WILLIAM PETER BLATTY / AUTHOR OF 'THE EXORCIST'

[auntym]

www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/william-peter-blatty-talks-literature-life-after-death-and-lousy-movies/2015/04/14/071546f2-de0e-11e4-be40-566e2653afe5_story.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+C2C-InTheNews+%28Feed+-+Coast+to+Coast+-+In+the+News%29

William Peter Blatty talks literature, life after death and lousy movies

By Michael O'Sullivan
April 14, 2015


“Exorcist” author William Peter Blatty has a new book out. Titled “Finding Peter,” it’s part comic memoir, part argument for life after death. Blatty, a lifelong Catholic, lays out a number of curious incidents — electric lights mysteriously flickering on and off, etc. — that have convinced him that his son Peter, who died of a rare heart disorder in 2006 at the age of 19, has been communicating with him from beyond the grave.

Blatty, who calls his book a “labor of love” meant for readers who have lost a loved one, plans to donate the book’s royalties to a scholarship fund in his son’s name at Peter’s old high school, the Heights School, in Potomac, Md . We chatted with the 87-year-old Bethesda, Md. author by phone, touching on the literary life, life after death and movies.

[William Peter Blatty, writer of ‘The Exorcist,’ slips back into the light for its 40th anniversary] www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/william-peter-blatty-writer-of-the-exorcist-slips-back-into-the-light-for-its-40th-anniversary/2013/10/30/e8c85900-3fda-11e3-a624-41d661b0bb78_story.html

Your book’s subtitle is “A True Story of the Hand of Providence and Evidence of Life After Death.” It’s telling that you use the word evidence — what a lawyer might present to a jury. That’s not the same thing as proof.

No, it’s not proof at all. Any one of even the most dramatic incidents that I cite in the book could be explained as coincidence. It’s only when they’re considered in the context of eight years of this kind of going-on that, for me at least, they take on considerably more weight.

The first half of the book establishes the credibility of the witness, as it were.


CONTINUE READING: www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/william-peter-blatty-talks-literature-life-after-death-and-lousy-movies/2015/04/14/071546f2-de0e-11e4-be40-566e2653afe5_story.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+C2C-InTheNews+%28Feed+-+Coast+to+Coast+-+In+the+News%29

[auntym]

mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/03/the-exorcist-director-attends-actual-exorcism-at-the-vatican/

‘The Exorcist’ Director Attends Actual Exorcism at The Vatican

by Brett Tingley / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/bbtingley/
March 28, 2018

When The Exorcist first appeared in theaters in 1973, the religious practice was still relatively unknown in popular culture. The success of the terrifying film made exorcism a household term and even launched a whole subgenre of horror fiction. Every subsequent exorcism movie has essentially been a variation on the same elements of The Exorcist. Whether related to the film or not, exorcisms appear to be on the rise, at least from the recent calls for more exorcists made by both the Vatican and senior Irish clergy. Whatever the reason, exorcism has become a hot topic worldwide. It’s no coincidence, then, that original Exorcist director William Friedkin has shot a new film exploring real-world exorcisms which saw the director himself sitting in on a recent expulsion of a demon.



William Friedkin

Friedkin attendance at the exorcism was part of the filming for the upcoming documentary The Devil and Father Amorth. The film chronicles the life and work of Father Gabriele Amortha, the Vatican’s former resident exorcist who conducted exorcisms on behalf of the Diocese of Rome until his death in 2016, as he performs his ninth exorcism on a woman in Italy. Friedkin got to witness what would be one of Father Amortha’s final exorcisms in person, an event which moved him powerfully.

Following the exorcism, Friedkin told interviewers that it ultimately made him realize how emotionally traumatic and difficult these spiritual ceremonies can be:

It was terrifying, it went from being afraid of what could happen to feeling a great deal of empathy with this woman’s pain and suffering, which is obvious in the film.

Still, despite focusing on the human side of the story for this new film, Friedkin has received significant criticism online for supporting and promoting what some see as a phony phenomenon. Friedkin recently tweeted a defense of his film, claiming that showing interest in the paranormal isn’t necessarily the same as believing in it:

I don’t know anymore than you do. But just because we don’t know about something doesn’t mean it does or doesn’t exist. I just don’t go through life as a skeptic.

The Devil and Father Amorth premieres in the U.S. on April 20th.

mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/03/the-exorcist-director-attends-actual-exorcism-at-the-vatican/

[jcurio]

onepeterfive.com/chief-exorcist-father-amorth-padre-pio-knew-the-third-secret/

***********
More on Father Amorth.

I don’t doubt that exorcisms are needed in today’s lives.

I do doubt the “true purpose” behind the Fatima event. 🙂

I think it would be very hard to be a Catholic priest. To take on every aspect that the “heads of your church” tell you to. (Which is also true of other parsons of other religions. But more so, in my opinion, because Catholic priests are still not allowed to marry.... talking about the “strict rules” implied).

[auntym]

mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/04/director-of-the-exorcist-says-psychiatrists-cant-explain-real-exorcism/

Director of “The Exorcist” Says Psychiatrists Can’t Explain Real Exorcism

by Paul Seaburn / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/paulseaburn/
April 24, 2018





On lists of scariest movies and scariest novels ever, “The Exorcist” is one of the few that appears at or near the top of both. The film’s director, William Friedkin, has just released a documentary in which he filmed an actual exorcism that he has previously admitted was “terrifying.” However, he’s now revealed something that seems to terrify him even more … science can’t explain what he saw.

“There are many things, like radioactivity, that we knew nothing about for the longest time. And now it has a name and it’s a field of study. And maybe some day they’ll find some medical or other term for possession. I don’t know.”

In the meantime, Friedkin remains shook up by both the real exorcism that he witnessed and by the response he received from the doctors and psychiatrists who watched the video in his new documentary, “The Devil and Father Amorth.” Father Armorth is the late Italian priest and experienced exorcist Gabriele Amorth, who allowed Friedkin to witness his exorcism of a 46-year-old Italian woman in 2016. While Friedkin admitted that being just two feet away from the act terrified him, that terror eventually turned to empathy for the woman. It also convinced him that, if he were to make the movie today, it would be quite different.

Both Father Amorth and Friedkin admitted that the common view of exorcisms is based on the movie, which is much different from the real thing. In fact, the late author William Peter Blatty admitted that his novel “The Exorcist” was not the result of any personal witnessing on his part of a real exorcism. Instead, he based the priest, Father Merrin, on British archaeologist and Dead Sea Scrolls hunter Gerald Lankester Harding, and the exorcism itself on an account of an exorcism in 1949 of a 14-year-old boy (identified by the pseudonyms Robbie Mannheim and Roland Doe) performed by Jesuit priest Fr. William S. Bowdern. Later investigations referred to “Robbie” as “disturbed” but not possessed.

Friedkin might disagree with that diagnosis, especially after talking to brain surgeons who viewed the filmed exorcism. He explains in an interview with Huffington Post:

“Now, these were guys who have done over 5,000 brain surgeries each. So I took it to them, and they all to a person said: We don’t know what this is. It’s not epilepsy; it’s not a lesion in the temporal lobe. We would not know what to remove from her brain to solve this.”

Then, as he tells NPR, he showed it to psychiatrists.

“And the psychiatrists told me, to my astonishment, that psychiatry now recognizes it as something called dissociative identity disorder – demonic possession.”

Dissociative identity disorder was previously known as multiple personality disorder and it’s a controversial diagnosis because many believe its cause is childhood abuse. It has also been blamed on genetics and even on the psychiatrists or hypnotists who are attempting to determine its origin. While demonic possession is not on the list of causes, religious beliefs are and that’s where the beliefs in demons and possession have their roots.

Friedkin admits to being closer to Christianity than the Jewish faith he was born in, but neither have an answer to questions about possessions and exorcisms.

“People can have faith or belief, but we know nothing. Not the Pope, not Bertrand Russell, or the greatest thinkers really know the answers to these questions.”

Does that make “The Exorcist” even scarier?

mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/04/director-of-the-exorcist-says-psychiatrists-cant-explain-real-exorcism/

[auntym]

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/20/the-exorcist-boy-named-magazine

US news

Boy whose case inspired The Exorcist is named by US magazine



Ronald Edwin Hunkeler died last year, a month before his 86th birthday, after suffering a stroke at home in Marriottsville, Maryland. Photograph: AF archive/Alamy


by Maya Yang / www.theguardian.com/profile/maya-yang
Mon 20 Dec 2021


The boy whose case inspired the portrayal of a demon-possessed child in the 1973 horror movie classic The Exorcist has been named.

The US magazine the Skeptical Inquirer named the then 14-year-old boy, previously known as Roland Doe, who underwent exorcisms in Cottage City, Maryland, and St Louis, Missouri, in 1949.

Ronald Edwin Hunkeler died last year, a month before his 86th birthday, after suffering a stroke at home in Marriottsville, Maryland.

In adult life, Hunkeler was a Nasa engineer whose work contributed to the Apollo space missions of the 1960s and who patented a technology that helped space shuttle panels withstand extreme heat.


One of his companions, a 29-year-old woman who asked not to be named, told the New York Post that Hunkeler was always on edge about his Nasa colleagues discovering that he was the inspiration for The Exorcist.

“On Halloween, we always left the house because he figured someone would come to his residence and know where he lived and never let him have peace,” she said. “He had a terrible life from worry, worry, worry,” she added.

Hunkeler eventually retired from Nasa in 2001 after working at the agency for nearly 40 years.

William Peter Blatty, who wrote the 1971 novel and the film based on the same name, first heard about Hunkeler’s apparent demonic possession when he was a senior at Georgetown University in Washington DC.

His professor, Eugene Gallager, who was also a priest at Georgetown, the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university founded in the US, told Blatty about Hunkeler’s reported possessions and subsequent exorcisms.

Born in 1935 and raised by a middle-class family in Cottage City, Hunkeler began experiencing paranormal activities at 14 when he reported hearing knocking and scratching sounds from behind his bedroom walls.

The Rev Luther Schulze, Hunkeler’s family minister, eventually wrote to the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, in North Carolina, in March 1949 and explained how “chairs moved with [Hunkeler] and one threw him out [of it.] His bed shook whenever he was in it.”

Schulze also explained how the family’s floors were “scarred from the sliding of heavy furniture” and how “a picture of Christ on the wall shook” whenever Hunkeler was nearby.

The family eventually sought the help of William Bowdern, a Jesuit who conducted more than 20 exorcism rituals on Hunkeler in the span of three months. Writing in his diary on 10 March 1949, Bowdern noted how Hunkeler entered a trance-like state as 14 witnesses watched during one of his exorcisms.

There was a “scratching which beat out a rhythm of marching soldiers. Second class relic of St Margaret Mary was thrown on the floor. The safety pin was opened but no human hand had touched the relic. R started up in fright when the relic was thrown down,” Bowdern wrote.

Hunkeler was then relocated to St Louis to be treated for demonic possession. “It seems that whatever force was writing the words was in favor of making the trip to St Louis,” Bowdern wrote.

“On one evening the word ‘Louis’ was written on the boy’s ribs in deep red [scratches.] Next, when there was some question of the time of departure, the word ‘Saturday’ was written plainly on the boy’s hip. As to the length of time the mother and the boy should stay in St Louis, another message was printed on the boy’s chest, ‘3 ½ weeks’. The printing always appeared without any motion on the part of the boy’s hands.”

Hunkeler was admitted to the Alexian Brothers Hospital in St Louis on 21 March 1949. Nearly a month later, Hunkeler “broke into a violent tantrum of screaming, cursing, and voicing of Latin phrases” as Jesuit priests allegedly cast the demon out of his body.

He “has been freed by a Catholic priest of possession by the devil, Catholic sources reported yesterday”, wrote Washington Post reporter Bill Brinkley in an article on 20 August 1949.

Shortly before his death, a Catholic priest showed up at Hunkeler’s home unexpectedly to perform last rites, said his companion.

“I have no idea how the Father knew to come but he got Ron to heaven. Ron’s in heaven and he’s with God now,” she told the New York Post.


www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/20/the-exorcist-boy-named-magazine

[auntym]

www.coasttocoastam.com/article/former-nasa-engineer-revealed-to-have-been-boy-at-center-of-exorcist-case/


Former NASA Engineer Revealed to Have Been Boy at Center of 'Exorcist' Case

December 21, 2021

By Tim Binnall / www.coasttocoastam.com/pages/tim-binnall/





Long shrouded in mystery, the identity of the boy who served as the inspiration for the legendary story 'The Exorcist' has been revealed to be a former NASA engineer who passed away last year. By way of an investigation by JD Sword from the magazine Skeptical Inquirer, it has been determined that Ronald Edwin Hunkeler was the then-14-year-old individual who underwent a series of exorcisms back in 1949 at his home in Cottage City, Maryland. Word of the strange case of purported demonic possession captivated writer William Peter Blatty, who subsequently penned a fictionalized version of the account titled The Exorcist, which then went on to become a hit Hollywood film of the same name.

Although Hunkeler's identity was known to the Jesuit priests and medical professionals who tended to him more than seven decades ago, his name was kept secret from the general public since he was just a boy when the strange case occurred and the teenager was dubbed simply 'Roland Doe.' By connecting various clues which came to light over the years, such as the boy's date of birth and a high school yearbook for Cottage City, Sword was able to pinpoint a particularly promising suspect. Upon bringing the information to journalist Mark Opsasnick, who had previously thoroughly investigated the case, his findings were confirmed when he was told "the Haunted Boy is Ronald Hunkeler. That’s a fact."

With Hunkeler's central role in the 'Exorcist' story finally being revealed, an unnamed friend spoke to the New York Post about how the experience shaped his subsequent years and the remarkable life he led after the events of 1949. According to the woman, he was quite literally haunted by the legendary story and the notoriety that surrounded it. Plagued with fears that it would someday be revealed to be that he was the 'haunted boy," she lamented that "he had a terrible life from worry, worry, worry" and that Hunkeler always left the house on Halloween because he was concerned that someone would show up on that evening to blow his proverbial cover.

However, Hunkeler did not appear to have been diminished by the dark cloud which hung over him due to his connection to 'The Exorcist' story as he actually went on to have a distinguished career as an engineer with NASA and even worked on the famed Apollo program. As for the events of 1949, his friend recalled that "he said he wasn't possessed, it was all concocted. He said, 'I was just a bad boy.'" While that very well may be the case, Hunkeler's passing last May produced one last uncanny and rather eerie moment when, a few days earlier, a Catholic priest showed up out of the blue at his home to perform the last rites. "I have no idea how the Father knew to come," his friend marveled, "but he got Ron to heaven."


www.coasttocoastam.com/article/former-nasa-engineer-revealed-to-have-been-boy-at-center-of-exorcist-case/