Perhaps after The Exorcist, the demonic possession movie cited with the greatest respect is The Exorcism of Emily Rose.  This 2005 movie is based, in part, on the true case of Anneliese Michel, a young German woman who died after undergoing several exorcisms, beginning in 1975.  Sometimes it takes a while for the penny to drop, but after reading about The Exorcist the timing of all of this struck me.  Somehow reading about it in Joseph Laycock and Eric Harrelson’s “The Exorcist” Effect, hadn’t stuck with me.  William Peter Blatty published the eponymous novel in 1971.  This was based, in part, on a case from 1949, over twenty years earlier.  The novel was a bestseller and, of course, adapted into William Friedkin’s The Exorcist in 1973.  That movie was a blockbuster, and is probably the single biggest influence in the current perceptions of demonic possession.  What caught Blatty’s attention in the first place was how rare exorcism was.  And one was held in 1949?

Anneliese Michel had been undergoing psychiatric treatment since 1970.  It was only five years later, after the release of both the novel and movie, that exorcism was suggested as a possible cure.  It may be impossible to know if the priest whom the Michel family approached had read the novel or seen the film.  One thing is certain, however.  The Exorcist brought the topic back into popular consciousness in the western world by then.  Yes, in the United States it was pop culture, but the film was taken with such seriousness that it filtered into everyday consciousness as well.  Although banned in parts of Britain, that consciousness had entered Europe as well.  Was the idea to treat Michel by exorcism part of what Laycock and Harrelson termed “The Exorcist Effect”?

Media is incredibly influential.  Fiction can create reality.  It can cost someone their life.  And not just for being in an accident in the film industry (although such tragedies do occur).  Humans are intrigued by ideas.  We tell stories about them.  Sometimes our own life stories become fictionalized in our recollections.  My memories have been corrected more than once by my siblings.  Culturally, we were shown what demons were and what they could do in The Exorcist.  Even if Michel’s priest hadn’t seen the movie, he lived in a culture already altered by it.  I really need to go back and read Laycock and Harrelson’s book again.  Being invited to a podcast about demons back in August made me think about Emily Rose again, after years of pursing The Wicker Man and Sleepy Hollow.