Real Possession Cases: Documented Exorcisms in History

Real possession cases are cases where a person was believed to be possessed, a religious exorcism took place, and records survive from the time. Courts, hospitals, police or church officials wrote things down. That is what makes them real cases. It does not prove a demon was present. No case has ever shown possession under conditions that can be tested. Several ended in death, and two ended in criminal trials. Doctors today link most of the reported signs to epilepsy, psychosis, dissociation, and the beliefs of the people around the victim.

The seven cases below are the best recorded. Each links to a full page on this site.

Real possession cases

The Loudun possessions (1632 to 1637)

In 1632 the Ursuline nuns of Loudun in western France began to show fits and convulsions. Their prioress, Jeanne des Anges, named the parish priest Urbain Grandier as the cause. Grandier had a reputation with women and many enemies. He also opposed Cardinal Richelieu’s plan to pull down the town walls. Richelieu’s agent Jean de Laubardemont ran the inquiry. Grandier was convicted of sorcery and burned at the stake in August 1634. The public exorcisms drew large crowds and went on until about 1637. John Locke called the affair a contrivance of Richelieu. The historian Michel de Certeau read it as political theatre and mass hysteria. Read the full case.

Clara Germana Cele (1906)

Clara Germana Cele was a sixteen-year-old orphan at St Michael’s Mission in Natal, South Africa. In 1906, some sources say 1907, the mission’s staff came to believe she was possessed. Accounts say she reacted to holy water, spoke in languages she did not know, and rose about five feet into the air. Father Erasmus Hörner, her confessor, and the mission director Father Mansueti carried out an exorcism over two days. The main account comes from a nun at the mission. Later retellings come from books on the paranormal. No independent witness or medical record has been found. She died in 1912, aged about 22. Read the full case.

Roland Doe (1949)

This is the case that inspired William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist in 1971. A teenage boy from Cottage City, Maryland, known as “Roland Doe” or “Robbie Mannheim”, began to show strange behaviour after the death of an aunt. She was a Spiritualist who had shown him a Ouija board. The family’s Lutheran pastor, Luther Schulze, sent them to Catholic priests. Exorcisms were tried in Washington and then in St. Louis, Missouri. The Jesuit Raymond Bishop kept a diary. It describes scratches on the boy’s skin and violent fits. In 2021 the Skeptical Inquirer named the boy as Ronald Hunkeler, who died in 2020. The writer Thomas Allen called him a deeply disturbed boy. Mark Opsasnick found that much of the story rested on hearsay. Father Walter Halloran, who took part, would not say the boy had been possessed. Read the full case.

Michael Taylor (1974)

Michael Taylor was a butcher from Ossett in West Yorkshire. He joined a local Christian prayer group and his behaviour grew wild. On the night of 5 to 6 October 1974, the Anglican priest Peter Vincent and the Methodist minister Raymond Smith held an exorcism at St Thomas’s Church in Gawber, near Barnsley. Accounts say they believed they cast out at least forty demons, but that three remained, namely insanity, murder and violence. Hours later Taylor killed his wife Christine at home. He was found covered in blood in the street. At his trial in March 1975 he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He spent two years in Broadmoor Hospital. Read the full case.

Anneliese Michel (1975 to 1976)

Anneliese Michel was born in 1952 and grew up in Klingenberg am Main in Bavaria. At sixteen she had a severe convulsion and was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy. She later came to believe she was possessed. Bishop Josef Stangl of Würzburg approved an exorcism in secret. The priests Ernst Alt and Arnold Renz carried out 67 sessions over about ten months in 1975 and 1976, and many were taped. Voices on the tapes named themselves as Lucifer, Cain, Judas, Nero and Hitler. She stopped eating and died on 1 July 1976 of malnutrition and dehydration. She weighed about 30 kilograms. In April 1978 her parents and both priests were convicted of negligent homicide and given suspended sentences. Read the full case.

Arne Cheyenne Johnson (1981)

On 16 February 1981 Arne Cheyenne Johnson stabbed his landlord Alan Bono to death in Brookfield, Connecticut. The year before, the Glatzel family had called in Ed and Lorraine Warren over their young son David. Johnson was the boyfriend of David’s sister Debbie. The Warrens said a demon had passed from the boy to Johnson. His lawyer tried to plead that Johnson was possessed. Judge Robert Callahan would not allow it. In November 1981 Johnson was convicted of first-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to ten to twenty years and served about five. In 2007 David and his brother Carl sued over a book on the case. Carl called the possession story a hoax made up by the Warrens. The case inspired the 2021 film The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. Read the full case.

Latoya Ammons (2011 to 2012)

Latoya Ammons and her three children lived in a rented house in Gary, Indiana. The family said the house was full of demons and that the children were possessed. The Department of Child Services took the case on and removed the children for a time. The Indianapolis Star reported in January 2014, drawing on nearly 800 pages of official records. According to the paper, a case manager and a hospital nurse said they saw the nine-year-old boy walk backward up a wall. Gary police Captain Charles Austin first thought the family had made it up for money. After several visits he said “I am a believer.” Father Michael Maginot performed three major exorcisms on Ammons in June 2012. The television host Zak Bagans later bought and demolished the house. The skeptic Kenny Biddle said Bagans’s 2018 film Demon House made no real investigation of the claims. Read the full case.

How the Church tests a claim

The Catholic Church has a formal rite of exorcism. It was last revised in 1999. Before a priest may use it, the bishop is meant to rule out illness. The Church lists four classic signs. They are great strength, knowledge of hidden things, speaking an unknown language, and a strong reaction to holy objects. In practice these signs are reported by believers, at the scene, with no controls. In every case above, the strongest claims come from people who already believed in possession.

Other faiths have their own rites. In Islam, healers recite verses of the Quran over a person thought to be troubled by jinn. This is called ruqyah. Jewish folklore tells of the dybbuk, a restless soul that enters the living. Possession beliefs appear in Hindu, Buddhist and many local traditions. The signs people describe are much the same everywhere, which suggests they draw on common human experiences.

What doctors say

Doctors point to known conditions that can look like possession. Epilepsy, especially in the temporal lobe, can bring fits, strange feelings and sudden changes in mood. Anneliese Michel had this diagnosis. Psychosis can bring voices and the belief that something outside is in control. Dissociative disorders can bring other voices and loss of memory for what happened. Tourette syndrome can bring sudden swearing. A strong religious setting can shape how all of these show up and how the family reads them.

The two deaths on this list came from treatment that replaced medicine with ritual. That is why most churches now ask for a medical check first. The more extreme claims, such as levitation in Natal or wall walking in Gary, come from witness reports. None was filmed or tested. For a related type of case, see our guide to real poltergeist cases, where the same pattern of one troubled young person at the centre appears again and again.

Sources

• Loudun possessions (Wikipedia)
• Clara Germana Cele (Wikipedia)
• Exorcism of Roland Doe (Wikipedia)
• Michael Taylor (British killer) (Wikipedia)
• Anneliese Michel (Wikipedia)
• Trial of Arne Cheyenne Johnson (Wikipedia)
• Demon House (Wikipedia)
• GetReligion on the Indianapolis Star’s Ammons report, January 2014