Exorcism Footage of the Real Emily Rose

Dozens of movie-goers around the world flocked the cinemas to see the thrilling and disturbing horror flick, The Exorcism of Emily Rose on its premiere night. The film based on true events grossed over $150 million in the box office and was tagged as one of the scariest American movies of all time. But surprisingly there weren’t a lot of information publicized about Anneliese Michel - the person who inspired the movie, the real-life Emily Rose. 

Anneliese Michel is a beautiful young teen of German descent who underwent Catholic exorcism rites in 1975. As a child, she was described as an intelligent, kind, and compassionate person with a deep devotion to the church. On 1969, the then 17-year old began experiencing epileptic seizures and convulsions. Doctors diagnosed her of having a psychosis and temporal lobe epilepsy. She was immediately treated at a psychiatric hospital however, instead of improving health the treatments worsened her condition.

She was said to develop severe depression that led to hallucinations such as seeing demons and hearing voices that would tell her she was “damned.” When the medical treatments still proved to be fruitless, her parents sought to seek religious help with the thinking that she may have been possessed by a demon. 

Initially the Catholic priests did not adhere to the parents’ request of conducting an exorcism but relented when Bishop Josef Strangl permitted them to do so. And thus, Fr. Ernst Alt and Arnold Renz performed the exorcism rites for 10 months in complete secrecy. 

Reports say that in Anneliese’s episodes, she would make demonic voices and facial expressions, tear all her clothes apart, eat coal and drink her own urine. Further documentations say that the demons who occupied the her body included Lucifer, Cain, Judas Iscariot, Nero and Hitler. Eventually she began talking of dying as a martyr and refused to eat anything later on. 

Finally, on July 1 1976 Anneliese Michel died of extreme dehydration and starvation after 67 exorcism at age 23. Consequently, all the people involved in the exorcism rites were charged with negligent homicide and sentenced to 6 months in jail with 3 years probation.