The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel

The true story behind “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” involves a young German girl named Anneliese Michel, born on September 21, 1952 in a small village in Bavaria. She was a young, beautiful woman on her way to a career in elementary education.

According to court findings, she experienced her first epileptic attack in 1969, and by 1973 was suffering from depression and considering suicide. Soon she was seeing the faces of demons on the people and things around her, and voices told her she was damned.

The first person to recognize that Anneliese Michel was possessed by demons was an older woman accompanying the girl on a pilgrimage. She noticed that Anneliese would not walk past a certain image of Jesus, refused to drink water from a holy spring and smelled bad — hellishly bad.

Under the influence of her demons, Michel ripped the clothes off her body, compulsively performed up to 400 squats a day, crawled under a table and barked like a dog for two days, ate flies, spiders and coal, bit the head off a dead bird and licked her own urine from the floor.

Anneliese’s ailments continued to get worse, she began self mutilation and would bite family members. She began destroying any religious symbols, rosaries, crucifixes and paintings of Jesus. This went on for 5 years.

By 1975 Michel was asking for an exorcism. The Revs. Pastor Ernst Alt and Father Arnold Renz performed the rite 67 times over the first half of 1976. Some of the sessions took up to four hours. Forty-two sessions were recorded on tape.

Michel’s recorded voice can still send shivers up your spine. It is the voice of a demon, growling, barking, inhuman — and surprisingly like the voice of Linda Blair in “The Exorcist,” which had been released in Germany two years earlier.

Sometimes the demons identified themselves — as Cain, Nero, Judas, Lucifer, Hitler and others — and even answered the exorcists’ questions, explaining what was wrong with the church or why they were in Hell. “People are stupid as pigs,” spat Hitler. “They think it’s all over after death. It goes on.” Judas said Hitler was nothing but a “big mouth” and had “no real say” in Hell.

Here are a compilation of the actual recorded sessions of the exorcism of Anneliese Michel ( before u listen to it, let me warn you….don’t listen to it if you are really afraid):

Click here to view the video. (I haven't uploaded the video because it is quite horrifying)

For ten months the rites were performed once or twice weekly and sometimes continued for 4 hours at a time. In many of these sessions, Anneliese would have strong attacks and had to be held or chained down. During the rites, Anneliese would speak with a demonic voice in several languages, including some that have died out years ago. Anneliese's health began to deteriorate. During the 10 months the rites being performed, she'd refuse to eat, saying the demons wouldn't let her. She'd also ruptured both her knee caps from performing approximately 600 genuflections-the process of dropping on your knees repeatedly.

During this time she'd given a written letter to the priest, stating that she no longer wanted to continue with the exorcisms. She told of the Virgin Mary coming to her and offering her 2 choices - to have immediate freedom from the demons or to let the possession continue for a while longer to reveal the danger and power of demons to the whole world and save souls. She was also told that before her death, she would be free of the demons and would die in grace and peace. Anneliese decided to remain possessed and stopped the exorcisms. She also predicted the time of her death.

At midnight on July 1, 1976. the exact day she had predicted, Anneliese went to sleep, finally at peace and never woke up again. The autopsy reports confirmed that she died of malnutrition and dehydration. A beautiful young woman, who had become almost unrecognizable weighted just 68 pound!!

The investigation concluded that Anneliese had literally starved to death and that if she'd been force fed, she would still be alive. Both her parents, the pastor and the priest were all charged with negligent homicide and the trial started in March of 1978. Despite the introduction of several sessions recorded on tape, all four were found guilty. They were sentenced to six months in prison, suspended with three years’ probation.

On February 25, 1978, the body was buried only 100 feet from the house she grew up in. Anneliese's grave is often visited by people.

The case became the last time the Catholic Church officially recognized Demonic Possession and granted an exorcism.

In her last words to the priest, Anneliese warned them to "Beg for Absolution".

And, a dying child's last word to her mother was..."Mother, I'm afraid..."

I came upon this interesting audio on youtube where some random guy plays the exorcism tapes backwards….and stumbles upon some really interesting things (again don’t listen to it if you‘re afraid):

Click here to view the video. (I haven't uploaded the video because it is quite horrifying)