The teen from ‘The Exorcist’ in St. Louis grew up to work at NASA

fox2now.com ^ | October 8, 2022 | Liz Dowell

[lowbridge]

The 1973 film The Exorcist was based in part on a family with close ties to St. Louis. The child that inspired the movie, Ronald Hunkler, grew up to work at NASA, the government agency confirms. 

He joined NASA in February 1962 to work in the spacecraft technology division. It is located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. 

“His work with the high-temperature resistant ceramic compound was detailed in a Goddard News article,” said Sean Potter, Public Affairs Specialist. He said that a photo of him was published along with the article in the 1964 edition. 

“He is also mentioned in a February 1965 NASA Tech Brief on the above topic,” said Potter.

Hunkeler worked with NASA for 40 years. Furthermore, he helped with the Apollo missions of the 1960s that put US astronauts on the moon in 1969. 

Hunkeler was the boy who inspired the book The Exorcist in 1971, and then the movie of the same name. 

The Skeptical Inquirer stated Hunkeler as the 14-year-old boy in the St. Louis exorcism case. They announced this after Hunkeler’s death on May 10, 2020. He was previously known as Roland or Robbie Doe in the many news articles about the exorcisms.

Saint Louis University says that the actual events that inspired the novel happened in 1949. Hunkeler’s family lived in the Washington, DC area. His aunt from St. Louis introduced him to Spiritualism, the occult. After she died, he tried to contact her with a Ouija board. That is when strange things started to happen in his family’s home.

[tired&retired]

Thank you for a very detailed and informative post.

[tired&retired]

“A key warning is in this paragraph about the dangers of Ouija boards.”

Very true. I’ve been a part of several clean up projects when this door was opened.

It’s very real.

[fidelis]

One of the unexplained oddities of the case is why the Lutheran pastor referred them to the local Catholic priest. Perhaps the pastor and priest were simply good friends. But this still strikes me as quite unLutheranlike behavior. “Hey, I’ve got a tough case here, so I’d better call the Catholics” is not the response I’d expect from a Lutheran pastor...The Lutheran pastor may have also been unconvinced, but the priest saw it differently and started the process for exorcism.

[KC_Conspirator]

I have seen his house outside DC.