The boy’s family lived in Cottage City, MD, between the DC line and the Anacostia River and between Bladensburg Road and Rhode Island Avenue. Bladensburg is directly across the river. Back in a more gracious era, it was a trolley line suburb, served by the Rhode Island Avenue Trolley that ran from DC up to Hyattsville and College Park.
The boy had been suspended from Bladensburg Junior High School for his odd behavior. The family was Lutheran. The father was a career government employee, back in the era of the civil service exams, so he was presumptively reasonably competent and had good medical coverage by the standards of the time. 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.
As I understand the story, the boy’s mother was the true believer that he had been possessed. The father was apparently never convinced. The Lutheran pastor may have also been unconvinced, but the priest saw it differently and started the process for exorcism.
It would be fascinating to know the details. This is not a case of Father O’Gullible out in the back of beyond trying to deal with something above his paygrade. This started in 1949 in a just-across-the-city-line suburb of Washington, DC. Catholic University with its phalanx of seminaries and theologians is 2.5 miles away. The boy had been suspended by the local school officials. In addition to the neighborhood pastor and priest, he was seen by doctors and psychiatrists. The exorcism was started in the Georgetown University Hospital, so he was seen by more docs and shrinks there. I don’t know how tight the Catholic protocols on authorizing exorcisms were in 1949, but big league expert resources were available.
The GU exorcism was halted after the boy yanked a coil spring out of his rollaway hospital bed and stabbed a priest. The mother then took him to St. Louis, where she had family. The point that intrigues me here is that this created a Team A/Team B situation. They go to St. Louis: a different archdiocese, different bishop, different priests, doctors, and psychiatrists. Team B concurred with Team A and continued the exorcism, which was very extended but ultimately successful.
One of my good friends is an argumentative agnostic tending towards atheism. He is a radical skeptic on such matters. He insists that the supposed “victims” either have some extreme psychiatric condition or are faking the symptoms for their own gratification/amusement. But in this case, the boy was 13 years old when it all started. There were a lot of adult eyes on him, many of them very sophisticated in different fields, with two independent teams reaching the same conclusion. What exactly were they seeing?
Materialists are simply terrified of anything spiritual. The psychiatrists are the hitmen to explain away anything that violates materialist dogma even to the point of murder (ECT, lobotomies, etc).
Well, except for stuff flying around the room, it could be mental. I know people who did spiritual possession for money(Bob Larson).
Zoomers collect mental illnesses like baseball cards. It is possible it could open a door for demons.
Thank you for a very detailed and informative post.