Possession and exorcism: an essay review

Journal of Parapsychology, The, March, 1995 by Ian Stevenson

The idea of possession is found often in the Bible and became incorporated in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Exorcists - persons empowered to displace a possessing devil - were a minor order of the Roman Catholic Church until the Church abolished this role in 1972. Authorized priests may still perform rituals of exorcism. The book by Thomas Allen(2) that stimulated this essay describes the alleged possession and exorcism of a 14-year-old boy in 1949.

We should consider the case and the book together because the book is likely to be our only publicly available source of information about the case. Some other information in ecclesiastical archives is inaccessible, and the subject in the case - to whom Allen gives the pseudonym Robbie - did not answer Allen's letter asking for additional information. This makes it important to examine Allen's sources and his handling of them. Of these sources, the most important by far is a 28-page diary kept by Father Raymond Bishop, S.J., who was an eyewitness to the second and more extensive of the two exorcisms in the case. Father Bishop included in his diary what he was able to learn about the family concerned in the case and certain events that occurred before it came to his attention. Unfortunately, Father Bishop and the two exorcists, Father Albert Hughes and Father William Bowdern, S.J., had all died by the time Allen began to work on his book. He was, however, able to interview a few other persons who were either firsthand informants or apparently reliable secondhand ones. The most important of these was Father Walter Halloran, S.J., who had assisted at the second exorcism. Allen also derived some further fragments of information from other sources, especially a few newspaper accounts based on items of information that leaked out during Robbie's illness. Allen acknowledges the limitations of the evidence he deploys and shows that he tried to corroborate statements as much as possible. His attention to details pleases me. For example, in trying to place in Robbie's family a person mentioned without being further identified, Allen searched the obituary of another member of the family in the hope that it would name the unidentified person and state her relationship to the rest of the family.

In the early 1970s this case provided the basis for a fictional account of it and a sensational movie. Such exploitation would generate caution in anyone reading the assertion in the subtitle of Allen's book that he has given his readers "the true story" of the case. Nevertheless, I think that he can fairly claim to have done this. I believe that his account is sufficiently reliable so that we can take the case seriously and consider alternative interpretations for it. Allen provides a careful guide to his sources, a compact bibliography (which shows that he is acquainted with some of the scientific literature on possession), and an index.

I turn now to the case itself. Robbie was his parents' only child. He was 14 years old when the case developed, in January 1949. He seems not to have shown any obvious abnormalities of personality prior to that time, although he was perhaps somewhat introverted and solitary. His maternal grandmother lived in the home (in a Washington, D.C. suburb) with him and his parents. The family were Protestants.

Robbie had a paternal aunt named Harriet, who did not live with the family but came often to visit them. Harriet was a Spiritualist, and she introduced Robbie to the ouija board, which she worked with him. Afterward, Robbie sometimes worked the ouija board by himself. Harriet to some extent convinced Robbie's mother of the reality of communication with deceased souls, but Robbie's father and grandmother remained skeptical.

The first event in the case occurred on January 15, 1949, when Robbie and his grandmother - his parents being absent - heard an inexplicable sound as of water dripping. This was followed by a sound as if someone or some animal was scratching on a floor. The scratching persisted for several nights, and all members of the family heard it. On January 26, Robbie's Aunt Harriet died. Her death seems to have devastated Robbie, who began spending hours with the ouija board, possibly trying to contact Aunt Harriet. At about this time the scratching ceased, but other inexplicable noises, as of someone walking with squeaking shoes, began. Robbie's mother thought the unusual sounds might somehow be connected with Aunt Harriet's involvement with Spiritualism, and remembering what Aunt Harriet had said about using raps to communicate with spirits, she endeavored to reach Aunt Harriet with raps.

At this time the second phase of the case began. This consisted of the phenomena associated with a conventional poltergeist. Objects moved without being touched: Sometimes they tipped over, and some of them took off and flew through the air. Robbie was quickly seen to be the focus of these disturbances; his desk at school participated in the inexplicable movements. He firmly denied that he had anything to do with the events. His parents sought professional help, including that of a psychiatrist, who had nothing to often As the disturbances continued, they became "convinced that Robbie was the victim of an evil ghost" (p. 13), perhaps that of Aunt Harriet. They next consulted a local Lutheran minister, the Rev. Luther Schulze. He satisfied himself about the magnitude of the phenomena when he slept in the same room with Robbie and observed a bed shaking and a heavy chair tip over without being moved normally. As an "enlightened Lutheran," he had no belief in possession by an evil spirit and could only suggest prayer as a remedy. This having failed, Schulze, with commendable liberality, advised Robbie's parents to consult a Roman Catholic priest. He said "the Catholics know about things like this" (p. 24).