Paranormal Nation

by Marc E. Fitch

  CHAPTER 10

  Based on a True Story…

  Hollywood loves to claim that paranormal movies are “based on a true story,” but how true is that statement? Our history of film provides many “true stories” that are verifiable and absolutely true to the best of the director’s and actors’ knowledge. However, there are other so-called true stories that are not necessarily “true.” As discussed in “Paranormal Hoaxes,” one of the hallmarks of the paranormal is the blurring of the boundaries between fact and fiction, empirical evidence versus interpretation. The difficulty with “true” paranormal stories is the difficulty in verifying the phenomenon that is central to the film. The phenomenon is what the audience links most directly with the “true” statement in the title. Normally, there is very little doubt that a particular individual existed, or that a certain house was the site of some grisly murders, or even that there was an individual missing for a long period of time, only to show up again with no recollection of where he had been, as in the case of Travis Walton in Fire in the Sky. For instance, The Amityville Horror is one of the films that worked its way into the pantheon of the American paranormal experience; most remember it as being lauded as a “true” story. It is true in that there is a house in Amityville, New York, that was the site of some grisly murders. The house was bought by the Lutz family, who then abandoned it approximately one month later claiming that the house was haunted. Ed and Lorraine Warren, who investigated the house, confirmed the haunting. There was much media sensation surrounding the claims, a book was written, a subsequent film was produced, and the legend of the Amityville Horror was born. So many people descended upon Amityville that the town eventually had to change the name of the street where the house was located to keep people from trespassing.

  All of that is absolutely, empirically true. It all happened. But what of the phenomena claimed by both the Lutz family and the Warrens? This is where “truth” becomes blurred. There is no way to verify the phenomena other than taking their word for it. The story is “true” inasmuch as it is the story they told and attest to be true. When asserting that a book or film is a true story, the author, director, and producers are, in effect, telling the audience that they accept the witnesses’ testimony as truth. The audience is not allowed to make a decision one way or the other; the “truth” is told to them. However, the audience appears to be willing and able to believe this truth.

  When we enter a movie theater, we pay a fee that allows us to willingly suspend our disbelief for a short period of time; it is essentially why we go to movies. While watching Star Wars, I accept the fact that the Millennium Falcon can move freely through the universe at remarkable speed, defying all physics known to man. I accept it as an act of my willing suspension of disbelief, so that I can enjoy the movie without bogging down my brain trying to figure out the physics of it. But no one ever claimed that Star Wars was a “true story.” When a film claims to be a true story and we enter the darkness of the theater—the place where we traditionally suspend our natural inclination to disbelief—are we somehow more vulnerable to believing the story at face value? Or are the “true” stories being told resonating with audiences because they confirm their already existent beliefs or because they have had similar experiences themselves? Based on the reactions that some of these films have elicited from audiences, the answers to both these questions seem to be an emphatic “Yes.”

  In middle school I recall hearing for the first time (that I can remember) about the film Texas Chainsaw Massacre. One of the kids told me that it was a true story, and I was willing to believe him. For some reason, the belief in a massacre in Texas involving a chainsaw made sense to me and seemed to resonate with some deeper horror that I had only just begun to realize. For years I walked around with the presumption that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a true story, precisely because I didn’t feel the need to dig any deeper. It wasn’t until my college years that I finally did some research on the story and found that it wasn’t true in the least. It was very loosely based on Ed Gein, a Wisconsin grave robber who eventually turned to murder. He committed monstrous acts but murdered only two people, and neither involved Texas or a chainsaw. In the case of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the “true story” aspect was probably for promotional gains; however, the story became legend—one that school kids were telling each other and readily accepting.

  When The Blair Witch Project came out, many people were tricked into believing in the Blair Witch legend, which was entirely fictional. Some were even tricked into believing that the footage was real. Once again, it was entirely promotional; as yet, the Blair Witch seems to have made no steps toward becoming an American legend. But there are films that have. There are films that, through their assertion of being true stories and the audience’s willingness to believe that they are true, have become a part of the American cultural landscape—a movie mythology. The films that will be examined in this book claim to be true stories and, in fact, have a basis: the stories are real in that they were played out on a national media level and there were real people behind these films attesting to their truth. Additionally, the audience’s reaction attests to a certain truth in their perception of the films—everything from fainting in the theater to protests of criminal acts were associated with these films. Fire in the Sky, The Amityville Horror, and The Exorcist all managed to become part of the American movie mythology. The stories are told around campfires and in schoolyards, debated on television by skeptics and believers, and they have found a widespread audience more than willing to suspend their disbelief.

  THE EXORCIST

  William Friedkin’s The Exorcist is the “big daddy” of all horror films. It is widely considered the most frightening film of all time. It was an international blockbuster, an Academy Award contender (losing Best Picture and Director awards to none other than The Godfather), and it was controversial to say the least. Some derided The Exorcist as a pandering to the Dark Ages, as religious pornography; film critic Jon Landau wrote,

  The audience knew instinctively that The Exorcist is nothing more than a religious porn film, the gaudiest piece of big budget schlock this side of Cecil B. DeMille (minus the gentleman’s wit and ability to tell a story), and an assault on their sensibility at the most basic levels of shock and surprise. If it hadn’t made me angry, I might have been content to acknowledge that by virtue of its sheer outrageousness it may very well be a good bad movie, even an entertaining one, and let it go at that.1

  Other critics lauded the movie as one of the finest ever made.

  The Exorcist is one of the best movies of its type ever made; it not only transcends the genre of terror, horror, and the supernatural, but it transcends such serious, ambitious efforts in the same direction as Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby. Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is a greater film—but, of course, not nearly so willing to exploit the ways film can manipulate feeling.2

  However, more often than not it is the audience, not the critics, that propels a film into the pantheon of classics; and stories of the audience reaction to The Exorcist were as extreme as the film itself.

  Peter Travers and Stephanie Reiff authored the book The Story behind The Exorcist, and were allowed by William Friedkin to tag along for the making of the film. Thus, they have recorded the most in-depth look at the making of the film, including the audience reaction upon the opening of the film.

  But what of the reports of vomiting and fainting? Surely these people were not reveling in the voyeuristic pleasure. Nor were the people who were running to their priests for reassurances that the Devil was really only found in artistic representations. One had only to pick up a copy of a daily newspaper to read the accounts of construction workers in Texas demanding an exorcism for a building site formerly inhabited by the members of a pagan church, or young girls staying up all night to say the rosary, or even, the young men in Boston parading naked in front of the screen shouting they were the Devil.3

  However, contrary t
o the media hype, there appear to be few, if any, verifiable accounts of such extreme reactions in the theater. Part of this hype may have been inspired by audience reaction to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and the stories of people fainting and vomiting in the theater may have been influenced by many of the grindhouse films that were released to low-rent movie houses in the late sixties through the early eighties that would sometimes advertise as having EMTs on hand upon the release of the film because it was so graphic and horrible. Travers and Reiff’s reporting of the incidents may have been just more hype; they had been given full access to the directors, writers, producers, and studios of a film that had been kept under tight wraps, it was only in their best interest to keep the hype going.

  All these rumors, however, did inspire a great amount of public interest, and there were, in fact, lines going out the theater doors for The Exorcist. From the Christian Science Monitor, circa 1974, “He was standing in line for two hours on one of New York’s stinging cold days waiting for The Exorcist … He was joining the 4 million people already paying $10 million to see the film, queuing up for hours in line winding around city blocks, often in awful weather, to see an occult thriller supposed to shock audiences into nausea, fainting or more severe forms of physical and mental illness.”4 There was also a dramatic increase in public interest in exorcism; the Catholic Church was inundated with requests for exorcisms and questions from a frightened public concerning Satan. Unfortunately, the church was largely unprepared and at odds with itself regarding Satan and exorcism. The Second Vatican Council had just recently convened and had modernized many of the Catholic rituals and was reexamining whether or not Satan was an actual being, thus virtually fracturing the religion itself. Some critics even say that the Vatican II did away with the notion of pure evil. Then suddenly The Exorcist is released and a religion in flux is forced to confront its very own demons.

  This is one of the many “truths” of The Exorcist. Much of the Catholic faith was in question at the time, and The Exorcist, for many, was an affirmation of their belief system—an affirmation of true good and true evil—and it ultimately struck a chord in a nervous community. It was not a modernist film, but rather, a film that harkened back to the Dark Ages—to primeval beliefs in spirits, demons, devils, and God. It was a refutation of the modernist social and religious changes of the times. The religious aspects are some of the truest in the film and generated the greatest reaction from the audience. Naturally there was shock and horror and outrage at the graphic nature of the film, but it was the religious context of The Exorcist that drove it straight into the hearts and fears of the audience.

  William Peter Blatty released his novel, The Exorcist, in 1972; it was the story of a young girl living in Georgetown who became possessed by a demon and required an exorcism by a local Jesuit. Blatty had formerly been a seminary student and was very familiar with the inner workings of the church, particularly the Jesuits, one of the most educated and devout factions of the Catholic faith. While The Exorcist is a work of fiction, it was inspired by an exorcism that Blatty had read about in a newspaper in 1949, in which a 12-year-old boy was exorcised over the course of several months. The boy, whose identity has always been protected by the Catholic Church, by Blatty and subsequent authors, was originally from the Georgetown area, but the exorcism was performed over the course of one month in St. Louis, Missouri. The actual case was not quite as extreme as the film; there was no 360-degree rotation of the boy’s head, no projectile vomiting, no levitation, and no murder (although one of the first priests to attempt the exorcism was badly injured when the boy slashed him with a piece of metal he had somehow removed from the hospital bed), and no “Captain Howdy,” the name Regan gives to the demon before it possesses her. The exorcism was largely performed in a Catholic hospital with the priests returning night after night to confront the boy, who, for all intents and purposes, behaved perfectly normal during the daylight hours. The exorcist, Father Bowdern, kept a diary of the events and thus made it the first documented exorcism in U.S. history.

  While there may not have been any instances of the more memorable moments of The Exorcist, there were reports of objects moving across the room, the bed shaking when the boy was on it, numerous violent acts by the boy, and a rather weak case of the boy speaking in unknown languages. Some of this is refuted even by the Catholic Church. Thomas Allen, journalist and author, wrote a full account of the boy’s exorcism in his work, Possessed, which was subsequently turned into a film by the cable network Showtime. Allen’s report is based on Bowdern’s diary, which he acquired through another priest who was present during the exorcism. He writes,

  The Roman Catholic Church has never said whether demons possessed Robbie (fake name), despite what seems to be enough ecclesiastical evidence to render a verdict … Archbishop Ritter, following Church procedure, appointed an examiner—a Jesuit professor of philosophy at St. Louis University—to investigate the case. The examiner had the authority to interview participants under oath. According to a Jesuit who is familiar with the results of the investigation, the examiner concluded that Robbie was not the victim of a diabolical possession. Buttressing that report were statements by psychiatrists at Washington University. They said they saw no evidence of the supernatural or preternatural.5

  Furthermore, the origins of the possession are different in the actual case as opposed to the film. The actual case was tied to the boy’s aunt, a woman who was heavily into Spiritualism and trying to contact the spirits of the dead. She encouraged the boy to use an Ouija board and used it with him. After she passed away, the 13-year-old boy was devastated and attempted to contact her through the board. When the phenomena began, the family thought it was actually the boy’s aunt trying to communicate. This has led to some speculation of an inappropriate relationship between the two, whereas in the film, Regan was a seemingly innocent victim of a spirit predator, rather than a sexual predator.

  So how is The Exorcist a true story? Well … it’s not. It is based on a fictional novel that was based on an article that William Peter Blatty read while attending seminary. Blatty did speak with Father Bowdern, but according to Blatty,

  I got in touch with the exorcist and presented my credentials to try to convince him that a great apostolic purpose could be served if this was a nonfiction book written by him … He said instantly that he was not interested in writing the book, for he had taken a vow of silence on the subject … The exorcist wrote me and implored that I not write anything that would connect the victim in the case to the material in my novel. I thought he was going far, far overboard, but I decided to change the character from a boy to a girl.6

  Blatty then began to research exorcism in general to create a suspense/horror tale around the phenomena; and when he teamed with William Friedkin, they attempted to add as much truth as possible to the film.

  So what was true? On a very basic level, The Exorcist is based on an actual exorcism that took place on a 13-year-old boy in St. Louis in 1949 and was reported by the Washington Post; the story inspired William Peter Blatty. Regardless of whether or not one believes in demons and the devil, exorcism is practiced to this very day, and Blatty’s book was based on one of the very few recorded exorcisms. As indicated before, the exorcism of this 13-year-old boy did not manifest such grotesque phenomena as shown in the film The Exorcist; this has caused some of the priests involved to question the legitimacy of the boy’s possession. However, it was rumored during that time that another exorcism had taken place years earlier on a farm in Iowa—one in which the full spectrum of manifestations had become horrifyingly real.

  Father Theophilus had hardly begun the formula of exorcism in the name of the Blessed Trinity, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, in the name of the Crucified Savior, when a hair-raising scene occurred. With lightning speed the possessed dislodged herself from her bed and from the hands of her guards; and her body, carried through the air, landed high above the door of the room and clung to the wall w
ith a tenacious grip. All present were struck with a trembling fear.7

  This account came in the form of a pamphlet written by Celestine Kapsner and was originally published in German. The exorcist was Father Theophilus Reisinger. There were further phenomena that are quite similar to the special effects generated in Friedkin’s film: “As a result of these disturbances, the woman’s face became so distorted that no one could recognize her features. Then, too, her whole body became so horribly disfigured that the regular contour of her body vanished. Her pale, deathlike and emaciated head, often assuming the size of an inverted water pitcher, became as red as glowing embers. Her eyes protruded out of their sockets, her lips swelled up to proportions equaling the size of hands.”8 There are also stories of “pails of vomit” and several different languages used by the one possessed.

  Father Nicola, an American theologian and priest, was on hand for the filming of The Exorcist as a spiritual advisor. He has become one of the world’s foremost authorities on exorcism. In 1973, Nicola stated, “When I read The Exorcist, it struck me immediately that everything in it could be documented from one case or another of diabolic possession. Amazingly, it was 80 to 85 percent accurate from the one case in 1949 on which Blatty based it.”9 More recently Nicola stated in Matt Baglio’s work,

  Whenever I express a fear and unwillingness to act as exorcist, I get letters from people assuring me that they have successfully cast out demons and that, as long as one relies on the power of Christ, there is no need to fear the demons. It is my conviction that they are thinking of something entirely different from what I am. Solemn public exorcisms are rarely performed in modern times in the Western world. When they are performed, they are as gruesome and ugly as anything in the world.10

  Director William Friedkin was focused on maintaining a stark realism in his work, and in order to reach that level of realism, he not only incorporated phenomena from previously documented exorcisms, but also had on staff an actual exorcist who could guide and direct them.