CASE OF ANNELIESE MICHEL

In 1978, Germany, there was a ‘possession’ case, which was so much extreme that it left the whole world at a situation of flux with the topic of Demonic possession. It was the very first exorcism case (A/c me as far as I have checked during the case study) which came out officially and publicly to the world and based on this demonic possession, the parents of the victim (i.e., her father Joseph Michel and mother Anna Michel) and the priests (i.e., Father Renz and Father Ernst Alt) were brought under trial and found guilty in the case of Homicide and sentenced for six months. Although, victim died during the rituals of exorcism.

Anneliese Michel

What I had discussed in this blog are the extracted form of the case history and contain some real photos and audio tape recording file which had been done by the priest Father Renz during the rituals of exorcism which may be disturbing and shocking images/sounds, proceed with caution.

Those who knew Anneliese described her intelligent, reserved in manner and speech, compassionate, kind, polite and deeply religious. She had a beautiful smile. She was very knowledgeable of the catholic faith, which she quietly and faithfully put into the practice. She led an active prayer and sacramental life. With a clear understanding of the role of suffering from a Christian perspective, she accepted her trials and tribulations in life. Outside the events which caused her varying degrees of suffering, she led a normal and happy life pursuing all the normal things many young ladies do. She fell in love with a fellow classmate Peter whom she planned to marry in the fall of 1976 and thus fulfill her dream of becoming a school teacher and have a family.

Anneliese Michel (at the time of death)

In 1968, Anneliese got a scholarship of further studies in one of the renowned high school in Wurzburg and thus moved there away from her family in Aschaffenburg, Germany. One night at her hostel, she felt something weird in herself; she by herself explained that incident as;

“It was something...I don’t know...what it was actually.... but I saw it entered my room and jumped over my bed and dragged me to the ground”.

That night she started shivering and sweating up and suddenly mutilated strongly, after that night she got admitted in a Psychiatric hospital. A neurologist at the hospital in Wurzburg diagnosed her with ‘grand mal’ Epilepsy and further prescribed her related drugs for that like DYLANTIN, AOLEPT and TEGRETOL.

[Epilepsy is generally a diverse set of chronic neurological disturbance and disorders which are commonly characterized by seizures. And this was coming to be very common in those days within young ones. Long term unconsciousness, involuntary contraction of many muscles of the body (also as mutilation) were some common symptoms of Epilepsy].

Anneliese with her Family

But even after regular treatment in the hospital and proper medication, she was still suffering from the regular long-term seizures and involuntary contraction of muscles (mutilation), which was not even enough, on top of the issues she was having problem regarding her speech and inability to support her own body-weight  she was also having sudden on sets of severe depression and excessive sorrow, but that was also the least of her problems. Body shaking, paranormal hallucination, unable to control body, started hearing voices that followed her  
                                                                                       like ‘stew in hell ‘.

It crossed approx. 1 year and very soon, she got discharged from hospital and moved back to her home in Aschaffenburg. Even after taking regular medication, instead of any cure or any improvement, her status became worst than before. She started insulting, beat and biting the other member of family. She refuses to eat, slept on stoned-floor, ate spiders, flies and coal and even started drinking her own urine. Very soon, she lost hope that medicine is going to help her and started ignoring her dozes.

The changes in her crossed its limits when a terrified and unrealistic incident happened a night on the dining table. During one night at the dinner table, Anna (the mother) recalls a situation where Anneliese’s hands appeared to be “enormous”, to extend that she would even claim that they were almost twice their normal size. After the dining table incident, the mother decided then and there to contact the exorcists for the relief of her daughter’s suffering. She was totally convinced that whatever was happening to Anneliese was nothing but a possession of devil on her.                                                                                                                                 

1973, her parents requested an exorcism in different pastors and continuously rejected and recommended to follow the medication and proper treatment. The request rejection of the case was coming up as the case was not under requirement and not fulfilling the ‘qualification’ of possession like speaking different ancient language, super-natural powers, aversion to the religious things.

After that incident, Anneliese’s suffering became worst like hell. Except all the weird things which she was already doing, she could be heard screaming throughout the house for hours while breaking crucifixes, destroying painting of Jesus, pulling apart rosaries. She began self-mutilation with high levels, tearing off her clothes and urination on the floor, sometimes she was also found totally nude in the areas next to her home. She almost lost her balance. Every time she stands, would be violently thrown down to ground and injured herself badly every time. And very soon, she had lost all the comfortableness  Sometimes, she was also found speaking in masculine and guttering voice.  She started having terrifying illusions. She claimed to see things, namely terror-inciting visions. “I see devil faces on the walls, they have seven crowns and seven horns.” she had said. Often times, Anneliese would also somehow force tables and chairs to move about frequently, constantly rearranging themselves without ever actually physically touching the items above-mentioned.

September 1975, Bishop of Wurzburg, Josef Srangl, assigned Father Arnold Renz and Pastor Ernst Alt with the order to perform exorcism on the basis of “Rituale Romanum” which was still a cannon law from 17th century.

Fr. Renz (main exorcist)

Father Renz, as the main exorcist and as he claimed that he sent to as many doctors as he could once he became familiar with what was happening to her actually. He was constantly trying to see if they could find anything at all that would maybe explain some, if not all, of the events occurring. In the end, it was concluded that Anneliese had something “similar to” epilepsy and that she would need to be prescribed medications for the problem. As a requirement by the Catholic Church, Anneliese saw MANY psychiatrists, some of which went as far as to say that it was impossible to cure cases of possession with injections of tablets. And finally, after all of the doctors had given their diagnosis and professional opinions, Father Renz decided to perform a “trial” exorcism, which may, as it sounds, be performed as a ‘test; or a ‘diagnostic’ event.

From September ’75 to July ’76, regular exorcism sessions taken out every week. During that 67 exorcism sessions in the presence of a doctor, the family with the exorcists faced the worst part of Anneliese. She was seemed to speak in masculine and some confusing voice like more three people were talking as claimed by the family and Father Renz. She was also seemed speaking ancient roman language, ethnic language, and some other different languages too sometimes.  During those exorcism sessions, Father Renz recorded 40 audio tapes of the sessions which include his voice and the drafting behaviour of Anneliese.

(some of the audio tapes recording are tagged, though it was dam’ impossible for me to generate the translation. And have also tagged a 90 minutes English transcript.)

90 minutes audio recording of the exorcism of Anneliese (recorded by Fr. Renz)

Transcript form of the Audio recording

According to Father Renz, as he claimed that Anneliese was possessed by six major demons LUCIFER, JUDAS ISCARIOT, NERO, CAIN, HITLER, FLEISCHMANN (who was a Frankish priest) from the 16th century and some damned souls.

Between those days, She finds sometimes very much normal and sometimes goes too much out off that the family members also used to chained her up and holding up by 3 men.

It was claimed by Father Renz that he exiled the major six demons from her by the start up of last session and he was going to exile the rest of the demons by the end of last session. But, Anneliese was actually accepting her suffering by that end.

Last exorcism was on June 30th, 1976. She was suffering from pneumonia and high fever and exhausted so much that she was unable to stand on her knee for the rituals.

July 1^st, 1976 noon, Anneliese died and soon after that the state prosecutor started the investigations. It took 2 years for the prosecutor to bring it to the court.

March 30, 1978 the trial began in the district court of Aschaffenburg in Germany.

They were sentenced to 6 months in jail and probation. The verdict included the opinion of the court that the accused should have helped by taking care of the medical treatment that the girl needed.

Now, what ever I had studied the case of Anneliese Michel, was damn confused with the things what went wrong with her and it shows the basic irresponsibility of the church and the humanity including her parents. After the death, when she got autopsied, it showed that she died due to high-starvation and dehydration. During the trial, the specialist claimed that if she was forced to eat a week before, she could be alive.

And as during her suffering, it was ‘partially’ diagnosed that she was suffering from temporal lobe Epilepsy.  According to the “Doctrinaire Induction”, the priests treated Anneliese as putting the psychotic behaviour to Possession level. Her unsettled sexual development influenced her psychosis behaviour and also due to her ignorance of regular treatment and medicines, her Epilepsy gets influenced by her psychotic behaviour which results in her of having terrifying illusions and self-mutilation and because of that she lost the control on her muscles which led to her inactivity of speech.

But what about her behaviour of speaking ancient roman and ethnic languages!!?! And what about her moving the things without any physical control!!?!, these things couldn't be a part of Epilepsy. According to case study and the arguments took place during the trial, it suddenly came down on contrast that Anneliese as of her ritualism  she had studied and learned many ancient and ethnic languages. According to the specialists and psychologists, the behaviour of Anneliese to control the movement of objects without any physical touch was actually Psycho Kinesis.

Psycho kinesis is the power to flit or teleport small objects through space. It is caused by the transfer of psychic energy to objects. The one giving off this type of energy is generally under great deal of stress and intra-frustration. PK involves objects over one pound. It typically happens to those children who’re intra-frustrated, conservative and anger (then in that case I should quit anger management, its cool to levitate the objects). But for a note, I also want to mention here that till now no experiments has yet shown this kind of behaviour from a human mind. So, the PK thing is till now just a matter of theoretical fact but not a practicality one.

Whatever I study about the very sharp statements and other facts given by many psychologists who were either a part of the trial or any articles on Anneliese, I got one thing that why these psychologists are smart and sharp enough to give sessions!!, because they have answer of every thing whether its a natural fact, paranormal or a supernatural fact. They have everything’s reason in their books except the cure.

During the trial, both side tried their best to defend each other. The priests showed the 40 recorded tapes which they had taken during each exorcism sessions, but the most amazing thing is that the court totally disqualified the tape due to some reason, though the tape was examined properly in the lab.

Anneliese with her mother Anna

The doctors who had examined Anneliese in the beginning of the exorcism sessions and declared that whatever happening to Anneliese was out of normal situation in psychic terms and recommended Father Renz to execute the exorcism as medicine couldn't cure her, suddenly these all doctors pulled their hands from the case. Some of them changed the stories; some of them said that they recommended medication not rituals of exorcism and all, some of them got disappeared.

According to some specialists on spirituality, the drugs, which Anneliese was taking, influenced her possession to a high rate because those drugs were high dosed and may sometimes shut down the power of brain which let those ‘demons’ to attack with their full sources and that’s why the exorcism sessions were unable to exile all demons from her. And that’s why Father Renz recommended Anneliese to stop taking those drugs as they may create conflicts in between the exorcism sessions. But may be if she was not suffering from any type of ‘demonic possession’ and whatever she was facing was just a psychic behaviour, then recommendation of ignoring medication by Father Renz was a poor and irresponsible advice and may be if she was possessed by any ‘demons’, then in that case recommendation of high-dosed drugs by doctors was a poor advice. Well, very much confusing. The Spiritual based Specialist were blaming the doctors and the doctors were blaming them. 

I also have noticed that during trial, nobody was enabled to prove that whether it was a ‘Demonic’ possession or a psychic thing. Every specialists and Priests from both sides were just talking on water. They were discussing and describing those facts which always starts with a tag of ‘May be’ or ‘may not be’. Those facts were actually not having any type of strong evidences or strong statements.

But the most baloney thing was that after the respective delinquents got sentenced for six months, suddenly a commission of German-Bishops Conference declared that Anneliese Michel was not possessed.

Personally after studying the case of Anneliese Michel, I got totally confused that whether to support or resist. It had created a hybrid of both in me. Well, whether to support or to resist, end of the day a 23 year girl died due to irresponsibility of humanity either of the doctors who gave her drugs for medication or of church which had assigned two priests to perform exorcism and in fact after a proper agreementation and analyzing Anneliese and suddenly backtracked from all the things and declared that Anneliese was not possessed.

Anneliese, a 23 year girl who suffered to a great extent when she was alive and even after her death, people’re not letting her to rest in peace. Even after her death, regularly in every ten years, her corpse gets exhumed just to confirm that it had decayed as would have been expected under normal circumstances or not.

Grave Of Anneliese Michel

It was said that by the death of Anneliese, she was having STIGMATA sign on her hands and legs. 

(Stigmata are generally a sign or wound on hands or legs which show that god had touched it or interact with that particular person who is having that sign). 

And that’s why today, her grave remains in a place of pilgrimage for rosary-praying for those who believe that she bravely fought the ‘devil’.

It was true and proved too that the girl died due to demonic caper whether it’s of any devil like Lucifer or in the form of any human. I believe that I had tried my level best to put the exact and required information and actual case of victim but if I am lacking somewhere then I really want to apologize.

Now from here, I want to leave the rest of the thing to the readers to think that who was right and who was wrong!?!.....who suffered...And who survived!?!......what to believe...on facts or ‘features’!?!.

[References: - Anneliese Michel – A true story of Demonic Possession by Father Jose Antonio Fortea, The movie; Exorcism of Emily Rose, Requiem  and some interviews articles  and some online articles].