Further reading for Anneliese Michel
Anneliese Michel A true story of a case of demonic possession Germany by Lawrence LeBlanc
The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel by Felicitas D. Goodman
Anneliese Michel was a young German woman who, in the mid-1970’s underwent dozens of exorcisms. Deeply religious, her family firmly believed that was in the clutches of Satan, hiself, when it was far more likely that temporal lobe epilepsy and epileptic psychosis were to blame for the, ahem, possession.
From top to bottom, the story of Anneliese Michel is a sad one stemming from a total systemic failure to help her. Psychiatric treatments for depression and treatments for her epilepsy were ineffective and in the summer of 1976 she fell deep into a series of violent fits. Desperate for some sort of relief, her parents turned to the church to cure her ills and she was subjected to intense exorcisms that you can hear audio from as she goes along with the priest, playing her part in the crazy proceedings. Finally, maybe mercifully, she succumbed to dehydration and malnutrition, having eaten nothing nor having had any water for days, and she slipped away and died. Medical examination revealed that for the year leading up to her death she had hardly eaten anything and derived hydration only from what little food she had ingested. Her knees were also broken repeatedly from constant genuflection, an act of showing reverence to the cross by falling to one knee before the christian altar. As her death drew nearer, she insisted that medical treatment be forgone and that only the church’s exorcism be performed. The church was only more than happy to agree.
In the months that followed, German authorities charged her parents and the priests who oversaw the exorcism with negligent homicide. A sensational trial followed.
Episodes: 473-474
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