Roland Doe: The Real Exorcism That Inspired The Exorcist
They say the devil is in the details.
But in 1949, the devil might have been in a 13-year-old boy from the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Most people know the movie The Exorcist — spinning heads, levitating beds, green vomit. But before Hollywood turned it into a nightmare on the big screen, there was the real story. The one priests, neighbors, and even hospital staff swore happened. The one the Catholic Church would rather you didn’t dig too deeply into.
And at the center of it all was a boy known only as Roland Doe.
The Scratching in the Walls
It began in the dead of winter. January. The kind of night when the cold seeps into your bones and even the house seems to groan in protest. Roland’s family first heard scratching sounds in the walls — faint at first, then growing louder, as if something was trapped inside.
They called in an exterminator. No mice. No rats. No nothing.
Then the noises started moving. Not in the walls anymore… but in the floors. In the furniture. Roland’s bed shook at night. A heavy dresser slid across the room on its own. A framed picture of Christ flew from the wall and shattered at his feet.
The Ouija Board
Roland had always been close to his Aunt Harriet. She was… different. The kind of woman who read fortunes, whispered about spirits, and, most importantly, owned a Ouija board.
After she died suddenly, Roland tried to reach her using that board. That’s when the scratching became clawing. And the clawing became scraping.
Then came the marks. Thin, bloody scratches appearing on his skin — sometimes spelling words. One night, his parents swore the letters LOUIS rose from his flesh in angry red welts.
The First Exorcism
The family turned to Reverend Luther Schulze, their Lutheran minister. But after seeing what Roland could do, Schulze wanted no part of it. He passed the case to the Catholic Church.
Father Edward Hughes at Georgetown University Hospital agreed to help. What happened next reads like something out of a nightmare:
Midway through the exorcism, Roland broke free from his restraints, ripped a metal spring from his mattress, and slashed Hughes from shoulder to wrist. The ritual stopped.
The thing inside Roland had won Round One.
The St. Louis Siege
After the “LOUIS” message, the family traveled to St. Louis to stay with relatives. There, Jesuit priests William Bowdern and Walter Halloran began documenting what they saw:
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Furniture shaking when Roland entered a room.
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Religious statues flying across the room.
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The boy speaking in a voice no 13-year-old should have — low, guttural, mocking.
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Words like HELL and EVIL appearing on his skin before their eyes.
And sometimes, he’d laugh. A horrible, echoing laugh that made even the priests feel cold inside.
Thirty Nights of Terror
For over a month, the priests battled whatever was inside him. Night after night, Roland’s body contorted unnaturally. His eyes rolled back. His voice switched from pleading to threatening in a heartbeat.
Then, on April 18, 1949 — the day after Easter — the final confrontation came.
As the priests prayed, Roland suddenly cried out in a booming voice:
“Satan! Satan! I am St. Michael, and I command you to leave this boy now!”
He convulsed violently, then collapsed.
What Happened Next Will Chill You…
What happened after Roland collapsed — the chilling details the priests left out of the official record — is where the story turns darkest.
We covered everything in this episode of Warped Reality: Paranormal Stories, including the parts that Hollywood left out and the strange “aftershocks” that followed the exorcism.
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