Possessed by demons or Mental Psychosis

 BE SURE TO LISTEN TO Annelises Exorcism "Recorded" Below

Shown in the picture is Anneliese Michel (September 21, 1952 – July 1, 1976)she was a German Catholic woman who was said to be possessed by demons and subsequently underwent an exorcism. Two motion pictures, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Requiem, are loosely based on Michel's story.

Michel experienced what is recognized by medical professionals as; “severe psychiatric disturbances, multiple personality disorders and severe depression” from the age of 16 until her death at age 23. It was reported, that her cause of death was from “malnutrition, secondary to mental illness”. She apparently intended her death by starvation to "atone for the wayward youth of the day and the apostate priests of the modern church". Michel underwent several years of “ineffective psychiatric treatment”. She eventually gave up on “modern medicine” refusing medical treatment all together. She decided on a replacement cure and requested an exorcism. Due to her strong faith, as well as her parents, Michel’s request was later granted.

Anneliese Michel was born September of 1952 in Klingenberg, Bavaria, Germany. Michel was raised by her parents, who where devote Catholics. As a child, Michel followed her parents faith contently, becoming strong in her faith. She tried to make reparations for the sins of wayward priests and drug addicts by sleeping on a bare floor in the middle of winter.

In 1968, Anneliese was 16 and still in high school, she began to suffer from uncontrollable shacking or convulsions. Court findings have her experiencing her first epileptic attack in 1969. It was then that a neurologist at the Psychiatric Clinic Würzburg diagnosed her with grand mal epilepsy.

Soon after she was diagnosis of grand mal epilepsy, Anneliese started experiencing demon like hallucinations while praying. She also began to hear voices or auditory hallucinations which told her that she was damned. By 1973 Anneliese was suffering from depression due to the uncontrollable incidents and began  to contemplate  suicide. Her behavior continued to became increasingly bizarre: she tore off her clothes, ate coal and bugs, as well as licked her own urine off the floor.

Do to Michel’s behavior, she was quickly admitted in to an unnamed psychiatric hospital. The lengthy time, two years, in which she spent at the hospital did not improve her health. In fact she became worse, her depression began to deepen and she became increasingly frustrated with medical intervention, as it did not improve her condition. The long-term medical treatment proved to be unsuccessful for Michel; her psychotic behavior, personality disorder, as well as depression, continued to worsen with time.

Centering her life around the Church and the Catholic faith, Michel began to consider the possibility of possession. She defined and contributed occurrences such as; became intolerant of sacred places and objects “the crucifix”, to her own demonic possession. Throughout the course of the religious rites Michel underwent, she was prescribed and said to be taking, antipsychotic drugs.

In June of 1970, Michel suffered a third seizure at the psychiatric hospital she had been staying in and was prescribed an anticonvulsants for the first time. The name of this drug is not known, and it did not bring about immediate alleviation of Michel's symptoms.

According to The Washington Post, as she grew more convinced that she was possessed, "Anneliese began to see the faces of demons on the people and things around her". Michel, still convinced that conventional medicine would never cure her and growing increasingly adamant that her illness was of a spiritual kind, she appealed to the Church to perform an exorcism on her.

That same month, she was prescribed another drug, Aolept (pericyazine), which is a phenothiazine with general properties similar to those of chlorpromazine: pericyazine is used in the treatment of various psychoses, including schizophrenia and disturbed behavior.

In November of 1973, Michel started her treatment with Tegretol (carbamazepine), which is an antiepileptic drug. Michel took this medicine frequently, until shortly before her death.

In 1975, when Anneliese was 23 years old, an older woman who accompanied Anneliese Michel on a pilgrimage concluded that Anneliese was suffering from demonic possession because Michel was unable to walk past a certain icon of Jesus Christ and refused to drink the water of a holy spring. The women also noted that during active demonic presents, Michel was unable to remember her actions or the voices the demon expressed.

An exorcist in a nearby town examined Michel and returned a diagnosis of demonic possession.[1] The bishop issued permission to perform the rite of exorcism according to the Rituale Romanum of 1614.

She and her parents were convinced that she was possessed. After years of unsuccessful psychiatric treatments, they gave up medical treatment completely and chose to rely solely on the exorcisms for healing. The rites of exorcism were performed over the course of ten months in 1976. A total of sixty-seven exorcism sessions were held, one or two each week, some lasting up to four hours. Michel at this time, was refusing medical care, food, and talking about her death being a form of atonement for other people's sins. On July 1, 1976, Anneliese Michel died in her sleep. The autopsy report stated that her death resulted from the malnutrition and dehydration due to almost a year of semi-starvation, weighing a mere 68 pounds, during which time the rites of exorcism were also performed.

 Both priests who performed the exorcism and Michel's parents were convicted of negligent manslaughter because they did not seek medical treatment (for her refusal to eat) on her behalf and over her objections.

Specialists claimed that if the accused would have begun with forced feeding one week before her death, Anneliese’s life would have been saved. One sister told the court that Anneliese did not want to go to a mental home where she would be sedated and forced to eat. The exorcists tried to prove the presence of the demons, playing taped recordings of strange dialogues like that of two demons arguing about which one of them would have to leave Anneliese’s body first. One of the demons called himself Hitler, and spoke with a Frankish accent (Hitler was born in Austria). Not one of those present during the exorcism ever had a doubt about the authenticity of the presence of these demons.
The psychiatrists, whom had been ordered to testify by the court, spoke about the “Doctrinaire Induction”. They said that the priests had provided Anneliese with the contents of her psychotic behavior. Consequentially, they claimed, she later accepted her behavior as a form of demonic possession. They also offered that Anneliese’s unsettled sexual development, along with her diagnosed Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, had influenced the psychosis.

The verdict was considered by many as not as harsh as they expected. Anneliese’s parents, as well as the exorcists, were found guilty of manslaughter resulting from negligence and omitting first aid. 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, but instead, their use of naive practices aggravated Anneliese’s already poor constitution.