So Supernatural - HAUNTED: The Exorcism of Anna Ecklund

Episode Date: April 15, 2020

In 1928, an Iowan woman claiming to hear disturbing voices underwent an exorcism—it lasted 23 days. It turns out that Anna Ecklund wasn't just possessed by one demon, but by several. Almost 100 years later, it remains one of the most famous exorcisms in history. 

The story of Anna Eklund's exorcism is not only frightening, like lock the door, keep the light on at night scary, it's also one of the most documented cases of paranormal activity ever. It took 23 days for multiple demons to leave her, and it happened in front of over a dozen witnesses. To this day, most of what went on defies scientific explanation. This is Supernatural, and I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, we're looking at the exorcism of Anna Eklund,

the most famous case of demonic possession in American history. Anna's exorcism took place in 1928, so much of what we know about it is from eyewitness accounts. These were published as a book in 1936, but much of what the book says is backed up by the personal diaries and notes left behind by the exorcist himself. These were compiled and published in an article on Medium in April of 2019. Maybe the craziest thing about this story is how long the exorcism lasted, over three weeks, which means a lot of strange and disturbing things happened.

It's no surprise that Anna's story has inspired countless books and movies, but in this case, everything is true. Despite how well-documented the exorcism is, not much is known about Anna herself. For one thing, Anna Eklund isn't even her real name. It's a pseudonym for a woman named Emma Schmidt. To keep things simple, I'm just going to call her Anna for this episode. Anna was born in Switzerland in 1882.

Shortly after her birth, her family moved to the U.S. and settled in Wisconsin. We don't know a whole lot about Anna's childhood, except that she probably didn't attend school past the elementary level. The other thing we know, she was a devout Catholic. Her family wasn't religious at all. In fact, her parents flat out rejected the church. But Anna was a different story. Sometimes she went to mass twice a day, and she even dreamed of becoming a nun.

But then something changed. Accounts of this are mixed, but sometime in her teens, she began hearing voices. And suddenly, she can't go to church. I mean, she physically can't even walk through the front door. Everything about God and religion makes her furious. The voices in her head tell her to do unspeakable things, sexual things, violent things. She even has the urge to strangle a priest. She has no idea where these thoughts are coming from, and she's horrified by them.

Her parents at the time think that she's suffering from hysteria, which is sort of like a catch-all diagnosis for any kind of emotional instability or female trouble of the time. So they take her to doctors. They even go all the way to New York to visit a specialist. But none of the doctors can help, and the voices don't stop. Finally, she hears about someone who may be able to help her, a priest who's an exorcist. His name is Father Theophilus Reisinger, or Father Theo for short. Father Theo is a monk at a Franciscan monastery in Wisconsin. Unusually strong and disciplined, he doesn't scare easily. He's also done his fair share of exorcisms. He not only believes in their power, he considers it his duty to help people to get rid of their demons. But first, he has to decide whether or

not Anna is actually possessed by one. The church knows that true possession is very rare, and the majority of people who come to them for help are more likely suffering from mental illness. So before an exorcism can be approved, the priest has to be absolutely certain that the person is really possessed. According to the Roman ritual, which is sort of like this guidebook for all the rites of the Catholic Church, there are three distinct signs of possession. Unusual strength, fluency in a language never before studied, and knowledge of hidden things. So Father Theo goes to interview Anna. It's actually not the first time they've met. According to an interview Father Theo gave years later, Anna was actually a parishioner of his

when he was still training to be a priest. Back then, he found her to be cheerful and a devout young woman. When he sees her again, it's obvious that she's changed. During their interview, he asks Anna about her life, her symptoms, and then he asks her to pray with him. This is when things start to get strange. As soon as he begins to bless her, she becomes furious. She actually starts foaming at the mouth, even though Father Theo is praying in Latin and Anna has never studied Latin before. When he shifts into regular

non-religious Latin, she's fine. She doesn't react. Like somehow she can tell when he's praying and when he's not. Father Theo tries this in Italian, Hebrew, Polish, all languages Anna doesn't know, and the same thing happens each time. She also knows immediately when things have been blessed or doused with holy water in a different room, but if they bring something to her that hasn't been blessed, it doesn't bother her at all. Then there are other strange occurrences. At one point in the interview, Anna is suddenly thrown across the room by an unseen force. And when a priest who's helping Father Theo tries to pick her up, he can't. Like she's too heavy. Not even three priests together can do

it. I mean, Anna's a pretty small woman, so it shouldn't take more than one person to lift her. That same invisible force must be tethering her to the ground somehow. Even with all these signs that something strange is going on, a priest can never be too cautious. Father Theo interviews Anna again and again until he can't deny that he's dealing with a true possession. There's no medical explanation for so much of what he's seeing, how she knows the different languages, how she's thrown across the room.

He's positive that she's harboring an evil spirit. Father Theo gets permission from the bishop for an exorcism. This is crucial because according to the church, if you try to do an exorcism without proper authority, the devil will know and it won't have any effect. Even though they both live in Wisconsin, Father Theo wants to do the exorcism in this tiny town called Erling, Iowa. There's only like 350 people there. This way, he says, if word gets out to the community, her identity can be kept a secret. Also, Father Theo is friends with the

local parish priest, Father Steiger, and Father Steiger arranges for the exorcism to take place at a convent just outside of town. When Anna arrives at the convent, she's led into a small room, like a bare room furnished with only a bed. The nuns help her lie down onto a mattress which lays on a simple iron frame, and at least a few people are going to stay with her in the room at all times. For extra protection, Father Theo places the Holy Eucharist in a small box called a pyx and hangs it on a chain around his neck. He already senses that this exorcism may be the most challenging of his life. Then, Father Theo begins to pray. This is how an exorcism typically starts, with some simple prayers from the Bible,

the litany of saints, some gospel readings, and some psalm readings. For most exorcisms, it can be a slow start. A demon will stay hidden as long as possible. To show itself at all means that it's giving in to the exorcist's power. But in this case, Anna passes out almost immediately. She seems to go unconscious, lying there with her eyes shut. And then something else takes over. As soon as Father Theo invokes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,

Anna vaults off the bed. She flies across the room toward the ceiling and lands on the wall above the door. This is in front of Father Theo, the nuns, and Father Steiger. She stays there, gripping the wall like an insect, until the nuns have to pull her down and wrestle her onto the bed. At this point, the nuns need to hold her down because as Father Theo continues to pray, she's screaming, blood-curdling sounds, barks, shrieks, screams and moans. But the whole time, Anna's eyes never open and her lips never move. Somehow, the voices are coming from inside her body. We'll hear more about the demons inside Anna when we return. Now back to the story. From the moment Anna's exorcism started, it was clear there was something horribly wrong with her. While the nuns held her down, she screamed in multiple

different voices without ever moving her lips. And then she started to vomit. Now this is gross, but without getting too far into it, the spitting and vomiting and defecating is overwhelming, especially because this is not a big woman. In fact, it's biologically impossible that this much stuff could be coming out of any person, let alone someone her size. She's also vomiting up objects that she hasn't even eaten. At one point, it looks like she's thrown up chewed tobacco leaves.

As the exorcism goes on, day after day, Anna needs to be injected with liquid food. Nevertheless, the vomiting and everything else keeps coming. So much so that Father Theo has to change his clothes three or four times a session. As the screams go on, he can hear multiple voices inside Anna. Some sound human, some sound inhuman. But gradually, he begins to realize

Anna isn't possessed by one demon, but by several. And so he asks them to reveal who they are. Now, they won't right away. Just as demons don't like to come to the surface, they also don't like to give their names. It's a way for the exorcist to gain power over them, and they know it. More hours pass until finally, one of the demons speaks. In a deep, guttural voice, he says he's Beelzebub. Beelzebub is considered Satan's second-in-command. His name means Lord of the Flies, and some accounts say that when he makes himself known to Father Theo, flies suddenly appear in the room. This demon is also extremely argumentative. He starts to work on Father Theo's pride.

He debates his knowledge of the Bible, his knowledge of Latin. He has a terrible, mocking presence, and he ends up being Father Theo's main adversary. When Father Theo asks Beelzebub why he's there, the demon says that the possession wasn't even his idea. It was actually caused by a curse put on Anna by her dead father, Jacob. Now, this makes sense because according to the church, a curse is considered a doorway to possession. A demon can't come in and invade someone's body without an opening or an opportunity. And one of the strongest doorways that exist is a curse,

especially if it's made by someone who's a blood relative to the victim. All Father Theo knows about Anna's father, Jacob, is that he turned against religion later in life and would mock his daughter for her faith. But why curse her? Father Theo asks the demon why Anna's father would want his own child to be possessed. But Beelzebub doesn't answer. He tells the priest, ask Jacob yourself. Before Father Theo can even try to summon the father's spirit, another demon speaks up. Its voice is so deep and so loud that some of the nuns actually have to leave the room.

It's not Jacob. It's Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus to the Romans. He took his own life shortly after Jesus's crucifixion, and he says he wants Anna to do the same thing. He says he wants her to, quote, get the rope and hang herself. While Judas is screaming through her, Anna's body is morphing and changing constantly. One moment her abdomen will swell up like a balloon. The next, she'll go completely pale. Her eyes will bug out of their sockets, her lips will swell up, her face turns red.

At one point, her body becomes so heavy that it bends the iron bed frame. These body transformations are a known occurrence in exorcisms. Anna's is an extreme case, but present-day exorcists say it's not unusual to see eyes rolling into the back of heads, jaws dropping and contorting into impossible positions, and hands clenching into claws. At night, when the sessions are over, Anna has no memory of anything that happened during the day. Now, this is also a sign of true possession, complete amnesia about what happens when the demon takes over. Interestingly, as exorcisms go on, the demon can appear to become stronger instead of weaker. As the days go on, Anna's condition is getting worse. But Father

Theo keeps trying. He knows that the key to all of this is Anna's father Jacob. If he can figure out why he's cursed her, then he could heal her. He keeps praying the exorcism rite, doing everything he can to lure Anna's father out of hiding. And finally, Jacob answers. We don't know exactly when or how Anna's father died, but as Father Theo speaks to him, it's clear that he's in hell. Father Theo asks why he would do this to his own daughter, and Jacob's answer shocks everyone. Anna refused to have sex with him. And this is the moment where, for a second, this case almost falls apart to me. Because sexual abuse in childhood is a leading cause of a bunch of psychological disorders,

including dissociative identity disorder, which was formerly known as multiple personality disorder. It's what many doctors consider to be the best explanation for alleged demonic possession. In dissociative identity disorder, someone can develop alternate personalities with different voices and different names, which seem to take over their consciousness and act of their own accord. It usually develops as a response to childhood trauma, particularly sexual abuse. So if Anna was a survivor of sexual abuse, it casts a different light on what's going on here. The changes in behavior, the hatred of religion, separate personalities, all of this could be a response to that trauma. But here's the thing.

There are plenty of doctors out there who say they aren't even sure dissociative identity disorder is real. Some of them theorize that people can develop these personalities through suggestion by their therapists or even by popular culture. It's a very controversial diagnosis and there's not a lot of consensus on what causes it. And of course, it still can't account for all of the other events going on here, the other languages, and I mean that way Anna has literally flown across the room. Mental illness can't explain those things. But on the other hand, as it turns out, sexual abuse apparently is also considered a doorway for possession. It's said to create a psychic wound that can allow a demon to enter. In fact, one exorcist says that 80% of the people who come to him are sexual abuse survivors.

So are those people actually suffering from dissociative identity disorder? Maybe, but it's hard to say. And in Anna's case, since it was going on so long ago, we don't have any clear answers at all. According to one account, Anna's dead father asks Father Theo why he can't torment his daughter. After all, she's his child. He can do what he wants with her, right? And Father Theo says no. As he's speaking to Jacob, he hears a woman's voice speaking as well.

This is Anna's aunt, Mina. Mina, it turns out, was Jacob's mistress and was with him in hell, allegedly for killing children. Now, we don't know what happened here, but some people believe that these children she killed were her own. It also turns out that Mina was considered a witch by the people in her town. This makes sense because the occult is considered another doorway to possession. In fact, according to the church, dabbling in any kind of occult practices, I mean, going to see a medium, getting your tarot cards read, even using crystals can create an opening for a demon. Mina turns out to be one of the most spiteful demons inside Anna. The vomiting goes up

a notch when she's present. And by the second week, Anna is getting weaker and weaker. She's so exhausted by the end of every day that she needs to be carried back to her room. Now, she still has no memory of anything that's happening during the exorcism, but at night, she has visions. She talks about seeing God and the devil fighting each other with armies. One day, she goes so pale during an exorcism that Father Steiger, the Erling priest, thinks she's about to die. And Anna isn't the only person feeling the strain. By the second week, the ordeal is taking its toll on Father Theo as well. The sheer physical stamina needed for hours of prayer, not to mention the vomit and the horrible sounds,

would bring anyone to their breaking point. Even the nuns are on the verge of collapse. By now, Father Theo has moved into the core of the exorcism ritual. He's calling on God to help Anna. Later, when he knows the demons are more vulnerable, he'll command them to leave. But for now, Beelzebub is undeterred. He's now torturing everyone in the room. He's shouting out everyone's secrets, old sins, embarrassing transgressions. And here's the thing. Everything he's saying is true.

The demon somehow knows everything about everyone. But there's a little bit of a crazy catch. He doesn't know about the sins that have been confessed to a priest. And this is an accepted fact in the Catholic Church, so much so that it's recommended that anyone who will be helping in an exorcism go to confession beforehand. Obviously, we have to take a lot of this story with a grain of salt, because who knows how accurate this hundred-year-old account is. At this point, the events are getting so crazy,

it seems like they have to be exaggerating. But maybe it's a mistake to dismiss it so easily. At one point, the demons predict that Father Steiger will be in a car crash. Father Steiger just kind of shakes it off, probably like I would, because the devil says a lot of things, plays a lot of tricks. You can't believe anything it says. Or can you? In the middle of the day soon after, while he's coming back from giving someone their last rites, Steiger loses control of his car.

A black cloud appears in front of him out of nowhere, blocking his vision, and he almost goes off a bridge. He barely escapes with his life. When Father Steiger comes back to the exorcism room, the demon starts laughing, and it asks him how he enjoyed the cruel little trick it played on him. It's common knowledge in the exorcist community that things are at their worst just before the battle is over. Father Theo can feel that the demons are close to defeat, but they aren't going to go away without a fight. He starts commanding the demons to leave. Father Theo stays up for three nights in

a row until he wears the demons down. He sprinkles Anna with holy water, he brandishes crucifixes, and then for one surreal half hour, Father Theo actually sees Satan himself, standing in a corner of the room, wearing a crown and holding a sword, Beelzebub by his side, and flames surrounding them both. Finally, after more than 21 days, the demons give up. On the night of December 23rd, 1928, Anna rises from bed and then falls back down limp. And then she shrieks all four of the demons' names. Their voices grow fainter and fainter until they just disappear. Then all is quiet. Anna opens her eyes. A horrible smell of sulfur wafts through the room.

And this is the demon's parting gift. Apparently, they're partial to sulfur. It seems like it's finally over. Anna is back to her old self. But this isn't the end of it. Soon, she's hearing voices again. And these voices are something much more powerful than the demons. We'll hear about Anna's new visitor when we return.

Let's get back to the story. In the popular book about Anna's possession, it ends right after the exorcism. But in real life, Anna's story had an interesting postscript. According to notes left behind by Father Theo, her visions eventually came back. And this time, they weren't just visions of demons. They were also of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. Eventually, Anna even began to speak in the voice of who she claimed to be, Jesus Christ.

The voice told Father Theo that he needed to prepare for the Antichrist. In Catholic teaching, the Antichrist is a false messiah who's supposed to come before the end of the world to test people's faith. And according to the voice, this figure was already walking the earth. The Antichrist would apparently come to power in 1952 when they reached the age of 33, the same age Jesus was when he died. Father Theo takes this prediction seriously because it's eerily similar to another mystic's prediction, a woman who lived in the 19th century named Catherine Emmerich. She had predicted that the Antichrist would come to power about 50 years before the year 2000.

Now, maybe it's just a coincidence that two women a century apart made the same prediction, but after everything else that's happened with Anna, Father Theo doesn't think so. According to Catholic theology, God sometimes allows those who are the most spiritual to be possessed by extreme evil to make them even stronger in their faith. This might have been the case with Anna. At a certain point, the demonic voices inside her gave way and she became a conduit for the divine to warn the world that a bigger, more destructive evil was on the way. So Father Theo puts together a team to search for the Antichrist. Working backwards, he puts the Antichrist's birth date at 1919. It's the early 30s now, so he asks his fellow priest to look for a 12-year-old boy who is already showing signs of evil activity.

Now, they come up with a few different options. One of them is a boy living in Siberia who seems to have a talent for creating weapons. This boy, Mikhail Kalashnikov, grows up to become the inventor of the AK-47. So while his invention is, you know, indirectly responsible for a lot of deaths, he didn't actually shepherd in the end of the world. Another boy they had their eye on was Georgios Papadopoulos. Now, he lived in Greece, and it's not really clear why he raised red flags as a 12-year-old boy, but as an adult, he led a coup in Greece and then ruled as a dictator from 1967 to 1973. Again, not a great guy, but it's a stretch to call him the literal Antichrist. So was Anna's prediction correct? As far as I can tell, no, which makes me wonder if she was

really possessed or just suffering from a psychological disorder. There are still details that don't add up, though. The flying across the room, the horrifying voices, all the knowledge of different languages and knowing everyone's secrets. I mean, even that car crash that almost killed Father Steiger. Now, of course, it's possible that none of that ever actually happened. I mean, the whole story comes from a book written almost a century ago by a priest who probably had an agenda. There are Father Theo's notes, too, which confirm most of what happened. But again, it's just kind of hard to know how much we can trust in his word. Still, for those skeptics out there who want to say this was strictly a product of its time

and would probably never happen today, keep this in mind. In recent years, possessions have been increasing. In December 2018, The Atlantic reported that more Americans are requesting exorcisms now than ever before. In fact, the exorcist for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, here where I live, says that he received 1,700 requests for exorcism just in 2018 alone. And in Italy, more than 500,000 people see an exorcist every year. The question, of course, is why? In 2018, a Gallup poll found that only 50% of Americans considered themselves members of a specific church. So, I don't know, you'd think that like a declining interest in religion would mean less

of a belief in the devil, right? But that's not what we're seeing because as church attendance drops, occult practices tend to go up. There's been a surge of interest in astrology, tarot, crystals, and paganism. Remember, the church considers the occult to be a potential doorway for a demon to enter a person. So the rise in occult activity could account for the increase in possessions, or at least, if you're skeptical, the increased belief in demons. It's also possible that people are becoming disillusioned with traditional medicine and psychiatry. Studies have shown that for some people, having an exorcism can fill the same purpose as seeing a therapist.

It's a safe place to work through psychological issues that are just hard to talk about in regular life. So does that mean that possessions and mental illness are two ways of looking at the same thing? Maybe, maybe not. There might actually be a third answer that's only been discovered recently. There's a rare neurological condition called anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, which causes inflammation in the brain. This can cause a wide range of symptoms from psychosis to hallucinations to seizures. I mean, behavior can change overnight and extreme delusions are common.

In a lot of ways, it kind of appears like schizophrenia and it's often misdiagnosed as such. But there are other motor symptoms that look more like your classic case of possession. I mean, speaking in tongues, loss of memory, horrifying muscle contortions, or uncontrollably throwing yourself across the room. The symptoms, physical and psychological, are almost identical to historic accounts of possession. There are only a few things about Anna's story that don't fit into this bucket, like the climbing on the ceiling and knowing everyone's secrets.

But we could chalk those up to exaggeration, since this is all coming from, again, a 100-year-old memoir. Looking at all of the options, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis is probably the best explanation for what was happening to her. Unfortunately, Anna Eklund died in 1964 without ever getting a diagnosis. She was buried next to her father, the same man who had apparently cursed her. Today, she's remembered for creating the American exorcism. It's the basis for a lot of the urban legends and fictional stories that we're still hearing today. But the next time you see a movie with a girl's head spinning around

and a steady stream of green vomit, just remember, there's more to the story. Whether it's possession or mental illness, there are real people who are suffering through these things without an explanation. And if Anna's later visions are any indicator, the people who carry the most darkness might also be full of the most light. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode.

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