The Exorcism That Killed Her

Anneliese Michel is the subject of one of the most disturbing cases of medical neglect disguised as faith in modern European history — a young German woman whose epilepsy and mental illness were treated not with medicine but with 67 exorcism rites, until her body gave out and her parents and priests were convicted of negligent homicide. The 2005 film The Exorcism of Emily Rose turned her death into a PG-13 supernatural thriller, complete with demonic visions and a noble priest on trial. The reality was not a battle with the devil. It was a battle with biology — and biology lost because the people who should have helped her chose prayer over penicillin.

Anneliese Michel was born in 1952 in Klingenberg am Main, Bavaria, into a devoutly Catholic family. At sixteen, she suffered a seizure and was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy. By twenty, she was hearing voices, seeing demonic faces, and had become intolerant of religious objects. She was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression. For five years, psychiatric medication failed to help, and her condition worsened. Then, in 1975, her family found a priest named Ernst Alt, who became convinced she was possessed. He petitioned the local bishop, Josef Stangl, who approved a major exorcism — on the condition of total secrecy. Two priests, Alt and Arnold Renz, began visiting the Michel home weekly, sometimes twice a week, for sessions lasting up to four hours. Over ten months, they performed 67 exorcisms.

The Horror

The family stopped consulting doctors. Anneliese stopped eating. She was forced to genuflect in prayer so many times that she broke the bones and ripped the tendons in her knees. She crawled on the floor, barked like a dog, ate spiders and coal, and bit the head off a dead bird — behaviors that, in hindsight, look like the severe neurological and psychiatric deterioration of a starving, untreated epileptic woman. The priests recorded 42 hours of sessions, during which Anneliese spoke in different voices and named her demons: Lucifer, Cain, Judas Iscariot, Nero, Adolf Hitler, and a disgraced priest named Fleischmann. By the summer of 1976, she weighed 66 pounds, could not move without assistance, and had contracted pneumonia. On 1 July 1976, she died of malnutrition and dehydration. She was twenty-three.

The autopsy was damning. The coroner found no demons — only a body destroyed by starvation, dehydration, and untreated epilepsy. In 1978, Anneliese’s parents and the two priests were tried for negligent homicide. Doctors testified that she had never been possessed, that her symptoms were the result of epilepsy, mental illness, and religious delusion reinforced by the exorcisms themselves. The defense played the exorcism tapes in court. All four were convicted but given suspended sentences — six months in jail, reduced to three years probation, plus fines. The Catholic Church later recanted its finding of possession and attributed her condition to mental illness.

The Modern Relic

The relic is her grave — and the silence around it. In Klingenberg, a different narrative persists. Pilgrims still visit Anneliese’s grave, believing she can save lost souls. Her mother, Anna Michel, told a reporter in 2005: “I don’t regret it. There was no other way.” The house where she died still stands in the Bavarian countryside. The exorcism tapes are said to still exist, locked away, 42 hours of a young woman’s voice breaking apart in a room where medicine was forbidden and prayer became a death sentence. The movie made her into Emily Rose, a possessed girl fighting demons. The real Anneliese Michel was fighting her own brain — and the people who loved her let her lose.

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