The Exorcism of Emma Schmidt
The Least Known Yet Most Famous Exorcism in History
Background
The little spoken-of exorcism of “Emma Schmidt” in Iowa is what inspired key aspects of the book and film, “The Exorcist” by William Peter Blatty. Although only one other American exorcism case is commonly referenced as the inspiration, the earlier exorcism of Emma Schmidt inspired Blatty to give his main character her most shocking and memorable scenes.
“Emma Schmidt” is one of the pseudonyms given to a young German-American Wisconsin woman who endured two exorcisms between 1912 and 1928. Other names used for this case are “Anna Ecklund” and “Mary X.”
Emma was born in rural Wisconsin in 1882. She was born into a troubled family, with a mother and father whose marriage was not stable. Her father was an abusive degenerate who could not stand the pious nature of her mother. Emma’s mother died sometime between Emma being 8 and 14 years of age, so she was left alone with her abusive father at a young age.
In her teenage years, Emma, though pious herself, began to show distressing symptoms of malaise. She could not enter a church, and she had disturbing thoughts of performing acts which repulsed her. She endured this for years, with her first exorcism occurring at age 30 after all medical issues were ruled out. The procedure was successful, but Emma would become possessed again 12 years later at age 42.
This time, her pastor Father Theophilis Riesinger decided to take her to Earling, Iowa to give her more privacy. The ceremony was performed in secret at a convent with the help of the residing nuns and Reverend Joseph Steiger.
This is discussed in the Bible in Luke 11:24-26:
“When an unclean spirit comes out of a man, it passes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ / On its return, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. / Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and dwell there. And the final plight of that man is worse than the first.”
Indeed, when Emma received her second exorcism, it was much more intense, prolonged, and miserable.
The Final Exorcism
As soon as Emma’s train arrived at the Iowa train station and nuns appeared to welcome her, she instantly wanted to choke them to death and began verbally abusing them right away.
At the Earling convent, her name was concealed and listed as names other than her own so that locals would not know who was undergoing the exorcism.
From the time he drove to the exorcism, Father Riesinger experienced car troubles in his brand new car and this would persist throughout the ordeal.
Just before the ceremony commenced, the nuns with sprinkle holy water on some of Emma’s food or beverages, and the girl would react in bizarre ways to the affected fare. She did not react at all to unaffected food and drink. With the blessed fare, she would purr like a cat or recoil violently. This is a classic reaction of the possessed to secretly blessed items.
As soon as the ritual began, the young woman, tied to her bed, broke free from her bed straps, and her body flew up and over the door. The full weight of her body clung itself to the wall and ceiling this way, horrifying all the witnesses.
Once she was tied back down to the bed and more tightly secured, the ritual began again and this time strange voices and howls came out of the girls mouth, striking fear into all present.
Despite the efforts to conceal the events unfolding, Emma’s screams became so loud that villagers came to understand that something bizarre was afoot. Villagers began running to the convent to see what the screeching was all about. They asked if someone were being murdered or if a pig were being slaughtered inside. They also smelled extremely foul odors emanating from its perimeter.
The Horrifying Details
Emma would lose consciousness at the beginning of each ceremony and would awaken when it concluded, exhausted and unable to recall anything that had happened to her. The rituals would begin early in the morning and conclude late at night.
She was able to understand languages she had never learned, demonstrating that some other intelligence was in charge. The pastors would switch up their languages at random, and the entities possessing Emma would always respond in that same language. At times, the priests would make grammatical or pronunciation errors, and quickly be corrected by the demons inside Emma.
Throughout the ordeal, the poor possessed girl was somehow forced to vomit profuse amounts of unknown substances, which caused great discomfort to the eyes and noses of all the witnesses. Even though Emma would only take teaspoons of milk and water every day for sustenance, she was somehow able to vomit up gallons and gallons of mysterious substances. It was described as resembling shredded tobacco leaves at times, or macaroni, but nobody knew where this high quantity of mystery matter could possibly be coming from. This proved to be quite tortuous for the possessed woman to endure.
When the name of Jesus Christ was mentioned, Emma would foam at the mouth, spit, and howl like a wild animal. The animal sounds could resemble anything including hyenas, cows, cats or barking dogs.
When asked to name the demon or demons possessing Emma, the first name announced was Beelzebub. This demon claimed it had possessed the girl since she was 14 years old, and that her own father was the one who cursed her to become possessed. When asked why the father had cursed his daughter, the response is that the father had been with the demons ever since he died and was damned to Hell, and that the priest could ask the father himself now to answer these questions.
After this, a new demon’s voice came about who claimed it was Judas. This proclamation, along with the voice, scared some of the nuns so badly that they fled from the room. “Judas” claimed that he was here to bring the girl despair so that she would commit suicide and hang herself. He exclaimed, “She must get the rope! She must go to Hell!” The demon went on to laugh about how a high number of people who commit suicide are actually urged to do it by demons.
The Possession Was Personal
Next, a demon calling himself Jacob surfaced and produced a deep and gruff man’s voice. He revealed he was Emma’s father. After living a debased and unchaste life, he cursed his young daughter when she refused to commit incest with him. The curse was that she should allow devils to take over her body and ruin her soul. Upon being given his last rights on his death bed, Jacob said he would have been forgiven and saved for everything except the crime of cursing his own child to Satan. That was the thing that did him in, and by doing so he signed his soul up for eternal damnation. Even in Hell, he said, he was still scheming to molest and torture his daughter, and Lucifer rejoiced in that. Now that he was possessing his own daughter, he said he wasn’t ever going to leave her.
After some time, a new high pitched woman’s voice produced out of Emma, a voice not her own. This demon announced herself as Mina. Mina was Emma’s maternal aunt who had had a long-term affair with Emma’s father Jacob. In life, Mina was a witch who was also said to have cursed Emma and poisoned her with the witch herbs. The first possession Emma experienced from her teenage years was due to this specific event. The second possession was due to her father’s curse.
Mina admitted to being in Hell because of the affair that she had and the fact that she was a child killer. She specified that she killed “three - no actually four babies,” presumably her own. It was said that Mina and Judas were the most hateful and frightening of all the demons who presented.
Frightening Physical Changes
These conversations summarized above happened in very punctuated fashion, and not in one sitting. Single sentences were interrupted at length by screams, contortions, and other dramatic behaviors.
Emma’s body was put through intense disfigurement during this process, which took place over nearly a month. Her face became so distorted that she was no longer recognizable. Her body was so disfigured that its normal contours disappeared. She was very pale and appeared dead, but at times her entire skull would light up and become “as red as glowing embers.” Her eyes popped out of their sockets, her lips swelled up to the size of hands, and her thin body would become bloated to such a disturbing degree that everyone would stop the process because they thought that she would burst and die. The woman’s abdomen and extremities would become rock hard at times. Her body pressed itself so strongly into the iron bedframe that it bent the iron rods down to the floor, displaying inhuman strength.
Particularly strong reactions of horror and pain resulted from the demons when certain phrases or holy names were mentioned such as “the Holy Ghost,” “Holy Mary,” or “Saint Michael.” The demons also reacted violently whenever someone approached wielding a crucifix, even if it were hidden beneath their clothes.
The demon particularly hated any mention or prayer involving Archangel Michael. A particularly visceral reaction would occur when the following prayer was uttered:
“Holy Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do you, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.”
Spiritual Warfare
The demons taunted Steiger and warned him that Friday would prove interesting. He ignored them, assuming it to be nonsense taunting like everything else.
But on that Friday, Pastor Steiger was called to a neighboring farmer’s home to perform last rites. The farmer’s car had suddenly stopped working, which required the pastor to take his own car. On his way home, a strange dark cloud enveloped Steiger’s car on a bridge; the car sharply veered to the side and crashed. Miraculously, it did not tumble over the side of the bridge, but the pastor attributed this to having prayed when he began his journey home.
Hours later, he walked back into the convent to continue the exorcisms. The demon possessing Emma mocked Steiger fiercely or having just been in an accident. Nobody in the room could have known this; it was long before cell phones existed, and the pastor had not communicated anything to anybody yet about this incident. The demon took credit for the mishap and lamented that, “our aim was to get you, but our plans were thwarted…it was your powerful Patron Saint who prevented us from harming you.”
Interestingly, it was noted that possessed woman’s mouth never moved. While these various voices were coming out of Emma, they did not seem to use her lips or tongue. This spooky phenomenon thoroughly disturbed all who witnessed it.
Emma’s exorcism lasted 23 days. It said that a large number of lesser demons were forced out of her in the beginning days, but the four named evil entities remained with great strength.
Visions were had both by Emma and by other attendees in the room. Emma had constant visions of evil spirits and holy spirits fighting on her behalf. At one po near the end, just as everyone wanted to give up, flowers appeared on the ceiling which only the nuns could see. Emma seemed to become possessed not by a demon but by a benevolent spirit, who said not give up because the tribulation was almost over.
The Eviction
The demons lamented at the torture they suffered throughout the exorcism. They begged not to be sent back to their “High Commander” Lucifer, who gave them great pain. The demons tried to gain sympathy from their human enemies, groaning, “Oh what we have to put up with here, it is terrible all that we have suffered…and how we will again have to suffer and cringe under him. How he will torture us again if we return without having accomplished our task!”
They screamed in pain when met with splashes of holy water or utterances of prayer, which they said hurt worse than the tortures of Hell. Despairing that the priests were trying to send them back to Hell, the demons begged to possess any body on Earth, man or animal, but begged not to be sent back. When reminded quite bluntly that they were already in Hell, they conceded pathetically, “True, true, we drag Hell along with us. But it is a relief to be permitted to roam about the earth until we shall be cast off and damned to Hell for eternity.” This was in reference to the Last Judgement, at which time Jesus will confront all demons and banish them to their dark underworld forever.
The exit of the demons were dramatic. Out of nowhere, Emma’s body flung up and out of the hands of those restraining her, such that only her heels were touching the bed/ This seemed to be in defiance of physics. One priest yelled, “Depart, ye fiends of Hell! Begone, Satan, the Lion of Judah reigns!” Emma went limp as voices emanated from around her which pierced the air and caused fright in everyone who heard them. The voices were saying “Beelzebub!” “Judas!”, “Jacob!”, and “Mina!” The names were repeated along with the phrase “Hell, Hell, Hell!”
Emma opened her eyes and mouth, praised Jesus, and received communion. She lived a happy life after the exorcism, completely devoted to her faith. No details about her life or death are officially known besides the events of this exorcism.
All the nuns involved requested a transfer to new convents, wanting never to dwell in this building again.
The information about the exorcism of Emily Schmidt comes from the book/pamphlet Begone Satan! by Reverend Carl Vogl. At the time of its publication in 1935, Emma’s exorcism was proclaimed the be the first and last exorcism performed in America by the Catholic Church. Since then, others have occurred, but Emma’s provided unspoken inspiration to the novel and film which made all of America aware overnight to the terrors of demonic possession. As described, the bodily contortions, vomit, voices, and extreme reactions to holy objects demonstrated in Emma’s possession case all showed up in The Exorcist, revealing that the book and film describe much more fact than fiction - and that is terrifying.