A Playground and a School
I see that I shall have to tell all that I know about The Exorcist, this being its 30th anniversary. I only saw the movie once and as usual, could not see what the fuss was about. My story has a much more amusing ending.
The real demonic possession occurred in Mt. Rainier near where Taylor St. NE crosses the District Line, not far from the "Catholic Ghetto." It occurred in the early 1950s. The host was not a girl but a boy, who now lives elswhere in the country. A Jesuit--identity never disclosed--from Georgetown University was the exorcist. The family was not Catholic, but only the Catholic Church does exorcisms.
My Dad was a student at Georgetown in the early '50s and he thought he figured out who the exorcist priest was. There was one fellow who disappeared for a while and came back looking quite the worse for wear. He was not the same Fr.--- that everybody knew.
Another student at Georgetown at the time was William Peter Blatty. He was a Mask & Bauble type who made a career of writing funny stuff. At a class reunion, one of his Jesuit teachers challenged him to write something serious. And so came about his book "The Exorcist."
I heard quite a bit about exorcisms in the wake of the book and movie. At Georgetown Prep we had the good fortune of having Fr. John Nicola on the faculty. An exorcist himself who could chill you good and hard with his reminiscences, he had been the technical advisor to the movie. He had also written the forward to The Amityville Horror which he regretted, it having turned out to be a hoax. He was paid $600,000.00 for such bits. He told us that he persuaded the movie director to cut some really gross and offensive parts although since then, some sculptors have done much worse.
Fr. was a great man and teacher, got me interested in Philosophy. His celebrity status attracted no less than "In Search of...," hosted by Leonard Nimoy, which came up to film him in his classroom at GP.
The house where the original possession happened has since been torn down, along with its neighbors. The city fathers of Mt. Rainier ordered it so because they were afraid the demons would come out of the ground and take hold of new residents. Can you imagine this happening with today's Wall of Separation? Cause of condemnation: Demons.
So in place of the house, they built a playground and a school.
Copyright © 2003 by Neal J. Conway. All rights reserved.