The real story behind the Exorcist Movie and Roland Doe
Revised November 2024
In the late 1940s, priests of the Roman Catholic Church performed a series of exorcisms on an anonymous 14-year-old boy under the pseudonym "Roland Doe" or "Robbie Mannheim". The boy was the alleged victim of demonic possession, and the events were recorded by the attending priest, Raymond J. Bishop, with elements being incorporated in William Peter Blatty's novel The Exorcist in 1971, which became the infamous movie of the same name in 1973, directed by William Friedkin.
The demonic possession
In mid-1949, several newspapers printed anonymous reports of alleged possession and exorcism. The source for these reports is thought to be the family's former pastor, Luther Miles Schulze. According to one account, "forty-eight people witnessed this exorcism, nine of them Jesuits."
According to author Thomas B. Allen, Jesuit priest Father Walter H. Halloran was one of the last surviving eyewitnesses of the events and participated in the exorcism. Allen wrote that a diary kept by attending priest Father Raymond J. Bishop detailed the exorcism performed on a boy identified as "Roland Doe", aka "Robbie".
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Father Walter H. Halloran