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Speaker 2: Hello, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil. I'm Rascha Pacerreiro
Speaker 2: and I'm.
Speaker 3: Evett Genteelay, and today we're talking about the case of
Speaker 3: Annalise Michelle. That's a name you might not know, but
Speaker 3: it's a case you probably do know a lot about. Yes,
Speaker 3: this is a case involving a real life exorcism. And
Speaker 3: while it took place after the infamous movie The Exorcist,
Speaker 3: which I never saw because I'm a big scaredy cat,
Speaker 3: it inspired three documentary films, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Requiem,
Speaker 3: and Honalise The Exorcist Tapes, and as that last title implies,
Speaker 3: these exorcism sessions were actually recorded. There is audio of
Speaker 3: the priests as they were trying to drive out the
Speaker 3: evil spirits that they believed were possessing Analise Michelle and
Speaker 3: full transparency here. I know little to nothing about exorcisms,
Speaker 3: especially being agnostic, so looking at this as a case
Speaker 3: is just feels so far removed from reality for me personally.
Speaker 3: And we will analyze some of that today as we
Speaker 3: talk with Father Carlos Martin's director of the Treasures of
Speaker 3: the Church ministry and an official exorcist. We'll talk about
Speaker 3: what really happened to Analise Michelle and how this exorcism
Speaker 3: led to her death. But first our producer Trevor is
Speaker 3: going to walk us through today's case.
Speaker 4: There are many people who laugh at the notion of
Speaker 4: demonic possession or even the reality itself, but the Catholic
Speaker 4: Church does teach that evil's reality and it is personified
Speaker 4: in the person of the devil.
Speaker 1: Annalise Michelle was a twenty three year old woman from
Speaker 1: Germany who died after a series of failed priestlet exorcisms
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six. She was born in libel Feing,
Speaker 1: Bavaria in West Germany to a devout Catholic family. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: Annalise and her sisters were not allowed to play outside
Speaker 1: with other children, and instead spent most of their time
Speaker 1: praying inside. At the age of sixteen, Annalise experienced her
Speaker 1: first seizure. The next year, she had yet another and
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, a chronic nerve system
Speaker 1: disorder in which recurrent seizures take place, usually lasting a
Speaker 1: couple of minutes. Shortly after this, she was diagnosed with
Speaker 1: depression and psychosis and was treated at a psychiatric facility.
Speaker 1: At the facility, she had another seizure and was prescribed
Speaker 1: the anti convulsant dilantin, after which she began describing seeing
Speaker 1: quote devil faces frequently. However, the medications did not help
Speaker 1: with her seizures or her strange visions. In nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: she went to the University of Wurtzburg, where her classmates
Speaker 1: described her as quote withdrawn and very religious. Some classmates
Speaker 1: described one occasion where they found her in a trance
Speaker 1: like state with her arms outstretched dramatically. But she also
Speaker 1: began hearing more menacing voices telling her she was damned
Speaker 1: and that she would quote rotten Hell. Around this time,
Speaker 1: she said someone else was manipulating her and that her
Speaker 1: will was not her own. She also became intolerant of
Speaker 1: cruise fixes and other sacred Christian objects and places. She
Speaker 1: told a family friend that she was unable to enter
Speaker 1: a Christian shrine during a religious pilgrimage the two took
Speaker 1: together to Italy, and that the soil around the place
Speaker 1: quote burned like fire when she attempted to walk on it.
Speaker 1: The friend concluded that Annalise was suffering from demonic possession.
Speaker 1: Annalise and her family were convinced of this as well,
Speaker 1: and at first priests refused her pleas for an exorcism,
Speaker 1: recommending that she instead continue her psychiatric treatment. They also
Speaker 1: said they needed the bishop's permission to perform an exorcism,
Speaker 1: but her condition worsened, and in September of nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: Bishop Joseph Stongel granted Father ernst Alt and Father Arnold
Speaker 1: Wrens permission to perform an exorcism on Annalise, but they
Speaker 1: were ordered to total secrecy. Over the next ten months,
Speaker 1: the two priests performed sixty seven exorcism sessions at the
Speaker 1: rate of about two twice a week. Each lasted about
Speaker 1: four hours, and forty two of these sessions were recorded.
Speaker 1: Annalise had to be tied down for many of the
Speaker 1: sessions as she tried to bite and harm the men.
Speaker 1: In the last few months of the exorcisms, she refused
Speaker 1: food and rapidly lost weight. On June thirtieth, nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: Father Wrens performed the final exorcism. By now she was
Speaker 1: severely emaciated, had pneumonia, and was running a high fever.
Speaker 1: Her final words to the priest were quote request for absolution,
Speaker 1: end quote, but her final words to her mother were quote, mother,
Speaker 1: I'm afraid. On July first, nineteen seventy six, Annalise Michel died.
Speaker 1: The cause of death was malnutrition and dehydration. Father Alt
Speaker 1: and Father Wrens believed her exorcism was successful because she
Speaker 1: died after the demons were driven out of her. Later
Speaker 1: that year, the priests and parents were charged with negligent homicide.
Speaker 1: The trial was a massive media sensation, and the priests
Speaker 1: were eventually convicted, but only given suspended prison sentences. And so,
Speaker 1: what happened to Annalise Michelle? Who was responsible for her death?
Speaker 1: And what does the story tell us about the complicated
Speaker 1: intersection between religious and medical approaches to mental illness.
Speaker 3: So today we are lucky to be joined by an
Speaker 3: expert in the field of exorcism.
Speaker 5: You may have.
Speaker 3: Recently heard his voice on the new iHeartRadio podcast that
Speaker 3: Exorcist Files with Us. Now is Father Carlos Martins, director
Speaker 3: of the Treasure of the Church Ministry and an official
Speaker 3: exorcist on two Continents. Welcome Father Martins to Facing Evil.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be
Speaker 5: here with you.
Speaker 2: We're honored to have you here, Father Martins.
Speaker 3: Yes, so I just have to say I'm Catholic. I've
Speaker 3: been married for sixteen years, and my husband and I
Speaker 3: have an amazing father, father Arman, in our life. And
Speaker 3: I remember asking him the question when did he get
Speaker 3: that calling, you know, to be a part of the ministry,
Speaker 3: And he told me, he said, Yvette, it was when
Speaker 3: I was probably seven or eight that I just knew. So,
Speaker 3: can I ask you when did you first get your
Speaker 3: calling to be involved with the ministry work that you
Speaker 3: do and eventually do exorcisms.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I guess for me, I was not as
Speaker 5: young as your priest was. I'm a convert from atheism,
Speaker 5: so I converted in my twenties. I was a college
Speaker 5: student at the time, and after that conversion occurred, I
Speaker 5: got the call to the priesthood about seven years later.
Speaker 5: So in two thousand and three, I was on a
Speaker 5: retreat and I heard the proverbial voice of God and
Speaker 5: he said, Carlos, joined the priesthood. I promised to make
Speaker 5: you very happy, and so I did and was ordained
Speaker 5: a priest about six years later. And when I was
Speaker 5: assigned to the first church that I was placed in,
Speaker 5: the priests that were on staff there were the diocesan exorcists,
Speaker 5: and they were just so busy with oppression and possession
Speaker 5: cases with individuals that when something of a lesser nature
Speaker 5: would come in, like the infestation of a house, demonic
Speaker 5: phenomena happening within a place, they just turned to me
Speaker 5: and said, Deacon, go get rid of the devil. So
Speaker 5: I didn't have any training at that point, and so
Speaker 5: I would not advise this to be the normal course
Speaker 5: of affairs for someone to be thrown in a situation,
Speaker 5: but that was my situation. And what I knew, though,
Speaker 5: is that if the devil is in a place, then
Speaker 5: there's going to be signs that reveal that presence. So
Speaker 5: there's going to be proof, if you will, and if
Speaker 5: the devil is in a place, and we can determine
Speaker 5: that through proof, then he's there for a reason. In
Speaker 5: other words, a door was opened to him, and so
Speaker 5: that door has to be closed. What I preach on
Speaker 5: all the time, what I've developed some notoriety for saying,
Speaker 5: is this, the job of the exorcist is not to
Speaker 5: cast out the devil. The job of the exorcist is
Speaker 5: to find out why is the devil there? What rights
Speaker 5: has he obtained, And it's the exorcist job to then, knowing,
Speaker 5: once those rights are known, to work with the victim
Speaker 5: to rescind those rights. Once the rights are rescinded, then
Speaker 5: the devil must leave. Then the devil ca can be
Speaker 5: cast out. But until that is done, the devil has
Speaker 5: every right to stay. He's obtained the rights to stay.
Speaker 5: So most people in their mind understand exorcism falsely to
Speaker 5: be an enterprise where on the one side you have
Speaker 5: a demon or demons, and on the other side you
Speaker 5: have a priest and they kind of do battle with
Speaker 5: one another, and whoever's the most powerful wins. And that
Speaker 5: is nowhere near what the case is. One has to
Speaker 5: find out which was the doorway by which the devil
Speaker 5: entered where he is. Then that doorway has to be
Speaker 5: closed and then he can be evicted.
Speaker 2: So, Father Martins, I'll be quite honest. I was not
Speaker 2: raised in the Catholic Church. However, I am born and
Speaker 2: raised in Honolulu, and I respect the Hawaiian culture more
Speaker 2: than you can possibly know. And so when I think
Speaker 2: of things like exorcisms or what you do, I think
Speaker 2: of our Hawaiian kahunas or our Hawaiian kahu's who will
Speaker 2: go into homes and bless homes, or if something sad
Speaker 2: has happened or anything like that, they go and they
Speaker 2: just give O pome wit cut ye blessings. But with
Speaker 2: all of that being said, I would love to know more,
Speaker 2: what's the history of exorcism? Does it go as far
Speaker 2: back as when the Bible was first written? I would
Speaker 2: love to know the history of it.
Speaker 5: Heavens no, it far predates that the Romans practiced it
Speaker 5: before them, The Greeks practiced it, certainly the Jews did.
Speaker 5: But in every historical culture, in every culture that history
Speaker 5: can study, there appears to be the process of exorcism.
Speaker 5: There appear to be people whose task it is or
Speaker 5: who are willing to take on a foreign spirit manifested
Speaker 5: as a different, a radically different personality that is all
Speaker 5: of a sudden inhabiting somebody who is known, and that
Speaker 5: typically that inhabitation is marked by a certain number of characteristics,
Speaker 5: which all of all of which are are out of
Speaker 5: the character of the person. So a particular violence, an
Speaker 5: aversion to any goodness, to truth, to beauty to goodness,
Speaker 5: a knowledge of hidden things, a knowledge of occult realities
Speaker 5: or the occult, the meaning of occult being the most
Speaker 5: broad meeting meaning that which is hidden, that that which
Speaker 5: they couldn't possibly know. And included with that would be
Speaker 5: a speaking of a language or language, is that they
Speaker 5: were never taught. So there clearly is something different that
Speaker 5: is not from the individual himself or herself that is
Speaker 5: now present. A foreign spirit is now present. And so
Speaker 5: there are different ways in which different cultures, and I
Speaker 5: mean all of them, Japanese culture, Chinese culture, the different
Speaker 5: African cultures and so forth, that they would deal with that.
Speaker 5: I mean you mentioned your own. In the Hawaiian culture,
Speaker 5: you have exactly so you have a copuona that would
Speaker 5: come over and would conduct some ritual, the intention of
Speaker 5: which would be to clean the place, to clean someone
Speaker 5: wary place. Right, So that is ingrained in the human
Speaker 5: nature that hey, we've we have these enemies that are
Speaker 5: not physical, they're spiritual, and yet we we want to
Speaker 5: combat them. So this drama is very much a part
Speaker 5: of the human story. It's it's been there from the
Speaker 5: beginning and it continues.
Speaker 3: You know, Father, you were telling us the story of
Speaker 3: you know, earlier, of how you got into the ministry,
Speaker 3: and you were kind of you know, you were sent
Speaker 3: to this house from that point on up until now
Speaker 3: where you're at today. Did you or do you still
Speaker 3: have to go through any type of training when you
Speaker 3: do these different types of you know, exorcisms.
Speaker 5: Well, I attend conferences regularly, but it's not really for
Speaker 5: the sake of training. I'm in fact a trainer of exorcists. Now, okay,
Speaker 5: Now that being said, it's always possible to learn something
Speaker 5: new or to gain an insight from your colleagues, especially
Speaker 5: when you have colleagues as good as I do. I
Speaker 5: really respect the other exorcists with whom I work or
Speaker 5: with whom I'm friends. They're smart individuals, they have great insights,
Speaker 5: they're hard working, and they're committed people who love the
Speaker 5: Lord and equally they love the victims, the people who
Speaker 5: are ensnared. So those people need to be loved, and
Speaker 5: we're doing this as an effort to rescue them and
Speaker 5: to aid them. And these people have been tormented and tortured,
Speaker 5: and often people regard them and sometimes even their own
Speaker 5: family members, as people who are crazy, who are daft,
Speaker 5: who shouldn't be believed because they're just not connected with reality.
Speaker 5: And so mental illness is absolutely a thing. And I'm
Speaker 5: not competent to diagnose mental illness. I'm not a psychiatrist
Speaker 5: or a psychologist or a dog. However, I can diagnose
Speaker 5: the presence of evil, and they're going to be very
Speaker 5: different manifestations than a physical or mental illness. That being said,
Speaker 5: That being said, it is not an either or situation.
Speaker 5: One can have mental illness and can be demonically oppressed.
Speaker 5: So because someone is diagnosed with mental illness, it does
Speaker 5: not mean that, oh, because of that, the devil's not
Speaker 5: interested in them. That's in fact, he's going to be
Speaker 5: more interested in them because like an animal that is sick,
Speaker 5: just as the pack of lions goes after that animal,
Speaker 5: why because that animal is the easiest to catch. The
Speaker 5: animals already wounded. So the animal is already a target
Speaker 5: by that fact, so that love of the individual is
Speaker 5: what gives the motive and all of the other things
Speaker 5: that are needed to the exorcists the patients for example,
Speaker 5: because sometimes the process of gathering information and making a
Speaker 5: diagnosis is painstaking. It's not a quick thing. It's not
Speaker 5: an effort of kind of telepathy, you know, with just
Speaker 5: through a straight mental knowledge. Okay, eye into it. The
Speaker 5: devil is in front of me, not at all. There
Speaker 5: have to be signs. Those signs are objective that anybody
Speaker 5: with a rational mind will have to conclude that nothing
Speaker 5: in the natural realm could cause this. And they are
Speaker 5: specific criteria that we follow.
Speaker 2: So, Father Martins, can you take us through what actually
Speaker 2: goes into an exorcism? How does it work?
Speaker 5: So maybe let's take maybe half a step back. So
Speaker 5: rather than starting with the actual exorcism, what do we
Speaker 5: need to establish so that we know the presence of
Speaker 5: a demon is there? And the Church identifies three classical
Speaker 5: criteria that point to a reality that is beyond the
Speaker 5: realm of nature. We call it preter nature, which literally
Speaker 5: means in Latin outside the natural. One is knowledge of
Speaker 5: the hidden, so within the victim, within the person who
Speaker 5: is being diagnosed, a knowledge of facts that he or
Speaker 5: she could not possibly know, such as, for example, if
Speaker 5: that person all of a sudden started to recite facts
Speaker 5: of your life, what happened on your eleventh birthday, conversation
Speaker 5: that you had with your best friend last night in Seattle,
Speaker 5: Washington before you flew to wherever you are here. So
Speaker 5: there's no way in the natural realm that this individual
Speaker 5: on the spot could come up with that knowledge. A Secondly,
Speaker 5: the facility, the ability to speak in foreign languages with ease.
Speaker 5: We're talking about speaking with facility, with perfect grammar, the
Speaker 5: ability to answer and to ask questions. Thirdly, is superhuman strength,
Speaker 5: strength that is beyond the ability of the natural and
Speaker 5: anything else that might be related to that. So, for example,
Speaker 5: something we might call possessed gravity. Whereas a petite individual
Speaker 5: such as whom we're going to talk about, Annalise Michelle,
Speaker 5: who weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe one hundred
Speaker 5: and thirty one hundred and forty pounds that her stout
Speaker 5: boyfriend at one point and a priest could not lift her.
Speaker 5: They couldn't budget her. So there was all of a
Speaker 5: sudden a weight to her body that was absolutely extraordinary.
Speaker 5: So we're talking about signs that are impossible in nature.
Speaker 5: There have to be signs that the natural realm cannot
Speaker 5: account for.
Speaker 3: In the case of Annali's Michelle, obviously we know that
Speaker 3: you know a lot about it. Can you tell us
Speaker 3: what you think actually happened there as far as the facts.
Speaker 5: Well, I think so. First of all, what I will
Speaker 5: say is Annalise Michelle her possession was very, very unique
Speaker 5: in the sense that her circumstances point to a particular
Speaker 5: reality whereby God was asking her to take on a
Speaker 5: suffering vicariously, a suffering for the sake of others, for
Speaker 5: the benefit of others. To phrase it in in kind
Speaker 5: of classical Catholic language, she was being asked to be
Speaker 5: a victim's soul. She's not the only one in history
Speaker 5: that has had this. So we have a Canoni saint,
Speaker 5: Saint Mary of Jesus Crucified, who was a Palestinian nun.
Speaker 5: She was born in Bethlehem. She is called a holy demoniac.
Speaker 5: She was possessed not because of a particular sin that
Speaker 5: she had done a particular action, but she was possessed
Speaker 5: for the sake of undergoing a suffering that would benefit
Speaker 5: the Universal Church to benefit others. And the proof of
Speaker 5: it is in the fact is that the demons didn't
Speaker 5: want to be inside her. The demons described as the
Speaker 5: one whom we serve, right, they never want to name God.
Speaker 5: They don't even want to say the word, and they
Speaker 5: absolutely will never say Jesus Christ. They will refer to
Speaker 5: the one whom you serve, or the carpenter from Nazareth
Speaker 5: or something like that. With regard to bless Saint Mary
Speaker 5: of Jesus. Crucified the demons over and over repeated that
Speaker 5: they wanted to leave, but the One whom you serve
Speaker 5: will not let me. The same thing is in Analie's Michelle.
Speaker 5: The demons at first talked about them bringing her to hell.
Speaker 5: They talked about them having a plan for her. They enjoy,
Speaker 5: they love torturing her, and they would brag about yesterday,
Speaker 5: we made her do this for three hours, in other words,
Speaker 5: chasing her tail, going kind of on a nervous wild
Speaker 5: goose chase within her room. So she's pacing the room
Speaker 5: for hours with horrendous anxiety. They would brag about this,
Speaker 5: But as the exorcisms went on, that changed, so yes,
Speaker 5: Annalie's Michelle had symptoms that were consistent with seizures, and
Speaker 5: this is what kind of began her medical treatment. And
Speaker 5: that's what began her parents taking her to the doctor,
Speaker 5: first the family doctor, and then a neurologist. And she
Speaker 5: saw several neurologists, and she had at least seven EEGs
Speaker 5: in her life. All of them except one, proved to
Speaker 5: be normal. One showed a slight abnormality in the left
Speaker 5: lobe that might be consistent with normalcy, it might not be.
Speaker 5: In other words, it was inconclusive. The diagnosis of epilepsy
Speaker 5: was never one that was hard and fast. The doctor
Speaker 5: at her trial who insisted that that's what she had,
Speaker 5: he never saw her, so he's going by statements of
Speaker 5: other people. He's not going by direct, firsthand knowledge. So
Speaker 5: whether or not Annelie's Michelle had epileptie, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I can't tell you. Her symptoms were consistent initially with seizures,
Speaker 5: but that was quickly I'm not going to say replaced.
Speaker 5: But alongside those things that the seizures themselves, at a
Speaker 5: certain point, nobody would talk about them because they didn't
Speaker 5: appear to be evident. But what was evident was some
Speaker 5: of those preternatural signs, not even some an abundance of
Speaker 5: preternatural signs that that was impossible for the cause of
Speaker 5: which to be from the natural. For example, she would
Speaker 5: know the exact time and place that her friend Thea
Speaker 5: would be praying for her. She accurately predicted when a priest,
Speaker 5: Father Roth was going to come and visit her, although
Speaker 5: no one told her and even her family didn't know.
Speaker 5: And this is one of the things that demons do.
Speaker 5: It's quite common socially vicually an act that is threatening
Speaker 5: for them, like a priest is on his way right here,
Speaker 5: right now, and they will make a reference to it,
Speaker 5: and they will usually attach something derogatory to it, right
Speaker 5: they'll call him by some type of expletive, some type
Speaker 5: of scandalous word, and that's the manifestation of the threat
Speaker 5: that they feel. She as I mentioned already, the evidence
Speaker 5: of the superhuman strength when she was in the gravity
Speaker 5: of possession, when she was in the hospital and Peter
Speaker 5: and the priest couldn't lift her, but she had at
Speaker 5: times the strength of a bear. So her friend Thea
Speaker 5: identified this that she was throwing around men like they
Speaker 5: were rag dolls. And so this is a petitue girl.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is when she was already very close
Speaker 5: to her death. So this is a person who wouldn't
Speaker 5: have the strength to do such a thing. And then,
Speaker 5: of course she had knowledge of unknown languages, so she
Speaker 5: at one point corrected the priest's Latin. He missed pronounced something,
Speaker 5: and the demon stopped, you've mispronounced that, you idiot, this
Speaker 5: is how you say it. And then he spoke to
Speaker 5: her in Dutch. Now her native language is German. He
Speaker 5: spoke to her in Dutch, and she answered back in
Speaker 5: Dutch fluently. Now Dutch and German they're different languages, but
Speaker 5: there's a lot of similarities. And she you know, if
Speaker 5: you live in Germany, you live close to Holland. So okay,
Speaker 5: fair enough. But that priest was a missionary priest. He
Speaker 5: had lived in China, so he spoke to her in
Speaker 5: Chinese and she answered in perfect Chinese. So again, you know,
Speaker 5: exorcism entails its own science, a science of diagnosis. It's
Speaker 5: a hard diagnosis. It's one that we don't take lightly,
Speaker 5: and it's a diagnosis that any rational human being, even
Speaker 5: an atheist, who is in the room and observes the phenomena,
Speaker 5: would have to conclude the same way that we do thing.
Speaker 5: Otherwise it would be foreign to what our craft, our
Speaker 5: and our nature, our science is.
Speaker 3: Father Martin's. You've said so much, and it makes sense
Speaker 3: because you your mind goes, you know, how would she
Speaker 3: be able to know Chinese and Dutch and all of
Speaker 3: these things by the age of twenty three. But then
Speaker 3: at the same time, you know, your mind thinks of
Speaker 3: everything that she's gone through as a child. You know,
Speaker 3: you know, having to wear black her whole life, and
Speaker 3: you know, not being able to socialize with children, and
Speaker 3: then being on drugs. I mean, do you think that
Speaker 3: that could have contributed as well, you know, to her
Speaker 3: mental health.
Speaker 5: I don't believe any of those things are true. There's
Speaker 5: been a lot of inks build about the Annals Michelle case,
Speaker 5: and a lot of that has been done by people
Speaker 5: that have absolutely no knowledge of the case, and some
Speaker 5: of them they'll have some knowledge, but they'll stop at
Speaker 5: the very incomplete medical diagnoses that she received and the
Speaker 5: fact that she was given some antipsychotic or anti convulsive medication.
Speaker 5: At first it was strictly an anti convulsive medication for
Speaker 5: the seizures. Yeah, an anti epilepsy medication. But those things
Speaker 5: do have effects on the mind. For one, they made
Speaker 5: her depressed, They made her slow, tired, and withdrawn, and
Speaker 5: it does that to anybody. But the point being that
Speaker 5: these drugs had absolutely no effect on the preternatural occurrence.
Speaker 5: And this is something that occurs all the time. If
Speaker 5: possession is an act by a preternatural enemy, why in
Speaker 5: Heaven's name would it matter what drugs, what sedatives would
Speaker 5: be inside the victim's body. And in fact, I have
Speaker 5: a good friend of mine, Adam Bli, who is a
Speaker 5: demonologist and who is the bishop's expert on demonology and
Speaker 5: exorcism for the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. He used to
Speaker 5: work in a prison and when an inmate becomes violent,
Speaker 5: egregiously violent, what they will do is inject thorizine into
Speaker 5: him to make him start. Ten minutes after he's received
Speaker 5: an injection of thorisine, he's on the floor drooling into
Speaker 5: his shoe. In prison, thorizine is called break fluid. It
Speaker 5: just stops a human being.
Speaker 1: Period.
Speaker 5: You can inject a possessed person with thorazine, there will
Speaker 5: be absolutely no change in their behavior, and in fact,
Speaker 5: sometimes the demon will come back at you. In a
Speaker 5: provocative way and say, oh that felt good. Do you
Speaker 5: got anymore? So we're talking about two different realities.
Speaker 2: I would like to ask you did mention you know,
Speaker 2: father Alt and the other priest was father Rends. Do
Speaker 2: you think that they did everything that they should have
Speaker 2: done or do you think it was taken too far?
Speaker 5: Sure? Yeah, so that's a really good question. And the
Speaker 5: answer to that is I don't know, because I wasn't there. Certainly,
Speaker 5: I will say this that if any of them believed,
Speaker 5: and they gave testimony to this, if any of them
Speaker 5: believed that she was close to death, then they would
Speaker 5: have stopped, have had her medicated, they would have had
Speaker 5: her institutionalized and forced fed if need be. But you
Speaker 5: also have to remember that even in the case of
Speaker 5: force feeding, we can force feed somebody who has a
Speaker 5: mental health issue. We can give them any number of
Speaker 5: tranquilizer sedatives thorazine for example, and force feed them. In
Speaker 5: the case of demonic possession, force feeding somebody is not
Speaker 5: necessarily an option you can try. Now in this case,
Speaker 5: it wasn't tried because they regarded And so I mean
Speaker 5: the two priests, both parents, all you know, her three
Speaker 5: sisters none and including her boyfriend, Peter, her friend Thea,
Speaker 5: Maria Klog her friend, and Anna Lippert. So nine individuals,
Speaker 5: pardon me, eleven individuals. None of them believed that she
Speaker 5: was close today. So there is one more fact to
Speaker 5: look at, and that has to be thrown on the
Speaker 5: scale in the midst of all of this. That annales
Speaker 5: when she was herself predicted, in other words, during in
Speaker 5: states where the demon was not possessing, that she was
Speaker 5: going to be freed in July of that year, July
Speaker 5: of nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2: And isn't that when she passed away?
Speaker 5: That is, she died on July the first, So she
Speaker 5: was given a knowledge, allegedly by the blessed Virgin. This
Speaker 5: was testified to by her friends and by her family
Speaker 5: members over and over that she had repeated this. The
Speaker 5: demons as well, in the course of the exorcisms, also
Speaker 5: stated that we are finished by July. In July, our
Speaker 5: reign comes to an end. So on the morning of
Speaker 5: July the first, she's dead in her bed in the morning.
Speaker 5: Now the prophecy was true, she was free, but she died.
Speaker 5: She died. She was diagnosed as having died of malnutrition.
Speaker 5: I believe that medical diagnosis. It's not up to me
Speaker 5: to question that. I take that at face value. Would
Speaker 5: I have continued with the exorcisms if her health was
Speaker 5: in danger?
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 5: That being said, I believe these eleven rational people when
Speaker 5: they say they were not aware that she that she
Speaker 5: was in danger, in life threatening danger because of her condition.
Speaker 5: I think in that sense, the fact that none of
Speaker 5: these people, eleven people, none of them raised that question
Speaker 5: or had that concern, I think that has to be
Speaker 5: taken into account because we weren't there.
Speaker 3: I think about what you do, right, Father Martin's, when
Speaker 3: you go into someone's home and you know they've called
Speaker 3: you in because they believe what they believe is happened
Speaker 3: to their child or you know, whomever it may be.
Speaker 3: When you go in, there has to be that element
Speaker 3: of that supernatural that is happening in order for you
Speaker 3: to do an exorcism. Right, Instead of saying this is
Speaker 3: for the doctors.
Speaker 5: Again, I don't want to take anything away from the
Speaker 5: doctors who made their diagnoses. They were rational ment and
Speaker 5: they're applying their science, and I applaud them for it.
Speaker 5: I do have I do take issue with the doctor
Speaker 5: at her trial who gave her a diagnosis of epilepsy
Speaker 5: and stated that that that was the cause of the problem,
Speaker 5: when he had never met with her and diagnosed her.
Speaker 5: And so he's taking his facts on hearsay and maybe
Speaker 5: EEGs that others did which showed nothing anyway. So the
Speaker 5: fact that the medical profession, multiple doctors, had a crack
Speaker 5: at Annales, but we're never able to provide a diagnosis
Speaker 5: that we're able to explain all of the facts and
Speaker 5: phenomena that came from her that were seen by numerous people,
Speaker 5: then I think we have to go somewhere else that
Speaker 5: good science demands that we go to another explanation on.
Speaker 2: Facing evil, we always try to find the light in
Speaker 2: the dark. I am curious, Father, what do you see
Speaker 2: as the light in the dark in Analisa's case?
Speaker 5: Sure? You know so with Annales. One of the phenomena
Speaker 5: that is present is her grave is visited by hundreds,
Speaker 5: if not thousands, of pilgrims a year. In other words,
Speaker 5: there's this kind of what we call in the Catholic
Speaker 5: Church and an odor of sanctity, a smell of holiness
Speaker 5: that has been left behind, and that this is an
Speaker 5: odor that the church talks about the saints leaving and
Speaker 5: people are attracted to that quote unquote odor, but people
Speaker 5: are attracted to the person of Annely's Michelle. That there
Speaker 5: is all the signs that the Holy Spirit has instilled
Speaker 5: within people and instinct, that she lived a saintly life,
Speaker 5: and that she is with the Lord in heaven.
Speaker 3: Father, we really appreciate that thought. It's so nice to
Speaker 3: hear that, even though Anali's faced a lot of difficulty
Speaker 3: in her life, that her grave is visited by thousands
Speaker 3: of people and she is still remembered.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, Mahalanuiloa, thank you so much for joining us today,
Speaker 2: Father Martin's.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely anytime.
Speaker 2: For today's message of hope and healing, our emul goes
Speaker 2: out to Analise Michelle. We will never know the true
Speaker 2: extent of Analis's mental illness, but we do know that
Speaker 2: she did struggle during a time where treatments for conditions
Speaker 2: like hers were incredibly limited.
Speaker 3: And people struggling with mental health often feel so disconnected
Speaker 3: from those around them and so misunderstood. And although things
Speaker 3: are better now than they once were, many people still
Speaker 3: experience a sense of stigma and shame around their illness.
Speaker 3: If you are in a crisis. There is help available.
Speaker 3: You can reach the US Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at
Speaker 3: nine to eight eight.
Speaker 2: Analise Mashie Show was more than just a spooky story.
Speaker 2: She was a young woman who'd once been a student teacher.
Speaker 2: Some part of her likely harbored dreams of the future
Speaker 2: outside of the nightmarish world that increasingly engulfed her.
Speaker 3: And so today we send hope and healing to Annaalis
Speaker 3: and to others who have found themselves in similar circumstances.
Speaker 3: Onward and upward e mooa emua.
Speaker 2: Well, that's our show for today. We'd love to hear
Speaker 2: what you thought about today's discussion and if there's a
Speaker 2: case you'd like for us to.
Speaker 3: Cover, find us on social media or email us at
Speaker 3: Facingevil pod at Tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 2: And one small request if you haven't already, please find
Speaker 2: us on iTunes and give us a good rating and
Speaker 2: a good review. If you like what we do, your
Speaker 2: support is always cherished.
Speaker 3: Until next time, I'm Aloha.
Speaker 1: Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
Speaker 1: The show is hosted by Russia Pacuerero and a vet Gentile,
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk, Donald
Speaker 1: albright In Payne Lindsay our executive producers on behalf of
Speaker 1: Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Carolyn Talmadge.
Speaker 1: Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on
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