April 6, 2023 • 40 mins
The attempted exorcism and eventual death of Anneliese Michel inspired films like 'The Exorcism of Emily Rose' and 'Requiem.' But what actually happened to Michel in 1976? Was she actually posessed by some supernatural force? Or was her hysteria the result of mental illness? We talk about the practice of exorcisms with Father Carlos Martins, Director of the ‘Treasures of the Church’ Ministry and an official exorcist.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Facing Evil, a production of iHeartRadio and
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Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hello, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil. I'm Rascha Pacerreiro
and I'm.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Evett Genteelay, and today we're talking about the case of
Annalise Michelle. That's a name you might not know, but
it's a case you probably do know a lot about. Yes,
this is a case involving a real life exorcism. And
while it took place after the infamous movie The Exorcist,
which I never saw because I'm a big scaredy cat,
(00:54):
it inspired three documentary films, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Requiem,
and Honalise The Exorcist Tapes, and as that last title implies,
these exorcism sessions were actually recorded. There is audio of
the priests as they were trying to drive out the
evil spirits that they believed were possessing Analise Michelle and
(01:20):
full transparency here. I know little to nothing about exorcisms,
especially being agnostic, so looking at this as a case
is just feels so far removed from reality for me personally.
And we will analyze some of that today as we
talk with Father Carlos Martin's director of the Treasures of
(01:43):
the Church ministry and an official exorcist. We'll talk about
what really happened to Analise Michelle and how this exorcism
led to her death. But first our producer Trevor is
going to walk us through today's case.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
There are many people who laugh at the notion of
demonic possession or even the reality itself, but the Catholic
Church does teach that evil's reality and it is personified
in the person of the devil.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Annalise Michelle was a twenty three year old woman from
Germany who died after a series of failed priestlet exorcisms
in nineteen seventy six. She was born in libel Feing,
Bavaria in West Germany to a devout Catholic family. Supposedly,
Annalise and her sisters were not allowed to play outside
with other children, and instead spent most of their time
(02:48):
praying inside. At the age of sixteen, Annalise experienced her
first seizure. The next year, she had yet another and
was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, a chronic nerve system
disorder in which recurrent seizures take place, usually lasting a
couple of minutes. Shortly after this, she was diagnosed with
(03:08):
depression and psychosis and was treated at a psychiatric facility.
At the facility, she had another seizure and was prescribed
the anti convulsant dilantin, after which she began describing seeing
quote devil faces frequently. However, the medications did not help
with her seizures or her strange visions. In nineteen seventy three,
(03:30):
she went to the University of Wurtzburg, where her classmates
described her as quote withdrawn and very religious. Some classmates
described one occasion where they found her in a trance
like state with her arms outstretched dramatically. But she also
began hearing more menacing voices telling her she was damned
and that she would quote rotten Hell. Around this time,
(03:53):
she said someone else was manipulating her and that her
will was not her own. She also became intolerant of
cruise fixes and other sacred Christian objects and places. She
told a family friend that she was unable to enter
a Christian shrine during a religious pilgrimage the two took
together to Italy, and that the soil around the place
(04:13):
quote burned like fire when she attempted to walk on it.
The friend concluded that Annalise was suffering from demonic possession.
Annalise and her family were convinced of this as well,
and at first priests refused her pleas for an exorcism,
recommending that she instead continue her psychiatric treatment. They also
(04:34):
said they needed the bishop's permission to perform an exorcism,
but her condition worsened, and in September of nineteen seventy five,
Bishop Joseph Stongel granted Father ernst Alt and Father Arnold
Wrens permission to perform an exorcism on Annalise, but they
were ordered to total secrecy. Over the next ten months,
(04:55):
the two priests performed sixty seven exorcism sessions at the
rate of about two twice a week. Each lasted about
four hours, and forty two of these sessions were recorded.
Annalise had to be tied down for many of the
sessions as she tried to bite and harm the men.
In the last few months of the exorcisms, she refused
food and rapidly lost weight. On June thirtieth, nineteen seventy six,
(05:20):
Father Wrens performed the final exorcism. By now she was
severely emaciated, had pneumonia, and was running a high fever.
Her final words to the priest were quote request for absolution,
end quote, but her final words to her mother were quote, mother,
I'm afraid. On July first, nineteen seventy six, Annalise Michel died.
(05:44):
The cause of death was malnutrition and dehydration. Father Alt
and Father Wrens believed her exorcism was successful because she
died after the demons were driven out of her. Later
that year, the priests and parents were charged with negligent homicide.
The trial was a massive media sensation, and the priests
(06:05):
were eventually convicted, but only given suspended prison sentences. And so,
what happened to Annalise Michelle? Who was responsible for her death?
And what does the story tell us about the complicated
intersection between religious and medical approaches to mental illness.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
So today we are lucky to be joined by an
expert in the field of exorcism.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
You may have.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Recently heard his voice on the new iHeartRadio podcast that
Exorcist Files with Us. Now is Father Carlos Martins, director
of the Treasure of the Church Ministry and an official
exorcist on two Continents. Welcome Father Martins to Facing Evil.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be
here with you.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
We're honored to have you here, Father Martins.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yes, so I just have to say I'm Catholic. I've
been married for sixteen years, and my husband and I
have an amazing father, father Arman, in our life. And
I remember asking him the question when did he get
that calling, you know, to be a part of the ministry,
And he told me, he said, Yvette, it was when
(07:20):
I was probably seven or eight that I just knew. So,
can I ask you when did you first get your
calling to be involved with the ministry work that you
do and eventually do exorcisms.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
Yeah, well, I guess for me, I was not as
young as your priest was. I'm a convert from atheism,
so I converted in my twenties. I was a college
student at the time, and after that conversion occurred, I
got the call to the priesthood about seven years later.
So in two thousand and three, I was on a
(07:57):
retreat and I heard the proverbial voice of God and
he said, Carlos, joined the priesthood. I promised to make
you very happy, and so I did and was ordained
a priest about six years later. And when I was
assigned to the first church that I was placed in,
the priests that were on staff there were the diocesan exorcists,
(08:22):
and they were just so busy with oppression and possession
cases with individuals that when something of a lesser nature
would come in, like the infestation of a house, demonic
phenomena happening within a place, they just turned to me
and said, Deacon, go get rid of the devil. So
(08:46):
I didn't have any training at that point, and so
I would not advise this to be the normal course
of affairs for someone to be thrown in a situation,
but that was my situation. And what I knew, though,
is that if the devil is in a place, then
there's going to be signs that reveal that presence. So
(09:08):
there's going to be proof, if you will, and if
the devil is in a place, and we can determine
that through proof, then he's there for a reason. In
other words, a door was opened to him, and so
that door has to be closed. What I preach on
all the time, what I've developed some notoriety for saying,
(09:30):
is this, the job of the exorcist is not to
cast out the devil. The job of the exorcist is
to find out why is the devil there? What rights
has he obtained, And it's the exorcist job to then, knowing,
once those rights are known, to work with the victim
(09:53):
to rescind those rights. Once the rights are rescinded, then
the devil must leave. Then the devil ca can be
cast out. But until that is done, the devil has
every right to stay. He's obtained the rights to stay.
So most people in their mind understand exorcism falsely to
(10:15):
be an enterprise where on the one side you have
a demon or demons, and on the other side you
have a priest and they kind of do battle with
one another, and whoever's the most powerful wins. And that
is nowhere near what the case is. One has to
find out which was the doorway by which the devil
(10:35):
entered where he is. Then that doorway has to be
closed and then he can be evicted.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
So, Father Martins, I'll be quite honest. I was not
raised in the Catholic Church. However, I am born and
raised in Honolulu, and I respect the Hawaiian culture more
than you can possibly know. And so when I think
of things like exorcisms or what you do, I think
(11:05):
of our Hawaiian kahunas or our Hawaiian kahu's who will
go into homes and bless homes, or if something sad
has happened or anything like that, they go and they
just give O pome wit cut ye blessings. But with
all of that being said, I would love to know more,
(11:26):
what's the history of exorcism? Does it go as far
back as when the Bible was first written? I would
love to know the history of it.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
Heavens no, it far predates that the Romans practiced it
before them, The Greeks practiced it, certainly the Jews did.
But in every historical culture, in every culture that history
can study, there appears to be the process of exorcism.
(11:55):
There appear to be people whose task it is or
who are willing to take on a foreign spirit manifested
as a different, a radically different personality that is all
of a sudden inhabiting somebody who is known, and that
(12:16):
typically that inhabitation is marked by a certain number of characteristics,
which all of all of which are are out of
the character of the person. So a particular violence, an
aversion to any goodness, to truth, to beauty to goodness,
(12:38):
a knowledge of hidden things, a knowledge of occult realities
or the occult, the meaning of occult being the most
broad meeting meaning that which is hidden, that that which
they couldn't possibly know. And included with that would be
a speaking of a language or language, is that they
(12:59):
were never taught. So there clearly is something different that
is not from the individual himself or herself that is
now present. A foreign spirit is now present. And so
there are different ways in which different cultures, and I
mean all of them, Japanese culture, Chinese culture, the different
(13:19):
African cultures and so forth, that they would deal with that.
I mean you mentioned your own. In the Hawaiian culture,
you have exactly so you have a copuona that would
come over and would conduct some ritual, the intention of
which would be to clean the place, to clean someone
wary place. Right, So that is ingrained in the human
(13:42):
nature that hey, we've we have these enemies that are
not physical, they're spiritual, and yet we we want to
combat them. So this drama is very much a part
of the human story. It's it's been there from the
beginning and it continues.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
You know, Father, you were telling us the story of
you know, earlier, of how you got into the ministry,
and you were kind of you know, you were sent
to this house from that point on up until now
where you're at today. Did you or do you still
have to go through any type of training when you
do these different types of you know, exorcisms.
Speaker 5 (14:41):
Well, I attend conferences regularly, but it's not really for
the sake of training. I'm in fact a trainer of exorcists. Now, okay,
Now that being said, it's always possible to learn something
new or to gain an insight from your colleagues, especially
(15:01):
when you have colleagues as good as I do. I
really respect the other exorcists with whom I work or
with whom I'm friends. They're smart individuals, they have great insights,
they're hard working, and they're committed people who love the
Lord and equally they love the victims, the people who
(15:21):
are ensnared. So those people need to be loved, and
we're doing this as an effort to rescue them and
to aid them. And these people have been tormented and tortured,
and often people regard them and sometimes even their own
family members, as people who are crazy, who are daft,
(15:43):
who shouldn't be believed because they're just not connected with reality.
And so mental illness is absolutely a thing. And I'm
not competent to diagnose mental illness. I'm not a psychiatrist
or a psychologist or a dog. However, I can diagnose
(16:05):
the presence of evil, and they're going to be very
different manifestations than a physical or mental illness. That being said,
That being said, it is not an either or situation.
One can have mental illness and can be demonically oppressed.
(16:27):
So because someone is diagnosed with mental illness, it does
not mean that, oh, because of that, the devil's not
interested in them. That's in fact, he's going to be
more interested in them because like an animal that is sick,
just as the pack of lions goes after that animal,
why because that animal is the easiest to catch. The
(16:50):
animals already wounded. So the animal is already a target
by that fact, so that love of the individual is
what gives the motive and all of the other things
that are needed to the exorcists the patients for example,
because sometimes the process of gathering information and making a
(17:11):
diagnosis is painstaking. It's not a quick thing. It's not
an effort of kind of telepathy, you know, with just
through a straight mental knowledge. Okay, eye into it. The
devil is in front of me, not at all. There
have to be signs. Those signs are objective that anybody
(17:33):
with a rational mind will have to conclude that nothing
in the natural realm could cause this. And they are
specific criteria that we follow.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
So, Father Martins, can you take us through what actually
goes into an exorcism? How does it work?
Speaker 5 (17:52):
So maybe let's take maybe half a step back. So
rather than starting with the actual exorcism, what do we
need to establish so that we know the presence of
a demon is there? And the Church identifies three classical
criteria that point to a reality that is beyond the
(18:13):
realm of nature. We call it preter nature, which literally
means in Latin outside the natural. One is knowledge of
the hidden, so within the victim, within the person who
is being diagnosed, a knowledge of facts that he or
she could not possibly know, such as, for example, if
(18:35):
that person all of a sudden started to recite facts
of your life, what happened on your eleventh birthday, conversation
that you had with your best friend last night in Seattle,
Washington before you flew to wherever you are here. So
there's no way in the natural realm that this individual
(18:57):
on the spot could come up with that knowledge. A Secondly,
the facility, the ability to speak in foreign languages with ease.
We're talking about speaking with facility, with perfect grammar, the
ability to answer and to ask questions. Thirdly, is superhuman strength,
(19:24):
strength that is beyond the ability of the natural and
anything else that might be related to that. So, for example,
something we might call possessed gravity. Whereas a petite individual
such as whom we're going to talk about, Annalise Michelle,
(19:46):
who weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe one hundred
and thirty one hundred and forty pounds that her stout
boyfriend at one point and a priest could not lift her.
They couldn't budget her. So there was all of a
sudden a weight to her body that was absolutely extraordinary.
(20:08):
So we're talking about signs that are impossible in nature.
There have to be signs that the natural realm cannot
account for.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
In the case of Annali's Michelle, obviously we know that
you know a lot about it. Can you tell us
what you think actually happened there as far as the facts.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
Well, I think so. First of all, what I will
say is Annalise Michelle her possession was very, very unique
in the sense that her circumstances point to a particular
reality whereby God was asking her to take on a
suffering vicariously, a suffering for the sake of others, for
(20:56):
the benefit of others. To phrase it in in kind
of classical Catholic language, she was being asked to be
a victim's soul. She's not the only one in history
that has had this. So we have a Canoni saint,
Saint Mary of Jesus Crucified, who was a Palestinian nun.
(21:20):
She was born in Bethlehem. She is called a holy demoniac.
She was possessed not because of a particular sin that
she had done a particular action, but she was possessed
for the sake of undergoing a suffering that would benefit
the Universal Church to benefit others. And the proof of
(21:43):
it is in the fact is that the demons didn't
want to be inside her. The demons described as the
one whom we serve, right, they never want to name God.
They don't even want to say the word, and they
absolutely will never say Jesus Christ. They will refer to
the one whom you serve, or the carpenter from Nazareth
(22:04):
or something like that. With regard to bless Saint Mary
of Jesus. Crucified the demons over and over repeated that
they wanted to leave, but the One whom you serve
will not let me. The same thing is in Analie's Michelle.
The demons at first talked about them bringing her to hell.
(22:26):
They talked about them having a plan for her. They enjoy,
they love torturing her, and they would brag about yesterday,
we made her do this for three hours, in other words,
chasing her tail, going kind of on a nervous wild
goose chase within her room. So she's pacing the room
(22:49):
for hours with horrendous anxiety. They would brag about this,
But as the exorcisms went on, that changed, so yes,
Annalie's Michelle had symptoms that were consistent with seizures, and
this is what kind of began her medical treatment. And
that's what began her parents taking her to the doctor,
(23:11):
first the family doctor, and then a neurologist. And she
saw several neurologists, and she had at least seven EEGs
in her life. All of them except one, proved to
be normal. One showed a slight abnormality in the left
lobe that might be consistent with normalcy, it might not be.
(23:35):
In other words, it was inconclusive. The diagnosis of epilepsy
was never one that was hard and fast. The doctor
at her trial who insisted that that's what she had,
he never saw her, so he's going by statements of
other people. He's not going by direct, firsthand knowledge. So
(23:56):
whether or not Annelie's Michelle had epileptie, I don't know.
I can't tell you. Her symptoms were consistent initially with seizures,
but that was quickly I'm not going to say replaced.
But alongside those things that the seizures themselves, at a
(24:16):
certain point, nobody would talk about them because they didn't
appear to be evident. But what was evident was some
of those preternatural signs, not even some an abundance of
preternatural signs that that was impossible for the cause of
which to be from the natural. For example, she would
(24:38):
know the exact time and place that her friend Thea
would be praying for her. She accurately predicted when a priest,
Father Roth was going to come and visit her, although
no one told her and even her family didn't know.
And this is one of the things that demons do.
It's quite common socially vicually an act that is threatening
(25:02):
for them, like a priest is on his way right here,
right now, and they will make a reference to it,
and they will usually attach something derogatory to it, right
they'll call him by some type of expletive, some type
of scandalous word, and that's the manifestation of the threat
that they feel. She as I mentioned already, the evidence
(25:25):
of the superhuman strength when she was in the gravity
of possession, when she was in the hospital and Peter
and the priest couldn't lift her, but she had at
times the strength of a bear. So her friend Thea
identified this that she was throwing around men like they
were rag dolls. And so this is a petitue girl.
I mean, this is when she was already very close
(25:46):
to her death. So this is a person who wouldn't
have the strength to do such a thing. And then,
of course she had knowledge of unknown languages, so she
at one point corrected the priest's Latin. He missed pronounced something,
and the demon stopped, you've mispronounced that, you idiot, this
(26:07):
is how you say it. And then he spoke to
her in Dutch. Now her native language is German. He
spoke to her in Dutch, and she answered back in
Dutch fluently. Now Dutch and German they're different languages, but
there's a lot of similarities. And she you know, if
you live in Germany, you live close to Holland. So okay,
fair enough. But that priest was a missionary priest. He
(26:27):
had lived in China, so he spoke to her in
Chinese and she answered in perfect Chinese. So again, you know,
exorcism entails its own science, a science of diagnosis. It's
a hard diagnosis. It's one that we don't take lightly,
and it's a diagnosis that any rational human being, even
(26:51):
an atheist, who is in the room and observes the phenomena,
would have to conclude the same way that we do thing.
Otherwise it would be foreign to what our craft, our
and our nature, our science is.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Father Martin's. You've said so much, and it makes sense
because you your mind goes, you know, how would she
be able to know Chinese and Dutch and all of
these things by the age of twenty three. But then
at the same time, you know, your mind thinks of
everything that she's gone through as a child. You know,
(27:48):
you know, having to wear black her whole life, and
you know, not being able to socialize with children, and
then being on drugs. I mean, do you think that
that could have contributed as well, you know, to her
mental health.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
I don't believe any of those things are true. There's
been a lot of inks build about the Annals Michelle case,
and a lot of that has been done by people
that have absolutely no knowledge of the case, and some
of them they'll have some knowledge, but they'll stop at
the very incomplete medical diagnoses that she received and the
(28:27):
fact that she was given some antipsychotic or anti convulsive medication.
At first it was strictly an anti convulsive medication for
the seizures. Yeah, an anti epilepsy medication. But those things
do have effects on the mind. For one, they made
her depressed, They made her slow, tired, and withdrawn, and
(28:49):
it does that to anybody. But the point being that
these drugs had absolutely no effect on the preternatural occurrence.
And this is something that occurs all the time. If
possession is an act by a preternatural enemy, why in
(29:10):
Heaven's name would it matter what drugs, what sedatives would
be inside the victim's body. And in fact, I have
a good friend of mine, Adam Bli, who is a
demonologist and who is the bishop's expert on demonology and
exorcism for the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. He used to
(29:31):
work in a prison and when an inmate becomes violent,
egregiously violent, what they will do is inject thorizine into
him to make him start. Ten minutes after he's received
an injection of thorisine, he's on the floor drooling into
his shoe. In prison, thorizine is called break fluid. It
(29:54):
just stops a human being.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Period.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
You can inject a possessed person with thorazine, there will
be absolutely no change in their behavior, and in fact,
sometimes the demon will come back at you. In a
provocative way and say, oh that felt good. Do you
got anymore? So we're talking about two different realities.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I would like to ask you did mention you know,
father Alt and the other priest was father Rends. Do
you think that they did everything that they should have
done or do you think it was taken too far?
Speaker 5 (30:35):
Sure? Yeah, so that's a really good question. And the
answer to that is I don't know, because I wasn't there. Certainly,
I will say this that if any of them believed,
and they gave testimony to this, if any of them
believed that she was close to death, then they would
(30:58):
have stopped, have had her medicated, they would have had
her institutionalized and forced fed if need be. But you
also have to remember that even in the case of
force feeding, we can force feed somebody who has a
mental health issue. We can give them any number of
(31:18):
tranquilizer sedatives thorazine for example, and force feed them. In
the case of demonic possession, force feeding somebody is not
necessarily an option you can try. Now in this case,
it wasn't tried because they regarded And so I mean
(31:38):
the two priests, both parents, all you know, her three
sisters none and including her boyfriend, Peter, her friend Thea,
Maria Klog her friend, and Anna Lippert. So nine individuals,
pardon me, eleven individuals. None of them believed that she
(31:59):
was close today. So there is one more fact to
look at, and that has to be thrown on the
scale in the midst of all of this. That annales
when she was herself predicted, in other words, during in
states where the demon was not possessing, that she was
(32:21):
going to be freed in July of that year, July
of nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
And isn't that when she passed away?
Speaker 5 (32:28):
That is, she died on July the first, So she
was given a knowledge, allegedly by the blessed Virgin. This
was testified to by her friends and by her family
members over and over that she had repeated this. The
demons as well, in the course of the exorcisms, also
(32:51):
stated that we are finished by July. In July, our
reign comes to an end. So on the morning of
July the first, she's dead in her bed in the morning.
Now the prophecy was true, she was free, but she died.
(33:12):
She died. She was diagnosed as having died of malnutrition.
I believe that medical diagnosis. It's not up to me
to question that. I take that at face value. Would
I have continued with the exorcisms if her health was
in danger?
Speaker 2 (33:32):
No.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
That being said, I believe these eleven rational people when
they say they were not aware that she that she
was in danger, in life threatening danger because of her condition.
I think in that sense, the fact that none of
these people, eleven people, none of them raised that question
(33:58):
or had that concern, I think that has to be
taken into account because we weren't there.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
I think about what you do, right, Father Martin's, when
you go into someone's home and you know they've called
you in because they believe what they believe is happened
to their child or you know, whomever it may be.
When you go in, there has to be that element
(34:26):
of that supernatural that is happening in order for you
to do an exorcism. Right, Instead of saying this is
for the doctors.
Speaker 5 (34:36):
Again, I don't want to take anything away from the
doctors who made their diagnoses. They were rational ment and
they're applying their science, and I applaud them for it.
I do have I do take issue with the doctor
at her trial who gave her a diagnosis of epilepsy
(34:59):
and stated that that that was the cause of the problem,
when he had never met with her and diagnosed her.
And so he's taking his facts on hearsay and maybe
EEGs that others did which showed nothing anyway. So the
fact that the medical profession, multiple doctors, had a crack
(35:22):
at Annales, but we're never able to provide a diagnosis
that we're able to explain all of the facts and
phenomena that came from her that were seen by numerous people,
then I think we have to go somewhere else that
good science demands that we go to another explanation on.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Facing evil, we always try to find the light in
the dark. I am curious, Father, what do you see
as the light in the dark in Analisa's case?
Speaker 5 (35:53):
Sure? You know so with Annales. One of the phenomena
that is present is her grave is visited by hundreds,
if not thousands, of pilgrims a year. In other words,
there's this kind of what we call in the Catholic
Church and an odor of sanctity, a smell of holiness
(36:15):
that has been left behind, and that this is an
odor that the church talks about the saints leaving and
people are attracted to that quote unquote odor, but people
are attracted to the person of Annely's Michelle. That there
is all the signs that the Holy Spirit has instilled
(36:38):
within people and instinct, that she lived a saintly life,
and that she is with the Lord in heaven.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Father, we really appreciate that thought. It's so nice to
hear that, even though Anali's faced a lot of difficulty
in her life, that her grave is visited by thousands
of people and she is still remembered.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yes, indeed, Mahalanuiloa, thank you so much for joining us today,
Father Martin's.
Speaker 5 (37:06):
Yeah, absolutely anytime.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
For today's message of hope and healing, our emul goes
out to Analise Michelle. We will never know the true
extent of Analis's mental illness, but we do know that
she did struggle during a time where treatments for conditions
like hers were incredibly limited.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
And people struggling with mental health often feel so disconnected
from those around them and so misunderstood. And although things
are better now than they once were, many people still
experience a sense of stigma and shame around their illness.
If you are in a crisis. There is help available.
(37:53):
You can reach the US Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at
nine to eight eight.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Analise Mashie Show was more than just a spooky story.
She was a young woman who'd once been a student teacher.
Some part of her likely harbored dreams of the future
outside of the nightmarish world that increasingly engulfed her.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
And so today we send hope and healing to Annaalis
and to others who have found themselves in similar circumstances.
Onward and upward e mooa emua.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Well, that's our show for today. We'd love to hear
what you thought about today's discussion and if there's a
case you'd like for us to.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Cover, find us on social media or email us at
Facingevil pod at Tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
And one small request if you haven't already, please find
us on iTunes and give us a good rating and
a good review. If you like what we do, your
support is always cherished.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
Until next time, I'm Aloha.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
The show is hosted by Russia Pacuerero and a vet Gentile,
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf
of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk, Donald
albright In Payne Lindsay our executive producers on behalf of
(39:38):
Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Carolyn Talmadge.
Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on
social media or email us at facingevilpod at tenderfoot dot tv.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the
iHeartRadio app, apple Pot Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(40:02):
your favorite shows,
You're listening to Facing Evil, a production of iHeartRadio and
Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast
are solely those of the individuals participating in the show
and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV.
This podcast contains subject matter which may not be suitable
for everyone. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hello, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil. I'm Rascha Pacerreiro
and I'm.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Evett Genteelay, and today we're talking about the case of
Annalise Michelle. That's a name you might not know, but
it's a case you probably do know a lot about. Yes,
this is a case involving a real life exorcism. And
while it took place after the infamous movie The Exorcist,
which I never saw because I'm a big scaredy cat,
(00:54):
it inspired three documentary films, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Requiem,
and Honalise The Exorcist Tapes, and as that last title implies,
these exorcism sessions were actually recorded. There is audio of
the priests as they were trying to drive out the
evil spirits that they believed were possessing Analise Michelle and
(01:20):
full transparency here. I know little to nothing about exorcisms,
especially being agnostic, so looking at this as a case
is just feels so far removed from reality for me personally.
And we will analyze some of that today as we
talk with Father Carlos Martin's director of the Treasures of
(01:43):
the Church ministry and an official exorcist. We'll talk about
what really happened to Analise Michelle and how this exorcism
led to her death. But first our producer Trevor is
going to walk us through today's case.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
There are many people who laugh at the notion of
demonic possession or even the reality itself, but the Catholic
Church does teach that evil's reality and it is personified
in the person of the devil.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Annalise Michelle was a twenty three year old woman from
Germany who died after a series of failed priestlet exorcisms
in nineteen seventy six. She was born in libel Feing,
Bavaria in West Germany to a devout Catholic family. Supposedly,
Annalise and her sisters were not allowed to play outside
with other children, and instead spent most of their time
(02:48):
praying inside. At the age of sixteen, Annalise experienced her
first seizure. The next year, she had yet another and
was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, a chronic nerve system
disorder in which recurrent seizures take place, usually lasting a
couple of minutes. Shortly after this, she was diagnosed with
(03:08):
depression and psychosis and was treated at a psychiatric facility.
At the facility, she had another seizure and was prescribed
the anti convulsant dilantin, after which she began describing seeing
quote devil faces frequently. However, the medications did not help
with her seizures or her strange visions. In nineteen seventy three,
(03:30):
she went to the University of Wurtzburg, where her classmates
described her as quote withdrawn and very religious. Some classmates
described one occasion where they found her in a trance
like state with her arms outstretched dramatically. But she also
began hearing more menacing voices telling her she was damned
and that she would quote rotten Hell. Around this time,
(03:53):
she said someone else was manipulating her and that her
will was not her own. She also became intolerant of
cruise fixes and other sacred Christian objects and places. She
told a family friend that she was unable to enter
a Christian shrine during a religious pilgrimage the two took
together to Italy, and that the soil around the place
(04:13):
quote burned like fire when she attempted to walk on it.
The friend concluded that Annalise was suffering from demonic possession.
Annalise and her family were convinced of this as well,
and at first priests refused her pleas for an exorcism,
recommending that she instead continue her psychiatric treatment. They also
(04:34):
said they needed the bishop's permission to perform an exorcism,
but her condition worsened, and in September of nineteen seventy five,
Bishop Joseph Stongel granted Father ernst Alt and Father Arnold
Wrens permission to perform an exorcism on Annalise, but they
were ordered to total secrecy. Over the next ten months,
(04:55):
the two priests performed sixty seven exorcism sessions at the
rate of about two twice a week. Each lasted about
four hours, and forty two of these sessions were recorded.
Annalise had to be tied down for many of the
sessions as she tried to bite and harm the men.
In the last few months of the exorcisms, she refused
food and rapidly lost weight. On June thirtieth, nineteen seventy six,
(05:20):
Father Wrens performed the final exorcism. By now she was
severely emaciated, had pneumonia, and was running a high fever.
Her final words to the priest were quote request for absolution,
end quote, but her final words to her mother were quote, mother,
I'm afraid. On July first, nineteen seventy six, Annalise Michel died.
(05:44):
The cause of death was malnutrition and dehydration. Father Alt
and Father Wrens believed her exorcism was successful because she
died after the demons were driven out of her. Later
that year, the priests and parents were charged with negligent homicide.
The trial was a massive media sensation, and the priests
(06:05):
were eventually convicted, but only given suspended prison sentences. And so,
what happened to Annalise Michelle? Who was responsible for her death?
And what does the story tell us about the complicated
intersection between religious and medical approaches to mental illness.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
So today we are lucky to be joined by an
expert in the field of exorcism.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
You may have.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Recently heard his voice on the new iHeartRadio podcast that
Exorcist Files with Us. Now is Father Carlos Martins, director
of the Treasure of the Church Ministry and an official
exorcist on two Continents. Welcome Father Martins to Facing Evil.
Speaker 5 (06:52):
Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to be
here with you.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
We're honored to have you here, Father Martins.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yes, so I just have to say I'm Catholic. I've
been married for sixteen years, and my husband and I
have an amazing father, father Arman, in our life. And
I remember asking him the question when did he get
that calling, you know, to be a part of the ministry,
And he told me, he said, Yvette, it was when
(07:20):
I was probably seven or eight that I just knew. So,
can I ask you when did you first get your
calling to be involved with the ministry work that you
do and eventually do exorcisms.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
Yeah, well, I guess for me, I was not as
young as your priest was. I'm a convert from atheism,
so I converted in my twenties. I was a college
student at the time, and after that conversion occurred, I
got the call to the priesthood about seven years later.
So in two thousand and three, I was on a
(07:57):
retreat and I heard the proverbial voice of God and
he said, Carlos, joined the priesthood. I promised to make
you very happy, and so I did and was ordained
a priest about six years later. And when I was
assigned to the first church that I was placed in,
the priests that were on staff there were the diocesan exorcists,
(08:22):
and they were just so busy with oppression and possession
cases with individuals that when something of a lesser nature
would come in, like the infestation of a house, demonic
phenomena happening within a place, they just turned to me
and said, Deacon, go get rid of the devil. So
(08:46):
I didn't have any training at that point, and so
I would not advise this to be the normal course
of affairs for someone to be thrown in a situation,
but that was my situation. And what I knew, though,
is that if the devil is in a place, then
there's going to be signs that reveal that presence. So
(09:08):
there's going to be proof, if you will, and if
the devil is in a place, and we can determine
that through proof, then he's there for a reason. In
other words, a door was opened to him, and so
that door has to be closed. What I preach on
all the time, what I've developed some notoriety for saying,
(09:30):
is this, the job of the exorcist is not to
cast out the devil. The job of the exorcist is
to find out why is the devil there? What rights
has he obtained, And it's the exorcist job to then, knowing,
once those rights are known, to work with the victim
(09:53):
to rescind those rights. Once the rights are rescinded, then
the devil must leave. Then the devil ca can be
cast out. But until that is done, the devil has
every right to stay. He's obtained the rights to stay.
So most people in their mind understand exorcism falsely to
(10:15):
be an enterprise where on the one side you have
a demon or demons, and on the other side you
have a priest and they kind of do battle with
one another, and whoever's the most powerful wins. And that
is nowhere near what the case is. One has to
find out which was the doorway by which the devil
(10:35):
entered where he is. Then that doorway has to be
closed and then he can be evicted.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
So, Father Martins, I'll be quite honest. I was not
raised in the Catholic Church. However, I am born and
raised in Honolulu, and I respect the Hawaiian culture more
than you can possibly know. And so when I think
of things like exorcisms or what you do, I think
(11:05):
of our Hawaiian kahunas or our Hawaiian kahu's who will
go into homes and bless homes, or if something sad
has happened or anything like that, they go and they
just give O pome wit cut ye blessings. But with
all of that being said, I would love to know more,
(11:26):
what's the history of exorcism? Does it go as far
back as when the Bible was first written? I would
love to know the history of it.
Speaker 5 (11:35):
Heavens no, it far predates that the Romans practiced it
before them, The Greeks practiced it, certainly the Jews did.
But in every historical culture, in every culture that history
can study, there appears to be the process of exorcism.
(11:55):
There appear to be people whose task it is or
who are willing to take on a foreign spirit manifested
as a different, a radically different personality that is all
of a sudden inhabiting somebody who is known, and that
(12:16):
typically that inhabitation is marked by a certain number of characteristics,
which all of all of which are are out of
the character of the person. So a particular violence, an
aversion to any goodness, to truth, to beauty to goodness,
(12:38):
a knowledge of hidden things, a knowledge of occult realities
or the occult, the meaning of occult being the most
broad meeting meaning that which is hidden, that that which
they couldn't possibly know. And included with that would be
a speaking of a language or language, is that they
(12:59):
were never taught. So there clearly is something different that
is not from the individual himself or herself that is
now present. A foreign spirit is now present. And so
there are different ways in which different cultures, and I
mean all of them, Japanese culture, Chinese culture, the different
(13:19):
African cultures and so forth, that they would deal with that.
I mean you mentioned your own. In the Hawaiian culture,
you have exactly so you have a copuona that would
come over and would conduct some ritual, the intention of
which would be to clean the place, to clean someone
wary place. Right, So that is ingrained in the human
(13:42):
nature that hey, we've we have these enemies that are
not physical, they're spiritual, and yet we we want to
combat them. So this drama is very much a part
of the human story. It's it's been there from the
beginning and it continues.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
You know, Father, you were telling us the story of
you know, earlier, of how you got into the ministry,
and you were kind of you know, you were sent
to this house from that point on up until now
where you're at today. Did you or do you still
have to go through any type of training when you
do these different types of you know, exorcisms.
Speaker 5 (14:41):
Well, I attend conferences regularly, but it's not really for
the sake of training. I'm in fact a trainer of exorcists. Now, okay,
Now that being said, it's always possible to learn something
new or to gain an insight from your colleagues, especially
(15:01):
when you have colleagues as good as I do. I
really respect the other exorcists with whom I work or
with whom I'm friends. They're smart individuals, they have great insights,
they're hard working, and they're committed people who love the
Lord and equally they love the victims, the people who
(15:21):
are ensnared. So those people need to be loved, and
we're doing this as an effort to rescue them and
to aid them. And these people have been tormented and tortured,
and often people regard them and sometimes even their own
family members, as people who are crazy, who are daft,
(15:43):
who shouldn't be believed because they're just not connected with reality.
And so mental illness is absolutely a thing. And I'm
not competent to diagnose mental illness. I'm not a psychiatrist
or a psychologist or a dog. However, I can diagnose
(16:05):
the presence of evil, and they're going to be very
different manifestations than a physical or mental illness. That being said,
That being said, it is not an either or situation.
One can have mental illness and can be demonically oppressed.
(16:27):
So because someone is diagnosed with mental illness, it does
not mean that, oh, because of that, the devil's not
interested in them. That's in fact, he's going to be
more interested in them because like an animal that is sick,
just as the pack of lions goes after that animal,
why because that animal is the easiest to catch. The
(16:50):
animals already wounded. So the animal is already a target
by that fact, so that love of the individual is
what gives the motive and all of the other things
that are needed to the exorcists the patients for example,
because sometimes the process of gathering information and making a
(17:11):
diagnosis is painstaking. It's not a quick thing. It's not
an effort of kind of telepathy, you know, with just
through a straight mental knowledge. Okay, eye into it. The
devil is in front of me, not at all. There
have to be signs. Those signs are objective that anybody
(17:33):
with a rational mind will have to conclude that nothing
in the natural realm could cause this. And they are
specific criteria that we follow.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
So, Father Martins, can you take us through what actually
goes into an exorcism? How does it work?
Speaker 5 (17:52):
So maybe let's take maybe half a step back. So
rather than starting with the actual exorcism, what do we
need to establish so that we know the presence of
a demon is there? And the Church identifies three classical
criteria that point to a reality that is beyond the
(18:13):
realm of nature. We call it preter nature, which literally
means in Latin outside the natural. One is knowledge of
the hidden, so within the victim, within the person who
is being diagnosed, a knowledge of facts that he or
she could not possibly know, such as, for example, if
(18:35):
that person all of a sudden started to recite facts
of your life, what happened on your eleventh birthday, conversation
that you had with your best friend last night in Seattle,
Washington before you flew to wherever you are here. So
there's no way in the natural realm that this individual
(18:57):
on the spot could come up with that knowledge. A Secondly,
the facility, the ability to speak in foreign languages with ease.
We're talking about speaking with facility, with perfect grammar, the
ability to answer and to ask questions. Thirdly, is superhuman strength,
(19:24):
strength that is beyond the ability of the natural and
anything else that might be related to that. So, for example,
something we might call possessed gravity. Whereas a petite individual
such as whom we're going to talk about, Annalise Michelle,
(19:46):
who weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe one hundred
and thirty one hundred and forty pounds that her stout
boyfriend at one point and a priest could not lift her.
They couldn't budget her. So there was all of a
sudden a weight to her body that was absolutely extraordinary.
(20:08):
So we're talking about signs that are impossible in nature.
There have to be signs that the natural realm cannot
account for.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
In the case of Annali's Michelle, obviously we know that
you know a lot about it. Can you tell us
what you think actually happened there as far as the facts.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
Well, I think so. First of all, what I will
say is Annalise Michelle her possession was very, very unique
in the sense that her circumstances point to a particular
reality whereby God was asking her to take on a
suffering vicariously, a suffering for the sake of others, for
(20:56):
the benefit of others. To phrase it in in kind
of classical Catholic language, she was being asked to be
a victim's soul. She's not the only one in history
that has had this. So we have a Canoni saint,
Saint Mary of Jesus Crucified, who was a Palestinian nun.
(21:20):
She was born in Bethlehem. She is called a holy demoniac.
She was possessed not because of a particular sin that
she had done a particular action, but she was possessed
for the sake of undergoing a suffering that would benefit
the Universal Church to benefit others. And the proof of
(21:43):
it is in the fact is that the demons didn't
want to be inside her. The demons described as the
one whom we serve, right, they never want to name God.
They don't even want to say the word, and they
absolutely will never say Jesus Christ. They will refer to
the one whom you serve, or the carpenter from Nazareth
(22:04):
or something like that. With regard to bless Saint Mary
of Jesus. Crucified the demons over and over repeated that
they wanted to leave, but the One whom you serve
will not let me. The same thing is in Analie's Michelle.
The demons at first talked about them bringing her to hell.
(22:26):
They talked about them having a plan for her. They enjoy,
they love torturing her, and they would brag about yesterday,
we made her do this for three hours, in other words,
chasing her tail, going kind of on a nervous wild
goose chase within her room. So she's pacing the room
(22:49):
for hours with horrendous anxiety. They would brag about this,
But as the exorcisms went on, that changed, so yes,
Annalie's Michelle had symptoms that were consistent with seizures, and
this is what kind of began her medical treatment. And
that's what began her parents taking her to the doctor,
(23:11):
first the family doctor, and then a neurologist. And she
saw several neurologists, and she had at least seven EEGs
in her life. All of them except one, proved to
be normal. One showed a slight abnormality in the left
lobe that might be consistent with normalcy, it might not be.
(23:35):
In other words, it was inconclusive. The diagnosis of epilepsy
was never one that was hard and fast. The doctor
at her trial who insisted that that's what she had,
he never saw her, so he's going by statements of
other people. He's not going by direct, firsthand knowledge. So
(23:56):
whether or not Annelie's Michelle had epileptie, I don't know.
I can't tell you. Her symptoms were consistent initially with seizures,
but that was quickly I'm not going to say replaced.
But alongside those things that the seizures themselves, at a
(24:16):
certain point, nobody would talk about them because they didn't
appear to be evident. But what was evident was some
of those preternatural signs, not even some an abundance of
preternatural signs that that was impossible for the cause of
which to be from the natural. For example, she would
(24:38):
know the exact time and place that her friend Thea
would be praying for her. She accurately predicted when a priest,
Father Roth was going to come and visit her, although
no one told her and even her family didn't know.
And this is one of the things that demons do.
It's quite common socially vicually an act that is threatening
(25:02):
for them, like a priest is on his way right here,
right now, and they will make a reference to it,
and they will usually attach something derogatory to it, right
they'll call him by some type of expletive, some type
of scandalous word, and that's the manifestation of the threat
that they feel. She as I mentioned already, the evidence
(25:25):
of the superhuman strength when she was in the gravity
of possession, when she was in the hospital and Peter
and the priest couldn't lift her, but she had at
times the strength of a bear. So her friend Thea
identified this that she was throwing around men like they
were rag dolls. And so this is a petitue girl.
I mean, this is when she was already very close
(25:46):
to her death. So this is a person who wouldn't
have the strength to do such a thing. And then,
of course she had knowledge of unknown languages, so she
at one point corrected the priest's Latin. He missed pronounced something,
and the demon stopped, you've mispronounced that, you idiot, this
(26:07):
is how you say it. And then he spoke to
her in Dutch. Now her native language is German. He
spoke to her in Dutch, and she answered back in
Dutch fluently. Now Dutch and German they're different languages, but
there's a lot of similarities. And she you know, if
you live in Germany, you live close to Holland. So okay,
fair enough. But that priest was a missionary priest. He
(26:27):
had lived in China, so he spoke to her in
Chinese and she answered in perfect Chinese. So again, you know,
exorcism entails its own science, a science of diagnosis. It's
a hard diagnosis. It's one that we don't take lightly,
and it's a diagnosis that any rational human being, even
(26:51):
an atheist, who is in the room and observes the phenomena,
would have to conclude the same way that we do thing.
Otherwise it would be foreign to what our craft, our
and our nature, our science is.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Father Martin's. You've said so much, and it makes sense
because you your mind goes, you know, how would she
be able to know Chinese and Dutch and all of
these things by the age of twenty three. But then
at the same time, you know, your mind thinks of
everything that she's gone through as a child. You know,
(27:48):
you know, having to wear black her whole life, and
you know, not being able to socialize with children, and
then being on drugs. I mean, do you think that
that could have contributed as well, you know, to her
mental health.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
I don't believe any of those things are true. There's
been a lot of inks build about the Annals Michelle case,
and a lot of that has been done by people
that have absolutely no knowledge of the case, and some
of them they'll have some knowledge, but they'll stop at
the very incomplete medical diagnoses that she received and the
(28:27):
fact that she was given some antipsychotic or anti convulsive medication.
At first it was strictly an anti convulsive medication for
the seizures. Yeah, an anti epilepsy medication. But those things
do have effects on the mind. For one, they made
her depressed, They made her slow, tired, and withdrawn, and
(28:49):
it does that to anybody. But the point being that
these drugs had absolutely no effect on the preternatural occurrence.
And this is something that occurs all the time. If
possession is an act by a preternatural enemy, why in
(29:10):
Heaven's name would it matter what drugs, what sedatives would
be inside the victim's body. And in fact, I have
a good friend of mine, Adam Bli, who is a
demonologist and who is the bishop's expert on demonology and
exorcism for the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. He used to
(29:31):
work in a prison and when an inmate becomes violent,
egregiously violent, what they will do is inject thorizine into
him to make him start. Ten minutes after he's received
an injection of thorisine, he's on the floor drooling into
his shoe. In prison, thorizine is called break fluid. It
(29:54):
just stops a human being.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Period.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
You can inject a possessed person with thorazine, there will
be absolutely no change in their behavior, and in fact,
sometimes the demon will come back at you. In a
provocative way and say, oh that felt good. Do you
got anymore? So we're talking about two different realities.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
I would like to ask you did mention you know,
father Alt and the other priest was father Rends. Do
you think that they did everything that they should have
done or do you think it was taken too far?
Speaker 5 (30:35):
Sure? Yeah, so that's a really good question. And the
answer to that is I don't know, because I wasn't there. Certainly,
I will say this that if any of them believed,
and they gave testimony to this, if any of them
believed that she was close to death, then they would
(30:58):
have stopped, have had her medicated, they would have had
her institutionalized and forced fed if need be. But you
also have to remember that even in the case of
force feeding, we can force feed somebody who has a
mental health issue. We can give them any number of
(31:18):
tranquilizer sedatives thorazine for example, and force feed them. In
the case of demonic possession, force feeding somebody is not
necessarily an option you can try. Now in this case,
it wasn't tried because they regarded And so I mean
(31:38):
the two priests, both parents, all you know, her three
sisters none and including her boyfriend, Peter, her friend Thea,
Maria Klog her friend, and Anna Lippert. So nine individuals,
pardon me, eleven individuals. None of them believed that she
(31:59):
was close today. So there is one more fact to
look at, and that has to be thrown on the
scale in the midst of all of this. That annales
when she was herself predicted, in other words, during in
states where the demon was not possessing, that she was
(32:21):
going to be freed in July of that year, July
of nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
And isn't that when she passed away?
Speaker 5 (32:28):
That is, she died on July the first, So she
was given a knowledge, allegedly by the blessed Virgin. This
was testified to by her friends and by her family
members over and over that she had repeated this. The
demons as well, in the course of the exorcisms, also
(32:51):
stated that we are finished by July. In July, our
reign comes to an end. So on the morning of
July the first, she's dead in her bed in the morning.
Now the prophecy was true, she was free, but she died.
(33:12):
She died. She was diagnosed as having died of malnutrition.
I believe that medical diagnosis. It's not up to me
to question that. I take that at face value. Would
I have continued with the exorcisms if her health was
in danger?
Speaker 2 (33:32):
No.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
That being said, I believe these eleven rational people when
they say they were not aware that she that she
was in danger, in life threatening danger because of her condition.
I think in that sense, the fact that none of
these people, eleven people, none of them raised that question
(33:58):
or had that concern, I think that has to be
taken into account because we weren't there.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
I think about what you do, right, Father Martin's, when
you go into someone's home and you know they've called
you in because they believe what they believe is happened
to their child or you know, whomever it may be.
When you go in, there has to be that element
(34:26):
of that supernatural that is happening in order for you
to do an exorcism. Right, Instead of saying this is
for the doctors.
Speaker 5 (34:36):
Again, I don't want to take anything away from the
doctors who made their diagnoses. They were rational ment and
they're applying their science, and I applaud them for it.
I do have I do take issue with the doctor
at her trial who gave her a diagnosis of epilepsy
(34:59):
and stated that that that was the cause of the problem,
when he had never met with her and diagnosed her.
And so he's taking his facts on hearsay and maybe
EEGs that others did which showed nothing anyway. So the
fact that the medical profession, multiple doctors, had a crack
(35:22):
at Annales, but we're never able to provide a diagnosis
that we're able to explain all of the facts and
phenomena that came from her that were seen by numerous people,
then I think we have to go somewhere else that
good science demands that we go to another explanation on.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Facing evil, we always try to find the light in
the dark. I am curious, Father, what do you see
as the light in the dark in Analisa's case?
Speaker 5 (35:53):
Sure? You know so with Annales. One of the phenomena
that is present is her grave is visited by hundreds,
if not thousands, of pilgrims a year. In other words,
there's this kind of what we call in the Catholic
Church and an odor of sanctity, a smell of holiness
(36:15):
that has been left behind, and that this is an
odor that the church talks about the saints leaving and
people are attracted to that quote unquote odor, but people
are attracted to the person of Annely's Michelle. That there
is all the signs that the Holy Spirit has instilled
(36:38):
within people and instinct, that she lived a saintly life,
and that she is with the Lord in heaven.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Father, we really appreciate that thought. It's so nice to
hear that, even though Anali's faced a lot of difficulty
in her life, that her grave is visited by thousands
of people and she is still remembered.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yes, indeed, Mahalanuiloa, thank you so much for joining us today,
Father Martin's.
Speaker 5 (37:06):
Yeah, absolutely anytime.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
For today's message of hope and healing, our emul goes
out to Analise Michelle. We will never know the true
extent of Analis's mental illness, but we do know that
she did struggle during a time where treatments for conditions
like hers were incredibly limited.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
And people struggling with mental health often feel so disconnected
from those around them and so misunderstood. And although things
are better now than they once were, many people still
experience a sense of stigma and shame around their illness.
If you are in a crisis. There is help available.
(37:53):
You can reach the US Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at
nine to eight eight.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Analise Mashie Show was more than just a spooky story.
She was a young woman who'd once been a student teacher.
Some part of her likely harbored dreams of the future
outside of the nightmarish world that increasingly engulfed her.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
And so today we send hope and healing to Annaalis
and to others who have found themselves in similar circumstances.
Onward and upward e mooa emua.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Well, that's our show for today. We'd love to hear
what you thought about today's discussion and if there's a
case you'd like for us to.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
Cover, find us on social media or email us at
Facingevil pod at Tenderfoot dot tv.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
And one small request if you haven't already, please find
us on iTunes and give us a good rating and
a good review. If you like what we do, your
support is always cherished.
Speaker 3 (38:59):
Until next time, I'm Aloha.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.
The show is hosted by Russia Pacuerero and a vet Gentile,
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf
of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Funk, Donald
albright In Payne Lindsay our executive producers on behalf of
(39:38):
Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our researcher is Carolyn Talmadge.
Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Find us on
social media or email us at facingevilpod at tenderfoot dot tv.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the
iHeartRadio app, apple Pot Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(40:02):
your favorite shows,
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