The house where the 1949 exorcism that inspired the William Peter Blatty book and the hit movie is still standing in St Louis...and something remains behind.
It was SRO at Riverboat Molly's History and Hauntings Bookstore in Alton, Illinois, yesterday during the American Ghost Society's free annual open house. Part of the reason was a row of chairs not put in up front because of the pull-down movie screen overhead for one of the presentations. But also, I'm sure, there were just more people that in past years.
A quick summary of what happened:
Author and Society founder Troy Taylor talked about his visit to the house in St Louis where the 1949 exorcism involving a young boy took place, all as part of a Halloween radio event. He was interested in seeing the place he'd written up in a book a couple years before. He ultimately is somewhat skeptical about it all, but has an open mind. The idea is not prove it's a ghost, but that it isn't. Troy talked about how in all his writing about ghosts and even ghost investigations, he's never really had any experiences except two occasions when he saw a ghost and both times he freaked. On this occasion, he got to the door of the boy's bedroom and could not enter. When he did finally go in, he started having breathing problems and a racing heart and had to leave, never to return to the room. He compared it to discovering you've walked up unsuspecting on a snake. Three contestants selected on the radio program were taken into the bedroom one at a time to spend one hour to win the big prize, whatever it was. One declined, of the other two, the best record was one guy who made it 12 minutes. The third person, a girl, made it two and a half minutes. Troy's conclusion: he's still unsure about the possession, but the church was convinced enough in 1949 to authorize it, even though the case did not really fit all the criteria for exorcism (remember Father Karra's testing of Megan to confirm she was possessed?). Nevertheless, a residue of whatever happened remains.
Jeremiah Niere talked about Zombie Road, a rural area in the south St Louis area along the Meramec River in the Six Flags Over Midamerica region. The focus was largely on bizarre deaths such as a canoeist who's boat disappeared and his body was pulled up by some poor trotline fisherman who thought he had a big catfish or a turtle. But the capper was an interesting photo of Shadow People, the featureless humanoid forms seen at some locations like the Waverly Sanitorium in Louisville. In this case, the photo was of a forested skyline in winter and among the trees on the ridge were six or eight shadowy humanois figures. The kicker was that in the pondwater below, which reflected the ridgeline behind the pond, you saw the trees but not the humanoids.
Adam White of New Age Paranormal, accompanied by his wife and another NAP member, discussed experiences in Decatur's Lincoln Theater, how he received clawmarks on his back when he conducted another investigation, and, of special note, his own experience with a shadow person in the Ohio prison where the Shawshank Redemption was filmed. As two or three people stood talking quietly in a row of cellblocks, one of them noticed a head a shoulders poking out of a cell way down the block, as if from curiosity, then disappearing again back into the cell. Needless to say, they were the only ones actually there.
There was also the telling of some ghost experiences, a drawing for books (my friend Dawn, who'd never been to one of these before, got one of Troy's books, Haunted New Orleans which she gave to me), and a lot of people buying books from the shop. There were also after hours events, for which you needed advance registration...they sell out quick. Besides, my intention was to get back home at a reasonable hour so we were just there for the day. Pat would've enjoyed it. She and Dawn would've been crocheting away the afternoon together. Pat finished a little pouch with neckstrap project for her granddaughter.
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