A novel by Peter Blatty was written about the events that took place in the late forties of the last century, and later, twenty years later, the mystical thriller "The Exorcist" was released. Meanwhile, both the book and the film are fictional, where there is a lot of fictional and even more unsaid. What really happened to Roland Doe?
The events took place in a small town in Maryland. Roland, fourteen, lived in the house with his parents; he had no brothers or sisters. His classmates later said that Roland was extremely unpopular at school, he was not athletic, and he often got it from other guys. He was not popular with the opposite sex either. A classmate of his, said several decades later that Roland tried to flirt with her, but the only way she answered him was ridicule.
“We were teenagers, and teenagers are like a wild pack. If two authorities in the class said he was an outcast, then he must be an outcast. But the guy was not bad, he could not give back, but he studied well, and I meanly used his help when I did not understand something,”recalls a classmate.
Roland did not have the best relations with his parents either. The fault was the father, who wanted his son to be tough and courageous, but the guy was more interested in studies than sports. The only person with whom the teenager communicated was his aunt, named Harriet, and it was with her that he spent the most time. In 1949, Harriet buried her husband, a grief-stricken woman took up the study of the occult, she was obsessed with summoning the spirit of her deceased husband. One of her rooms literally turned into a real temple, where a woman could summon a spirit all day using an Ouija board. Roland was often present during the seances. One fine morning, Harriet did not wake up, she died in her sleep, the official cause of death is a heart attack. Harriet died two months after her husband's death.
At the same time, Roland continued to spend all his free time in his aunt's room. According to the official version, the boy was just playing with spiritual supplies, but this was not the case. Another version of those events is confirmed by the words of the same classmate Roland.
“He grew gloomy every day, he tried not to come close to me. I understood the reason for his anger, then I began to improve relations with one guy from another class, who was two years older than me. The guy's name was Matt, and he was one of Roland's offenders. One day Roland came up to me and said that Matt did not have long to live. Indeed, two days later, Matt crashed on a motorcycle. For some reason, no one connects Matt's death with that story,”said Julia. Another classmate said that Roland allegedly sold his soul to the Devil in order to take revenge on all offenders and achieve Julia, and for this he seriously took up the study of spiritualism.
However, something went wrong. Everything changed dramatically at the end of September 1949. Late at night, the Dow family's home shook all over. Roland's mother later said that there was a sharp shock, as if it were an earthquake: paintings were falling from the walls, dishes were breaking in the kitchen, a window was broken in one of the rooms. The boy himself shouted at his parents with his last words, in a low bass.
“He was weak, but I didn't have the strength to keep him. My wife and I had to work hard to tie Roland. I don’t know where he got such powers that night,”Roland's father recalled after a while.
Promotional video:
The boy was tied to the bed. The very next day, psychiatrists were called to the house, but they could not make the correct diagnosis and help at least with something. And then Father Albert Hughes, a local Catholic priest, asked permission to conduct an exorcism ceremony. In total, more than ten ceremonies were held, during each of them Roland shouted at everyone with obscene words in a low bass. The priests said that during the rituals, furniture shook in the room, and strange objects flew in the air. The boy calmed down, the priests announced that they had managed to expel Satan himself from Roland's body.
But Dow's classmates have a completely different opinion. “After those events, he became different, they began not only to respect him, they began to fear him. In general, everything in life was too easy for him, Roland did not look like a victim of those events, on the contrary - he seemed to benefit. I wouldn't be surprised if someone proves that Dow actually sold his soul to the devil,”Dow's classmates recalled.
And, nevertheless, the official version says that Roland accidentally summoned a certain spirit that possessed him, and the priests, on the tenth attempt, expelled him. But eyewitnesses of those events have a completely different opinion.