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
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. Hello, everyone, welcome back
(00:29):
to Facing Evil. I'm Rasha Peccarrero and I'm Evette Gentile,
and today we're talking about the case of Anna Lis 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
(00:52):
I never saw because I'm a big scarity cat, it
inspired three documentary films, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Requiem
and an Elise 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
(01:13):
out the evil spirits that they believed were possessing Annelisee
Michelle and 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
(01:34):
for me personally. And we will analyze some of that
today as we talk with Father Carlos Martin's director of
the Treasures of the Church ministry and an official exorcist.
We'll talk about what really happened to Annelise Michelle and
how this exorcism led to her death. But first our
(01:55):
producer Trevor is going to walk us through today's case.
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. Yeah. Anneliese Michelle was
(02:26):
a twenty three year old woman from Germany who died
after a series of failed priest let exorcisms in nineteen
seventy six. She was born in Libelfing, Bavaria in West
Germany to a devout Catholic family. Supposedly, Annelise and her
sisters were not allowed to play outside with other children,
and instead spent most of their time praying inside. At
(02:50):
the age of sixteen, Annealise experienced her first seizure. The
next year, she had yet another and was diagnosed with
temporal lobe epilepsy, a chronic nerve of a system disorder
in which recurrent seizures take place, usually lasting a couple
of minutes. Shortly after this, she was diagnosed with depression
and psychosis and was treated at a psychiatric facility. At
(03:13):
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,
she went to the University of Wurtzburg, where her classmates
(03:33):
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,
she said someone else was manipulating her and that her
(03:56):
will was not her own. She also became intolerant of
crew suffixes 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
quote burned like fire when she attempted to walk on it.
(04:17):
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
said they needed the bishop's permission to perform an exorcism,
(04:37):
but her condition worsened, and in September of nineteen seventy five,
Bishop Joseph Stangel granted Father ernst Alt and Father Arnold
Rens permission to perform an exorcism on Annalise, but they
were ordered to total secrecy. Over the next ten months,
the two priests performed sixty seven exorcism sessions at the
(04:59):
rate of about 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, Father
(05:20):
Wrens performed the final exorcism. By now she was severely emaciated,
had pneumonia, and was running a high fever. Her final
words to the priests 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 Michele 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 Anneliese 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. So
(06:26):
today we are lucky to be joined by an expert
in the field of exorcism. You may have recently heard
his voice on the new iHeartRadio podcast that Exorcist Files
With This now is Father Carlos Martins, director of the
Treasure of the Church Ministry and an official exorcist on
(06:47):
two Continents. Welcome Father Martins to Facing Evil. Thank you
very much. It is a pleasure to be here with you.
We're honored to have you here, Father Martins. Yes, so, Father,
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
(07:09):
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 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
(07:31):
do and eventually do exorcisms. 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
(07:53):
about seven years later. So in two thousand and three,
I was on a 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
(08:16):
I was placed in, the priests that were on staff
there were the diocesan exorcists, 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,
(08:40):
they just turned to me and said, Deacon, go get
rid of the devil. So 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
(09:03):
is in a place, then there's going to be signs
that reveal that presence. So 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.
(09:24):
What I preach on all the time, what I've developed
some notoriety for saying, 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
(09:46):
exorcist job to then, knowing, once those rights are known,
to work with the victim to rescind those rights. Once
the rights are rescinded, then the devil must leave. Then
the devil can be cast out. But until that is done,
the devil has every right to stay. He's obtained the
(10:07):
rights to stay. So most people in their mind understand
exorcism falsely to 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
(10:31):
has to find out which was the doorway by which
the devil entered where he is, then that doorway has
to be closed, and then he can be evicted, So
Father Martin's, I'll be quite honest. I was not raised
in the Catholic Church. However, I am born and raised
(10:53):
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 of
our Hawaiian cahunas or our Hawaiian cahus who will go
into homes and bless homes, or if something sad has
(11:15):
happened or anything like that, they go and they just
give pemay cutty blessings. But with all of that being said,
I would love to know more. What's the history of exorcism?
Does it go like as far back as when the
Bible was first written? I would love to know the
history of it. Heavens no, it far predates that the
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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. There appear to be people whose task
it is or who are willing to take on a
(12:04):
foreign spirit manifested as a different, a radically different personality.
That is all of a sudden inhabiting somebody who is known,
and that typically that inhabitation is marked by a certain
number of characteristics, which all of all of which are
out of the character of the person. So a particular violence,
(12:30):
an aversion to any goodness, to truth, to beauty, to goodness,
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 which they
(12:51):
couldn't possibly know. And included with that would be a
speaking of a language or languages that they 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
(13:13):
ways in which different cultures, and I mean all of them,
a Japanese culture, Chinese culture, the different 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 kapuna that would come over and
would conduct some ritual, the intention of which would be
(13:34):
to clean the place, to clean someone wory place. Right,
So that is ingrained in the human nature. That hey,
we've we have these enemies that are not physical, they're spiritual,
and yet we want to combat them. So this drama
is very much a part of the human story. It's
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it's been there from the beginning and it continues. You know, Father,
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you were telling us the story of you 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. Well, I attend conferences regularly, but
(14:45):
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 when you have colleagues
as good as I do. I really respect the other
(15:06):
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 are ensnared. So
those people need to be loved, and we're doing this
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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, 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
(15:53):
competent to diagnose mental illness. I'm not a psychiatrist or
a psychologist or a doll. However, I can diagnose the
presence of evil, and they're going to be very different
manifestations than a physical or mental illness. That being said.
(16:15):
That being said, it is not an either or situation.
One can have mental illness and can be demonically oppressed.
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
(16:38):
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
animals already wounded, and so the animals already a target
by that fact. So that love of the individual is
(16:59):
what gives the motive and all of the other things
that are needed to the exorcist the patients, for example,
because sometimes the process of gathering information and making a
diagnosis is painstaking. It's not a quick thing. It's not
an effort of kind of telepathy just through a straight
(17:22):
mental knowledge. Okay, I into it. The devil is in
front of me, not at all. There have to be signs.
Those signs are objective that anybody with the rational mind
will have to conclude that nothing in the natural realm
could cause this. And there are specific criteria that we follow.
(17:44):
So Father Martin's can you take us through what actually
goes into an exorcism? How does it work? 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
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point to a reality that is beyond the 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
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possibly know, such as, for example, if 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
(18:53):
way in the natural realm that this individual on the
spot could come up with that knowledge, all right. Secondly,
the facility, the ability to speak in foreign languages with ease.
We're talking about speaking with facility, with perfect grammar, the
(19:15):
ability to answer and to ask questions. Thirdly, is superhuman strength,
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
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such as whom we're going to talk about, Annelie's Michelle,
who weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe one hundred
thirty one hundred forty pounds that her stout boyfriend at
one point and a priest could not lift her. They
couldn't budge her. So there was all of a sudden
(20:03):
a weight to her body that was absolutely extraordinary. So
we're talking about signs that are impossible in nature, there
have to be signs that the natural realm cannot account for.
In the case of Anneliese Michelle, obviously we know that
you know a lot about it. Can you tell us
(20:26):
what you think actually happened there? As far as the facts, well,
I think so. First of all, what I will say
is Anneli's Michelle. Her possession was very, very unique in
the sense that her circumstances point to a particular reality
(20:47):
whereby God was asking her to take on a suffering vicariously,
a suffering for the sake of others, for the benefit
of others. To phrase it in in kind of classical
Catholic language, she was being asked to be a victim soul.
She's not the only one in history that has had this.
(21:09):
So we have a Cannonite saint, Saint Mary of Jesus Crucified,
who was a Palestinian nun. She was born in Bethlehem,
is called a holy demoniac. She was possessed not because
of a particular sin, that she had done a particular action,
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but she was possessed for the sake of undergoing a
suffering that would benefit the universal Church, to benefit others,
and the proof of 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
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never want to name God. They don't even want to
say the word, and they absolutely will never say Jesus Christ,
but they will refer to the one whom you serve,
or the carpenter from Nazareth 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
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the one whom you serve will not let me. The
same thing is in Annelie's Michelle. The demons at first
talked about them bringing her to hell. They talked about
them having a plan for her. They enjoy, they love
torturing her, and they would brag about yesterday, we made
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her do this for three hours and in other words,
chasing her tail, going on a nervous wild goose chase
within her room. So she's pacing the room for hours
with horrendous anxiety. They would brag about this. But as
the exorcisms went on, that changed. So yes Annelie's Michelle
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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, first the
family doctor, and then a neurologist. And she saw several neurologists,
and she had at least seven EEGs in her life.
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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. In other words,
it was inconclusive. The diagnosis of epilepsy was never one
that was hard and fast. The doctor at her trial
(23:45):
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 whether or not Annelie's
Michelle had epilepsy, I don't know. I can't tell you.
Her symptoms were consistent initially with seizures, but that was
(24:09):
quickly I'm not going to say replaced. But alongside those
things that the seizures themselves, at a certain point, nobody
would talk about them because they didn't appear to be evident.
But what was evident was some of those preternatural sign
not even some an abundance of preternatural signs that that
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was impossible for the cause of which to be from
the natural. For example, she would 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
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of the things that demons do. It's quite common, so
especially an act that is threatening 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,
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and that's the manifestation of the threat that they feel.
She as I mentioned already, the evidence of the superhuman
strength when she was in the gravity of possession, when
she was in the hospital and Peter and the priests
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.
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And so this is a petite girl, I mean, this
is when she was already very close 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 mispronounced something, and the demon stopped,
(26:05):
you've mispronounced that, you idiot, this 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 had lived in China,
(26:29):
so he spoke to her in Chinese and she answered
in perfect Chinese. Wow. 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 an atheist, who
(26:52):
is in the room and observes the phenomena, would have
to conclude the same way that we do any thing,
otherwise it would be foreign to what our craft in
our in our nature, our sciences. Father Martin's You've said
(27:29):
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, you know, having to wear black
(27:50):
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. I don't believe any
of those things are true. There's been a lot of
inks build about the Anneale's Michelle case, and a lot
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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 fact that she
was given some antipsychotic or anti convulsive medication. At first,
(28:34):
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 it does that
to anybody. But the point being that these drugs had
(28:55):
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 Heaven's name would
it matter what drugs, what sedatives would be inside the
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victim's body. And in fact, I have a good friend
of mine, Adam Bligh, who is a demonologist and who
is the bishop's expert on demonology and exorcism for the
Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. He used to work in a
prison and when an inmate becomes violent, egregiously violent, what
(29:39):
they will do is inject thorazine into him to make
him start. Ten minutes after he's received an injection of thorazine,
he's on the floor drooling into his shoe. In prison,
thorazine is called break fluid. It just stops a human being. Period.
You can inject a possessed person with thorazine. There will
(30:02):
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
God anymore? Right? So we're talking about two different realities.
I would like to ask you did mention you know,
father Alt and the other priestless father Rens. Do you
(30:26):
think that they did everything that they should have done
or do you think it was taken too far? 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,
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and they gave testimony to this, if any of them
believed that she was close to death, then they would
have stopped and they 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
(31:14):
has a mental health issue. We can give them any
number of tranquilizers, 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
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the two priests, both parents, all her three sisters none
and including her boyfriend Peter, her friend, thea Maria Klogger
friend and Anna Lippert. So nine individuals, pardon me, eleven individuals.
None of them believed that she was close today I see.
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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 Annelie's when she was
herself predicted in other words, during in states where the
demon was not possessing, that she was going to be
freed in July of that year, July of nineteen seventy six.
(32:26):
And isn't that when she passed away? 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
(32:48):
the course of the exorcisms, also 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,
(33:09):
she was free, but she died. 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
(33:29):
exorcisms if her health was in danger. No. 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
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in that sense, the fact that none of these eleven people,
none of them raised that question or had that concern,
I think that has to be taken into account because
we weren't there. I think about what you do, right,
Father Martin's, when you go into someone's home and you
(34:12):
know they've called you in because they believe what they
believe has happened to their child or you know, whomever
it may be. When you go in, there has to
be that element of that supernatural that is happening in
order for you to do an exorcism. Right, Instead of
(34:34):
saying this is for the doctors. Again, I don't want
to take anything away from the doctors who made their diagnoses.
They were rational men 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
(34:56):
her a diagnosis of epilepsy and stated 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 egs that others did which showed
nothing anyway. So the fact that the medical profession, multiple
(35:20):
doctors had a crack at Annalie's, 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
we're seen by numerous people, then I think we have
to go somewhere else. The good science demands that we
go to another explanation on facing evil, we always try
(35:45):
to find the light in the dark. I am curious, father,
what do you see as the light in the dark
in an Elisa's case? Sure you know so with Annelie's
one of the phenomena that is present is her grave
is visited by hundreds, if not thousands, of pilgrims a year.
(36:07):
In other words, there's this kind of what we call
in the Catholic Church and an odor of sanctity, a
smell of holiness that has been left behind. And this
is an odor that the church talks about the saints
leaving and people are attracted to that quote unquote oder.
But people are attracted to the person of Annelie's Michelle,
(36:29):
that there is all the signs that the Holy Spirit
has instilled within people an instinct that she lived a
saintly life and that she is with the Lord in heaven. Father,
we really appreciate that thought. It's so nice to hear that,
even though Anneli's faced a lot of difficulty in her life,
(36:53):
that her grave is visited by thousands of people and
she is still remembered. Yes, indeed, Mahalanila, thank you so
much for joining us today, Father Martin's Yeah, absolutely anytime.
For today's message of hope and healing, our Imua goes
(37:16):
out to Anna Liis Michelle. We will never know the
true extent of Anna LIS's mental illness, but we do
know that she did struggle during a time where treatments
for conditions like hers were incredibly limited, and people struggling
with mental health often feel so disconnected from those around
(37:37):
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. You can reach
the US Suicide in Crisis lifeline at nine eight eight,
(37:59):
Annas 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. And
so today we send hope and healing to Anna Lee
(38:19):
and to others who have found themselves in similar circumstances.
Onward and upward, Emoa emua. Well, that's our show for today.
We'd love to hear what you thought about today's discussion
(38:39):
and if there's a case you'd like for us to cover,
find us on social media or email us at Facing
Evil pod at tenderfoot dot tv. 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.
Until next I'm Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio
(39:20):
and Tenderfoot TV. The show is hosted by Russia Peccarero
and a Vetchantile. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive
producers on behalf of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young and
Jesse Funk. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay our executive producers
on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our
(39:42):
researcher is Carolyn Talmidge. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Find us on social media or email us at Facing
Evil pot at tenderfoot dot tv. For more podcasts from
iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pie Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to 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. Hello, everyone, welcome back
(00:29):
to Facing Evil. I'm Rasha Peccarrero and I'm Evette Gentile,
and today we're talking about the case of Anna Lis 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
(00:52):
I never saw because I'm a big scarity cat, it
inspired three documentary films, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Requiem
and an Elise 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
(01:13):
out the evil spirits that they believed were possessing Annelisee
Michelle and 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
(01:34):
for me personally. And we will analyze some of that
today as we talk with Father Carlos Martin's director of
the Treasures of the Church ministry and an official exorcist.
We'll talk about what really happened to Annelise Michelle and
how this exorcism led to her death. But first our
(01:55):
producer Trevor is going to walk us through today's case.
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. Yeah. Anneliese Michelle was
(02:26):
a twenty three year old woman from Germany who died
after a series of failed priest let exorcisms in nineteen
seventy six. She was born in Libelfing, Bavaria in West
Germany to a devout Catholic family. Supposedly, Annelise and her
sisters were not allowed to play outside with other children,
and instead spent most of their time praying inside. At
(02:50):
the age of sixteen, Annealise experienced her first seizure. The
next year, she had yet another and was diagnosed with
temporal lobe epilepsy, a chronic nerve of a system disorder
in which recurrent seizures take place, usually lasting a couple
of minutes. Shortly after this, she was diagnosed with depression
and psychosis and was treated at a psychiatric facility. At
(03:13):
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,
she went to the University of Wurtzburg, where her classmates
(03:33):
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,
she said someone else was manipulating her and that her
(03:56):
will was not her own. She also became intolerant of
crew suffixes 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
quote burned like fire when she attempted to walk on it.
(04:17):
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
said they needed the bishop's permission to perform an exorcism,
(04:37):
but her condition worsened, and in September of nineteen seventy five,
Bishop Joseph Stangel granted Father ernst Alt and Father Arnold
Rens permission to perform an exorcism on Annalise, but they
were ordered to total secrecy. Over the next ten months,
the two priests performed sixty seven exorcism sessions at the
(04:59):
rate of about 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, Father
(05:20):
Wrens performed the final exorcism. By now she was severely emaciated,
had pneumonia, and was running a high fever. Her final
words to the priests 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 Michele 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 Anneliese 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. So
(06:26):
today we are lucky to be joined by an expert
in the field of exorcism. You may have recently heard
his voice on the new iHeartRadio podcast that Exorcist Files
With This now is Father Carlos Martins, director of the
Treasure of the Church Ministry and an official exorcist on
(06:47):
two Continents. Welcome Father Martins to Facing Evil. Thank you
very much. It is a pleasure to be here with you.
We're honored to have you here, Father Martins. Yes, so, Father,
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
(07:09):
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 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
(07:31):
do and eventually do exorcisms. 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
(07:53):
about seven years later. So in two thousand and three,
I was on a 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
(08:16):
I was placed in, the priests that were on staff
there were the diocesan exorcists, 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,
(08:40):
they just turned to me and said, Deacon, go get
rid of the devil. So 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
(09:03):
is in a place, then there's going to be signs
that reveal that presence. So 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.
(09:24):
What I preach on all the time, what I've developed
some notoriety for saying, 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
(09:46):
exorcist job to then, knowing, once those rights are known,
to work with the victim to rescind those rights. Once
the rights are rescinded, then the devil must leave. Then
the devil can be cast out. But until that is done,
the devil has every right to stay. He's obtained the
(10:07):
rights to stay. So most people in their mind understand
exorcism falsely to 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
(10:31):
has to find out which was the doorway by which
the devil entered where he is, then that doorway has
to be closed, and then he can be evicted, So
Father Martin's, I'll be quite honest. I was not raised
in the Catholic Church. However, I am born and raised
(10:53):
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 of
our Hawaiian cahunas or our Hawaiian cahus who will go
into homes and bless homes, or if something sad has
(11:15):
happened or anything like that, they go and they just
give pemay cutty blessings. But with all of that being said,
I would love to know more. What's the history of exorcism?
Does it go like as far back as when the
Bible was first written? I would love to know the
history of it. Heavens no, it far predates that the
(11:39):
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. There appear to be people whose task
it is or who are willing to take on a
(12:04):
foreign spirit manifested as a different, a radically different personality.
That is all of a sudden inhabiting somebody who is known,
and that typically that inhabitation is marked by a certain
number of characteristics, which all of all of which are
out of the character of the person. So a particular violence,
(12:30):
an aversion to any goodness, to truth, to beauty, to goodness,
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 which they
(12:51):
couldn't possibly know. And included with that would be a
speaking of a language or languages that they 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
(13:13):
ways in which different cultures, and I mean all of them,
a Japanese culture, Chinese culture, the different 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 kapuna that would come over and
would conduct some ritual, the intention of which would be
(13:34):
to clean the place, to clean someone wory place. Right,
So that is ingrained in the human nature. That hey,
we've we have these enemies that are not physical, they're spiritual,
and yet we want to combat them. So this drama
is very much a part of the human story. It's
(13:55):
it's been there from the beginning and it continues. You know, Father,
(14:19):
you were telling us the story of you 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. Well, I attend conferences regularly, but
(14:45):
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 when you have colleagues
as good as I do. I really respect the other
(15:06):
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 are ensnared. So
those people need to be loved, and we're doing this
(15:27):
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, 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
(15:53):
competent to diagnose mental illness. I'm not a psychiatrist or
a psychologist or a doll. However, I can diagnose the
presence of evil, and they're going to be very different
manifestations than a physical or mental illness. That being said.
(16:15):
That being said, it is not an either or situation.
One can have mental illness and can be demonically oppressed.
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
(16:38):
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
animals already wounded, and so the animals already a target
by that fact. So that love of the individual is
(16:59):
what gives the motive and all of the other things
that are needed to the exorcist the patients, for example,
because sometimes the process of gathering information and making a
diagnosis is painstaking. It's not a quick thing. It's not
an effort of kind of telepathy just through a straight
(17:22):
mental knowledge. Okay, I into it. The devil is in
front of me, not at all. There have to be signs.
Those signs are objective that anybody with the rational mind
will have to conclude that nothing in the natural realm
could cause this. And there are specific criteria that we follow.
(17:44):
So Father Martin's can you take us through what actually
goes into an exorcism? How does it work? 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
(18:10):
point to a reality that is beyond the 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
(18:32):
possibly know, such as, for example, if 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
(18:53):
way in the natural realm that this individual on the
spot could come up with that knowledge, all right. Secondly,
the facility, the ability to speak in foreign languages with ease.
We're talking about speaking with facility, with perfect grammar, the
(19:15):
ability to answer and to ask questions. Thirdly, is superhuman strength,
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
(19:42):
such as whom we're going to talk about, Annelie's Michelle,
who weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe one hundred
thirty one hundred forty pounds that her stout boyfriend at
one point and a priest could not lift her. They
couldn't budge her. So there was all of a sudden
(20:03):
a weight to her body that was absolutely extraordinary. So
we're talking about signs that are impossible in nature, there
have to be signs that the natural realm cannot account for.
In the case of Anneliese Michelle, obviously we know that
you know a lot about it. Can you tell us
(20:26):
what you think actually happened there? As far as the facts, well,
I think so. First of all, what I will say
is Anneli's Michelle. Her possession was very, very unique in
the sense that her circumstances point to a particular reality
(20:47):
whereby God was asking her to take on a suffering vicariously,
a suffering for the sake of others, for the benefit
of others. To phrase it in in kind of classical
Catholic language, she was being asked to be a victim soul.
She's not the only one in history that has had this.
(21:09):
So we have a Cannonite saint, Saint Mary of Jesus Crucified,
who was a Palestinian nun. She was born in Bethlehem,
is called a holy demoniac. She was possessed not because
of a particular sin, that she had done a particular action,
(21:32):
but she was possessed for the sake of undergoing a
suffering that would benefit the universal Church, to benefit others,
and the proof of 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
(21:52):
never want to name God. They don't even want to
say the word, and they absolutely will never say Jesus Christ,
but they will refer to the one whom you serve,
or the carpenter from Nazareth 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
(22:16):
the one whom you serve will not let me. The
same thing is in Annelie's Michelle. The demons at first
talked about them bringing her to hell. They talked about
them having a plan for her. They enjoy, they love
torturing her, and they would brag about yesterday, we made
(22:36):
her do this for three hours and in other words,
chasing her tail, going on a nervous wild goose chase
within her room. So she's pacing the room for hours
with horrendous anxiety. They would brag about this. But as
the exorcisms went on, that changed. So yes Annelie's Michelle
(23:00):
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, first the
family doctor, and then a neurologist. And she saw several neurologists,
and she had at least seven EEGs in her life.
(23:22):
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. In other words,
it was inconclusive. The diagnosis of epilepsy was never one
that was hard and fast. The doctor at her trial
(23:45):
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 whether or not Annelie's
Michelle had epilepsy, I don't know. I can't tell you.
Her symptoms were consistent initially with seizures, but that was
(24:09):
quickly I'm not going to say replaced. But alongside those
things that the seizures themselves, at a certain point, nobody
would talk about them because they didn't appear to be evident.
But what was evident was some of those preternatural sign
not even some an abundance of preternatural signs that that
(24:31):
was impossible for the cause of which to be from
the natural. For example, she would 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
(24:54):
of the things that demons do. It's quite common, so
especially an act that is threatening 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,
(25:18):
and that's the manifestation of the threat that they feel.
She as I mentioned already, the evidence of the superhuman
strength when she was in the gravity of possession, when
she was in the hospital and Peter and the priests
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.
(25:41):
And so this is a petite girl, I mean, this
is when she was already very close 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 mispronounced something, and the demon stopped,
(26:05):
you've mispronounced that, you idiot, this 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 had lived in China,
(26:29):
so he spoke to her in Chinese and she answered
in perfect Chinese. Wow. 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 an atheist, who
(26:52):
is in the room and observes the phenomena, would have
to conclude the same way that we do any thing,
otherwise it would be foreign to what our craft in
our in our nature, our sciences. Father Martin's You've said
(27:29):
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, you know, having to wear black
(27:50):
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. I don't believe any
of those things are true. There's been a lot of
inks build about the Anneale's Michelle case, and a lot
(28:11):
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 fact that she
was given some antipsychotic or anti convulsive medication. At first,
(28:34):
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 it does that
to anybody. But the point being that these drugs had
(28:55):
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 Heaven's name would
it matter what drugs, what sedatives would be inside the
(29:15):
victim's body. And in fact, I have a good friend
of mine, Adam Bligh, who is a demonologist and who
is the bishop's expert on demonology and exorcism for the
Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. He used to work in a
prison and when an inmate becomes violent, egregiously violent, what
(29:39):
they will do is inject thorazine into him to make
him start. Ten minutes after he's received an injection of thorazine,
he's on the floor drooling into his shoe. In prison,
thorazine is called break fluid. It just stops a human being. Period.
You can inject a possessed person with thorazine. There will
(30:02):
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
God anymore? Right? So we're talking about two different realities.
I would like to ask you did mention you know,
father Alt and the other priestless father Rens. Do you
(30:26):
think that they did everything that they should have done
or do you think it was taken too far? 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,
(30:49):
and they gave testimony to this, if any of them
believed that she was close to death, then they would
have stopped and they 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
(31:14):
has a mental health issue. We can give them any
number of tranquilizers, 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 her three sisters none
and including her boyfriend Peter, her friend, thea Maria Klogger
friend and Anna Lippert. So nine individuals, pardon me, eleven individuals.
None of them believed that she was close today I see.
(32:01):
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 Annelie's when she was
herself predicted in other words, during in states where the
demon was not possessing, that she was going to be
freed in July of that year, July of nineteen seventy six.
(32:26):
And isn't that when she passed away? 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
(32:48):
the course of the exorcisms, also 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,
(33:09):
she was free, but she died. 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
(33:29):
exorcisms if her health was in danger. No. 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
(33:50):
in that sense, the fact that none of these eleven people,
none of them raised that question or had that concern,
I think that has to be taken into account because
we weren't there. I think about what you do, right,
Father Martin's, when you go into someone's home and you
(34:12):
know they've called you in because they believe what they
believe has happened to their child or you know, whomever
it may be. When you go in, there has to
be that element of that supernatural that is happening in
order for you to do an exorcism. Right, Instead of
(34:34):
saying this is for the doctors. Again, I don't want
to take anything away from the doctors who made their diagnoses.
They were rational men 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
(34:56):
her a diagnosis of epilepsy and stated 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 egs that others did which showed
nothing anyway. So the fact that the medical profession, multiple
(35:20):
doctors had a crack at Annalie's, 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
we're seen by numerous people, then I think we have
to go somewhere else. The good science demands that we
go to another explanation on facing evil, we always try
(35:45):
to find the light in the dark. I am curious, father,
what do you see as the light in the dark
in an Elisa's case? Sure you know so with Annelie's
one of the phenomena that is present is her grave
is visited by hundreds, if not thousands, of pilgrims a year.
(36:07):
In other words, there's this kind of what we call
in the Catholic Church and an odor of sanctity, a
smell of holiness that has been left behind. And this
is an odor that the church talks about the saints
leaving and people are attracted to that quote unquote oder.
But people are attracted to the person of Annelie's Michelle,
(36:29):
that there is all the signs that the Holy Spirit
has instilled within people an instinct that she lived a
saintly life and that she is with the Lord in heaven. Father,
we really appreciate that thought. It's so nice to hear that,
even though Anneli's faced a lot of difficulty in her life,
(36:53):
that her grave is visited by thousands of people and
she is still remembered. Yes, indeed, Mahalanila, thank you so
much for joining us today, Father Martin's Yeah, absolutely anytime.
For today's message of hope and healing, our Imua goes
(37:16):
out to Anna Liis Michelle. We will never know the
true extent of Anna LIS's mental illness, but we do
know that she did struggle during a time where treatments
for conditions like hers were incredibly limited, and people struggling
with mental health often feel so disconnected from those around
(37:37):
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. You can reach
the US Suicide in Crisis lifeline at nine eight eight,
(37:59):
Annas 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. And
so today we send hope and healing to Anna Lee
(38:19):
and to others who have found themselves in similar circumstances.
Onward and upward, Emoa emua. Well, that's our show for today.
We'd love to hear what you thought about today's discussion
(38:39):
and if there's a case you'd like for us to cover,
find us on social media or email us at Facing
Evil pod at tenderfoot dot tv. 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.
Until next I'm Facing Evil is a production of iHeartRadio
(39:20):
and Tenderfoot TV. The show is hosted by Russia Peccarero
and a Vetchantile. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams our executive
producers on behalf of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young and
Jesse Funk. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay our executive producers
on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producer Tracy Kaplan. Our
(39:42):
researcher is Carolyn Talmidge. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Find us on social media or email us at Facing
Evil pot at tenderfoot dot tv. For more podcasts from
iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Pie Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
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