Page 68 - WTP Vol. XIII #1

Witches (continued from preceding page)
4. The blockbuster movie, for him, depicted absolute- ly real events. Details had been changed—the original case had been a boy, not a girl; he had lived in Cottage City, not Georgetown; had, in fact, attended Gonzaga himself, back in the 1940s—but all the horrific depic- tions, from skin-writing to prolonged levitation, were absolute fact.
5. There had been a complicated series of Jesuits involved in his rescue, priests attending and others assisting, things happening in different places, in- cluding northern Virginia, Maryland, DC, and even, for some reason, Missouri. This exorcism, known in popular media as the “Roland Doe” case, is well- enough documented by enthusiasts that it’s likely possible to figure out how all these fragmented recollections fit together, inasmuch as they do, and what has been either jumbled or lost in the corri- dors of memory. I have eschewed any such attempt here, preferring to recount only such information as I recall being given to me, in the uncertain form in which it has stayed in my mind.
6. He told us about the witches. ~
Witches, Father assured us, were behind many events that occurred during filming, which weren’t merely eerie, but supernatural in origin.
Both Linda Blair and Ellen Burstyn received spinal injuries on set, including a broken coccyx. (A more prosaic explanation would involve the fact that, in one scene, Burstyn was tied to a special-effects harness that assistants were instructed to pull as hard as they could. That scream she gives is real.) The great Irish actor Jack MacGowran, who played Burke Dennings, and Vasiliki Maliaros, who played Mary Karras, died soon after completing their roles. Family members of the cast also died; people working on the production lost fingers and toes. At one point the entire New York set of the house burned down.
Burned down, Father stressed, looking up now to reveal small grey eyes brimming with intensity—be- cause hell is full of sinners on fire, I thought, and so the movie sets caught fire? He never actually spelled out a connection. But the thing that plagued produc- tion most... the thing that was behind it all... was the witches, and how they followed everyone around.
Nor were these cartoon women on broomsticks; they were the real thing. In particular, they rode motorcycles.
I promise I am not making this up. Father’s sober claim was that everywhere the filmmakers went they were watched by mysterious figures, often in black leather jackets with tinted visors to con- ceal their faces. These were members of a Satanic coven in the nation’s capitol who were very in- terested indeed in how their dark lord was being portrayed. One of these motorcycle witches, if you want to see, can actually be spotted in the movie itself. It’s an early shot that takes place on Hallow- een day, when Chris MacNeil is walking home after shooting that campus demonstration. She smiles at some trick-or-treating children. One of them is dressed in a black pointy hat and robe. The fa- mous piano line begins; a motorcyclist pulls up at the intersection behind her, perhaps only acciden- tally caught on film. That person, according to our visiting lecturer, is a witch.
It got weirder. Father confided in us in a low tone that lead actor Jason Miller had a child who had been born with hydrocephalus, a rare but serious condi- tion whereby excess cerebrospinal fluid builds up in- side the skull. This child had been taken to the beach for an outing with his parents—but the family didn’t realize they had been followed by a motorcycle witch, one who rode a Harley suddenly onto the beach and directly over the child’s swollen head.
A witch-beach attack. On motorcycle. Driving over a child’s hydrocephalic head.
That’s what will come, Father traced slowly the seated room with his stare, if the power of darkness is not taken seriously.
It does indeed sound like some cold-sweat dream, but I swear to you, I remember these things.
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