Hey weirdos, it's Ash.
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You guys, I tried my mochi ice cream the other day, and I was lifted off of this planet into just another galaxy entirely.
It is a cool, creamy scoop of ice cream wrapped in a soft, chewy dough.
It's literally like a little sweet ice cream dumpling.
It's pillowy soft, D to the E to the L -I -C -I -O -U -S, and it just feels very indulgent.
I loved it. I tried the cookies and cream flavor, and I still have the mango flavor to try.
I'm so excited to try the mango because if it's half as good as the cookies and cream, I'll probably just like fall on the floor and start crying.
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My name is Ash. I'm Alayna.
And this is More Bad.
You sounded like you were hosting a show like Delilah.
Oh my god, thank you.
Hey. Hey out there.
Everybody out there.
You single ladies. This is Ash.
This one goes out to all my queens.
I don't know. All my queens.
Now that I just started sounding like Trixie and Katja when they're like doing a bit.
I like it. May I please have bread?
Bread. Um, what's going on?
on i'm in a silly goofy funny lol mood me too yeah i'm feeling it good feeling it we got some mini cadbury cream eggs in this i just ate two of them i ate the no i ate two oh you're just trying to one -up me with cadbury eggs i took a third one out okay but i have not yet ingested it yeah maybe you should chill out um they're tiny they're baby no you can do what you want this is kind of a hot Hot Topic cream Cadbury eggs.
How do you guys feel about them?
My husband thinks they're the most disgusting things.
My husband also thinks that.
And any time I have them in the house, he gags and can't handle it.
If one of us will eat one, he will visibly gag.
Drew just does a little like with his nose.
See, my girls love them.
Yeah, who doesn't? My girls are correct.
It shouldn't be that hot of a topic.
No, it should not, but it is.
If you don't like them, you're just wrong.
Whoa. She said it. I didn't.
I said it. I'm here to tell you that your opinion matters, but Ash, she's telling you to fuck off.
Oh, you're going to validate them in these streets?
No, that's wrong. It's wrong if you don't like them.
There's another option.
Is it caramel? Yeah, the caramel.
So I like caramel, but I don't like those ones.
I'm okay with them, but it's not my preference.
I don't really fucks with them, if you will.
I don't either, man.
I was going to tell you guys something.
thing I thought of it this morning I was like getting my coffee ready and I was like I'll say that on the show later I'll say that on the show oh I'll say that on the pod what was it and then we had such a whirlwind of a morning and now I just have boats and hoes stuck in my head so it's true because we got a couple of strep strep throat cases in my house um because kids get sick calm Calm down.
What if I laughed like that all the time?
I always get one person that's like, why are your kids sick?
Hey, kids are always sick.
Like, yep. Kids are sick.
Said no parent ever.
And also it's not just kid.
It is also John who has strep throat.
Kid plus John. So that child and John are kind of sticking together.
And so they started calling themselves strep brothers.
But then it made boats and hoes get stuck in my head.
It did. So that's a whole thing.
Yeah. But yeah. Yeah.
It's good that we're in a silly mood today because we're talking about something like moderately silly.
Yeah. I mean, anytime we can take it in a place of exorcism or paranormal, it's a different vibe.
Yeah. I would say. It is a different vibe.
We can come in in a different angle.
Yeah. A silly, goofy angle.
A silly, goofy. It's kind of a wonky angle.
Yes. In the best way.
It's like curved. Yeah.
I like that. All right.
Well, let's talk about the exorcism.
hello wow i don't know what happened i need an exorcism hello all right we're going to talk about the exorcism of one roland doe so as long as the public has known about the exorcist supposedly true origins the character at the center of the story has always been known as roland doe or sometimes robbie manheim i think manheim manheim manheim both are obviously pseudonyms to protect his actual identity but in december 2021 the skeptical inquirer a magazine devoted to scientific skepticism revealed the identity of roland doe can you believe that it's crazy yeah well the reason that he had passed
away a year earlier so there was like not really any need for anonymity anymore i suppose i guess the identity of roland doe has been uncovered by an independent journalist two decades earlier it had been but the reporter Porter actually opted not to publish the name for legal reasons.
Probably smart. So people knew who he was for a little bit, but it was kept on the DL.
Wow, that's shocking.
I know. It was a different time.
I was going to say that would never happen now.
Well, exactly, because in the year of our lord, 2021, it got leaked.
It got leaked, yeah.
So in 1999, though, taking it back a little bit, a journalist named Mark Opsasnick, I believe, was writing an article on the possession for Strange magazine, which I prefer, when he interviewed Father Albert Hughes, one of the priests involved in the case.
That must have been gnarly.
Oh my god, can you imagine?
That'd be crazy. Let's sit with that for a second.
Yeah, let's paint a picture.
You get to sit down with Father Albert Hughes, who was involved in the original case that inspired the exorcism.
That's a fucking top tip.
The exorcist, I mean.
What did you say? I said the exorcism.
Who inspired the exorcism.
The exorcism that was in the exorcism.
Not a exorcism, the exorcism.
Like, that's a big moment.
Yeah. Just a weird moment.
I would assume top ten in your life.
Yeah, for sure. Well, according to Hughes, the boy who was exorcised was from Cottage City, Maryland, and he, quote, went on to graduate from Gonzaga High and turned out fine.
Anytime I say Gonzaga High, I just want to say Gorgonzola.
And you do that for a reason.
Yeah. And you don't even know what the reason is.
Tell me what it is.
John loves March Madness, and he usually has me do a fake bracket with him.
And I don't know anything about college basketball.
I like regular, like higher basketball, whatever, NBA.
But I'm like, what is that called?
Big boy basketball.
Big boy basketball.
But I don't know anything about college basketball.
So I just pick based on what I think is a cool name.
And Gonzaga reminded me of Gorgonzola.
And so now I only call Gonzaga Gorgonzola.
Wow. You might have heard it subconsciously.
It's possible. And we're also just family.
It's true. That proved it.
And he'll even do it now.
He's like, oh, Gorgonzola moved on to the next round.
Wow. Yeah. Look at us, so connected.
Gonzaga. Gonzorgola, I was going to say.
Gonzorgola. Well, with those facts and a few other facts obtained from his research, Opsasnik was able to determine the years that the boy was in high school.
And after tracking down a copy of the 1954 Gorgonzola -Gonzaga High School Yearbook, he narrowed the pool of potential voice to a very small number and after cross -checking the list with the known attendees of saint james church where albert hughes was a priest he was left with just one name ronald hunkler ronald hunkler ronald hunkler that's a cool name it is i like it hunkler hunkler yeah the story of the roland doe and the exorcist have been told and retold like a million gajillion times since the supposed possession occurred that it's become very very difficult if not almost impossible to tell
all the facts from fictions those are my favorite kind of paranormal stories they're the best I don't I don't want clear facts and fiction frankly it's most paranormal stories but then the popularity of the movie that came out made the already sensational story even more sensational with obviously aspects played up to promote the supernatural details of the story so facts about Ronald and his life before and after the exorcism are sparse and a little difficult to verify but here's what we do know now.
Ronald Edwin Hunkler was born June 1st, 1935.
Hey, that is my wedding anniversary.
And the day that one Marilyn Monroe passed away.
It's true. I didn't mean to do that.
It was in Cottage City, Maryland that he was born to Edwin and Odell Hunkler.
Isn't Odell a cool name?
It is a cool name. I also love the name Edwin.
I do too. I think that's a really cute name.
That was Ronald's middle name and his father's name.
Love it. So his father, Edwin, worked for the federal government and Odell his mother was a homemaker Edwin was very fortunate in that he had a stable job during the peak of the Great Depression but the pay was relatively low and the family definitely struggled financially a lot of the time and this struggle became even greater a few years after Ronald's birth when Odell's mother moved into their house which obviously put in you know kind of an additional strain yeah more mouths to feed more resources being used for sure sitting about one mile outside the northeast border of Washington D .C.
Cottage City was and still is a a pretty suburban area populated mostly by government employees, like Edwin Hunkler was.
According to Alvin Cagey, one of Ronald's childhood friends, Ronald, quote, had friends, but he was in a sense, a little bit of a loner.
He was somewhat sedentary, somewhat quiet as his parents were.
In his younger years, Ronald did have a best friend.
For the purposes of this story, we're going to call him John.
I love that name. We don't really.
You do? I do. That's crazy.
We don't really know like, if his name was John or not.
So we're just gonna call him that.
John. according to john's brother jc these two paired up and were virtually inseparable they were loners who found each other and they caused a lot of mischief there was a close relationship there a very close relationship good for them yeah loners causing mischief let's go what's better kind of like what we do yeah but we're not really loners no sort of i don't know according to jc when the stories about a possessed boy began making their way around town he He immediately thought of Roland and John, Ronald and John.
That sucks that they used essentially the same name.
No, it does. And let me tell you, it fucked me up the entire time I was reading about this and writing about it.
So if I say the wrong name, I'm going to do my best to say Ronald the entire time because that is his name.
But if I fuck up, just like laugh with me, OK?
Yeah, because no matter what, that's the whatever name is used is a name that he was referred to as.
Yeah, Ronald or Roland.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm doing my best to say Ronald.
So like, imagine trying to save someone's identity and use essentially the same name.
You literally just switch three letters.
Yeah. Like, that's fake.
Come on. And if you have dyslexia, the fuck?
Yeah, it's true. That's not cool.
No. But JC said you had these two mischief makers that had a strong tendency to take advantage of people who were weaker than themselves.
That's not good. They were a pair of connivers and they had their act down.
They were trying to outdo each other.
So he's like, possessed boy got something to do with the two of them.
Yeah. Yeah. Now, if J .C.
remembered Ronald as a mischievous troublemaker, John, who was actually his friend himself, described Ronald in a lot more of extreme terms. Oh, according to John, Ronald's home life was anything but typical for a boy in the 1940s.
He said Ronald was, quote, smothered by his obsessively religious mother and grandmother who had deep interest in spiritualism and Ouija boards shunned by his classmates at school, prone to traumas and even violent outbursts and exhibited cruel.
cruel, and at times even sadistic behavior toward other children and even animals.
Yeah. So there's a lot going on with this pathology.
And when it came to his father's influence on Ronald, both JC and John remembered Edwin Hunkler as a man who was physically present in the home, but emotionally absent anywhere else at the time, which was kind of common. I was going to say of the time, that's not shocking.
Yeah. But I think when you have all those other things at play, it's going to add to it.
it was never good no nobody came out of that in a great way yeah jc said of the supposed paranormal activity i think he could see what was going on which is why he's never mentioned talking about edwin interesting yeah now since the story broke in the papers and especially since the release of the book and then the movie john really tried to distance himself from ronald and avoid any association with the legend which i can understand yeah in an interview in 1999 he said i've never Never said his name in front of anyone, not even my wife.
Whoa. Yeah. Damn. In fact, while nearly everyone remembered John and Ronald as inseparable best friends, even his own brother, John himself wouldn't have actually described it in such intimate terms. He said, we were playmates and classmates.
People ask what he was like back then, and I can tell you that he was never what you would call a normal child.
He was an only child and kind of spoiled, and he was a mean bastard. He was a mean bastard. dude.
I think it sounds like John just kind of put up with him for a while.
Yeah. Even he was like, fuck off.
I feel like everyone is at least had like some interaction with a person like that as they were growing up or you were just like, you're kind of a dumb bitch. Like, why am I hanging out with you?
It's like a friend.
You just like do. Yeah.
Yeah. I feel like that's just one of those.
It's like then you move to like a new school, like you move up a grade and you kind of like branch out a little more and you're like, why the fuck was I friends with that asshole?
Yeah, and you kind of float apart.
Yeah, for sure. So don't feel bad if you were friends with it.
Oh, i can think of exactly who i used to hang out with that was kind of yeah and i look back and i'm like why did i put myself through that yeah she was an asshole well as an illustration of ronald's ronald's typical behavior john remembered a story about a stray dog in the neighborhood oh no it's okay okay that seemed to take a liking to ronald and vice versa they actually liked each other but apparently he said this dog was mean and nobody ever knew who owned it it just came out of nowhere no dog is mean he was a little mean he's not mean he doesn't mean to be he was treated badly i bet yeah
probably no dog comes out mean you're right and they all go to heaven yeah well and this is john's words he said well ronald basically adopted that dog that dog really was his best friend not me one time he called me up and told me to come over and i never really trusted him because he was sneaky and a real mean little bastard i was going over there and he was looking out from the basement window and when i got to his house i heard the back porch door slam and i knew right away what he'd done he'd done this sort of thing many times before to different kids i started running like hell because he'd
sick that dog on me when i got when i got home he called me up and he was laughing like hell that's the kind of person he was i mean that's pretty funny it's a little silly but also that's fucked up a dog could have ate his face off that's like super 1940s behavior though i feel i think i've seen that in like several like i think i've i've seen that i feel like that's very like i'm just bored yeah i'm gonna stick my meat dog 100 but it's supposed to be his best friend that's the shit you do to your best friend though yeah you know john john didn't like it i don't know i feel like we're in the northeast
maybe we just i know that's actually i'm like that's just roasting somebody you love yeah you know yeah no that's obviously so true i remember one time i had a play date with somebody who i thought was like my best friend and it was like the middle of winter and we were playing outside and they they just locked me outside yeah that's just you know that's just somebody you love we were still besties after of course you were yeah because that's love that's what that is new england is wild we're different we are but john john didn't like that so people who knew ronald as a child paint a picture of a pretty
lonely boy overall it sounds like also you know with pretty bad social skills since he's sick and his dog on people yeah that is pretty rough and you know obviously this is a great example of it a tendency to behave in cruel if not outright sadistic ways which is scary because while we can laugh a little bit that is a fucked up thing it is a fucked up thing to do especially knowing that the dog is mean well that's the thing i don't all i'm hearing is that the dog was mean it's like i don't know what that means yeah well it's not only mean to like the friend it's mean to the dog you should put
the dog in that position that's the thing because i mean again things were different in the 1940s now you do that that dog so much as touches that person you're gonna have to put that dog down and that's your fault yeah exactly and And that's fucked up because that dog's just doing what they think is going to make you happy.
Exactly. And that's all dogs want to do.
Exactly. But the cruel and sadistic stuff is like a different, because again, we're talking about like roast your friends, roast the people you like.
Yeah. Like these two silly things.
Yeah. Cruel and sadistic is like a totally different thing.
Yeah, don't do that.
Yeah. And again, people said that he was like mean to other animals and stuff like that.
As soon as you said that, I got a red flag.
That's more like what we're talking about.
but unfortunately, like I said, there's limited information, so we don't have specific examples.
Of what those cruel and sadistic things are.
But we know that they happened, or people said they did at least. But there was at least one person in Ronald's life who he really truly bonded with and somebody who he was willing to let his guard down around, and it was his father's sister, Matilda, who was his Aunt Tilly, as he called her.
Oh, that's really cute.
I know, they had a really cute relationship, I think.
In the stories, the documentaries, and the movies that have been made since the original event, there's always a great deal made about aunt tilly and especially her role as the person who introduced ronald to the occult but damn aunt tilly she might have but again there's a lot more fiction surrounding aspects of the story than facts so we don't know but what is true is that aunt tilly lived in saint louis and she visited her brother and his family a lot and during her visit she always made time for ronald they really like to hang out together that's some good aunt shit it is hey there my weird
weirdos i want to take a minute to recommend another podcast called who took misty copsey in september of 1992 14 year old misty copsey leaves the washington state fair with her best friend and is never seen again her body is never found at the time western washington is home to prolific serial killers like the green river killer which leads to different theories on who's responsible for what happened to misty over the course of eight episodes host and cold case investigator sarah kalin speaks with misty's friends and family looks at police records and different anonymous tips to try to figure
out if misty's disappearance is the work of a serial killer or someone who knew her no suspects are ruled out.
After 33 years, Sarah Kalin hopes to answer the question, who took Misty?
You guys are going to love this.
If you listen to Morbid, we know that you love a cold case, and we always tell you, a cold case is never cold.
So definitely give this a listen.
Definitely look into the case.
Listen to Who Took Misty Copsy wherever you get your podcasts.
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Author Thomas Allen wrote, Aunt Tilly seems to have treated Ronald more like a special friend than as a nephew.
That reads a little creepy.
I just want to be clear, it's not creepy.
It's not creepy. It was just a cute relationship.
It's like she paid, she might have seen too that he was a little off.
Off, yeah. And he was a little socially strange and a little bit of a loner, And so she was like I'm going to just you know Yeah To make sure that I pay attention to him And I think she even saw that her brother probably wasn't super present Yeah In her nephew's life And like he was struggling at school The adults around him didn't pay a lot of attention to him Other than his mom like smothering him Yeah Which is not the attention that you want No So she was like let me just like be a normal person in your life Yeah But I feel like you're her special friend Oh 100 % That automatically reads creepy
Yeah Like we're in a place now in the world where special friend with an adult is No bueno Yeah yeah so i just wanted to be you know thank you for clearing up on tilly's name yeah i had to that's my girl yeah so given his inability to form bonds with children his own age and the fact that he you know treated his peers pretty shittily most of ronald's effect most of ronald's time was spent with the adults in his life and like i was just saying most of them typically just ignored him or treated him like a nuisance so in that case it makes sense why he was drawn so much to somebody like his aunt
tilly yeah she was said to be outgoing outspoken and pretty eccentric in In an era where most people were conservative and respectable and, you know, buttoned up.
So she probably sees a little bit of something in him, you know what I mean?
Yeah. Like, she's a little different.
Yeah. She's like, I think you just need to be, like, steered in the right direction.
Yeah, we gotta celebrate our differences.
Yeah. So like Ronald's mother and grandmother, Tilly was also interested in spiritualism.
And she introduced Ronald to the Ouija board, which they used together to try to contact the spirit world.
I'm kind of obsessed with all of this.
I'm also pretty obsessed with all of this.
Like, I do also love that the mom and grandmother are super into spiritualism in the Ouija board. I'm like, wow.
It's funny, too, because the mom was, like, super religious, but she also had an interest in that side of things.
Yeah, that's very interesting.
Yeah. Nobody really knows how much Ronald believed in his aunt's ability to talk to the dead through the Ouija board, or if he really bought into any of the beliefs.
But according to Thomas Allen, his interest in the board was at least strong enough for him to engage with it, even when Tilly wasn't visiting.
So, he was using that Ouija board. So, he was into it.
And it wasn't just the spirit board that Tilly believed in.
She was also a firm believer in spirit wrapping, which is the belief that spirits can communicate with the living by knocking on walls, floors, any hard surface.
Some people think it's debunked.
I don't. I feel like it's a hard one to debunk.
Like, fully. Yeah. I agree.
You know? We've heard weird tapping in this room before.
We have. And we've never found the source.
Like, you can debunk certain instances of it.
Yes. For sure. But not overall.
a blanket debunkment doesn't feel right here thank you you're welcome so considering everything that was going on it would definitely be fair to say that ronald was struggling emotionally before his possession and that he didn't have a lot of relationships where he felt supported yeah and throughout a lot of the 20th century expectations of gender were rigid when it came to boys and young men and especially boys and young men asking for help when it comes to like emotional problems that would have been super unusual and that's why they just acted out Exactly.
That's exactly my point here.
So let's kind of get into it now.
As far as anybody can tell, Ronald Hunkler's paranormal experience began in early January 1949.
About five months into his eighth grade year, his behavior was starting to become a problem at school and his bullying behavior wasn't giving him any friends.
And things finally came to a head that winter when one day, just in the middle of class, a supposedly paranormal experience made him the the center of everybody's attention.
His friend John remembered he was sitting in a chair and it was one of those deals with one arm attached and it looked like he was shaking the desk.
The desk was shaking and vibrating extremely fast and I remember the teacher yelling at him to stop it and I remember he kind of yelled I'm not doing it and they took him out of class and that was the last I ever saw of him at school.
Holy shit. Yeah. Now what?
Yeah. In later tellings of the the story, particularly the version told in Thomas Allen's book, Possession, the event in the classroom was a genuine poltergeist phenomenon where the desk was moving free of human hands like he wasn't doing it at all.
But John, who was in that class, said, nah, the desk certainly did not move around the room like that book said.
It was just shaking.
All right. I mean, either way.
Yeah. Two versions of that story.
Regardless of what was causing the commotion, the disruption with the desk was the the last straw for the teachers and the administrators at the high school and Ronald was asked to not return.
So there was definitely stuff leading up to this.
There had to be a lot of shit leading up to this.
I think probably the bullying was a bigger thing.
That's a big deal. He definitely sounds like he was disruptive a lot.
Yeah, if you're being a bully to everyone and treating everyone like shit.
Sorry, I just almost yawned while I was saying that.
Not because this is boring, just because it's tired.
tired uh but i said it's tired it's tired it's tired over there this this is tired but yeah like if you're bullying people being disruptive you're being like sadistic to people like the fact that they use the word sadistic quite often means he's doing some shit and also it was a lot easier to throw people out of school it's true and it's like if they're telling him to stop and he's like i'm not doing it and he just keeps doing what do you get on my class like Like, of course.
But what sucks is that if it like was legitimate.
Then he just got kicked out because of a ghost. Yeah, like that's kind of bullshit, you know?
Yeah. Thanks a lot, Spirit.
Thanks a lot, Spirit.
Well, interestingly, when the incident was reported to the priest months later, it was reported that Ronald, quote, did not continue his attendance out of embarrassment.
So there's two stories there.
Now, the next major event came a few days later on January 15th.
Ronald and his grandmother were at home in his grandmother's room and they started hearing a dripping noise.
followed by scratching sounds coming from within the walls and the ceiling.
I'd be like, fuck, we have mice.
Until, without warning, a framed picture of Jesus Christ began shaking, quote, The way you said it.
I had to say it. A framed picture of Jesus Christ. That's a big deal.
Jesus Christ himself.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesua Christ. decreased they've started shaking quote as if the wall back of it had been bumped so i'm just picturing i can't help it go maybe this is why you're asleep i haven't had a lot of sleep i'm picturing a daemon in the wall saying and i'm picturing him just booty bump in the wall like he knows jesus christ is in the photo boom yeah jesus christ is in that photo like he knows yeah like he's just like dancing to his own beat behind the wall and he's just booty bumping the wall every now and then i like the image that conjures big booty demon big booty demon let
away shake it a bodacious demon in the wall it's gonna be like booty bumping mario's nickname for brie on tiktok or for brinn on tiktok yes it's so true well that happened big booty demon or mice knocking pictures of big booty mice of jesus christ off the wall i don't know why when you say it it's like so intense because i did it on purpose because it's so important it is so in the week or so following the scratching and the dripping sounds the inexplicable noises noises became a nightly event in the hunkler house usually from like 7 p .m to midnight yeah that's when he's getting his ray bomb yeah
that first you pre -game then you rage that he's really into it yeah he's he's he starts like a little bit slowly yeah he takes a couple shots at the pre -game but once he gets that feeling it's it's over it's over the night's going on and that's it he says let's go girls he says let's go hunkler fam now it's unclear what type of activity was experienced during these events for the humans but most accounts mentioned ronald's reports of hearing squeaking shoes on his bed for six nights in a row whoa so now the demon has new sneakers that he's breaking in on ronald's bed some new nike high tops now
it's worth noting that none of the accounts mention which of the family members heard these sounds but after about a week of ronald's complaints the sounds did finally become audible to the other members of the family aside from just ronald but the noise was quote only heard at night when the boy went to bed yeah because that's when you go that's when you go crazy yeah that's your time i mean if a demon is gonna start partying it's definitely gonna be when the youngest kid goes to bed of course duh yeah that's how demon tree works absolutely it does read the handbook read a book exactly thank
you by the end of the week though ronald's mother and grandmother had accepted ronald's claims as fact and they too started having paranormal experiences good for them and good for them that was a crazy reaction let's go girls he said hell yeah nana in one instance both women were laying down on ronald's bed and they quote heard something coming toward them similar to the rhythm of marching feet in the beat of drums this is all adding up and that seemed to travel the length of the mattress and back again yes conga line all i can think of is the like the new gaga song abracadabra and it's like
i love it and he's just like bogey oh my god the demon yes i love it bogeying and throwing pictures of jesus christ now the next significant event came about a week later on january 26 36 when aunt tilly died no until he died from complications of multiple sclerosis at age 54 oh she's young i know oh an ms that's tough yeah that's awful plant tilly i know now given the special relationship that ronald had with his aunt tilly's death had to have been a devastating event for not him of course and the entire family oh hell yeah now believing that tilly's death might have had something to do with the events
happening in the house ronald's mother held a seance with the Ouija board a few nights later in an attempt to contact Tilly's spirit.
I got that. That sounds awesome.
I'm obsessed. Like that's awesome.
Yeah. She's just like, let's seance about it.
I think it's rad. What a cool mom.
And I think the grandma probably went too.
Cause she was into spiritualistic shit.
I would have loved to grow up in this house.
Yeah. That's pretty cool.
Now, according to her testimony provided to father Raymond Bishop, Odell called out to the spirit and asked if you are aunt Tilly knock three times.
supposedly ronald's grandmother said she could feel waves of air rushing over her face and head and then all three participants heard a faint knock three times and odell called out if you are tilly tell me positively by knocking four times at which point she heard four distinct knocks followed by a quote claw scratching on ronald's mat on roland's mattress ronald's mattress you can keep that all in because he has 47 names that's scary i don't like the claw well the other thing is you could ask a spirit who they are and you could say are you aunt tilly and they could say yeah bitch yeah of course
i am yeah it me that's the thing like you think a demon's gonna be like oh shit no caught me that's not my name it's me beelzebub i can only answer to my name right no they lie like you're just giving him a cloak i don't think that he's like totally opposed to lying no definitely not yeah so i don't think it's on tilly i just wanted to make that clear but after the seance the story starts to get a little hazy and a little inconsistent according to marco psaznik odell began quote alternating her beliefs that the problems with her son either were the work of the devil or their departed relative
she like couldn't make her mind up uh both of those sound like uh bad choices a stretch yeah so basically she thought that either the house was being haunted by the spirit of on tilly or that some some sort of demonic entity had attached itself to ronald and he was now harassing the family but odell couldn't quite settle on which of the two she believed the devil i mean there's a lot going on so it's either the devil or aunt tilly or aunt tilly and now we need jesus christ you need jesus christ to intervene you need your lord yeah savior now whatever the case this is the point where according
to skeptic joe nickel quote the case which began as a seeming poltergeist outbreak soon advanced to one of alleged spirit communication to one of supposed diabolic possession.
Oh. Which I love. I am obsessed with the word diabolical.
Yeah. I describe many things as diabolical.
Same. And now my kids have started to call things diabolical.
I haven't heard that yet and I can't wait for the moment that I do.
You were playing Mario Kart last night and one of them said that Daisy is diabolical.
Daisy is diabolical.
I love when they use things perfect.
and i was like agreed is she like the village girl uh no she's the redhead princess oh fuck daisy but they saw her a statue of her dancing with mario and they were very angry for princess peach oh i don't like princess peach either yeah i don't mind her she makes me really mad at mario party i just wanted to say about time to put that out uh the village girl yeah the villagers are wild i don't like them no anyway back to the story yeah in the early days of the phenomenon on the hunklers reported experiences that would become common in later claims of poltergeist activity including an instance
where a parent in orange quote flew across the room where ronald was standing eat your fruit eat your fruit he said have a smoothie food and beverages were knocked from tables and counters other objects seemed to fly off the shelves and even a bible was hurled from a shelf and fell right at ronald's feet read the bible read it and weep not willing Daring to rule out the possibility that her son was possessed, of course, Odell reached out to Reverend Luther Schultz, the minister at the family's Lutheran church. She detailed what had been happening in the home and explained that she was very worried
that Ronald was, quote, the victim of an evil ghost and wondered if it could be Aunt Tilly.
An evil ghost? I'm like, that's not fair.
Just because you don't like your sister -in -law doesn't make her evil.
No, and it's, I don't know.
Evil ghosts don't feel real.
Like a thing. Yeah, no, it's either a demon or nothing.
ghost yeah or just a regular ghost it's a ghost yeah agreed well in order to help guide the family reverend shulls determined he needed to see the phenomenon for himself and so he arranged for ronald to spend the night at his home don't love that ronald arrived at the parsonage a little after 9 30 p .m excuse me a little before 9 30 p .m on the evening of february 17th and he stayed until a little after 9 a .m the next morning according to the reverend that evening he He heard scratching noises at various points throughout the night and witnessed, quote, bed vibrations, a chair in which Roland Ronald
sat tipping over, and the movement of a pallet of blankets.
It's the Roland Ronald.
That's what it is. And the movement of a pallet of blankets upon which Roland sat. A pallet of blankets?
Is he like Princess and the Pea?
Yes. To put him on a bunch of blankets?
Yes, obviously. okay okay reverend sitting there and it moved demonic devil oh all right he's just staying at your house well that all happens yeah i don't like that well a little over a week after ronald spent the night at the reverend's home the phenomenon in the hunkler house escalated and became more physical beginning on the night of february 26th and occurring four nights in a row he complained to his parents that something had attacked him in the night and showed them scratch scratch marks all over his body that seem to have been made by claws dang like the noises and the other various
phenomena father bishop's diary indicates that the only other person to have seen the marks on ronald's body at the time were his mother okay but like they're there yeah so for more than a month the hunkler family had been experiencing this crazy shit in their home you know it wasn't exactly dangerous but it was disruptive especially for 13 year old ronald at the time damn who you know was the focus of the activity that's very um unfortunately ask so it's very puberty s but there are studies that yeah that happens i know we've seen it it's in different cases remember that one that we did a couple
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But it is interesting that poltergeist activity can kind of, you know, kick it up a notch. Link up to that.
Well, and, you know, it's causing a lot of issues for him.
He got kicked out of school.
It removed a lot of, I mean, he didn't have, like, a lot of social support, but what social support he did have at school was now gone yeah outside of the home but fortunately odell hunkler did get the assistance that she was hoping for from the church but that assistance added even more people to the story whose version of events would further complicate an already convoluted story love that making it even more difficult to tell fact from fiction let's go which to some people is like womp womp to me that's like awesome no add more shit to this give me more give me more crazy shit so the events
that comprise the first month of ronald's supernatural experience were based a lot on odell and ronald's reports to father bishop with some additional statements from one or two other witnesses they were pretty benign to a point until the introduction of those claw marks on ronald's body that obviously indicated that the problem was getting a lot worse and for odell who had previously been unsure about the origin of her son's problem it was now very it's very clear that he was the victim of an evil entity an evil demon an evil onion taken back now in late february odell consulted with father albert
hughes the priest at saint james catholic church in nearby mount rainer a different priest now so father albert hughes explained that he knew very little about demonic possession and even less about exorcism but he suggested that the family used blessed candles holy water and prayer to bless the home that sounds nice it does i don't know why i went southern but i just wanted to with this kind of stuff you just do in the days that followed odell did as hugh suggested she sprinkled holy water around the house she prayed constantly but very little seemed to change at one point she actually even tried
to baptize ronald placing candles around his bed and saying prayers and according to the diary account the flames on on the candles around the bed quote all began moving back and forth in unison and ronald he responded with rage oh that's upsetting because when you first said that all i can think of is the flames just being like all just dancing together and abracadabra still playing it's always abracadabra but then roland is roland ronald is like he's pissed that's that's upsetting that actually hurt i'm gonna take a sip my kids actually love the new lady gaga song as they they should yeah i
love that for them now father bishop's diary indicates that this behavior resulted in ronald actually being admitted for a three -day stay at university hospital though there aren't really additional details about that hospitalization or the outcome they said you got ghosts in your blood but like that's him like whatever he did like in response to being baptized landed him a three -day hospital stint sounds intense super duper sounds like it It was more than just being like rawr.
Yes. Yeah. But that's all I thought that I could do.
I don't want to reenact anything and end up in the hospital myself.
And we've got, you know, we've got flames in here.
Yeah, and I have. We don't need to be lighting shit on fire.
I have a job to do.
Yeah. So after Ronald's discharge from the hospital, the family took a trip to visit relatives in Missouri, where, according to Bishop, other members of the family also witnessed the markings on Ronald's skin.
It's here that Father Raymond Bishop becomes involved for the first time, really.
he was a member of the clergy at saint louis university saint louis saint louis and the director of the school's department of education in later years most of the information that informed both the legends about ronald's story and actually the story of the exorcist would come from this man's diary i love that it's awesome something about that is so spooky and cool it's like heavy metal yeah it really is like i did a rock on she did she was like heavy metal heavy metal just to all of you not regular metal no heavy that's why the heavy variety that's why i like really thrust my hand when i did
it because if i if it was just metal i'd be like metal like just a little uh but it's heavy metal heavy metal so you have to thrust your hand thank you now anyways according to thomas alland one of roland's ronald's extended family members referred to as elizabeth was a student at st louis university and after becoming concerned about ronald's condition she approached Raymond Bishop for advice.
Like Albert Hughes the other father and virtually all clergy at the time Bishop knew very little about possession or the right of exorcism himself but he still agreed to meet with the family to see what he could do to help.
He lives to serve. Yeah I mean go read up on exorcisms. That's pretty much what he did.
That's what you can do.
He acknowledged that before he gave the family his thoughts on the situation he needed time to quote think about what possession was and how it could be proved.
I love that. He's kind of of like approaching it scientifically he is because he's like i need to think on this i gotta let me give me some time to think let me just quickly come up with a definition of possession first and then i will discover how to fix it i'll work on it i like that so father bishop met with the hungler family for the first time on march 9th where he claimed to have witnessed the scratching on ronald's body and actually saw the boy's mattress move at the time he kept his suspicions of any danger to himself but later he would admit that he quote had sensed from the beginning
that Robbie was threatened with possession he's like I wasn't gonna tell these people but I thought shit was gonna go down he said I had an inkling I wasn't gonna give them a heads up but what am I to do yeah so at the time he told the Hunklers that he needed to consult with some other Jesuit priests and that he would get back to them ASAP yeah hopefully Robbie doesn't get like super duper possessed in the meantime yeah you just kind of because right now it's just like a little threat of it like it was like on the precipice of possession yeah you know it wasn't quite there possession is in the air
yes you know yes i feel like that might be like a good name for a movie possession in the air yeah i like it i like that maybe a band name we'll workshop we're possession in the air i kind of like that yeah hello wisconsin so it's not completely clear who bishop spoke with and what he told them at all um priests unclear things but as marco upsasnik points out this vagueness and ambiguity would become one of the hallmarks of father Other bishops reporting, which is a little problematic when you consider the fact that the bulk of the information about the exorcism did come from his reports.
Yeah. Problematic and fun.
Pretty awesome. Obscastic wrote, Bishop does not always make it clear who actually witnessed the events being described.
He often fails to mention when the priests are in the room, when they're absent, and when the information comes secondhand from the boy's mother.
The possibility of fraudulent activity is neither considered nor investigated.
What he needed was a good editor.
you know just an editor to be like you're not really giving us enough uh texture in these descriptions can you can you kind of like tell who else is in the room that's the thing it's like like when they go back on bravo shows and they like the editors give you the time stamps of the events that happened important he needed something like that yeah so regardless of how things played out behind the scenes though two days later on march 11th bishop father bishop returned to the family this time in the company of another key witness in this story father william in bodernd so many fathers lots of fathers
daddies everywhere yeah around that's inappropriate that was horrifying leaving it around 11 p .m at night ronald went to bed at which p .m at night i don't know i just feel silly 11 p .m at night at night that's actually one of my biggest i know it is maybe i'm almost possessed maybe around 11 p .m in the evening ronald went to bed at which point the three men gathered around his bedside and bowdern you know they had to wait until he was sleeping bowdern read the novena which is the catholic devotional prayer it also could be the novena i didn't look it up and reportedly blessed the boy with a quote
piece of bone from the forearm of saint francis xavier and fixed a relic encrusted crucifix under the boy's pillow before leaving the room this is the most metal shit i've ever heard why do you have a bone from the forearm arm of saint francis xavier did he say that that's okay for you to have i don't know about that he's not here to say that's why they're assuming he's fine with it you know what they say about assuming you know what though so far he hasn't made a fuss maybe this is his fuss maybe this right here is his fuss this is how he fusses the fact that they just blessed they they quote
-unquote blessed him with a piece of bone from the forearm of Mr. St. Francis Xavier.
I don't know. And put a relic -encrusted crucifix under his pillow?
Yeah. You can't fucking make this up.
No, you literally can't.
This is real. Like, you can't make that up.
Well, a short time later, while the priests were sitting in the living room with the family, they heard a loud crash come from Ronald's room, Ronald Rowland's room, and ran in to see what what happened in the bedroom they found that a large bookcase had slid across the room a bench had been flipped over and the crucifix that father baudern had put under the pillow appeared to be moved to the edge of the bed oh baudern also claimed that he witnessed the bed shaking when they entered the room and it only came to a stop when odell shouted aunt tilly stop here's my thought though i think there's two
things at play here i think there's a daemon who's trying who's Like pushing over bookshelves and shit And trying to pull that relic out I think Aunt Tilly's shaking the bed to wake him up To help him?
So that's my view of this I think Aunt Tilly is trying to let him know that shit's afoot I like to believe that Aunt Tilly just passed on Yeah if they're shaking the bed And she yells Aunt Tilly stop And the bed shaking stops She was trying to wake him up I agree She was the one doing it I like it Yeah Well the scene witnessed in Ronald's bedroom that night it was enough to convince the priest that something had in fact possessed the boy after a few nights spent weighing their options the two men took their concerns to archbishop joseph ritter and not to be confused with john ritter no this is joseph
ritter i know r .i .p and on march 16th bowdern was given permission to perform the rite of exorcism he got permission from the archdiocese which usually doesn't happen now we're all archdiocese is pretty stingy with their permission giving they don't just hand it out interesting that they they don't just hand it out, but they gave it to a man who like wasn't super familiar with exorcisms. Yeah.
They were like, you'll figure it out.
They were confident in his abilities.
Yeah. He, I mean, he said he was coming up with a definition.
So it seems as though he did.
That night, Bishop and Bowdern returned to the house, this time in the company of Bowdern's assistant, Father Walter Halloran, who becomes a bigger player later on, and started what would ultimately be an almost month long process of attempting to exorcise whatever evil entity had possessed Ronald Hunkler.
Now if you've ever seen an exorcism.
Yeah. Picture that happening for a month.
No. That's insane. I don't have the stamina.
A lot of times they last like a couple hours or like a couple days and even that is horrifying.
A month. A month. Almost a month.
Yeah. For reasons that remain unclear throughout the process Ronald would be moved back and forth multiple times between his aunt's home in a local rectory and um alexian brothers hospital in st louis huh so he was like hospitalized somebody was doing this now after introducing the family to father holler halloran father bodern wasted no time getting to work you cannot waste time when you're exercising no it's time yeah on the treadmill or in a religious way yeah so in ronald roland's bedroom bow down started talking with ronald roland to quote examine his conscious and make an act of contrition before
starting the rite. Then joined by the two other priests and several family members the group gathered around Ronald's bed and started praying.
According to father as they prayed the mattress began to lift slightly off the bed and then lower back down but he insisted that the family ignore the theatrics and continue praying.
Ain't no way I could ignore those theatrics.
I could not pray through that.
No way. No. For hours the three priests recited the rite in Latin while the family continued their prayer and finally the first cycle of the right had ended and father bowdoin concluded by shouting precipio tb which is i love it i don't know if i said it really well but i did my best priest yelling in latin is one of the scariest things ever yeah i don't even like like you really shouldn't read the latin i should not read the latin you see what i did i set that up but when he yelled that ronald screamed in what sounded like terrible pain oh no and his father bowdoin was concerned as far as he
was concerned Ronald's scream was evidence that he was indeed possessed and that the rite was actually working Hell yeah So the priest continued aggressively reciting that rite of exorcism as Ronald just writhed around uncomfortably on the bed In his wild thrashing he quickly kicked the blankets away uncovering his body and with his pajama top unbuttoned the participants in the room watched as three red long welts appeared on his chest as if something was attempting to cut its way out of him from the inside Damn Damn.
Yeah. Later, Father Bishop would describe the welts as, quote, marks raised up above the surface of the skin, similar to an engraving.
Ooh. And Father Bonner, he paid no attention to the welts.
He just carried on with his rite.
Oh, yeah. As more and more welts started appearing on Ronald's body.
The more they recited, the more Ronald appeared to be in, like, immense pain.
And soon the welts and scratches started producing faint lines of blood all over Ronald's legs, his stomach, and his back.
Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah.
The longer the ritual dragged on, the more and more pain Ronald seemed to experience.
At one point, one of the relatives in the room claimed that they saw the image of the devil.
The devil. The devil himself?
appear on Ronald's thigh.
They saw it. In his journal, Bishop wrote, the arms were held above his head and seemed to be webbed, giving the hideous appearance of a bat.
Okay. At other times in the evening.
Bats are awesome. He's not saying they're not.
The hideous appearance?
Appearance? Well, he actually is kind of saying that.
It is rude. You should think about his words.
Yeah. At other times in the evening, though, participants reported seeing words appear in the scratches on Ronald's body.
People saw the words hell, go, and a large X on his thigh.
And that was before the days of Twitter turning to X.
Oh, shit. So I don't know what that meant exactly.
Now, after hours of the Latin ritual, the group finally broke for the night because everybody was really tired.
Yeah. And Ronald appeared to fall into a deep sleep.
But through the night, while still conscious, he would periodically slam his fists into the headboard above him or into his pillow.
And the next morning when Father Bodurn asked what he was dreaming about, Ronald said he had been fighting a huge red devil.
It felt slimy and was extremely powerful.
And Dave said, that sounds like puberty.
He said, how else would you describe puberty if not slimy and extremely powerful?
And I said, Dave, that's a great point.
I said, I don't have an argument for you, sir.
In the days and weeks that followed, both the exorcism and Ronald's behavior grew more and more aggressive and offensive.
In one diary entry, Father Bowdern reports, From 12 midnight on, it was necessary to hold R during his fights with the spirit.
Two men were necessary to pin him down on the bed.
R shouted threats of violence at them, but vulgar language was not used.
Oh, that's good. R spit at his opponents many times.
He used a strong arm whenever he could free himself, and his blows were beyond the ordinary strength of a boy.
Like, they were like, he was violent, but he was never vulgar.
He was never vulgar.
It's important to know.
It's important to know.
But he was also swole.
He was packing a punch. Swole beyond his years.
Yeah, exactly. Now, at times, Ronald would also speak in a, quote, diabolical high -pitched voice.
I love it. What is a diabolical high -pitched voice?
Can you try it? Can you please try it?
So, like, we're talking like a demon high voice.
Diabolical high -pitched.
high -pitched it's gotta be like do it i'm trying to like think she's getting ready she did something with her teeth because you have to like get in a snarly way i think it's gotta be like that kinda i don't like it you gotta like show teeth when you do it like he doesn't like it either mikey shook his head i mean it's diabolical i'm just picturing like i'll get to my pretty that's diabolical and high -pitched yeah you know thanks i don't know we weren't there We weren't there.
We weren't there. And unfortunately, they don't have voice notes from back then.
They don't, unfortunately.
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He also was said to be swinging his fists at the priest and other adults in the room.
he also supposedly broke father halloran's nose fuck i know and then at other times he would sit up normally in bed and just sing sweetly oh that's nice and la -di -da -do la -di -da -di he would sit up he'd just go abracadabra oh that's great he would also sad cry off and on oh but then immediately his attitude would change and he'd start swearing he didn't eventually start swearing and being vulgar and he would also make masturbation gestures in order to embarrass the other people in the room keep it together that's diabolical it truly is other times he would spout latin words and phrases to the surprise
of his parents who swore that ronald did not know latin and had never been exposed to that language before i know one thing about my kid it's that he doesn't know latin that's the thing at times though he was said to be more lucid and appeared to be on the mend end so his parents started wondering maybe if it was time to return to maryland and sent him back to school yeah that sounds like a great idea because no but there were like little like week long periods where he would be completely fine yeah so they'd be like all right like you're 13 we got to give you to school you gotta learn and shit
this will just be a silly time we think about later where you were possessed for a little while honestly what's funny is like that's ultimately what ends up happening this man lives a long life funny story yeah that we look back on but But unfortunately, and this is so crazy, as soon as Ronald caught on to their conversations, he would become possessed again.
Whoa. In one instance, when the subject of his returning to school came up, he started thrashing around on the bed and tore open his pajama top.
And it revealed that the words no school were scratched on his chest. This demon does not fuck with the heavy learning.
He said schools out forever.
I wish it said that instead.
that song wasn't a thing yet i don't think no so as the days wore on ronald became more abusive to anyone and everyone who entered the room he would swear at them he would attempt and sometimes succeed to make himself vomit oh that would piss me off be pissed on himself and otherwise be assaultive yeah in one instance he managed to break one of the bed springs from the mattress and jam it into father bout arms about earns arm oh uh drawing blood obviously another time when and the family traveled back to Cottage City for a visit, accompanied by Father Bowdern.
Ronald became physically violent on the train.
He was said to have punched Bowdern in the testicles and screamed, that's a nutcracker for you, isn't it?
Which is low -key just teenage boy shit.
That is low -key just teenage boy shit.
I'm like, babe, he wasn't possessed.
Like, babe, that's just a 13 -year -old boy.
he just doesn't have another 13 year old boy to do it to so he does it to the priest that's been sitting by his bed every night thinking of him punching a priest in the palms and saying that's a nutcracker for you isn't it is dying isn't it I love I love that part of it that's a nutcracker for you isn't it father can you confirm that's a nutcracker father can you confirm that i just cracked your nuts these nuts it is literally if this kid had friends if he hadn't been pulled out of school and all that shit oh he was nutcracker and people when he was in school everybody's 13 years old and he'd
be doing it and being like that's a nutcracker for you huh and then he was doing that that's why he got kicked out of school but instead he's got like an older priest that hangs out all the time that's his friend he's like of course isn't it isn't it so funny oh damn imagine being on that train i would i would have taken on my phone a little bit 1943 wouldn't have stopped me Getting that for TikTok.
Well for some reason after all that craziness on April 4th the hunkers decided it was time to go back to Maryland so that Edwin could go to work and Ronald Rowland could go back to school and Nutcracker someone else.
Then after five days in Maryland Ronald started acting out again so he got sent back to Missouri and admitted to a hospital where he was observed for psychiatric symptoms. Feeling like they'd left too soon, Edwin and Odell also returned to Missouri to support their son.
Those are good parents right there.
The exorcism finally came to an end on the evening of April 18th.
The priest had spent most of the afternoon and evening reciting the Rite of Exorcism over the boy, who now was draped in several religious medals and holding a crucifix in his hand.
My God. The imagery.
Yeah, it constructs a visual.
Yeah. Throughout the day, his demeanor had swung back and forth from calm and pleasant to mean and violent.
But by the evening, he did seem to have calmed down.
And his father, Baudern, recited the Latin phrases over the bed, demanding to know the identity of the demon that possessed the boy.
Ronald Rowland's demeanor changed again, and he started thrashing about the bed, claiming he was a fallen angel.
Oh, like the damn, like sight, like Lucifer Morningstar.
Yeah. Finally, around 11 p .m., a, quote, new masculine voice emerged from Ronald.
who said satan satan i am saint michael i command you satan and the other evil spirits to leave this body in the name of dominus immediately now now now that's my best masculine that shit broke satan satan satan in the name of Dominess immediately immediately all Junior Girls report to the gymnasium immediately immediately oh my god I haven't laughed this hard in years oh shit I love a paranormal statue too they're so good they're so fun well after that male voice emerged that was a clip by the way oh man it was it was audio they got it from 1940 yeah whatever uh yeah whatever that was funny after that ronald
roland's body spasmed one final time he fell backward on the bed and then in his normal 13 year old voice he said he is gone he said cool he peaced out y 'all y 'all he left he said peace up a town so later the ultimate irish goodbye bye he didn't feel like staying any longer he didn't say bye but he just left so later ronald would tell father bodern in that final moment of possession he had a vision of saint michael holding a flaming sword heavy metal the hunkler family stayed in missouri with the family for 12 more days just to be sure that yeah satan was actually gone before finally returning
home to maryland during this time father checked in with them regularly but as far as anybody could tell the possessing demon had left ronald's body for good for him by all accounts the phenomenon never occurred again once the hunklers went back to cottage uh city ronald was enrolled at gorgonzola high school and he went on to college where he studied chemical engineering and went on to work is a scientist for NASA.
Okay, Ronald. Period.
Okay. The motherfucker who inspired the story of the exorcist became a scientist for NASA.
That blew my mind. That's the funnest fact.
That is the funnest fact.
The funnest of all facts.
The funnest fact. Thank you for agreeing.
That's really cool.
In a letter dated August 19th, 1951, Father Bishop wrote of his visit to the Hunkler's house.
He said R, now 16, is a fine young man.
His father and mother also became Catholic, having received their first Holy Communion on Christmas Day, 1950.
Damn. Praise be. I mean, I guess if anything's going to turn you Catholic.
It's an exorcism. That's going to do it.
Well, the diary of the account written by Father Bishop, like I said, became something of a legend at Georgetown University, though few have actually seen it.
I want to see it. Well, few have, so good luck.
No one seems to be able to settle on how long the document actually is.
Some people say it's 16 pages and others say 26.
OK. But presumably, this is how it came to the attention of the Washington Post and other Washington area papers in late 1949, where it gained some brief traction before mostly fading into obscurity, since none of the reporters seemed to be able to track down any of the participants to verify any kind of story.
Other sources allege that Father Luther Miles, the family's local priest, was the source to leak to the press.
And that's when the story like really came out.
while some of the press reports minimize the supposed demonic possession which is fucking lame others chose to play it up or just tell it as it was for all it was worth citing the various ungodly messages that appeared on ronald's body like no school like no school that's ungodly and the various examples of unknown telekinetic force like when the picture of jesus christ jesus christ was booty bumped off the wall exactly yeah if it wasn't for william peter blatty's 1971 novel in the movie that followed two years later.
It's pretty likely that nobody actually would have ever heard of Roland Doe or Ronald Tankler.
It's true. But the timing was just right.
Americans were taking a particular interest in the occult at the time, so the story was thrust back into the spotlight, and it kind of took on a life of its own.
Now, it's important to be clear that even Blatty's novel was heavily influenced by Ronald's story, even though it was.
It's actually just one one of several influential stories and events that also included the Lodun possessions and the Louvier's possession.
Both were 17th century witch trials that I think you would probably be pretty interested in covering.
So write that down, Biatch. I'm writing it down right now.
And there were different archaeological excavations that occurred throughout the early to mid -19th century across Africa and the Middle East that also inspired his story.
So with so many different versions of the story floating around in the cultural zeitgeist, the question remains what exactly did happen to ronald hunkler in 1949 was he possessed by a demonic presence or was there something even more complicated going on who knows now at this point it's probably impossible to say with certainty what exactly happened to ronald but if there was an authority on the subject it would probably be investigative journalist mark up sasnick more than just the individual responsible for discovering roland doe's real identity he also Also devoted a ton of time to the story,
he conducted interviews with more than a hundred people who actually knew the Hunkler family personally and the other figures in the story, all in an attempt to verify the details of what has become one of America's most iconic scary stories.
And his interviews with Ronald's childhood friends and peers revealed that far from being an ordinary shy boy, Ronald Hunkler was a very lonely, somewhat troubled kid who was struggling.
Yeah. His father never actually believed that his son was possessed, reportedly was emotionally unavailable.
So he really comes up in the story at all.
And the women in his life, on the other hand, were hugely influential, almost to his detriment, especially like his mom, I think, using their love of spiritualism as maybe the only means of bonding with him.
And when it came to children his own age, it seems like his behavior and, you know, flaws kept them at an arm's length.
But Obsaznik didn't just speak to Ronald's friends and family.
He also tracked down anybody who was directly involved with the case or familiar enough with those who were.
And of the three priests at the center of the exorcism story, only Father Halloran was alive when Obsaznik began his investigation.
investigation. At the time, Halloran actually reluctantly agreed to an interview, but he ended up revealing a lot about the case and its legacy.
When asked whether or not he would go on record as saying he believed that Ronald was truly possessed, he declined.
He said, no, I can't go on record. I never made an absolute statement about these things because I didn't feel I was qualified.
I hadn't studied the phenomena and that sort of thing.
According to him, Ronald never spoke in a voice other than his own oh he never demonstrated supernatural strength or abilities oh and when asked about ronald's supposed extraordinary strength halloran said i don't know i never even thought very much about it it certainly wasn't mike tyson hitting me in the nose or something like that and as for ronald speaking latin a language that he supposedly didn't know and had only occasionally heard father clarified i think he mimicked us oh so he's a non -believer okay you know i mean all valid all valid but the rest of his interview with father halloran unfolded
in a similar thread he recall ronald spitting and swearing a lot he didn't have any recollection of ronald vomiting or urinating oh and as far as the multiple reports of the bed moving he acknowledged that they did but he said it was on rollers like any bed at the time so there was really no way of knowing if it was moving like how from him moving or if it was okay yeah obsaznik's investigation obviously provides a lot of clarifying information around what did and didn't happen during the exorcism of ronald hunkler but it also provides some insight as to why there are so many gaps in the story
and how it managed to get out to the public yeah for sure and when it comes to the earlier part of the story where bishop claims to have been involved with the family and ronald's hospitalization as well as his own attempted exorcism obsaznik was was unable to find any information on Bishop's claims. So we don't know.
His research indicates that Bishop didn't get involved until March and that the vast majority of the information he collected was from secondhand sources.
Obsasnick pointed out, No mention is made whatsoever of the alleged first exorcism attempted by Father Hughes at Georgetown University Hospital and nothing is written of the boy's father's feelings or level of involvement or the possible presence of psychosomatic illness within the boy.
Very interesting. interesting if mark obsaznik and other skeptics are correct and ronald hunkler was never really possessed then what actually did happen obsaznik says personally i do not believe rob doe was possessed and instead he's come to his own conclusion based on everything he learned about the case and the people involved he said there's simply too much evidence that indicates that as a boy he had serious emotional problems stemming from his home life there's not one shred of hard evidence to support the notion of demonic possession the facts show that he was a spoiled and disturbed only
child with a very overprotective mother and a non -responsive father to me his behavior was indicative of an outcast youth who desperately wanted out of bladensburg junior high school at any cost he wanted attention and he wanted to leave the area and go to st louis throwing tantrums was the answer he began to play his concocted game for his efforts he got a collection of priests who had no previous exorcism experience who doted over him as he lay strapped to a bed his response was that of any normal child he reacted with rage he wanted out without delving into the dynamics of psychosomatic illness
there's no question there was something wrong with rob doe prior to january 1949 something that modern era psychiatry might have best addressed rob doe was not just another normal teenage boy my favorite part of that is that he got a collection of priests as he said he was upset and he got a collection of collection of priests yeah like that's just the most horrifying thing that's not the prize that i personally want like you oh you want to play this game here's a collection of priests that's gonna sit by your bed at night do you feel as though you've won did you win did you win ronald that's
a that's a real lose -lose it is well whether he was possessed or not ronald hunkler's 1949 claims of possession did help to fuel america's imaginations and of course america's interest in the supernatural and of course as one of the primary influences on the exorcist his story is everywhere it's like part of american supernatural lore yeah and while we may never know if it was real or not it seems at this point really doesn't matter no it really doesn't it's a fun fucking story it's fucking a blast all the way through i think it's great yeah i like that story i love that story and i love that he
became a nasa scientist so like he got it worked out all yeah he came out the other end personally good for him i think he was possessed i think you know let's go girls yeah and i think i my story is that he was possessed and until he helped him out that i like that thank you thank you jesus christ amen jesus christ um so yeah if you want to keep listening we hope you do we hope you keep listening we hope you keep It's weird. But not so weird as getting a prize of three priests.
Of a collection of priests.
Unless you want that.
A collection of priests.
You can have it if you want it.
If you want it. Keep it so weird. It's available to you.
That if you want that, you get it.
And that if you don't, you don't.
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