The 1949 case is filed in Catholic Church records as the exorcism of “Roland Doe” — a pseudonym protecting the identity of a fourteen-year-old boy from a Maryland family who, beginning in January of that year, began exhibiting what his family described as supernatural behavior. Scratching sounds in the walls. Objects moving without apparent cause. The boy speaking in a guttural voice his family didn’t recognize. His Lutheran family eventually sought Catholic intervention, and what followed was a months-long series of exorcism rituals that moved from Maryland to St. Louis when the family brought the boy to stay with relatives.

The St. Louis exorcism sessions were conducted at two locations: the Alexian Brothers Hospital (since demolished, formerly at 3933 South Broadway) and a home in Bel-Nor, the small municipality just north of the city limits in St. Louis County. The Bel-Nor house, belonging to the boy’s aunt and uncle, is where the most dramatic recorded incidents occurred, according to the journal kept by Father Raymond Bishop, one of the officiating priests.

Bishop’s diary — maintained contemporaneously and later accessed by researchers — describes the boy levitating, speaking Latin he had no apparent way of knowing, and displaying words scratched on his skin from the inside. It also notes, in the measured language of a Jesuit trained in skepticism, that he could not rule out psychological causes for some of what he observed.

The boy, whose real identity has never been officially confirmed, reportedly recovered completely following the final exorcism session. He went on to lead, by all accounts, an entirely ordinary life, eventually working for NASA. He has never spoken publicly about the events.

William Peter Blatty was a Georgetown University student when he read the Washington Post’s account of the case. He spent years researching the real events before fictionalizing them and relocating the story to Georgetown for the 1971 novel. The film adaptation, directed by William Friedkin, was released in 1973 and remains one of the highest-grossing horror films ever made.

The Bel-Nor house still stands. It is a private residence. Its current owners are presumably tired of people driving slowly past, which does not stop people from driving slowly past.