Before the priests took over, a Washington University physicist apparently walked into the room and tried to explain the whole thing with electromagnetism. This is one of those details that makes the St. Louis exorcism story feel less like horror and more like the city accidentally hosting a very strange committee meeting. First the family. Then the clergy. Then, naturally, a scientist. St. Louis likes to give every mystery a chance to become administrative.

The man is usually identified in later retellings as Frank Bubb, though at least one later source gives the name as Karl W. Bubb, Sr., which is not ideal if you are trying to pin history to the wall. What stays consistent is the outline: a Washington University scientist with an interest in unusual phenomena was brought in during the St. Louis phase of the 1949 case to see whether the flying furniture and shaking bed might have some rational cause.

That rational cause, at least at first, was said to be electromagnetism. It is a beautifully mid-century answer. Not spirits. Not demons. Just some misunderstood force in the room, as though physics had wandered into north St. Louis, adjusted its glasses, and asked everyone to calm down. The version of the story that survives in later books and articles suggests Bubb thought there was still much left to learn about electromagnetism. Which is either a serious scientific observation or the politest possible way to say, “I do not know what this is, and I would prefer not to be here.”

According to one of the better-known retellings, he entered the room, observed objects moving, took notes, and then backed away from the case with the line: “This isn’t my territory.” It is a perfect sentence. Short. Defeated. A man of science arriving with a theory and leaving with an existential shrug. You can build an entire St. Louis mood around that.

It also says something about why this story has lasted. The Exorcist case does not survive because it is tidy. It survives because it refuses to stay in one category. Medical mystery. Religious crisis. Family panic. Urban legend. Local embarrassment with national afterlife. Add a WashU physicist testing the limits of electromagnetism in a possessed boy’s bedroom and the whole thing becomes even harder to file away.

There is, as usual, some fog around the details. The St. Louis exorcism story has been retold so many times that parts of it now arrive pre-aged, like antique wood darkened by handling. Some sources mention Bubb directly. Others focus on the priests, the diary, or the later cultural machinery that turned a frightened boy into one of America’s most durable supernatural exports. The scientist remains a side character. Which somehow makes him more interesting.

St. Louis keeps producing stories like this: half documented, half whispered, with one foot in a university archive and the other in a creaking hallway. A physicist walks into a room to test a theory about electromagnetism and walks back out with less certainty than he brought in. The city, meanwhile, just adds it to the pile.