A former lover becomes an uninvited houseguest in Ted and Marjory's quiet abode, adversely affecting investigations into the history of the semicolon. A judge must compulsively narrate his neighbour into ignominy. A market analyst's visit to a stripper goes awry, leading to a compulsory leave from work and an intervention from loved ones. An English lit undergraduate finds himself besieged by increasingly urgent voyeuristic desires, and soon finds himself pressed to the glass, firm in his belief that the only way to exorcise his demon is to identify its essential objectives and achieve them. Meanwhile, poor Tim Pine must face his coprophobia in a most public and lamentable office misadventure. Sentimental Exorcisms is a collection of tragicomic satire, latter-day Victorian collisions of Nabokov and Proust. The men in these long short stories have grand designs and petty fears, or modest designs and grand fears. Desires, scapegoats, idylls and obtrusive egos: the golden calves they can't quite bear to kill. With their ramparts crumbling around them, each mounts an exuberant defence in a vacuum of self-absorption. 'Derry specializes in the most delightfully self-unaware characters. These are delicious portrayals of delusion.' - Uptown 'Derry's cohort of misanthropic, sexual-repressed anti-heroes possesses a spooky ability to get under your skin.' - Prairie Fire 'Arrestingly witty.' - Vue Magazine

A former lover becomes an uninvited houseguest in Ted and Marjory’s quiet abode, adversely affecting investigations into the history of the semicolon. A judge must compulsively narrate his neighbour into ignominy. A market analyst’s visit to a stripper goes awry, leading to a compulsory leave from work and an intervention from loved ones. An English lit undergraduate finds himself besieged by increasingly urgent voyeuristic desires, and soon finds himself pressed to the glass, firm in his belief that the only way to exorcise his demon is to identify its essential objectives and achieve them. Meanwhile, poor Tim Pine must face his coprophobia in a most public and lamentable office misadventure. Sentimental Exorcisms is a collection of tragicomic satire, latter-day Victorian collisions of Nabokov and Proust. The men in these long short stories have grand designs and petty fears, or modest designs and grand fears. Desires, scapegoats, idylls and obtrusive egos: the golden calves they can’t quite bear to kill. With their ramparts crumbling around them, each mounts an exuberant defence in a vacuum of self-absorption. 'Derry specializes in the most delightfully self-unaware characters. These are delicious portrayals of delusion.' – Uptown 'Derry's cohort of misanthropic, sexual-repressed anti-heroes possesses a spooky ability to get under your skin.' – Prairie Fire 'Arrestingly witty.' – Vue Magazine.

"The Exorcist", a 1973 movie about a twelve-year-old girl possessed by the Devil, frightened people more than any horror film ever did. Many moviegoers sought therapy to rid themselves of fears they could not explain. Psychiatrists coined the term "cinematic neurosis" for patients who left the movie feeling a terrifying presence of demons. At the Washington premiere, a young woman stood outside the theater, trembling. "I come out here in the sunlight," she said, "and I see people's eyes, and they frighten me." Among the few moviegoers unmoved by the horror were two priests, Father William S. Bowdern and Father Walter Halloran, members of the Jesuit community at St. Louis University. "Billy came out shaking his head about the little girl bouncing on the bed and urinating on the crucifix," Halloran remembers. "He was kind of angry. 'There is a good message that can be given by this thing,' he said. The message was the fact that evil spirits operate in our world." Bowdern and Halloran knew that the movie was fictional veneer masking a terrible reality. Night after night in March and April 1949, Bowdern had been an exorcist, with Halloran assisting. Bowdern fervently believed that he had driven a demon from a tormented soul. The victim had been a thirteen-year-old boy strangely lured to St. Louis from a Maryland suburb of Washington. Bowdern's exorcism had been the inspiration for the movie. The true story of this possession, told in Possessed, is based on a diary kept by a Jesuit priest assisting Father Bowdern. The diary, the most complete account of an exorcism since the Middle Ages, is published for the first time in this revised edition of Possessed.

In 1976 a young German girl named Anneliese Michel underwent a series of exorcisms. The rites were administered by two priests of the Catholic Church to free Anneliese of the six demons they believed possessed her. Seemingly as a result of the exorcisms the girl died. Worldwide publicity followed when the girl's parents and the two exorcists were brought to trial and convicted of negligent homicide. Here a noted anthropologist offers her own interpretation of the exorcisms of Anneliese Michel. Drawing on interviews with the two exorcists, the girl's parents and friends, transcripts of the trial, and tape recordings made during the exorcisms - as well as studies of religious experience in various cultures - Felicitas Goodman has written a fascinating, compelling book, one that finally tells what happened in this strange case as it delves into the age-old mystery of demonic possession.

In 1976, a twenty-three-year old German girl named Anneliese Michel died following months of exorcism sessions. Despite the fact that she had been medically diagnosed with epilepsy and manic depressive psychosis, two priests conducted numerous exorcism sessions and ignored her mental, medical, and physical condition. Ms. Michel's death due to misdiagnosed demonic possession and negligently applied exorcism was neither the first nor the last case of such negligence to occur. Complete familiarity with the spiritual elements of demonical posssession and attack is the sole focus of most demonologists, exorcists, and clerical members of Christianity. Few clerics have a sufficient understanding of psychiatric conditions that may mimic the symptoms of demonic possession. The result has been catastrophic for many innocent people over the centuries. The overlooking or ignoring of a person's medical and psychiatric condition is the primary culprit behind misdiagnosed possession and botched exorcisms resulting in death or serious bodily injury. Reverend Father John Duffey, a Reformed Catholic Church of North America priest, renders a standardized approach to properly investigating suspected demoniacal possession, determining the existence of possession, and in the safe execution of exorcism/deliverance acceptable to virtually all denominations of the Christian faith.

Haunting accounts of real-life exorcisms through the centuries and around the world, from ancient Egypt and the biblical Middle East to colonial America and twentieth-century South Africa A Penguin Classic Levitation. Feats of superhuman strength. Speaking in tongues. A hateful, glowing stare. The signs of spirit possession have been documented for thousands of years and across religions and cultures, even into our time: In 2019 the Vatican convened 250 priests from 50 countries for a weeklong seminar on exorcism. The Penguin Book of Exorcisms brings together the most astonishing accounts: Saint Anthony set upon by demons in the form of a lion, a bull, and a panther, who are no match for his devotion and prayer; the Prophet Muhammad casting an enemy of God out of a young boy; fox spirits in medieval China and Japan; a headless bear assaulting a woman in sixteenth-century England; the possession in the French town of Loudun of an entire convent of Ursuline nuns; a Zulu woman who floated to a height of five feet almost daily; a previously unpublished account of an exorcism in Earling, Iowa, in 1928--an important inspiration for the movie The Exorcist; poltergeist activity at a home in Maryland in 1949--the basis for William Peter Blatty's novel The Exorcist; a Filipina girl "bitten by devils"; and a rare example of a priest's letter requesting permission of a bishop to perform an exorcism--after witnessing a boy walk backward up a wall. Fifty-seven percent of Americans profess to believe in demonic possession; after reading this book, you may too.

A guided tour through the burgeoning business of exorcism and the darker side of American life. There is no other religious ritual more fascinating, or more disturbing, than exorcism. This is particularly true in America today, where the ancient rite has a surprisingly strong hold on our imagination, and on our popular entertainment industry. We’ve all heard of exorcism, seen the movies and read the books, but few of us have ever experienced it firsthand. Conducted by exorcists officially appointed by Catholic archdioceses and by maverick priests sidestepping Church sanctions, by evangelical ministers and Episcopal charismatics, exorcism is alive and well in the new millennium. Oprah, Diane Sawyer, and Barbara Walters have featured exorcists on their shows. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Time, and other publications have charted the proliferation of exorcisms across the United States. Last year, the Archdiocese of Chicago appointed its first full-time exorcist in its 160-year history; in New York, four priests have officially investigated about forty cases of suspected possession every year since 1995. American Exorcism is an inside look at this burgeoning phenomenon, written with objectivity, insight, and just the right touch of irony. Michael W. Cuneo attended more than fifty exorcisms and interviewed many of the participants–both the exorcists who performed the rituals and the people from all walks of life who believed they were possessed by the devil. He brings vividly to life the ceremonies themselves, conjuring up memories of Linda Blair’s astonishing performance in the 1973 movie The Exorcist and other bizarre (and sometimes stomach-churning) images. Cuneo dissects, as well, the arguments of such well-known exorcism advocates as Malachi Martin, author of the controversial Hostage to the Devil, self-help guru M. Scott Peck, and self-professed demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren of Amityville Horror fame. As he explores this netherworld of American life, Cuneo reflects on the meaning of exorcism in the twenty-first century and on the relationship between religious ritual and popular culture. Touching on such provocative topics as the “satanic panics” of the 1980s, repressed memory, and ritual abuse, American Exorcism is a remarkably revealing, consistently entertaining work of cultural commentary.