These 8 Real-Life Exorcisms Went Terribly Wrong

#1 The Tragic Exorcism of Anneliese Michel

Anna Elisabeth Michel was born into a Catholic family, and was brought up to be deeply religious. Her family attended Mass twice a week, and her parents were incredibly strict. At age 16, she started to get epileptic fits, and although she did well in school, her classmates noticed she was growing increasingly withdrawn. Eventually, Michel was taken to a psychiatric hospital and was given anti-convulsion drugs. Before long, perhaps due to side effects from the drugs, she started telling the nurses that she was seeing "demon faces."

Showing Signs Of Demonic Possession?

Michel started to show sign of schizophrenia and psychoses, and started hallucinating while viciously praying. She told her doctors that she was "damned" and would "rot in hell," and her depression got worse. Psychiatric treatment of the 1970s seemed to have no effect on her condition, and curiously she stared to get scared anytime religious artifacts like crosses were brought into the room. After years of suffering, Michel met with a priest, Ernst Alt, who declared she "didn't look like an epileptic" and claimed that she was actually suffering from demonic possession.

A Young Woman Is Tortured In The Name Of Religious Exorcism

Alt arranged for a local bishop, Josef Stangl, to perform an exorcism on Michel in total secrecy. The first session was scheduled for September 24, and everyoneeven Michel's parentswere prevented from entering the room. For a year, the bishop performed one to two exorcisms a week on Michel, until 1976 when she was discovered dead in her parents home. She weighed just 30 pounds, had two broken knees from genuflections, and had died of starvation during the year the exorcisms were being performed.

#2 Best-Case Scenario: The Demon Stays At Large And No One Dies

With so many exorcisms on this list resulting in horrific deaths, it seems as though sometimes the best-case scenario for an exorcism is that it doesn't work. In the 1970s, the Smurl family became increasingly popular when their publicized issues with demonic possession flooded the media. The family, who lived in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, claimed a demon was making their house smell bad and was tormenting their pets and children. On one occasion, the family even claimed a demon sexually assaulted their son. Several exorcisms were performed in the house, but none of them worked. By 1986, everyone in the family had moved on, except for the mother Janet Smurl, who continued to witness spiritual encounters through 1987.

#3 The Exorcism of Morgan Freeman's Step-Granddaughter

Here's an exorcism with a weird Hollywood connection. In 2015, Morgan Freeman's step-granddaughter, 33-year-old E'dena Hines was stabbed 16 times by a man named Lamar Davenport. The event, which took place in Manhattan, was apparently an exorcism gone fatally wrong. Davenport, who was an aspiring rapper, was attempting to exorcise demons out of Hines's body. When police arrived on the scene, Davenport was still brutally attacking her body and witnesses said they heard him screaming "Get out, devils!"

#4 A Family Exorcism Goes Horribly Wrong

In 2015, five members of a South Korean family were arrested when police found a 41-year-old dead woman in a German hotel. The family had gathered to perform a two-hour exorcism on her, and during the course of the ritual, they gagged and beat her until she was unconscious. The family had gagged her with clothes hangers and towels, and the blows to her chest and stomach were enough to kill her. Some of the people who were arrested were the deceased woman's children, and they had also performed an impromptu exorcism on another woman the same night. She lived, but she was discovered in the same hotel suffering from dehydration and hypothermia.

#5 Eder Guzman-Rodriguez Exorcism Of His Child

While exorcisms always seem strange, they're particularly fishy when someone who isn't even a priest performs them. In the case of Eder Guzman-Rodriguez, it's clear he was pretty off his rocker when he beat his 2-year-old daughter Jocelyn to death while exorcising demons from her body. Police found Jocelyn's body mangled, beaten, and strangled on the bed with several religious books arranged around her. Rodriguez also beat his wife until she blacked out to keep her out of the way while he performed the exorcism. Clearly, Rodriguez was the only demon left in the room once he was finished with his mission.

#6 A Crazy Woman Exorcises Demons From Her 1 And 2 Year Olds

While most people imagine an exorcism taking place with a priest, holy water, and a raving lunatic strapped to a bed, this example sounds like a pretty cut and dry murder. In 2014, 28-year-old mother of four Zakieya L. Avery stabled her two youngest kids to death when she became convinced they were possessed by demons. Avery, who was clearly mentally ill, convinced another woman, 21-year-old Monifa Denise Sanford to help her with the murders. Police were alerted to the crime when neighbors heard disturbing noises coming from the Avery household.

#7 An Autistic Boy Is Killed During A Ritualistic Ceremony

Unfortunately, the exorcism and death of 8-year-old Terrance Cottrell came from extreme beliefs about autism. Cottrell's mother, who was a member of the Faith Temple Church of the Apostolic Faith in Milwaukee, believed that the church could cure her son's autism by performing an exorcism on him. She thought her son was a conduit for evil spirits, and believed demons were trying to communicate with her through him. The church leader wrapped the boy in sheets for a prayer session, and during the course of the exorcism the boy suffocated to death. The death was ruled a homicide and the mother and several church members were implicated in the crime.

#8 A Kenyan Woman Murders Her Baby During A 2016 Exorcism

While a belief in supernatural forces can be pretty cool if a psychic is channeling a dead relative or giving someone a palm reading, things can get really dangerous if those beliefs are combined with mental illness. Exorcisms are a huge problem worldwide even to this day, with one of the most recent exorcism "accidents" happening in Kenya in 2016. In the case of Irene Mbithe, she gave birth to a son and within six months had cut out his tongue and intestines in an attempt to exorcise demons from his body. The baby died, and she claimed her actions were all a godly attempt to save her son. During the news reports, the baby was featured wrapped in a sheet on her lap.