“Exorcist” priest Walter H. Halloran, 83
Posted: Thursday, March 3rd, 2005 12:57 pmWAUWATOSA, Wis. — The Rev. Walter H. Halloran, a priest who took part in an exorcism that spawned the book and movie “The Exorcist,” has died at age 83.
He was the last living Jesuit who assisted in the exorcism in 1949 at a psychiatric unit in St. Louis. He died Tuesday night at a Jesuit retirement home in suburban Milwaukee.
Halloran was a 27-year-old Jesuit scholastic at Saint Louis University when a priest called him to the psychiatric wing at Alexian Brothers Hospital. The Rev. William S. Bowdern was trying to help a 14-year-old boy who he believed was possessed by a demon, and he needed a strong man to help control the boy. A third Jesuit, the Rev. William Van Roo, also was there. …
Halloran said he saw streaks and arrows and words like “hell” on the boy’s skin.
A three-paragraph news account of the incident inspired William Peter Blatty to write his 1971 best seller, “The Exorcist,” which led to the movie a few years later. Blatty’s story featured a 12-year-old girl. … Read full obituary
