Last Jesuit involved in exorcism that inspired 'The Exorcist' dies

Published: 2005-03-09

WAUWATOSA, Wis. (CNS) -- A funeral Mass was celebrated March 4 in St. Camillus Chapel in Wauwatosa for Jesuit Father Walter H. Halloran, who died at age 83 March 1. He was the last surviving Jesuit involved in a 1949 exorcism case in St. Louis that led to William Peter Blatty's 1971 best seller, "The Exorcist," and the hit 1973 movie of the same name. The priest had been living in retirement at a Jesuit assisted living facility at St. Camillus. No cause of death was reported. Father Halloran, who was ordained to the priesthood in 1954, was a Jesuit scholastic at St. Louis University at the time he was assigned to hold down a 14-year-old boy known by the pseudonym "Douglas Deen," while Jesuit Father William Bowdern performed the exorcism with the assistance of Jesuit Father William Van Roo. In a 1988 interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch daily newspaper, Father Halloran said he observed streaks and arrows and words like "hell" that would rise on the boy's skin. "The little boy would go into a seizure and get quite violent," Father Halloran recalled. "So Father Bowdern asked me to hold him. Yes, he did break my nose."

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