The Marathon Exorcism of Emma Schmidt

In the late summer of 1928, in a small Franciscan convent in the farming community of Earling, Iowa, a middle-aged woman known publicly as Emma Schmidt endured what would become one of the longest, most physically violent, and most thoroughly documented exorcisms in American Catholic history. For twenty-three consecutive days, Capuchin friar Father Theophilus Riesinger battled entities that spoke through Emma in multiple voices, caused her body to levitate above her bed, and produced physical phenomena so extreme that the nuns who hosted the ritual were shaken to the foundations of their faith. The case was subsequently authorized for publication by the Catholic Church under the title “Begone Satan!” and became one of the most influential accounts of possession and exorcism in the twentieth century, shaping both popular culture’s image of demonic possession and the Catholic Church’s own institutional understanding of the rite.

A Lifetime of Affliction

Emma Schmidt, whose real name was Anna Ecklund and who has been identified by both names in various accounts of her case, was not a woman suddenly overtaken by spiritual crisis. By the time she arrived at the Earling convent in 1928, she had been experiencing what she and those around her understood as demonic affliction for more than thirty years, a lifetime of intermittent torment that had worn her down physically and psychologically without ever breaking her entirely.

The first signs of Emma’s affliction appeared when she was approximately fourteen years old, around the turn of the twentieth century. She developed an intense aversion to entering churches, a revulsion so strong that she physically could not bring herself to cross the threshold of sacred spaces where she had previously worshipped without difficulty. When she forced herself to attend Mass, she was seized by violent nausea, trembling, and a sense of dread that overwhelmed her capacity for prayer. She began hearing voices that mocked her faith, urged her toward blasphemy, and filled her mind with obscene images during moments of devotion.

An initial exorcism was performed when Emma was still young, and it brought temporary relief. For a period, her symptoms subsided, and she was able to resume something approaching a normal life. But the respite proved to be just that, and by the time she reached her forties, the symptoms had returned with redoubled force. The voices were louder, the aversion to the sacred was more intense, and new phenomena had appeared: knowledge of things she could not naturally know, physical disturbances in her presence, and episodes during which her personality seemed to be replaced entirely by entities that spoke and behaved in ways utterly unlike her own character.

Emma was a devout Catholic woman who had not chosen her affliction and who desperately wanted to be free of it. She was not seeking attention, not pursuing celebrity, and not attempting to leverage her condition for any material advantage. She was simply suffering, and she sought the help of the Church in the same spirit that any believer might seek medical attention for a persistent and worsening disease.

Father Theophilus Riesinger

The exorcist who would undertake Emma’s case was Father Theophilus Riesinger, a Capuchin friar who had already established a reputation within Catholic circles as an experienced and effective practitioner of the rite of exorcism. Born in Germany in 1868, Riesinger had immigrated to the United States and had served in various Capuchin foundations in the Midwest. He was a man of deep personal piety, considerable physical stamina, and the kind of unshakeable conviction in the reality of the spiritual world that the rite of exorcism demands of its practitioners.

Riesinger had performed the earlier exorcism that had brought Emma temporary relief, and he was familiar with the contours of her case. When her condition deteriorated again in the 1920s, he was the natural choice to attempt a definitive liberation. He understood, from his previous experience, that Emma’s case was unusually severe and that a successful exorcism would require extraordinary commitment, and he prepared accordingly.

The choice of location was deliberate. Riesinger arranged for the exorcism to take place at a Franciscan convent in Earling, Iowa, a small, quiet community far from major population centers and the prying attention of the press. The convent offered the seclusion, the spiritual atmosphere, and the practical support that the ritual would require. Mother Superior Steigman agreed to host the proceedings, and the Franciscan sisters of the convent prepared to assist in whatever way was needed, not yet fully understanding the magnitude of what they were about to witness.

The Twenty-Three Days

The exorcism began in August 1928, and from its opening moments, it was clear that this would be an ordeal unlike anything the participants had previously experienced. Emma was brought to a room in the convent that had been prepared for the ritual, and as Riesinger began the prescribed prayers, the woman’s condition deteriorated with shocking speed.

The physical phenomena that manifested during the twenty-three days of the exorcism were extreme by any standard and were witnessed by multiple individuals including the nuns of the convent, Father Riesinger, and other clergy who assisted in the proceedings. The most dramatic of these was levitation. Emma’s body rose from the bed on which she had been placed and hung suspended in the air, sometimes pressed against the wall above the headboard, sometimes hovering above the mattress at a height that precluded any support from the bed itself. This levitation occurred repeatedly during the course of the exorcism and was witnessed on multiple occasions by different combinations of observers.

Emma’s body also underwent physical changes that defied medical explanation. During the most intense episodes, her abdomen distended until she appeared to be enormously swollen, her body bloating to what witnesses described as roughly twice its normal size. This distension was accompanied by the expulsion of vast quantities of foul-smelling material, vomiting episodes that continued far beyond what her stomach could have contained and that produced matter whose volume and nature seemed impossible given her minimal food intake during the exorcism period. The stench of this material was so overpowering that nuns attending the exorcism sometimes had to leave the room, and it reportedly permeated the entire convent during the worst episodes.

The voices that spoke through Emma were among the most disturbing features of the case. Multiple distinct entities manifested, each with its own voice, personality, and manner of speaking. These entities identified themselves variously as demons of specific rank and identity, and they addressed Father Riesinger with a mixture of contempt, rage, and what sometimes seemed like genuine fear. The voices spoke in languages that Emma did not know, including Latin and German, and they demonstrated knowledge of theological matters far beyond Emma’s education.

Among the entities that identified themselves, several were claimed to be the spirits of deceased persons rather than fallen angels. One voice identified itself as Emma’s father, who it claimed had committed incestuous acts against her and had cursed her from beyond the grave. Another identified itself as his mistress, Mina, who it said had bewitched Emma as a child. These familial entities added a dimension of personal tragedy to the cosmic spiritual drama, suggesting that Emma’s affliction was rooted not merely in abstract demonic malice but in the specific sins and curses of her own family history.

The entities displayed an intense and violent hatred of anything sacred. When Riesinger presented the consecrated Host, the voices shrieked and Emma’s body convulsed with redoubled violence. When holy water was sprinkled, the reaction was equally extreme. The prayers of the rite of exorcism, with their invocations of divine authority and their commands for the spirits to depart, were met with howls of rage, torrents of blasphemy, and physical resistance that tested the endurance of everyone present.

The Nuns as Witnesses

The Franciscan sisters who hosted the exorcism found themselves thrust into a role they had never anticipated and for which no preparation could have been adequate. These women, accustomed to the quiet discipline of convent life, were suddenly confronted with phenomena that challenged everything they thought they knew about the boundaries of physical reality.

Mother Superior Steigman documented her observations and experiences during the twenty-three days with a detail and sobriety that have lent her account considerable weight among researchers. She described the levitation, the physical distortion of Emma’s body, the overwhelming stench, and the voices with the matter-of-fact precision of a reliable witness who is reporting what she has seen rather than embellishing for effect. Her account lacks the sensationalism that might be expected if the case were a deliberate fabrication, and it includes admissions of confusion, fear, and uncertainty that ring true as the honest responses of someone genuinely overwhelmed by what she was witnessing.

The other nuns who participated, serving as attendants, preparing food that Emma rarely consumed, cleaning up after the violent physical episodes, and maintaining the schedule of prayer that was considered essential to the success of the exorcism, also provided testimony that corroborated the central claims of the case. Their accounts, while varying in detail and emphasis, are consistent on the major phenomena: levitation, physical distortion, inhuman vomiting, and the multiple voices that spoke through Emma during the sessions.

The effect of the exorcism on the nuns was profound. Several reported experiencing their own episodes of spiritual disturbance during and after the proceedings, including nightmares, feelings of oppressive presence, and a pervasive sense of evil that lingered in the convent after the exorcism concluded. These aftereffects were interpreted within the theological framework of the participants as evidence of the genuine spiritual forces that had been engaged during the ritual.

The Climax

The exorcism reached its climax on the evening of December 23, 1928. Throughout the preceding days, the confrontation between Riesinger and the entities had intensified, with the demons seeming to weaken even as their resistance became more desperate. The prayers were more sustained, the commands more forceful, and the entities’ responses increasingly fragmented and incoherent, as if the structures that held them in possession of Emma’s body were beginning to collapse.

On that final evening, the voices rose to a pitch of extraordinary violence, screaming, cursing, and threatening in a cacophony that witnesses described as nearly unbearable. Emma’s body was in constant violent motion, levitating, contorting, and thrashing against the restraints that had been placed to prevent her from injuring herself. The atmosphere in the room was suffocating, the stench overwhelming, the spiritual tension almost palpable.

Then, with a final shriek that multiple witnesses described as inhuman in its intensity and pitch, the voices fell silent. Emma’s body went limp, settling back onto the bed with the sudden collapse of a puppet whose strings have been cut. The room fell into absolute stillness.

When Emma opened her eyes, she looked around with the bewildered expression of someone waking from a deep sleep in unfamiliar surroundings. She had no memory of the preceding twenty-three days, no recollection of the voices that had spoken through her, the violence her body had endured, or the long battle that had been fought over her soul. She was, by all appearances, free.

Aftermath and Publication

Emma’s recovery was complete and, by all accounts, permanent. She returned to her normal life and reportedly lived peacefully for the remainder of her years, never again experiencing the symptoms that had tormented her since adolescence. The entities did not return, the aversion to the sacred did not recur, and the voices fell silent forever. Whatever had happened during those twenty-three days in Earling, it had accomplished what decades of suffering had not: a resolution that held.

Father Riesinger subsequently prepared an account of the case, which was reviewed and approved for publication by the Catholic Church under the title “Begone Satan!” The booklet, written in a straightforward narrative style and drawing on the testimony of the multiple witnesses who had been present during the exorcism, became widely read within Catholic circles and introduced the Earling case to a broader audience. The Church’s decision to authorize publication was significant, as it represented an institutional endorsement of the case’s authenticity, lending it a weight that extended beyond the personal testimony of the individuals involved.

The account was translated into multiple languages and distributed internationally, becoming one of the most widely read descriptions of a modern exorcism and influencing both popular understanding of possession and the training of priests who might be called upon to perform the rite. The phenomena described in “Begone Satan!” the levitation, the voices, the physical distortions, the prolonged battle between exorcist and demons, became iconic representations of what exorcism looked like, shaping expectations and assumptions that persist to this day.

Skeptical Perspectives

The Earling exorcism has not escaped critical scrutiny, and skeptics have offered various explanations for the reported phenomena. The most common naturalistic interpretation holds that Emma suffered from a severe psychiatric condition, possibly a combination of dissociative identity disorder and conversion disorder, that produced the dramatic symptoms attributed to demonic possession. The multiple voices could be explained as alternate personalities, the physical contortions as hysterical symptoms, and the aversion to sacred objects as a manifestation of religious anxiety rooted in guilt or trauma.

The claim of incest by Emma’s father, if true, would provide a psychological foundation for many of the symptoms. Childhood sexual abuse is a well-documented precursor to dissociative disorders, and the particular character of Emma’s affliction, including the voices identifying themselves as her father and his mistress, is consistent with a dissociative response to early trauma. From this perspective, the exorcism may have functioned as a form of intensive, religiously framed psychotherapy, providing Emma with a narrative framework within which to confront and ultimately resolve her traumatic experiences.

The levitation claims are more difficult to address within a naturalistic framework. Skeptics have suggested that the witnesses, operating under conditions of extreme stress, sleep deprivation, and intense religious expectation, may have misperceived or exaggerated what they saw. The room was not under controlled conditions, and the lighting, the emotional atmosphere, and the shared conviction that supernatural events were occurring could all have influenced perception and memory.

The vomiting, while extreme, is not unprecedented in cases of severe psychosomatic illness, though the volumes reported do strain credulity. The foul smell could be attributed to infection, poor hygiene during the prolonged ordeal, or the psychological expectation that demonic manifestation would produce such odors.

None of these skeptical explanations is entirely satisfactory, and each leaves aspects of the case unexplained. The twenty-three-day duration, the consistency of the phenomena across multiple witnesses, and the completeness and permanence of the resolution all present challenges to purely naturalistic interpretation. Equally, the absence of controlled conditions, the religious biases of the witnesses, and the possibility of retrospective embellishment in the published account prevent the case from serving as definitive proof of supernatural intervention.

Legacy

The Marathon Exorcism of Emma Schmidt remains one of the defining cases in the modern history of possession and exorcism. Its influence extends across multiple domains: it shaped Catholic institutional practice by providing a detailed case study for the training of exorcists, it contributed to popular culture’s image of demonic possession through its vivid descriptions of levitation, inhuman voices, and prolonged spiritual combat, and it raised questions about the relationship between mental illness and religious experience that continue to challenge both medical professionals and theologians.

The case also occupies an important place in the specifically American history of the supernatural. While possession cases have been reported in every culture and every era, the Earling exorcism brought the phenomenon into the American heartland, demonstrating that the ancient drama of spiritual warfare could unfold in a small Iowa farming community as readily as in the convents and cathedrals of medieval Europe. The ordinariness of the setting, the plainness of the participants, and the matter-of-fact tone of the published account all contributed to the case’s power, grounding the extraordinary events in a context of American normalcy that made them simultaneously more credible and more unsettling.

Whether one interprets the Earling exorcism as a genuine encounter with demonic forces, a dramatic manifestation of psychiatric illness, or some combination of the two, it remains a case that demands engagement. Something happened in that convent in 1928 that exceeded the ordinary capacities of explanation, and the testimony of those who witnessed it, however one evaluates its reliability, speaks to an experience so extreme and so sustained that it cannot be dismissed as mere imagination or deception. The echoes of those twenty-three days in Earling continue to resonate, reminding us that the boundaries of human experience are wider, stranger, and more disturbing than any comfortable rationalism would prefer to admit.

Sources

• Wikipedia search: “The Marathon Exorcism of Emma Schmidt”
• JSTOR — Religious studies — Peer-reviewed research on possession and exorcism
• Chronicling America — Historic US newspapers (1690–1963)