The Earling Exorcism

In the late summer of 1928, a middle-aged woman named Anna Ecklund was brought to a small Franciscan convent in Earling, Iowa, a quiet farming community of a few hundred souls nestled among the cornfields of Shelby County. What followed over the next twenty-three days would become one of the most thoroughly documented cases of demonic possession and exorcism in American history—a harrowing ordeal that tested the faith of everyone involved and produced testimony so disturbing that it received official approval for publication from the Catholic Church. The account, eventually circulated under the title Begone Satan!, would go on to influence how theologians, clergy, and the public understood possession for decades to come.

A Troubled Life

Anna Ecklund was born in the American Midwest around 1882, though the precise details of her early biography were deliberately obscured by Church authorities to protect her identity. What is known is that Anna was raised in a devoutly Catholic household—or at least, one that maintained the outward appearance of devotion. Beneath that respectable surface lay something far darker. According to testimony gathered during the exorcism itself, Anna’s father, Jacob, harbored incestuous desires toward his daughter, and when she rejected his advances, he turned to occult means to punish her.

Jacob allegedly enlisted the help of a woman named Mina, described variously as his mistress or a local practitioner of folk magic, to place curses upon the young Anna. Whether one accepts the supernatural framework of these claims or views them through a psychological lens, the practical effects on Anna were devastating and unmistakable. From the age of fourteen, she began exhibiting behaviors that defied easy explanation. She developed an intense aversion to sacred objects and spaces. The sight of a church filled her with revulsion. Holy water, when sprinkled upon her unknowingly, provoked violent physical reactions. She could not bring herself to pray, and the act of receiving Communion became impossible—her body would seize and convulse at the approach of the Eucharist.

As the years passed, Anna’s condition worsened. She displayed knowledge of things she could not possibly have known through ordinary means, revealing the hidden sins and private shames of people she had never met. She understood languages she had never studied. Her behavior alternated between periods of relative calm and episodes of terrifying violence, during which she exhibited strength far beyond what her slight frame should have allowed. By the time she reached her forties, Anna Ecklund’s life had become a prison of torment, and those around her had exhausted every natural remedy they could conceive.

Father Theophilus Riesinger

The man who would take on the burden of freeing Anna Ecklund was Father Theophilus Riesinger, a Capuchin monk of German descent who had already earned a reputation within Catholic circles as an experienced exorcist. Father Riesinger had performed exorcisms before—some accounts suggest as many as twenty over the course of his ministry—and he approached the practice with a combination of absolute faith and methodical precision that would prove essential during the weeks ahead.

Riesinger had actually attempted an earlier exorcism of Anna in 1912, which had apparently brought her some temporary relief. But by the mid-1920s, the affliction had returned with redoubled fury, and Anna’s condition had deteriorated to a point where she could no longer function in ordinary society. Father Riesinger determined that a more sustained and thorough exorcism was required, one that would need to be conducted away from prying eyes and in a setting that could provide both spiritual support and practical assistance.

He turned to Father Joseph Steiger, the pastor of St. Joseph’s parish in Earling, who agreed to host the exorcism at a nearby Franciscan convent. The choice of location was deliberate. The convent offered seclusion from the public, the constant prayers of the religious community, and the practical help of nuns who could assist in caring for Anna during what promised to be an extended ordeal. Father Steiger, though supportive, could not have fully understood what he was agreeing to. The events that unfolded within his parish would haunt him for the rest of his life.

The Ordeal Begins

Anna Ecklund arrived at the convent in Earling in August 1928, and the exorcism commenced almost immediately. From the very first session, it became clear that this would be no ordinary spiritual struggle. When the nuns, acting on Father Riesinger’s instructions, placed blessed food before Anna without her knowledge—her meals had been secretly sprinkled with holy water and blessed salt—the reaction was immediate and violent. Anna sensed the consecrated elements before the food even reached her lips and flew into a rage, hurling the plates against the wall with a strength that startled the sisters who witnessed it.

As Father Riesinger began the formal Rite of Exorcism, reading the prescribed prayers in Latin, Anna’s body began to undergo transformations that defied medical understanding. She was lifted from the bed and hurled against the wall with tremendous force. Her body contorted into positions that witnesses described as anatomically impossible, her limbs bending at angles that should have broken bones. She was found clinging to the wall above the door of her room, suspended near the ceiling with no visible means of support, her body rigid and her face twisted into an expression of inhuman malice.

The sounds that issued from Anna during these episodes were perhaps the most disturbing element of the entire affair. Her voice—or rather, the voices that spoke through her—changed constantly, shifting between deep masculine growls, high-pitched shrieks, and guttural utterances in languages that witnesses identified as German, Latin, and several other tongues Anna had never learned. The voices howled, cursed, blasphemed, and mocked the priests and nuns who attended her. At times, multiple voices seemed to speak simultaneously, creating a cacophony that reduced hardened clergy to tears.

Twenty-Three Days of Torment

The exorcism stretched on day after day, each session bringing new horrors. Anna’s physical condition became increasingly extreme. Despite consuming virtually no food—she violently rejected most attempts to feed her—she vomited prodigious quantities of foul-smelling material, sometimes filling multiple buckets in a single session. The substance was variously described as resembling tobacco leaves, coffee grounds, and other materials that bore no relation to anything she had eaten. The stench was so overpowering that windows had to be kept open despite the summer heat, and even then, the smell permeated the entire convent.

Her body swelled to grotesque proportions during the worst episodes. Witnesses reported that her abdomen distended until she appeared ready to burst, her face bloated beyond recognition, and her lips grew so enormously swollen that they seemed to envelop her entire lower face. Then, just as suddenly, the swelling would subside, leaving her emaciated and exhausted. These physical transformations occurred so rapidly and dramatically that the nuns who tended her lived in constant fear that Anna would die before the exorcism could be completed.

Throughout the twenty-three days, the entities speaking through Anna identified themselves by name, and their testimonies—if such a word can be applied—painted a picture of spiritual assault that had been orchestrated against her since childhood. The entity identifying itself as Jacob, Anna’s own father, confirmed through Anna’s contorted mouth that he had deliberately cursed his daughter as revenge for refusing his incestuous demands. He had invited demonic forces into her life and had enlisted the witch Mina to seal the curse through occult ritual.

Mina herself allegedly manifested, speaking in a voice that witnesses described as simultaneously seductive and filled with bottomless hatred. She claimed to have placed spells upon Anna as a young girl, binding dark spirits to her soul through rituals involving cursed herbs placed in Anna’s food. Other entities also made themselves known—a veritable legion of spirits, each with its own voice and personality, each resisting Father Riesinger’s commands with furious determination.

The Impact on Those Present

The exorcism took a severe toll on everyone involved, not just Anna herself. Father Steiger, the local pastor who had agreed to host the ritual, found himself targeted by what he interpreted as demonic retaliation. On one occasion while driving to the convent, his car inexplicably swerved off the road and rolled over, an accident that should have killed him but from which he walked away with only minor injuries. On another occasion, a young woman appeared at his rectory door in a state of apparent distress, but when he went to assist her, she vanished before his eyes. Strange sounds plagued his home at night—knockings, scratchings, and footsteps in empty rooms.

The nuns who cared for Anna bore perhaps the heaviest burden after the exorcist himself. These women, accustomed to lives of quiet prayer and contemplation, found themselves thrust into a nightmare that challenged everything they believed about the nature of evil. They witnessed things that no amount of theological training could have prepared them for. Some were reduced to near-collapse by the experience, unable to sleep for fear of the sounds that echoed through the convent corridors at night. Yet they persevered, maintaining their prayer vigils and tending to Anna’s physical needs with a courage that Father Riesinger later praised as essential to the exorcism’s success.

Father Riesinger himself endured the worst of the spiritual assault. The entities speaking through Anna directed their most venomous attacks at him, threatening his life, mocking his faith, and attempting to break his will through sheer psychological violence. They revealed knowledge of his private life, his doubts, and his fears with an intimacy that suggested either genuine supernatural insight or a capacity for psychological manipulation that exceeded anything in the medical literature of the time. Yet Riesinger held firm, returning day after day to resume the prayers, the commands, the endless repetitions of sacred formulae that gradually wore down the resistance of the possessing entities.

The Climax

As December approached and the exorcism entered its final phase, the intensity of the manifestations reached a crescendo. The voices speaking through Anna became more desperate, more frantic, alternating between defiant rage and what witnesses interpreted as genuine terror. Father Riesinger pressed his advantage, invoking the authority of Christ and the saints with renewed determination, commanding the entities to identify themselves fully and to depart.

On December 23, 1928, the ordeal reached its conclusion. According to all accounts, Anna suddenly rose up in her bed, her body rigid, and let out a shriek so piercing and prolonged that it was heard throughout the convent and by people passing on the street outside. The voices—all of them—cried out their names in a final torrent of sound, and then fell silent. Anna collapsed back onto the bed, opened her eyes, and spoke in her own voice for the first time in twenty-three days. “My Jesus, Mercy,” she whispered. “Praised be Jesus Christ.”

The transformation was immediate and complete. The woman who moments before had been a vessel of chaos and horror was suddenly calm, lucid, and at peace. Her face, which had been swollen and distorted, returned to its normal appearance. She asked for food and ate normally for the first time since the exorcism began. She could pray without difficulty, hold a rosary without pain, and look upon sacred images with devotion rather than revulsion. Whatever had inhabited Anna Ecklund for the better part of four decades was gone.

Aftermath and Legacy

Anna Ecklund lived quietly for many years after the exorcism, her identity carefully guarded by Church authorities. By all accounts, the possession never returned. She resumed a normal life, attending Mass regularly and experiencing none of the torments that had plagued her since childhood. Her case stood as powerful testimony—at least for those inclined to accept it—that the ancient rites of the Church retained their efficacy even in the modern age.

The account of the Earling exorcism was written up by Father Carl Vogl, a German cleric who compiled testimony from Father Riesinger, Father Steiger, and the nuns who had participated. Published in German in 1935 and subsequently translated into English under the title Begone Satan!, the pamphlet received an imprimatur from the Bishop of Treves, signifying that it contained nothing contrary to faith or morals. This official approval gave the account a credibility that few other exorcism narratives could claim and ensured its wide circulation among Catholic readers.

The case attracted attention from both believers and skeptics. For those within the Catholic tradition, the Earling exorcism served as confirmation that demonic possession was real and that the Church possessed the means to combat it. The detailed documentation—the multiple witnesses, the consistency of their testimony, the physical phenomena that defied natural explanation—made the case difficult to dismiss as mere hysteria or fraud. The account became a standard reference in seminary courses on pastoral theology and influenced the training of future exorcists.

Skeptics, naturally, offered alternative explanations. Some suggested that Anna Ecklund suffered from a severe dissociative disorder, possibly triggered by the childhood abuse she had endured at her father’s hands. The multiple voices, the contortions, the aversion to religious objects—all of these could theoretically be explained as symptoms of extreme psychological trauma manifesting through the framework of Catholic demonology. The physical phenomena, skeptics argued, were likely exaggerated in the retelling, shaped by the expectations of witnesses who already believed in the reality of possession.

Others pointed to the cultural context of rural Iowa in the 1920s, where folk beliefs about witchcraft and curses still held considerable sway among communities of German and Central European descent. Anna’s belief that she had been cursed by her father and his mistress may have been genuine, but that did not necessarily mean the curse itself was real—only that Anna’s conviction of its reality was powerful enough to produce the symptoms she displayed.

A Case That Endures

Whatever one makes of the Earling exorcism—whether one sees it as genuine spiritual warfare, a case study in the power of belief, or something that resists easy categorization—its significance in the history of American paranormal phenomena is undeniable. It remains one of the most thoroughly documented exorcism cases in the Western Hemisphere, and its influence extends far beyond the theological realm.

The case contributed to a broader cultural awareness of exorcism that would eventually culminate in William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist (1971) and the landmark film that followed. While Blatty drew primarily from the 1949 exorcism of a boy in Maryland, the Earling case had already established many of the tropes that would become associated with possession in the popular imagination—the contorted bodies, the speaking in tongues, the levitation, the vomiting, the voices that knew impossible things.

Earling, Iowa, remains a small and quiet community, largely unchanged from the farming town it was in 1928. The convent where the exorcism took place has long since ceased to function as a religious house, and few physical traces of the event remain. But the story persists, passed down through local memory and kept alive by the enduring fascination that possession holds for the human mind. In a world that increasingly explains itself through science and reason, the Earling exorcism stands as a stubborn reminder that some experiences resist easy explanation—that there are dark corners of human existence where faith and fear converge, and where the boundary between the natural and the supernatural grows disturbingly thin.

The twenty-three days that Anna Ecklund spent in that convent room remain as troubling today as they were nearly a century ago. The witnesses are long dead, the principals have passed beyond the reach of further questioning, and the truth of what happened in Earling in the autumn of 1928 can never be established with certainty. What is certain is that something happened—something that broke Anna Ecklund’s decades of suffering, something that left hardened clergy shaken to their foundations, something that the Catholic Church itself considered significant enough to authorize for publication. Whether that something was the departure of genuine demons or the resolution of a profound psychological crisis through the power of ritual and belief, the Earling exorcism continues to command attention, demanding that we reckon with the possibility that the world contains forces we do not fully understand.

Sources

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