William Friedkin directed the 1973 movie The Exorcist. It became one of the highest-grossing films in history, was a major pop culture influence, and was labeled by critics and voters as one of the scariest movies of all time. But in an issue of Vanity Fair, Friedkin admitted that he had never witnessed an actual exorcism. So Friedkin, who considers himself an agnostic, traveled to Italy and watched a real exorcism. When he returned to the U.S. he showed the video to two of the world's leading neurosurgeons and researchers in California and to a group of prominent psychiatrists in New York.
After watching the video, Dr. Neil Martin, chief of neurosurgery at the UCLA Medical Center, said:
There's a major force at work within her somehow. I don't know the underlying origin of it … This doesn't seem to be hallucinations … It doesn't look like schizophrenia or epilepsy … I've done thousands of surgeries, on brain tumors, traumatic brain injuries, [etc.] … and I haven't seen this kind of consequence from any of those disorders. This goes beyond anything I've ever experienced—that's for certain.
Dr. Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon and clinical specialist in epilepsy surgery, seizure disorder :
It looks like something authentic. She is like a caged animal. I don't think there's a loss of consciousness or contact … I believe everything originates in the brain. So which part of the brain could serve this type of behavior? … [But] can I characterize it? Maybe. Can I treat it? No.
Friedkin was surprised by the neurosurgeons' response:
They wouldn't come out and say, "Of course this woman is possessed by Satan," but they seemed baffled as to how to define her ailment … I went to these doctors to try to get a rational, scientific explanation for what I had experienced. I thought they'd say, 'This is some sort of psychosomatic disorder having nothing to do with possession.' That's not what I came away with. Forty-five years after I directed The Exorcist, there's more acceptance of the possibility of possession than there was when I made the film.
