ABSTRACT
On July 1, 1976, the German student Anneliese Michel was found dead in her parents’ house, in Klingenberg-am-Main, Bavaria. She was only 24 years old and the real nature of the disease from which she had been suffering during the last eight years of her life was—and continues to be—much written about: Some people say she had been struck down by a neurologic (epilepsy: generalized or uncinate) and/or psychiatric (psychosis) disorder (Goodman, 2005; Wolff, 2006; Wegner, 2009; Duffey, 2011), while others believe she had actually been possessed by the devil (Bullinger, 1983; Siegmund, 1985; Buttner, 1986; Fortea & LeBlanc, 2010). Such a differential diagnosis is of course not a matter for us (!), but the very first scary events Anneliese experienced in mid-September 1968 perfectly illustrate the topic of this column:
That night, shortly after midnight, she woke up and could not move. A giant force was pinning her down. [...] Her breathing became labored. In utter panic, she wanted to call to her sisters, but no sound came out. Her tongue was as if paralyzed. “Holy Mother of God,” she thought, “I must be dying.” By the time the tower clock of the church sounded the quarter hour, it was over. All pressure ceased as if blown away. Only her tongue felt sore. (Goodman, 2005, p. 14)
