Is The Exorcist based on a true story? All about “Roland Doe” and the "cursed film"

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Exorcist.

As written by William Peter Blatty, both in his original novel and his Academy Award-winning screenplay, The Exorcist (1973) did not happen. Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) and her mother Chris (Ellen Burstyn) were not real people, and no priests have ever died after falling out of a window mid-exorcism in Washington, DC. But the broad outlines of the story — a young teenager possessed by a seemingly supernatural force; two priests called to the child’s bedside to expel it — were based on supposedly real events that took place in 1949.

The most impactful true story behind The Exorcist, however, is what happened afterward. The film brought renewed attention to the once-obscure practice of exorcism; today, demand for the ritual continues to accelerate. It’s the ultimate example of how popular movies can directly influence reality — and vice versa.

William Friedkin’s horror classic also has a reputation as a “cursed film,” with multiple deaths and peculiar coincidences tied to the movie and its production. Read on for the eerie true stories behind The Exorcist, its inspiration, and its aftermath.

The real case that inspired The Exorcist

Blatty first heard about the case of “Roland Doe” when he was a student at Georgetown University. A professor told him about the case of a 13-year-old Maryland boy who had recently undergone “between 20 and 30” exorcisms over two months, primarily in Missouri. In May 1949, one of the Jesuit priests who performed the rites declared that the last one had been successful. The boy went on to live a normal life as an engineer for NASA. His true identity, Ronald Edwin Hunkeler, was revealed after his death at age 85 in 2020. 

The story stuck with Blatty. In the late 1960s, the author — then a comedy writer — took a break to pen a nonfiction book based on the story of “Roland Doe.” Few involved with the case would speak to Blatty on the record, and he ended up changing the details of the story, including the child’s gender, and adapting it into a work of fiction. The novel hit bookshelves in 1971. When Friedkin came aboard to helm the big-screen adaptation, he and Blatty were given access to the diaries of a priest who assisted in the rites, a Jesuit named William Halloran, as well as other eyewitness accounts. 

When the movie became a hit, Blatty bragged to the press that everything in the movie — short of Blair’s 360-degree head turn, of course — had actually happened. And some of the details do seem to line up. In the movie, the word “HELP” appears under Regan’s skin; similarly, words were scratched onto Roland’s skin throughout his ordeal. Witnesses claimed that furniture in the boy’s room appeared to move on its own and he was reportedly thrown around the room by unseen forces. During his many exorcisms, he “broke into a violent tantrum of screaming, cursing, and voicing of Latin phrases,” as The Washington Post detailed in 1949.

The cultural impact of The Exorcist

When The Exorcist hit theaters in late 1973, exorcism in the Catholic Church was an obscure and little-discussed practice that was on the verge of extinction. But the movie was a massive hit, inspiring not only films like The Omen (1976) — and the entire demonic possession subgenre, for that matter — but a renewed preoccupation with the devil among the general public. Reports of moviegoers fainting, vomiting, and running out of theaters in fright were common. One woman claimed the film caused her to have a miscarriage, and it was blamed for several nervous breakdowns.

Demand for exorcisms boomed in the wake of the film, along with a crop of renegade priests willing to perform the ritual without the Church's approval. The Catholic Church later updated its guidelines for exorcism in 1999, listing the symptoms of demonic possession — which include unusual strength and knowledge of unknown languages, like in the movie — and advising would-be exorcists to exhaust all potential diagnoses of physical and mental illness before declaring that someone is possessed.

In recent years, exorcisms have been on the rise worldwide, including among evangelical Christians whose churches don’t have the strict hierarchies and rules of the Catholic Church. These DIY exorcisms can, of course, be extremely dangerous: Earlier this year, three people were charged in the death of a 3-year-old girl who was smothered during a ritual at a Pentecostal church in San Jose, Calif.

Friedkin himself remained fascinated by demonic possession in his later years. In 2017, he directed a documentary, The Devil and Father Amorth, that claimed to capture the “first authentic exorcism that the Vatican has ever allowed to be filmed,” per Entertainment Weekly’s review.

Is The Exorcist a cursed film?

The Exorcist has a reputation as a “cursed film,” so much so that it was the subject of the first episode of Shudder’s docuseries of the same name. The trouble started on set, where Burstyn and Blair both suffered from back injuries caused by faulty rigging of special effects harnesses. Then a fire broke out that burned down most of the set — except for Regan’s bedroom, the center of the film’s demonic activity. (That one is still unexplained.) 

Two of the film’s actors, Jack MacGowran (who played Burke Jennings, Chris MacNeil’s director and friend) and Vasiliki Maliaros (who played Damian Karras’ mother, Mary), died during production, which finally wrapped after 200 agonizing days full of mishaps and delays. At least two crew members died as well. Two others lost appendages — a thumb and a toe — in on-set accidents. In response to these mysterious events — and to soothe the crew’s jangled nerves — Friedkin called in a priest to bless the set. He bragged about a “curse” on the film’s press tour, and that became part of its legend. 

But perhaps the creepiest real-life tale tied to The Exorcist is that of Paul Bateson, a radiologist who appears in a small role as a technician in the film’s agonizing angiography sequence. These medical scenes are among the most upsetting in the film — which says a lot. They’re even more unsettling when you learn that Bateson, after losing his job at the NYU Medical Center, began a downward spiral that culminated in him murdering Variety journalist Addison Verrill on Sept. 14, 1977. 

Bateson confessed to Verrill’s murder, but detectives and prosecutors suspected him of killing six more gay men in a series of sexually motivated homicides — the so-called “bag murders” — that took place between 1975 and 1977. Bateson was never charged with those crimes, and the connection remains circumstantial and speculative. He was, however, convicted of killing Verrill in 1979.

Friedkin visited him in prison, and the experience inspired him to direct the controversial Al Pacino-led murder mystery Cruising (1980). Bateson was released on parole in 2003. His current whereabouts are unknown.