As Hollywood (specifically Blumhouse productions) gears up for yet ANOTHER reboot of an American classic: The Exorcist, fascinating revelations have been made about the true story the film’s events were based upon. The real identity of the child who was reportedly subject to demonic possession and only relieved of this affliction through a difficult and traumatic series of exorcisms has been confirmed following the death of a famed NASA Engineer at the ripe old age of 85.
We now know that retired NASA engineer Ronald Edwin Hunkeler who boasted a 40-year spanning career working on projects from the Apollo program to even a patented heat resistant system for the Space Shuttle hid his controversial past for his whole life, according to the Skeptical Inquirer‘s, JD Sword.
Coast To Coast with George Noory explained further,
“Although Hunkeler’s identity was known to the Jesuit priests and medical professionals who tended to him more than seven decades ago, his name was kept secret from the general public since he was just a boy when the strange case occurred and the teenager was dubbed simply ‘Roland Doe.’ By connecting various clues which came to light over the years, such as the boy’s date of birth and a high school yearbook for Cottage City, Sword was able to pinpoint a particularly promising suspect. Upon bringing the information to journalist Mark Opsasnick, who had previously thoroughly investigated the case, his findings were confirmed when he was told “the Haunted Boy is Ronald Hunkeler. That’s a fact.”
“In what is perhaps one of the most remarkable experiences of its kind in recent religious history, a 14-year-old … boy has been freed by a Catholic priest of possession by the devil, Catholic sources reported yesterday,”
wrote Bill Brinkley in an August 1949 article in the Washington Post.
A NASA Engineer Hiding His Past For His Whole Life
Mr. Hunkeler was born in 1935 and raised a Lutheran in a middle-class, Cottage City, Maryland family. As the story goes, when he was fourteen he started to hear knocking and scratching sounds emanating from his bedroom walls. Things started to escalate with objects in the boy’s room seeming to fly across the room of their own accord and his bed moving as well.
The New York Post wrote, “In March 1949, the family’s minister, the Rev. Luther Schulze, wrote to Duke University’s Parapsychology Lab about what was going on with Hunkeler, detailing how “chairs moved with him and one threw him out [of it]. His bed shook whenever he was in it.” The reverend also cited the family’s stories of tables overturning, their floors being “scarred from the sliding of heavy furniture” and, in one, how a “picture of Christ on the wall shook” when Hunkeler was nearby.”
Reportedly Ronald’s mother was deathly afraid that his experiences were related to his Aunt Tillie of St. Louis, MO, recently deceased. Tillie was apparently a “spiritualist” who had allegedly taught Hunkeler how to use a Ouija board to contact spirits on the other side. Ronald’s family sought treatment for him in medical and psychological terms to no avail. The battery of tests on the boy yielded nothing abnormal. Mrs. Hunekler then turned to religious assistance, beginning with a Protestant minister, Reverend Luther Schulze. However, things grew only worse and the family turned to a group more acquainted with this type of phenomenon: the Jesuit order.
Sword wrote, “After that, a Jesuit priest, Father William Bowdern, was brought in to perform more than twenty exorcisms on Roland over a period of two months, finally freeing him of the demonic influence. Father Bowdern was assisted by fellow priests Father Walter Halloran, Father Hughes, and Father Raymond Bishop. Bishop kept a diary of events that Blatty would base his novel on and would be reprinted later in Thomas Allen’s book Possessed.”
It was later revealed that, despite no longer experiencing these terrors, while Hunkeler led a storied and lauded career, his personal life suffered as he feared the exposure of his past. And one of his later life companions told the press that he denied the demonic possession entirely.
“He said he wasn’t possessed, it was all concocted,” said the companion. “He said, ‘I was just a bad boy.’”
Regrettably, Ronald would find himself divorced, and estranged from his three children in his later life. His children didn’t attend his funeral. His companion explained that “he had a terrible life from worry, worry, worry”. But Hunkeler’s death had one last mystery to add to his story: unlooked-for and unrequested, mere days before his passing: a Catholic priest reportedly arrived at his home to perform his Extreme Unction, the Catholic last-rites administered to those in danger of imminent death. His companion reportedly said according to Italy24News. “I don’t know how he found out. But the important thing is that he is now in heaven“
