10 Disturbing Possessions And Exorcisms That Really Happened

In 1906, Clara Germana Cele was an orphan at St. Michael’s Mission in Natal, South Africa, who confessed to Father Erasmus Horner that she had foolishly made a pact with Lucifer.

While the Father surprisingly doubted her confession, the Mission’s nuns admitted to witnessing unusual and barbaric behaviour from the 16-year-old: she spoke Polish, German, French, and other languages she had never been exposed to, she taunted strangers by revealing their most intimate secrets, and she attacked her fellow sisters by hurling them about the convent rooms.

Terrified of the levitating girl who slithered across the floor and bit a sister’s arm, the nuns convinced Reverend Mansueti and Father Horner to perform an exorcism on 11 September. Cele’s deliverance lasted two days and over 170 people saw her knock the holy bible from the priest’s hands and attempt to strangle him with his own stole.

Mansueti and Horner declared that the ritual was successful and the devil had been condemned back to hell, but in 1907 its former host made another deal and was possessed once again. The teen’s second and final exorcism ended with a rank odour filling the air.