Real life "The Exorcist" boy ID-ed. Spoiler from real life.

[UTUSN]

*******QUOTE********

https://nypost.com/2021/12/20/is-the-exorcist-a-true-story-what-happened-to-ronald-hunkeler/

What really happened to Ronald Hunkeler, who inspired ‘The Exorcist’

Ronald Edwin Hunkeler was a NASA engineer who patented a special technology to make space shuttle panels resistant to extreme heat, helping the Apollo missions of the 1960s that put US astronauts on the moon in 1969.

But Hunkeler also had another claim to fame: He was the secret real-life inspiration for the demon-possessed kid in “The Exorcist.” ....

But the man who inspired it had a sad end to his life: Hunkeler’s three children — two daughters and a son — had long been estranged from their father and did not attend the funeral, the companion said. ....

“He said he wasn’t possessed, it was all concocted,” said the companion. “He said, ‘I was just a bad boy.' ” ....

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[JarOCats]

1. Concocted or not...

... it's a shame he spent his entire life worrying someone would find out. I bet the vast majority of his friends and coworkers would not have shamed him or shunned him, but would have had great sympathy for him. After all, he was just a stupid kid whose "concoction" got away from him.

[Gore1FL]

2. The house it happened in is walking distance from where I am typing this.

I read a lot of the details surrounding it and all of it sounded like a pretty obvious hoax. When the Exorcist movie came out and claimed "based on a true story" people seemed to assume it was as documentary of sorts.

[UTUSN]

3. Wow! & i was one of those who thought it was sort of true. It was the '70s!1

Last edited Mon Dec 20, 2021, 07:14 PM - Edit history (2)

Plus who was that peyote dude with all the mystc books - Don Juan? And then came The Da Vinci Code!1

I got disabused a lot sooner than a couple of my Hippie pals.

*** ON EDIT- "The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Life" by Carlos Castañeda first presented as anthropology then found out as fiction. The hippies were, like, "Dude!1"

[Gore1FL]

4. The argument I have use most when discussing this with someone convinced it was like the movie is

"If I were the devil, I would take over someone rich an powerful, not a troubled kid whose family apparently couldn't afford a camera."

I thought it was true in the 70s, too. "Tubular Bells" creeped me out as a kid. The subject came up in the last decade or so because they were having some television event at the house. By then, a lot more had been researched, people were interviewed, and a lot of the urban legends around it were debunked. I did have those advantages and Google on my second pass through it all!

I can't tell you how many time I biked past that house as a kid not knowing it's significance. It would have really freaked me out back then!

Here is the house:

https://www.zillow.com/homes/8435-Roanoke-Dr,-Bel.dash.Nor,-Missouri-63121-USA_rb/2694343_zpid/

[UTUSN]

5. Ricky GERVAIS has a hilarious bit about a hate mail he got for being an atheist:

The hater was a Fundie who wrote something like, "Satan is going to rape you and I'm going to be laughing at you!1

The bit started, "So (Fundie) is going to be in Hell, too?!1 Devil will drop raping me to do him!1"

On and on.