In the summer of 1961, I was a Benedictine monk in St. John's Abbey at Collegeville, Minnesota, studying for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest. That summer I was in charge of the little book store set up for people who came to the Abbey for summer retreats and other events. One of the pamphlets on sale the book store was Begone Satan!, an account of what was up to that point probably the best known and most spectacular case of satanic possession in the history of the United States. (The pamphlet cost 15 cents at the time, but it sells for the better part of $100.00 at a rare bookstore today.) Begone Satan! recounts the possession and exorcism of a 40-year-old woman in 1928 in a small rural town in Iowa. It contains vivid, eyewitness descriptions of how this woman came under the power of the devil and was the centre of extraordinary paranormal occurrences in the process of her exorcism. The exorcist was a Father Theophilus Riesinger, O.M.Cap. When the rite of exorcism began, she was being held down on an iron bed by a number of assisting nuns. As the first words were pronounced, she broke free of their hold and her body was carried high into the air and stuck to the wall above the door of the room. At times her body became horribly distorted (her emaciated frame swelling enormously, with her lips becoming many times their usual size and her head changing shape and colour). On occasion she vomited huge quantities of spaghetti-like material, although she had eaten practically nothing for weeks. This uneducated woman, under the influence of the demon corrected Father Riesinger when he misread Latin words in the ritual of exorcism and showed other signs of having knowledge of things she could not have known through ordinary means. In the process of the exorcism, the demons that were thrown out included Beelzebub, Lucifer, and Judas. After twenty-three days the exorcism was brought to a successful conclusion.

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