Image
© Destination AmericaBishop James Long
All reality TV producers have to prepare for worst-case scenarios when they air a live event. Jodi Tovay's worries are a bit more unusual, because she is sending paranormal investigators into a house they believe is infested with demonic spirits.

"The worst-case scenario is that one of these entities will attach to someone," Tovay said. "It is dangerous."

Luckily, Tovay says, the physical symptoms are usually obvious when an evil spirit attaches itself to a person: nausea, scratches, super-human strength. A team of paramedics will be on standby, as will police. She's ready.


Comment: Physical symptoms of possession are not always so obvious. For some broad insight into what it's like for an exorcist to perform exorcisms in a broad range of people with varying symptoms you might read Hostage to The Devil by Malachai Martin. But be forewarned, it's not light reading and not for the timid.


Welcome to Exorcism: Live! airing at 9 p.m. Friday on Destination America, a cable channel owned by Discovery Communications. The two-hour telecast tasks a clergyman, a psychic and the team from the network's Ghost Asylum series to go into the spooky suburban St. Louis home that inspired The Exorcist book and movie. Ghost hunters insist that the house is filled with a dark, sinister energy, and Exorcism: Live! is determined to cleanse it.

"People have called it the biggest supernatural mystery in American history — so many tales that have come out of that house and still exist around it," Tovay said. "So we almost had to do something."

The Exorcist, William Blatty's 1971 horror novel, was based on the real-life case of a Maryland teenager known as Roland Doe. In 1949, Doe became violently ill, screaming in languages he was never taught, and doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong. Eventually, religious leaders decided that Doe was possessed by the Devil. Through exorcism rituals, a Catholic priest freed Doe of his demons. At the time, The Washington Post called it "perhaps one of the most remarkable experiences of its kind in recent religious history."

Doe traveled between Maryland and St. Louis for exorcisms as doctors and members of the clergy examined him. He stayed with relatives in the house in St. Louis and underwent an exorcism on the second floor. "Ever since the attempted exorcism of Roland Doe rumors have swirled that the house is still possessed by an evil entity," Destination America explains on its Web site.

"It's waiting there to attack somebody else who is going to come in and let themselves open themselves up so it can attach itself to that individual in our reality," said Nick Groff, the former star of Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures. "That's what scares me more than anything."