Bel-Nor: Home of the Exorcist

Many of the events that inspired Peter Blatty's famous book, The Exorcist, occurred here - on a quiet street in North County.

In March 1949, a family from Maryland arrived at their relatives’ home on Roanoke Drive in Bel-Nor. They were hoping the visit would end two months of strange and frightening activity surrounding their thirteen-year-old son, but unfortunately it did not.

When priests were called to the house on March 9, they witnessed the boy’s bed shaking uncontrollably and saw a bottle of holy water fly through the air. When they quoted scripture, the boy screamed in pain as welts and scratches, some forming words and letters, inexplicably appeared on his skin.

According to a diary kept by the priests, for two weeks they conducted constant vigils with the boy, attempting to exorcise the demon within him. He writhed violently and cursed profanities at them in a “diabolical, high-pitched voice,” possessing “physical strength beyond the natural power.” Furniture moved on its own in the boy’s bedroom. At one point, he became so violent that he broke a priest’s nose.

As the boy’s welts and scratches continued to worsen – one spelling out “HELL” on his chest – the priests decided to move him to Alexian Brothers Hospital. For the next several weeks, he was shuttled between there, College Church rectory (at SLU), and the house on Roanoke Drive, until April 18, when the demon was finally cast out at the hospital.

Successfully exorcised, the boy returned with his family to Maryland. Several of the priests suffered mental and physical exhaustion, refusing to ever discuss the exorcism. And years later, both the College Church rectory and Alexian Brothers Hospital were razed, leaving the house in Bel-Nor as the only landmark to this haunting and now infamous incident.

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