427: The 1949 Exorcism That Inspired "The Exorcist" w/ Troy Taylor

Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast

Erik Rivenes

History, True Crime, Education

4.7 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2026

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1949, a quiet neighborhood in St. Louis became the center of one of the most controversial religious cases in American history. A 13-year-old boy began exhibiting disturbing symptoms including violent outbursts, strange markings on his body, and other troubling episodes, leading Catholic priests to perform a series of secret exorcism rites. The case would later inspire The Exorcist, but the real story was far more complex than the film. My guest is Troy Taylor, author of The Devil Came to St. Louis: The Uncensored True Story of the 1949 Exorcism, who takes a careful look at the case, its origins, and how fact, faith, and folklore became intertwined in one of America’s most enduring mysteries. The author's website: https://www.americanhauntingsink.com/ Become a Most Notorious Patron here! https://www.patreon.com/c/mostnotorious Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered.
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0:18.8	then check out the Ancient World Podcast.
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0:28.8	That's the Ancient World Podcast.
0:31.0	That's the Ancient World Podcast. The
0:40.3	The Welcome everyone to another episode of the Most Notorious podcast.
1:02.9	I'm Eric Rivenis.
1:04.6	I am very pleased to announce that Troy Taylor is back on the show.
1:09.3	It's always great to have him.
1:11.9	He's been on Most Notorious to talk about the Iroquois Theater Fire, the Donner Party tragedy, and the horrific murders
1:18.6	of the Grime Sisters. In this interview, we lean heavily into his knowledge of the supernatural,
1:25.4	the paranormal, the all-around unknown, as we delve into his book
1:30.7	published in 2006 called The Devil Came to St. Louis, the true story of the 1949 exorcism.
1:40.3	Welcome back. Always great to have you on. Oh, thanks. Thanks. I always love coming on and you always seem to
1:47.5	pick things that I really love talking about. So this is one of them. Perfect. And we should mention that
1:55.5	you have updated your book since 2006. Yes. Yeah, it's in its fifth edition now because it things just, it's not, it's one of those
2:05.1	stories that I, you know, started researching back in the mid-90s, and it's one of
2:10.7	those things that, you know, I published the first edition and I could only do so much because
2:16.1	I had made some promises that names wouldn't be used.
2:21.0	Some things wouldn't be revealed until the person at the center of all this had passed away.
2:26.8	And so I kept that promise. And eventually, after he passed, I was able to really update this thing.
	...

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