A convent story with more than one ending
The reported exorcisms at Earling, Iowa, became a prominent American Catholic possession narrative through a pamphlet translated into English in 1935. Theophilus Riesinger, a Capuchin priest, conducted the rites with the assistance of local pastor Joseph Steiger. Later literature calls the woman Anna Ecklund or Mary, among other names. Her identity is less securely established in the sources reviewed here than the existence and circulation of the account.
The historical question is not simply whether to accept its most dramatic scenes. Versions disagree about the duration, languages, prophetic messages and outcome. Contemporary Catholic publicity, a Spiritualist response and later scholarly comparisons reveal a story interpreted differently even by people willing to accept extraordinary events.
The pamphlet and its supplement
The published religious account available through EWTN places the rites in a Franciscan convent at Earling. It attributes the narrative to Steiger’s testimony and presents Riesinger as an experienced exorcist. It describes an adult woman restrained on a bed, voices interpreted as several possessing spirits, unusual movement and violent bodily symptoms. These are the pamphlet’s claims, not independently measured phenomena.
Its chronology requires care. The main narrative places the final departure on 23 December 1928. A supplement lists three periods: 18–26 August, 13–20 September and 15–22 December. The familiar total of twenty-three days should therefore be attributed to the account rather than treated as an independently verified continuous timetable.
The ending is qualified within the same edition. After describing relief, the supplement acknowledges later episodes of a milder character. It also explicitly says the Church made no official decision concerning the case. The text bears a 1935 imprimatur but refers to other cases since 1940: this online edition contains later material and cannot be treated as an unchanged facsimile of the first printing. [1]
The prefatory physician’s endorsement follows an interview with Riesinger after reading the account; it is not presented as the woman’s contemporaneous examination record at the convent.
How Catholic publicity presented it in 1936
TIME’s report of 17 February 1936 traced the publicity to Notre Dame’s Religious Bulletin and the Denver Catholic Register. It condensed the pamphlet, then described the Register editor’s response to readers worried by the story or its effect on the Church. The editor distinguished general Catholic teaching about possession from any obligation to believe this particular account. This is evidence of contemporary circulation and controversy, not an independent medical investigation. The original public article was read in full; its dramatic extracts remain attributed material. [2]
A contemporary Spiritualist counter-reading
Another response appeared in The National Spiritualist on 1 June 1936. In his Bureau of Phenomenal Evidence column, Emil Reichel discussed a Milwaukee Sunday Journal interview with Riesinger and the controversy surrounding the Earling pamphlet. Reichel did not dismiss the reported phenomena. Instead, he challenged the Catholic interpretation of them.
He asked why a supposed return by the woman’s deceased father should not support the possibility of communication by other dead people. He interpreted the bodily phenomena in the vocabulary of mediumship, including levitation and what he considered ectoplasm, and invoked William Crookes’s Spiritualist research. Those interpretations were his religious argument, not laboratory identifications of material from Earling.
Reichel distinguished cooperative mediumship from unwanted influence accompanied by fear and confusion. The article therefore supplies a useful historical disagreement that is broader than belief against scepticism: different religious traditions could accept the narrative while contesting what its voices and actions meant. It was commentary on published reporting, not a newly documented observation inside the convent. The complete original column was checked in the June issue, page fifteen. [3]
Kelly compares the competing accounts
Henry Ansgar Kelly examined Earling in the revised 1974 edition of The Devil, Demonology and Witchcraft. His discussion identifies the familiar account as Carl Vogl’s narrative based on Steiger, translated by Celestine Kapsner. Kelly also consulted a second account compiled by F. J. Bunse from Riesinger’s German notes.
His language comparison is especially concrete. Vogl describes replies in English, German and Latin and speculates about understanding any language. Bunse says the woman had learned English and German in childhood and understood additional languages; Kelly observes that this is not the same claim as speaking unfamiliar languages. He also asks how such understanding was established.
The accounts differed over prophetic messages and the interpretation of purported heavenly visitors. Kelly contrasted the appearance of a final cure with the supplement’s admission of recurrence and Bunse’s account of continuing episodes. His analysis supports keeping the versions separate. The original Bunse manuscript has not been inspected for this case file: those comparisons are explicitly Kelly’s findings. His Earling discussion, printed pages 100–102, was read in an archived copy of the excerpt published by UCLA. [4]
Later scholarship and the manuscript trail
Joseph Laycock returned to the two accounts in a 2020 chapter, The Secret History of the ‘Earling Exorcism’. Its publisher’s abstract identifies the second text as a 1934 Bunse account based on Riesinger’s narrative. It reports renewed episodes in 1929 and continuing exorcisms when that account was written, alongside messages attributed to Jesus, Mary, Michael and other heavenly visitors.
Laycock frames the comparison as a study of how religious experience was narrated and how institutional interests shaped its interpretation. That offers a distinct research question from deciding whether each reported movement was supernatural. The abstract and public references were read; the complete subscription chapter was not accessed and is not represented as having been reviewed. [5]
The University of Scranton’s special collections blog confirms a rare Bunse text among its holdings. Its 2019 entry dates the account to 1932, whereas Kelly and the Springer abstract give 1934. That catalogue-level difference remains unresolved here. A modern description of a manuscript is a route to further research, not a substitute for reading the actual copy or establishing that all surviving copies are identical. [6]
What the sources can establish
The evidence supports a documented history of a possession narrative, its circulation and the disagreements it produced. It does not turn descriptions of strength, movement or languages into controlled measurements. A person’s distress and the meaning assigned to it are different questions; neither a historical pamphlet nor an opposing religious explanation supplies an independently verified clinical account.
The distinction between publication approval and historical verification also matters. Permission to publish a religious text cannot by itself settle every factual claim it contains. Here the most useful corrections arise from comparing the sources themselves: a supplement qualifies an ending, a scholar distinguishes two language claims, and contemporary readers argue over interpretation. No additional diagnosis of the woman is inferred.
Approximate location and the photograph
The map pin is an approximate Earling locality reference, rounded from the U.S. Census city gazetteer. It identifies the Iowa town associated with the convent narrative, not a particular room, a private residence or a visitor destination. The modern photograph shows Earling’s main street in 2008. It is town context, not a view of the 1928 rites or an identification of the convent interior. The photographer’s public-domain release covers its use here and in directory thumbnails. [7, 8]
Reading the case as a history
Earling remains substantial because the source trail preserves competing accounts rather than one uncontested report. The rites belong to a particular place and religious setting; the later pamphlet, press coverage and scholarship belong to successive stages of interpretation. A careful account can describe that history without declaring demonic possession proved, a permanent cure established, or every witness mistaken. The unresolved ending is part of the surviving record.
Sources and related reading
[1] Begone Satan!, English religious account and supplement, EWTN edition.
[2] TIME, Religion: Exorcist & Energumen, 17 February 1936.
[6] University of Scranton, Happy Halloween from McHugh Special Collections!, 31 October 2019.
[7] U.S. Census Bureau, 2024 Gazetteer, Iowa places: Earling city.
[8] Sultec, Earling main street, 2008: original file and public-domain release.
Compare Adele Brise’s reported Wisconsin visions and Jane Addams’s Hull-House folklore account for other distinctions between a religious or supernatural narrative and its surviving documentation.