The Exorcist (ISBN 0061007226) (1971), is a novel by William Peter Blatty, on which he based his screenplay for the movie of the same name.

The novel is in turn based on newspaper accounts of the real life exorcism of an adolescent boy, given the pseudonym "Roland Doe", that took place between January and April of 1949 in the Washington D.C area. News of the boy's exorcism was published in the Washington Post on August 20, 1949, where it came to the attention of Blatty, then a student at Georgetown University.

Recently, Strange Magazine issue #20 published an investigation into the boy's case and media coverage, that aimed to separate fact from fiction.

Blatty also wrote a sequel to The Exorcist, Legion (1983) (ISBN 840136048X), that linked a serial killer to the story in the first book. However, that was not the story used in the film sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic. Instead, it was made into The Exorcist III with Blatty again adapting the screenplay.

External links

• Strange Magazine - The Haunted Boy