The Exorcism of Caterina Doria
When I was about 13, my paternal grandfather told me the story of how his mother’s sister, Caterina, was possessed by the spirit of a dead woman when she was 19 years old. This took place around 1902 in San Vito sullo Ionio, Calabria, Italy.
Recently I came into possession of my grandfather’s handwritten genealogy, and it contains the story in his own words. Between my memory and my grandfather’s diary, I can reconstruct the story.
As my great-grandmother, Maria, and her older sister, Caterina, were going up into the hills to do some work on a piece of land their family owned (or in a second version, as they were going to the town well), there was simultaneously an injured woman being brought down the hill (or just down the road and back into town) on a chair or a stretcher. Probably she had fallen off a horse and was bleeding. Apparently Caterina either laughed at the woman or made some joke to her sister, and the woman gave Caterina the evil eye.
Later on, when they were returning from the well or property (it’s unclear which), they passed a cross on the side of the road. Apparently it was the custom to erect a cross where a person dies on the road, similar to how we do now in the U.S. when someone is killed in a car crash. When they passed that cross, the dead woman’s spirit entered Caterina’s body.
My aunt Caterina was in a park where there is a water fountain. All the women go there to get water in a barrel to used at home. While she was there, they were bringing the lady that was hurt. [Crossed out: “The spirit of the lady when she [indeciperable] that when she pass by my aunt, she [his aunt] laughed at her. [Then when] she went by the cross, the spirit entered her. She was possessed by the spirit.] And when she went by my aunt, she [the dying woman?] looked at her [my aunt?], and she claims that my aunt laughed at her. So when a person dies, that means that she got killed, and they place a cross where she fell. So when my aunt and my mother went to the country, on the way back she passed by the cross, and that’s when her spirit went in my aunt’s body.
It took 2 times in church, the priest praying for hours to let the spirit come out of her body.
Caterina was pregnant with her first son when she was possessed by the spirit. As the priest was performing the exorcism and commanding the spirit to leave Caterina’s body, the spirit threatened to kill the unborn baby as it was leaving the body. For this reason, the priest commanded the spirit to leave through the tips of Caterina’s fingers. At the end of many hours, the spirit left as commanded.
At the end of the exorcism, the priest released Caterina into the care of her parents, my great-great-grandparents Vito and Maria. He instructed them to burn the clothes Caterina was wearing, lest the spirit return. They failed to do this, leaving the clothes at the bottom of a closest. In the middle of the night the spirit returned and repossessed Caterina.
Again she had to be taken to the church, and again, after many hours, the spirit was exorcised from her body through her fingertips. This time her family burned the clothes, and the spirit did not return. But from that day forward, and until the day she died, Caterina’s fingernails were black.