Looking back, I’m a bit disappointed in my last Flashback Friday. I was a bit off my game that evening, and what I ended up posting was nowhere near what I was hoping it would be. True, it was fun to reminisce about these books, but since most people are never going to be able to get their hands on any of them, it was a bit pointless to tell you about them, eh? <\/p>\n

So here is a supplemental offering: An article from Strange Magazine<\/em>, “The Haunted Boy of Cottage City,” <\/a>about the true story that inspired William Peter Blatty to pen The Exorcist<\/a><\/em>, one of the greatest horror novels ever written that would later be turned into one of the greatest horror movies ever filmed. <\/p>\n

Blatty is even more legendary in the D.C. area since he discovered the inspiration for The Exorcist<\/em> while studying at Georgetown University, which you will note plays a prominent role in the book and the movie. In fact, any self-respecting horror fan in this area has made the mandatory pilgrimage to the infamous Exorcist Steps at least once. Yes, I count myself as one of these happy horror pilgrims. So, of course I would be interested in learning more about the true story that inspired one of my all-time favorite fictional accounts of demonic possession. <\/p>\n

Whether or not you find either the fictional account or the true version scary is up to your own personal tolerance levels for this type of story. However, I think the investigative depths of this article are to be commended. I’d always wondered about the young boy who was supposedly the inspiration for Regan MacNeil, but truth be told, I couldn’t be bothered to do the investigation myself. Thank goodness for Strange Magazine<\/em>!<\/p>\n

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the article and forgive me for my less-than-stellar Flashback Friday from last week. Mea culpa, denizens. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looking back, I’m a bit disappointed in my last Flashback Friday. I was a bit off my game that evening, and what I ended up posting was nowhere near what I was hoping it would be. True, it was fun to reminisce about these books, but since most people are never going to be able […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lobablanca.com\/blog09\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}