In 1928, a woman known to history as Anna Ecklund was brought under an assumed name to a secluded convent in rural Iowa.

What followed was one of the most prolonged, violent, and influential exorcisms ever conducted in the United States.

This episode of True Haunting Files traces the true story behind The Birth of the American Exorcism Myth—not as sensational horror, but as a cultural turning point. Drawing from priestly journals, historical records, and later publications like Begone Satan!, we examine how Anna Ecklund’s suffering was transformed into a template that reshaped how Americans understood demonic possession.

We explore Anna’s early life, allegations of familial abuse, the 1928 exorcism itself, and how its aftermath quietly seeded a mythology that would ripple forward through seminaries, popular culture, and eventually Hollywood. Along the way, we connect this case to older American fear cycles—from the Salem witch trials to modern Satan panics—and show how belief spreads not through demons, but through stories.

This is not just the story of an exorcism.

It is the story of how suffering became proof… how ritual became authority… and how a single locked room helped create a myth that never stopped moving.

Listener discretion advised.

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