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USA Today
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- USA Today
The 'true' origin story of 'The Ritual' is even more hair-raising: 'Begone Satan!'
The 'true' origin story of 'The Ritual' is even more hair-raising: 'Begone Satan!' Show Caption Hide Caption 'The Ritual': Al Pacino, Dan Stevens take on exorcism horror Al Pacino and Dan Stevens star in "The Ritual," a horror film based on the account of a 1928 American exorcism. "The Ritual" exorcism horror drama (now in theaters), starring Al Pacino as the real-life German-American Capuchin friar Theophilus Riesinger and Dan Stevens as Father Joseph Steiger, proudly claims to be "based on true events." The star duo delivers hair-raising moments as they recreate the 1928 exorcism of Emma Schmidt (Abigail Cowen). But on a horror level, it pales in comparison to the more sensational source material. Writer-director David Midell has made it clear "The Ritual" is inspired by the 1935 "Begone Satan!" book by Father Carl Vogl, a German priest and author. Vogl's exclamation point-filled "true account" of the proceedings in Earling, Iowa, is still available online and makes for great, campy reading. How 'Begone Satan!' emerged as the source of 'The Ritual' in Time magazine Steiger's job was to host (other churches declined) and to take notes during the harrowing (and reportedly successful) exorcism. The Steiger notes are the purported source of "Begone Satan!" which made front-page news in religious publications like Denver's Catholic Register years later. Time magazine brought the story to mainstream readers with a Riesinger-heavy 1936 account of the "diabolical possession." The Time article demonstrates some skepticism by reminding readers "that no Catholic is obliged to believe in any particular account of a case of diabolical possession outside of those recounted in Scripture." At the end of this long, twisted, and sometimes dubious road, "The Ritual" earns the right to make the carefully worded claim in its closing: "The 1928 exorcism of Emma Schmidt represents the most thoroughly documented and well-known exorcism in American history." The devil will apparently mess with your car In an early "Ritual" scene, Steiger apologizes for failing to pick up Riesinger at the train station, attributing the oversight to the devil's mischief. With 19 exorcisms to his name, he knows that the devil will mess with cars. In "Begone Satan!" Steiger can't explain why his "tip-top" car takes two hours to get to the station. Riesinger points out that the traveling mishap is the devil "doing his utmost to foil our plans." Later, Steiger is nearly killed after inexplicably losing control of his still-new car on a familiar road and crashing it to "smithereens." The book's car-totaling "devil's trick" doesn't make "The Ritual," which is a shame, given the rich real-life irony: Stevens' "Downton Abbey" character, Matthew Crawley, was killed in a Season 3 car crash that allowed him to pursue a film career. In "Begone Satan!" Steiger's congregation pitches in to buy a new car for the pastor, which frankly could have been an alternate film ending (with a Ford sponsorship). Riesinger had met Schmidt's demons before In "The Ritual," Riesinger makes it clear that the case is personal because he had previously exorcised Schmidt. "Begone Satan!" says Riesinger "freed her from this possession" in 1912, but Schmidt "became possessed again" in her 40s. Schmidt is said to be possessed by four entities that announce themselves as Beelzebub, betraying disciple Judas, Schmidt's abusive father Jacob and Mina (Jacob's lover and Schmidt's aunt). The devil didn't mess with the 'Ritual' nuns Three nuns are injured while dealing directly with the possessed Schmidt in "The Ritual," and Sister Rose ("Twilight" star Ashley Greene) has her hair pulled out of her scalp. In "Begone Satan!" the devil never attacked the nuns, saving his blows for the bigwigs — Pastor Steiger or Mother Superior (played by "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Patricia Heaton). In "The Ritual," the demons within Schmidt taunt Steiger with knowledge of his brother's recent death by suicide. There's no suggestion of these low blows in "Begone Satan!" But in the book, Steiger gives some memorable verbal shots in that never made the movie, like "detestable hellhound" and "vile serpent." Satan also calls Riesinger "dumbbell" when the overtired priest doesn't get his prayers right. That didn't make the movie, either. 'Begone Satan!' has the possessed woman flying over bed like 'The Ritual' The possessed Schmidt throws up black bile often in "The Ritual," but not as much as in the book. 'It was not unusual for her to vomit 20 to 30 times a day," the book says, including bedside descriptions of wretched output "resembling vomited macaroni." The movie scene featuring Schmidt flying over the bed is detailed in "Begone Satan!" "The possessed woman broke from the grip of her protectors and stood erect before them," the book says. "Only her heels were touching the bed." How 'Begone Satan!' ends the story Unlike the movie, the Iowa exorcism reportedly took place in three stages, in August, September and December 1928. The book's climax differs from "The Ritual" ending, which has Schmidt running through the church catacombs, and Steiger stepping up with an exorcist hero moment, shouting down the demon with the Bible in hand. In the book, levitating Schmidt returns to the bed, and "Satan was forced to leave his victim at last to return to Hell." Schmidt utters, "My Jesus mercy! Praised be Jesus!" showing she's clear. The woman "reportedly lived out the rest of her life peacefully," the movie says in the closing credits. "Begone Satan!" backs up that happy ending, adding "there were still possessions, but of a milder nature."
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Oswego Chasers prepare to hunt storms in Tornado Alley
OSWEGO, N.Y. (WSYR) — SUNY Oswego's storm-chasing student team, the 'Oswego Chasers,' is hitting the road again on Tuesday, May 27. Dr. Scott Steiger, professor of meteorology and Director of LESPaRC, spent Memorial Day preparing his class and visiting students from states in the northeast for the annual summer expedition in the Great Plains. Students were testing instruments, such as a Radiosonde weather balloon, that would be vital to their research in the field. Dr. Steiger told his team the tool measures moisture, temperature, and wind at least 10 miles above the surface. Students from as far as Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, along with Oswego-based students, will be split into three teams to focus on forecasting, equipment care, and logistics. Because their focus is on forecasting daily, each team observes, takes measurements, and compares their data from earlier in the day with the data at the end. 'That really can help to determine whether or not we're in a good place to…where thunderstorms may develop,' Dr. Steiger said. Dr. Steiger has been preparing his band of misfit meteorologists all semester long to take on 'Tornado Alley' for two weeks, a tradition he has loved since 2007. 'One day we'll be in Texas,' he said. 'Two days later, we could be in Montana.' David Rienza, a SUNY Oswego 2024-25 graduate, said he has always been fascinated by storms in New York State but is ready to observe them on a larger scale. 'We get severe thunderstorms, but they're nothing compared to, you know, how severe…just how massive they are out in the Plains,' Rienza said. During the instrument demonstration, the professor's team agreed they were ready to put their skills and tools to the test. 'We can actually plot it ourselves,' Kaitlin Farrell, a senior, said. 'We get to collect that data that we, normally, are kind of given…with these instruments, we can actually see how this stuff works!' Senior Jason Ruiz, an avid astronomy enthusiast, cannot wait to apply his knowledge of Earth and space science while studying the skies. 'It brings excitement to me…knowing that what I'm looking at on the screen is actually happening, like, in large scale around me,' Ruiz said. As Dr. Steiger prepares to pack the vagabond fleet of vans in the morning, he said he never ceases to look forward to his favorite part of any trip. 'When we're out watching a storm…I have my iPad, and we're looking at the radar imagery of the storm, and they're comparing what they're visually seeing to what they see on the radar screen and you can just see when they make that connection in their eyes,' he said. The Oswego Chases depart at 7 a.m. and hope to be storm-chasing in Western Oklahoma by Wednesday evening. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Yahoo
‘No consequences': How teens access stolen guns, and why so many become repeat offenders
If it seems like teenagers are involved in more crimes of gun violence than in the past, and more young teens seem to be caught carrying arsenals of guns, our KIRO 7 investigation confirms, that both of those things are true. According to King County gun violence data, since 2017, 58 teenagers ages 11 to 17 were killed in gun violence in King County alone. According to police and prosecutors, the majority of the triggers were pulled by other teens. Those numbers are trending higher than the previous ten-year span. Multiple police sources tell KIRO 7 they've never seen more teens carrying automatic weapons. Last July, Seattle police caught three teens, two 14-year-olds and a 13-year-old, carrying stolen handguns that had been modified to be fully automatic. KIRO 7 requested evidence photos and details from several police agencies of guns confiscated from teenagers, and they supplied dozens of examples. Three weeks ago, three guns were taken from one teenager after a high-speed chase in Auburn. Auburn police say the guns were stolen and all were modified to be machine guns. 'The least little aggravation and they'll pull out a gun and start shooting,' said Cloyd Steiger, who now teaches homicide detectives, after solving murders for the SPD for 22 years. Lately, Steiger has noticed a clear pattern. 'They just assume nothing's going to happen to them. And you know what? They're right most of the time,' he said. According to Seattle police, a 15-year-old recently arrested in Seattle with a stolen gun in his waistband had been arrested only months before for drive-by shooting with a different stolen gun. According to Title 13 of Washington State Law, the teen had to be released both times without an extended period of detention. On March 5, 2023, when 29-year-old Karel Juarez was gunned down in front of his girlfriend and three-year-old daughter in White Center, 16-year-old Charles Anthony Baker was arrested and charged with his murder. King County Prosecutors discovered Baker had been arrested two previous times with stolen guns in Snohomish County, but state law required Baker to be released from custody each time. Because the latest charge includes a murder case, Baker, who is now 18, is now charged as an adult. He has pleaded not guilty. State law says a juvenile can be arrested for gun possession five times, with five different guns for five different gun-related crimes, before a judge even has the legal option to send a teen to detention for longer than 30 days. Steiger says it's no wonder the same teens make deadly choices again and again. 'Because there are no consequences,' he said. 'You have to have that threat, that hammer of the law over your head that if you don't do these required things, it will fall, and you'll just go away. To wait five convictions is outrageous!' King County Prosecutors told KIRO 7 there are seven teenagers currently charged with either murder or first-degree assault after previously being convicted of unlawful gun possession as a juvenile. Some of the suspects have multiple previous arrests for gun possession, or using a gun in a crime, and all of them were released sooner than the 30-day maximum. State Representative David Hackney, a Democrat from the 11th Legislative District proposed a bill to stiffen penalties for teen gun crimes, but his idea died without even getting a hearing. So where are all the guns coming from? You might see signs in parking lots warning you about this. FBI data shows overall, the vast majority of guns are stolen out of parked cars than anywhere else. In Renton last year, 86% of stolen guns were taken in car prowls. KIRO 7's investigation spanning six years of data shows in Seattle alone — an average of 407 guns are reported stolen every year, the majority coming from car break-ins. From 2018 to 2023, two-thousand, four hundred, and forty guns were reported stolen. In 2005, then Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske reported his Glock 32 stolen from a car parked at 4th and Olive downtown. The gun has never been recovered. Steiger noted once teens acquire stolen guns, they tend to pass them around. 'Frequently we find guns involved in a drive-by over here, it was involved here,' he said. Steiger told KIRO 7 he matched a stolen gun used by a juvenile to another unresolved murder six years before. Same gun, but the trigger was very likely pulled by a different killer. Deputy Chief Ryan Rutledge of the Renton Police Department is trying an innovative approach, that seems to be working. Renton's Violent Crimes Unit is dedicated to getting stolen guns — and teens making violent choices — off the streets. Deputy Chief Ryan Rutledge says the effort has led to a significant drop in juvenile crime since last year. 'We don't believe that just putting somebody in secure detention without any plan is going to be a great idea,' Rutledge said, noting a program called LINC (it stands for leadership intervention and change) works to inspire teen offenders with influence and guidance from mentors, counselors and officers. 'So, while they are in custody it's an intervention,' he said. 'It's a new chance to connect, it's touch point, where that youth has a support system before they get released.' 'They have not attended school for multiple years.' 'We actively ask the judges to hold those children in detention,' said Jamie Kvistad, the Senior Deputy Prosecutor for juvenile crimes in King County. Kvistad told KIRO 7 she charges kids for gun possession virtually every day, and she says one thing connects almost all of them. 'I see these kids screened in on a detention referral, I read their detention screening notes, and it says they have not attended school for multiple years,' she said. Kvistad analyzed almost 60 cases of kids arrested for gun possession, and she found nearly 90 percent had not been enrolled in school. Sometimes, they'd been truant for years. She believes reconnecting at-risk kids with school earlier changes everything. 'I could tell you, it will solve violent crime for juveniles if we could do that,' she said.
Telegraph
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Better than Brando? Why Rod Steiger should have been a contender
Rod Steiger, the burly and beloved star born a century ago this week, could have become the greatest film actor of all time. Or at least, like his character's brother in On the Waterfront, he coulda been a contender. His early performances were extraordinary displays of Method acting that matched those of Marlon Brando, his co-star in Waterfront and perennial rival. His intensity and naturalism stunned the doyens of film criticism – Pauline Kael: 'Steiger seems to take over a picture even when he isn't in the lead'; Roger Ebert: 'I don't know how he does it' – and the hulking frame and granite countenance that denied him leading-man roles should have opened up a long career full of complex characters. But beneath Steiger's tough-guy persona was a traumatised child and a tortured adult, whose unpredictable, explosive depressions torpedoed his career and denied him ultimate acting greatness. He ricocheted between long, comatose withdrawals from reality and wild rages, suicide attempts and murderous fantasies. And yet in the final years of Steiger's life something extraordinary happened. He recovered from the worst of his depression and spoke out about his mental health, raising huge amounts for charity and redefining his sense of purpose. While Brando became increasingly withdrawn and sybaritic, Steiger was changing the world. Steiger was born in Long Island, New York in 1925, and his problems started when he was young. His parents, Fred and Lorraine Steiger, had travelled the country together as a song-and-dance act but, shortly after Lorraine gave birth, Fred left the house and never came back. Lorraine remarried – Steiger treated her second husband as his real father – but then that man disappeared, too, leaving a note saying that he was off for a drink but not returning for two years. The effect on the young Steiger was profound. In his words, it left him forever with 'a void, a hold, an emptiness, a blackness, a longing'. And the double abandonment exacerbated his mother's drinking problems, which had begun after a botched operation permanently crippled her leg. Steiger was a popular and talented schoolboy but his family's unstable finances and his mother's drinking were causes of great embarrassment. As a young child he often had to walk Lorraine out of bars and back home by hand. Aged five he came downstairs on Christmas morning to discover that his house was empty, his mother was nowhere to be seen, and the Christmas tree was lying flat on the floor. Lorraine was out on a mammoth drinking session and only came home three days later. At the same age Steiger suffered another trauma when a local paedophile lured him into his house by promising the boy a look at his extensive butterfly collection. He then molested Steiger before fleeing town the next day. 'This is why child abuse is so monstrous,' Steiger would later say. 'The child has no experience, he or she cannot comprehend what is happening to him. I knew it was wrong, deep-down… but it was also very exciting. No child should ever have to be exposed to that kind of emotion.' Steiger ran away from home at 16 and joined the US Navy. In service during World War Two he discovered his acting talents between feats of spectacular courage, including once hanging precariously on to the deck of a warship during a typhoon. In quieter moments he loved to recite Shakespeare to his fellow sailors and perfect his telling of dirty jokes, which were especially enjoyed by his ship's chaplain. He was embarrassingly discharged from the navy because of a severe skin condition that caused him to bleed through his uniform (it was possibly eczema, possibly acne), but his period in service had given him a lifelong love of the theatrical. After returning to New Jersey to look after his mother – who did eventually beat her alcoholism – Steiger used the adult education offered to him by the GI Bill of Rights to study drama formally. His precocious talent was clear to his teachers and he was invited to join the prestigious new Actors Studio in New York without even having to audition. Here the great teacher Lee Strasberg was tutoring the lives of a young Brando in the Method, a new way of acting that used your own experiences and emotions to inform performances. Steiger became an eager and consummate disciple. In the navy he'd embraced his bulk and played up his masculinity, ditching the name Rodney for the more macho 'Rod' and putting on a deep voice. But Method acting allowed Steiger to reveal his sensitive side. 'It was a wonderful tool,' he remembered. 'Why, it even allowed men to cry.' New York loved him. He quickly accumulated barnstorming performances on stage and in TV dramas – in the early 1950s he was filming one every week – and was counted alongside Brando and James Dean as part of a new generation of naturalistic, impassioned young performers. Steiger lacked their vaguely epicene looks and was temperamentally incapable of their hysterical outbursts. So he became the working man's Method Actor. He had spent his childhood in bread queues and his teenage years on warships – and it showed. But that worldly experience made him distinctive. It also made him the perfect choice to play Brando's older sibling in On the Waterfront, his first hit film and greatest masterpiece. Steiger invested sympathy in the pathetic and doomed Charley, who betrayed his brother at a crucial moment in his boxing career and consigned him to a life of crime and poverty. Although he never delivers a spectacular cadenza like Brando's taxi speech, Steiger grounds the film in a naturalism rarely seen on film before. The rivalry between the two stars – who didn't get along off-camera – gave the movie its phenomenal energy, and helped make it a worldwide success. As a young man scarred by the humiliations of childhood, Steiger had sworn to himself that 'one day you're going to do something so good no one will laugh at the name Steiger again'. Well, no one was laughing at him now. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s his career gathered further momentum – he was great as a Holocaust survivor in The Pawnbroker, and memorable in Dr Zhivago and Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One. In 1967 he played a racist, emotionally suppressed sheriff opposite Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night and won an Oscar for his performance. But in the year after that film's release, Steiger was not offered a single role. His career was already beginning to go downhill and he didn't help things by making some poor decisions about which projects to choose. He turned down the acclaimed biopic Patton, his 'dumbest career move', but signed up for the spaghetti western Duck, You Sucker! the following year. (Though Duck, You Sucker! is better than it sounds.) Steiger also became prone to making eccentric decisions when filming – in Waterloo he played a peculiarly dopey Napoleon after imagining that the Emperor 'bombed himself out on laudanum' before battles – and developed a reputation for hamminess. His career was tailspinning just as Brando's was experiencing an extraordinary renaissance, as he starred in The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris and Apocalypse Now. Even worse, Steiger's health was deteriorating. Maintaining his colossal weight had consequences and he underwent open-heart surgery in 1976 and again in 1979. After the second operation, his mental health fell off a cliff. The traumas of his childhood finally combined with his work and health anxieties in a spiral of crippling tenebrousness. He became so depressed that he was often rendered almost comatose, spending days on end in silence, numbly watching sport on TV or staring out at the ocean from his window. 'You begin to lose self-esteem,' he recalled of his worst depressive episodes. 'You don't walk, you don't shave and if no one was watching you'd go to the bathroom right where you were sitting.' On other occasions Steiger would go wild. '[Once] I locked myself in a room downstairs. For three days I tore the walls. I tore myself up. I bit myself. People forget we are the highest form of animal. A-n-i-m-a-l. The animal can take over and destroy.' He twice almost shot himself – 'I figured I'd go out in a fishing boat, lower myself into the water and put a gun in my mouth' – and fantasised about murdering his family. This period of intense depression lasted eight years and nearly destroyed Steiger's career for good. But Steiger eventually hauled himself back into public life with the help of medication and his fourth wife, Paula Ellis. And then he transformed himself; suddenly he determined to use his own suffering to help others. Steiger spoke out about his experiences prodigiously, in a way that his contemporaries simply did not, and despite being widely advised not to. 'My present manager and my agent both say, 'If you talk about your depression, people will think you're crazy,'' he told the LA Times, during an interview that ultimately focused on that exact subject. In 1994 he spoke on behalf of the National Institute of Mental Health in front of a Senate panel, and read a six-page long poem, Hitting the Bottom, about his troubled mind. By the time he had finished reading, the assembled panel were all in tears and $24 million in mental health research had been guaranteed for the Institute. He later read the poem on CNN. For days afterwards the network received more than 100 phone calls per hour from moved viewers. 'I try to fight the stigma against mental disease,' he said shortly after. 'It's much more important for me to talk about depression and what it can do to a person than to talk about the movies I've made.' Hollywood never gave up on Steiger completely. He appeared in 90 movies, and notched up plenty of roles that audiences adored. He loved to play egomaniacs and eccentrics from the past – Napoleon, Mussolini, Rasputin, Al Capone, WC Fields. (Name a big-boned historical figure and Steiger probably depicted him.) He never appeared in as many masterpieces as Brando and is never talked about now in the same reverent tone. But in the final stages of the two men's lives there can be no question of who achieved more. The late-life, lugubrious, humungous Brando retreated into himself – and there was plenty of himself to retreat into – while Steiger opened himself up to the world. He'd survived familial misery, child abuse, a world war, years in the spotlight and some of the worst mental health imaginable. But the great prizefighter of Hollywood never gave up. An acting student once asked the old Steiger what it was like to be a star. He replied: 'You go 16 rounds. You are hurt. You are bloody. And they finally lift your hand up and you've won. And then the bell rings for the next round.'
Yahoo
16-02-2025
- Yahoo
DUI mother arrested in Northern California after son texts 911 for help, police say
( — A mother was arrested for allegedly driving under the influence after her 18-year-old son texted 911 for help. Around 3 p.m. on Thursday, the Redding Police Department received a report of a DUI driver in a white 2020 Chevy Tahoe on E. Cypress Avenue near Larkspur Lane. The driver was later identified as Darlene Steiger, 43, of Redding. Two people hurt in Tahoe avalanche, serious injuries Steiger's son reported that she had just picked up him and his siblings, ages 11 and 13, after school and believed she was drunk. He reportedly sent text messages to 911 asking for help while he and his siblings were passengers in the vehicle being driven by Steiger. RPD located Steiger's vehicle at the intersection of Churn Creek Road and E. Cypress Avenue. An officer attempted to pull Steiger over but she failed to yield, according to RPD. Subsequently, a police chase was initiated. It ended after an officer successfully deployed a pursuit prevention device that deflated the right rear tire of Steiger's vehicle, forcing it to come to a stop at an intersection. Guilty verdict reached in six-figure Northern California drug network bust Despite the flat tire, police said Steiger continued to flee from police with her children in the vehicle. She finally stopped her vehicle at a family member's residence on Phobos Court, but fled on foot, leaving her children behind in the vehicle. Steiger was apprehended as she attempted to enter the sideyard of the residence, according to RPD. Her blood alcohol content was reportedly more than three times the legal limit. She was arrested and booked into the Shasta County Jail. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
