Was annaliese Michel the REAL person from exorcism of Emily rose really possessed or mentally ill?

Answer 1

Nobody knows. In this case, like a multitude of other "exorcism" cases, the victim/subject was never actually seen by a qualified medical examiner and diagnosed.

The similarities between most cases of possession (outside of film and tabloid papers) and mental illness point very heavily to the victim being tragically and severely, sometimes even terminally mentally ill, and that they never really recover. The few instances where the victim DOES get better post-exorcism can pretty much be attributed to sheer luck and coincidence.

There will always be witnesses to possession cases that claim that inexplicable things happened (the bed rose a foot off the ground, just as an example), that the victim was speaking a language that they "had NO way of knowing" and dozens of other spooky symptoms. But as any good psychologist/neurologist will tell you, people have a tendency to make things up. Not necessarily on purpose, but more as "mis-remembering". And since none of these specatcular cases have ever been documented by real scientists, we'll never know.

People are drawn to posession because, in a way, its cool. Its outside of our day-to-day lives and makes for a great story to tell other people. So, we tend to latch on to the religious/supernatural explinations without taking the time to explore the rational and scientific.