The death of Father Karras in the movie entails him falling down some stairs. An actual staircase located in Georgetown was used for filming. Although they were made of concrete, the stairs were padded with half-inch-thick rubber to film the stuntman. Could a fall down a flight of stairs kill a person? Absolutely. According to the National Safety Council7 over one thousand people die per year by falling down stairs. In fact, stairs are considered the most dangerous part of our homes, particularly for elderly people. To be safe, it’s recommended to have your stairs well lit, not carry bulky objects on difficult stairs, and to make sure staircases are free from items that could potentially trip you. It also helps to not be pushed down a flight of stairs by a demon! There is no data on that science.
What would it take for a medical doctor to call in an exorcist? According to Dr. Luke Hafdahl, he would call a priest if the patient presented with that iconic revolving head. “That’s when I’d know it’s time to try something outside medical science!” Whether you believe in possession or not, the battle between Heaven and Hell rages on in horror cinema. The Exorcist was not the first movie to depict body possession by the devil, and there have been dozens since, including; The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), Constantine (2005), The Possession (2012), and The Possession of Hannah Grace (2018). Yet, nearly fifty years later, Regan MacNeil’s violent and shocking body usurpation remains the gold standard of devil versus priest.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE TINGLER
Year of Release: 1959
Director: William Castle
Writer: Robb White
Starring: Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn
Budget: $250,000
Box Office: $2.9 million
Imagine sitting in a movie theater watching a horror film. You’re involved in the plot, feeling a little scared, but then you start to feel something else . . . a tingle. It seems that your whole seat is vibrating. Suddenly a skeleton emerges from below the screen of the theater! The plot of the movie seems to have come to life right there with you. This may sound far-fetched, but it’s exactly the kind of tactics that William Castle used to promote his films.
The 1959 film The Tingler, starring horror icon Vincent Price, focuses on a parasite that attaches itself to humans and feeds on their fear. The writer of the script, Robb White, was inspired by an encounter with a centipede while living in the British Virgin Islands. He likely saw an Amazonian giant centipede which can grow up to twelve inches in length. These animals are carnivores and feed on anything they can overpower and kill. At least one human death can be attributed to these giant centipedes.1 A nineteenth-century Tibetan poet warned his fellow Buddhists, “if you enjoy frightening others, you will be reborn as a centipede.”2 The plot of The Tingler follows that thinking. The movie posits that these centipede-like creatures are part of our bodies and that they feed on our fear. The more fear we have, the bigger the parasite grows. It produces a tingling sensation, eventually crushing its host’s spine. The only way to defeat this dreaded beast is to scream.
Are there examples of creatures that become part of other beings in nature? One such creature is the Cymothoa exigua, or tongue-eating louse. It is exactly what it sounds like in that it eats the tongue of its host and replaces it. This is the only known parasite that completely replaces a part of the host animal. More than forty species of fish have been known to be infected with this creature.3 Cookiecutter sharks were originally known as demon whale-biters and are considered ectoparasites because they attach themselves to the outside of other animals to feed, leaving neat, round bite marks. Because of their preferred environment these parasites rarely come into contact with humans but have been implicated in several attacks. One noted case involved the victim recovering for nine months from the bite after having to get a skin graft procedure.4
The Cymothoa exigua becomes the tongue of its host.
Some animals are able to manipulate their hosts from within, causing them to act in self-destructive ways that ultimately benefit the parasite. The females of a Costa Rican wasp lay their eggs on the abdomens of orb spiders. After living off its host for weeks, the wasp larva injects a chemical into the spider that makes it build a strange, new kind of web. The web is meant to support the wasp cocoon. After the wasp hatches it will kill and eat the spider.5
There are parasites that specifically target humans including tapeworms, scabies, and certain amoeba. Around 70 percent of parasites are not visible to the human eye. Others, like the malarial parasite, can grow up to thirty meters long. In 2017, a six-foot-long tapeworm was removed from a patient through his mouth. The man had been experiencing stomach pains for over two months. A colonoscopy revealed the tapeworm and an endoscopy confirmed it was curled up in his small intestine. After sedation, the tapeworm was pulled from his mouth intact.6 The horror movie writes itself!
Could a creature attach itself to a human and kill them like the The Tingler? The tingler may not exist, but there have been living things found inside of people. One such case was Sanju Bhagat. He always had a large stomach, but in 1999 it became so swollen that he appeared to be in his third trimester of pregnancy. He was having trouble breathing and was rushed to the hospital. Emergency surgery was performed to remove what they thought would be a tumor. After entering the abdomen, though, it became apparent that Bhagat suffered from fetus in fetu, an extremely rare condition in which one twin can be absorbed by the other while in the womb. The fetus can survive as a parasite past birth by forming an umbilical cord-like structure that takes its twin’s blood supply. Often times the unknown twin will grow so large that it starts to harm the host, at which point doctors usually intervene. When surgery was performed on thirty-six-year-old Bhagat he had no idea what was inside of him. Doctors described seeing one limb, then another come out. Developed hands with long fingernails, feet, hair, teeth, and bones emerged and were disconnected from the host. Bhagat went on to make a full recovery.
There have been at least two reported cases of people’s mouths becoming “impregnated” by squid sperm. After biting into partially cooked squid, squid sperm implanted itself in the mucous membranes of the victims’ mouths. Doctors later removed the living creatures from their tongues, cheeks, and gums. In 2013, a four-year-old boy was found to have a live snail living in his knee. Several weeks earlier he had tripped and fallen at the beach, getting a scrape on his knee. The wound didn’t heal and was thought to be infected until, upon closer inspection and a squeeze, a sea snail popped out. The boy ended up keeping the snail as a pet and named him Turbo. Now that’s a happy ending!