Anneliese was a young German girl born to working class parents in Bavaria. Over a span of seven years from 16 to the time of her death at age 23, Anneliese experienced what started as a seizure, developed into night terrors, and crescendoed as full-blown possession ending in a months long exorcism that spanned from 1975-1976, ending with her death. What catapulted this case into the spotlight was that in addition to being a real-life exorcism that took place around the time the Exorcist movie came out, the German courts also found some question around whether or not her cause of death was from possession, or from malnutrition and dehydration that resulted in negligent homicide on the part of her parents and the clergy that oversaw the exorcism. Ultimately, her parents and the attending priests would stand trial, and ultimately were convicted of the charges, despite adamantly claiming that it wasn’t a physical ailment that had killed her, but a spiritual one.