Decades after the hit horror film, demand for exorcists on the rise

She levitates above her chair. An old man hurls a priest across the room. A young woman speaks full paragraphs in Bulgarian, a language she’s never studied. A man’s skin blisters at the sight of a crucifix.

In interviews with The Baltimore Sun, exorcists claimed these are not movie scenes but moments they’ve witnessed firsthand. And what’s more, requests from the public to undergo the ancient ritual are multiplying.

Today, more than 50 years after Linda Blair’s head spun in the hit film “The Exorcist” and nearly 15 years after the Catholic Church convened its first U.S. seminar on exorcism in Baltimore, the priests who claim to do battle with demons are in more demand than ever.

At the time of that Baltimore meeting, about two dozen exorcists practiced in the United States; today, it ha