Name: "The Exorcist" Author Hears Mysterious Voices | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-08-07T19:15:59.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video '"The Exorcist" Author Hears Mysterious Voices | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-08-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video '"The Exorcist" Author Hears Mysterious Voices | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-08-07. Transcript available.

Welcome back to the program. My next guest is an author of the, perhaps best
known as the author
of The Exorcist. His latest novel is entitled Legion, and in this book he
writes about some
very peculiar experiences which he claims are based on events from his own life,
and we'll be
conducting our own little experiment along those lines in a couple of minutes.
Please welcome now
William Peter Blatty.
Thank you, Raymond, for being here. I guess everyone would agree that The Exorcist
was an amazing bit of writing, very riveting.
Oh, thank you very much.
And do you ever get scared when you're writing something that powerfully moving?
No, I get scared when I'm not sure what my third act is going to be.
Yeah, that would be a problem. Nothing but blank pages coming up. In this book,
Legion, there is a chapter
devoted to some experimentation with a tape recorder and some voices, which, as
we said in the introduction,
came from your own life. Tell us about that.
Yes, it did. In 1972, when we were filming The Exorcist locations in Georgetown,
somebody gave me a copy
of a book called Breakthrough, and it was by a Latvian psychologist who claimed
that he could elicit voices
from some unknown source by simply plugging a microphone into a tape recorder,
making a brief prefatory
statement, asking a question or asking to hear his name. And then on playback,
although we heard nothing
while making the recording, he would hear voices. And I thought, well, why not?
And I mean, the parrot can talk
and walk around in a devil costume on a tape recorder.
Sure, yes. Stranger things would happen.
So I tried it one night. And I was living in a motel where the planes would
overfly almost every minute
going into National Airport. And so the quietest room was the bathroom. And I
plugged in the tape recorder,
and I made the prefatory comment that was prescribed by the book Breakthrough.
And I made the following creepy statement. I said, unseen intelligences are
entities.
This is William Peter Blatty attempting to communicate with you. I would like,
especially if she's there,
to hear from my mother. And then I turned it on to full volume and pushed play
and record and walked out.
And then three minutes later, I picked it up and brought it outside and I put
the earphones on and I started to listen.
And after my comment, I suddenly sat up like, I heard something. And I went
back and it got louder the second time.
And the third time, unfortunately, what I heard was, did you hear that? It was
the man in the adjoining bathroom.
Martha. Yeah. Martha, the devil guy is next to you.
I packed the bag.
Well, I made about another half hour of a tape and I played it back rather
attentively and I didn't hear a darn thing.
Nothing.
A few days later, I played the same tape again and somewhere in the middle of
it, I heard some, just a very subtle sound.
Clicking?
Yeah. Well, it wasn't quite a click, but it was very low level and buried down
underneath the amplifier.
Mm-hmm.
And I kept repeating and repeating and finally, with every repetition, a voice
began to come, at least I thought so.
And I heard my name, as though it were being shouted by a man a great distance
away, "William."
And then later in the tape, I heard something that valleyed, it was a woman's
voice.
And it went down like that, that, that, that, that, I couldn't understand the
first part, and then it went up, continued to hear us.
Well, I kept doing experiments and I kept thinking, well, maybe I hear
something, maybe I don't, maybe I'm super-
Well, let me interrupt you here and ask you a couple of questions.
Sure.
So you actually did get a response to your-
Yeah, I did.
Okay. Now, were there discussions on the tape or just a word here and a word
there?
No, there were, there were statements here and there. Yeah, very banal, nothing
terribly interesting.
Did you, did you ever have these things authenticated or have anybody check
them or, I mean, it could be an old tape maybe that's bleeding through or-
No, it wasn't finally until we went to New York City and one night I, I did a
little experiment.
I thought I heard my mother's voice just saying, "Willie?" And yeah, I got a
tingle again, thinking about it.
Every time I played it, I got that tingle up my spine. So I went to our sound
man, Chris Newman.
I said, "Chris, you must take me either to the best Park Avenue psychiatrist
you know of or to a professional recording studio.
And let's find out if I'm superimposing sense onto, you know, the sounds and
noises that are just indigenous to tape recording."
Sure. So what'd you come up with?
We went to Magno Sound and we made a recording and we got, we got something
very encouraging.
It wasn't until the last night of filming, only Neil Fallon, the Magno sound
engineer and I were there.
And I asked a direct question to which I, I asked that the answer be simply the
word affirmative or negative.
Mm-hmm.
And we got something very, very, I mean relatively very loud and unmistakably,
a voice but it was like a gargling.
It wasn't until three years later when I was setting up some stereo in my new
home in California that I saw the boy from Henry Raiden.
Young man, you have very young years. Would you listen to this tape? And he did.
I said, "Did you hear something?"
He said, "Yeah, there's somebody talking."
Okay, let me, I'm going to have to interrupt you here again.
Oh, sure.
We're going to do a commercial. We'll come back.
Okay.
Not only will we continue this discussion, but we're going to listen to some of
these tapes and then we'll do the other thing.
All right. Now, the tapes in question, are those the ones we're going to listen
to now?
Yes. The first one, that's the one that we made at Magno Sound on the last
night.
And that one, when played at twice the speed at which it was recording, sounds
to me like an answer to my question.
Okay. I'll tell you what I...
You ask an answer, a question?
I asked for either the word affirmative or negative. Now, anyone at home is
going to have to turn the volume all the way up.
There's a tremendous amount of amplifier and light noise.
We find that folks who don't watching the show generally have it all the way up
anyway.
They have to hear from them.
No problem. Okay. Now, I guess we should be very quiet to hear this.
Oh, yes.
Okay. Let's go ahead and turn it on there and this is one of those tape
recordings.
Well, I hear affirmative "Can You Hear Me?" and I think we played it ten more
times. If you don't have time for it, you might hear this sound.
No, I don't mean to be... I heard nothing. Actually, it just seemed like some
kind of pulsating, you know, white noise.
You want to hear them again? Can we do them again?
Yeah, but louder, please.
Louder. All right. Can we listen to... Did anybody hear anything on that tape?
No.
Well, you pretty much convinced them, Belle.
No, I don't think I have.
Okay. Here we go again.
Oh, yeah. All right. Now...
Can you hear me?
Now, over the years, I've, you know, noodled around with this as a hobby.
Okay, let me, let me interrupt you again here. Now, who, assuming we are
listening to something on the tape, who is it?
Oh, I have no idea.
Who would you, who do you think it is?
Well, I can tell you some very clear answers that I've heard over the years to
the question, you know, who, where are you?
What is your condition, the state of being? I've heard limbo, dead.
So it's possible that these are spirits from dead people?
I don't know who they are, but they say it's like a hospital. We're all treated
here.
They say that to you, the voices?
Yeah. Well, that's what I think I hear. Dr. Angels. And very recently, I had
one that said, "I don't belong here."
So I get definite impression that they're, that they're in some kind of cosmic
institute for the very, very nervous.
Do you recognize voices?
No, I don't recognize any voices, but they have a different quality.
Do they have a sense of humor? Do they be able to, or do they...
Oh, yeah, yeah, they are. Once I asked directly, "Look, have I got this right?
Are you in some kind of transitory state where you're getting therapy, where
you're healing your psychic wounds?"
And I thought I heard a male voice saying, "Yes, we're all crazy. You're fine,
though."
But why, why would they speak English?
I have no... Well, I speak English. I know, but...
I have no... David, I don't know what... I don't know. I don't want to say it's
a psychic phenomenon.
I don't say it's paranormal. I just say it's very, very puzzling.
And anybody could do this? No special equipment? No, no, no, no. Anything.
Okay. We're going to try it now. Oh, we're going to listen to another tape.
Yes, I have just one word about this. This is a response to the question, "Does
God exist?"
And you'll hear two tapes. The first one is the answer I got at normal speed.
All right. Here we go. We're going to do the experiment. I'm sorry, we're
apparently not going to play the other tape.
Okay. So, if you can, just explain again what is required here. We have a
microphone.
Yeah. We have a tape recorder. And you make some sort of statement at the
beginning?
No, I'm not saying. Turn it up to your microphone to maximum volume.
Let it run, I don't know, 30 seconds, as long as you want. Let's hear if we can
hear the word David or Letterman or David Letterman.
Okay, so we're asking to hear from these folks? Yeah, we're asking to hear your
name specifically.
Okay. Ask them also if they know when I'm going to get cable.
Okay. Now, the audience should be very quiet, right? Yes.
Yes. All right. So, for what? 20, 15? 15 seconds. Okay. Be very quiet.
Quiet, please. This will be a lot of fun. We're recording. Thank you.
Okay, David. All right. Now, play it back at maximum volume, please.
Maximum volume. Now, in all fairness, you can hear people in the hall. In all
fairness, give them more than 15 seconds.
It takes a little while. Okay. So, now, let's hear what we got from the test
there.
I heard something. I heard it again. Yeah, it sounded like a sea lion. I don't
know why.
No, you did. Regardless of what that was, you do think you hear something there.
I don't know. Yeah, no, I agree. Somebody might have murmured in the audience.
We got to go. I'm sorry. We'll be right back. Sure.
Liam, thank you very much for being here. It's very interesting, fascinating
things.
Pleasure to be here, David. Thank you, sir.
Also, my thanks to Marv Albert, Alba Ballard and her parrots, Paul and the band,
Mr. Bill Windle, our announcer.
We'll see you tomorrow night, folks. Thanks for everything.