AI Summary
5 min readIn the 1630s, a French mother superior named Jeanne des Anges stood outside her convent in the rain for two hours, a noose around her neck, before snapping out of it, racing inside, and throwing herself at the feet of the king’s counselor. She confessed that the man she had accused of sorcery—Father Urbain Grandier—was innocent. Then she ran back out to hang herself. She was pulled down before she could. By daylight, however, she had returned to her original story. The clergy told her the demons had made her confess, and she believed them. In 1634, Urbain Grandier was burned at the stake. The question that lingers nearly four centuries later is whether the demons were real, or whether a conspiracy of powerful men used a lovesick nun to destroy a priest they hated.
The Possession Begins
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:07) **The Possessed Nun in the Rain** - The episode opens with a vivid scene: Mother Superior Jeanne des Anges stands in a storm for two hours, a noose around her neck, before snapping out of it and running to confess that Father Urbain Grandier is innocent.
- 2 (04:05) **Podcast Intro & Episode Context** - Host Carter Roy introduces the series and frames this as the first of four eerie conspiracy investigations for October.
- 3 (07:08) **The Plague and the First Visions** - In 1632, a plague kills a quarter of Loudun’s population, and immediately afterward, the Ursuline convent becomes the site of strange events.
- 4 (09:38) **The Thorns and the First Exorcism** - Jeanne finds three hawthorn thorns in her hand, and after burning them on a priest’s advice, she is seized by violent convulsions.
- 5 (12:46) **The Demons Name Their Sorcerer** - On October 11, the demons finally answer who invited them: Father Urbain Grandier.
- 6 (16:29) **Sponsor Break** - Advertisements for ZipRecruiter, Petivity, and Tremfya.
- 7 (19:02) **The Investigation Begins** - Chaplain Mignot alerts the town magistrates about the sorcerer in their midst.
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Show Notes
Beginning in 1632, a convent of young Ursuline nuns made startling claims – from seeing dead priests, to being possessed by a horde of Satan’s demons. A team of priests presided over daily exorcisms – some of them public – for months…until the blame was directed toward one man: Father Urbain Grandier, a controversial figure who’d made a number of foes. Despite his claims of innocence, Grandier was executed. Was he in league with the devil? Were the young women hallucinating? Or…were the nuns coerced into pulling off a bizarre case of sabotage?
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