Clara Germana Cele, the girl who hurled nuns

The Possession Diaries Part IX

One day in 1906, at Marianhill mission school in Umzinto, South Africa, a man named Father Erasmus Horner received a confession from one of the young Catholic girls in the school.

Her name was Clara Germana Cele and she claimed to have entered into a deal with the Devil. She was a 16-year-old black girl, orphaned and baptised as a baby, and had been at the school since she was four.

Her initial confession was soon forgotten. However, in the next few weeks she began to behave more and more strangely – the strangeness peaking on August the 20th 1906, when she started ripping her clothes, growling like an animal, and having conversations with invisible entities.

At one point, Clara said: “Sister, please call Father Erasmus. I must confess and tell everything. But quick, quick, or Satan will kill me. He has me in his power! Nothing blessed is with me; I have thrown away all the medals you gave me.”

Later, she said, “You have betrayed me. You have promised me days of glory, but now you treat me cruelly.”

The outbursts continued.

The nuns reported that Clara’s skin burned whenever they sprinkled holy water on her, and that she became disturbed, convulsed, and hit out whenever crosses or other holy relics came into her presence, even if those objects were hidden.

She also developed clairvoyancy and was able to describe details of other people’s lives she couldn’t possibly have known, including intimate secrets and transgressions.

The accounts of some of the nuns also held that she was able to speak and understand foreign languages to which she’d never been exposed — Polish, German, French, Norwegian, and others.

It was also claimed that Clara was imbued with superhuman strength, easily able to overpower authority figures at the school whenever they tried to restrain her, hurling nuns around the convent rooms.

Clara also began to levitate, up to five feet in the air, on a regular basis, her clothes adhering to her as if they also had managed to defy gravity. Sometimes she floated horizontally and sometimes vertically.

It was claimed that the only way to bring her back to the ground was to sprinkle her with holy water, during which she’d temporarily leave her possessed state.

One nun reported that Clara’s cries were so bestial they astonished those around her. In regards to her voice, an attending nun wrote:

“No animal had ever made such sounds. Neither the lions of East Africa nor the angry bulls. At times, it sounded like a veritable herd of wild beasts orchestrated by Satan had formed a hellish choir.”

There was also a claim that she had the ability to change into a snakelike creature, her body turning hyper-flexible and slithering across the floor. At one point, she bit a nun on the arm and left puncture wounds like those left by snake-fangs.

After Clara “met the criteria” for demonic possession (being able to levitate amongst other signs), Father Horner and another Roman Catholic priest — Reverend Mansueti — were given permission to carry out an exorcism on the girl.

The exorcism took place on September the 11th 1906 and lasted from the early hours of morning / dawn until midday, then from 3pm, continuing on into the dark night hours.

Amongst other odd and violent acts, Clara knocked a Bible out of the priest’s hands and tried to strangle him with his own stole.

The next morning, they administered the rites once more, the incumbent demon supposedly leaving Clara’s body after telling the priests it would announce its exit by levitating, which happened before an audience of approximately 170 people in the mission chapel.

The priests then declared Clara was free of demonic influence.

However, in January 1907, Clara said she’d made another bargain with the Devil.

Another exorcism was performed which lasted two days. After the demon fled for a second time, witnesses complained that the atmosphere was filled with an overpoweringly bad smell.

That was the last time any supernatural occurrence was reported in Clara Germana Cele’s case.

She died of heart failure in 1912, aged 22.

Read the rest of The Possession Diaries: