The Butcher Murderer of Ossett

Part XII of The Possession Diaries

TRIGGER WARNING: Contains graphic descriptions of violence, murder, insanity.

Michael Taylor was born on September the 21st, 1944, in Ossett, West Yorkshire, England.

He worked as a butcher and was a member of a Christian Fellowship Group along with his wife, Christine.

According to Christine, Michael was having a “carnal” relationship with the group’s leader, Marie Robinson.

Michael Taylor claimed that he could feel evil inside himself and eventually subjected Marie to verbal abuse until she screamed at him.

In the next meeting, Michael was given forgiveness for his behaviour but his actions grew ever more strange, prompting the local vicar and other ministers to conduct an exorcism on him.

The rite lasted from October 5th – 6th 1974, at St Thomas’s church in Gawber, headed by Father Peter Vincent, an Anglican priest, and helped by a Methodist, Reverend Raymond Smith.

According to an expert on folklore and contemporary occult matters (Bill Ellis), the exorcism lasted all night and believed that they had “invoked and cast out at least forty demons, including those of incest, bestiality, blasphemy, and lewdness. At the end, exhausted, they allowed Taylor to go home, although they felt that at least three demons—insanity, murder, and violence—were still left in him.”

At home, Michael Taylor attacked and killed Christine with his bare hands, pulling her eyes and tongue out and almost tearing her face off.

He then strangled their pet dog and was found by the police in the street, naked and covered in blood.

During the trial in March, Michael was acquitted on grounds of insanity.

He was sent to Broadmoor for two years, then had another two years in a secure ward in Bradford before he was released.

Michael Taylor’s case was mentioned in the 2021 movie “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” which was based on another killer who claimed demonic possession, Arne Cheyenne Johnson, who murdered his landlord with a pocket knife in 1981.

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