Joan Vollmer at the Antwerp house with her beloved garden which was torn up during her violent exorcism to expose demons. Photo / Rob Baird, News Corp Australia
Joan Vollmer at the Antwerp house with her beloved garden which was torn up during her violent exorcism to expose demons. Photo / Rob Baird, News Corp Australia
The house has laid abandoned on a lonely road in the tiny Victorian outback town of Antwerp since it was encased in cling wrap and Joan Vollmer was tied to a chair in the living room for a terrifying and violent exorcism.
Boarded up and unoccupied for two decades it has become the place for terrified teenagers to visit as a dare and hold seances.
So far, none of them have been able to reach into the afterlife for Joan, the 49-year-old housewife subjected to deprivation, pain, bizarre rituals and eventual death at the hands of an extreme religious group 23 years ago.
The house has been sold at least twice, but no-one has moved into it.
Seen from above, the house lies off an isolated stretch of road by the Wimmera River in outback Victoria. Photo / Google maps
Secretly visiting the house where Mrs Vollmer died has been a "rite of passage" for local youths, who enter through a hole kicked through one of the walls.
"The verandas have been taken off, and kids get into it from time to time," said Ivan Polack, a long-term Antwerp local who knew Joan Vollmer and her husband Ralph.
"They're all scared of it, not me of course, it's just a house. But the people who own it don't want to live there. They feel it's not right."
What went on over several days at the house, which lay on the flat plains of the Wimmera District half way between Adelaide and Melbourne, made international headlines.
"It put Antwerp on the map so to speak," Mr Polack told news.com.au. "People still talk about what happened in that house."
Ralph Vollmer outside the house where he conducted the exorcism which killed his wife Joan. Photo / News Corp Australia
The extraordinary saga began in January 1993, when pig farmer Ralph Vollmer became convinced his second wife Joan had become possessed by demons.
He told friends in the local district who were members of an ousted church group that evil spirits were making Joan dance outside, use bad language, act "like a prostitute" and behave like a pig or dog.
Vollmer, 55, tried tying Joan to their bed or locking her in the basement, but she became hysterical and screamed through the night.
Calling on his neighbours John Reichenbach, 31, and his wife Leanne, and their spiritual leader 78-year-old expelled Lutheran, Leah Clugston, Vollmer and the group concluded that 10 demons were living in Joan's body.
Vollmer and Leanne Reichenbach tied Joan down and, denying her food and water so as not to feed the beasts inside her, started praying.
The old Antwerp store no longer operates in the tiny outback town which lay half way between Adelaide and Melbourne. Photo / News Corp Australia
Pig farmer Ralph Vollmer at his Antwerp farm house after the failed exorcism of his wife, moved to Queensland with his third wife. Photo / Kaine Pinder, News Corp Australia
Tied down with her own stockings in the excessive summer heat, Joan began to beg for food and water, scream and struggle against her bonds.
Vollmer decided they needed help to oust the demons and called in another church member, 28-year-old David Klingner.
They strapped her down further and slapped her face. Vollmer later said that he felt Joan was no longer his wife, but "an evil spirit that needed to be dealt with".
The group then called on 23-year-old Matthew Nuske, an assistant greenkeeper at a golf course whose mother believed he had "special powers".
Nuske blessed some olive oil and ordered the members of the exorcism group douse themselves with it, then took a box of cling wrap and circled the house seven times with it, sealing doors and windows against demons.
Nuske also asked the members to smash Joan's possessions with a hammer and destroy her flowerbeds and greenhouse to disrupt any lurking demons.
Assistant greenkeeper Matthew Nuske, who claimed to identify several demons living inside Joan Vollmer, was found guilty of her false imprisonment. Photo / News Corp Australia
Ralph Vollmer was cleared of his wife Joan's manslaughter after she died during a violent exorcism during which she was starved and beaten. Photo / News Corp Australia
Ralph Vollmer, pictured outside his remote farmhouse in Victoria where his second wife died during a bizarre exercise to oust her 'demons'. Photo / News Corp Australia
He had identified the demons living inside Joan as "the spirit of filth", a mother and daughter demon named Princess Joan and Princess Baby Joan and "Legion", a multitude of powerful demons the Bible says Jesus Christ exorcised from a possessed man
Nuske slapped Joan fully in the face to oust the demons. Her head was slammed against the wall and she begged for her life.
At 4pm on January 30, The group moved Joan's battered body to the bedroom where members sat on her and began pummeling her head, neck and chest to "squeeze" the demons from her womb up through her mouth.
Eventually, Joan Vollmer fell quiet and Nuske claimed victory over the demons and said she would arise by morning as her normal self.
After 48 hours with no resurrection in sight, Ralph Vollmer sent for a local Baptist minister.
He found the group eating lunch as Joan's body lay covered in flies, bloating and decomposing in the 40 degree heat. The minister called a doctor and the police.
Three days later, Ralph Vollmer held a funeral for Joan at which he claimed, she would rise from the dead.
When she didn't, Vollmer began to cry.
Ralph Vollmer, arriving at court, was found guilty of false imprisonment and recklessly causing his wife injury. Photo / News Corp Australia
A post mortem later found that pressure on Joan Vollmer's neck had fractured her thyroid cartilage and caused her to have a heart attack.
Police charged Ralph Vollmer, Leanne Reichenbach, David Klingner and Matthew Nuske with Joan Vollmer's manslaughter.
A magistrate found there was insufficient evidence for them to stand trial, but the Victorian Director of Public Prosecutions overturned the decision.
Leanne Reichenbach and David Klingner were found guilty of the manslaughter of Mrs Vollmer and of falsely imprisoning her.
The city limits of Antwerp which local resident Ivan Polack says is still known worldwide for Joan Vollmer's exorcism. Photo / News Corp Australia
Ralph Vollmer was convicted of false imprisonment and recklessly causing his wife injury.
Matthew Nuske was found guilty of false imprisonment.
Leanne Reichenbach was ordered to serve four months in prison, David Klingner was jailed for three months and both Ralph Vollmer and Matthew Nuske walked free on wholly suspended sentences.
The police officer in charge of the case, Detective Superintendent Paul Sheridan, said later it was the weirdest he had investigated.
He told the Herald Sun that the four accused "believed they were doing the right thing in trying to exorcise demons ... but they weren't innocent and they certainly weren't doing the right thing."
He said all four were quite happy to talk about the bizarre, dangerous and painful things they did to Mrs Vollmer and how they believed she would come back to life after they forced the demons from her body.
"That highlighted just how far out of whack they were with reality," Supt Sheridan said.
Antwerp, Victoria, (above) and the road leading to the house where Joan Vollmer underwent a brutal and fatal exorcism in 1983. Photo / Google Maps
Ralph Vollmer lived on for a short time at the house, then moved to Queensland with his new, third wife.
The house was resold several years ago, but remains empty and attempts to stop inquisitive people going inside it have failed.
Today, Antwerp consists of a grain silo, community hall and a few houses, but no shops or local hotel.
Joan Vollmer's relatives denounced Ralph Vollmer and his religious cohorts, saying Joan had never been religious before she died at the hands of the extreme group.
