The boy whose case inspired the portrayal of a demon-possessed child in the 1973 horror movie classic The Exorcist has been named.

The US magazine the Skeptical Inquirer named the then 14-year-old boy, previously known as Roland Doe, who underwent exorcisms in Cottage City, Maryland, and St Louis, Missouri, in 1949.

Ronald Edwin Hunkeler died last year, a month before his 86th birthday, after suffering a stroke at home in Marriottsville, Maryland.

In adult life, Hunkeler was a Nasa engineer whose work contributed to the Apollo space missions of the 1960s and who patented a technology that helped space shuttle panels withstand extreme heat.

One of his companions, a 29-year-old woman who asked not to be named, told the New York Post that Hunkeler was always on edge about his Nasa colleagues discovering that he was the inspiration for The Exorcist.

“On Halloween, we always left the house because he figured someone would come to his residence and know where he lived and never let him have peace,” she said. “He had a terrible life from worry, worry, worry,” she added.

Hunkeler eventually retired from Nasa in 2001 after working at the agency for nearly 40 years.

Read more: yahoo