32 Years Later, ‘Days of our Lives’ Fans Are Still Talking About Deidre Hall’s Most Devilish Plot

When someone started desecrating Salem churches in 1994, Days of Our Lives fans and Salemites never guessed the culprit would turn out to be Dr. Marlena Evans, psychiatrist extraordinaire and town heroine. There wasn’t an evil bone in Marlena’s body, but there was evil in her soul. When Marlena was revealed to be possessed by Satan himself, an NBC soap opera became the talk of the town.

Marlena Evans Levitates Above Her Bed

DAYS went all out in the early part of 1995 once Marlena began menacing Salem, but she wasn’t Marlena at all. Instead, Stefano’s (Joseph Mascolo) attempts to make Marlena his Queen of the Night had left her vulnerable to Satanic possession. Some of “MarDevil’s” stunts included levitating above her bed, causing a chandelier to fall from the ceiling, throwing Stefano from the terrace, and morphing Kristen (then played by Eileen Davidson) into a jaguar.

In the end, Marlena’s 1994 to 1995 possession was considered a love story, as it took Marlena’s soulmate, John Black (Drake Hogestyn), who was a priest at the time, to exorcise the devil from her body. In 2025, Deidre Hall, who celebrates 50 years as Marlena on June 21st, reflected on the possession story during an interview with New York’s WPIX. She recalled her first thoughts when presented with the plot, saying, “My only request was ‘Do it tastefully. Do it well.'”

In 2021 and 2022, DAYS revisited its long-ago possession story when the devil didn’t just target Marlena; it also targeted various other Salemites, including Doug Williams (Bill Hayes), Johnny DiMera (Carson Boatman), Allie Horton (Lindsay Arnold), Susan Banks (Stacy Haiduk), Belle Black (Martha Madison), and Tripp Johnson (Lucas Adams).

However, it’s the first possession story that still keeps fans talking all these years later.

“Ha, this was the exact moment I started watching Days of Our Lives. I was in college and only had afternoon classes. This led me to watching Passions. I loved soaps with supernatural storylines,” a Reddit fan said of the scene where Marlena levitates for the first time.”

“I remember watching this exact scene my freshman year in college,” another Reddit fan said of the levitation moment. “My friends and I purposely picked classes that weren’t at noon so we could watch.”

Fans are also well aware that this story was a turning point for the soap, with one saying, “Whether people liked it or not, it’s the reason that Days was pushed into the mainstream consciousness and cemented its place in pop culture.”