Belief in possession by spirits appears as early as 3100 B.C., in the Sumerian culture of ancient Mesopotamia, now parts of Syria, Iraq, and Kuwait. In the New Testament, demons are cast out by Jesus. Exorcisms were common in the Middle Ages. Perhaps every society needs explanations for things that cannot be explained. As Hamlet said to Horatio, “There are more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dream’t of in your philosophie.”
I wanted to get credible scientific opinion about what I had witnessed. A skeptic’s explanation for the “possession phenomenon” is “unconscious fraud,” wherein a suggestible person is aware of the behavior that’s expected of him or her and performs it out of social compliance, as a child does when a parent shows approval.
I showed the video of Rosa’s exorcism to two of the world’s leading neurosurgeons and researchers in California and to a group of prominent psychiatrists in New York.
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