Demonic Possession? Options

A few years ago, for several months, I frequently had strange episodes which I can only compare to demonic possession. It always started with a strong feeling of anxiety followed by uncontrollable laughter and loss of control over my body. After a few minutes of laughing and lying paralyzed on the floor, I would begin convulsing and my voice would slowly start to change. Eventually the laughing would stop and I would involuntarily scream what sounds like gibberish in seemingly impossible voices, sometimes several voices at once. I've tried to reproduce these voices, but I've never succeeded.

After several minutes, that would stop and I'd just be jerking occasionally without making noise. But even after the jerking stopped, I would still be unable to move or speak for several minutes, and when I finally managed to mostly regain control of body I would start jerking again every few seconds, and I would be extremely thirsty. During the episodes, I would also sometimes go into positions that should probably break my neck, and I estimate my heart rate increased to around 300 bpm. Also, I have almost no muscle mass, but when a pretty strong friend of mine saw it happen to me and tried to stop it, I effortlessly held them back with one hand.

This doesn't happen to me anymore, but when it did I would always wake up at exactly 3:00, 3:30, or 3:33 every morning. I would often wake up in the middle of speaking in one of the voices, and I once woke myself up with an inhuman roar. I would also wake up much stronger and faster than normal, but that only lasted a minute or two. Even now that it's over, if I happen to be awake at around 3:00 am, I will hear things outside my door. Things, almost human, whispering in a language I don't understand. And in the weeks before it started, I often saw shadow people and other strange beings in my house, including white shadow beings and an almost ethereal mist moving through walls and eventually out of the house. I was checked multiple times throughout this, and my brain was functioning normally, so I doubt I'm just insane.

This hasn't happened for a while, but I'm still curious as to just what it was and how I can prevent it.

Well in medieval times if you admitted this the Catholic church may issue and exorcism - or burn you at the stake to cleanse your soul....

In either case right now we're in modern times and I have had the chance to review several case studies of people who claimed demonic possession and although they exhibited similar instances of inhuman jibberish and other sounds as well as convulsions and striking hard to explain positions, in most instances it turned out the person who thought they were being possessed were in fact suffering from several panic attacks usually brought on by severe feelings of guilt, horror, post traumatic stress and childhood abuse. If any of those things are even possible, even if you just repressed those thoughts, that doesn't mean your insane. It means you don't know how to deal with those thoughts and feelings.

The point is jumping on demonic possession, in a way, is like assuming that a UFO (something in the sky you cannot identify) is being pilotted by aliens. Before you jump to demonic possession, explore other psychological issues. We do already know that people under extreme stress can exhibit inhuman strength and speed. We also know altered states of concsiousness Can induce convulsions as well as speaking in tongues. Furthermore we know that people can put their bodies through extreme conditions - be it walk on hot coals, stab themselves with sharp needles or even have themselves cruxified. None of these things neccessarily involve demonic possesion, though many cultures that practice these kinds of things to believe in temporary possession by spirits of some type.

You mentioned these things happen around 3 or 3:30 am, which happens to be about the same time that many people report paranormal activity of some kind. Most people are just experiencing post REM waking states in which they are not fully awake or asleep and this state of mind can produce powerful hallucinations as well as the perception of the loss of control over one's body to some other force. Most of this stuff is just related to sleep disorder or just a lack of quality sleep.

So to recap we have several possibilities here that have nothing to do with demonic possession: Several panic attacks brought on by repressed truama of some sort, a sleep disorder (which can include a lack of quality sleep) and hypnagotic hallucinations that occur when you wake up before the rest of your body does.

Are you suffering from demonic possession? I don't know. How do you know you are possessed out side of taking it by faith or a belief in some divine truth? In which case why believe in that kind of divine truth at all? But take a serious look at other possibilities first. Unfortunately I also know that many people who do have very repressed memories or suffered severe truama, tend to find it easier to believe in demonic possession, than it is to face what actually happened to them.

I'm inclined to think that possession can happen, personally. I also think, however, that it is one of those things that people really do not *want* to believe in the possibility of, (for fairly obvious reasons (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)) and so they attempt to use pseudo-rationalistic explanations for how it might happen instead.

I think a lot of the time, Occam's Razor gets misinterpreted; to me, simply saying that a person is possessed by demons, is actually a MUCH simpler and less complex explanation than a lot of the other pseudo-psychological rubbish that gets thrown around when attempting to explain it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)