Free Poltergeist: A Classic Study in Destructive Haunting by Colin Wilson Page A

or of their own free will. It added sensibly that many people who seem to be possessed are really cases of epilepsy or madness, and demand a doctor rather than an exorcist. Rivail asked whether exorcism actually has any power over such spirits, and got the answer: “No. When bad spirits see anyone trying to influence them by such means, they laugh.” In fact, any investigator who has had anything to do with poltergeists knows that they cannot be exorcised.
    The modern revival of interest in the subject of “demoniacal possession” was largely the result of Aldous Huxley’s book The Devils of Loudun , published in 1952 and, later, of William Blatty’s novel The Exorcist . Huxley takes a skeptical view of the possession of a convent full of
Ursuline nuns:
    Bogus demoniac possession, artfully faked by a whole convent of hysterical Ursulines, under the coaching of their spiritual directors; monks plotting with lawyers to bear false witness against a hated professional and sexual rival; a fornicating priest, enmeshed in the toils of his own lust and vanity and at last judicially murdered on a false charge and with every refinement of cruelty—it is a story that takes a high place in
the annals of human beastliness in general and religious beastliness in particular . . . [2]
    Father Urbain Grandier, the parish priest of the small town of Loudun, was charged in 1633 of “bewitching” the nuns of the local convent, who had been going into convulsions and howling blasphemies in hoarse voices. When Grandier was finally taken in to perform an exorcism ceremony, the nuns began to accuse him of being responsible. Convinced of the absurdity of the charge, Grandier made no real attempt to defend himself until it was too late. Then he was tortured and publicly burnt.
    Huxley is undoubtedly correct when he speaks of the plots against Grandier, and about Grandier’s own fornications—he seduced at least two young girls in the confessional and made one of them pregnant. There also seems to be no doubt that the “plot” against Grandier began as a practical joke, with some of the novices frightening the others by dressing up in a white sheet and pretending to be ghosts. But when we come to examine the actual “possession,” the skeptical explanation no longer seems adequate. Four of the priests who came to exorcise the “devils” were themselves possessed, and two of them died of it. Father Surin, a remarkable mystic, became more-or-less insane for twenty-five years. The unfortunate Father Tranquille, a famous Capuchin preacher, went along to Loudun convinced that the authority of the Church would protect him from the “devils”; he proved to be mistaken. He found himself in the horrifying position of writhing around on the ground, listening to his mouth uttering blasphemies, while his mind remained a detached spectator. This continued until he died in a state of exhaustion. In a famous study of psychological possession, the German philosopher T. K. Oesterreich observes accurately: “This death is one of the most frightful which can be imagined, the patient being sick in mind while fully conscious, and a prey to excitement so violent that finally the organism breaks down under it.” The same thing happened to Father Lactance, who had “expelled three demons” from the prioress of the convent, Sister Jeanne des Anges.
    Surin came to Loudun after Grandier had been burnt. His death did not put an end to the possession of the nuns. Father Lactance was already dead. And fairly soon, Surin was writing to a friend:
    God has . . . permitted the devils to pass out of the possessed person’s body and, entering into mine, to assault me, to throw me down, to torment me . . . I find it almost impossible to explain what happens to me during this time, how this alien spirit is united to mine, without depriving me of consciousness or of inner freedom, and yet constituting a second “me,” as though I had two souls, of which one is