Why Do Possessions Occur?

1. People are faking it. Why? To get attention or create a diversion. This may be the case with marginalised females suffering stress or the confines of a patriarchal society. Others might fake possession to avoid an exam or a stifling, repressively managed factory. Some fakers have criminal motives.

2. People are afflicted by a dissociative disorder (such as a split personality) or some other mental illness. Or they could have epilepsy. Victims of demonic possessions display the symptoms of a recently classified disease called anti- NMDA receptor encephalitis. Categorised only in 2007, this disease is a form of brain inflammation. Symptoms include delusional thinking, disinhibited behaviour and spasms. While this could explain individual cases of possession, it’s unlikely a dozen schoolgirls or factory workers could all be afflicted by the same disease simultaneously. Unless they have all consumed some food or drink tainted by a hallucinogen. Some Indonesian mushrooms cause hallucinations, just as mouldy rye grain was touted as a cause of possession by witches in Salem, Massachusetts, in the 1690s.

3. People have been raised to believe in ghosts and demonic spirits. This makes them susceptible to performing traditional trance rituals that gain attention and sympathy, and bring business, fame and credibility to healers or exorcists. People suffering societal inequalities or psychological problems may be more prone to acting possessed.

4. Some Indonesians say factories are hit by possessions because of poor ventilation and stress, and strict foreign bosses who do not allow sufficient levity or breaks. Others say possessions are due to poor diet (inadequate nutrition), stress, menstruation and insufficient exercise.

5. Demons and evil spirits are real, lurking in trees, rocks, houses, cemeteries and other locations, eager to enter the bodies of weak females or willing males. This, of course, is preposterous nonsense. Supernatural spirits exist only in fertile imaginations, especially among people brainwashed into such beliefs.