The Case for Possession: Do the Dead Influence the Living?

Accepting, as I must, that not only do we survive bodily death, but that we cannot escape survival, I find plentiful evidence that the nature of the afterlife varies in quality as much as does earthly life. The saints of this world appear to find satisfaction and creative work on the next plane, and that almost immediately after death. Those who have led destructive lives have made a hell for themselves, and to that hell they are condemned. But outside the spectrum that ranges from the happy to the unhappy dead - there is another class - the earthbound.

• Cynthia Pettiward
  In The Case for Possession Cynthia Pettiward suggests that depressed and psychotic states, both of mind and body, could sometimes be induced by agencies outside the psychological personality-structure. She believes that there are grounds for assuming that this hypothesis is worth studying. Her belief arises not only from the case-histories she has investigated but from personal experience and observation. Pettiward leaves aside the question of demonic possession, although she does not reject it; instead, she summarises some of the evidence pointing to possession by discarnate human entities - the 'earthbound' dead. In order to posit this thesis it is inevitable that belief in survival of bodily death be accepted, and Pettiward is as much concerned to bring forward the evidence for survival as to study the case for possession.