In the Middle Ages, “demonic” possession was often used in society to explain strange or erratic behavior. Exorcism was the usual treatment for “demoniacs” and seemed to provide a bit of alleviation for the suffering of those distressed people.
Diabolical, or demonic, possession is the term for when a person’s corporeal form has fallen under the control of a demon.
The possessed person might have superhuman strength or knowledge, or gabble in tongues. The New Testament of the Bible often said that natural afflictions (epilepsy, blindness, mutism) were the result of this type of possession. The reason for these attributions was the lack of scientific knowledge in those days needed for diagnosing nervous and mental disorders.
Spirit possession, on the other hand, is an altered state of consciousness and certain behaviors that go with it, said to be caused by spirits, ghosts, demons, angels, or gods controlling a person’s body. The idea of spirit possession is in many cultures and religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Haitian Vodou, Hinduism, Islam, Wicca, along with Southeast Asian, African, and Native American traditions, to name a few.
Depending on the culture, possession can be either voluntary or involuntary, with either beneficial or damaging effects on the possessed.
An early example was that of Martha Brossier (1556 – after 1600), a French woman who claimed to be demonically possessed when she was 22 years old. She was the daughter of a weaver in Romorantin.
She was said to suffer from extreme shortness of breath, an ability to poke out her tongue unreasonably far, teeth-gnashing, writhing and moving her mouth as if having seizures while contorting her face, rolling her eyes, and appearing to show deep distress and torment. She also contorted her body parts and a rumbling noise was heard from her spleen area (under the short ribs on the left side of the body), which caused her left thigh to go into spasm.
She often spoke with a violent and roaring voice and was recorded to have laid flat on her back and skipped from the altar to the door of a great chapel in four or five “lifts,” which onlookers said made it appear as if something was dragging or lifting her, presumably demons. During her fits, she could endure pinpricks to her hands and neck with not much bleeding. She could also speak with her mouth closed, in both English and Greek with apparent fluency.
Charles Miron, the Bishop of Angers or Orleans, had an inkling that Martha Brossier’s claim of possession was untrue. He got her to drink some holy water, under the guise of normal water, and got the exorcists to give her a key wrapped in red silk, saying that it contained a relic of the true cross, while reciting verses from the Roman writer Virgil.
Martha mistook all this for an exorcism rite. The wrapped key and Virgil’s poetry agitated her a great amount. Henri de Gondi, the Cardinal Bishop of Paris, had five members of his faculty examine her, and three of them thought she was an impostor.
The Parlement of Paris chose eleven physicians to look her over, and they all reported there was nothing demonic going on with Martha. They suggested that she used the physical strength of her stomach and chest muscles to talk through a closed mouth.
Elka Wyverg, (a troubled girl in the second book of the Nighthunter series that I’m currently working on) suffers from a form of ghostly possession where she is able to summon different types of Ghosts at random in response to her strong emotions.
You can find the first book in the series here
Other parts of The Possession Diaries:
Nightwalks 
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