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K T Oesterreich - Possession

In the midst of the terrible spectacle which he presents in the fit, he remains fully conscious of what is happening; he is the passive spectator of what takes place within him. This form of possession was described by one of the victims of an outbreak of demonic possession at a convent in Madrid in the seventeenth century:

When I began to find myself in this state I felt within me movements so extraordinary that I judged the cause could not be natural. I recited several orisons asking God to deliver me from such terrible pain. Seeing that my state did not change, I several times begged the prior to exorcize me; as he was not willing to do so and sought to turn me from it, telling me that all I related was only the outcome of my imagination, I did all that in me lay to believe it, but the pain drove.me to feel the contrary . . . I then felt the presence of the demon who was in my body; I began without thinking to run, muttering, 'Lord Peregrino calls me’, so I came where the demon was, and before arriving there was already speaking of whatever thing they had under discussion and of which I had no previous knowledge.