In her 2006 book, Possessed by Ghosts, Wanda Pratnicka, a Polish psychotherapist, healer, and exorcist, states that one of the primary causes of homosexuality is possession of a child by a ghost of the opposite sex. “When a woman-ghost has dominated the mind of a boy, he will seek out contacts with men,” Pratnicka writes. “…The same thing happens by analogy to a girl who has been possessed by a man.”

As Pratnicka defines it, a ghost is a spirit who has not passed through to the other side of death’s curtain and has to “hook up” to a living person in order to survive. It then steals the person’s energy. “For many ghosts this is, however, not enough so then they steal the person's body as well,” Pratnicka claims. “If such a ghost also succeeds in usurping a person's mind then we're dealing with total possession. Such a person is a puppet which is completely governed by a ghost.”

According to Pratnicka,, a ghost whose life revolved around satisfying sexual desires will likely continue the pursuit on the other side. “After death, their sexual urges pull them down and prevent them going further toward the Light,” she explains. “They are tied to the question which filled their whole lives, that is the pursuit of a suitable partner. Now this becomes their motive force, an obsession in the seeking out of anyone who happens to be at hand and who would satisfy their needs and unrealized dreams best of all.”

Children are most often chosen, Pratnicka says, because the possession is usually by a deceased relative and the child, knowing him or her, doesn’t shut himself off from the ghost. The possession is usually not perceptible to family members, but eventually family members may begin to comment that their child looks like and acts like Uncle Ivan or Aunt Ida, while assuming it is a genetic matter rather than one of possession.

“The ghost of any person who has died and not passed through to the other side of death's curtain may be the one which has just possessed us; so it may be our mother, father, brother, sister, grandfather, granny, uncle, aunt, friend, work-mate, neighbor, school friend or some random ghost which just happened to be nearby,” Pratnicka offers, adding that sometimes it is a strong bond between people of which they may be unaware.

Pratnicka says she has encountered homosexuality as a result of possession hundreds of times out of the several thousand patients of hers world-wide. (Although living in Poland, she has U.S. and Great Britain phones numbers; see her website at www.TheExorcisms.com) She adds that she has been successful in exorcising such possessing spirits, but they often come back.

In a LifeSiteNews.com story on August 15, 2008, Father Jeremy Davies, a Catholic priest with the Westminster diocese in the United Kingdom, is quoted as saying that “among the causes of homosexuality is a contagious demonic factor.” An Oxford graduate who is also a physician, Davies is the author of Exorcism: Understanding Exorcism in Scripture and Practice, published earlier this year. The article goes on to quote Davies as saying that even heterosexual promiscuity can open up the individual to “evil spirits” and that young people are especially vulnerable.

Davies has served as exorcist for the Westminster Archdiocese s since 1986 and co-founded the International Association of Exorcists, which has hundreds of members worldwide. In a 2000 interview, Davies told an independent newspaper that incidents of demonic possession are rising dramatically. "At the centre of this is man's ever-growing pride and attempted self-reliance. Man trying to build a better world without God - another Tower of Babel," he was quoted. said.

In his 2003 book, Healing Lost Souls, William J. Baldwin, Ph.D., an Orlando, Florida therapist, states that “an attached entity of the opposite gender can cause confusion over gender orientation and sexual behavior. This confusion can lead to homosexuality, transvestism, or transsexualism, and gender reassignment surgery.” He goes on to say that many people who are unhappy with their sexual orientation have been freed after releasing the entity that caused the problem.

Baldwin tells the story of a 55-year-old man who had been a transvestite for 50 years. He first became fascinated with his mother’s underwear when five years old and during his teen years stole articles of women’s clothing from clotheslines to use in his own wardrobe. Regressing the man, Baldwin determined that a woman who had been his babysitter when he was a young child and who had died in a trolley accident had attached herself to the man. Through releasement therapy, the invading spirit was released, but it came back after four months. It was again released and had not returned after six months.

A 62-year-old male architect suffering from “gender dysphoria” was found to have been controlled by his mother’s girlfriend who had died in a boating accident before he was born. She had entered the mother’s womb and attached herself to him about the sixth or seventh week in utero. Through releasement therapy, he was also freed but the entity returned. The man concluded that the entity was also responsible for his artistic ability and decided to keep her attached to him.

Louise Ireland-Frey, M.D., a Tulane University medical school graduate, discovered hypnotherapy late in her medical career and came to realize that many medical issues are caused by spirit possession. Her 1999 book Freeing Captives: The Emerging Therapy of Treating Attachment discusses how “attached” entities can be responsible for any number of physical, mental, and emotional disorders. She defines several degrees of attachment. First is temptation of the living person by a wandering spirit. This does not involve an overwhelming compulsion but a thought of doing something out of character for the person. Second is influencing or shadowing, where the disembodied entity is affecting the host person with mood swings, irrational moments, sudden inexplicable fears or depression. Oppression is a word used for a harassing entity. Obsession is where the entity may invade not only the psyche but also the physical body and meld its own personality traits and former bodily feelings with those of the host. Possession is the condition in which the invading entity completely takes over the body of the host, pushing out the host’s own personality (soul).

“A soul that is still very heavy with negative emotions and undesirable habits such as rage, cruelty, greed, etc., may be too negative to be attracted to the Light, and will turn away, not perceiving it, and go to a ‘place’ (a vibrational frequency or dimension) that is likewise dark and heavy, appropriate for its own present nature,” Ireland-Frey explains, going on to say that such souls become wanderers and attach themselves to living people. They are usually drawn to people with the same addictions, vices, or desires so that they can satisfy their still earthly desires through the bodies and senses of the living. The best defense against such attachment, Ireland-Frey states, is a clear, clean, and strong aura – one developed by healthy habits of all kinds.

Dr. Carl A. Wickland, a psychiatrist, dealt extensively with such spirits through the mediumship of his wife, Anna Wickland, during the early part of the 1900s. A member of the Chicago Medical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and director of the National Psychological Institute of Los Angeles, Wickland specialized in cases of schizophrenia, paranoia, depression, addiction, manic-depression, criminal behavior and phobias of all kind. In his 1924 book, Thirty Years Among the Dead, Wickland stated that much of such mental illness was caused by intruding, or obsessing, spirits. “Spirit obsession is a fact – a perversion of a natural law – and is amply demonstrable,” Wickland wrote. “This has been proven hundreds of times by causing the supposed insanity or aberration to be temporarily transferred from the victim to a psychic sensitive who is trained for the purpose, and by this method ascertain the cause of the psychosis to be an ignorant or mischievous spirit, whose identity may frequently be verified.”

I do have a problem understanding why innocent children – those who have not yet reached the age of reason – should be left defenseless and so susceptible to attack by earthbound spirits. I put this concern to Susan B. Martinez, Ph.D., author of The Psychic Life of Abraham Lincoln and a book not yet released in which she attempts to debunk reincarnation by showing that every one of the stories seemingly lending itself to demonstrating reincarnation can be explained by overshadowing, another word for possession.

Martinez  referred me to her recent article titled “The Invented God,” in which she discusses how we wrongly blame God when thing go wrong. “… far too much credit has been given to the Supreme for the play of events and forces that we ourselves have unleashed in the world – which in fact God had nothing to do with. How ready we have been to blame our own come-uppance (or even dumb luck) on a higher power!” she writes. “responsibility is key – with both eyes open. Let us leave God out of the equation for a minute and see how far we can get on our own hook – confessing our weaknesses and pledging to set things aright with all our wisdom, love and power.”

The same lack of divine justice relative to possession or overshadowing may be applied to the death of young children. What kind of God allows an innocent child to die before attaining the age of reason? This is a question that Mary Lincoln asked in her bereavement at the loss of her young son Willie in 1862 before realizing the folly of her “rebelliousness”:  "How often I feel rebellious, and almost believe that our Heavenly Father has forsaken us, in removing so lovely a child from us! Yet I know, a great sin is committed when we feel thus”

“If Heaven owes us any explanations, it comes not in distracted moments of bereavement or rage, but from a lifetime of thought and study,” Martinez offers. “I have just come across a Jewish parable that ends with this moral (I will end with it too): “Mortals see only the beginning of any of God’s work. Therefore they cannot understand the nature and the end of creation.”

Addendum: Since postng the above 14 hours ago, I have received several e-mail from friends who feel that the whole subject matter is inappropriate. It was not my intent to in any way disparage gays or lesbians.   I am not prejudiced against either.  To each his own. I  had not heard of the overshadowing  explanation of homosexuality before I read Pratnicka's  book and it struck me as something to explore in an objective manner.  It is not something I am emotional about one way or the other, but apparently many people are.  

After reading Pratnicka's comments, I searched for other references on the subject and added those. I wasn't prepared to examine other explanations in this blog as it is already long enough.  One writer stated that there is evidence we choose our sexual orientation before coming into the world.  Another suggested that it is related to past-life karma.   Another said that there is a study indicating that animals can be homosexuals and wondered if animals can be overshadowed.   (Actually, there is, but that's something for a different blog). 

"Possession" is a very emotional word and perhaps I should have used "overshadow" to begin with.  I do believe there is strong evidence for other types of  overshadowing, including small children being overshadowed by musicians and artists, etc.  thereby becoming "child prodigies."   Whether they can be overshadoweed in the manner described by Pratnicka, I don't pretend to know.  As I stated above, I have a hard time with the idea that defenseless children can be overshadowed, but I wanted to set forth the views of those who believe they can as food for thought. 

   


  

above:  Hamlin Garland  

In case you missed this past Tuesday's segment of "The Mentalist," CBS's popular new detective program, it appears that Patrick Jane (played by Simon Baker) may have been converted to a belief in life after death.  In the first segment of the series, Patrick, a flamboyant private detective with special intuitive abilities, made it clear that he does not believe in psychics or  in life after death.   In Tuesday's program, Patrick was out to expose a "psychic who channels the dead" as a fraud, but he failed and clearly met his match.

One of  Patrick's colleagues, who believed that the psychic was for real, lambasted him for trying to expose the psychic as a fraud, asking him to consider that he might be wrong and wondering how his deceased wife and daughter, both killed in an auto accident, may now feel realizing that he thinks they are extinct.  Patrick's expression suggested his ego had never allowed him to consider that possibility.    At the end of the show the psychic passed on a very evidential message from Patrick's wife, one which left Patrick crying and hopefully convinced.  

So it is with the real-life "skeptics," i.e., the pseudo-skeptics, who say that stories like the one below are all bunk. They claim to be emissaries of truth, hoping to cleanse the world of religious superstition, while not really considering the possibility that they are wrong and, if they are wrong, how that makes our deceased relatives and friends feel or what a world without hope and looking only toward extinction might be like.   Many of them display a certain bravado in that respect, but it appears nothing more than bravado.

In Dark Lore, Volume II, recently released by Daily Grail Publishing, Stephen Braude, a professor of philosophy and a popular author in the field of parapsychology, discusses the "Fear of Psi"  that grips mainstream science. He points out how the pseudo skeptics resort to ad hominem arguments in their attempts to discredit valid phenomena.   As an example, he cites the case of  D. D. Home, the renowned medium of yesteryear, mentioning that books attempting to debunk Home suggest that he had an affair or that he might have been homosexual, apparently believing that by attacking his character they succeed in debunking him.   

Braude also gives examples of the "straw man" arguments used by skeptics.  They mention that some of the minor phenomena can be performed by magicians while ignoring the major phenomena which no magician has been known to duplicate.

"It's obvious that many skeptics are intelligent people, and I suggest that it is highly unlikely that these shabby criticisms of parapsychological evidence are simply the sorts of occasional and more or less random spasms of stupidity that all persons experience sometimes," Braude writes, going on to say that many skeptics are simply in a kind of conceptual panic and that in the grip of this panic their reason and integrity go by the wayside.

In another chapter of the Dark Lore anthology, popular author Michael Prescott addresses the attempts of skeptics to debunk the famous R-101 case, the subject of a recent blog entry here (See "Irrefutable Evidence of Life after Death" under the "popular" tab on the right side of this screen).  The skeptics came up with all kinds of "could haves" or "might haves."  As Prescott points out, as long as some of the facts are well in the past and cannot be verified one way or the other, the case cannot be considered airtight. Moreover, it unlikely that any single case can establish the validity of a phenomenon like mediumship.  However, the cumulative weight of hundreds, even thousands of cases certainly offers a preponderance of evidence, if not evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt."  (More about Dark Lore, Volume II, at the end of this entry)

 Seemingly typical of the Patrick Jane mindset was a comment by Michael Shermer, the editor of a skeptic's magazine, in an A & E program this past week featuring a "psychic detective" who was called in to help locate a missing child.   Shermer attempted to debunk the psychic detective by asking why, if she could really find people, she couldn't find Osama bin Laden or Jimmy Hoffa.   Of course, such a statement appeals to the know-nothings, but clearly displays a lack of understanding of the psychic process.  It's like asking why the psychic can't give you the winning lottery numbers.

This blog is dedicated to offering evidence - some of it strong, much of it clearly anecdotal - for the survival of consciousness after death.  As Sir Oliver Lodge, the renowned British physicist, said many years ago, it was not any single case or communication that convinced him of survival.  Rather it was, as suggested above, the cumulative evidence.  It is such cumulative evidence that helps us move from open-minded skepticism or blind faith to conviction and the recognition that we are not marching toward an abyss of nothingness, or total extinction.  Consider this case, as reported by Dr. Hamlin Garland, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of more than 50 books as well as a psychical researcher, keeping in mind that Garland was clearly a skeptic - although an open-minded one - when he began his investigations of mediums and psychics.  Outside of claiming that Garland, clearly a man of honor and integrity based on various biographies, made up the story or considerably embellished it, how can the pseudo-skeptic explain it?   

Shortly after the end of World War I, Hamlin Garland, was in New York City and was invited to lunch at the Bankers' Club on Wall Street by his old friend, Edwin Winter.  Knowing of Garland's interest in psychic matters, Winter brought along another guest whom he introduced as Thomas Traynor, telling Garland that Traynor had the gift of second sight.   Traynor informed Garland that ever since he could remember he could see "invisibles" and report their words to his friends and relatives.  He didn't know how it worked other than that he was some kind of "wireless receiving station."  Winter, a retired railroad company president, told Garland that he had heard from many of his deceased railroad cronies through Traynor's clairvoyance and clairaudience.   He suggested they meet at his apartment so that Garland might experience Traynor's gift.

Several days later, Garland, his wife, Augustus Thomas (Garland's friend), Traynor, and Winter met for dinner at Winter's Park Ave. apartment.  "Nothing was said of his mediumship during dinner," Garland recorded, "but an hour later as we were all sitting before the fire, with our coffee and cigars, Winter turned to Traynor and said, ‘Well, Tom, do you see any spooks in the room?'"  Traynor replied that he saw a young woman standing beside Mrs. Garland.  This startled her, Garland noted, as she disbelieved in spirits and ghosts and disliked all discussion of them.     However, Traynor continued:  "She says her name is Scales - Carrie L. Scales.  She is about thirty-five. She is tall with brown hair combed up in a roll above her brow.  She says to you, Mrs. Garland, that you were not with her when she passed out - neither was her husband."

Mrs. Garland immediately recognized the name and the facts but remained silent.  "As he went on, he began to impersonate the dead woman," Garland continued the story. He spoke as if she were using his organs of speech.  Addressing my wife directly, ‘Carrie' entered into most intimate details.  ‘For a time I resented my husband's second marriage, but I am resigned to it now,' she said."

The communicating spirit described events of which Mrs. Garland had no knowledge and which Traynor could not have read.   Mrs. Garland was deeply moved, commenting that every relationship and every description was accurate, at least those she knew of.  

Traynor then turned to Winter and told him that there was a man there who claimed to have known him since he was a boy.  "I used to see you on the platform of the station at Beloit, Wisconsin," Traynor quoted the spirit.  "You used to come down to the train with pails of berries to sell to the passengers."

 Winter agreed that he sold pails of berries to passengers at that train station when he was a boy, but didn't know what man was being referred to.   Traynor then impersonated the man.  "I was conductor on the local which ran from Chicago to Madison.  I wore a fancy vest-you'll remember that vest - and it was my habit to wait till the last car came along before swinging on. You liked to see me do it. You admired me."

Garland noted that the tone of the voice then changed.  "After you became a big man in the railway business you made me a division superintendent.  That was a mistake.  I wasn't big enough for the job."

 Winter then recalled the man and remembered promoting him after he became general manager of the Northern Railway. He remembered the fancy vest and watching him swing on to the rear car platform.  He further recalled that the man failed as a superintendent and returned to being a conductor.

 Traynor then turned to Thomas and began talking about an old friend of his, which  Thomas immediately recognized.  Several other old friends were then mentioned.  Garland noted that Traynor could turn his power off and on like twisting a key.   Thomas suggested that it was a case of mind-reading and that even though the people mentioned to the sitters were not on their minds and in the case of the train conductor had not been thought of in years, that Traynor was somehow able to dig into their subconscious memories.

 Winter brought out some papers in which he recorded the details of a previous sitting with Traynor.   Traynor told him that there was "a queer, seedy, old chap, who says that he is a kind of uncle of yours."  Winter didn't know whom he was talking about.  The man then told him that he was married to his Aunt Sarah when he (Winter) was a child and gave his name as Milton K. Smalley.

Winter faintly recalled that his Aunt Sarah was married to someone when he was a boy but had never met him and had forgotten him completely.  Winter asked what the man wanted.   "He doesn't seem to want anything - just wishes to say that he didn't appreciate your aunt," Traynor said.  "He would like to identify himself and clear his record.  He says: ‘I left your aunt and went down to Lowell just before the Civil War broke out.  I enlisted in one of the first Massachusetts regiments to go South and I was killed in the Baltimore riot along with four other men.'"

In an attempt to confirm the information, Winter wrote to the Adjutant General at the State House in Boston.  The reply came that there was no such man as Milton K. Smalley in their records.    The next time he saw Traynor, Winter told him of the search and negative results. Traynor then became silent and a fixed look came into his eyes.  He then began impersonating Smalley:  "Of course you didn't find me under that name.  I enlisted under another name altogether.  You see I'd been living with another woman since leaving your aunt, and I enlisted as Jackson Turner."

Winter checked with the Adjutant General again and confirmed that Jackson Turner was in the regiment indicated and that he had been killed in the streets of Baltimore along with three other men.  Moreover, Winter contacted his sister and confirmed his Aunt Sarah's marriage to Smalley.

If Traynor had been mind-reading, both Garland and Winter wondered how he could come upon such facts that were definitely not in Winter's subconscious mind.  While Winter vaguely recalled the marriage and may have heard the name Smalley, he clearly did not know the name Jackson Turner and the fact that Turner was killed in Baltimore.

 Not long after, Garland arranged to have Traynor visit with him and his friend Brown, who was grieving the recent death of his wife.   Sometime after they finished eating, Traynor began to impersonate Mrs. Brown.  "From his lips came words which indicated that the dying woman had twice left the body and that she had visited friends during her first flight," Garland wrote. 

"I heard your voice," the dead woman told her husband, "and returned to my body.  I heard you, but I could not answer."

Traynor then turned to Garland and spoke in the dead woman's character.  "I wanted to see you before you went home, but I was not able to do so.  I was too weak."  Garland confirmed that he was staying with Brown at the time, but had to leave to fill some lecture dates.  Also, the apparent death of Mrs. Brown and her revival a few hours later was true, as was her reported appearance at the bedside of a friend during her "first flight."

In spite of many years of psychical research and having observed much similar phenomena, Garland could not bring himself to accept the spirit hypothesis.  He preferred to see it as some kind of "perceptive sensing" which could not be understood.  Nevertheless, he concluded that the case of Tom Traynor strengthened the case for personal survival after death.

     Dark Lore, Volume II, a collection of stories about the paranormal to which I have contributed a chapter ( about pre-Raymond Moody near-death experiences), was released last week and is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.    Published by Daily Grail Publishing, this book has 15 stories on topics covering everything from mediumship and UFOs to the Crystal Skull and the Loch Ness Monster.  Check http://darklore.dailygrail.com/ for a couple of sample chapters from the book.