INTRODUCTION. A General Statement with Inquiries and Warnings. I. Spirits, not necessarily gods or devils, are simply human beings released from their mortal bodies. II. The event termed death neither spiritually exalts nor degrades a human being. III. Spirits, conscious entities, to maintain their identities, must have taken with them consciousness, memory, disposition and tendencies. IV. There are as many kinds, classes and castes of spirits in the spirit world, which lies over and all about us, as there are kinds and conditions of mortals on earth. V. Hypnotism m this life, and hypnotic trance from tlie spirit spheres, being intimately allied, there are many phenomena connected with somnambulism and temporary loss of identity, clearly pointing to obsession as the only rational explanation. Many of the obsessed are utterly ignorant of the causes of their strange impressions and unaccountable doings. VI. Persons that liked authority, position and the power to domineer over others in this life carry their monarchical traits into the invisible beyond, and naturally, for a time at least, become controlling, if not obsessing spirits. VII. Sensitive individuals with negative temperaments coming within the radius of this class of spirits, become psychically influenced, and later obsessed without understanding the causes of their strange, restless, nervous conditions. Ill

Introduction. VIII. Earth-bound spirits are as naturally chained or held within the limits of the earth's atmosphere as lead is held to the surface of the earth by the fixed law of gravity. IX. Different moral grades of spiritual beings can by their wills so impinge upon the auras of mortals and so hypnotically project their thoughts and their suggestions into the minds of those yet clothed in mortality, as to not only influence, not only co-ordinate the mentality, but to obsess them, and so in a measure sensuously re-live their lives on this earthly, fleshly plane. X. Selfish, ignorant spirits thrust into spirit life by accident, or natural causes, soon seek their affinitizing associates over there, which, in regard to space, is logically here. They return to their old haunts; hence haunted houses. They also follow and if possible comingle their psychic emanations with certain mortals, and cling to them as fungus and moss to trees, thus vampire-like, absorbing their vitality. This is one of the worst forms of obsession. XI. Hunters and vivisectionists, who torture animals, shoot innocent birds, attend prize fights, engage in maddened dueling, and rush fiercely into battle aflame with malice, to perish on the crimson warfields of slaughter, constitute many of the obsessional forces that blight humanity. These unredeemed personalities often incite mortals to the commission of crimes where no motive on this side of the great divide is discernible. Mrs. McKnight's case is an illustration. There was no appreciable malice— no motive for the killing of her husband, her sister and the children. She said she was sorry, but she could not help it — a clear case of obsession. IV

Introduction. XII. Where, and who are the exorcists of these times competent to cast out demons as did the incarnate Christ of old, and so restore to health and harmony the afflicted? It is evident that the demon-infested cannot ■cast out demons. XIII. Is it, or is it not, true that the demons of these demon-controlled mediums, being of necessity near the earth, near matter and material things, teach materialistic doctrines, rudest Darwinism, spontaneous generation, and the non-immortality of some human beings? XIV. Are obsessions relievable? If so, by what methods,— Chinese, the Hindu or the Christian? Who have the power to bid these oppressed prisoners go free % Who are the wise, heaven-commissioned ones to transfer low, deceptive spirits into better conditioned fields with better facilities for moral growth? XV. Can these ignorant, malicious or evil-disposed demon-spirits, often lying, pompous and pretentious, that benumb individuality, obsess, and if possible possess, be reached? Can their soul sympathies be touched by the fires of inspiration? Can their depraved natures be transformed, and so be prepared to ultimately enter into the higher Christ-spheres of the many-mansioned house of the Father? All of these psychological questions, hypnofe^m, trance, witchcraft, monomania, motiveless crimes, obsessions by demoniac spirits, are discussed in this volume, solving the illustrious Blackstone's queries, found in the sixtieth article of the fourth book of ''Blackstone's Commentaries." These were his words, ''A sixth species of offense against God and religion, of which our ancient books are full, is a crime of which one knows not