The Unquiet Dead by Edith Fiore: A Psychologist Treats Spirit Possession © 1987

Book Summary by Dr. Denice Moffat

Edith Fiore has performed over 20,000 regressions in her life as a clinical psychologist. What I like about her approach is that it seems practical and is used in a common-sense manner. Each case she evaluated over the years she said was, “like an intricate jigsaw puzzle that we put together by picking up a random piece here and another isolated one there. When the last significant piece is pushed in place, there is an instantaneous cure.”

The way I work with my guides to figure out cases is much like this. Even trivial little pieces of information come into play to put together that picture of someone’s health challenge.

This process of depossession can be speedy (I know of one healer who attended a weekend workshop where the group healed a schizophrenic) but other times it can be slow and tedious as hidden facets surface to be healed. Some cases could use the support of support staff (counselors, energy workers, psychotherapists, etc.)

Edith feels that the issue of proof whether or not entities exist is not a priority. Results are. Troubled, unhappy people in pain justify use of this technique. I agree. What we fear or believe personally as healers should not affect our connecting our clients/patients to the resources that will do them the most good and bring them the healing that they need.

Edith says that the mentally ill are often mislabeled and are occupied by wayward spirits instead. Our mental facilities are filled with people whose only problems may be a few unwanted and undetected “hitchhikers” that nobody has seemed to be able to identify or entice these beings/energies to go to the Light. For example, paranoid schizophrenics often use drugs and alcohol to block the voices inside their heads. The prescription drugs that are used to control those voices open up the auric field for more attachment.

There are hundreds of entities that hang around mental facilities waiting for a drugged up body. We could use many more practitioners who know this and who are willing to send these entity addicts to a better place if they only knew what was really going on.

Dr. Fiore believes that all spirits eventually go to the Light, even if they have remained stuck on the physical plane for decades. People who help these spirits cross over from the other side are called Spirit Helpers. When we die and go to the Light, our vibrational energy soars. Spirit Helpers learn how to lower their vibration to be able to talk to the living. When shown that the Light is warm, peaceful, happy, loving and that friendly people exuding love who have previously passed come to assist (many times a beloved relative or pet), the entity often readily goes with the Rescue Team of Spirit Helpers from the other side. Most earthbound entities are happy to have a healthy body of their own once again.

Shocking or exorcising an entity may work temporarily but after the machine is turned off or the priest has gone home, most of them go back into the body or into someone else’s. This work we are talking about is done with compassion. The entities are treated with compassion and love and sent with a higher spirit to the appropriate place in heaven where they can deprogram and get help. The possessing entities are the true patients. They are suffering greatly, perhaps without realizing it. and are prisoners trapped on the earth plane. Why kick them out, displacing them again when they will probably enter another human being who doesn’t know how to deal with it? This could possibly lead to suicides or murders and misery of the unsuspecting new host.

Spirits stay on this plane because they are confused, ignorant, fearful, have attachments to living persons or places that they feel they cannot give up or have some addiction to drugs/alcohol/smoking/food or sex which they feel they will not be forgiven for. Many of them don’t realize that they have died and need to be educated on this. In most cases after dying, the spirit usually goes home or to their funeral and doesn’t understand why they are being ignored when they try to communicate with their loved ones.

Depossessing can be immediate, lasting and effective and can bring complete relief of symptoms. It does not require mental health training says Dr. Fiore. 

Common Signs of Possession: (Note many of these signs mimic mental illness) 

• Addictions or abuse of drugs/sex/alcohol
• Character shifts or mood swings
• Hearing voices in your head suggesting things that you wouldn’t normally want to do or think
• History of headaches
• Impulsive behavior out of character
• Inner voice(s) speaking to you
• Irrational fears and confused thinking
• Low energy levels, exhaustion
• Memory problems/Loss of time
• Mental illness of all kinds (paranoid schizophrenia, bipolarity, phobias, depression, multiple personality, etc.)
• Poor concentration/Easily distracted
• Sabotage of overcoming personal goals (overcoming addictions)
• Self-destructive personalities and strange compulsions
• Sudden onset of anxiety or depression
• Sudden onset of physical problems with no obvious cause and that defy diagnosis
• Suicidal thoughts
• Unexplained body pain or diseases not characteristic of the subject’s age
• Emotional and/or physical reactions to reading books such as this

I once consulted with a woman whose little boy flipped from being really nice to really naughty. She used to ask him to go ask “Good Joey” to come out. Kind of makes one wonder. . .

Phrases said that may indicate a possession:

• “My husband says I am two completely different people, especially before my period.”
• “They are a completely different person when they are drinking.”
• “That’s just not me!”
• “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
• “Somebody inside me sabotaged my fortitude to diet/stop smoking/quit drugs, stop drinking.”
• “I’ve never been the same since that accident.”
• “I’ve always been happy/popular/fearless, until about the time a few years back when. . .”
• “I would never do such a thing—but I did.”
• “I think I have multiple personality.”
• “I used to have so much energy, now I come home from work exhausted and go to bed at 8:30. I used to stay up to 11pm.”

One way to tell if a person is possessed is to listen for any thoughts that are said in the third person. Nobody thinks in the third person—these are ghosts telling you what to do. “You really need a drink or a bowl of ice cream.” Ghosts love the things they loved in life. The only way they can re-experience them is to possess living people.

It’s very rare for entities to be as flamboyant as in the movies. I cringe when I see that kind of exploitation and ultra-dramatization. It prevents treatable people from getting the help they need and keeps the earthbound soul in an unhappy place when they could easily go into the light.

In the book Change of Heart (Claire Sylvia © 1998) the author needed a heart transplant. A man was killed in a motorcycle accident that matched her needs, so his heart was put in. She could not explain that when she woke up from the surgery she wanted a beer and some chicken McNuggets—things she would never normally eat. It was months later that she discovered the man whose heart she received loved beer and he was found at the scene of the accident with a pocket full of chicken McNuggets! So what happens when we get a blood transfusion? These are things to contemplate.

Often, (Edith says up to 75% of her patients) possession was a core cause of disease from vacillating between only slight influence on the body to being extremely dominant.

Entities can follow a person from one lifetime to the next. Possession was mentioned in the bible on many occasions. For example:

• Jesus preached and cast out devils (Mark 1:39)
• Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man . . . He that was possessed of the devil was healed (Luke 8:27-33).
• There are 26 examples in the Bible of Jesus exorcising spirits and Jesus gave his disciples the power to cast off unclean spirits as well (Matthew 10:1).

Historically many cultures believed in possessing spirits including the Chinese, Japanese, Egyptians, Indian (Vedas), Hindus and Buddhists.

Definitions and Types of Possession:

Earthbound entities—people who have passed over but not gone into the Light for whatever reason merge accidentally or intentionally with a live person whom they think will make them feel better (energy, power, drugs, alcohol, to help the person, protect the person, etc.) Spirit addicts tend to cluster around living addicts and the places they frequent. They are attracted to the experience of what was once the dominant theme of their lives. No matter why they chose to stay among the living, earthbound spirits are frustrated, confused and unhappy. They are unable to find peace or lasting satisfaction inhabiting other people’s bodies. They are lost souls that do not know they are hurting themselves. When people are possessed by spirits of the opposite sex their hormonal system can be affected. Diminished sex drive, sudden marital conflicts and even premenstrual syndrome have sometimes been associated with possession. A relative possessing a person’s body many mean well (there for protection or to help the living person grieve), but they bring along their own baggage including their own emotions, beliefs, mental and physical problems which can be manifested through the living host. Most earthbounds don’t mean to cause harm and may not even be aware that they are causing distress in their host’s body. They usually willingly go into the Light by connecting and talking to the host (often through hypnosis, but Edith gives a wonderful script in the book to use at home as well.)

Obsessive attachment—Parents or loved ones stay to “help” the partner/child/spouse/family member. No matter how well-meaning the motives, the attachment of the spirit always causes serious problems as they prevent progress of the living and can infuse their thoughts and fears or negative emotions or habits into them. Sometimes the dead will influence the living to complete projects they were obsessed with when they were alive.

Demons or devils. Some of these types of entities have never inhabited a body and usually they have a “boss” but won’t say the boss’s name. They have been threatened with harsh forms of punishment if they do not complete their ‘orders’ and believe the lies of their boss.

This type of possession gives a kind of give a new meaning to the phrase “Possession is 9/10^th of the law.” I’m joking but honestly, this is the type of possession that is most frightening to people. We fear what we know little about.

Elementals, extraterrestrials, incarnate astral projecting, black magicians, psychic vampires and other threats are not addressed in The Unquiet Dead, but there are some resources below that address these issues.

Professions and people susceptible to attracting entities include: 

• Alcoholics
• Doctors, Nurses and all medical personnel
• Drug abusers
• Healers/Body workers/Shaman
• Hospice workers
• Paramedics/EMTs/Emergency room staff
• People who live and work in mental hospitals
• Priests/Ministers

How does a living person open up their body for entities to enter it?

• Alcohol drinking in excess
• Anesthesia
• Being overly empathetic (healers)
• Drug abuse (both recreational or medical) to excess causing mind alterations
• Illness
• Excess stress/distress/strong negative emotions
• Weak auric fields

Note: Young children are more susceptible to entity attachment (e.g. imaginary friends)

Some people want to keep their entities: “I won’t know who I am. I’ll be lonely.”

Most people don’t know they are possessed because most ghosts hide and don’t want you to know they are there.

This book should be on the shelf of every serious healer–both mainstream or complementary—in both health and mental arenas. There are things that we all encounter that defy simple explanation, particularly when it comes to intractable issues that won’t go away. While spirit attachment is not the first thing that I think of when I am working with someone, it’s certainly something I am more aware of after almost three decades of working in the alternative medicine field. I do believe that entity releasement work should be taught to all people in health and mental health careers.

Many people who are suicidal are unaware that their thoughts of suicide are probably triggered by spirits. The same goes for alcoholism and drug addiction as well as any other behaviors that are self-destructive. I’ve recommended this book to a few clients over the years but when queried upon follow-up, most people will not have bothered to read it (most out of fear). People fear what they know nothing about. If you have people you love who are challenged by mental illness, you owe it to them to get educated on the topic.

On my own path over the years I’ve had some experience with entities and earthbounds. I’ve found that most healers are afraid to work on them. In addition, most of them do not know who to refer a client to for the removal of these entities. Because of this, I’ve read several books on the topic to overcome my own ignorance and fears on the topic. It seems like some healers do a better job than others when it comes to this challenge.

Don’t be afraid to try out a couple practitioners if you feel like you haven’t gotten results and do take some training on how to fortify your auric field, do effective prayer work and minimize exposure to places and substances that open up your body and lower your vibration allowing entity attachment.

As we work in the field of metaphysics most of us just keep bumping into stuff of ever-expanding fields of consciousness in the cosmic jigsaw puzzle of life we can’t ignore. Over the years I’ve read things that I can’t make sense of. If it felt like it fit in somewhere or that it may be useful in the future, I learned to just put it onto a cosmic bookshelf where is sits until I find enough pieces to take it down someday and use. Sometimes it takes years to have enough of these pieces amassed to connect the dots. This area of entities and earthbounds has taken a couple of decades to connect the dots together. I don’t have all the answers of course, but at least I’m more educated at this point about these kinds of things.

I hope this information will be helpful to you, your families and to your clients.

If you are a practitioner who does this kind of work and who would like to be listed under this article, please contact me with your information. We need you!

Helpful Resources and Famous Entity Workers:

• Book: CE-VI: Close encounters of the Possession Kind by William Baldwin, PhD. © 1999
• Book: Exorcism: How to Clear at a Distance a Spirit Possessed Person by Eugene Maurey ©1989
• Book: Freeing the Captives by Louise Ireland-Frey MD, addresses dealing with all types of entities, human and non-human in a clear, no-nonsense way. © 1999
• Book: Healing Lost Souls: Releasing Unwanted Spirits from Your Energy Body by William J. Baldwin © 2003
• Book: Remarkable Healings: A Psychiatrist Discovers Unsuspected Roots of Mental and Physical Illness by Dr. Shakuntala Modi © 1998
• Book: Remote Depossession by Irene Hickman © 1994
• Book: Spirit Releasement Therapy: A Technique Manual by Dr. William J. Baldwin © 1995
• Book: Thirty Years Among the Dead by Carl Wickland, MD © 1930 and 2014
• Edgar Cayce brought the issue of spirit possession as a cause of disease to the attention of the public during his life. https://www.edgarcayce.org/are/holistic_health/data/prschi3a.html
• Entity Protection/Removal handout from About.com (Note that smudging sometimes just makes them annoyed and often doesn’t work for these cases): https://healing.about.com/od/empathic/a/psychicprotect.htm?nl=1
• Prayer of Protection: https://naturalhealthtechniques.com/prayer-of-protection/
• Treatment Modality: Reconnection Therapy Dr. Eric Pearl https://www.thereconnection.com/eric-pearl/
• Treatment modality: Shamanic healers are trained in depossession techniques
• Treatment modality: Soul Retrieval work