Demon Possession and Allied Themes

About this book

In northern China, a missionary collects reports of voices, altered behaviour and people said to be possessed by spirits. The witnesses disagree about what they have seen, yet the stories accumulate until they seem to demand an explanation.

John L. Nevius interprets these accounts through a Christian understanding of demonic possession while engaging with local beliefs and contemporary discussion of unusual mental states. The book is valuable as a record of religious testimony and missionary thought; its supernatural conclusions are not independently established. The individual cases reveal how fear, culture and conviction meet.