Epilepsy that were interpreted as voodoo possession

clipped from www.mindhacks.com Seized by Voodoo spirits: a remarkable href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/18047807/Epilepsy-and-religious-experiences-Voodoo-possession">paper with several cases of epilepsy that were interpreted as voodoo possession. They were all people with roots in Haiti, where href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Vodou">voodoo is the predominant religion, and where spirit possession is considered a common spiritual event For thousands of years epilepsy has been explained as spirit possession in religions around the world. Epilepsy is also known to trigger intense religious or spiritual experiences in some people but the majority of cases are from the West and so have a distinctly Christian theme. 36-year-old woman had several years of recurrent href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_partial_seizure">complex partial seizures that manifested as a strong sense of fear and href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigastrium">epigastric coldness, followed by loss of awareness, utterances of nonsensical phrases, and complex motor href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatism_%28medicine%29">automatisms. The local mambo attributed the events to her being taken by “Melle Charlotte,” a french loa [spirit], with the nonsensical speech being interpreted as a foreign language