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MYS436: Can one human being possess another?

That question, from a listener named Mari, takes Jimmy Akin straight into MKUltra — the CIA’s Cold War hunt for a way to control a mind, and the death of Frank Olson, dosed without his knowledge at a 1953 retreat and dead out a New York hotel window days later. Whether any of it worked is disputed. Whether it would count as possession turns on what possession is in Scripture — a spirit seizing a living person — and on the older, wider sense of demon, which in Second Temple Judaism and even in a 1928 Iowa exorcism could mean a departed human spirit.

Eight listener questions in all, recorded for Catholic Answers Live with producer Edgar Lujano in the host’s chair:

• What happens to souls still in purgatory when the world ends? 1 Corinthians 15 says the living are changed “in the twinkling of an eye,” and the same must hold for anyone still being purified. Which opens a stranger question, by way of aeviternity and Benedict XVI’s Spe Salvi: is purification instantaneous right now?
• Is it licit to ask a ghost who it is? Far from forbidden. 1 John tells Christians to test the spirits, Thomas Aquinas said you may ask a dying person to report back — his own sister appeared to him twice — and St. Martin of Tours asked a spirit at a supposed martyr’s shrine who it was, and got an answer that closed the shrine.
• Are there fallen guardian angels? The common view puts every angelic fall before humans existed. But the Church has never settled it, and Genesis 6 and Paul’s “because of the angels” both point the other way.
• If two people swapped brains, where would the souls go? No teaching, no consensus, and four live possibilities — one of which Jimmy says nobody else has proposed.
• Were lizards, and especially dinosaurs, once dragons? Wings appear nowhere in Genesis or in Revelation’s dragon, and dinosaurs were never lizards — their defining trait is the hip that puts the legs underneath, which is why birds walk the way they do.
• Do you understate the skeptics on near-death experiences? That literature is thinner than people assume, none of it is backed by experiment, and nothing in it explains veridical information: the blue tennis shoe on a hospital ledge, the patient who came back knowing the intern ate his lunch.
• Is purgatory fire, or something else? Fr. Nathan Castle reports souls counseled rather than burned. Fire is a Western image the East never took up, and Gregory the Great recorded a purgatorial soul working as a bath attendant.

Then Dom Bettinelli brings feedback on episode 425, Voice to Skull Technology — bone-conduction headsets, Lucille Ball’s dental fillings, and why every era explains the same experience with its newest machine.

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Chapters:

• 0:00:12 – Intro
• 0:00:42 – Why a weird questions episode
• 0:02:11 – The topics Jimmy will cover
• 0:02:51 – Catholic Answers Live: Weird Questions
• 0:03:44 – How to submit a weird question
• 0:06:03 – Can humans possess one another? (Mari)
• 0:07:32 – …MKUltra, LSD and Sidney Gottlieb
• 0:08:13 – …The death of Frank Olson
• 0:11:44 – …The Church Committee and the surviving files
• 0:15:02 – …Telepathy between living people
• 0:16:59 – …Departed human spirits, and the older meaning of “demon”
• 0:21:09 – Souls in purgatory at the end of the world (Jocelyn)
• 0:21:47 – …1 Corinthians 15 and the twinkling of an eye
• 0:24:27 – …Aeviternity: time in the afterlife
• 0:25:26 – …Spe Salvi and praying for the dead
• 0:27:32 – This week on Mysterious World: crisis apparitions
• 0:31:11 – …Hans Berger and the first EEG
• 0:32:02 – Can you ask a ghost to reveal its identity? (Rez Kerry)
• 0:34:08 – …Testing the spirits in 1 John 4
• 0:37:09 – …Aquinas and his sister’s apparition
• 0:39:46 – …St. Martin of Tours and the false martyr
• 0:42:06 – Are there fallen guardian angels? (Severe Famine)
• 0:42:31 – …The common view: the angels fell before man
• 0:45:32 – …The staged-fall view: Genesis 6 and the Nephilim
• 0:46:56 – …Head coverings because of the angels
• 0:49:22 – …God will not leave you unguarded
• 0:50:32 – The Jimmy Akin Podcast: Ascension and Pentecost
• 0:51:50 – Thank you to Patrons
• 0:52:26 – Sponsor: The Grady Group
• 0:52:41 – Sponsor: In Time by Robert Young
• 0:53:53 – Answering the skeptics on near-death experiences (Rafael Figueredo)
• 0:57:17 – …Susan Blackmore and the tunnel
• 1:01:25 – …Veridical information: Maria and the tennis shoe
• 1:02:43 – …The surgeon who flapped his arms
• 1:05:40 – …Psychopomps and shared death experiences
• 1:08:36 – …Living agent psi
• 1:10:33 – Fr. Nathan Castle’s purgatory accounts (F Man)
• 1:15:46 – …Is the fire of purgatory literal?
• 1:20:29 – …Gregory the Great and the bath attendant
• 1:25:47 – Brain swaps and the soul (Roodo)
• 1:28:11 – …Is the brain a filter for consciousness?
• 1:30:26 – …Organ transplants and transferred preferences
• 1:32:02 – …Could a soul animate two bodies?
• 1:33:53 – Were lizards once dragons? (Caleb Henderson)
• 1:36:30 – …Wings are named nowhere in Genesis or Revelation
• 1:39:30 – …Sprawling legs and parasagittal posture
• 1:41:50 – …Birds are dinosaurs
• 1:42:23 – Mysterious Feedback: #425 Voice to Skull Technology
• 1:42:40 – …Hearing voices and schizophrenia
• 1:46:32 – …Analog phone bandwidth and subliminal messages
• 1:47:38 – …Bone conduction and Lucille Ball’s fillings
• 1:50:27 – …DARPA and reverse-engineered technology
• 1:51:32 – …How voices have been interpreted through history
• 1:53:37 – Your mysterious feedback
• 1:54:14 – Thank you to Oasis Studio 7
• 1:54:27 – Jimmy’s YouTube channel
• 1:55:11 – Share the show and write a review
• 1:55:21 – Get your Mysterious merch
• 1:55:29 – Show notes
• 1:55:36 – Become a Patron
• 1:55:45 – Sponsor: Gravetending Solutions
• 1:56:24 – Sponsor: Rosary Army and School of Mary
• 1:56:45 – Outro

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