Editor’s Preface

This book was wildly popular when it was first published in 1921. It caught the attention of many and underwent translations into languages reaching double digits. The various revisions over the next decades consisted mostly of including additional data and factoids and similar cases to the ones presented here.

Of the six published editions, I opted for the 3rd since, after that, it starts to get repetitive, not adding anything new or more illustrative for our purposes.

As we shall soon discuss, there are three primary signs of demonic possession that the Church uses to establish the veracity of a case of possession. What’s unique in the cases presented here is that all three signs are almost continuously manifest. This is a rarity and explains why the cases treated here gained such notoriety.

In 1921, when the subject of demonic possession was relegated almost solely to treatment in theological manuals and the appendices of books on spiritual theology for seminary formation, this book was received as a shocker. A present-day reading reveals a deficit, however.

After going over it several times to determine if it might be a candidate for a Padre Pio Press translation and publication, it became clear that, in its original form and as a simple translation from German to English, it simply wasn’t satisfactory.

The well-intentioned author’s goal was to awaken people to the reality of demonic possession — something he excelled at. Yet, with the recent glut of videos and books on the subject, and the new phenomenon of “celebrity exorcists” giving public conferences and interviews — for better or for worse — it’s clear that much of the original book’s contents had already entered into common parlance.

Further, only discussing the externals of the phenomenon, as Father Sutter does, runs the risk of simply fomenting morbid curiosity or turning the tragic story of the people involved into a circus sideshow. What was lacking in the original was a theological underpinning and an explanation of much that took place.

To ameliorate this, I have sought to include a running commentary in the footnotes along the way to supply such explanations, as well as a simple but systematic theological introduction to the entire phenomenon, so that the reader might approach the book better equipped.

That book is now here: