Throughout time, numerous people have declared that they had witnessed strange and inexplicable occurrences involving the ghosts of the deceased, fantastic creatures, demons, and other similar things. Many have claimed to have been haunted or possessed by entities from the world beyond. However, not just people are confronted with the supernatural. Animals can also be haunted or, in turn, they can haunt and even possess.
Hyenas Causing Possession
Some African tribes viewed the animal state as the pure state, unmodified by the rules and constraints imposed by the human society. Thus, they tried to achieve and experience this state by various rituals meant to transfer an animal spirit into a human body for a short period of time. In this way, the animal spirit would possess the person who would begin to act according to animal impulses.
The most common cases of possession caused by animals were said to be those in which a man was possessed by the spirit of one or more hyenas. The human would begin to walk on all fours, roll on the floor, bite, eat raw meat and even make those guttural sounds that characterize the hyena’s laughter.
Hyenas and a man. (CC BY-ND 2.0)