The Possession Files: True accounts of possession in Scotland

In this feature length episode, we look at real historical cases from Scotland where possession was recorded - not the Hollywood kind, but the kind found in parish records, court transcripts, and old ministerial accounts. Some of these cases are deeply unsettling: people who claimed to see spirits, to be tormented in their sleep, to speak with voices not their own. Others sit somewhere between faith, fear, and mental collapse. Through a modern lens, they might be seen as illness or trauma - but at the time, they were believed to be evidence of possession. These are not Hollywood exorcisms or invented horrors. They’re stranger than that - real moments from Scottish history where belief in the unseen was part of everyday life, and where the line between the spiritual and the psychological was far less clear. Join me as we revisit these forgotten records, from the Canongate Tolbooth to Bargarran, and ask what these cases might still tell us about how people experience fear, faith, and the unknown.