Tony Robinson's Superstitions

Evil Spirits (1x4)

Ausstrahlung: Dez 17, 2011

Imagine a world full of demons who could enter your body and take control of it. A world populated by invisible spirits that would steal humans - and especially babies, leaving 'changelings' in their place. A world where inappropriate behaviour or mental illness was taken as evidence of possession by a devil, and a sign that your soul was damned to hell. For thousands of years this was the world our ancestors believed they lived in, and it was utterly terrifying. But why did they believe this? What did they think spirits were? And what did they do to try and defend themselves against them? With the aid of dramatic reconstructions Tony tries to answer these questions. He travels from Roman Britain to 19th-century Ireland; on the way he reveals the story of a woman who became possessed when she was enveloped in a white cloud, he learns how to perform an exorcism, summons up demons using mediaeval black magic, and reveals the horrifying story of a 19th-century woman who was killed by her husband because he thought she'd been replaced by a fairy.