Bull, Titus

Titus Bull (1871–1946) was an American physician and neurologist who believed spirit obsession and Possession were at the root of many illnesses, and treated his patients accordingly.

Bull practiced neurology, psychiatry and general medicine during a time when little attention was paid to the workings of the mind, or how the mind influenced health. At some point shortly after the turn of the 20th century, he became acquainted with the obsession research of James H. Hyslop; Hyslop consulted with him on the THOMPSON-GIFFORD CASE.

Like his predecessor Carl Wickland, Bull believed that the possessing spirits were not necessarily evil but merely confused. With help from either the doctor or other spirits, the entities could pass on to their proper plane, leaving the victim in peace and finding happiness themselves.

Based on his experiences, Bull concluded that spirits enter the victim through the base of the brain, the solar plexus or the reproductive organs. He also postulated that pains suffered by the living may be pains produced by the obsessing head spirit, especially if that spirit suffered in life.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Bull, working in New York City, treated many of his patients with spiritualist therapy. With the assistance of a medium, Carolyn C. Duke (her real identity remains a mystery), Bull claimed to treat and sometimes cure schizophrenics, manic-depressives and alcoholics. However, he failed to explain his criteria for evaluating cures; consequently, his work is ignored by both medical and psychical research establishments.

In 1932, Bull published a booklet, Analysis of Unusual Experiences in Healing Relative to Diseased Minds and Results of Materialism Foreshadowed. In it he developed Hyslop’s theory that spirit obsession rarely causes pathology, but is a complicating factor in it. Trauma, he said, could attract spirits to a person. Also, some illnesses might involve a host of spirits attached to a person. Bull suffered a stroke in 1942 and was paralyzed and speechless for the rest of his life. He died in 1946.

See Spirit Releasement.

FURTHER READING:

• Ebon, Martin. The Devil’s Bride, Exorcism: Past and Present. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.
• Rogo, D. Scott. The Infi nite Boundary. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1987.

The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits– Written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley – September 1, 2007