Dybbuk

A dybbuk (meaning 'adhere' or 'cling') is a malicious possessing spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person. It supposedly leaves the host body once it has accomplished its goal, sometimes after being exorcised.

The dybbuk, because of former sins, wanders restlessly until it finds a haven in the body of a living person. Belief in such spirits was especially prevalent in 16th–17th-century eastern Europe. Often individuals suffering from nervous or mental disorders were taken to a miracle-working rabbi (baʿal shem), who alone, it was believed, could expel the harmful dybbuk through a religious rite of exorcism.