In 1877, in the quiet town of Watseka, Illinois, a teenage girl with the wonderfully witchy name Lurancy Vennum became the center of international fascination when she became possessed by the spirit of another girl who had died in an insane asylum twelve years earlier. Dubbed the “Watseka Wonder,” her case mesmerized the public and drew intense scrutiny from doctors, philosophers, clergymen, journalists, psychical researchers, and the merely curious. Fierce debate raged over the true nature of her possession: Was she an unwitting medium channeling the dead? A cunning fraud orchestrating an elaborate hoax? A sufferer of hysteria? A victim of demonic forces? Or, as the Dalai Lama of the day speculated, a highly unorthodox case of reincarnation? This illustrated talk will delve into a once-famous but now largely forgotten supernatural mystery.