Dibbuk!

Jeez. How can I out myself when there's so much juicy news to make fun of. YWN reports that an avreich has been infected by a dybuk in Brazil. They tried to do an exorcism via Skype but it didn't work. As Rav Chaim Kanievsky explained, the infected person must be there in person. As a commenter there explained, Skype doesn't remove dibukim, for that you need McAfee.

As has been noted many times, once people believe in a magical, fantastical world, then anything is possible. Dybukim, talking fish, magic, visitations from angels, reiki, keys in challos - it all works - as long as some Godol says it does.

What's interesting though is that the Rationalist RWMO scoff at such things, yet they inhabit a pretty magical world too (at least in the past) - where gods write books, fantastical miracles happened, and ancient middle eastern leaders were actually prophets, receiving the word of god.

I guess the RWMO perspective is this - it's ok and perfectly normal to believe that the world was once "magical", but of course nowadays the world is very rational. When did things change? Well, obviously some time after Chazal but before the Rambam.

I suppose you could call it a type of "Nishtaneh Hatevah".