Following the meeting in Hillerslev, Bircherod asked the authorities for help, which was soon granted when by royal decree he was made the head of a commission tasked with determining the truth in the Thisted case. The women, and later also Ole Bjørn, were brought to Aalborg for examination and questioning. However, even though the authorities were now clearly sceptical, several women continued to display symptoms of demonic possession that mirrored those in Køge Huskors, as several witnesses testified. The symptoms were most vividly described by Lorends Mein, who was tasked with transporting Maren Spillemands from Thisted to Aalborg and observed one of her fits:
[She] barked like a dog, crowed like a rooster, and her breast and stomach were distended, as though she were pregnant with twins. […] She was attacked so badly that two men could not hold her down, and she soared two feet above the ground.
1 My translation. The original reads: ‘[Hun] gøede som en hund, galede som en hane, og brystet tillige med maven blev opblæst, som hun kunde lavet fremmelig til barsel, så fuldkommelig som vi vel har set mange dannekvinder har gået med tvende børn […] blev hun angreben, så at tvende karle måtte holde hende, og gik op fra jorden over alenhøj […]’: (National Archives, Copenhagen, Bilag til jysk missive af 7. november 1696 ang. Kommissionen i den thistedske besættelsessag, pp. 545–7).This description is so similar to the description found in
Køge Huskors discussed above that it almost seems a direct reference to the book.
2 Compare with J. Brunsmand, Et forfærdeligt Huus-Kaars (1674), pp. 44–5. After multiple interrogations several women, including Maren Spillemands, admitted to faking their fits and having been coached to do so by Ole Bjørn and his assistants. Maren later retracted her confession, stating that it was made under duress. On 14 May 1697, after a long investigation and trial during which many witnesses were interrogated, the commissioners ruled that Ole Bjørn and most of the women were frauds, and they received severe sentences, including death for some.
3 National Archives, Copenhagen, Bilag til jysk missive af 7. november 1696 ang. Kommissionen i den thistedske besættelsessag, pp. 1266–83. However, the case did not end there.
Ole Bjørn appealed to the Supreme Court in Copenhagen, where the case was retried. The women were brought to the capital, where they were imprisoned under harsh conditions. The final verdict was returned on 26 February 1698, and although it was generally the same as the earlier one, Ole Bjørn, not the women, was judged to be the primary offender. He was sentenced to imprisonment for life, but this was later reduced to exile from Denmark. The women received various sentences, as some had admitted to fraud or were perceived to be ill, whereas the more stubborn of them, including Maren Spillemands, were sentenced to forced labour.
4 National Archives, Copenhagen, Appendix til høyesterets Protocoll af anno 1697, fols 245–249v; Bæksted, Besættelsen i Tisted, 1960, 2, pp. 353–6. The fifteen judges of the Supreme Court all gave detailed written opinions on the case as they saw it. Five of the judges viewed the possession as purely fraudulent, seven saw it as a combination of fraud and mental illness (mainly hysteria), three found it to be solely the result of illness, not fraud, and two of those did not rule out the possibility that the Devil was somehow involved.
5 National Archives, Copenhagen, Appendix til høyesterets Protocoll af anno 1697, fols 2–245. While the judges rejected demonic possession as an explanation, their scepticism was specific to this case and was not a complete rejection of the possibility of demonic possession.