POSSESSION

Continuing with the recent theme of multiple souls, there is another possible theory on the island survivors. Instead of dying in the plane crash, they survived but in a weakened state. In such a physical state that the whispers (the ghosts of dead souls who can't leave the island) attempt to enter their bodies in order to get off the island.

This is exactly what MIB/Smokey told the survivors when he was in the form of Flocke.

And it makes some deal of sense. If the island has a strange electromagnetic pull, and certain souls without redemption cannot navigate to the after life, the whispers would then have to find a way out. We know they have an intelligent core as whisper Michael had a conversation with Hurley.

Now, some may counter and say that the whispers were merely mental illusions or delusions, since Alpert's dead wife appeared to him even though she never died on the island.

The idea of Miles and Hurley being able to talk to the dead has two possible reasons. First, they are truly special people, mediums, to the other side. Second, they could have been contacted by the whisper souls directly in order to influence or change their actions so as to help those immortal souls  trapped on the island to escape. Perhaps in a roundabout way, this is the real conclusion to the LOST story as Hurley becomes the island guardian and "shuts it down" which probably would include releasing the souls to their own sideways reality.

So if dead souls could possess living beings, how did they get the survivors to do their bidding? There was a chain of influence spread down from Jacob to Alpert to Ben to Jack to the beach camp.

The problem is what is Jacob. Is he a god, an intelligent being with supernatural powers? Or is he a possessed soul who is granted immortality for so long as a whisper possesses his body? The only real supernatural force shown with any unusual power was the smoke monster, MIB. But he had the lone desire to leave the island, and during the course of the final episodes did everything in his power to recruit, destroy, scare and kidnap people in order for him to get his way. (Ironically, all of these missions and plans may have been a smoke screen; the smoke monster may never have wanted or could not leave the island.)

If the whispers are trapped on the island, was this a form of punishment? In Michael's case, it was since he killed two innocent people. In Alpert's case, he was tried and convicted of murder but sold in slavery instead of receiving his punishment. If so, then the island is a form of hell but no in the conventional fire and brimstone setting.

If the islanders were possessed by whispers, what happens if they are lucky enough to leave? For example, since Jack and Kate saw ghosts form their past on the island, we can assume that window was created by the whispers as a means of controlling them. Once they left the island, the whispers were not able to release themselves into the real world. It made them very unhappy. It caused Jack down a spiral path of personal destruction - - - and an illogical quest to return to the island (so his whisper could go back to its "home.") Recall, Jack's return to the island makes no sense since he had no idea that any of his friends were still alive after the island vanished. It was not Jack that wanted to go back to the island, but the soul who possessed his body and mind.

One can weave a good ghost possession premise to LOST because it is as good as any other theory in trying to explain the illogical motivations of some of the characters and the strong, absurd connection people had with the island.

SOUL POSSESSION

In the new British series, Intruders, the premise is that after people die, their souls can live on . . . by possessing a live individual. It is an interesting concept of demonic possession from ancient times (which in many instances was misdiagnosis of actual medical conditions like seizure disorders).

LOST did feature elements of multiple souls. In ancient Egyptian death rituals, the person's soul is divided at death into the ka and ba which separately have to journey through the underworld to try to be reunited in the after life. If souls were released upon death, sci-fi allows for these intelligent vessels to inhabit other human beings.

In a bait-and-switch type theory, the 815 survivors could have been "possessed" by lost souls, the whispers, trapped on the island. In fact, the only reason the survivors "lived" after the crash was that they were re-possessed by island souls.

For example, what if Jack was near death in the bamboo grove when dead Horace, the former leader of the Dharma group, possesses his body? There were many of the Dharma group that was purged by Ben's Others. And when the Others member died, they destroyed the body which may be so that that body could not be repossessed by an island soul.

If there were possession by island souls, that could explain why Jack immediately took to pushing back against Ben and the Others because deep inside he knew of their threat and danger because Horace's soul was influencing his decision making process. When they talked about "a war" on the island, it may be a never ending saga of souls reanimating their revenge with new visitors time after time for eternity (much like the reality of the Middle East conflicts).

The island souls could become the dominate personality in a person's body; repressing the person's actual soul until its "second death." The real soul may be in a sort of suspended animation, a dream state of confusion, during the island time line. Perhaps the suspended animation of souls is a better explanation of the sideways limbo state.