Indications of Laura Palmer's Partial Possession Throughout The Series, Diary and Film

Warning: This post contains descriptions of abuse and graphic imagery. 

One of the most noted scenes in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me occurs when Laura is momentarily overcome by a darkness that changes her features. The darkness seems to come from within Laura. The script explicitly states that she "allows the feeling of BOB to come over her," indicating that she is aware of his presence or influence within her but retains enough autonomy to control it. She, in my opinion, the same as conjures him from within to prove his existence.

From the script,

She allows the feeling of Bob to come over her and she begins to scream.  Harold steps back, but Laura grabs him.  To his face with a horrifying expression on hers.

                   LAURA
            FIRE WALK WITH ME.

In the script for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Laura hears BOB speak to her on more than one occasion. It seems as though his words are heard by Laura alone. In the film, we hear such a moment when BOB speaks to Laura under the ceiling fan, telling her he wants to taste through her mouth.

In the David Lynch-directed flashback to Laura's murder in season two (#2.001, May The Giant Be With You), Laura always seemed unlike herself in my opinion in that she was possibly possessed. This almost seems to be an idea Lynch returned to in Fire Walk With Me, if the few frames we see of Laura on her stomach in the train car are meant to match with an earlier promotional photo.

Laura in FWWM.

Laura in an image that ran in Fangoria magazine with an article on Fire Walk With Me prior to the film's release.

If the second picture is from Fire Walk With Me, it would have to be from a different filming date. Sheryl/Laura's hair is not the same as in the film. The floorboards of the train car floor are placed vertically in the scene from the film. In the television series, the boards are horizontal. Also, in the promotional picture, there is a spot of blood on one of Laura's teeth that seems to match her appearance in the season two premiere. In the film, Laura has blood on her teeth as well, though the placement is different. The bangs of her hair seem to be the same in the screencapture below and the promotional photo from the original series. Her hair also appears to be wet in both pictures, unlike her hair in the still from Fire Walk With Me. 

Fire Walk With Me. Laura's hair is dry, her bangs thicker. 

The series and a promotional photo. Her hair is wet, her bangs cling to her forehead.

Laura bears a striking resemblance to BOB when her image is compared to his in stills from episode eight (2.001, May The Giant Be With You.)



The murder scene in the script for Fire Walk With Me seems to follow the canon of the series in that Laura wanted to die. She saw her death as freedom from BOB, the only means of escape. In the script, after she witnesses BOB's reflection in the mirror instead of her own - her apparent initial possession - Laura asks her father to kill her.

There are indications of possession throughout Jennifer Lynch's The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. BOB, more than once, takes control of Laura while she's writing, using her hand to write his words. Sheryl Lee gives a superlative performance of this transition in the audiobook.

In the diary, BOB's words are always written in capitals. An example from The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer,

Why do other girls get to have happy lives? Why can't I just tell him the truth?

YOU DON'T KNOW THE TRUTH.

You're here.

SMART GIRL.

What do you want?

JUST CHECKING IN.

Fine. I'm here. You checked in. Now go.

I SAW YOUR LIGHT ON SIX NIGHTS IN A ROW.

So did anyone who walked down the street.

LAURA PALMER . . . BE NICE.

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer contains repeated indications of possession. Laura also describes memories that sound reminiscent of one fading in and out of consciousness. There are too many moments to include in full here. A few instances:

Inside me there is something
No one knows about
Like a secret
Sometimes it takes over
And I drift back
Deep into darkness
p. 20

Sometimes I think there is someone inside me, but it is another stranger part of me. Sometimes I see her in the mirror.
p. 23

He squeezed my neck hard until I stopped crying. He would let go just before I would faint . . . I think I was fainting . . .  sometimes that still happens. Everything goes tingly and dark, and my head spins inside and I can't see anything, and I have to stop crying or he'll keep squeezing.
p. 57

Was BOB here? Was BOB inside?
p. 84

"The part of me with the ability to decide for myself whether something is right or wrong has been taken away. A decision lasts only a moment for me before I doubt it and curse myself for ever thinking I was capable of choosing right over wrong. . . . I should have learned ages ago how to remember you. Perhaps I could have saved myself some very sad moments . . . very bad dreams, and several hundred desperate attempts at regaining my better self. The one who welcomed you in. The one to whom you owe an entire lifetime." p. 90

(of Bob writing through her) "I'm tired of accepting you all the time" BOB replies with, "IT ISN'T UP TO YOU, LAURA PALMER." p. 106

Laura writes, "Get the f'*ck out of my head!
I LIKE IT HERE. MIGHT STAY AWHILE."

And, How wonderful of you to drop into my head, the door is always open, you know.
p. 127

Laura uses an analogy of a door to describe the ease with which BOB can enter her mind. There is only a door between him and her inner workings. This the same analogy used for entrance to the mind in The Autobiography of F.B.I. Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes. A man whose description fits BOB knocks at a door in young Cooper's dream. When Cooper tells his mother of this, she tells him she has had the same dream, and he must never let the man in.

Finally, in her last entry, Laura writes of BOB, "I never meant to see him or let him in." Her words sound very much like Leland Palmer's recount of BOB's initial possession, "He opened me, and I invited him, and he came inside me."

The script for episode 18 (2.011, Masked Ball), contains dialogue deleted from the televised episode. In the dialogue, Dale speaks to Diane of current events. He, in passing, mentions "the darkness Laura Palmer submitted to." The use of  'submit' in this context makes one think he may mean the same as surrender.

O

The cause of Laura's death given by Doc Hayward in episode one (1.001, Traces to Nowhere) states that Laura passed away due to loss of blood from numerous shallow wounds. This seems to tie with BOB's practice of bloodletting, as mentioned in The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. A few examples below:

In a forest of trees again and again, I have been brought down. Surgery of a strange and indescribable nature takes place. Blood is let. I am so numb that it actually occurred to me the other day that I wished he would come and cut me the way he used to. Take some of this constant thinking again and again away, by simply bleeding it out of me.
P. 70

If this doesn't make the nightmares and the fire and the ropes and the little silver blades go away.
P. 50

Sometimes I would come home bleeding. I would bleed and I couldn't tell anyone, so I would sit up all night in my bathroom, all alone, and wait for it to stop coming out. Sometimes he would cut me between my legs, and other times he would cut me inside my mouth. Always tiny little cuts, hundreds of tiny little cuts.
P. 57- 58 

Does he expect to sit down and chat before taking the house's only child from her room and using her like an experiment?
P. 72

The part of me that has rehearsed its cries for more and more incisions ... I remember! I know you cut me when I was very young, several times, and you told me that I was in big trouble because I had bled. You told me good children don't bleed down their legs. You told me I was not a child of God!
P. 73

If you look closely at the image of BOB in the train car with Laura's body, as seen in Ronette's memories, you will see what appear to be surgical and/or dental tools beside BOB. Viewing the scene on a Blu-Ray on a 4K television, you can discern what appears to be a cloth beneath the tools, possibly a tool roll.

If the series may have included BOB's 'surgeries' as described in the diary, couldn't other more controversial notions, such as Laura's partial possession, be incorporated as well?

Close shot of what appear to be surgical tools.

The script for episode 14 (2.007, Lonely Souls), contains a deleted scene where a portion of Laura's diary is read aloud by Sheriff Truman.

TRUMAN
(reading the diary)
Oh my Lord ... oh my Lord ...

COOPER
Harry?

TRUMAN
(reads)
"... he can come into my mind, a man who can slip
in and out of you like a wind that goes unnoticed ... it
just struck me that his name is a warning in itself; B-O-B: Beware of Bob."

COOPER
(rising, galvanized)
Hawk, bring the cruiser around, Harry, bring the diary,
I'll get Gerard, we're taking him to the Great Northern Hotel.

This, oddly enough, is a combination of two entries from Jennifer Lynch's novel.

From an entry dated October 1st, 1986

P.S. It just struck me that BOB's name is a warning in itself . . .
 B. BEWARE
 0. OF
 B. BOB

And in an entry dated, April 2nd, 1987,

I wish BOB would trade. If he does I'll try and find the person and tell them to beware OF THE MAN WHO CAN SLIP MAYBE IN AND OUT OF YOU LIKE A WIND THAT GOES UNNOTICED...

The Fire Walk With Me American Press kit states,

"Determined that she will no longer be the conduit for the evil that has invaded her heart, Laura takes the only escape available to her. As the story closes, it becomes clear that the voracious dark force has not yet finished with the town of Twin Peaks - and that Laura's struggle will continue from another place."

This description could be interpreted as death being her only escape from possession. The way it is phrased, "Determined that she will no longer be the conduit for the evil that has invaded her heart" almost makes it sound as though this invasion is established. Sheryl Lee has said Laura is known to have had one foot on the side that is known as good and another on the side of what is considered bad or evil.

In the script for episode sixteen, Donna reads from a page torn from Laura's diary. It says the following,

DONNA
February 22nd. Tonight is the night that I die.
(quiet gasp, a look at Cooper)
I know I have to because it is the only way to keep Bob
away from me. The only way to tear him out from
inside. I know he wants me. I can feel his fire. But if I
die he can't hurt me anymore.

If Laura was not entirely possessed, it seems as though BOB had the ability to occasionally open the door to her mind and enter. Please know that in writing this I am not attempting to tarnish Laura's name. I hold her in high regard. The matter of her possibly containing elements of BOB is a subject not often addressed. She is always thought of as a person who evaded his possession. It should be acknowledged as another horror she should never have had to endure.