What do you do when you're a demon possessing an innocent body, and want show off how powerful you are?
Simple, begin using supernatural powers!
Whether it's making your Host invulnerable, become invisible, obtain godly strength, or destroy everything they touch, you can always count on them to show how powerful and scary you are!
These are all cool tactics, but there's something different about levitation, that makes it so popular among possessive demons.
To characters witnessing a human being floating while babbling some weird ancient language with white eyes, it'd be clear that they've been taken over by some other being, and that said being is clearly not benevolent.
Expect the "Guest" (i.e. the thing/demon possessing the character) to be as dramatic and eerie as possible.
Many a time this will happen during an exorcism, with the priest and other attendees horrified, or by Fighting from the Inside: the Host is working very hard from within to get rid of the Guest, but the Guest is also working very hard to stay, and with both beings being so powerful, this creates some supernatural occurrences.
Perchance to the sadness of the Host, after the Guest has been banished they will lose this cool power...
Sub-trope to Power Floats and Powers via Possession. Usually overlaps with Demonic Possession. May overlap with Marionette Motion if the demon is being extra weird that day. Contrast Ghostly Glide, where levitation is similarly used to eerie effects, but where it is more low-key, and the character can usually float by themselves.
Examples:
- Evil Dead:
- The Evil Dead: Sheryl gets possessed by a Kandarian demon and floats as she threatens everyone in the cabin.
- Evil Dead 2: Ed gets possessed and floats in the cabin. He boasts about killing the humans and that the demons shall live again.
- Army of Darkness: Ash fights off a woman who got possessed by a demon in S-Mart. While he is shooting her, she floats in the air.
- Evil Dead Rise: In the beginning of the movie, a woman gets possessed by a demon and starts floating above a lake.
- The Exorcist: After being possessed by Pazuzu, the Mesopotamian demon, 12-year old Regan begins to float off her mattress during the exorcism conducted by Karras and Merrin. They successfully subdue her.
- Ghostbusters: During her possession by Zuul, Dana becomes very sexually aggressive and attempts to seduce Peter. After he rejects her advances she becomes angry and begins to levitate above her bed, and she even does a full mid-air rotation. Peter later sedates her.
- Over Her Dead Body: Invoked. When trying to scare Ashley off from dating her former fiancé Henry, Kate takes advantage of the fact that as a psychic Ashley is still able to perceive her despite being a ghost. Thus she poses as a client and pretends to be possessed to deliver a message warning Ashley of a horrible fate if she continues "falsely speaking for the dead", climaxing in her levitating into the air as the icing on the cake.
- Penny Dreadful: After a date night with Dorian Gray, Vanessa returns home possessed by a demon. Malcolm discovers her in the salon levitating and spinning in the air with her head turned upward.
- Sleepy Hollow: In "The Vessel" at the climax, after playing subtle throughout the episode, when Ancitif reveals himself as having possessed Captain Irving's daughter Macy, he causes her to levitate into the air whilst speaking in an unholy voice and then kills the kindly priest who tries to save her.
- Ghostbusters: The Video Game: The possessor ghosts take over the guests' bodies during a gala in the New York Museum of History and float around the room along with the possessed Walter Peck.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: Malladus has Zelda float while possessing her body.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Zelda's body floats while she's possessed by Ganondorf.
- Pink Panther: Hokus Pokus Pink: Violet floats when possessed by Echidna.
- Pokémon Sword and Shield: When Calyrex uses its psychic powers to take control of Peony in order to speak to the protagonist, his body floats the whole time. Unlike a lot of examples of the trope, however, Calyrex is a benevolent rather than malevolent being.
- There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension: Mr. Willhelm floats because of Mr. Glitch being stuck to him.
- Eddsworld: In "Hammer and Fail 2", the boys find a demonic entity inside Matt's room. The entity then takes control of Matt, making him levitate above their house.
- Spooky Month: After possessing Dexter, the demon Moloch floats off the ground in Dexter's body as he chases Lila.
- Courage the Cowardly Dog: In "The Demon in the Mattress", after Muriel got possessed by a demon living in her new bed mattress by going up her nose, her body floats as she's sleeping.
- Gravity Falls: In "The Inconveniencing", Mabel floats off the ground when the convenience store ghosts possess her. Played for Laughs when, after Dipper confesses he isn't a teenager (teens are the ghosts' Berserk Button), the ghosts of the sweet-looking elderly couple appear, holding Mabel up by her hair before dropping her into a pile of snacks.
- Scared Shrekless: During the segment parodying The Exorcist, Pinocchio (in the role of the possessed) levitates thanks to his marionette strings. Shrek solves this by just cutting the strings.
- Steven Universe: In "Legs From Here to Homeworld", White Diamond's Pearl glides about everywhere on the tips of her toes. In fact, the only part of her body that moves individually is her mouth. The whole effect makes her rather eerie. It eventually turns out that she used to move more normally before White Diamond turned her into a Meat Puppet.
