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Alice Auma was born in 1956. After two marriages in which she proved infertile , she moved away from her hometown. She eventually converted to Catholicism and on 25 May 1985 was purportedly possessed by a Christian spirit , Lakwena, and went ‘insane’, unable to either hear or speak. Her father took her to eleven different witches but none could help. According to the story, finally Lakwena guided her to Paraa National Park where she disappeared for 40 days and returned a spirit-medium

Prior to the defeat of Tito Okello, Alice Auma was one of many spirit-mediums working near the town of Gulu as an minor oracle and spiritual healer. In the midst of the chaos of the anti-NRA insurgency of the Uganda People's Democratic Army and the increasinglly brutal counterinsurgency of the National Resistance Army, it is claimed that on 6 August 1986 Lakwena ordered Alice to stop her work as a diviner and healer, which was pointless in the midst of war, and create a Holy Spirit Movement (HSM) to fight Evil and end the bloodshed. Through this divine mission that coincidentally required the retaking of the capital of Kampala, the Acholi would redeem themselves from the violence they had collectively done to the civilians of the Luwero Triangle and initiate a paradise on earth. An explanation was given in a letter given to local missionaries:

The good Lord who had sent the Lakwena decided to change his work from that of a doctor to that of a military commander for one simple reason: it is useless to cure a man today only that he be killed the next. So it became an obligation on his part to stop the bloodshed before continuing his work as a doctor.

This came in the midst of a profound spiritual crisis matched only by the threat posed by the occupying southern forces. The increased level of societal tension and number of deaths was attributed to witchcraft. Simultaneously, the soldiers fleeing back into Acholi from the defeat at Kampala often refused purification ceremonies to protect the community from the vengeful spirits of the people they had killed, and the elders found that they no longer had the authority to force compliance. These new evil spirits could then be used for even more witchcraft, creating the sense of a religious crisis spiraling out of control.

The insurgency led by Lakwena required that Alice be possessed by numerous other spirits to achieve its aims, which was unusual in the context of Acholi spirit-behavior. After a series of spectacular victories, Alice led the Holy Spirit Movement south out of Acholiland towards Kampala, where she garnered much support from other ethnic groups that had grievances with the Museveni government. However, the military setbacks inevitably suffered by the HSM prompted some followers to accuse Alice of being an witch using spirits for destructive ends. As the HSM suffered its final defeat under withering artillery fire in the forests near Kampala, Lakwena left Alice and she fled. She currently lives in a refugeeUnder international law, a refugee is a person who is outside his/her country of nationality or habitual residence; has a well-founded fear of persecution because of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political camp in eastern KenyaKenya (pronounced KEN-ya; the pronunciation KEEN-ya is archaic) is a country of eastern Africa, bordering Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and the Indian Ocean. Nairobi is its capital and largest city. Republic of Kenya ( In Detail) (Full size), abandoned by the spirits.