Poltergeist: A Classic Study in Destructive Haunting (7 page)

Similarly, Felicia Parise found that she was at first totally unable to cause “PK effects,” no matter how hard she tried.
But one day, when she had received an emotional shock—the news that her grandmother was dying—she reached out for a small plastic bottle and it moved away from her hand.
From then on, she had the “trick” of causing PK.

All this underlines something that should be quite clear in any case: that in a sense, we are
all
“split-brain patients.” The logical self interferes with the natural operations of the right brain.
This is why the artist has to wait for “inspiration”—for the left brain to relax and allow the right to take over.
Mozart was an example of an artist who was born with an unusual harmony between the two halves of his brain, and he commented once that tunes were always “walking into his head”—meaning into his left brain.
In most of us, a certain self-mistrust, a tendency to ask questions, sits like a bad-tempered door-keeper between the two halves of the brain.
When we become subject to increasing tension and worry, this has the effect of increasing the door-keeper’s mistrustfulness.
He thinks he is performing a useful service in keeping out the impulses from the “other half.” In fact, he is simply isolating the left-brain self and making it more tense and miserable.
Nervous breakdown is due to the increasingly desperate attempts of this door-keeper to cope with problems in what he considers to be the right way, and which is, in fact, the worst possible way.

What Lois Bourne has said about suspending the rational intellect seems to apply to most forms of “extra-sensory perception” and paranormal abilities.
Most people have had the experience of reaching out to pick up the telephone and
knowing
who is on the other end.
Everyone has had the experience of thinking about someone they haven’t heard from in years, and receiving a letter from them the same day.
“Extra-sensory perception” (ESP) seems to operate when we are relaxed, and thinking about something else.

All this, then,
seems
to offer a basis for an explanation of the poltergeist.
It is true that human powers of psychokinesis seem rather feeble—it would be far more convincing if we could point to some medium or psychic who could cause objects to fly around the room at will.
But then, perhaps the explanation is that the “door-keeper” inhibits the natural powers of the right brain.
Even good “mediums” cannot put themselves into a “sensitive” state at will; some of them need to go into a trance; others need to be in the right frame of mind.
Trance mediums who try to “work normally” (i.e., when wide awake) often find it exhausting and frustrating, because the “censor” keeps getting in the way.
So if the poltergeist
is
some peculiar power or force residing in the right brain, perhaps this explains why it cannot be called upon at will, even by gifted psychics such as Uri Geller.

Dowsing also provides us with a possible explanation of the origin of that force.
In some dowsers, the presence of underground water produces such a powerful effect that they go into violent convulsions.
One of the most famous of French dowsers, Barthelemy Bléton, discovered his powers accidentally at the age of seven; he was taking his father’s meal out to the fields when he sat down on a certain spot, and felt sick and faint.
Digging at this spot revealed a powerful underground stream.
Again, an old lady who is a member of the British Society of Dowsers described at a conference a few years ago how she could pick up a large branch from the ground, and it would swing around in her hand like a pointer until it indicated water.

If the dowsing rod is responding to some magnetic force, either in water or standing stones, it seems possible that this same force, channeled through the right brain, could provide the energy for poltergeist effects.

It looks, then, as if the modern psychical investigator is in a far better position than his predecessor of a century ago when it comes to constructing theories about the paranormal.
The recognition of the “two people” inside our heads may be the most important step ever taken in this direction.

Having said this, it is necessary to admit that most of the mystery remains unexplained.
Lodge’s “psychometric hypothesis” and Lethbridge’s theory of “ghouls” may provide an explanation for the majority of ghosts—but what about all those cases in which the witnesses insist that the ghost behaved as if it saw them?
Again, it would certainly be convenient if we could explain the poltergeist in terms of “unconscious psychokinesis.” But why has no psychic been able to duplicate poltergeist effects?
It is not really an answer to say that they have not learned to switch the power on and off.
Many psychics can switch other powers on and off—
telepathy, psychokinesis, second sight.
So why not poltergeist effects?

These awkward questions remind us that there are others we have failed to answer.
In the case of Lombroso’s bottle-smashing poltergeist in the Via Bava, why did it stop smashing bottles when the wife went away for the first time?
If Lombroso is correct, and the poltergeist was a “spirit” that drew its energy from people, then we have our explanation.
The spirit needed energy from both the wife and the young waiter to smash bottles and crockery.
When the wife went away for the first time, it lost half its energy supply and decided to take a rest.
But the second time she went away, she cursed it, and it made a special effort to be disagreeable.
In order to do this, it had to make use of the “vestigial energy” she had left on dishes and other objects she had touched.
When the young waiter was eventually dismissed, the wife alone could not provide sufficient energy for its needs and it went elsewhere .
.
.

Modern psychical research has a way of ignoring such questions.
It prefers straightforward distinctions.
If there is a “medium” present (or, as we now say, a “focus”), then it is a poltergeist; if not, then it is a ghost.

But even this pleasantly simple distinction proves to be less useful than it looks.
The “spirits” themselves seem to dislike being type-cast, and often decline to stick to their proper role.
A case that starts as an ordinary haunting may develop into a poltergeist haunting, and vice versa.
And then, just to confuse the issue, the spirits occasionally identify themselves as devils and demons, and manifest themselves in the highly disturbing form known as “possession.” This subject is so complex that it deserves a chapter to itself.

two

Possession is Nine Points of the Law

Paris has always led the rest of the world in new fads and crazes—from the can-can in the 1830s, to existentialism in the 1940s.
In 1850, the newest and most exciting craze was “table turning.” The rules were simple.
A group of people sat around a table, resting their fingertips lightly on the surface, their fingers spread wide so that everyone’s hands touched those of the neighbor on either side.
When conditions were favorable, the table would begin to vibrate, then to move of its own accord.
It might twist around at an angle of ninety degrees, or rise up into the air, or simply balance on two legs.

This entertainment had, of course, originated in America, the home of modern “Spiritualism.” In March 1848 the Fox family, who lived in a farmhouse in the village of Hydesville, New York, were kept awake at night by loud rapping noises, which defied all attempts to track them down.
One of the two younger Fox sisters—Margaret was fifteen and Kate twelve—started snapping her fingers, and the raps imitated the sounds she made.
A neighbor who came in to hear the raps tried asking questions, with one rap for “yes” and two for “no.” The obliging spirit was able to give the age of various people who were present and to answer various other
numerical questions.

At this point, the neighbor had the idea of devising an alphabetical code, and asking the spirit to answer questions about itself.
It identified itself as a peddler named Charles B.
Rosma, who had died in the house five years earlier.
Asked for details, it said that it had been murdered in the east bedroom by having its throat cut, and had subsequently been buried in the cellar.
Police investigation failed to locate a missing peddler named Rosma, and the murder inquiry was not pursued.
[1]
Soon afterward, the poltergeist rappings turned into a normal “haunting,” with sounds of a death struggle, horrible gurglings (presumably as the man’s throat was cut) and the sounds of a body being dragged across the floor.
(Mr.
Fox’s hair turned white as a result.)

Meanwhile, the rapping noises followed the girls around from house to house.
Various committees were set up to try and detect the girls in trickery—entirely without success.
When Kate and Margaret separated to avoid the furor, the rappings broke out in both houses they stayed in.
A man named Calvin Brown, who lived in the same house as the eldest Fox sister, Leah, seemed to arouse the spirit’s dislike because of his hostile attitude, and it began to persecute him.
Various objects were thrown at him—but without ever causing injury.
Then the “spirit”’ began snatching off Mrs.
Fox’s cap, pulling the comb out of her hair, as well as jabbing pins into members of the family when they knelt down to pray.
The rappings turned into deafening bangs like a cannon, which could be heard a mile away.

The household was in despair until someone decided to try and communicate with the spirit by using the alphabetical code.
The result was a message beginning: “Dear friends, you must proclaim this truth to the world.
This is the dawning of a new era .
.
.” It proved to be correct.
The first “spiritualist” meeting took place on November 14, 1849, and within months this new “religion” had spread across America, then across the sea to Europe.

All three sisters—including Leah—developed into “mediums,” and gave séances.
The simplest method of holding a séance is for everyone to sit around the tables and call upon the spirits.
And at a very early stage, the spirits began indicating their presence by causing the table to vibrate, or even making it give raps by raising one leg in the air and banging it on the floor.
It seemed astonishingly easy to make a table move (as, indeed, it still is).
It was discovered that the best method was to take a fairly light table—a card table for preference—and place it on a smooth polished floor.
The “sisters” then had to join their fingers in a “chain” and concentrate.
And usually, within minutes, the table was sliding around the room, sometimes even rising into the air, in spite of all efforts to hold it down.

The Parisians were thrilled with this new game; there had been nothing like it since the days when Mesmer had “magnetized” groups of half-naked men and women and sent them into ecstatic convulsions.
What astonished everyone was how easy it was to get results.
If the phenomena were really due to spirits, then they seemed to be permanently on duty.

One of Paris’ best-known intellectuals at this time was an educationalist called Leon Dénizarth-Hippolyte Rivail.
Rivail was to Paris what John Ruskin and Herbert Spencer would become to London: a kind of universal educator, willing to dispense knowledge on any and every topic.
His public lectures on such subjects as chemistry and astronomy were attended by huge audiences.

Rivail was one of the few people who still believed in the discoveries of Mesmer, that remarkable physician who had been driven out of Paris seventy years earlier by the hostility of the medical profession.
Mesmer believed that illnesses can be cured by magnets, and one of his disciples made the discovery with which Mesmer’s name is often identified—hypnotism.
But when the doctors succeeded in driving Mesmer out of France, they also succeeded in convincing most people that hypnotism was a fraud.
Rivail was sufficiently independent to test it for himself, and discovered that it worked.
He also discovered that, contrary to what the doctors insisted, magnets
could
produce remarkable effects on sick people, as could various metals such as gold and copper.
(This interesting notion still awaits rediscovery by the medical profession.) So Rivail was prepared to be open-minded on the subject of table-turning.
He did not permit himself to be prejudiced by the fact that every empty-headed
society woman in Paris was organizing séances, and that even the much despised emperor Napoleon the Third (whom Victor Hugo denounced as Napoleon the Little) held sessions at Versailles.
He looked into the matter with his usual intense curiosity and scientific detachment.

Now it so happened that a friend of Rivail’s named Becquet had two daughters who had begun to experiment with the new craze, and had discovered that they seemed to be excellent “mediums.” It seemed to Rivail that this was not an opportunity to be missed.
If the spirits really had anything sensible to communicate, then presumably they would be willing to answer questions put by a man of science.
Accordingly, the Becquet girls were asked to devote a few hours every week to automatic writing; and to ask the “spirits” a number of specific questions written down by Rivail.

The results surpassed his most optimistic expectations.
The spirits, it seemed, were anxious to explain themselves at length.
Rivail was excited to find that what they said seemed to make sense, and constituted a remarkable and consistent philosophy about life and death.
Interestingly enough, they seemed to agree with Mesmer, who said that the universe is pervaded by a vital or magnetic “fluid.” When this fluid is able to flow through living beings, the result is health; when it is blocked, the result is illness.

According to Rivail’s informants, the universe is pervaded by spirits of incorporeal intelligences.
Human beings are simply “incarnate spirits,” spirits united with a material body.
They advance toward perfection by undergoing trials during their lifetime, and after one body dies, they are reincarnated in another one.
In between reincarnations, they may wander around without a body.
It is these “discarnate spirits” that are responsible for various forms of mischief, such as poltergeist effects.

In due course, the spirits instructed Rivail to publish the results of his questions.
They gave him a title—
The Spirits’ Book
—and even told him the pseudonym he should use: Allan Kardec—both names he had borne in a previous existence, they told him.

The Spirits’ Book
appeared in 1856, and created a sensation.
Kardec became the founder-figure of the French spiritualist movement, and his works attained immense influence.
But he died of a heart attack only thirteen years after the book was published, at the age of sixty-five, and his influence was soon being widely questioned by the French spiritualist movement.
Rivail was totally committed to the doctrine of reincarnation, the slow perfection of the spirit through a series of rebirths, which can be traced back to ancient India.
But most of the “spirits” who spoke through mediums at séances had nothing to say about reincarnation.
So Rivail was inclined to be critical about trance mediums, while the trance mediums and their followers denounced Rivail as a dogmatic old man.
After Rivail’s death, his influence waned, and within a few years he was half-forgotten.
Oddly enough, his works received immediate and widespread acceptance in South America, particularly in Brazil, and became the foundation of a religion—which calls itself Spiritism—which still flourishes there.
We shall examine this at length in chapter Six.

Now in Paris, in 1860, there was a particularly violent poltergeist in the Rue des Noyers; it smashed every window in the place, hurled all kinds of objects around the house (including many which the occupants had never seen before), and finally drove the unfortunate people out of the house.
Rivail decided to try to find out what exactly had happened.
His medium’s “control” (i.e., the spirit who acts as master of ceremonies) explained that the disturbances were the work of a mischievous spirit.
And, at the request of the control (a spirit called Saint Louis), the poltergeist of the Rue des Noyers was summoned.
He appeared to be in a bad temper, and asked irritably: “Why do you call me?
Do you want to have some stones thrown at you?” Rivail now asked the spirit: “Was there anyone in the Rue des Noyers who helped you play tricks on the inmates?” Certainly, replied the spirit, it had had an excellent “instrument.” It added, “For I am merry and like to amuse myself sometimes.” Who was it, Rivail asked.
“A maidservant.”

“Was she unaware you were making use of her?”

“Oh yes, poor girl—she was the most frightened of them all.”

Rivail asked how the spirit managed to throw various objects about the place, and received the interesting answer: “I helped myself through the electric nature of the girl, joined to my own .
.
.
thus we were able to transport the objects between us.”

Rivail asked the spirit who it was.
It replied that it had been dead about fifty years, and had been a rag and bone man.
People used to make fun of him because he drank too much, and this was why he decided to play tricks on the inhabitants of the Rue des Noyers.
He indignantly denied that he had done these things out of malice; it was merely his way of amusing himself.

This spirit seemed to belong to a class described in
The Spirits’ Book:
“They are ignorant, mischievous, unreasonable, and addicted to mockery.
They meddle with everything and reply to every question without paying attention to the truth.” This latter remark brings to mind a comment by G.
K.
Chesterton, who describes in his autobiography how he once experimented with a planchette—a device for automatic writing.
The sitters asked one of the “spirits” the name of a distant relative, and the board answered “Manning.” When they said this was untrue, it wrote: “Married before.” “To whom?” “Cardinal Manning.” Chesterton remarks:

I saw quite enough of the thing to be able to testify, with complete certainty, that something happens which is not in the ordinary sense natural .
.
.
Whether it is produced by some subconscious but still human force, or by some powers, good, bad or indifferent, which are external to humanity, I would not myself attempt to decide.
The only thing I will say with complete confidence about that mystic and invisible power is that it tells lies.

Elsewhere, Rivail asked the spirits about the subject of “demoniacal possession,” and how far human beings can be unconsciously influenced by spirits.
The answer to the latter question was that the influence of spirits is far greater than most people suppose—that they often influence our thoughts
and
actions.
This is a theme that is often repeated in the books of “Allan Kardec.” Asked about possession, the spirit replied: “A spirit does not enter into a body as you enter into a house.
He assimilates himself to an incarnate spirit who has the same defects and the same qualities as himself, in order that they may act conjointly.” But, it added, the spirit cannot actually “take over” the body of the person it is “possessing.” This is united indissolubly to the physical body.