Real-Life X-Files (15 page)

From 1966 to 1970 he taught at the University of St. Thomas, a Ro-man Catholic school in Houston, and frequently sang with the Houston Grand Opera. In 1970, however, he was granted a “terminal leave of absence.” According to a St. Thomas spokesperson, “He was an extremely talented musician who had health problems of an emotional nature” (Hewes and Steiger 1976, 24). The following year he reportedly checked into a Houston hospital, asking to be “cured” of homosexual desires. By this time he was divorced and had been living with a male companion. He was also “suddenly hearing voices,” and he had a vision in which he was given knowledge about the world (Fisher and Pressley 1997; Hewitt et al. 1997). According to
Newsweek
, “He told his sister he had suffered a ‘near-death experience’ after a heart attack, but he may actually have suffered from a drug overdose, according to Ray Hill, a radio-show host in Texas who knew Applewhite at the time. ‘He was kind of a Timothy Leary type,’ said Hill” (Thomas et al. 1997, 31).

During this period, Applewhite met a nurse named Bonnie Lu Trousdale Nettles. They shared an interest in astrology and believed they had been acquainted in earlier lives. Nettles, who was four years his senior and married with four children, shared an asexual relationship with Applewhite, who at some point underwent castration. Early in their association they claimed to be channeling an apparition, the spirit of a nineteenth-century monk named Brother Francis, whom Nettles had been communicating with even prior to meeting Applewhite. They would later claim that anyone who followed them would have a spirit or guardian angel to direct them in perfecting their meditation (Sachs 1980, 153; Hewes and Steiger 1976, 37). According to one biographical source, “Herff experienced unnerving astral voyages at night, and he and Bonnie werein daily contact with unseen forces and entities… Both Herff and Bonnietold of vivid dreams in which beings from UFOs urged them to abandon their earthly lives” (Balch 1982, 37).

The Two

The couple set out on a tour of the United States, during which time they formulated their flying saucer religion. They saw their mission revealed in chapter eleven of the Book of Revelation, which told how two messengers from the heavens would prophesy “a thousand two-hundred-and- three-score days, clothed in sack cloth.” The two would then be killed, but they would return to life in three and a half days, ascending into heaven in a cloud that Applewhite and Nettles believed was actually a UFO. Calling themselves “The Two,” they began to recruit followers at special meetings. Converts were expected to renounce family ties and give away all their worldly possessions in anticipation of the UFO voyage. This was predicted to occur in six months; when it did not, many disillusioned followers deserted the cult, while Applewhite and Nettles responded by extending the deadline for the expected events.

When The Two were briefly arrested on auto theft charges in 1974, Applewhite, who was sentenced to four months in jail, reportedly told the prosecutor that “a force from beyond the earth” made him keep the car (Hewitt et al. 1997,40). Interviewed in 1974 by Hewes, both “Herff” and “Bonnie” claimed to be aliens from “another level” (Hewes and Steiger 1976,68). “The Two” also referred to themselves as “Bo and Peep,” due to their role as extraterrestrial shepherds. At times during the interview, Applewhite “would go into a trance-like state” (70). This was apparently explained in a later interview with Brad Steiger when they claimed that their “Fathers in the next kingdom” communicated with them “men-tally” (84). As special messengers of God, they taught that the body could actually be “healed” from death and taken to “the next level” (89).

Their imaginings were apparently quite real to them. One interviewer came away convinced that “what they’re talking about and what they’re preaching about they believe in one-hundred percent” (quoted in Hewes and Steiger 1976, 77). Step by step, of course, they were creating their own reality. After Nettles died in 1985, Applewhite continued to lead the cult. Then came Comet Hale-Bopp and an amateur astronomer’s photo of a “UFO” apparently trailing behind. Although this was actually a distant star, Applewhite and his followers apparently saw it as their long-awaited ride into the heavens. Dressed in their identical, asexual manner with short haircuts, the eighteen men and twenty-one women packed small bags of their belongings and committed suicide in shifts, eating
drug-laced applesauce or pudding and lying on their bunk beds to await the prophesied encounter.

There is, I think, sufficient evidence to warrant the conclusion that both Applewhite and Nettles were fantasy-prone individuals, each exhibiting several characteristics from the above list (he: a, d, e, h, i, j, 1, and m; and she: d, e, h, j, k, 1, and m). Eventually, however, Applewhite completely lost contact with reality and became psychotic. A psychiatry professor who studied videotapes of his final statements concluded he was delusional, paranoid, and sexually repressed (Fisher and Pressley 1997). Thus did fantasies of the paranormal lead to gruesome reality.

References

Balch, Robert W. 1982. Bo and Peep: A case study of origins of messianic leadership. In
Millennialism and Charisma,
edited by Roy Wallis. Belfast, North-ern Ireland: The Queens University, 13-72.

Bearak, Barry. 1997. Odyssey to suicide.
New York Times,
April 28, cover story.

Fisher, Marc, and Sue Ann Pressley. 1997. Cult leader evolved from being married, gay to antisex prophet.
Washington Post,
reprinted in
Buffalo News,
March 29.

Hewes, Hayden, and Brad Steiger, comps. and eds. 1976.
UFO Missionaries Ex-traordinary.
New York: Pocket.

Hewitt, Bill, et al. 1997. Who they were.
People,
April 14,40-56.

Internet, radio may have inspired belief that UFO trailed comet. 1997. Associated Press,
Buffalo News,
March 28.

Nickell, Joe. 1996. A study of fantasy proneness in the thirteen cases of alleged encounters in John Mack’s
Abduction. Skeptical Inquirer
20(3): 18-20, 54.

Sachs, Margaret. 1980. The UFO
Encyclopedia.
New York: Perigree, 152-53.

Thomas, Evan, et al. 1997. The next level.
Newsweek,
April 7, 28-35.

Wilson, Sheryl C., and Theodore X. Barber. The fantasyprone personality. In
Imagery: Current Theory Research and Application,
edited by Anees A. Sheikh. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1983.

Winant, Louise. 1997. Interview on ABC’s
Good Morning America,
March 28.

Chapter 12

In the late 1990s, a strange entity calling himself Sommy harassed an Emeryville, Ontario, family for months, supposedly using “high-tech” means to stalk Debbie and Dwayne Tamai and make their lives miserable. As reported on
Dateline
NBC
, the harassment began with the telephone—at first clicks, like someone was on the other extension; then the Tamais’ calls would be disconnected whenever they attempted to phone out. Things got worse when the couple went on a vacation, leaving their fifteen-year-old son Billy in the care of a house sitter and friend, Cheryl McCaulis. Now the power went off and on intermittently, although the power company could find nothing amiss. Then the password (pin number) on the voice mail was changed, although Bell Canada officials declared that impossible.

As the disturbances increased, Cheryl began keeping a log, even recording some of the noises made by Sommy. He made obscene and threatening calls, claiming he was watching the house. On other occasions he would just cut in on the line and make burping or grunting noises. By weeks end he had cut the telephone lines. When the Tamais returned from vacation, they had trouble believing their friend. Soon, however, Debbie had herself talked to Sommy. “It was freaky,” she said. “The first time I heard him, I’ll never forget him. My hair stood on ends, my arms—I was goose bumps, it was just the—the meanest voice.” Asked why he was doing this, Sommy replied, “I just want a friend.”

He reportedly learned to control the TV set, and he used the Tamais’ telephone number to call others and harass them. He changed the ringing device on the Tamais’ phone so that it sounded strange. Worse, he
even devised a way to eavesdrop on the family, telling them things, they insisted, that he could only learn by monitoring their every word—from information on Debbie’s birthday to the Tamais’ bank card pin number.

According to
Dateline
, “So far no one, not the police, not the utility companies, not private surveillance teams, or even a former member of the Canadian Mounties, has been able to find this not-so-friendly ghost. Though not for the lack of trying. The Tamais believe Sommy got into their house while it was under construction… and planted devices they’ve ripped out walls trying to find. Or they think he could have tapped into a line down the street with so many wires above ground in this still un-finished subdivision. In fact, experts tell us with all the digital and com-puter technology these days, it is theoretically possible.”
Dateline
teamed up with the Discovery Channel to hire a private security firm, to take—as reporter Chris Hansen put it—“our own shot at ghostbusting.” But after more than six hours, the team was forced to announce they had discovered nothing.

Unfortunately,
Dateline
failed to enlist the real ghostbusters. Some of us at CSICOP headquarters, and no doubt elsewhere, formed a hy-pothesis as soon as we saw the program. We realized that many of the phenomena described, such as the eavesdropping, could have been accomplished more easily by someone in the house, negating such an elaborate hypothesis as that involving highly sophisticated electronic wizardry. We also knew that such mischief is typically due to a disturbed youngster in the household. For example, the mystery behind several fires that plagued an Alabama house was solved by the confession of the family’s nine-year-old son. He had had a simple motive: he wanted his family to return to the city from which they had recently moved. In another case—in a Louisville, Kentucky, home—boxes, bottle caps, and other objects were hurled about. Eventually an eleven-year-old girl admitted she was responsible for the trouble. Her mother was away, in a hospital, and the girl had felt neglected and needed attention. But she said, “I didn’t throw all those things. People just imagined some of them” (Nickell 1995, 82- 92). To catch a culprit, investigators have used a variety of techniques, ranging from use of dye powder (which stains the hands of a person touching a treated object) to hidden cameras. (One revealing film sequence, featured on Arthur C. Clarke’s
Mysterious World series
, portrayed a little girl, caught flagrante delicto, smashing an object.)

Following the Friday night broadcast, however, before CSICOP could
reply to urgings from our readers on the Internet, there came new developments. On Saturday, when the Tamais planned to take their son to the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) station in order to defend him from rumors claiming he was guilty of the harassment, he instead confessed. An OPP spokesperson reported the next day that nothing would be gained by prosecuting the youth for what was “an internal family matter.” The Tamais explained, “It started off as a joke with his friends and just got so out of hand that he didn’t know how to stop it and was afraid to come forward and tell us in fear of us disowning him.” They went on to “apologize” to the world for any pain or harm that was caused, and added that they would seek professional counseling for the boy (“Teen-Age” 1997).

References

Dateline NBC
. 1997. April 18.

Nickell, Joe. 1995.
Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings
.Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus.

Teen-age son confesses to harassing his family, 1997.
Buffalo News
, April 21.

Chapter 13

On the night of July 13,1855, in Wyoming County, New York, two boys and five men were fishing from a boat on Silver Lake near the village of Perry. After several minutes of watching a floating log, one man exclaimed, “Boys, that thing is moving!” Indeed, according to the
Wyoming Times
, after bobbing in and out of sight, suddenly, “the SERPENT, for now there was no mistaking its character, darted from the water about four feet from the stern of the boat, close by the rudderpaddle, the head and forward part of the monster rising above the surface of the water…. All in the boat had a fair view of the creature, and concur in representing it as a most horrid and repulsive looking monster.” One estimated its above-water circumference as about that of a flour barrel.