Supernatural (55 page)

Newspaper reporters soon unearthed a story of violent conflict between Brody, who was Jayne Mansfield’s lover as well as her attorney, and La Vey.
It arose because Jayne Mansfield’s film studio was grooming her as a successor to Marilyn Monroe, and rumours of her membership of the Church of Satan were bad publicity.
Brody threatened to start a newspaper campaign that would drive La Vey out of San Francisco, and La Vey retaliated by pronouncing a solemn ritual curse on Brody.
He told Brody that he would see him dead within a year, and shortly before Jayne Mansfield’s death he warned her not to share Brody’s car.
‘She was the victim of her own frivolity,’ said La Vey dispassionately after the crash; but there were members of California’s occult underground who declared openly that La Vey’s curse had got out of hand, killing the disciple as well as the unbeliever.

In Britain, it has also become clear that the modern witchcraft cult has its negative side, as cases involving ‘black magic’ and ritual child abuse have made national headlines.
Just before midnight on July 10, 1971, two police officers on the island of Jersey, in the English Channel, set off in pursuit of a car that had shot through a red light at high speed.
After a chase they caught up with the driver when he abandoned his car in the middle of a field.
More police arrived and helped subdue the furiously struggling man.
As they bundled him into a police car, one of them noticed something strange about his clothes.
Two rows of sharp nails protruded from the shoulders of his jacket.
He had another row of nails on his lapels, and wore bands studded with nails on his wrist.
At the police station the man was searched.
In his pockets police found a wig, a rubber face mask, and a length of pajama cord.
It seemed that they had finally caught the ‘Jersey rapist’—a man who had been terrorising the island for more than a decade.

The attacks had begun in 1957 when three women had been assaulted by a man with a knife.
In April 1958, a man threw a rope around the neck of a girl, dragged her into a field, and raped her.
In October 1958, a girl was dragged from a cottage and raped.
For over a year attacks ceased.
Then in January 1960, they took a more alarming turn.
A 10-year-old girl woke up to find a man in her bedroom.
He warned her that if she cried out he would shoot both her parents.
The man was wearing a rubber mask.
He sexually assaulted the girl in her own bed and left by the window, driving off in her father’s car.
One month later the rapist assaulted a 12-year-old boy.
For the next eleven years repeated attacks made Jersey an island of terror.
In many cases the masked rapist carried a child out into the garden, committed the assault, and took his victim back to the bedroom.

When the police in 1971 captured the man with a mask and a pajama cord in his pocket, they had little doubt that he was the rapist.
His name was Edward John Louis Paisnel, and he was in his early 50s.

Questioned about the peculiar attire he was wearing when he was found, Paisnel told the police that he was on his way to some sort of ‘orgy’.
He implied that this gathering was connected with black magic, and explained that all the participants were unknown to one another, because they wore masks.

When the police visited Paisnel’s home, they discovered that he slept apart from his wife in his own room.
In this room they found an alcove containing what appeared to be a small altar.
On the altar stood a china toad and a small chalice.
Suspended above these objects was a dagger on a length of cord.

In the same room the police found a cupboard that swung away from the wall on hinges.
Behind it was a small room containing a blue track suit and a fawn raincoat with nail-studded lapels.
Earlier descriptions of the Jersey rapist had mentioned a blue track suit and fawn raincoat.

Nevertheless, Paisnel continued to protest his innocence.
He insisted that he was a member of a black magic group and had no connection with the rapes.
Then came the break.
The car Paisnel had been driving before his arrest proved to have been stolen.
In the glove compartment the police discovered a crucifix made of palm fronds—apparently the property of the car’s owner, The detective in charge of the case threw it on the table in front of Paisnel and asked: ‘Is this yours?’

Paisnel’s face went red.
His eyes bulged.
Then he began to laugh.
‘No, it’s not mine.’
Then after a pause: ‘My master would laugh very long and very loud at this.’

The detective had no need to ask him the name of his ‘master’.
In Paisnel’s room the police had found various books on witchcraft and black magic.
Paisnel was speaking of the Devil.

The police made one more interesting find.
Among Paisnel’s books was a biography of the 15th-century child-murderer, Gilles de Rais—the man on whom the story of Bluebeard was based.
Gilles de Rais had been one of the richest noblemen in Europe, and had fought bravely at the side of Joan of Arc against the English.
His extravagance forced him to mortgage many of his estates, and finally he began to practise black magic, hoping that with the aid of the Devil he could discover the secret of turning lead into gold.
Some of these black magic rituals require the ‘blood of innocent virgins’, and this may explain how Gilles came to acquire his taste for killing children.
When Gilles was arrested—for assaulting a priest in the course of a quarrel—his mansion was searched, and the dismembered remains of more than fifty children were found in a locked tower.
Gilles admitted that he had murdered the children after committing sadistic attacks on them.
He was burned at the stake in October 1440.

It gradually became clear to the police that Paisnel was obsessed by Gilles de Rais.
It even seems likely that he believed himself to be a reincarnation of Gilles.
No other members of the ‘black magic group’ were ever discovered.
Presumably they existed only in Paisnel’s imagination.
Charged with seven sexual assaults, Paisnel was found guilty and sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment.

It seems certain that Paisnel was no armchair student of the occult.
He practised black magic, and he believed that he had sold his soul to the Devil.
He worshipped his ‘master’ before an altar, and he probably offered up prayers before he set off in search of victims.

The logical view of all this is that he was simply a ‘sex maniac’ who indulged in devil-worship as a kind of imaginative exercise that enabled him to ignore his conscience.
(A ‘devotee’ always has that advantage over an unbeliever.) But this chapter should at least have raised some doubts about the logical view.
The truth is that our scientific rationalism has blinded us to the truth behind witchcraft.
And in order to grasp that truth, we have to begin by recognising that
all
primitive people take the reality of the ‘spirit world’ for granted.
We also have to recognise that circumstantial reports of ghosts can be counted in their thousands, that they date back as far as recorded history, and that to try to dismiss all this as superstition is mere silliness.
We may reject the Christian notion of the Devil as an embodiment of evil (because surely evil is merely another name for stupidity?), just as we reject the Manichaean notion that matter itself is evil, while still recognising that the evidence for the existence of ‘spirits’ is very powerful indeed.
And the history of spiritualism, like the history of witchcraft, demonstrates that it is not difficult for human beings to establish contact with ‘spirits’, and that some do so easily and naturally.

So it would probably be a mistake to dismiss Paisnel’s devil-worship as sheer self-delusion.
The more likely truth is that he was a man whose fantasies had opened him to certain dark forces, and who had become a willing tool of those forces in exchange for the satisfaction of sexual cravings—in short, that he had done what a mediaeval theologian would call ‘sold his soul to the Devil’.

It is also interesting to note that his charmed life of immunity came to an end when he stole a car containing a Christian crucifix .
.
.

1.
Salmon’s version in the book differs in some particulars from his account on Westward Television; I have preferred the television version, which Salmon claims embodies his considered opinion.

11

Possession: Illusion or Reality?

A
CCORDING TO
Allan Kardec’s
Spirits’ Book,
people who die suddenly, or are unprepared for death by reason of wasted lives, are often unaware that they are dead, and become homeless wanderers on the earth, attracted by human beings of like mind, and sharing their lives and experiences.
They are able, to some extent, to influence these like-minded people and to make them do their will through suggestion.
Some ‘low spirits’ are activated by malice; others are merely mischievous, and can use energy drawn from human beings to cause physical disturbances—these are known as poltergeists.
When Kardec asked: ‘Do spirits influence our thoughts and actions?’, the answer was: ‘Their influence upon [human beings] is greater than you suppose, for it is very often they who direct both.’
Asked about possession, the ‘spirit’ explained that spirits cannot actually take over another person’s body, since that belongs to its owner; but a spirit can assimilate itself to a person who has the same defects and qualities as himself, and may dominate such a person.
In short, such spirits could be described as ‘mind parasites’.
(According to Kardec’s view, when people indulge in sexual fantasy, they may be providing a kind of pornographic film-show for some homeless spirit, which will then try to influence them to providing more of the same kind of entertainment by putting sexual thoughts into their heads.)

The classic modern book on the subject—
Possession, Demoniacal and Other
(1921)—is by a Tübingen professor, T.K.
Oesterreich, and it takes, as one might expect of a respectable academic, a totally sceptical view: Oesterreich dismisses the ‘spirit’ explanation, insisting that possession is always a case of hysteria or mental illness.
He will not even accept the hypothesis of multiple personality, since he cannot believe that the human personality can ‘split’.

One of his most impressive pieces of evidence for the hysteria theory is a lengthy account of the famous case of ‘Achille’, described by the psychiatrist Pierre Janet.
Achille, a moderately successful businessman, came from a peasant background, and married early.
In the winter of 1890, when he was 33, Achille returned from a business trip in a depressed condition, then suddenly went dumb.
One day, he sent for his wife and child, embraced them despairingly, then went into a cataleptic state for two days.
When he woke up he was suffering from delusions; he seemed to think he was in Hell, and that demons were burning him and cutting him in pieces.
The room, he said, was full of imps, and he was possessed by a devil.
After a number of suicide attempts, he was sent to the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, under the care of the famous physician Charcot.
The latter placed Janet in charge of the case.

Janet watched with interest as Achille displayed all the signs of demoniacal possession, as described in the Middle Ages: in a deep voice he cursed God, then in a shrill voice protested that the Devil had forced him to do it.

At first all Janet’s efforts to communicate were a failure; Achille refused to listen to him and resisted all attempts to hypnotise him.
Janet saw a possible solution when he observed that Achille was extremely ‘absent-minded’—he compares him to someone searching for an umbrella which he holds in his hand.
While Achille was raving, Janet quietly inserted a pencil in his hand, then tried ordering him, in a whisper, to make writing movements.
The pencil wrote: ‘I won’t.’
‘Who are you?’
asked Janet, and the pencil wrote: ‘The Devil.’
‘I shan’t believe you,’ Janet replied, ‘unless you can give me proof.
Can you make Achille raise his left arm without knowing it?’
‘Of course.
.
.’—and Achille raised his arm.
‘Why are you doing that?’
Janet asked Achille in his normal voice, and Achille looked at his raised arm with astonishment.

The demon went on to demonstrate his powers by making Achille dance, stick out his tongue and kiss a piece of paper.
Finally, Janet asked him if he could put Achille into a deep sleep.
Moments later, Achille was in a trance.
And now Janet was able to question him about the cause of his illness, and quickly learned that Achille had been unfaithful to his wife while away on his business trip, and that deep and intense guilt had caused the depression and other symptoms.
Now he was able to induce hallucinations, Janet made Achille believe that his wife was in the room, and had forgiven him for his infidelity.
(It is not quite clear from Janet’s account whether the wife actually came to the hospital.) After this, Achille’s psychological problems soon cleared up.

This is certainly a remarkable case.
Yet as a refutation of the ‘spirit’ view, it is obviously open to one serious objection.
If Kardec is correct, it is obvious that people suffering from nervous traumas or states of intense guilt and misery are more likely to become ‘obsessed’ by spirits than normal healthy persons.
Kardec would point out that Achille may have been genuinely ‘obsessed’ by a mischievous spirit, and that as soon as Janet had made him feel that he was forgiven, the spirit was ‘driven out’.

The same view of ‘possession’ was expressed by Carl Wickland, a Los Angeles doctor: in his book
Thirty Years Among the Dead,
he argues that a great deal of mental illness is caused by a kind of mental invasion by ‘homeless spirits’.

Wickland, born in Leiden (Sweden) in 1861, had emigrated to Chicago, where he gained his medical degree; he became a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Science, and a medical adviser to the Los Angeles branch of the National Psychological Institute.
It seems likely that he decided to burn his boats and publish his book because, at 63, he was on the verge of retirement anyway, and ridicule would make no difference.