The Dark Sacrament (47 page)

THE UNQUIET SPIRIT OF CHILD SARAH

E
VIDENCE OF “PSYCHOKINETIC” ENERGY:
It is also known as telekinetic energy. The most celebrated pioneer in the field of parapsychology and related research was Joseph Banks Rhine (1895–1980). In 1966, he and a number of colleagues, including J. Gaither Pratt and Charles E. Stuart, published the definitive work on PK:
Extra-sensory Perception After Sixty Years: A Critical Appraisal of the Research in Extra-Sensory Perception.
This was based on results first published in 1940.

Recent research into the PK phenomenon itself—as purportedly demonstrated by groups of people who lift heavy objects with the power of the mind alone—was led by British psychologist Kenneth J. Batcheldor, who believes that “unconscious muscular action” is the basis for telekinesis, which relies to a great extent on the faith of the participants. He holds that fear is the key: that it is the fear of the power itself that inhibits the successful application of PK.

LITTLE LUCY AND THE PHANTOM FAMILY

“R
ESIDUAL” OR “MENTAL IMPRINT” HAUNTING:
Peter Underwood, Britain's foremost researcher into the paranormal and author of
The Autobiography of a Ghost-Hunter
(1983), broadly categorizes ghosts thus:

• 1. Elemental (or primitive or racial-memory) manifestations. They are mainly seen in rural areas and in particular sites. They are rare and appear to be malevolent.
  
• 2. Poltergeists, which include death-bed visions and manifestations triggered by crises or traumas.
  
• 3. Traditional or historical ghosts. They usually dress in period clothing and follow old floor plans of houses and other buildings, thereby appearing to “walk” several inches above the floor. They neither speak nor interact with the observer. Often it is found that they are the ghosts of those who suffered trauma during their lifetimes.
  
• 4. Mental imprints. They are some kind of imprint upon the atmosphere and resemble holographic images. Often they must be viewed from a specific angle and at a given time. The manifestation they produce never alters, as though a film sequence is being played back over and over.
  
• 5. Time distortion and cyclic ghosts. They seem to be replays of past events, often the reenactment of famous battles.
  
• 6. Ghosts of the living, which may be part of the phenomenon known as bilocation, or the result of clairvoyance and telepathy. Observers claim that the apparition is all but indistinguishable from the real person.
  

All the ghosts seen by Lucy Gillespie seem to fall into more than one of these categories, in particular the third and fourth.

THE PIT BENEATH THE HEARTHSTONE

T
HE MYTH OF THE BANSHEE:
It is difficult to say whether the belief was common to all Celtic peoples or if it was brought to other parts of Great Britain by visitors from Ireland. Certainly the Scottish variant bears more than a passing resemblance to her Irish counterpart, as does the Gwrach-y-rhybin, the Welsh equivalent. According to legend, this “night-hag” has much in common with the banshee, attaching herself to ancient families, in other words, nobility. She is ugly, with long black hair and garments. In some versions of the legend she has black wings, too, and often flies low over the landscape. When lamenting an imminent death, she imitates the voice of the soon-to-be-bereaved. For instance, she will cry something like, “Oh, my poor husband!” if a woman is to be widowed.

The banshee and her Celtic cousins may be a throwback to pagan worship of the Dark Goddess or Crone, who was an aspect of the Goddess, the others being the Maiden and the Mother.

L
AY BENEATH THE HEARTHSTONE:
There can be no underestimating the importance of the hearth and hearthstone in rural Irish life in past centuries, and still today in certain outlying communities. There were plantations in the sixteenth century, and wholesale confiscation of lands in Munster and Ulster in the mid-seventeenth century. The “rebel” chieftains and their tribes were driven “to the fern.” Those evictions left an indelible hurt on the Irish psyche,
and led to an exaggerated importance being placed on the home hearth. There is even a notable Irish maxim that says,
Níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán fhéin:
“There's no hearth like your own hearth.”

It should be remembered, too, that those dispossessed by foreign planters were of families who had occupied the same land for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

The poet Lauchlan MacLean Watt (1867–1957) summarized the Irish obsession with the hearthstone:

In ancient times, the hearthstone was bound up with a variety of rituals. One example was the chieftain's practice of burying one or two of his enemies under the hearthstone of a new dwelling or fort. This was believed to bring luck.

A less gruesome use was found for the stone by a mother-to-be. To avoid having her child stolen by the fairies and a so-called changeling substituted, she would crush a new potato on the hearthstone.

MR. GANT AND THE NEIGHBOR FROM HELL

T
HERE'S NO
G
OD HERE:
This is strikingly similar to the utterance of the demented nun in the case entitled “The Temptation of Father Fintan.” In one, the site of the manifestation was Lourdes; in the other, Luxor, ancient Thebes of the Egyptians. Both are or were sacred sites. The two instances seem to give the lie to the common supposition that such sacred places are out of bounds to demonic influences.

T
HE
S
MURL FAMILY IN
P
ENNSYLVANIA:
The case is the subject of
The Haunted: One Family's Nightmare
by Robert Curran (1988). It details the extraordinary manifestations that terrorized the Smurls—infestations that could be banished only after four exorcisms. Ed and Lorraine Warren—who collaborated in the writing of the book—conducted the most extensive investigations into the phenomena and were themselves apparently the target of demonic attack. Ed Warren has the distinction of being the world's only lay demonologist trained by the Vatican.

M
Y NAME IS
L
EGION:
Some believe that the notorious New York serial killer who called himself Son of Sam was demonically possessed. Sam Berkowitz, who embarked on a horrific murder spree in the 1970s, was asked his name
when arrested. He replied: “My name is Legion, for we are many,” the precise words contained in Mark's Gospel (5:9). It remains a puzzle as to why Berkowitz, an orthodox Jew, should have quoted the New Testament, a collection of books normally read only by Christians. As with the demoniac of Scripture, cemeteries held a curious fascination for Berkowitz; he liked to spend time among the tombstones, especially those of the women he murdered.

Interestingly, Peter Sutcliffe, England's “Yorkshire Ripper,” also worked in a cemetery. He claimed it was while he was digging a grave there that a voice spoke to him from the grave of a Polish man. The voice told him that his mission in life was to rid the streets of prostitutes. Between 1975 and 1981, Sutcliffe attacked twenty women, not all of whom were prostitutes. Only seven survived his savage assaults.

Sutcliffe underwent several exorcisms conducted by a Catholic priest while awaiting trial in Armley jail, Leeds.

ST. B
ENEDICT MEDAL:
The saint was born in Nursia, near Rome, ca. 480, and went on to found the monastic order that bears his name. This particular medal features a cross with the letters
CSPB
, signifying
Crux Sancti Patris Benedicti,
the cross of Father Benedict. The cross was a favorite Benedictine emblem. Inscribed also are the initial letters of a Latin prayer, which translates as “May the holy cross be my light. May the dragon never be my guide.” Just why this saint came to be associated with exorcism is not clear. Many miracles were attributed to him, some of Christlike proportions, such as enabling a follower to walk on water. Such miracles would have identified Benedict in the minds of the faithful as one possessing power over Satan.

THE HESSIAN WHO RETURNED TO HAUNT

T
HE SPIRIT OF A
H
ESSIAN:
The notoriety of the Hessians may be unearned. They were, it is true, mercenary soldiers, although not in the same sense by which we understand mercenaries today. They were a private army recruited in the main by Count Frederick
II
of Hesse-Kassel, a principality in northern Hesse, Germany. They owed allegiance to their aristocratic masters but were not well paid; in fact, many drew only the cost of food and lodgings in return for their fighting skills.

They first made their appearance on the international stage during the American War of Independence, when some thirty thousand of them fought on the side of King George III, who was monarch to a great many of them. The Hessians distinguished themselves in a number of engagements.

In Ireland, the position was somewhat different. Coming, as it did, two decades after the War of Independence, the Rising of 1798 was fought by a different body of Hessians. Many accounts from that time depict an undisciplined and savage band of mercenaries, many of whom were drawn from prisons or were impressed into service, and whose conduct led to their being held
in loathing by the Irish people. Whereas the name of Hessian carries with it few negative connotations in American history, in Ireland it is reviled.

THE WOMAN WHO LEFT HER BODY AT WILL

T
UESDAY LOBSANG RAMPA:
Cyril Henry Hoskins (1911–81) made a spectacular literary debut in 1956 with
The Third Eye: The Autobiography of a Tibetan Lama,
in which he claimed to be a Buddhist master. Millions of copies were sold around the world. The writer was actually a plumber's son from Devon, a fact uncovered by a private detective hired by a group of academics who grew more than a little suspicious of “Dr.” Rampa's teaching, and by extension his bona fides. By way of explanation, Hoskins revealed that the real Lobsang Rampa had taken over his body as a means of continuing his teaching. Hoskins went on to publish many more books, sustained by a gullible public. Eventually, however, mounting allegations of fraud forced him to flee to Canada, where he died in obscurity.

C
LAIRVOYANCE, REMOTE VIEWING:
The two terms are cognate, though the latter has come to be associated with, among others, the
U.S.
military, which sought to develop this “gift” in groups of volunteers. The research went by different titles, beginning in the 1970s as a response to reports of Soviet investigation into so-called “PsyOps”; the final phase was Project Star Gate, which was abandoned in 1999. Although more than $20 million was spent, it is not known if any success was achieved, and skeptics cast doubt on the claims made by the participants. Clairvoyance should not be confused with astral projection, which appears to be an altogether different phenomenon, related to the near-death experience reported by many.

M
EMBERS OF THE
G
OLDEN DAWN:
This was the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a magical society founded along Rosicrucian lines in London in 1887 by three Freemasons. Aside from W. B. Yeats, its membership included the notorious Aleister Crowley. Several of its rituals were based on ancient documents translated by S. L. MacGregor Mathers, one of the founders, including the fearsome
Goetia, the Lesser Key of Solomon the King
and
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage.
The Golden Dawn drew on the philosophies of ancient Egypt and Greece, combined with threads of gnosticism and the Jewish Qabalah. It inspired many of the magical lodges found throughout the world today.

D
AVID
K
ORESH AND
J
IM
J
ONES:
James Warren Jones (1931–78) set the precedent for the charismatic cult leader who induces mass suicide in his followers. Jones was born in Indiana to a father who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and from an early age seemed determined to make reparations. On becoming a minister, he actively sought to embrace black America and
promote racial equality. He founded the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, but in 1977 moved it to Guyana, South America, when he was accused of tax evasion. Most of his one thousand followers joined him, where they established a commune in the jungle.

Jones was becoming increasingly delusional, claiming to be an incarnation of Jesus Christ, the Buddha, and others, and to be capable of performing miracles. He ruled his “people” with an iron fist, demanding total obedience. When U.S. authorities moved to arrest him, his men fatally ambushed the party, including a senator. Jones then induced his remaining 914 disciples—including 276 children—to commit suicide by consuming a soft drink laced with cyanide.

David Koresh (1959–93) was born Vernon Wayne Howell in Houston, Texas. He never knew his father and was sexually abused by his stepfather. He went to California to become a rock guitarist but failed. He returned to Texas and joined a breakaway sect of Seventh-Day Adventists calling itself the Branch Davidians. Soon after, Koresh proclaimed himself leader. There were growing reports of brainwashing and child abuse at the Davidian ranch near Waco, as well as accusations that Koresh demanded sex from any female member he chose. In 1993, the FBI raided the farm. The fifty-one-day siege resulted in the deaths of four agents and seventy-six sect members, including Koresh. It was found that several adults had killed their own children before shooting themselves.