The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (72 page)

The view that poltergeists are “spirits” who make use of some form of human energy remains highly unfashionable among psychical investigators, who prefer the more “scientific” theory of Fodor. Yet the case of the phantom drummer of Tedworth seems to support Playfair’s view that poltergeist phenomena can be caused by “witchcraft”; and witches
have traditionally claimed to perform their “magic” through the use of spirits. One thing is certain: that Podmore’s view that poltergeists are usually due to deliberate fraud is untenable in the face of the evidence. Skeptics point out that most “psychical phenomena” are intermittent, and that they are so much the exception that they may safely be ignored. But there have been literally thousands of cases of poltergeist phenomena, and they continue to occur with a regularity that makes them easy to record and investigate. No one who considers the phenomenon open-mindedly can fail to be convinced that the poltergeist is a reality that defies “purely scientific” explanation.

42

Possession by the Dead

Myth or Reality?

In 1924 the National Psychological Institute in Los Angeles published a book with the arresting title
Thirty Years Among the Dead
, by Carl A. Wickland. It was not, as one might have supposed, the memoirs of a mortuary attendant but an account by a respectable doctor of medicine of his psychological research into Spiritualism. Inevitably, it aroused a great deal of scorn among the medical fraternity, one fortunate result being that first editions are still fairly easy to find in the “occult” sections of secondhand bookshops. Yet this is hardly fair to a work that proves, on closer examination, to be a sober and factual account of Dr Wickland’s theory that a great deal of mental illness is caused by “spirit possession”.

Wickland, born in Leiden (Sweden) in 1861, had emigrated to Chicago, where he earned 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 age sixty-three he was on the verge of retirement anyway, and ridicule would make no difference.

Ridicule was inevitable. Twelve years before Wickland had been born, in 1849, the movement called Spiritualism had been launched in the Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, and within a few years, the new “religion” had swept across the Christian world.

It had all started two years earlier in the small town of Hydesville, where strange banging and rapping noises had kept the Fox family awake all night. Mrs Fox asked the unseen knocker whether it was a spirit, and if so, to make two raps; she was answered by two thunderous bangs. Later “communications” in a code of raps seemed to establish that the knocker was the ghost of a peddler who had been murdered by a
previous tenant and buried in the basement. (The previous tenant denied it indignantly, but more than half a century later, human bones were unearthed in the basement, behind a makeshift wall.) The raps and bangs turned into typical poltergeist phenomena, which followed the two teenage sisters, Kate and Margaretta, even when they were separated. In the Fox home, bloodcurdling groaning noises and sounds like a body being dragged across the floor made James Fox’s hair turn white. Eventually, a “spirit” spelled out a message to the effect that “this truth” must be proclaimed to the world, which led to the launch of the Spiritualist movement in November 1849.

Suddenly, hundreds of “mediums” discovered that they could communicate with spirits; some “physical mediums” could even cause them to “materialize”. Scientists were furious and denounced the movement as a revival of medieval superstition; even the foundation of the Society for Psychical Research in London in 1882 – by serious-minded scientists, philosophers, and statesmen – failed to provide Spiritualism with an air of respectability.

So even as late as 1924 Wickland was inviting ridicule with a title like
Thirty Years Among the Dead
. Yet the book’s opening chapters soon make it clear that his interest sprang from medical curiosity and was that of a medical man rather than a “believer”.

It all began, he explained, with a patient whom he calls Mrs Bl –, who began to practice automatic writing and who soon began to have fits of derangement in which she used vile language and claimed she was an actress; she had to be committed to an asylum. Another woman, “an artist and lady of refinement”, became convinced that she was a damned soul and knelt in the mud to pray at the top of her voice. Yet another woman, who owned a millinery shop, posed in her window in her nightclothes, declaring that she was Napoleon, and had to be removed by the police.

At this time (in the mid-1890s) it was generally believed that mental illness could be explained in purely physical terms; many a head physician in a mental home was appointed because he had a working knowledge of brain anatomy. Freud himself was an early convert to this theory (known as
organicism
), his professor, Dr Theodore Meynert, being one of its chief advocates. (Meynert later turned his back on Freud when the latter returned from Paris espousing a new “psychological” explanation of neurosis based on the idea of the unconscious mind.) In America, the favourite theory of mental illness was that it was due to poisons in the system resulting from such causes as infected tonsils or decayed teeth. But Wickland was intrigued by the case of a
youth named Frank James who, after a fall from a motorcycle at the age of ten, changed from an affectionate, obedient boy to a juvenile delinquent who spent many terms in reformatories and jails. Declared hopelessly insane, James succeeded in escaping from the criminal asylum and during his recapture was hit on the head with a club. On awakening, he had once again reverted to his earlier personality – gentle and good-natured.

This convinced Wickland of the inadequacy of the “toxemia” theory. And while he was still a medical student, his marriage to a woman who proved to be an excellent “medium” soon provided him with evidence of an alternative theory. One day Wickland was dissecting a leg in medical school, and on his return home, was alarmed when his wife, Anna, seemed to be about to faint. He placed his hand on her shoulder and was startled when she drew herself up and said threateningly, “What do you mean by cutting me”? After a few questions it became clear that he was speaking to the spirit of the owner of the leg he had been dissecting. Wickland guided Anna to a chair, and the spirit objected that he had no right to touch “him”. When Wickland replied that he was touching his wife, it retorted, “What are you talking about? I am no woman – I’m a man”. Eventually, Wickland reasoned the spirit into recognizing that it was dead and that dissecting its old body would do it no harm. When it asked for a chew of tobacco or a pipe, Wickland had to explain that his wife was a nonsmoker. (The next day he observed that the teeth of the corpse were heavily stained with tobacco.) More detailed explanation finally convinced the man that he was dead, and he left.

This showed Wickland that a “ghost” may believe that it is still alive, particularly if death came unexpectedly. He also encountered a case that seemed to demonstrate that spirits did not need to manifest themselves through a “medium”. When he was alone one day, dissecting a female corpse, he thought he heard a distant voice shout, “Don’t murder me”! A newspaper on the floor made a rustling noise, as if it was being crushed. Some days later, at a séance, a spirit who gave her name as Minnie Morgan claimed that it was she who had shouted “Don’t murder me”! and crushed the newspaper. Minnie also had to be convinced that she was no longer alive.

At séances, entities who spoke through his wife later explained to Wickland that such “homeless spirits” – those who are unaware that they are dead – are attracted by the warmth of the “human aura” – a kind of energy sphere that is supposed to surround the human body – and, under certain circumstances, may attach themselves to the owner of
the sphere as a kind of mental parasite. In effect, such spirits are in a state of sleep, in which dreams and reality are confused, and, as in sleep, the dreamer is unaware that he is dreaming.

In one case – of a female musician who had suffered a nervous breakdown – the woman spoke in a “wild gibberish” of English and Spanish (a language of which she was ignorant). Eventually, Wickland succeeded in learning that she was possessed by three spirits: a girl named Mary, and two rival lovers. One had murdered Mary, then the two men had killed each other in a fight; the three spirits were unaware that they were dead and had found themselves able to “possess” the musician, who was psychically weakened. (Wickland’s experience was that people who are insane or on the verge of a nervous breakdown are vulnerable to these psychic parasites.) Before the woman was finally cured, another spirit – that of a little girl who had been killed in the San Francisco earthquake – was “removed” from her (by a mild shock treatment involving static electricity generated by a Wimshurst machine, which Wickland found highly effective in “dislodging” these uninvited visitors).

Wickland’s book contains so many cases in its 460-odd pages that it is impossible to summarize. But one typical case will illustrate why he was so convinced that he was dealing with real spirits and not with some strange form of hysteria on the part of his wife. In 1904, at a seance in Chicago, Mrs Wickland began to clutch her throat and cry out, “Take the rope away. I am in the dark”! When the “spirit” had been soothed into speaking normally, she declared that she was a sixteen-year-old girl named Minnie Harmening, who had committed suicide by hanging herself in a Chicago suburb called Palatine (Wickland misheard it as Palestine). She had, she said, encountered the spirit of a big man with a black beard in the barn, and he had “hypnotized” her and made her hang herself.

Wickland and his wife were on a visit to Chicago at that time and had not heard of what had become known as the Harmening suicide, which had taken place six weeks earlier. The girl’s suicide had baffled her family because it had been without apparent cause (although, Wickland adds, “the girl had always been peculiar”, implying that she was mentally deficient). Moreover, there were some suspicious circumstances – the clothes around the neck had been torn, and there were scratches on her throat. The suicide had taken place – as the girl had said – in Palatine, Cook County, Illinois.

The spirit appeared again at the next séance and in reply to questions, explained that as soon as she had kicked the box away, she “came to her
senses” and clawed at her clothes, tearing them as she tried to loosen the rope.

Wickland cites many such cases in which he was able to corroborate the evidence of “spirits”. But what is obviously of chief interest in this case is that the girl claimed to have been “hypnotized” (she may simply mean strongly influenced) by a black-bearded spirit and induced to kill herself. That is to say, she had, in effect, been “possessed” by the black-bearded spirit.

Unfortunately, Wickland was not generally concerned with the kind of corroboration he provides in this case, with the result that his book is seldom mentioned by modern scientific investigators of the paranormal. (Wickland’s own excuse is that the spirits were usually in such a state of confusion that they could not give precise names and dates.) What he might have done is illustrated by his friend F. Lee Howard, a congregational minister, who attended a session in which the Wicklands were attempting to treat the daughter of one of Howard’s friends. Howard questioned a “possessing spirit”, which declared itself to be that of a suicide victim, and he obtained the name and date. A check with the coroner’s records confirmed that such a person had committed suicide on the given date. In another case, a reader of Wickland’s book wrote to say that the details given by one of the spirits convinced him that it was his father’s cousin.

Another objection raised by modern researchers is that Wickland is often naïve and that he is inclined to mistake mental illness for “spirit possession”. For example, the case of Frank James, the boy who became a juvenile delinquent after a fall from a motorcycle, would nowadays be explained in terms of the science of “split-brain physiology”. This is based upon the recognition that when the
corpus callosum
, the knot of nerves joining the two cerebral hemispheres of the brain, is severed – as it is sometimes to cure epilepsy – the patient turns into two different people, each of whom resides in a separate hemisphere of the brain. (See also chapter 25.) The normal “everyday self”, the person one thinks of as “me”, lives in the left hemisphere and is basically a logical and practical person, the one who copes with daily chores. The person who lives in the right is a stranger and seems to be altogether more intuitive and instinctive; he seems more concerned with what goes on inside us. You could say that the left-brain self is objective, the right brain subjective; one is, in effect, a scientist and the other an artist. Most of us are unaware of this “other” (right-brain) self, even though we are connected to it by the
corpus callosum
. In split-brain patients, the “other self” can be studied by directing
stimuli to the left eye (actually, the left visual field) or the left side of the body; for some odd reason, the left side of the body is connected to the right brain, and vice versa.

In a well-known case of the 1870s, a French youth named Louis Vivé was bitten by a viper and became paralyzed in both legs for three years; during this time he was quiet and well behaved. One day he had a “hysterico-epileptic” attack, followed by a fifteen-hour sleep; when he woke up, the well-behaved youth had given way to a violent, aggressive, and dishonest delinquent. But, unlike Frank James, Vivé’s two personalities continued to alternate. This new “criminal” self had a speech defect and was paralyzed down the right side of his body. After receiving a conviction for theft, Vivé was sent to an asylum at Rochefort, where two doctors became interested in his case. At this time there was considerable interest in the influence of magnets and of various metals on physical ailments like paralysis, and the doctors tried stroking his right side with steel. It had the effect of transferring the paralysis to the left side and restoring the patient to his previous quiet and well-behaved personality. All his memories of the “criminal” period vanished, and he could recall only his “own” earlier self – although his “other self” could be brought back by hypnosis.