Poltergeist: A Classic Study in Destructive Haunting (50 page)

Could it be, perhaps, that our preconceptions are simply too rigid, and that this is creating divisions and dichotomies where there are none?
We are inclined to make a simple and sharp distinction: between living creatures (or spirits) and “illusions” or tape recordings, which—to some extent—owe their existence to the human mind.
So, in a case like the one cited above, we ask: was there really a ghost present in the haunted room, or was it a delusion (or some form of projection) of Harold Phelps’ mind?
Yet the two categories may not really be mutually exclusive.
In the previous chapter, Eileen Garrett’s “control” Uvani declared: “Life cannot die.
You can explode its dynamism, but you cannot dissipate its energy.
If you suffered where life suffered, the essence that once filled the frame will take from you something to dramatize and live again.” To our normal way of thinking, this hardly seems to make sense.
The “ghost” of the old man sounds like a “person,” not a revivified memory (i.e., a “recording”).
But this is because we have the idea of a person so deeply embedded in our own way of thinking.
We forget that it is connected largely with the physical body: a person looks solid and real so he must be an “individual.” Yet most people have experienced mental states—for example, in high fever—when the personality seems to have disintegrated.
As absurd as it sounds, “I” am still there, but that “I” is not “me.” It is a kind of disembodied being without a “self.” People who have seen someone they know well lose their faculties—through illness or senility—have this same eerie sensation: that the body of the person remains, yet the “person” is no longer in it.
In other words, our concept of a “personality” may contain certain fundamental errors.
For example, if, in a high fever, “I” exist without my “personality,” then I could imagine my personality going elsewhere, and manifesting itself independent of “me.” And this seems to be getting close to what Uvani is talking about.
Perhaps we shall not be in a position to understand ghosts and poltergeists until we have eliminated the errors from our thinking.

The Glastonbury Scripts hint at this same concept of personality.
The monk Johannes asked, at one point:

Why cling I to that which is not?
It is I, and it is not I, but parte of me which dwelleth in the past and is bound to that whych my carnal soul loved and called “home” these many years.
Yet I, Johannes, amm of many partes, and ye better parte doeth other things
Laus, Laus Deo
!
[praise be to God]—only that part which remembereth clingeth like memory to what it seeth yet.

Here there are many suggestive hints “It is I, and it is not I”—“part of me which dwelleth in the past” and “which remembereth [and] clingeth like memory to what it seeth yet.” And this presumably means that if some “sensitive” at Glastonbury saw the “ghost” of Johannes, it would be seeing this part of him that clings to the past, not “ye better parte.” All of which suggests that our simplistic notion of a “soul” inside a body may be too crude to explain the facts of psychic phenomena.
It totally fails, for example, to explain what happens in the “projection of the double”—as when Mrs.
Fielding made her double visit her husband in their home while her body sat in the laboratory.
We have also seen that in many cases, people are unaware that they are projecting their “double”—like Canon Bourne; which implies that the everyday “I” which knows what we are doing is quite ignorant of a great deal that goes on inside us.
In occult philosophy, the double—or doppelganger—is also known as the “etheric double.”

There also seems to be a part of us that could be called the “mental double.” This is illustrated in another classic case, that of Gordon Davis, recorded by the well-known investigator Dr.
S.
G.
Soal.
At the turn of the century, Dr.
Soal was at school with a boy called Gordon Davis, and in 1920, he heard that Davis had been killed in the Great War.
Soal began attending séances with Mrs.
Blanche Cooper in 1921, and at one of these séances, the “spirit” of Gordon Davis spoke through the medium.
It declared that its only worry now were the wife and children.
Davis asked Soal if he remembered their last conversation, and reminded him that it had been a chance meeting on a train.
At a subsequent séance, Davis tried to describe the house where his wife lived.
There were six steps—or rather, five and a half.
It was not in a street but in “half a street.” Opposite the house there was “something like a veranda.” There was a kind of dark tunnel nearby.
In the house there was a big mirror and various pictures of landscapes, as well as some large vases.
Downstairs, a room with brass candlesticks on the shelf.
A woman and a little boy lived in the house .
.
.

Three years later, Soal learned by chance that the house was in Southend-on-Sea, and he went to investigate.
Everything was exactly as the “spirits” had described it.
The house was on the esplanade facing the sea—therefore on “half a street.” Opposite the house was a bus-shelter—a kind of “veranda.” There were six steps, one of which was very thin.
There was a dark tunnel next to the house leading to the back gardens of the block.
Inside the house there was a large mirror, various landscapes, big vases, and brass candlesticks in the downstairs dining room.
And Gordon Davis himself was in the house, alive and well, together with his wife and five-year-old son.
Davis had no knowledge whatever about the “spirit” that had given all this information at the séance.

It is conceivable, of course, that this was another earth-bound spirit playing games.
But if not, then it was a fragment of Davis’ personality that was wandering around—unknown to its owner.

A book called
Journeys Out of the Body
seems to support this latter view.
The author, Robert Monroe, is an American businessman who one day, to his astonishment, found that he could leave his body—the ability known as “astral projection.” In August 1963, he decided to “visit” a female business acquaintance whom he calls R.W.
He found himself in her kitchen, sitting in a chair and drinking from a glass; two girls were also with her.
He asked R.W.
if she knew he was there, and she replied (mentally), “Oh yes.” He asked her if she would remember, and she said she would.
Monroe said he would pinch her to make sure, and did so; she gave a loud shout of pain.
Later, Monroe asked her what had happened.
She had no memory whatever of seeing or conversing (mentally) with Monroe.
But she was in the kitchen with two girls; she suddenly felt a pinch, and jumped up in alarm.
She showed Monroe the bruise produced by the pinch (which seems to demonstrate, beyond all doubt, that the “astral body”
can
produce physical effects).
On another occasion, Monroe visited the researcher Andrija Puharich in his study, and held a mental conversation with him.
Puharich later agreed that he
had
been in the study and that everything Monroe said about it was correct; but he had no memory of a conversation.

In his book
The Romeo Error
, Lyall Watson reviews the evidence for “astral travel,” and makes the suggestion that human beings may have no less than seven “bodies” or levels upon which they exist, the first three being the physical body, the “etheric” level (the level of the “aura” which is supposed to surround the human body), and the astral level.
The Spiritualist philosophy asserts that when we die, we move on to the “astral plane,” shedding the physical body like a garment; but there are various planes
beyond
this.
This suggests the interesting notion that if human beings possess an “astral body,” they may also possess “bodies” belonging to the various other planes.
And we have already seen that some such notion seems to be suggested by the whole problem of multiple personality.
It is as if human beings contain a whole series of “selves,” arranged in the form of a ladder (a concept I have developed at length in a book called
Mysteries
).

Monroe’s experiences “outside the body” seem to be in many ways consistent with notions explored in this book.
For example, in a chapter called “Intelligent Animals,” he writes: “Throughout man’s history, the reports have been consistent.
There are demons, spirits, goblins, gremlins and assorted sub-human entities always hanging around humanity to make life miserable.” And he, goes on to describe a number of disturbing experiences in his “OOB” states.
A kind of child climbed on to his back, and forced him to “retreat” back into his body.
The next time he “left the body,” the same entity climbed on to his back; when he tugged at the leg, it stretched like rubber.
Two of the rubbery beings—which now seemed shapeless—proceeded to “attack”’ him, although it was with a casual persistence rather than malice.
Finally, a “man” came along, picked up the two entities, and seemed to cause them to deflate.
On another occasion, Monroe was threatened—or attacked—by three humanoid figures who seemed to be hooligans of the astral plane.
He also describes an attack from some sort of invisible animal that seemed to be determined to “take” vitality from him—a struggle he terminated by returning to his physical body, which lay in bed.

These entities begin to sound very much like the beings we encounter in cases of “possession.” But even here, there is ambiguity.
In his book on possession, Oesterreich cites one of the best known cases in the literature, that of Janet’s patient “Achille.” Achille was a businessman who had been brought up in a religious family; returning from a business trip in 1890, he sank into depression, then went dumb.
After waking from a two-day coma, he became convinced that he was in hell, then declared that the Devil was inside him.
He screamed and uttered horrible blasphemies.
Finally, he was confined in the Salpêtrière.
Janet was fascinated by the case.
Achille would curse God in a deep voice, then protest in his own voice that the Devil had made him do it.
Like Father Surin of Loudun, he evidently felt that the Devil was making use of his body, “making him” do things.

Janet made the interesting discovery that he could communicate with the “Devil” without Achille noticing—by placing a pencil on Achille’s fingers, then asking the “Devil” questions in a low voice.
The “Devil” would write replies.

Janet asked who he was.
“The Devil,” came the reply.
Achille asked if he could make Achille raise his arm, and Achille’s arm rose.
When Janet pointed this out to Achille, he was astonished.
“That demon has played another trick on me.” After a number of similar experiments, Janet asked if the Devil could put Achille to sleep.
Earlier attempts to hypnotize Achille had failed, but he now fell asleep, and when Janet asked him questions, he replied without opening his eyes.
Janet now discovered the cause of Achille’s illness; on his last business trip he had committed a “grave misdeed”—probably going to bed with a prostitute.
On his return home he brooded on his guilt, and was afraid he would blurt it out to his wife—hence the psychosomatic dumbness.
Things had quickly gone from bad to worse until Achille fell into a coma, and woke up convinced he was possessed.

Janet arranged for Achille’s wife to visit him in hospital and to pronounce forgiveness; Achille immediately began to recover.
Although he still dreamed of hellish torments at night, he laughed at his superstitions during the day, until the fears and hallucinations vanished.

Janet cites the case as an example of multiple personality: Achille’s own terrors convinced him he was possessed, his anxiety produced a state of tension in which he was in a permanent state of hysteria—trapped in the left brain, as it were—and his subconscious mind proceeded to play tricks.
But the possession-hypothesis fits just as well.
Achille came back from his business trip in a state of neurotic worry, and allowed himself to become more and more anxious—so becoming increasingly weak and passive.
He fell into a coma, which allowed a mischievous “elemental” to take over.
Fortunately; like most elementals, it was stupid, and allowed itself to be persuaded to place Achille in a trance.
As soon as Janet knew what was troubling Achille, she possessed the means of persuading Achille to “fight back.” And slowly, the more responsible and mature part of Achille gained control .
.
.

We may either take our choice of these two views, or we may decide that they are not mutually exclusive.
If “spirits” can pass in and out of our bodies at will, as Kardec says, then perhaps many of the feelings and emotions we assume to be “our own” are caused by the intruder.
Perhaps our belief that we are “individuals” is a mistake, and we are a whole assemblage of people, with one of them more-or-less “in charge.” According to Gurdjieff, we do not possess one “self” but dozens; this is why we are so changeable, and find it so difficult to complete things we set out to do.
Gurdjieff’s comment seems to be only “a manner of speaking” since our changeableness is really a lack of self-discipline.
But perhaps he intended it as more than a manner of speaking.
Perhaps the first step to understanding these mysteries would be to think of ourselves as a “conglomerate” rather than as individuals, as a mass of personalities and sub-personalities and personality fragments.