Supernatural (39 page)

If the ‘spirits’ of Myers, Gurney and Sidgwick failed to convince the world of the reality of the afterlife, a far more skilful and flamboyant publicist was now preparing to launch himself into the project.

Harry Price, ghost-hunter extraordinary, claimed that he was born in Shrewsbury, son of a wealthy paper manufacturer.
A brilliant critical biography by Trevor Hall,
The Search for Harry Price,
reveals that he was, in fact, the son of an unsuccessful grocer, and that he was born in London in 1881.
From then until he was about 40, he seems to have supported himself by a variety of jobs, including commercial travelling, manufacturing patent medicines, journalism and giving gramophone concerts.
What is certain is that his lifelong interest in stage magic began at the age of 8, when he saw an itinerant magician and patent medicine salesman, the Great Sequah, giving a public performance.
Price began collecting books on magic, and became an expert magician.
It may have been the interest in magic that led him to join the Society for Psychical Research in 1920—the SPR was then, as now, much concerned with trying to detect fraud in mediums.
E.J.
Dingwall, who was then Research Officer for the Society, asked Price if he would care to come with him to Munich, to attend some seances of a remarkable German medium, Willi Schneider—one of two brothers.
The man who arranged the seances was the German investigator, Baron von Schrenk-Notzing, a friend of Lombroso’s, and the author of a sensationally successful book called
Materialisation Phenomena,
which had aroused widespread scepticism in Germany when it appeared in 1914.
Schrenk-Notzing himself was something of a flamboyant publicist, and Trevor Hall suggests that Harry Price took his example to heart, and decided that this was the way to achieve the fame he craved.
(He admitted frankly that he had always wanted to get his name in
Who’s Who.
)
The Schneider brothers, Willi and Rudi, the most psychic members of a psychic family, were born at Braunau-am-Inn and, according to one friend of the family, the phenomena began after they had spent an evening playing with a ouija board.
Willi had then—in 1916—reached the age of puberty and the family was disturbed by loud knocking noises.
Then objects began moving around, and Willi saw a ghost in the sitting room.
Neighbours became so alarmed about the racket that the family were on the point of vacating the flat.
By means of the ouija board, they tried questioning the ‘spirit’, which identified itself as a girl named Olga Lindtner, who claimed to be a reincarnation of the notorious Lola Montez.
In due course, Willi went into a trance, and Olga spoke through him.
In spite of doubts later raised by Harry Price—after he had quarrelled with the brothers—there can be no doubt that the phenomena were genuine.
The novelist Thomas Mann attended one seance, and has recorded how, as he pressed Willi’s knees tightly between his own, and two other people held his hands, a handkerchief floated into the air, a bell began to ring and then floated into the air, a music box played, and the keys of a typewriter were struck.
Mann was convinced that deception was impossible.

Harry Price and E.J.
Dingwall witnessed similar occurrences, and also saw a white hand which materialised in front of them; they had no doubt whatever of the genuineness of the phenomena, and said as much at a lecture to the SPR.
But by way of keeping his options open, Price helped to edit and publish a book called
Revelations of a Spirit Medium,
in which a fake medium described the tricks of the trade.

In 1923, Price got into conversation with a young nurse on a train; her name was Stella Cranshawe.
He was fascinated to hear that mild poltergeist phenomena occurred around her—a feeling like a breeze, movement of small objects, rapping noises, and flashes of light.
By this time, Price knew enough about psychical research to realise that the girl was probably, without knowing it, a medium.
He persuaded her to allow herself to be investigated.
And at the first seance, a heavy table levitated and moved across the room on two legs, raps sounded, lights flashed, and the temperature in the room dropped considerably.
(At later sittings it became very low indeed.) At another seance, the table hit Harry Price under the chin, then three of its legs snapped off, the top broke into two pieces, then the whole table crumbled into matchwood.
Stella herself found all these phenomena rather boring and, after she married in 1928, refused to take any part in further experiments.
It is possible, in any case, that her powers would have vanished with marriage; many investigators have noted that there is a connection between sexual frustration and ‘poltergeist effects’, and that such effects cease when the ‘focus’ leads a normal sex life.
(She may also have felt that seances were bad for her health—they often leave the medium exhausted.)
In 1926, Price came upon one of the most remarkable poltergeist cases of all time.
In February 1925, a 13-year-old Rumanian peasant girl called Eleonora Zugun went to visit her grandmother at the village of Buhai, and on the way found some money by the roadside, which she spent on sweets.
Her grandmother, who was 105 years old, and had a reputation as a witch, told Eleonora that the money had been left by the devil, and that she would now be possessed by the devil.
The next day, stones rained down on the house, smashing windows, and small objects near Eleonora rose up in the air.
Eleonora was quickly sent home to Talpa, and the phenomena continued there.
A jug full of water rose slowly in the air and floated several feet.
A trunk rocked up and down, A porridge bowl hit a visitor on the head and made a nasty wound.
Eleonora was sent to a nearby monastery, then shut in a lunatic asylum.
A psychical researcher managed to get her removed and taken back to the monastery.
There he witnessed all kinds of things flying through the air.
The ‘spirit’ also began slapping the girl.
Then a countess with an interest in psychical research—Zoë Wassilko-Serecki—heard about Eleonora, went to see her, and brought her back with her to Vienna.
Eleonora was delighted with her new life in the countess’s flat, and began training as a hairdresser.
And the poltergeist phenomena continued—indicating, perhaps, that a poltergeist does not need a psychologically ‘disturbed’ teenager for its manifestations.
The countess observed what most other researchers into poltergeist activity have noted: that the poltergeist seems to dislike anyone actually seeing it move objects; the countess noted that various small items would fall from the air without being seen to move from their original place.
The poltergeist—or
dracu
(demon), as Eleonora called it—communicated by automatic writing, and even spoke a few sentences in a ‘breathy and toneless voice’.
But what it had to say indicated that its level of intelligence was extremely low.

The
dracu
also punched and slapped Eleonora, threw her out of bed, pulled her hair, filled her shoes with water (the poltergeist seems to be able to create water, as we shall see), and stole her favourite possessions.
In March 1926, it began scratching and biting her, as well as sticking needles into her.
The bite marks were often damp with saliva.

Price came to Vienna at the end of April 1926, and was soon convinced that this was a genuine poltergeist.
He took her back to London, where she was subjected to laboratory tests.
The movement of objects was less violent than in Vienna, but the bites and scratches continued to appear.
One day, when she was tying up a parcel in front of several witnesses, she gave a gasp, and teeth marks appeared on her wrist, then scratches appeared on her forearm, cheeks and forehead.

Back in Vienna, the movement of objects-ceased, but the scratches and bites continued, now often accompanied by quantities of an unpleasant spittle.
Subjected to chemical analysis, this was found to be swarming with micro-organisms (whereas Eleonora’s own saliva was relatively free from them).
When she went to Berlin to be studied by Schrenk-Notzing, a researcher named Hans Rosenbusch accused her of cheating—with the cooperation of the countess; but this seems to be typical of the extreme scepticism of certain investigators.
Finally, in 1927, the ‘spirit’ got tired of tormenting her, and went away.
She moved to Czernowitz, in Rumania, and ran a successful hairdressing business.

The countess was convinced that Eleonora herself—or rather, her unconscious mind—was responsible for the attacks: she believed that Eleonora had powerfully developed sexual urges, and that these were fixated on her father (it sounds as if she had been impressed by Freud); so the ‘attacks’ were a form of self-punishment.
Harry Price was inclined to agree, likening the bites to the ‘stigmata’ that appear on the hands of saints and religious fanatics.
Yet as we read the account of Eleanor’s sufferings at the hands of the
dracu
(there is an excellent account in Alan Gauld’s
Poltergeists
), these explanations seem more and more preposterous.
A girl does not go on scratching and biting herself for two years because she feels guilty about her sexual desires, particularly if she finds herself transformed, like Cinderella, into the protégée of a wealthy countess.
Then what exactly happened?

Clearly, the grandmother was in some way responsible for ‘triggering’ the attacks.
Eleonora had reached the age—13—at which such things happen; she was not particularly happy in her present surroundings in Talpa, so there was an underlying sense of frustration.
Peasants are superstitious, and when her grandmother told her that from now on she would belong to the devil and never get rid of him, the effect must have been traumatic.
Eleanora’s energies began to ‘leak’.
And some delinquent entity saw its chance, and made use of them.
It may or may not be relevant that her grandmother had a reputation as a witch.
If magic—and presumably witchcraft—makes use of ‘spirits’, as Guy Playfair suggests, then her grandmother’s house may have been the worst possible place for a frustrated adolescent like Eleonora.
(This matter of witchcraft is a subject to which we shall return in
Chapter 10
.)
As to Harry Price, he continued his triumphant career as the chief Public Relations Officer of the spirit world.
He investigated fire-walking and the Indian rope trick, organised seances, was photographed in ‘haunted beds’ (with ‘Professor’ Joad), and staged an experiment on the summit of the Brocken to try to change a goat into a young man.
(This was a failure.) Price loved publicity, and lost no opportunity to be photographed by journalists.
He was delighted that so many correspondents seemed to think that his name was Sir Harry Price.
Yet he also made the general public conscious of psychical research in a way it had never been before.
Because Price emphasised that he was a sceptic and a scientist, not a Spiritualist, people took him more seriously than they did a ‘believer’ like Conan Doyle or Sir Oliver Lodge.
When he announced in 1933 that he now felt that Rudi Schneider might be a fake, and produced a photograph that seemed to show him cheating during a seance, people felt that he was showing unflinching honesty.
(In fact, the photograph was later shown to be a fake; Price’s motive was almost certainly a desire to get his own back on Rudi for, as he saw it, ‘deserting’ him for another investigator, Lord Charles Hope, whose findings Price denounced.)
Yet in spite of his craving for publicity and his desire to get into
Who’s Who,
Price did much important and valuable work during these years.
In a sense, his motivation is irrelevant; he was a genuine enthusiast for psychical research.
The majority of his investigations were not spectacular: just the plodding, day-to-day work of a patient researcher, sitting with mediums, psychometrists, healers, miracle workers.
And, if anything, Price was inclined to be over-critical.
In Norway, he visited the home of Judge Ludwig Dahl, and had a sitting with the judge’s daughter Ingeborg, whose ‘controls’ were her two dead brothers.
While not regarding her as a downright fake, Price was unimpressed.
Yet one of the dead brothers prophesied that their father would die on August 8, 1934, seven years later, and this was precisely the day on which he did die from a stroke during a swim.

A case which certainly deserves mention in any account of Price’s career is the curious affair of the talking mongoose of Cashen’s Gap.
It was far from being one of Price’s successes; yet it remains an intriguing mystery.

In 1932, Price heard about a farmer called Irving, at Cashen’s Gap on the Isle of Man, who had made friends with a mongoose that could speak several languages.
It could also read minds and sing hymns.
Price could not find time to go to the Isle of Man, but a friend of his, a Captain M.H.
Macdonald, offered to go.

It seemed that the Irving family—who (significantly) had a 13-year-old daughter named Voirrey—had been disturbed by noises from behind the panels of the house: barking, spitting and blowing noises.
The farmer lay in wait with a gun, without success, and tried putting down poison; the creature eluded him.
So the farmer tried communicating with it, making various animal noises; to his astonishment, it seemed to be able to imitate them.
Voirrey tried nursery rhymes, and it began to repeat these.
Finally, it showed itself—a small, bushy-tailed creature that claimed to be a mongoose.
They called it Gef.
And Gef told them he was from India.
Mr Irving seldom saw Gef, except in glimpses, as he ran along a beam, but Voirrey and Mrs Irving often saw him face to face.

Macdonald arrived at the farm on February 26, 1932, and saw nothing.
When he left to go to his hotel a shrill voice screamed: ‘Go away!
Who is that man?’
The farmer said this was Gef.
The next day, as Macdonald was having tea with the Irvings, a large needle bounced off the teapot; and Irving remarked that Gef was always throwing things.
Later, he heard the shrill voice upstairs talking with Voirrey and Mrs Irving; when he called to ask if the mongoose would come down, the voice screamed: ‘No, I don’t like you.’
He tried sneaking upstairs, but the mongoose heard a stair creak, and shrieked: ‘He’s coming!’
And from then on, Macdonald saw and heard no more of Gef.