The Science of Ghosts

by Joe Nickell

  Could the doctor have been called in the hour of desperate need by an angel who appeared as this woman's young daughter? Was this the work of God's angels on behalf of the sick woman?

  Graham provides no documentation beyond the vague reference to Reader's Digest, which in any event is hardly a scholarly source. In fact, I soon discovered that the tale is an old one, circulated in various forms with conflicting details. For example, as “The Girl in the Snow,” it appears in Margaret Ronan's anthology of Strange Unsolved Mysteries. While Graham's version is of implied recent vintage, that by Ronan is set on a “December day in 1880.” Whereas Graham states that the doctor was “awakened by someone knocking on his door,” Ronan tells us “the doorbell downstairs was ringing violently.” Absent from the Graham version is the suggestion that the little girl was a ghost, not an angel; for example, Ronan says the child looked “almost wraithlike in the whirling snow,” and that “at times she seemed to vanish into the storm.” In Graham's account, the doctor is credited with simply “arranging for medical care,” while Ronan insists Mitchell “set about at once to do what he could for her” and “by morning he felt that at last she was out of danger.” Although both versions preserve the essential element that the woman's little girl had died a month before, Graham's version quotes the mother as saying, “Her shoes and coat are in the clothes closet there,” while Ronan's has her stating, “All I have left to remember her by are those clothes hanging on that peg over there.” Indeed the latter account does not describe a coat and shoes but states: “Hanging from the peg was the thin dress he had seen the child wearing, and the ragged shawl” (Ronan 1974, 99–101).

  VARIANT TALES

  There are many other versions—or variants as folklorists say—of the proliferating tale. Of the five others I discovered, all feature the physician S. Weir Mitchell, but only two suggest the time period. Unlike the Graham (1975) and Ronan (1974) versions, which have the garments in a “clothes closet” and hanging from a peg, respectively, four of the other five variant tales say the clothes are in a “cupboard”; one has them in a “shabby chiffonier” (Edwards 1961, 52). There are differences in the clothes: Colby (1959) lists a “little dress” and “tattered shawl”; Edwards (1961) a “heavy dress,” “hightop shoes,” and “gray shawl” with a “blue glass pin”; Hurwood (1967) “all the clothes the child had worn when he saw her earlier”; Tyler (1970) that exact same wording; and Strange Stories (1976) “her shoes and [folded] shawl.”

  No doubt there are still other versions of the story. Variants are a “defining characteristic of folklore,” according to distinguished folklorist Jan H. Brunvand (1978, 7), since oral transmission naturally produces differing versions of the same story. In this case, however, Brunvand notes that many of the variants are explained by writers copying others (Tyler from Hurwood, for instance) but adding details and making other changes for literary purposes (Brunvand 2000, 132). In any case, Brunvand (1981, 21) observes that when there is no certain original, the multiple versions of a tale provide “good evidence against credibility.” But was there an identifiable original of the Mitchell story?

  Brunvand (2000, 123–36) followed up on the tale (with some assistance from me). Eventually he turned up a couple of versions that supposedly came from Mitchell himself. One was published in 1950 by R. W. G. Vail, then director of the New York Historical Society:

  One day in February, 1949, Dr. Philip Cook of Worcester, Mass., while on a visit to New York City, told me this story which he had heard the famous doctor and writer S. Weir Mitchell tell at a medical meeting years ago. (Dr. Mitchell died in 1914).

  “I was sitting in my office late one night when I heard a knock and, going to the door, found a little girl crying, who asked me to go at once to her home to visit a very sick patient. I told her that I was practically retired and never made evening calls, but she seemed to be in such great distress that I agreed to make the call and so wrote down the name and address she gave me. So I got my bag, hat, and coat and returned to the door, but the little girl was gone. However, I had the address and so went on and made the call. When I got there, a woman came to the door in tears. I asked if there was a patient needing attention. She said that there had been—her little daughter—but that she had just died. She then invited me in. I saw the patient lying dead in her bed, and it was the little girl who had called at my office.”

  Brunvand (2000, 123–36) also turned up an interesting letter from the Mitchell papers. Dated November 2, 1909, it had been written to Mitchell by physician Noel Smith of Dover, New Hampshire. It read:

  S. Weir Mitchell, M.D.

  My dear Doctor:—

  Please pardon my intrusion upon your valuable time, but—as I should like the truthfulness, or otherwise, of what follows established, I have taken the liberty of addressing you.

  A travelling man, a stranger, accosted me a few days since at one of our principal hotels, knowing that I was a physician, asking me if I believe in the supernatural, communications with the spirits of de parted friends, etc.—I assured him that I had never experienced any personal observations or manifestations that would lead me to any such belief. He then related to me the following story, vouching for its authenticity.—He was a member of some organization, I think, in N.Y., and they had lectures now and then upon various topics. One evening it was announced that prominent men were present who would in turn relate their most wonderful experiences. You was [sic] the first called upon, and you stated that you could tell your most wonderful personal experience in a few words. You went on to say that you were engaged in writing late one evening in your library when somebody knocked three times upon the library door. This was thought to be very strange, as electric bells were in use. Upon opening the door, a little girl, about 12 years of age stood there, having a red cloak for an outer garment. She asked if you were Dr. Mitchell, and wished you to go at once to visit her mother professionally, as she was very ill. You informed her that you had given up general practice, but that Dr. Bennett lived diagonally across the street, and that you would direct her to his door, which you did. In a few moments the raps upon your door were repeated, and you found the girl there a second time. She could not obtain Dr. Bennett's services, and urged you to accompany her home; and you did so. She conducted you to a poor section of the city and up a rickety flight of stairs into a tenement house. She ushered you into a room where her mother lay ill upon a bed. You prescribed for the sick lady, giving her some general directions for future guide, and assured her that it was only at the very urgent and persistent efforts of her daughter that you were prevailed upon to come to her. The woman said that that was strange: that she had no daughter—that her only daughter had just died and her body reposed in a casket in the adjoining room. You then looked into this room & viewed the remains of a girl about 12 years of age, while hanging upon the wall was a red cloak.

  I am curious to know, doctor, whether you ever had any such experience, or any approach thereto. Hence these words. Let me say right here that Mrs. Smith & myself enjoyed very much the reading together the “Red City” when running in the Century Magazine.

  Thanking you in advance for your reply to this inquiry. I am

  Yours Sincerely

  Noel Smith

  THE REVELATION

  Mitchell wrote the following at the top of Smith's letter in his own handwriting: “One of many about an early [illegible] ghosttale of [mine?]”—a seemingly tacit admission that the ghost narrative was pure fiction.

  Indeed, Mitchell must surely be alluding to this very matter when, in his novel Characteristics ([1891] 1909, 208–209), the protagonist, North, observes:

  It is dangerous to tell a ghost-story nowadays…. A friend of mine once told one in print out of his wicked head, just for the fun of it. It was about a little dead child who rang up a doctor one night, and took him to see her dying mother. Since then he has been the prey of collectors of such marvels. Psychical societies write to him; anxious believers and disbelievers i
n the supernatural assail him with letters. He has written some fifty to lay this ghost. How could he predict a day when he would be taken seriously?

  So there we have it: Mitchell's oblique confession that he had simply conjured up a ghost tale, filled it with literary verisimilitude (semblance of truth), and sent it forth. Later, as Brunvand (2000, 129) notes, Mitchell was “chagrined to find the public believing that he was presenting the story as the literal truth.” Mitchell—like the Fox sisters, whose phony spirit communications spawned the modern spiritualist movement (Nickell 2007, 39)—discovered that the genie could not be put back into the bottle.

  Legendary American singer Elvis Presley is heralded not only as the major innovator, “The King,” of rock ’n’ roll but also as a godlike figure inviting comparison with Jesus—complete with alleged healings and resurrectionlike appearances. Looking at this mythology in the making can provide insights into the mythology that developed around the central figure of Christianity two millennia before. Here, we analyze Elvis's developing myth, study a recorded séance, visit two sites—one where Elvis's apparitions have been reported (figure 8.1) and another where the apparitions sometimes eat (figure 8.2)—and consider other sidelights.

  ELVIS

  Elvis Aron Presley was born January 8, 1935, in East Tupelo, Mississippi. Influenced by the music around him (including that of the Pentecostal church he attended with his parents), he went on to blend largely white country-and-western music with predominantly black rhythm-and-blues to help create a new American pop-music genre, rock ’n’ roll. With songs like “Heartbreak Hotel,” “All Shook Up,” and “Jailhouse Rock,” plus more than thirty movies (beginning with Love Me Tender in 1956), he became a superstar.

  However, by the late 1970s, Elvis's performances were deteriorating, and his overweight appearance had begun to draw jokes. In 1977, allegations of drug abuse and odd behavior surfaced in a book by three of his former employees titled Elvis: What Happened? Before the star could respond to the charges, he was discovered dead on August 16 at his Memphis, Tennessee, mansion—Graceland. An autopsy revealed that drugs were a contributing factor (Collier's Encyclopedia, s.v. “Elvis Aron Presley”).

  Along with countless others, I can still recall where I was when the news of Elvis's death came. I was in my apartment in West Los Angeles (where I was working as an armed guard while attending Paul Stader's Hollywood Stunt School). As I noted in my personal journal for that Tuesday: “While [I was] writing, there was a knock at my door. I found a young man—about 19, drunk, beer can still in hand, tears streaming down his face—who told me Elvis had just died. That incident is evidence of the impact he had.”

  DEVELOPING MYTHOLOGY

  Others, however, reacted with much deeper emotion. Many of Elvis's followers began to exhibit a “deitific regard” toward the dead star (Banks 1996, 222), prompted in part by Elvis himself. Before his death, the biography Elvis: What Happened? reported:

  While the rest of the world recognizes that Elvis Aron Presley is something more than an ordinary human being, the one person who believes that most passionately is Presley himself. He is addicted to the study of the Bible, mystical religion, numerology, psychic phenomena, and the belief in life after death. He firmly believes he has the powers of psychic healing by the laying on of hands. He believes he will be reincarnated. He believes he has the strength of will to move clouds in the air, and he is also convinced that there are beings on other planets. He firmly believes he is a prophet who was destined to lead, designated by God for a special role in life. (West, West, and Hebler 1977, 157)

  Now, following Elvis's death, grandiose claims began to proliferate. Someone noticed that “Elvis” is an anagram of “lives.” Parallels have been drawn between Elvis and Jesus:

  For example, Elvis was said not to be buried in his grave but to be hiding elsewhere (Southwell and Twist 2004, 20). (In Matthew [28:1–15], when Jesus’ tomb was found empty, the chief priests told the soldiers to say, “His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.”)

  After his death Elvis was reportedly witnessed boarding an airplane (Southwell and Twist 2004, 20), and there were subsequently “numerous accounts of ‘Elvis sightings’ in malls, burger restaurants, and airports throughout the United States” (Banks 1996). An Elvis Is Alive Museum was even created by a Baptist minister with displays of photographs, FBI files, and other memorabilia that supposedly provide evidence that the singer never died (“Elvis Is Alive” 2008). (In the Gospels, after his resurrection, Jesus made appearances to his disciples and many others [e.g., John 20:19–29; 1 Corinthians 15:4–8].)

  In time, Elvis's mythological status began to include “tales that recount his healings of illness, blindness, and sorrow through dreams and his music” (Banks 1996, 222). (As related, for example, in Luke [4:40–41; 18:43], Jesus went about healing the sick, the blind, and the possessed.)

  On the wall around Graceland, Elvis's followers have written inscriptions: “Elvis, we believe always and forever”; “Elvis, you are my God and my King”; and “Elvis, every mountain I have had to climb, you carried me over on your back” (Banks 1996, 222). (The New Testament contains passages such as these: “The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” [1 Timothy 1:14] and “I rejoice in the Lord…. I can do all things in him who strengthens me” [Philippians 4:10–13].)

  Great numbers of the faithful—some 10 percent of the American public—have visited Graceland “as a place of pilgrimage” (“Elvis Presley Phenomenon” 2008). (Christians make pilgrimages to Jerusalem and other sites associated with Jesus in order to venerate him.)

  There have even been “weeping” effigies of the star, like a plaster bust owned by a Dutch Elvis impersonator (“Is ‘Weeping’ Elvis Statue a Hose Job” 1997). (The phenomenon of weeping icons—rife with misperceptions and pious hoaxes—is frequently associated with Jesus, Mary, or a Christian saint [Nickell 2004, 324–30].)

  ENCOUNTERS

  The “Elvis sightings” are especially persistent. They stem from the notions of conspiracy theorists who believe the star faked his death. The “evidence” is generally laughable. For example, on his gravestone, Elvis's middle name appears not as Aron but “Aaron,” as if it were “a method of saying, ‘It's not me’” (Brewer-Giorgio 1988, 55). In fact, although it is clear he himself used “Aron” (probably for its similarity to the name of his stillborn twin, Jesse Garon Presley), the more common spelling often appears and may even have been the original form (Brewer-Giorgio 1988, 50–61; “Elvis Presley Phenomenon” 2008).

  Nevertheless, a still-alive Elvis has reportedly been seen by thousands of eyewitnesses. Critics, on the other hand, have suggested that the sightings can be explained by glimpses of Elvis impersonators (“Elvis Presley Phenomenon” 2008) or even simple lookalikes. Some modern sightings—which emphasize Elvis pigging out on fast food—are obviously satirical (Elvis Sighting Bulletin Board 2008) and examples of jokelore.

  Other close encounters of the Elvis kind involve his ghost or spirit allegedly communicating with others through such means as automatic writing (in which Elvis guides the sensitive's hand), séances (spirit-communication sessions often held by a “medium”), and astral encounters (achieved through out-of-body experiences). All of these have been utilized by one Dorothy Sherry, “a simple housewife” who has been billed as a “psychic go-between” for Elvis. “Ghost hunter” Hans Holzer tells her story in Star Ghosts. He insists: “Dorothy Sherry has never met Elvis Presley. She has not been to any concerts of his, does not collect his records or consider herself a fan of his” (1979, 61–62). Yet he says her contacts with Elvis are among the most “evidential” of his career.

  Why, Sherry can even be possessed by Elvis, or at least Holzer claims (though shows us no photos) that he watched “the usually placid face of Dorothy Sherry change to a near-likeness of Elvis” as the star supposedly “controlled her.” Elvis then provided statements “in rapid succession which
left no doubt,” Holzer insisted, “about his identity and actual presence in our midst” (1979, 63). Through Sherry, Elvis not only provided information supposedly unknown to her, but he also revealed to her that, in her words, “he had known me in a previous life, and that I had been his wife” (67). “Dorothy,” Hans Holzer tells us, “went astral traveling with Elvis practically night after night” (68).

  We thus receive the distinct impression that far from being uninterested in Elvis, Sherry is obsessed with him. Moreover, she has several traits that are associated with a fantasy-prone personality (such as professing psychic powers, having out-of-body experiences, receiving messages from higher entities, seeing apparitions, and so on) (Nickell 2001, 215; Wilson and Barber 1983).

  Holzer does concede: “Although I haven't the slightest doubt that Dorothy never read any books about Presley, nor any newspaper stories concerning him, the fact that these sources exist must be taken into account when evaluating the evidence obtained through her entranced lips” (1979, 62). Indeed, Holzer must know that the very sources used to authenticate spirit communication may be used by a medium (consciously or not) to glean the information in the first place. Alleged psychics and mediums have long made a practice of conducting secret research using the results as evidence, convincing the credulous of their paranormal ability. (For example, according to his former secretary, notorious medium Arthur Ford [1897–1971] traveled with a suitcase crammed with notes and clippings about whomever was to attend one of his séances [Christopher 1975, 143–44].)

  In fact, some of the very information Dorothy Sherry offered as coming from Elvis's spirit (for example an incident about a friend's leg injury [Holzer 1979, 64]) was readily available in the book Elvis: What Happened? (West, West, and Hebler 1977, 165). More over, some of the alleged information is doubtful. Sherry has Elvis telling her his mother had a weakness for drink, “a fact which has never been publicized for obvious reasons,” says Holzer (1979, 65). Actually, the allegation had indeed been made by “some Presley detractors,” but it was emphatically denied by Elvis's close companions (West, West, and Hebler 1977, 139). In any event, why would Elvis—otherworldly or not—choose to reveal derogatory information about the woman he regarded as a saint?