Supernatural

by Colin Wilson

  Occasionally a person appears able to respond to stimuli embedded . . . among psycho-physical surroundings in a manner at present ill-understood and almost incredible:—as if strong emotions could be unconsciously recorded in matter [my italics], so that the deposit shall thereafter affect a sufficiently sensitive organism and cause similar emotions to reproduce themselves in his sub-consciousness, in a manner analogous to the customary conscious interpretation of photographic or phonographic records, and indeed of pictures or music and artistic embodiment generally.

  ‘Take, for example, a haunted house . . . wherein some one room is the scene of a ghostly representation of some long past tragedy. On a psychometric hypothesis the original tragedy has been literally photographed on its material surroundings, nay, even on the ether itself, by reason of the intensity of emotion felt by those who enacted it; and thenceforth in certain persons an hallucinatory effect is experienced corresponding to such an impression. It is this theory that is made to account for the feeling one has on entering certain rooms, that there is an alien presence therein, though it is invisible and inaudible to mortal sense . . .’

  But why should this ‘hallucinatory effect’ be produced on only certain persons? Why not everybody? The answer lies in those words ‘psychometric hypothesis’. Lodge is talking about the theory of Buchanan and Denton we examined in Chapter 3. And of course, only certain persons can hold an object in their hands and ‘see’ its history. In the same way, according to Lodge, only certain persons can see the ‘tape recording’ known as a ghost.

  Half a century after Lodge, T.C. Lethbridge—who was Keeper of Anglo-Saxon Antiquities at Cambridge—stumbled on the ‘psychometric’ theory as a result of his own observations. When he saw the ‘ghost’ of the man in a hunting kit, he was at first inclined to wonder whether it had been purely a mental picture, perhaps ‘picked up’ from somebody else’s mind. Perhaps the huntsman had been a former occupant of the rooms, and was sitting in his armchair at home sipping a whisky as he thought about the good old days at Cambridge; and perhaps somehow the image had got itself transferred into Lethbridge’s mind . . .

  He was also intrigued by a much later experience. A woman who lived close to his home in Devon—reputed to be a witch—had died under mysterious circumstances suggesting murder. Lethbridge and his wife had both noticed a curiously ‘nasty’ feeling around her cottage just after her death. Moreover, he could step in and out of it, as if it ended quite sharply. Could this, he wondered, be some kind of field, analogous to a magnetic field? He was an excellent dowser—or water diviner—and his experience led him to speculate that certain places can ‘record’ strong emotions, and that people who can dowse are more likely to ‘pick up’ these recordings than people who can’t. In other words, a dowser is more likely to see a ghost than most people.

  Lethbridge developed his theory about ghosts in a number of books written in the last ten years of his life (he died in 1972).1 It is a natural and logical extension of Buchanan’s ‘psychometry’ and of Lodge’s theory about ‘recordings’. But Lethbridge has also placed it on a more scientific basis by suggesting that what does the ‘recording’ is some kind of magnetic field associated with water. The principle sounds very much like that of a tape recorder, where a magnetic field ‘imprints’ the sounds on an iron-oxide tape. In Lethbridge’s theory, the magnetic field of water records emotions and prints them on its surroundings—in the case of the ‘old witch’, on the walls of her damp cottage.

  All this helps to explain why Lombroso’s theory about haunted houses struck many contemporary researchers as ‘unscientific’. The ‘psychometric hypothesis’ seems to explain the majority of hauntings. For example, the ghost of the young man in the Place du Lion d’Or gave no sign of being aware of the presence of the various people who saw him, and that is what you would expect if a ghost is some kind of ‘film’ or recording of a long-past event.

  As to the poltergeist, the ‘mischievous spirit’ theory found little acceptance among investigators even in the earliest days of psychical research. The reason was simply that a scientific investigator prefers natural explanations. And where poltergeists were concerned, there were a number of plausible ones. Eusapia Palladino could cause tables to rise into the air. The famous Victorian medium Daniel Dunglas Home frequently caused heavy objects of furniture to float right up to the ceiling, while he himself floated out of third-storey windows and came back by the window on the other side of the room. Home and Palladino claimed that their powers came from spirits; but they might have been deceiving themselves. One of the first thing that struck the early scientific investigators of poltergeists is that there usually seemed to be a disturbed adolescent in the house—usually a girl. Lombroso himself had noticed how often teenage girls seemed to be involved in his paranormal cases—like the girl who could see with her ear. And his original ‘nervous force’ theory struck most investigators as far more plausible than his later belief in mischievous spirits.

  This younger generation of investigators had another reason for dismissing the spirit theory. By 1909, Freud had made most psychologists aware that the unconscious mind is a far more powerful force than Lombroso had recognised. Lombroso has a section on the unconscious in After Death—What? and it reveals that he thought of it as little more than another name for absent-mindedness or poetic inspiration. Freud had made people aware that the unconscious is a kind of ocean, full of dangerous currents and strange monsters. Moreover, Freud emphasised that the most powerful of these unconscious forces is the sex drive. Could it be coincidence that most poltergeist cases involve adolescents at the age of puberty?

  This, of course, still fails to explain how the unconscious mind of a disturbed adolescent can make bottles fly through the air. But again, science had some plausible theories. In Basle, a university student named Carl Jung was intrigued by a female cousin who began to go into trances at the age of puberty, and spoke with strange voices. And at about the time this started, the dining-room table suddenly split apart with a loud report. There was also a sudden explosion from a sideboard, and when they looked inside, they found that a bread knife had shattered into several pieces. Jung suspected that his cousin’s ‘illness’ was responsible for these events, and he coined the term ‘exteriorisation phenomenon’ to explain them—meaning more-or-less what Lombroso meant by ‘nerve force’. Jung had no doubt that it was caused by the unconscious mind, and a personal experience confirmed him in this view. One day he was arguing with Freud about ‘exteriorisation’ and Freud was highly sceptical. Jung’s rising irritation caused a burning sensation in his chest ‘as if my diaphragm was becoming red hot!’ Suddenly, there was a loud explosion in the bookcase. ‘There,’ said Jung, ’that was an exteriorisation phenomenon.’ ‘Bosh,’ said Freud, to which Jung replied: ‘It is not bosh, and to prove it, there will be another explosion in a moment.’ And a second explosion occurred. Jung had no doubt that he had somehow caused the explosions by getting angry.

  Most modern investigators of poltergeist phenomena would agree with Jung. One of the rare exceptions was the late Harry Price, who wrote in Poltergeist Over England: ‘My own view is that they are invisible, intangible, malicious and noisy entities . . .’ He adds: ‘Poltergeists are able, by laws yet unknown to our physicists, to extract energy from living persons, often from the young, and usually from girl adolescents, especially if they suffer from some mental disorder.’ Unfortunately, Price’s reputation has declined steadily since his death in 1948, with accusations of lying, cheating, publicity-seeking and fraud; so most psychical researchers would dismiss his views on poltergeists as a deliberate attempt at sensationalism. Besides, Price himself admitted that poltergeists seem to be connected with sexual energies; and he described how the husband of the Austrian medium Frieda Weisl told him that, during their early married life, ornaments jumped off the mantelshelf when she had a sexual orgasm. This certainly sounds like Jung’s ‘exteriorisation phenomenon’.

  We may say, then, that
the modern consensus of opinion is that a poltergeist is a person, not a spirit. The view is summed up by Richard Cavendish1:

  ‘Because poltergeist incidents usually occur in close proximity to a living person, parapsychologists tend to regard them as instances of psychokinesis or PK. Since poltergeist incidents are recurrent and arise unexpectedly and spontaneously, they are commonly referred to as instances of ‘recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis’ or RSPK. They appear to be unconscious cases of PK since the person who seems to bring them about is usually unaware of his involvement. Some persons remain convinced that RSPK phenomena are due to the agency of an incorporeal entity, such as the spirit of a deceased person or a ‘demon’ which has attached itself to some living person and which causes the incidents by PK. However, since there is no evidence for such spirits apart from the phenomena themselves, most parapsychologists are of the opinion that poltergeist phenomena are examples of unconscious PK exercised by the person around whom they occur.’

  ‘Psychokinesis’ means, of course, ‘mind over matter’. And it has been widely accepted by investigators since the mid-1930s, when Dr J.B. Rhine, of Duke University, conducted a series of experiments with a gambler who claimed that he could influence the fall of the dice by concentrating on them. Rhine’s experiments showed that the gambler was correct; he could, to some extent, influence the dice to make it turn up sixes. Since then, there have been thousands of similar experiments, and the evidence for PK is regarded as overwhelming.

  Yet it has to be admitted that even its ‘star performers’—Nina Kulagina, Felicia Parise, Ingo Swann, Uri Geller—cannot make objects fly around the room as poltergeists seem to be able to. The Russian Kulagina first came to the attention of scientists when she was in hospital after a nervous breakdown; her doctors were fascinated to see that she could reach into her sewing basket and take out any colour of thread she wanted without looking at it. They tested her and found that she could, beyond all doubt, ‘see’ colours with her fingertips. Her healing powers were also remarkable—for example, she could make wounds heal up in a very short time simply by holding her hand above them. But it was when they tested her for PK that they discovered her outstanding abilities. She could sit at a table, stare at a small object—like a matchbox or a wineglass—and make it move without touching it. She told investigators that when her concentration ‘worked’, she felt a sharp pain in her spine, and her eyesight blurred. Her blood pressure would rise abruptly.

  Nina Kulagina’s most spectacular feat was to make an apple fall off a table. Ingo Swann, an American, is able to deflect compass needles by PK. Felicia Parise, who was inspired to try ‘mind over matter’ after seeing a film about Kulagina, can move small objects like matchsticks and pieces of paper. Uri Geller, the world’s best-known ‘psychic’, can bend spoons by gently rubbing them with his finger, and snap metal rings by simply holding his hand above them.

  Now Geller has, in fact, produced certain ‘poltergeist effects’. In 1976, I spent some time with Geller in Barcelona, interviewing him for a book I subsequently wrote about him. A number of objects fell out of the air when I was with him, and these seemed to be typical examples of ‘teleportation’. Another friend, Jesse Lasky, has described to me how, when Uri was having dinner at their flat, there was a pinging noise like a bullet, and a silver button flew across the kitchen; it had come out of the bedroom drawer of Jesse’s wife, Pat. Geller was standing by the refrigerator with a bottle of milk in one hand and a tin of Coca Cola in the other when it happened. Another odd feature of this incident is that the button—if it came from the bedroom drawer—must have somehow travelled through three walls to reach the kitchen. ‘Interpenetration of matter’ is another curious feature in many poltergeist cases.

  But then, Geller was not trying to make this happen. As I discovered when getting to know him, odd events seem to happen when he is around. On the morning I went to meet him, at an office in the West End of London, he asked me, ‘Do you have any connection with Spain?’ I said that I didn’t. A moment before I walked into the office, a Spanish coin had risen out of the ashtray on the desk, and floated across to the other side of the room, where Geller and a public relations officer were standing. I subsequently came to know the P.R.O well enough to accept her word that this really took place. When Geller left the Laskys’ flat in central London, he buzzed them from the intercom at the front door and explained with embarrassment that he had damaged the door. A wrought-iron dragon which decorated the centre of the door had been twisted—fortunately they were able to force it back without breaking it. Geller explained that he is never sure when such things will happen, or even whether the razor with which he shaves is likely to buckle in his hand.

  In short, it seems that even the most talented practitioners of psychokinesis cannot produce real ‘poltergeist effect’ at will. But then, of course, we already know that there is another interesting possibility: that the effects may be produced by ‘Stan’, that person in the other side of the brain. If there is another person living in the right hemisphere of your brain, is it not possible that he is the one who is responsible for ‘spontaneous psychokinesis’?

  But even if we are willing to entertain this hypothesis, it still leaves us with the question: how does the right brain do it? In fact, is there any evidence whatsoever that the right brain possesses paranormal powers?

  And the answer to this is a qualified yes. We can begin with one of the simplest and best authenticated of all ‘paranormal powers’, water divining. The water diviner, or dowser, holds a forked hazel twig (or even a forked rod made from two strips out of a whalebone corset, tied at the end) in both hands, so there is a certain tension—a certain ‘springiness’—on the rod. And when he walks over an underground stream or spring, the rod twists either upwards or downwards in their hands.

  In fact, dowsers can dowse for almost anything, from oil and minerals to a coin hidden under the carpet. It seems that they merely have to decide what they’re looking for, and the unconscious mind—or the ‘other self’—does the rest.

  I have described elsewhere1 how I discovered, to my own astonishment, that I could dowse. I was visiting a circle of standing stones called the Merry Maidens, in Cornwall—a circle that probably dates back to the same period as Stonehenge. When I held the rod—made of two strips of plastic tied at the end—so as to give it a certain tension, it responded powerfully when I approached the stones. It would twist upwards as I came close to the stone, and then dip again as I stepped back or walked past it. What surprised me was that I felt nothing—no tingling in the hands, no sense of expectancy. It seemed to happen as automatically as the response of a voltmeter in an electric circuit. Since then I have shown dozens of people how to dowse. It is my own experience that nine out of ten people can dowse, and that all young children can do it. Some adults have to ‘tune in’—to learn to allow the mind and muscles to relax—but this can usually be done in a few minutes.

  Scientific tests have shown that what happens in dowsing is that the muscles convulse—or tighten—of their own accord. And if the dowser holds a pendulum—made of a wooden bob on a short length of string—then the pendulum goes into a circular swing over standing stones or underground water—once again, through some unconscious action of the muscles.

  Another experiment performed by Roger Sperry throws an interesting light on dowsing. He tried flashing green or red lights at random into the ‘blind’ eye of split-brain patients (into the left visual field, connected to the right cerebral hemisphere). The patients were then asked what colour had just been seen. Naturally, they had no idea, and the guesses showed a random score. But if they were allowed a second guess, they would always get it right. They might say: ‘Red—oh no, green . . .’ The right side of the brain had overheard the wrong guess, and communicated by causing the patient’s muscles to twitch. It was the equivalent of a kick under the table.

  Unable to communicate in any other way, the right brain did it by contracting the muscles.

>   It seems, therefore, a reasonable guess that this is also what happens in dowsing. The right brain knows there is water down there, or some peculiar magnetic force in the standing stones; it communicates this knowledge by causing the muscles to tense, which makes the rod jerk upwards.

  Most ‘psychics’ observe that deliberate effort inhibits their powers. One psychic, Lois Bourne, has written:

  ‘One of the greatest barriers to mediumship is the intellect, and the most serious problem I had to learn in my early psychic career was the suspension of my intellect. If, during the practice of extrasensory perception, I allowed logic to prevail, and permitted myself to rationalise the impressions I received, and the things I said, I would be hopelessly lost within a conflict. It is necessary that I totally by-pass my conscious mind . . .’

  Similarly, Felicia Parise found that she was at first totally unable to cause ‘PK effects’, no matter how hard she tried. But one day, when she had received an emotional shock—the news that her grandmother was dying—she reached out for a small plastic bottle and it moved away from her hand. From then on, she had the ‘trick’ of causing PK.

  All this underlines something that should be quite clear in any case: that, in a sense, we are all ‘split-brain patients’. The logical self interferes with the natural operations of the right brain. This is why the artist has to wait for ‘inspiration’—for the left brain to relax and allow the right to take over. Mozart was an example of an artist who was born with an unusual harmony between the two halves of his brain, and he commented once that tunes were always ‘walking into his head’—meaning into his left brain. In most of us, a certain self-mistrust, a tendency to ask questions, sits like a bad-tempered door-keeper between the two halves of the brain. When we become subject to increasing tension and worry, this has the effect of increasing the door-keeper’s mistrustfulness. He thinks he is performing a useful service in keeping out the impulses from the ‘other half. In fact, he is simply isolating the left-brain self and making it more tense and miserable. Nervous breakdown is due to the increasingly desperate attempts of this door-keeper to cope with problems in what he considers to be the right way, and which is, in fact, the worst possible way.