Paranormal Nation

by Marc E. Fitch

  Unlike so many books and programs concerning the paranormal, Paranormal Nation does not seek to either prove or disprove the paranormal. There can be no assertion of the reality of such experiences without personal experience verified through institutionalization and definition and, as of now, this does not exist. However, the paranormal does exist in the fact that people believe in it and are influenced by and act upon those beliefs. Paranormal beliefs have penetrated our culture to the very core of our understanding of reality, though few realize it. This work will examine the defined impact of those existent beliefs on our society and our individual lives.

  Religion is, by definition, paranormal, though many would like to separate the two. Religion is based entirely on the belief of that which cannot be proved and is not part of the normal everyday experience. It is based on faith, not science, and involves belief in ghosts, demons, witches, angels, miracles, and various other phenomena that can only be described as paranormal. With the understanding that religion is paranormal, it is then easy to see how it has influenced our lives and our shared history, but the influence is far deeper than only religion. The paranormal calls into question all that we believe we know about reality. While the average person does not consciously walk around day to day debating the existence of ghosts and how it is tied to the birth of our nation (as will be discussed in Chapter 4), the influence of the paranormal is working on a subconscious level, contributing to influences in our culture including religion, politics, science, entertainment, and economics. But it is also an exploration of what it means to be human, to have faith and belief and to question what we know. It is about the need for mystery, the defining of truth, and the search for identity. We are a nation of believers; believers in a wide variety of different institutions, religions, people, and philosophies. It is that very belief upon which the paranormal feeds and prospers, and it is that very belief that ultimately makes us a Paranormal Nation.

  CHAPTER 2

  A Brief History of the Paranormal in America

  There are countless ghost stories, legends, and tales of mythical and mysterious creatures that comprise the very human experience of the paranormal in the United States. But in the history of the United States there are several influential and persisting paranormal mysteries that have formed the haunted landscape of our shared country and cultural experience and have formed the basis of the themes and motifs examined in this work. From Colonial America to the present day, the paranormal has become part of the ethos of the American experience. Today’s fascination with the paranormal has its roots in the ancient history of humanity. Belief in the paranormal is nothing new; ever since man first witnessed a strike of lightning across the sky, belief in gods, witches, ghosts, and monsters have haunted the human psyche and inhabited the social mediums of every age. Ancient Greek plays incorporated ghosts and gods; the Bible tells of Satan and his horde who terrorize humanity for evil purposes and witches who call forth the dead; the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in Europe were preoccupied with the existence of magic and witchcraft; Shakespeare’s ghosts were bent on revenge and justice; and the colonialists believed that the Native Americans were ghostly creatures that haunted the very earth and trees, a belief that persists today. The history of the paranormal also involves a history of the mediums through which the world is experienced. Drama, fiction, radio, television, and the Internet have heralded and fueled beliefs in the paranormal. They have been the mediums through which individuals have connected with others and shared experiences. These mediums draw upon the paranormal—the belief in ghosts, gods, demons, witches, and monsters—and present them with their interpretations and representations of reality. This fueled paranormal belief and, as will be examined in later chapters, today’s medium, the Internet, has reached many more people in new and powerful ways.

  Author and folklorist Bill Ellis uses the term “ostension” to define the physical acting out of a legend or “a dramatic extension into real life.”1 When expanded to include the effects of an entertainment medium, such as oral storytelling, books, television, film, or the Internet, the role of ostension becomes a large and looming social force. Oral or written stories inspire film and television programs which are able to involve a large segment of the population in a dramatic rendering of a legend, ghost story, or any other tale of paranormal manifestation. The medium depicting the story feeds belief among the population and engrains the story into the social consciousness. This inevitably leads to hoaxes, falsities, rumors, and experiences that mimic what has been portrayed through the entertainment medium. It is one of the reasons that the paranormal can be such a difficult area to study: the question of the chicken and the egg can never truly be answered.

  For the purposes of this work, we will concentrate on the American paranormal experience and the examination of the legends that have developed over our short history. We must also incorporate books, radio, and film in the history of the paranormal experience because it is these mediums that have passed down the knowledge and legends and, in some cases, fueled and even created them. The American paranormal experience has been an odd mixture of experience and entertainment, fact and fiction, belief and skepticism—each needing the other to survive and continue. It is necessary to recount these iconic American paranormal experiences and legends due to their relation to the rest of this work and their inherent significance in the history of the United States. The paranormal landmarks listed in this chapter continue to this day, still mired in mystery and always drawing new interest from new generations. Their stories, at times, seem almost archetypal to the human experience as a whole and thus justify their continued existence and retelling.

  SALEM WITCH TRIALS

  The Salem witch trials occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692. While they were not the first or the last witch trials to be held in the New World, this particular outbreak was appalling in the history of America due to the high number of people accused and the high number of people (mostly women) executed for witchcraft. In 1692, rumors and accusations of witchcraft within the small town of Salem, Massachusetts, culminated with 150 arrests and 19 hangings of innocent people. Much has been speculated about the true origins of this tragedy; some researchers link it to mass hysteria brought on by tainted drinking water, while others argue that the accusations were ways of settling land disputes between neighbors. The accusations were originally lobbed by a group of 10 girls who were displaying “odd postures, foolish, ridiculous speeches, and distemper fits.”2 The girls testified that they were being controlled through forces of witchcraft and began accusing some of the town’s resident outcasts. The witch trials represented the dying gasp of the European witch craze that had worked its way across the Atlantic to the New World. By 1692, most of the witch trials that had been plaguing the European subcontinent had come to an end. They were replaced by a new rationalism and revision of judicial laws that required actual evidence to convict someone of witchcraft rather than mere accusations. The Salem witch trials represented a burning ember from the fire of Europe that landed in the New World and began to burn.

  And it has continued to burn. Unfortunately, the United States (as well as Europe) has repeatedly reframed and recycled the witch-hunt every few generations to purge the nation of its perceived ills, scapegoating social tensions and changes on whichever “witch” happens to occupy the national conscious at the time. Europe had the Holocaust against the Jews—who have traditionally been associated with witchcraft and magic in European/Christian belief systems—while the United States had the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, McCarthyism, and the satanic panic of the 1980s (which will be examined in detail later). Even through the present day, female politicians have to defend themselves against accusations of witchcraft (as in the case of Christine O’Donnell) and the assignation of blame for tragedy as in the case of Sarah Palin following the Tucson shooting spree that nearly killed Representative Gabrielle Giffords. Tellingly, Palin, in her statement to the public, used the term �
�blood libel,” a term used against the Jews in the European Middle Ages who were accused of witchcraft, cannibalism, and blood pacts with the devil.

  The Salem witch trials have also remained relevant in their influence on the judicial system. During the trials, Increase Mather penned Cases of Conscience, which argued that much of the “evidence” for those convicted of witchcraft was not evidence at all. He condemned the use of specters, or ghosts, as evidence against the accused and also questioned the witnesses’ stories. “Cases of Conscience called attention to an obvious fact that had become blurred in the quest for empirical proof: central to the validity of any evidence was the trustworthiness of its source and the circumstances under which it was secured.”3 Mather’s argument virtually ended the trials. His philosophy is still a cornerstone of our present-day legal system. Think of the O. J. Simpson trial; detective Mark Fuhrman’s trustworthiness was called into question as well as the method that was used to secure the evidence held against O. J. This lack of trustworthiness on behalf of the accusers and the procurement of evidence led to a not guilty verdict.

  The trials have also lived on through various entertainment mediums. Nathaniel Hawthorne depicted the environment of social fear and irony in his work Young Goodman Brown. Hawthorne was actually a descendent of William Hathorne, a judge who presided over some of the trials and ordered the execution of several women. It is largely believed that Hawthorne changed his name and penned Young Goodman Brown as a means of unburdening himself of his ancestral guilt. Arthur Miller penned The Crucible, which is largely considered an allegory for the Red Scare and McCarthyism of the 1950s.

  The Salem witch trials collapsed under the weight of its accusations, much like the European witch craze, and much like its various reiterations over the course of the United States’ history. Eventually too many people are accused; the accusations are too overwhelming and ridiculous. It is no longer the outcast that is being purged from society, but rather the pillars of the community and the accusers themselves. The Salem witch trials, much like many other aspects of the United States’ history and culture, was a cauldron bubble that burst, only to have a new one well up from the depths of our social soup.

  THE JERSEY DEVIL

  The legend of the Jersey Devil begins not long after the conclusion of the Salem witch trials and before the United States had declared itself independent from Great Britain. As legend has it, in 1735, Mrs. Leeds, a woman living in what is now known as the Pine Barrens in southern New Jersey, was pregnant with her thirteenth child. She cursed the unborn child during contractions. While the baby boy was born normal, it quickly mutated into a creature with a horse-like face, bat wings, and hooves for feet. It ran off into the deep pine forest where it has been stalking ever since. Sightings of this strange and sometimes dangerous creature began occurring shortly thereafter and even prompted a local preacher to exorcise the demon from the Pine Barrens; it didn’t work. While local authorities hoped the story would run its course and die off, the legend has persisted till today with sightings, research groups, television specials, and even its very own professional hockey team, the Jersey Devils.

  One of the premier and most active Jersey Devil research groups are the Devil Hunters, who have been featured in a number of television programs that have become part of today’s paranormal experience. Of course, one of the reasons for the persistence of this story is that people keep seeing something in the Pine Barrens that they cannot explain. According to the Devil Hunters,

  The 1900’s started off with a major bang for the Jersey Devil legend. In 1909, the largest batch of Jersey Devil sightings ever recorded occurred, in which the Jersey Devil was seen by over 100 people in the time span of a single week. This week, January 16th through January 23rd, has been justly named Phenomenal Week. During this time, a wide range of people throughout the Delaware Valley spotted the winged beast. Some sightings were seen by large groups of people at once; other sightings were made by residents who were awakened in the middle of the night to strange noises in the darkness.4

  The persistence of the legend of the Jersey Devil, along with the other paranormal experiences we are examining, form part of the cultural identity of the United States; born before the revolution, they represent a period of mystery, uncertainty, legend, and tradition. The Jersey Devil is part of that history and, real or not, it constitutes an important fiber in the fabric of the American tradition; one that blends modernity with tradition, belief with mystery, and always, a feeling of groundless uncertainty for strangers in a strange land.

  WASHINGTON IRVING

  The American paranormal experience blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. Often one seeps into the other to form the stories and legends that make up the national landscape. Take, for instance, Washington Irving’s classic, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is generally accepted to be Tarrytown, New York, these days, though a section of Tarrytown was officially changed to Sleepy Hollow as a way to honor Irving’s influence in the area. Irving’s now-classic story illustrates the blurring of the lines between reality and fantasy. The legend of the headless horseman is now taken as an American cultural legend, but there are many scholarly arguments over Irving’s sources when he penned this classic. During the 1800s the Hudson Valley was populated with mostly German and Dutch immigrants. Irving draws on the legends and cultural mythology of these settlers and through his writings is able to actually imbue the Hudson Valley with a legendary hauntedness. Irving managed to tap into a legend that had originally been born in Europe and had made its way across the Atlantic and into the Hudson. Owen Davies writes, “The headless or acephalous ghost is one of the classic ghost stereotypes present in folk tradition across Europe.”5 Davies offers several different explanations of the origins of headless ghosts, from the act of beheading the dead to keep them from rising from the grave to people dying from head and neck injuries. England even had its own headless horseman who, “every New Year’s eve, haunted a track between Penselwood and Stourton, in Wiltshire…”6 It is interesting to note that Irving wrote the Legend of Sleepy Hollow while living in England, away from the Hudson Valley.

  The real question is a matter of the chicken and the egg; which came first? The legend of the headless horseman that Irving heard through his travels or his creation of a story that resonated so well with the people and landscape of the area that it was immediately accepted as truth? A second-hand account of an actual witness of the headless horseman was recorded by Edgar Mayhew Bacon in 1897, when an Irish immigrant woman related to him a terrifying night. “It wasn’t late, mebby not mower than tin o’clock, an’ me waitin’ here be the gate for Dinny to com in…when upon me sowl, thrue as I’m standing here, I see right out there in the road a big, black shadder like, widout any head, an’ him on horseback at that.”7 The legend blended into reality and vice versa, blurring the line between reality and what a culture experiences collectively through shared mediums, in this case, books and oral stories. “Ultimately, though, two things seem true: first that the specific hauntings, as well as the general atmosphere of hauntedness, that made a literary debut in Irving’s writing became ingrained and valued ingredients of regional literary and vernacular culture; and second, that the absorption and perpetuation of images from Irving’s tales were possible only because the images were adaptable to the diverse social, political, and cultural conditions and needs of individuals and generations.”8

  HALLOWEEN

  Halloween is the annual American festival in which we celebrate all the frightening, funny, and unknown aspects of our culture; we dress to mimic that which we find frightening or entertaining. But the roots of Halloween are in an ancient pagan celebration of the dead in pre-Christian Ireland, Britain, France, Wales, and Scotland. According to Lesley Pratt Bannatyne, “The festival of Samhain was the most sacred of all Celtic festivals. Its rituals helped link people with their ancestors and the past. The Celts believed that the dead rose on the eve of Samhain and that ancestral ghosts and demon
s were set free to roam the earth…Samhain marked the start of the season that rightly belonged to spirits—a time when nights were long and dark fell early.”9

  Christianity coopted the pagan holiday by using their traditions but blending it with new, Christ-inspired meaning. Thus, Samhain was molded to become All Saints Eve and All Saints Day. Similar to the adoption of the Christmas tree to celebrate Christ’s birth, Christianity was able to use the pagan symbols like the jack-o’-lantern (originally made from turnips) to reinforce its belief system for peoples newly indoctrinated to Christianity. Halloween’s history is as much a blend of religion, culture, and heritage as is the United States’ history as a nation. Through its various rebirths, Halloween evolved to incorporate the Roman festival of Pomona, Protestant Guy Fawkes Day, the Mexican Day of the Dead, and Thanksgiving. It incorporated folkloric beliefs in witchcraft, voodoo from the Caribbean, and the dead returning from the Civil War. The holiday experienced different phases during which it was celebrated in different ways. During the Victorian years Halloween was largely about courtship among young people; upper-middle-class households practiced quaint divinations to determine one’s future husband or wife. Today’s manifestation of Halloween is a different animal but still maintains its roots in the ancient pagan practices. The holiday has become the source of urban legend (apples with razors and poisoned candy) and pop-culture entertainment such as the film franchise Halloween. It has become a night of vandalism and, sometimes, criminal activity, but mostly it has become an adult contemporary holiday during which adults dress up and have parties. Small towns and large cities host parades and parties and, naturally, children still dress as ghosts, goblins, and witches and go door to door asking for treats. While the dressing up in ghoulish costumes may be meaningless to the individual, its popular practice remains an incarnation of the ancient beliefs in ghosts, demons, spirits, and witches.