The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries

by Colin Wilson

  The authors leave us in no doubt that many of the “spooky” noises in Mackenzie House were the result of a rumbling boiler. But this fails to explain the ghost sightings of the witnesses. The tacit assumption is that the demonstration about the noises allows us to dismiss actual sightings. In fact, it may or it may not. If you happen to believe, as I do, that there are such things as ghosts, then you would require a further demonstration that the sightings of a shadowy woman and a man in a frock coat were also the result of the rumbling boiler.

  Sceptical investigators all seem to make this same curious logical error. William James pointed out that if you want to disprove that all crows are black, you do not have to try and prove that no crows are black; you only have to produce one single white crow. So a bookful of cases of fraud or excessive gullibility proves nothing except that those particular cases are fraudulent. But one single case of a paranormal event for which the evidence is overwhelming does demolish the argument that the paranormal is, by definition, fraudulent.

  The truth is that the expansion of human knowledge depends on asking questions. A cow learns nothing because it cannot ask questions; the cow’s world is exactly what it looks like, nothing more and nothing less, and there is nothing to ask questions about. But when Thales saw an eclipse he wanted to know what caused it. Newton asked the apparently absurd question: why does an apple fall to the ground instead of staying where it is? And Einstein asked the ultimately absurd question: what would it be like to sit astride a beam of light? All these questions led to fruitful results. If Martin Gardner had been standing behind them with folded arms, they would probably have decided to keep quiet.

  Consider a question raised by the zoologist Ivan Sanderson. On a moonlit night, on a dust-covered road in Haiti, he and his wife both experienced a curious hallucination of being back in Paris in the fifteenth century. (The story is told in full in “Time in Disarray” in this volume.) Gardner would declare that this is a question that should simply not be asked unless the answer is that Sanderson was either drunk or lying. But it is obvious that he was neither. Those who knew him (and I have a letter on my desk from one of them at the moment) agree that he was an honest man who was not remotely interested in the “supernatural”. It is also worth asking how Sanderson’s servants knew he had been involved in an accident – although it occurred in a remote and deserted spot – and that he would be home at dawn.

  And so is another question that Sanderson’s experience leads him to discuss: whether the mind is identical with the brain. He mentions a case of a man who died in a New York hospital, and who an autopsy revealed to have no brain, only “half a cupful of dirty water”. This sounds, admittedly, like another of those absurd stories that are not worth discussing. But in the early 1980s Professor John Lourber of Sheffield University discovered a student with an IQ of 126 whose head was entirely filled with “water”. A brain scan showed that the student’s brain was merely an outer layer, only one millimetre thick. How can a person function with virtually no brain? Lourber, who specializes in hydrocephalis (“water on the brain”) replies that he has come across many cases of perfectly normal people whose heads are filled with 95 per cent of fluid, and that 70 to 90 per cent is actually quite common.

  If a person can think without using the brain, the obvious conclusion would seem to be that the being who does the thinking exists apart from his brain.

  The real problem posed by experiences such as that of the Sandersons is one concerning the nature of time. All scientific reasoning, even the least dogmatic, tells us that it is totally impossible to slip back into the past or foretell the future. Where the past is concerned, we can admittedly speculate that the “time slip” is some kind of “tape recording”. But a vision of the future should be a total impossibility, since the future has not yet happened. In spite of which, there are many well authenticated cases of “glimpses” into the future. (I once presented a television programme about one of these – an Irish peer named Lord Kilbracken who dreamed repeatedly about the winners of horse races, and won money by backing them.) It seems to follow that there is something fundamentally wrong with the vision of the world presented to us by our senses – in fact, we have only to think for a moment to see that there must be something wrong with a logic that tells us that everything has a beginning and an end, and then presents us with the paradox of a universe that apparently has neither.

  This is why the views of CSICOP should be treated with suspicion. It is not simply a question of whether ESP or telepathy deserve to be taken seriously, but whether – as Martin Gardner would like to believe – the universe is ultimately as rational and “normal” as a novel by Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope. This is an easy belief to maintain, because the universe that confronts us when we open our eyes in the morning looks perfectly “normal”, and it is unlikely that we shall encounter any event during the day that contradicts this assumption. But then the universe looks “unquestionable” to a cow for the same kind of reason. We know that the moment we begin to use our intelligence to ask questions, the universe becomes a far more strange and mysterious place. Most scientists would, in fact, agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment, for science begins with a sense of mystery. But a certain type of scientist – and they are, unfortunately, in the majority – would also like to believe that the mysteries can all be solved by the kind of simple deductive logic employed by Sherlock Holmes. And the problems presented by “time slips” or precognitions or synchronicities, or by poltergeists and out-of-the-body experiences, make it clear that this is wishful thinking. We can only keep science within comfortable logical boundaries by refusing to acknowledge the existence of anything that lies outside those boundaries.

  It may seem reasonable to ask: Where is the harm in that? No one blames a policeman for not being interested in mysticism or philosophy – that is not his job. Why blame a physicist for taking no interest in poltergeists and ESP?

  The answer is that his preconceptions about the universe also involve preconceptions about the human mind. In the nineteenth century it made no difference whatever whether a scientist was interested in psychical research or regarded it as a delusion. But by the second half of the twentieth century, science was speculating whether the universe might contain eleven dimensions and whether black holes might be an entrance into a dimensionless “hyperspace” – even whether we might be able to use black holes to travel across the universe. Russian and American scientists have been experimenting with ESP as a means of communicating with submarines under the polar ice. Suddenly the question of the limits of the human mind has become a question of major scientific importance. If we are merely chance products of a material universe, then our position is basically that of spectators, and the extent to which we can “intervene” is limited. But if – to take just one example – Sanderson’s vision of fifteenth century Paris was not a hallucination, but was some kind of glimpse of a hidden power of his own mind, then it would challenge the whole Darwinian picture of evolution.

  Consider the strange case of the calculating twins discussed in the article on identical twins. A prime number is a number that cannot be divided exactly by any other number, like 3, 7 and 13. But there is no easy, quick way to tell whether a number is a prime or not: you just have to patiently divide all the smaller numbers into it and see if any of them “goes” precisely. If a number is very large – say five figures – then the only quick way to find out if it is prime is to look it up in a table of prime numbers. Yet these twins can do it instantaneously, and that is absurd. Quite apart from the mystery of how they can do it, there is the even more baffling mystery of how such a power could have developed during the course of human history. According to Darwin, the basic mechanism of evolution is “survival of the fittest”. The cheetah can run faster than a man and the kangaroo jump higher because they had to in order to survive. Most animals cannot count beyond a few figures. Man had to learn to count as his social life became more complex. Even so, most people are “bad at
figures”. So how could any human being have developed this amazing ability to recognize five figure primes instantaneously, when even a computer would be unable to do it?

  There can only be one answer: that we are wrong to think that human intelligence has to operate like a computer. It seems to have some “alternative method”. And presumably it was the same alternative method that accidentally allowed Sanderson his curious glimpse of the past. That statement sounds reasonable enough, for we all agree that “intuition” seems to operate in mysterious ways. But then we come upon a case in which someone has clearly foreseen the future, and we know this is not simply a question of intuition. The notion that time has a one-way flow is the very foundation of western science; everything depends on it. If precognition is possible, then our basic assumptions need revising.

  For the scientists of the nineteenth century, such an idea was deeply disquieting; that is why so many of them were so hostile to “psychical research”. It seemed the opposite of what all science stood for; a return to superstitions and old wives’ tales instead of experiment and analysis. In 1848 this reaction of science had swung so far that a novelist named Catherine Crowe decided it was time to protest. So she went to a great deal of trouble to gather together some of the best authenticated cases of the “supernatural” she could find – the kind of cases that would later be carefully examined by the Society for Psychical Research – and published them in a book called The Night Side of Nature. It had a considerable impact on thoughtful people.

  But Mrs Crowe was unfortunate. The year of its publication also happened to be the year when strange poltergeist disturbances took place in the home of the Fox family in New York State – curious rappings and bangings that occurred in the presence of the two children, Kate and Margaret. In a code of raps, the “entity” claimed to be a murdered peddler who had been buried in the basement. (In fact, a human skeleton was found buried in the basement in 1907.) These manifestations caused a sensation, and soon “Spiritualism” had begun to spread across America and Europe. Scientists were outraged at this fashionable tide of “superstition” – particularly when a number of “mediums” proved to be frauds – and Mrs Crowe’s highly reasonable arguments were forgotten. In fact she encountered so much hostility that a little over a decade after the publication of The Night Side of Nature she had a nervous breakdown and spent some time in a mental home; during the last sixteen years of her life, she wrote no more.

  Now, more than a century and a half later, Spiritualism has ceased to be a challenge to science, and has become little more than a harmless minority religion; nowadays it is perfectly obvious that it never was a challenge to science. We can also see that there was never any question of science being supplanted by superstition and old wives’ tales, and that therefore CSICOP was quite wrong to imagine that the success of Uri Geller heralded a return to the Middle Ages.

  What it would involve is a recognition that the history of life on earth may be a little more complex than Darwin thought. If paranormal powers, such as telepathy and “second sight”, actually exist, then it also seems fairly certain that they were possessed in a far greater degree by our primitive ancestors, just as they are now possessed in a greater degree by many “primitive” people. Sanderson makes it clear, for example, that he believes that some of the Haitians he encountered possessed powers of “second sight”. One of these remarked to him after his “timeslip” experience, “You saw things, didn’t you? You don’t believe it, but you could always see things if you wanted to”. In short, Sanderson himself could have developed or perhaps simply rediscovered his paranormal faculties.

  In my book The Occult I have cited many cases that seem to illustrate the same point. For example, the famous tiger-hunter Jim Corbett describes in Man Eaters of Kumaon how he came to develop what he calls “jungle sensitiveness”, so he knew when a wild animal was lying in wait for him. Obviously, such a faculty would be very useful to a tiger hunter in India, but virtually useless to a stockbroker in New York. So it would seem that civilized man has deliberately got rid of it. Or rather, the development of another faculty – the ability to deal with the complications of civilized life – has suppressed the “paranormal” faculty, because we no longer need it.

  But is this actually true? Is it even true that a New York stockbroker does not need “jungle sensitiveness”. After all, he lives in other kinds of jungle – not only the commercial jungle, but the concrete jungle where muggers lurk in pedestrian subways and public parks. His real problem is more likely to be the problem that caused Catherine Crowe’s nervous breakdown; that he has allowed civilized life to “get on top of him”. We have all, to some extent, lost that primitive vital force that can be found in most “savage” peoples. But what has really been lost is a certain sense of wonder, a certain basic optimism. The child thinks that this world of adults is a magical place, full of endless adventures: going into bars, driving motorcars, catching aeroplanes . . . He would find it very hard to believe that as he grows up the world will turn into a hard and ruthless and rather nasty place, where the basic rule is, “Nobody gets anything for nothing”.

  The adult’s problem is that his attitudes have become negative. I have described elsewhere how in 1967 I went to lecture at a university in Los Angeles, then went to meet my family in Disneyland. I had forgotten just how big Disneyland is, and when I walked in through the turnstile and saw the crowds my heart sank. But I was feeling cheerful and optimistic, having just given a good lecture. So I relaxed, placed myself in a mood of confidence and then simply allowed my feet to take me to them. I strolled at random for about fifty yards, turned left, and found them standing at a Mexican food stall.

  Forty-eight hours ago I was looking for a book on the Habsburg Empire, and I searched through three book cases without success. The next morning I made another search, and this time found the book on a shelf I had searched several times. Why had I missed it? Because I was in a state of tension as I searched (as if I was in a hurry) and sheer “haste” made me look at it without seeing it. Conversely, I have noticed again and again that when I am in a mood of relaxed confidence I can find things by some kind of “sixth sense”.

  But I have noticed something even more interesting: that when I am in these moods of relaxed confidence, things just somehow seem to “go right”. And this obviously has nothing to do with me or with any “sixth sense”. I just happen to “stumble upon” an important piece of information the day before I am due to write about it, or avoid some unpleasant experience by sheer serendipity.

  Our basic civilized problem is that our attitudes have become quite unjustifiably negative. Everyone is familiar with the experience of how relief can place us in an optimistic frame of mind. The plumbing goes wrong and you have to flush the lavatory with buckets of water for a couple of days. When the plumber finally arrives you feel immense relief, and for the next twenty-four hours feel how delightful it is to have a lavatory that flushes at the touch of a button. And whenever we experience this relief we also recognize that we are surrounded by reasons for delight: with bath taps and light switches and electric toasters that actually work, and doors that open without squeaking, and televisions that provide us with news as often as we want it. It has taken man about fifty thousand years to move out of caves and achieve this felicity. Yet we have become so accustomed to our civilization that we take it for granted, and spend most of our time worrying about trivialities.

  Yet whenever some minor inconvenience is followed by relief, we recognize that we have allowed ourselves to discount our blessings, and fall into a narrow and joyless state of mind. Civilization was designed to give us leisure and freedom; instead, we waste our days concentrating obsessively on minor problems that will appear totally unimportant in a week’s time. And this anxiety-ridden shortsightedness is due to certain left-brain qualities that we have developed over the past few thousand years. (The left-brain deals with logic and language, the right with meaning and intuition.) The only way to regai
n our birthright of leisure and freedom is to recognize that everyday left-brain awareness somehow tells us lies, and that we have to learn to relax into a wider type of awareness.

  Consider the following example from a book called The States of Human Consciousnes by C. Daly King; he is speaking of experiences of what he calls “Awakeness”.

  The first of them took place upon the platform of a commuters’ railway station in New Jersey as the writer walked along it to take a coming train to New York late one sunny morning. On the platform there were several small housings for freight elevators, news-stands and so on, constructed of dun-coloured bricks. He was emotionally at ease, planning unhurriedly the schedule of his various calls in the city and simultaneously attempting to be aware, actively and impartially, of the movements of his body’s walking . . .

  Suddenly the entire aspects of his surroundings changed. The whole atmosphere seemed strangely vitalized and abruptly the few other persons on the platform took on an appearance hardly more important or significant than that of the door-knobs at the entrance of the passengers’ waiting room. But the most extraordinary alteration was that of the dun-coloured bricks, for there was no concomitant sensory illusion in the experience. But all at once they appeared to be tremendously alive; without manifesting any exterior motion they seemed to be seething almost joyously inside and gave the distinct impression that in their own degree they were living actively and liking it. This impression so struck the writer that he remained staring at them for some minutes, until the train arrived . . .