The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries

by Colin Wilson

  Shortly before his death, F.W. Holiday, author of a classic book on the Loch Ness monster (see Chapter 18), advanced the startling theory that the Grey Man, like the Loch Ness monster and the Surrey puma, and possibly the Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas, is a member of “the phantom menagerie”, creatures who belong to some other world or dimension. In The Goblin Universe (chapter 6) he cites various stories about the Fear Liath More (the Celtic name for the Grey Man), and goes on:

  Pan, the goat-footed god, is not so funny when you encounter him . . . The chief symptom of being in the presence of Pan is panic, which the Oxford dictionary defines as “unreasoning and excessive terror, from Greek panicos, of god Pan, reputed to cause panic . . .” The phenomenon is certainly not localised to the Cairngorms. Hamish Corrie, when he was nearing the summit of Sgurr Dearg on Skye, turned back when he was overcome by “an unaccountable panic”.

  The late John Buchan reported the same effect in the Bavarian Alps. He describes how in 1910 he was returning through a pinewood on a sunny morning with a local forester when panic struck them out of the blue. Both of them fled without speaking until they collapsed from exhaustion on the valley highway below. Buchan comments that a friend of his “ran for dear life” when climbing in Jotunheimen in Norway. The Pan effect may be worldwide.

  Holiday connects “the phantom menagerie” with Unidentified Flying Objects, and cites the authority on UFOs, John Keel, who began by assuming that UFOs are some kind of unknown aircraft, perhaps from other planets, and ended by accepting that they come from “another dimension”, and that they seem to have a distinctly supernatural element. In one of his books, The Mothman Prophecies, Keel speaks of a gigantic winged figure sighted again and again in West Virginia, and describes his own feeling of “panic” on a road close to one of the sightings. Like Lethbridge, Keel found that the area of “panic” seemed to be sharply defined, so that he could walk in and out of it with one stride. And the area of sightings of “Mothman” also has many sightings of UFO phenomena.

  Oddly enough, Affleck Gray is willing to consider the “space visitors” theory as an explanation of the Ben MacDhui phenomena. He points out that in 1954 an ex-taxi driver named George King inaugurated the Aetherius Society in Caxton Hall, London. King claimed that he had met the Master Jesus on Holdstone Down, North Devon, and been made aware that he had been chosen as the primary mental channel of certain Space Intelligences. He was told to travel the world, his task being to serve as the channel for “charging” eighteen mountains with cosmic energy. One of these mountains was Creag an Leth-Choin, three miles north-west of Ben MacDhui, and King asserts that there is a huge dome-shaped auditorium, a retreat of the Great White Brotherhood, in the bowels of Ben MacDhui. Another group of “seekers”, the Active Truth Academy in Edinburgh, also believe that Ben MacDhui “has become the earth-fall for space beings”. But it is clear from Gray’s chapter on Space Beings that he regards this explanation with skepticism.

  If we wish for a “scientific” explanation of the Ben MacDhui phenomena, then the likeliest seems to be that the answer lies in Ben MacDhui itself: that the “panic” is caused by some natural phenomenon, a kind of “earth force” which may be connected with the earth’s magnetic field. There are areas of the earth’s surface where birds lose their way because the lines of earth magnetism somehow cancel one another out, forming a magnetic vortex. “Ley-hunters” also believe that so-called “ley lines” – which connect sacred sites such as churches, barrows and standing stones – are basically lines of magnetic force. Many are also convinced that places in which this force is exceptionally powerful are likely to be connected with “supernatural” occurrences – in fact, that such places “record” human emotions, producing the effects that are described as “hauntings”. This explanation would account for Frank Smythe’s experience of the “haunted” valley where the massacre had occurred.

  The non-scientific explanation may be sought in the belief of most primitive peoples that the earth is alive, that certain places are holy, and that such places are inhabited by spirits. The Western mind is inclined to dismiss such beliefs as superstition; but many travellers who have been in close contact with them are inclined to be more open-minded. In The Lost World of the Kalahari Laurens Van der Post tells how, when he was seeking the vanished Bushmen of South Africa, his guide Samutchoso took him to a place called the Slippery Hills. The guide insisted that there must be no hunting as they approached the hills, or the gods would be angry. Van de Post forgot to tell his advance party, and they shot a warthog. From then on they ran into an endless stream of bad luck. When Samutchoso tried to pray Van der Post saw that he was pulled over backward by some unknown force. All their technical equipment began to malfunction. Then Samutchoso “consulted” the spirits and began to speak to invisible presences. He told Van der Post that they were angry, and would have killed him if he had tried to pray again. Van der Post suggested that they should all write a message of apology, and that this should be buried in a bottle at the foot of a sacred rock. Apparently this worked; the spirits were propitiated, and suddenly the equipment ceased to malfunction. Through the guide, the “spirits” told Van der Post that he would find bad news waiting for him when he reached the next place on his route. In fact his assistant found a message saying that his father had died and he had to return home immediately. After all this, Van der Post had no doubt of the real existence of the “earth spirits” worshipped by primitive people.

  F.W.Holiday’s view was that the explanation of such phenomena as the “Grey Man” lay somewhere between these two sets of explanations: the scientific and the “supernatural”. But he believed that the Western mind will be capable of grasping the answer only when it has broadened its conception of science.

  20

  Kaspar Hauser

  The Boy from Nowhere

  The case of Kaspar Hauser is perhaps the greatest of nineteenth-century historical mysteries. But it is rather more than that. The unfortunate youth was the subject of a cruel experiment in what would now be called “sensory deprivation”, and the results of this experiment were in some ways more interesting than the admittedly fascinating enigma of Kaspar’s identity.

  On Whit Monday, 26 May 1828, the Unschlitt Square in Nuremberg was almost deserted, most people being in the surrounding countryside enjoying the Ausflug (or holiday excursion). At about five in the afternoon a weary-looking youth dragged himself into the square, and almost fell into the arms of the local cobbler, George Weichmann. He was well built, but poorly dressed, and walked in a curious, stiff-limbed manner. Weichmann took the letter that the youth held out to him, and saw that it was addressed to the captain of the 4th Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment. The lad seemed to be unable to answer questions, replying in a curious mumble – Weichmann suspected he was drunk. He led the youth to the nearest guardroom, and the sergeant in charge took him to the captain’s home. When Captain Wessenig came home a few hours later he found the place in a state of excitement. The youth seemed to be an idiot. He had tried to touch a candle flame with his fingers, and screamed when he was burned. Offered beer and meat, he had stared at them as if he had no idea what to do with them; yet he had fallen ravenously on a meal of black bread and water. The grandfather clock seemed to terrify him. The only words the boy seemed to know were “Weiss nicht” – I don’t know.

  The envelope proved to contain two letters. The first began: “Honoured Captain. I send you a lad who wishes to serve his king in the army. He was brought to me on October 7, 1812. I am but a poor labourer with children of my own to rear. His mother asked me to bring up the boy . . . Since then I have never let him go outside the house”. The letter had no signature. The other note stated: “This child has been baptised. His name is Kaspar; you must give him a second name yourself. His father was a cavalry soldier. When he is seventeen take him to Nuremberg to the Sixth Cavalry regiment: his father belonged to it. He was born on April 30, 1812. I am a poor girl; I can’t take care of him. His fat
her is dead”. This was presumably the letter that had accompanied Kaspar when he had been handed over to the “poor labourer”.

  Taken to the police station, the boy accepted a pencil and wrote “Kaspar Hauser”. But to other questions he answered “Don’t know”.

  It all seemed straightforward enough – an illegitimate child left on someone’s doorstep and brought up by a kind stranger. But in that case why keep him indoors for seventeen years? The boy’s feet were so tender – he was bleeding through his shoes – because he was unaccustomed to walking on them. His skin was pale, as if he had been confined in darkness. Moreover, on close examination it became clear that the two letters had been written by the same hand at about the same time, not sixteen years apart. The clothes he was wearing looked as if they had been taken from a scarecrow, and they were obviously not his own. Someone was trying to draw a red herring across the trail.

  The boy was locked in a cell, and his gaoler observed that he seemed perfectly contented to sit there for hours without moving. He had no sense of time, and seemed to know nothing about hours and minutes. It soon became clear that he had a small vocabulary. He could say that he wanted to become a Reiter (cavalryman) like his father – a phrase he had obviously been taught like a parrot. To every animal he applied the word “horse”, and he seemed to be fascinated by horses. When a visitor – one of the crowd who flocked to stare at him every day – gave him a toy one he adorned it with ribbons, played with it for hours, and pretended to feed it at every meal. The audience caused him no concern, and he caused amusement by performing his natural functions quite openly, with no sense of shame. He did not even seem to know the difference between men and women – he referred to both as “boys” (Junge).

  One of the most curious things about him was his incredible physical acuteness. He began to vomit if coffee or beer was in the same room; the sight and smell of meat produced nausea. The smell of wine literally made him drunk, and a single drop of brandy in his water made him sick. His hearing and eyesight were abnormally acute – in fact, he could see in the dark, and would later demonstrate his ability by reading from a Bible in a completely black room. He was so sensitive to magnets that he could tell whether the north or south pole was turned towards him. He could distinguish between different metals by passing his hand over them, even when they were covered with a cloth. (A few years later, the American doctor Joseph Rodes Buchanan would stumble upon the faculty he called psychometry (see Chapter 43) when he learned that many of his students could do the same thing.)

  At first Kaspar seemed to be an imbecile; he lived in a daze. Like an animal, he was terrified of thunderstorms. But the notion that he was mentally retarded soon had to be abandoned. The attention of his visitors obviously gave him pleasure, and he became visibly more alert day by day – exactly like a baby learning from experience. His vocabulary increased from day to day, and his physical clumsiness vanished – he learned to use scissors, quill pens and matches. And as his intelligence increased, his features altered. He had struck most people as a typical idiot, coarse, lumpish, clumsy and oddly repulsive; now his facial characteristics seemed to change and become more refined. But he continued to walk rather clumsily: in the place at the back of the knees where most of us have a hollow he had protrusions, so that when he sat with outstretched legs, the whole leg was in contact with the ground.

  As he learned to speak he was gradually able to tell something of his own story. But it seemed to make the mystery even more baffling. A bulletin issued by Burgomeister Binder and the town council of Nuremberg stated that for as long as Kaspar could remember he had lived in a small room, about seven feet long by four feet wide, and its windows were boarded up. There was no bed, only a bundle of straw on the bare earth. The ceiling was so low that he could not stand upright. He saw no one. When he woke up he would find bread and water in his cell. Sometimes his water had a bitter taste, and he would go into a deep sleep; when he woke his straw would have been changed and his hair and nails cut. The only toys were three wooden horses. One day a man had entered his room and taught him to write his name, Kaspar Hauser, and to repeat phrases like “I want to be a soldier” and “Don’t know”. One day he woke up to find himself wearing the baggy garments in which he had been found, and the man came and led him into the open air. As they trudged along the man promised him a big, live horse when he was a soldier. Then he was abandoned somewhere near the gates of Nuremberg.

  Suddenly Kaspar was famous; his case was discussed all over Germany. This must doubtless have worried whoever was responsible for turning him loose; his captor, or captors, had hoped that he would vanish quietly into the army and be forgotten; now he was a national celebrity, and everyone was asking questions.

  The Burgomaster and town council decided to take Kaspar under their protection; he would be fed and clothed at the municipal expense. In the rather dull town of Nuremberg he was an object of endless interest, and everyone wanted to solve the mystery. The town paid for thousands of handbills appealing for clues to his identity, and even offering a reward. The police made a careful search of the local countryside for his place of imprisonment, which was obviously within walking distance; but they found nothing.

  The town council also appointed a guardian for its celebrity, a lecturer and scientist named Georg Friedrich Daumer. He was interested in “animal magnetism”, and it was he who conducted the tests that revealed that Kaspar could distinguish the poles of a magnet and read in the dark. Under Daumer’s tutelage Kaspar finally developed into a young man of normal intelligence. Like any teenager, he enjoyed being the centre of attention. His appearance became almost foppish, and in the last months of his life he looked not unlike Roman busts of Nero, with his plump face and little curls.

  One of the many learned men who examined him was the lawyer and criminologist Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach, distinguished author of the Bavarian penal code; and he reached the interesting conclusion that Kaspar must be of royal blood. There could be no other explanation for the boy’s long imprisonment; he must be somebody’s heir. Kaspar was obviously not displeased at this notion.

  Then, a mere seventeen months after he had been “found”, someone tried to kill him. It happened on the afternoon of 7 October 1829, when Kaspar was found lying on the floor of the cellar of Daumer’s house, bleeding from a head-wound, with his shirt torn to the waist. Later he described being attacked by a man wearing a silken mask, who had struck him either with a club or a knife. The police immediately made a search of Nuremberg, but had no success in finding anyone who fitted Kaspar’s description of his assailant. There were those in Nuremberg who muttered that there had never been an assailant, and that Kaspar had invented the whole episode to attract attention. Not everyone believed, as Daumer did, that Kaspar was some sort of angel. But most people took the view that his life was in danger. He was moved to a new address, and two policemen were appointed to look after him; Ritter von Feuerbach was appointed his guardian. And for the next two years Kaspar vanished from the public eye. But not from the public mind. Now the novelty had worn off, there were many in Nuremberg who objected to supporting Kaspar on the rates.

  Then a solution was proposed that satisfied everyone. A wealthy and eccentric Englishman, Lord Stanhope – nephew of the former prime minister Pitt – became interested in Kaspar and came to interview him. The two seemed to take an instant liking to one another; they began to dine out in restaurants, and Kaspar was often to be seen in Lord Stanhope’s carriage. Stanhope was convinced that Kaspar was of royal blood, and was evidently fascinated by the mystery. When he offered to take Kaspar off on a tour of Europe the town council was delighted. And from 1831 until 1833 Kaspar was exhibited at many minor courts of Europe, where he never failed to arouse interest. But various members of the Bavarian royal houses, particularly that of Baden, threatened lawsuits if their names were publicly linked with Kaspar’s . . .

  It seems that all this attention and good living was not good for Kaspar’s character; pred
ictably, he became vain, difficult and conceited. Stanhope became disillusioned with him. In 1833, back in Nuremberg, Stanhope asked permission to lodge him in the town of Ansbach, twenty-five miles away, where he would be tutored by Stanhope’s friend Dr Meyer, and guarded by a certain Captain Hickel, a security officer. Then, feeling that he had done his duty, Stanhope disappeared back to England.

  Kaspar was not happy in Ansbach. It was even more of a backwater than Nuremberg – in fact, Nuremberg was a glittering metropolis by comparison. Kaspar resented being made to do lessons, particularly Latin, and longed for the old life of courts and dinner parties. His homesickness became stronger after a brief visit to Nuremberg. He seems to have felt that Ansbach was hardly better than the cell in which he had spent his early years.

  Then, only a few days before Christmas, he died. On 14 December 1833, on a snowy afternoon, he staggered into Mayer’s house gasping: “Man stabbed . . . knife . . . Hofgarten . . . gave purse . . . Go look quickly”. A hastily summoned doctor discovered that Kaspar had been stabbed in the side, just below the ribs. The blow had damaged his lung and liver. Hickel rushed to the park where Kaspar had been walking, and found a silk purse containing a note, written in mirror-writing. It said: “Hauser will be able to tell you how I look, whence I came and who I am. To spare him from that task I will tell you myself. I am from . . . on the Bavarian border . . . On the River . . . My name is M.L.O”.

  But Kaspar could not tell them anything about the man’s identity. He could only explain that he had received a message through a labourer, asking him to go to the Hofgarten. A tall, bewhiskered man wearing a black cloak had asked him, “Are you Kaspar Hauser”? and when he nodded handed him the purse. As Kaspar took it the man stabbed him, then ran off.