Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife

by Mary Roach

  I looked into the Psycho-Phone, thinking perhaps Edison had a plan B. According to Tim Fabrizio’s and George Paul’s Discovering Antique Phonographs, the Psycho-Phone did indeed exist, but it wasn’t designed for paranormal communications. It was an early, phonographic precursor to the modern-day subliminal self-improvement tape. As with the tapes, the listener sets the device to go off while he or she slumbers, in the hope that he or she will, say, to use an actual Psycho-Phone example, “wake refreshed—invigorated—and enjoy a regular bowel movement.”

  In 2003, a Psycho-Phone was put up for auction. There was a website posting written by the winning bidder, who believed that she had come into possession of one of Edison’s devices. The woman was understandably puzzled by a transcript of one of the subliminal messages, which she found in the box and took to be a letter from “someone that perhaps was a little deranged”:

  I enjoy drinking clean water or clean water flavored with the juices of pure fruit. Every morning I will get up in time to do a series of exercises to strengthen my body. My scalp is getting healthier every day as the blood flows abundantly…. My hair is growing luxuriantly dark and beautiful. My scalp is glowing with health and new beautiful hair is growing thereon. I am a good mixer & have a wonderful memory.

  These days, electricity, radio waves, and telephonics are the stuff of everyday life on earth. They’ve left the realm of the mysterious, and in their place we have ultrasound, infrared, cyberspace. Ultrasound was the mystery force du jour among paranormalists long before Dave Oester began tinkering with it. In the 1980s, an electronics buff named William O’Neil, who had a taste for the paranormal and a lab full of oscillators and ultrasonic receivers, developed Spiricom, a device for spirit communication. He claimed to be having lengthy two-way conversations with the dead, or anyway one of them: a former NASA physicist named George Mueller. O’Neil and fellow paranormalist George Meek published hundreds of pages of transcripts of the Spiricom conversations, including lots and lots of shop talk:

  (Dead guy) Mueller: By the way, did you get that multi faceted crystal?

  O’Neil: No, I got that five-faceted one from Edmund’s.

  Mueller: Edmunds? Who is Edmunds?

  O’Neil: Edmund’s is a company. Edmund’s Scientific.

  Mueller: Oh, I see. Well, very good.

  The dead are surprisingly poor conversationalists, given all the novel and mind-blowing things going on in their lives. They’re like ham radio operators. I once stumbled onto a long series of ham radio transcripts on the web. Here you’d have these two men, say, a Minnesotan and a Vanuatan, speaking to each other from what may as well be different planets, and they can’t think of anything to talk about but their equipment. “What are you using there, a KW-50?” “Oh, no, I like a Hammarlund. Got the Q multiplier built right in.”

  Dull as their man was, the concept of a chat with a dead man was pretty darn exciting, and Meek made the highly questionable decision to go public. In 1982, he booked the National Press Club ballroom in Washington, D.C., and sent out a press release announcing “electronic proof that the mind, memory banks and personality survive death.” A Chicago Sun-Times reporter expressed disappointment that, owing to technical difficulties, no “live” demonstration was possible. To make up for it, Meek played a tape of what he claimed were the astral voices—presumably obtained via Spiricom—of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst and … the great Shakespearean actress Dame Ellen Terry.

  Unlike Mr. Flint, Meek and O’Neil had no apparent plans to profit from their project. They let someone else write the book, and they handed out blueprints for the device at the press conference, encouraging others to try to replicate what they’d done. (No one succeeded.) If it was a hoax, it was a perplexing one. Way too much work for questionable payoff. If it wasn’t a hoax, it was … what? Real? There seemed to be no possible middle ground. I asked Dean Radin what he thought about it. “The middle ground between genuinely true and outright faking,” he offered, “is unconscious delusion.”

  LIKE MANY OLD structures in England, Staffordshire’s Westwood Hall has a long-standing reputation for being haunted. In 1998, the school’s caretaker was preparing a paper on the history of one Lady Prudentia Trentham, who died on the grounds and is thought to be the source of the alleged haunting. When the caretaker spell-checked his paper, strange things began to happen. For instance, when the program highlighted the misspelling “Prudentiaa,” it did not offer “Prudentia” as the proper spelling. The spellings it suggested were: “dead,” “buried,” and “cellar.” This sort of thing didn’t happen when he spell-checked other documents, and it happened on two different computers.

  Thinking that the discarnate Lady Prudentia was trying to communicate with him via his spell-checker,* the caretaker called the Society for Psychical Research. The SPR took the claim seriously. This wasn’t, after all, the first purported instance of dead spirits using computers to communicate. Far from it. Spirits have also, if you buy into the literature on “instrumented transcommunication” (a close cousin of EVP), made use of TVs, VCRs, alarm clocks, and answering machines.

  In 2001, the team of SPR researchers who were looking into the case hired software consultants Julie and David Rousseau to come take a look at the computer and the software to see if perhaps the caretaker’s system had been hacked into by capricious spirits still of the flesh. The Rousseaus confirmed that an experienced programmer could, without too much trouble, create the effects that the caretaker had seen. But a program like this would be simple to detect, and they quickly determined there’d been no foul play.

  This left two possibilities: a bug in the software or a ghost in the machine. To test for the former, they attempted to recreate the phenomena on a document and computer of their own, using all the same steps and software (Microsoft Word 6) that the caretaker had been using. They soon succeeded. (It is worth pointing out that Julie Rousseau is open to the possibility that paranormal forces can influence computers. She serves on the council of the SPR.)

  The bug involved the custom dictionaries that the caretaker had set up and the unorthodox manner in which he had modified them. Our man had noticed that the peculiar spell-check offerings always seemed to involve words from one of his custom dictionaries. Because he believed the spell-check anomalies to be communications from Lady Prudentia, he had decided to expand her vocabulary by seeding his custom dictionary with dozens of ordinary words—rather than simply the proper nouns and place names related to the file.

  Rousseau found that when she used Word 6 on her computer, the bug commenced on the twenty-first misspelling of custom dictionary words. The anomalous offering, she figured out, is simply the word that was last taken from the custom dictionary as an alternative suggestion for a misspelled word. Because the caretaker had four custom dictionaries operating, the bug kicked in much sooner than it would otherwise—which helped explain why the bug hadn’t been reported by other users.

  You would think that the matter would have come to rest there, but it has not. The caretaker insists that some of the anomalous suggestions are not words he added to his custom dictionaries. Again, the Rousseaus offered a possible explanation. The man had a side business typing theses; presumably some of the odd alternates are custom dictionary entries related to these papers. Julie Rousseau gives the example of “Pennyhough,” which was offered as an alternative for a misspelling of “Trentham.” (Pennyhough happens to be the surname of a cleaning lady who reported having seen Lady Prudentia Trentham’s ghost.) A web search revealed several authors of scholarly works who are named Pennyhough, so it isn’t hard to imagine that a student might have cited the name in a thesis and that it was added to the custom dictionary years back and since forgotten.

  Julie Rousseau said that the researchers told her they find some of her explanations far-fetched and do not consider the case closed. It is interesting to come across people who feel that a ghost communicating via a spell-checker is less farfetched than a software glitch. Nonethel
ess, kudos to the pair for having IT professionals look into it.

  There is a lesson here for both sides of the spirit divide, and that is that hasty assumptions serve no one. To make up one’s mind based on nothing beyond a simple summary of events—as believers and skeptics alike tend to do—does nothing to forward the pursuit of solid answers.

  DAVE IS STILL talking. I’ve learned a lot of new things this morning, many of which make me want to raise my hand and go, What??? just like that, with three question marks. I want to say, Where’s your proof, Dave? How do you know ghosts drain power off your car batteries to manifest themselves? Where did you read that cemetery planners chose their locations to be near “portal openings”? Portal openings!? I’ll show you portal openings … But I seem to be the only one having these thoughts, so I keep quiet.

  The last topic of the morning is spirit photography. Dave is talking about “spirit orbs,” supposed blobs of energy that are very similar to what shows up on your prints if a dust speck or raindrop was right in front of the lens. People often e-mail Dave photos of “spirit orbs” that are obviously dust, and he then has the unpleasant task of telling them this.

  “People used to say that when old buildings were renovated, the renovation disturbed ghosts, because they’d get a lot of orbs on their pictures.” Dave smiles. “Well, renovation also disturbs dust.”

  In other words, consider all angles. Take the link between electromagnetic fields and spirits. I called the manufacturer of the TriField Natural EM Meter and asked what made the company believe they had grounds to market it as a Ghost Detector. No studies support this; as Dean Radin puts it, “there is no evidence that EMF meters detect anything other than EMF.” The man on the phone said he didn’t know for sure, but he assumed that someone, possibly more than one person, had noticed that an EMF meter registered a jump when he or she was standing in a spot that felt haunted.

  But what if we take the ghost out of the equation? What if exposing someone’s brain to certain types of electromagnetic fields could create a feeling of an invisible presence? What if the energy is the ghost?

  Aiming to find out, I took my brain to Canada.

  *The Donner Party spent the winter of 1846–47 stranded near Donner Lake, in the Sierras of California. When it became clear there wasn’t food to last the winter, seventeen of the strongest set out to get help. Another blizzard hit, stranding the rescue party at what came to be called the Camp of Death. The flesh and organs of four who died there—though not, I am relieved to report, the man named Mr. Burger—gave the others the strength to make it over the mountains. Lest you doubt the direness of the situation, a quote from Unfortunate Emigrants: “January 1, 1847. They made their New Year’s dinner of the strings of their snow-shoes. Mr. Eddy also ate an old pair of moccasins.” By the time help arrived, four months hence, most of those left alive had resorted to the food that knows no cookbook.

  *It’s possible that the history of creatively interpreted white noise dates as far back as the Oracle at Delphi, where the priestess sat above a crack in the temple floor, below which could be heard the roiling waters of a spring. Dean Radin, senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, has posited that the white-noise-like sounds of the water may have brought on auditory hallucinations. (The more common theory holds that ethylene fumes issuing from the spot were sponsoring the woman’s altered state of mind. Ethylene—better known for making bananas ripe than for making priestesses bananas—can cause hallucinations in concentrated amounts.)

  *Literally, upon occasion: EVP literature holds that Jürgenson has had cameos on the tape recordings of an Italian EVP enthusiast, while Konstantin Raudive has made repeated appearances in the static on the TV screen of a couple in Luxembourg.

  *A note about spirit guides. You will occasionally read piffle about differences between the EEG of a medium and that of her guide, or control, and how this proves the guide’s existence as a separate entity. In 1981, Gary Heseltine, now an epidemiologist with the Texas Department of Public Health, experimented with the EEGs of two unnamed mediums and their spirit guides Shaolin and Monsanto (the “Comanche chief,” not the fertilizer concern). Heseltine writes that since sensory and metabolic input affect EEGs, you would have to go to the extreme of “paralyzing and maintaining the medium on life support” to control these factors. Even then, he doubted you’d have proof. “Short of a high brain stem transection,” Heseltine concluded, “it is difficult to conclude that differences in the EEG cannot be a consequence of differing sensory inputs.”

  *Oh, for the days when a nation’s highest-paid recording star could be a beefy six-foot-two oysterman’s daughter named Clara Butt. So remarkable was her voice that Madame Butt, as she was known early on, was recruited at a tender age to sing private concerts for Queen Victoria. Her lauded career in opera paved the way for what must have been a much-welcomed shift in titularity to Dame Clara.

  *The Ometer decline has continued, largely at the hands of the textile industry, who have given us the FadeOmeter, the Crackometer, and the Launder-Ometer (not to mention the Atlas Perspiration Tester, the Shirley Stiffness Tester, and the Evenness Tester 3 With Hairiness Module). Further Ometer abuse comes from the Centers for Disease Control (the Flu-O-Meter), the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds—their Splatometer tracks the abundance of flying insects, whose decline spells trouble for birds—and Gary Ometer, former Director of Debt Management for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. I was hesitant to phone Gary, for his title led me to expect a man of, shall we say, high scores on the Shirley Stiffness Tester, but he was a good sport about it. Gary blames shabby Ellis Island bookkeeping for his family’s contribution to the Ometer situation.

  *The publicity stunt is one of the lesser-known Edison inventions. In 1903, as part of a scheme to discredit the alternating current system (Edison was a DC man), he got involved in the Topsy-the-elephant situation. The Coney Island pachyderm had been sentenced to die for having killed three of her handlers. (One fed her a lit cigarette, so in my mind the jury’s still out.) The swift and humane execution of an elephant was proving troublesome. Cyanide had failed, and hanging promised all manner of logistical turmoil. Edison called the ASPCA and suggested electrocution. He filmed the highly effective dispatch, and used it as proof of the dangers of AC.

  *Until he figured out that his “halo” was a reflection of sunlight at a certain angle, Watson believed himself to have been singled out for some great purpose. “I told my mother about my halo,” he writes. While Mrs. Watson did not come right out and say she could see it, she did the motherly thing and said it “didn’t seem at all strange to her that her son was thus distinguished.” Emboldened, Watson confided in Alexander Graham Bell. Bell told him to get his eyes examined.

  *I can easily relate to the feeling that one’s spell-checker is possessed. Mine recently informed me that “fucking” is not a word, but that “cucking,” “rucking,” and “funking” were all good words that I might like to substitute.

  9

  Inside the Haunt Box

  Can electromagnetic fields make you hallucinate?

  IT IS HARD to imagine being terrified in Sudbury, Ontario. A bland, friendly mining city 150 miles north of Toronto, Sudbury is best known for the Big Nickel, a thirteen-ton statue of Canadian pocket change. Curling is popular here. Under the category “Other Fun Stuff ” on the Sudbury website, the tourism people have listed a vegetable store.

  Nevertheless, fear is on the agenda tonight. I’m heading to the Consciousness Research Lab at Laurentian University to be electromagnetically “haunted.” Michael Persinger, the neuroscience professor who runs the lab, has a theory about ghosts. The theory holds that certain patterns of electromagnetic field activity—both the earth’s own natural kind and the man-made kind created by wiring and appliances and power lines—can render the brain more prone to hallucinations. In particular, the sort that involve an invisible, sensed presence.

  In a study published in 1988, Persinger compared
thirty-seven years of dated Fate magazine haunting reports with geomagnetic activity for those dates. He found a nice correlation, and he wrote up his findings in Neuroscience Letters. In a similar study three years later, University of Iowa psychologists Walter and Steffani Randall examined monthly fluctuations in solar winds (which influence the earth’s geomagnetics) to see if they mirrored monthly ups and downs in “humanoid hallucinations” culled from old Society for Psychical Research records. Indeed, both showed peaks in April and September, with a trough in between.

  Persinger then turned his attention to man-made electromagnetic fields (EMFs). In 1996, a Sudbury couple had contacted him about strange goings-on in their house. They heard breathing and whispering sounds and at one point felt someone touching their feet as they lay in bed. The husband saw an apparition of a woman who appeared to move through the couple’s bed. Persinger and two colleagues drove out to the house and set up equipment to monitor EMFs in the various rooms. True to his theory, the house was an electromagnetic free-for-all. Wires were poorly grounded and circuits overloaded with electronic equipment. Not only were the EMFs most intense in the places where the couple had experienced their “ghosts,” but they showed the telltale irregularities that Persinger has come to see as the hallmarks of haunt-prompting fields.

  If electromagnetic fields like these could be generating “hauntings,” then it’s reasonable to assume you could create what Persinger calls a synthetic ghost by exposing people to similar, laboratory-generated EMFs. This is what Dr. Persinger will, at my request, be doing to me tonight. In the back of his lab is a soundproof chamber—a haunt box—outfitted with a comfy chair, in which subjects sit while Persinger directs complex patterns of EMFs into their brains via an electromagnet-bedecked, wire-sprouting helmet.