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People From The Other World

2012-01-29T12:42:00.000-08:00

Inside of Cabinet.

The people who emerged from the cabinet in the Eddy family’s circle-room seemed natural in some respects, as chronicled by Henry S. Olcott in his nonfiction case study that presented “a detailed description of the strange things seen, heard, and felt by the author at the Eddy Homestead, in the township of Chittenden, Vermont” during several months in 1874. The beings seen at the ‘materialization seances’ of William Eddy were distinctly ‘people’ and not any manner of vague or translucent ‘phantoms.’ Olcott commented that he had witnessed “too many proofs of the materiality of the visible spirit-forms to fancy them imponderable and unsubstantial.”

The Circle-Room.

The book People From The Other World (1875) evolved from a series of articles written by Henry S. Olcott (1832-1907) for The Daily Graphic newspaper. To chronicle his investigation, Olcott was accompanied during his visit by an artist assigned to make sketches of the proceedings. Olcott’s first writing and reporting had been in the field of agriculture prior to the Civil War. He cited in the book “portents and marvels” from recent years and from earlier epochs, observing: “. . . the present dispensation was ushered in at the little cabin of Michael Weekman, in 1847, where, in the family of John D. Fox, its then lessee, there bubbled up the tiny spring that is now so great a river.” Beyond the Fox family having experienced the ‘Rochester Knockings,’ other families that soon became known for experiencing the unexplained phenomena that became associated with Spiritualism were the Davenports of Buffalo, New York and the Koons family of Athens County, Ohio.

Olcott mentioned that he had originally approached his investigation from his “first position of ascribing all these Eddy phenomena to trickery” but the obvious reality of the phenomena became readily apparent. An account of his first visit of five days at the Eddy Homestead was published in the New York Sun and aroused great interest. His second visit to Chittenden commenced on September 17, 1874.

People From The Other World includes biographical information about the Eddys. Olcott reported that in March 1872 a significant event in the lives of the family had occurred. “William had cut his foot very badly with an axe, and was confined to his bed in an adjoining room. Suddenly, without warning, the grandmother’s spirit in full materialized form appeared at the threshold, and gave instruction for some salves to apply to the wound, and a cooling draught to abate the fever that had set in; after which she disappeared.” During this period, other materializations of people followed and William was instructed that to develop his mediumship “he must no longer sit for the instrument-playing exhibitions, as he had been doing for a number of years, but must go into the cabinet or closet alone . . ."

The Eddys’ circle room opened to the public on January 1, 1874 with “a dark-circle at which the spirit, or what is claimed to be the spirit, of a sailor, named George Dix, made a lengthy dedicatory address.” Olcott had a questioning orientation regarding the visitors from the other world. William conducted nightly materialization seances except on Sundays. The Eddy parents were deceased. Zephaniah Eddy was described as “a bigoted religionist, and very little educated.” His wife Julia had inherited from her mother the gift of 'foreseeing' or 'clairvoyance.' Olcott reported about their children:

Mysterious sounds were heard about their cradles, strange voices called through the rooms they were in, they would play by the hour with beautiful children, visible only to their eyes and the mother's, who brought them flowers and pet animals, and romped with them; and once in a while, after they were tucked away in bed, their little bodies would be lifted gently and floated through the air by some mysterious power.

The Mother.

One surprising instance of the cruelty begotten by ignorance, is afforded in the means resorted to once to bring William Eddy out of a trance. Pushing, pinching, and blows proving in vain, Anson Ladd, with the father’s permission, poured scalding hot water down his back, and, as a last heroic operation, put a blazing ember from the hearth on his head. But the lad slept on, and the only effect of this cruelty was the great scar that he has shown me on his crest.

The children traveled throughout the United States on exhibition and also were brought to London. The family maintained diaries of their experiences although William, without schooling, was “almost illiterate.” Olcott described the children’s assorted ordeals while touring, some similar to those faced by the Davenport brothers, whose public exhibitions presented some similar manifestations to the Eddy ‘light-circles.’ There were places where the Eddy children were “stoned, hooted at, and followed to their hotels by angry crowds.” Olcott reported:

. . . they travelled for the profit of others; by which I meant to say that when William, Horatio and Mary were young children, their father, having failed to cowhide their demons out of them, hired them out to a showman for four years, they receiving nothing but their bare expenses; and that at the expiration of that time they were hired by various other speculators, and during the ensuing eleven years received an average of under ten dollars a month apiece.

Olcott quoted from one passage of Horatio’s diary from 1867: “This day we suffered very much by severe tying and abuse from those who professed to be Spiritualists . . . We thanked the Divine Power for preserving us from the gross treatment of our enemies." Below are some of the depicted abuses. Olcott reported that in the lower left predicament "the victim was obliged to stay two mortal hours, the spirits refusing to manifest themselves under such disturbed conditions, and the committee, with astonishing cruelty, declaring they would keep him there until they did."

Sufferings of Mediums.

Among the many uncanny occurrences reported by the family during the boys’ childhood was hearing and seeing “an old-fashioned, open carriage, drawn by a pair of white horses with plumes on their heads, turn rapidly into the yard and stop.” As all eyes were fixed upon the lady on the back seat, she and the carriage began to fade. A week before Mrs. Eddy’s earthly life ended after a lingering illness, her own dead mother was reported to have materialized holding a basket of white roses: “She told them that Mrs. Eddy would soon come ‘over the river’ to her, and she was waiting to welcome her on the farther shore.” Roses have been a symbol for love and regeneration throughout the ages. Personally, when I (Mark Russell Bell) am asked about experiencing God’s Love, I need only say that from the age of five and for more than twenty-five years I lived in Pasadena, California!

Olcott mentioned that William invariably entered a deep trance when “materializations” occurred. Other trances were observed when Horatio and the others were “obsessed by other spirits who communicate orally to their personal friends, or when levitated, or when sitting for powerful physical manifestations in the light or dark.” Olcott further reported: “Upon recovering from this latter condition, the medium seems to remember nothing that has befallen him . . .”

The Sleeping Medium.

Olcott began attending circle seances on the rainy evening of his return to Chittenden when a company of twenty-five people assembled. Shortly after seven p.m., William entered the cabinet and there was a period of vocal and instrumental music. Then the voice of elderly ‘Mrs. Eaton’ was heard and next there emerged from the curtains of the cabinet the Indian woman 'Honto,' about whom Olcott wrote: “I have seen her about thirty times . . . She changes her dress frequently . . . A remarkable fact is, that at times her hair is very long . . ." On this evening, she suddenly produced “a long piece of gauzy fabric, apparently from the air itself . . . its strands were perfectly opaque. Then throwing it over her head as a Spanish woman wears her mantilla, she produced another, woolen, black and apparently striped; and then passed both behind the curtain.” After Honto allowed a seance attendee to feel the beating of her heart, there was seen a succession of five other Native Americans and then various relatives of several seance attendees.

Mrs. Eaton, “whose shrill voice we had so often heard from the cabinet up-stairs” was seen on one occasion during a sitting in the reception room at Olcott's suggestion, leading him to proclaim, “. . . it was now unquestionable that the voice up-stairs was hers and not the medium’s.”

Other phenomena witnessed by Olcott at the Eddy homestead included “writing of names of deceased persons upon cards” when only the hands were seen; “the flashing of phosphorescent lights”; “the touching and patting of our persons by supposed spirit-hands”; and “the improvisation of rhymes by a voice, upon a subject named by any person present.”

During Madame Blavatsky’s visit to the Eddy Homestead, she sometimes played the parlor-organ during seances and this brought her only several feet away from the people who emerged from the cabinet.

A Musical Spirit.

In the book’s Chapter XII subtitled “Is It An Occult Force?,” Olcott acknowledged his introspection brought about by his investigation at the Eddy Homestead: “Result: A possibility that, by some occult control over now unknown forces of nature, beings, other than those in the body can manifest their presence to sight, touch, and hearing. If beings, what beings? . . . and now the reader is prepared to let me take him by the hand through this maze, and with me, ‘try the spirits, if they be of God.’”

Below is a detail of a “Fac-Simile of Spirit-Writing” that appeared in The Daily Graphic.

Olcott wrote about a memorable speech heard on the evening of October 2, 1874 —

That afternoon, I had accompanied the artist to the graveyard to take a sketch of Mrs. Eddy’s grave, and as we turned to come away I remarked to him, that it would be a good test of the genuineness of the Eddy manifestations, if the spirit of Mrs. Eddy would appear that night and make some allusion to our present visit. We agreed to keep the matter to ourselves and see what might come of it.

We reached home without meeting any person, and even if we had been seen, it would naturally be supposed that we had merely been taking one of our usual strolls. The evening came, and we met in the circle-room at the regular hour. The company numbered fourteen, and nine spirits showed themselves. The first was old William Brown, who spoke a few words to his son; then a middle-aged lady named Maria Anna Clarke, dressed in dark clothing; then a Mrs. Griswold, who was murdered in Vermont not long ago, and who, upon the occasion of a former visit to this circle-room, gave all the details of the crime to an old friend of hers, a Mr. Wilkins, who was present. Then forth stepped Mrs. Eddy herself, and stood there silent and motionless, looking at the artist and myself, who sat together. She bowed and retired, and we exchanged glances as though not satisfied with the test; but immediately the spirit returned, and evidently addressing her discourse to us, said: “Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?” I had expected her to speak in the whispered accents of old Mrs. Pritchard, Maggie Brown, and certain other lady-spirits, but she pitched her voice so high and spoke so loud, that she might have been heard in the largest auditorium in New York city.

Mrs. Eddy Addressing The Audience.

The surprise was so great that the unexpected sound thrilled me to the marrow, and I sat staring through the gloom at the woman as I never did at a speaker before or since. She was of large frame, and had the ample figure that is represented in the portrait published with a former chapter. She wore a white waist and dark skirt. Her hair was in ringlets, as I discovered when she bent forward in profile, in the animation of her discourse. She said, addressing me: “Your writings are true, and be assured the Truth will prevail. A thousand spirits are watching your every step, and wishing you Godspeed. They see the rapid spread of Truth upon earth; and they and a countless host besides are helping it on. Go on, my friend; we will welcome you in gratitude and joy when you come to the other world, for daring to tell the truth, and helping to disseminate it. I thank you for your kindness to my children, who have suffered so much and so long for the good cause.” It is needless to say that, barring all compliments, I needed no stenographer to fix upon my memory this astounding address, of which I have given only a fragment. She spoke of her own sufferings and trials upon earth, and denounced with bitter and unstinted anger all who slander and persecute mediums, especially her own children. Her remarks showed very clearly the deep, and hardly eradicable impression made upon her soul by the treatment she received while living here, and the case offers a subject for the thoughtful consideration of psychologists.

Previous post about People From The Other World: “When Col. Olcott Met Madame Blavatsky”

H. S. Olcott's Old Diary Leaves (First Volume) — "The True Story of the Theosophical Society"

2012-01-22T17:16:00.000-08:00

Front Book Cover

In the Foreword of the first volume of Old Diary Leaves (1895), H. S. Olcott’s six-volume memoir about the Theosophical Society, he observed about Co-Founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky: “. . . if there ever existed a person in history who was a greater conglomeration of good and bad, light and shadow, wisdom and indiscretion, spiritual insight and lack of common sense, I cannot recall the name, the circumstances or the epoch.” Something undeniable was "her evident devotion to the Masters whom she depicted as almost supernatural personages, and her zeal for the spiritual uplifting of humanity by the power of the Eastern Wisdom."

Despite any human foibles of HPB, Olcott was convinced of the intercourse “between her mind and the minds of other living persons . . . Or, sometimes, the subordination of her will and whole personality to the will of another entity.” In his analysis of "psychical phenomena of or connected with Mme. Blavatsky," he included "spiritual insight, or intuition, or inspiration."

Olcott described an enlightening occurrence pertaining to his own mentality. This incident involved an anagram (the name of a 'Master') noticed in the acrostic made by the initials of a six-paragraph circular he had written.

It proved to me that space was no bar to the transmission of thought-suggestions from the teacher’s to the pupil’s brain; and it supported the theory that, in the doing of world-work, the agent may often be actually led by overseeing directors to do things which they choose to have done without his being at all conscious that his mind is not functioning under the sole impulse of its controlling Ego.

A self-declared 'Occultist,' HPB was unable to explain the precise circumstances of her revered spiritual guides despite her having written an extensive assortment of books, articles and correspondence concerning her experiences and beliefs. Olcott related: “. . . I had ocular proof that at least some of those who worked with us were living men, from having seen them in the flesh in India after having seen them in the astral body in America and Europe; from having touched and talked with them. Instead of telling me that they were spirits, they told me they were as much alive as myself, and that each of them had his own peculiarities and capabilities; in short, his complete individuality.” Olcott further wrote:

One of the greatest of them, the Master of the two Masters about whom the public has heard a few facts and circulated much foul abuse, wrote me on June 22, 1875: “The time is come to let you know who I am. I am not a disembodied spirit, Brother, I am a living man; gifted with such powers by our Lodge as are in store for yourself some day. I cannot be with you otherwise than in spirit, for thousands of miles separate us at present. Be patient and of good cheer, untiring labourer of the sacred Brotherhood! Work on and toil too for yourself, for self-reliance is the most powerful factor of success. Help your needy brother and you shall be helped yourself in virtue of the never-failing and ever active Law of Compensation.”

One observation that can be made about this statement based upon Olcott’s own reporting in People From The Other World (1875) is that the people who appeared during seances at the Eddy Homestead were not adequately described as ‘disembodied spirits’ either. He wrote in the earlier book: “I had had too many proofs of the materiality of the visible spirit-forms to fancy them imponderable and unsubstantial . . . To my sense of touch they appeared as substantial as any human being in the flesh, the only difference being in their temperature, which was invariably lower than my own, and the skin, which was ordinarily covered with a clammy sweat.”

Olcott came to accept HPB’s perspective that seance room phenomena could be attributed to “elementals.” A scrapbook remark added by Blavatsky via pen and ink was included in the published Collected Writings (Volume One) of H. P. Blavatsky and referred to the ‘Elementals’ as “the beings living in the Elements.” In an 1893 article, HPB appraised that there were elemental beings that were “simply creatures of ethereal matter, irresponsible, and neither good nor bad, unless influenced by a superior intelligence.” When I first read the first volume of Old Diary Leaves more than two decades ago, the shared idiosyncrasies of Olcott and HPB’s metaphysical beliefs seemed most vividly expressed in the thought-provoking anecdote describing an occurrence in 1875 at HPB’s house in Philadelphia. Here is Olcott’s report of this incident.

One day, bethinking me that a sufficiency of towels was but too evidently lacking in her house, I bought some and brought them home with me in a parcel. We cut them apart, and she was for putting them into immediate use without hemming, but, as I protested against such bad housekeeping, she good-naturedly set to plying her needle. She had hardly commenced when she gave an angry kick beneath the work-table at which she sat, and said, “Get out, you fool!” “What is the matter?” I asked. “Oh,” she replied, “it is only a little beast of an elemental that pulled my dress and wants something to do.” “Capital!” I said; “here is just the thing: make it hem these towels. Why should you bother about them, and you such an atrocious needlewoman as that very hem proves you to be?” She laughed, and abused me for my uncomplimentary speech, but at first would not gratify the poor little bond-slave under the table that was ready to play the kindly leprachaun if given the chance. I, however, persuaded her at last: she told me to lock up the towels, the needles and thread, in a bookcase with glass doors lined with thick green silk, that stood at the farther side of the room. I did so and resumed by seat near her, and we fell to talking on the inexhaustible and unique theme that occupied our thoughts—occult science. After perhaps a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, I heard a little squeaky sound, like a mouse’s pipe, beneath the table, whereupon H. P. B. told me that “that nuisance” had finished the towels. So I unlocked the bookcase door, and found the dozen towels were actually hemmed, though after a clumsy fashion that would disgrace the youngest child in an infant-school sewing-class. Hemmed they were, beyond the possibility of doubt, and inside a locked bookcase which H. P. B. Never approached while the thing was going on. The time was about 4 P.M., and, of course, it was broad daylight. We were the only persons in the room, and no third person entered it until all was finished.

The Theosophical Society was first proposed in 1875 and became a reality that same year. Olcott wrote: “It was to be a body for the collection and diffusion of knowledge; for occult research, and the study and dissemination of ancient philosophical and theosophical ideas . . .”

There was an amalgamation of the Society with Swami Dyánand Sarasvati’s Arya Samaj (“a brief and unpleasant connection”) in May 1878 that lasted only a few months. Olcott commented: “Our two hearts drew us towards the Orient, our dreams were of India, our chief desire to get into relations with the Asiatic people.”

The British Theosophical Society was formed at a “Meeting of Fellows” at Great Russell Street, London in June 1878 with Charles Carleton Massey elected President.

By Autumn, the decision had been made to transfer the Society’s ‘executive centre’ from New York to India. HPB’s entries in Olcott’s diary “testify to the nervous eagerness she felt to get away, and her fears that my plans might miscarry.” Olcott further reported:

In the entry of October 22d she writes—speaking of the urgency of our Mahâtmas: “N—went off watch and in came S—with orders from — to complete all by the early part of December. Well, H. S. O. is playing his great final stake.”

When their steamer left New York Bay on December 19, 1878, Olcott remembered, “At last we were crossing the blue water towards our Land of Promise; and, so full was my heart with the prospect, that I did not wait on deck to see the Navesink Highlands melt out of view, but descended to my cabin and searched for Bombay on my Map of India.”

The first volume of Old Diary Leaves derived from original articles by Olcott that appeared in The Theosophist journal between 1892 and 1894. A second edition of the first volume (or "First Series") was published in 1941 by the Theosophical Publishing House with a few corrections and the subtitle added “America, 1874—1878.”

The first volume of Old Diary Leaves may be read on the Internet at several websites, including the HathiTrust Digital Library edition.

H. S. Olcott and “The Science of Eastern Magic”

2012-01-15T16:00:00.000-08:00

Bird's-eye view of New York published in 1874

showing the waterfront, Brooklyn Bridge, with Battery Park and Governors Island in the foreground. Schlegel, George / Publisher: Tamsen & Dethlefs, New York (from “The Shape of New York”)

Henry Steel Olcott (1832-1907) recalled in the first volume of Old Diary Leaves (1895) his circumstances in November 1874 following his investigation of “The Eddy Manifestations” in Chittenden, Vermont. He resumed his new friendship with Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in New York City, where they both resided.

After Robert Dale Owen’s public denunciation of the Holmes mediums, Olcott arranged, through Owen, with Mrs. Holmes for a course of test-seances under his own conditions. In the portion of his case study People From The Other World (1875) reporting about “The Katie King Affair,” Olcott chronicled his investigation of Nelson and Jennie Holmes in Philadelphia during January 1875 in association with Owen, General F. J. Lippitt and HPB.

Olcott described many glimpses of the face of John King, who also spoke with him during seances. He received written messages from Katie King and 'J.K.' Eventually he also sighted the face of Katie King, as in the following excerpt:

At the evening seance, the usual precautions were taken, and as usual hands were shown and John appeared and spoke to me. A woman’s hand and arm were thrust quite out of the window, and after an intermission of a few minutes there came a face which struck me as soon as I saw it as the Katie King of the Holmes photograph.

During Olcott’s last test seance, both Nelson and Jennie Holmes were present and Madame Blavatsky was among the sitters. Olcott appraised that it was HPB who was responsible for not only summoning John King but he theorized that "she intimated her will that Katie should step out of the cabinet that evening, and he wrote her with his own hand a message to the effect that her orders should ‘be obeyed.’” Olcott described what happened after Mrs. Holmes went into a "death-like trance," which he also accepted to be "a strange exercise of Mme. de B.'s power."

Phenomenal disturbances soon began: raps were heard all over the cabinet, various voices addressed us from within its recesses, and a detached hand, coming out of the right aperture, and gliding down the face of the cabinet, clutched a small hand-bell that stood upon a table, and, ringing it all the while, rose again to the aperture and disappeared with it, within.

This last manifestation was calculated to startle one out of all his preconceived notions of both anatomy and gravity, and it really gave to the seance a most uncanny aspect. But the crowning test was yet to come. We heard the bolt drawn inside, and in breathless silence watched the cabinet door swing slowly open. I sat within a few feet of the entrance, and plainly saw at the threshold a short, thin, girlish figure, clad in white from crown to sole. She stood there motionless for an instant, and then slowly stepped forward a pace or two. By the obscure light we could see that she was shorter and much more delicately built than the medium, and her dress with its trailing skirt, and the long veil that completely enveloped her form, were as crisp as though just from the hands of the modiste. Who she was or what she was, I do not know, but one thing I do know,—she was not Jennie Holmes, nor any puppet or confederate of hers. And I know, further, that Mme. De B., who sat next to me, uttered one word in a strange tongue, and the spectre immediately withdrew as noiselessly as she had entered.

Something at this moment that Olcott didn’t take into consideration was that he had reported there were several occasions throughout his experiences chronicled at the Eddy Homestead when his own thoughts and those of others had been noticed to bring responses from the materialized people, such as when he mentioned that a ‘spirit’ “reappeared at my mental request after he had retired.” In Chapter VIII he reported about a young lady seance room attendee who saw her father, the late Captain Johnson, appear from the cabinet wearing citizen’s clothes. “The daughter mentally requested him to appear to her in his uniform, whereupon he retired for a moment and then returned in full naval dress, with sword and epaulettes.”

Olcott reflected about ‘John King’ in Old Diary Leaves: ". . . after seeing what H. P. B. could do in the way of producing mayavic (i.e., hypnotic) illusions and in the control of elementals, I am persuaded that 'John King' was a humbugging elemental . . ."

As recounted by Olcott, he found a note written by HPB that divulged (as she assumed) it was she “helped by M. And his power” (her Master) who “brought out the faces of John King and Katie King from the Astral Light, produced the phenomena of materialisation, and allowed the spiritualists to believe it was done through the medium of Mrs. Holmes.”

Olcott described some of the first phenomena he recalled having witnessed in the presence of HPB, including her successfully beckoning a butterfly apparition to enter a room and the materialization of edible fruit. He wrote, “Little by little, H. P. B. let me know of the existence of Eastern adepts and their powers, and gave me by a multitude of phenomena the proofs of her own control over the occult forces of nature."

Olcott chronicled the assorted wonders that occurred in relation to HPB. The following excerpt from the first volume of Old Diary Leaves offers one example. I am including Olcott’s explanation of the ‘important law’ that was illustrated to show his assumptions.

For a year or so after we took up housekeeping at the "Lamasery," my family silver was used for the table, but at last it had to be sent away, and H. P. B. helped me to pack it up. That day after dinner, when we were to have coffee, we noticed that there were no sugar tongs, and in handing her the sugar basin I put in it a teaspoon instead. She asked where were our sugar tongs, and upon my replying that we had packed it up to send away with the other silver, she said: "Well, we must have another one, mustn't we?" and, reaching her hand down beside her chair, brought up a nondescript tongs, the like of which one would scarcely find in a jeweller's shop. It had the legs much longer than usual, and the two claws slit like the prongs of a pickle-fork; while inside the shoulder of one of the legs was engraved the cryptograph of Mahátma "M." I have the curio now at Adyar.

An important law is illustrated here. To create anything objective out of the diffused matter of space, the first step is to think of the desired object—its form, pattern, colour, material, weight, and other characteristics: the picture of it must be sharp and distinct as to every detail; the next step is to put the trained Will in action, employ one's knowledge of the laws of matter and the process of its conglomeration, and compel the elemental spirits to form and fashion what one wishes made. If the operator fails in either of these details, his results will be imperfect. In this case before us it is evident that H. P. B. had confused in her memory the two different shapes of sugar-tongs and a pickle fork and combined them together into this nondescript or hybrid table implement. Of course, the result was to give stronger proof of the genuineness of her phenomenon than if she had made perfect sugar-tongs: for such may be bought in shops everywhere.

In the first volume of Old Diary Leaves, Olcott chronicled the writing and editing of HPB’s Isis Unveiled spanning the summer of 1875 through 1877. He had often been left to contemplate her states of consciousness in respect to the creation of the book and was convinced that elements of the book which could not be traced to accessible literary sources of quotation had been drawn “From the Astral Light, and, by her soul-senses, from her Teachers—the ‘Brothers,’ ‘Adepts,’ ‘Sages, ‘Masters,’ as they have been variously called.” Olcott cited letters written by HPB to her family. Excerpts of these letters were published in articles by Vera Johnston, HPB’s niece, in Path magazine. Olcott commented about these letters:

In those she plainly admits that her body was occupied at such times, and the literary work done by foreign entities who taught me through her lips and gave out knowledge of which she herself did not possess even a glimmering in her normal state.

Taken literally, as it reads, this explanation is hardly satisfactory; for, if the disjointed thought-bits of her psychical casse-tête always fitted together so as to make her puzzle-map strictly geometrical, then her literary work should be free from errors, and her materials run together into an orderly scheme of logical and literary sequence. Needless to say, the opposite is the case . . .

His commentary about ‘the masters' included referring to them as members of an “Occult Brotherhood” and mentioning that they were “Unseen, unsuspected as the vivifying spiritual currents of the Akash . . .”

It was in People From The Other World that Olcott first divulged his appraisal about Helena Petrovna Blavatsky that “. . . instead of being controlled by spirits to do their will, it is she who seems to control them to do her bidding.” A conception that seems to have been beyond his realization is that of an omnipresent Force operating in unusual ways in proximity and in sympathy with specific individuals to foster some manner of lesson or lessons.

Commentary and anecdotes that seem to offer contradictions are always useful for reflection. For example, Olcott wrote about HPB in Old Diary Leaves: “. . . it may be said that, throughout all our years of intimacy, she wasted enough psychic force on useless phenomena to have sufficed to convince the whole Royal Society if it had been judiciously employed . . . However, all that is past and gone, and my task is to record, as remembered, the psychical experiments which satisfied my critical reason as to the reality of the science of Eastern Magic.”

The alternative question that must then be considered is how self-aware is the 'Energy Source' making possible such ‘magic.’

Often in reading about history’s ‘paranormal people’ such as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, one finds that repeated experiences of uncanny phenomena manifesting around themselves may inspire them to hypothesize that they are somehow endowed with some exceptional 'power' or mental capacity. Something that I do not have in common with these individuals is that due to the chronology and variety of my own interaction with unexplained phenomena, it was obvious that the occurrences around me were not attributable to conscious directives of my own.

When Col. Olcott Met Madame Blavatsky

2012-01-08T10:05:00.000-08:00

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott in 1888

Theosophical Society President-Founder Col. Henry Steel Olcott wrote about his first encounter with the woman who would be the society's Co-Founder/Corresponding Secretary, Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, in Old Diary Leaves (1895) and his case study of paranormal phenomena People From The Other World (1875). The latter chronicled the various phenomena associated with the mediumship of brothers William and Horatio Eddy at their homestead in Chittenden, Vermont. The book included reports that had originally appeared in The Daily Graphic newspaper. Sketches by Alfred Kappes and T. W. Williams offer precise depictions of incidents at the homestead.

William H. Eddy (left) and Horatio G. Eddy

The phenomena included materializations of people who'd made the transition to the afterlife, direct voice (disembodied) communication, and spirit-writing.

Madame Blavatsky arrived on October 14, 1874 and after dinner, Olcott began a conversation with her. He recalled in Old Diary Leaves: "She asked me how long I had been there and what I thought of the phenomena; saying that she herself was greatly interested in such things, and had been drawn to Chittenden by reading the letters in the Daily Graphic: the public were growing so interested in these that it was sometimes impossible to find a copy of the paper on the book-stalls an hour after publication, and she had paid a dollar for the copy of the last issue . . . We became friends at once. Each of us felt as if we were of the same social world, cosmopolitans, free-thinkers, and in closer touch than with the rest of the company, intelligent and very worthy as some of them were."

Olcott described in People From The Other World the seances that were held nightly except on Sundays. Previously, the materialized people had been Native American Indians or Americans and Europeans who were friends or relatives of seance attendees. As Blavatsky had traveled the world, the seven seance "spirits" she recognized from associations earlier in her life were considerably more exotic. One of Blavatsky's earliest known writings is a commentary that soon thereafter appeared in the Daily Graphic newspaper in response to a skeptical article about the Eddy manifestations. She wrote in the letter that she was backed "by the testimony of hundreds of reliable witnesses" and that "all of the wardrobe of Niblo's Theater would not suffice to attire the number of 'spirits' that emerge night after night from an empty little closet." The letter can be read in A Modern Panarian: A Collection of Fugitive Fragments From the Pen of H. P. Blavatsky (1895).

Here are sketches from the book of some of these manifested people as they appeared, several of whom spoke to Blavatsky.

The first of these sketches shows a Georgian boy. Blavatsky wrote: "Requested by me in his mother tongue (upon the whispered suggestion of Colonel Olcott) to play the Lezguinka, a Circassian dance, he did so immediately upon the guitar."

In People From The Other World, the Georgian boy is identified as Michalko Guegidze. Olcott was able to corroborate Michalko's identity with two letters (included verbatim in the book) from a Philadelphia merchant who himself was a native of Georgia, M. C. Betanelly.

Michalko appeared at the first seance attended by Blavatsky. Also seen materialized by seance participants that night was M. Zephirin Boudreau, "late of Canada, the father of a lady who accompanied Mme. De Blavatsky to Chittenden, and who, of course, was attending her first seance. She addressed her questions to him in French, he responding by rapping with his hand against the door-frame, except in one instance when he uttered the word 'Oui.'"

Only those who have read my case study Testament (available to be read in a free Internet edition) might understand how my trip to Centrahoma in 1995 to investigate a so-called 'talking poltergeist' haunting would be the life-changing event in my life comparable to the Chittenden visit in HPB's.

The Eddy Homestead

Among the many surprising occurrences following the publication of People From The Other World as chronicled in Old Diary Leaves, the aforesaid Mr. Betanelly arranged with Olcott to visit New York and "talk over Spiritualism" with HPB. Not long thereafter, HPB married Michael C. Betanelly. He was granted a divorce in 1878. Later that same year, she became a citizen of the United States. The names of Michalko and HPB's second husband are noteworthy in consideration for what I have called the 'Michael Pattern' in previous blog posts (see "Some Further Observations about the Michael Pattern").

After my own experiences, it may be easier for me than it is for others to make sense of the unexplained phenomena manifesting in proximity to HPB. Books chronicling these incidents include A. P. Sinnett's The Occult World (revised American edition 1885) and Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky (1886). The latter book includes revealing anecdotes related by HPB's sister Mme. V. P. de Jelihowsky. One chapter of the book presents Jelihowsky's reports about phenomena that occurred in proximity to HPB in the town of Pskoff: "All these surprising and inexplicable manifestations of an intelligent, and at times, I should almost say, an omniscient force, produced a sensation in Pskoff, where there yet remain many who remember it well."

As one example of Jelihowsky's observations of various phenomena, she wrote that HPB "had two distinct methods of producing communications through raps. The one consisted almost entirely in her being passive, and permitting the influences to act at their will . . ." The remainder of this statement encompassing the second method ("used very rarely") is unsupportable as the events when evaluated in the entirety make evident that they are manifestly 'influences.' Although HPB often attributed the unexplained phenomena to "the Masters," there were times when she professed that some of the uncanny occurrences were produced by herself at will. One comment by Sinnett in Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky perhaps better expresses her quandary: ". . . the prestige of her occult power, uncertain and capricious though it has latterly become, invests her with so much interest for people . . . ."

H. S. Olcott's People From The Other World is his startling testimonial of an astonishing variety of "invisible powers" — "a truthful narrative of what befell in the Eddy Homestead, from the latter part of August to the first week in December, 1874." Here is a perhaps revealing anecdote about the family reported by Olcott.

They killed, a while ago, by accident, an old goose which used to get under the windows, some stormy night and say, in sepulchral tones, "God save my poor goslings!" and "Oh, dear! What shall I do?" and sometimes cry out "Murder!" Horatio Eddy, in telling me this tough yarn, said that of course he did not believe that the bird's organs of speech were so changed that it could utter words like a Christian, but that "George Dix" or some other jovial spirit "materialized" a voice close to the creature's mouth.

In comparison, during my 1995 interviews with Maxine Mc Wethy and her family in Centrahoma, Oklahoma, on one occasion Maxine mentioned in relation to the manifesting entities that they nicknamed 'Michael': "Once I had a little black and white dog that Brenda gave me — an Australian Shepherd . . . Well, one time it got so full of ticks and everything you find around here that the poor thing couldn't even walk on its hind legs. Twyla and I were out there and she was picking ticks off of him and Michael hollered, 'HELP ME, MAXINE' just like he was concerned about it."

Transcendental Communications from 'Abduhl Latif'

2012-01-01T07:38:00.000-08:00

Trance Medium Eileen Garrett (1893-1970)

In the nonfiction book written and compiled by R. H. Saunders, Healing Through Spirit Agency (1928), Saunders described how he "first heard of Abduhl Latif from the spirit side."

For some time we had formed a little circle sitting to obtain that phase of psychic phenomena called the "Direct Voice." We had been told by spirit friends that with patience we should develop sufficient power to secure what is undoubtedly the highest expression of psychic phenomena, the Spirit Voices.

To help us in this quest, Mrs. Etta Wriedt of Detroit, the well-known American medium, and our two best known English Direct Voice Mediums, Mrs. Roberts Johnson and Mrs. Blanche Cooper all kindly gave us sittings, and at the private residence of one of our group, and through Mrs. Wriedt's mediumship, Abduhl, for the first time in all the centuries since his passing out, manifested. About midway through the sitting, a steely blue light in the form of a ball, some three inches in diameter, shot at an angle across the room, coming from the ceiling furthest from the Medium (and apparently far beyond the ceiling), and alighting on the floor near her, and a voice addressed us. It had a curiously foreign accent, unlike any European accent I've heard; was deep, clear, deliberate, and rather laboured, as though there were difficulty in selecting or pronouncing the words. As is customary with me, I took down the words as the Spirit spoke. And this is what we heard:

"Friends, I am here to take part in the development of the power which is being generated in this circle. I am permitted to help in all work that is good—working and thinking. I am the guide of your circle, and I am empowered to help you, and I am learning your ways and manner of life and language with that object. Our power though great at times is limited at others. We draw from you to the extent of your strength. We dare not deprive you of all. We take what the sitters throw off, and mould it to our purpose."

This was said in the "Direct Voice," that is outside, and not through the Trumpet, which had been used by previous spirits during the sitting, and was delivered in a most impressive voice tinged with a curious accent, but during the many communications since Abduhl's English has improved. On many occasions Abduhl would break into rapid French or Italian, but he soon mastered our tongue until it became just as fluent and correct as any educated Englishman's.

I asked: "Would you please tell us who is speaking, and when did you pass over?" The reply was: "Long years ago—I am Abduhl Latif." "How do you spell it?" I queried. The spirit spelled out the name letter by letter, and added: "You will find my life and work in your British Museum."

I asked: "have you ever manifested before?" and the reply was: "Not in this form. I have often impressed both spirits and mortals in communications to Earth, but I have never previously divulged my name."

Much has been written of the subliminal, and usually by those who know least of it, and it is one of the problems critics of spiritualism have to face when they attribute what they cannot account for to the subconscious mind. Not one of us had the faintest idea who this Spirit was—we had never heard or read of him—and it is not to be wondered at, in the light of subsequent research, for some of the greatest Encyclopædias do not even mention his name.

The next morning, I went to the Reading Room of the British Museum and consulted six of the best Encyclopædias in the world in the English language. The Encyclopædia Americana had not a single word, and even the Encyclopædia Britannica had only a few short paragraphs, and others dismissed Abduhl with a few curt sentences. Yet columns and columns were devoted to Abduhls in plenty whose lives were of little use to humanity. I was disappointed at the result and came away. At the very door something struck me that I ought to ask the Librarian (I learned afterwards I had been impressed to do so) if he had heard of Abduhl Latif. The Librarian, a learned Orientalist, thought he had, and kindly took me to the Oriental section, and there turned up copious references to Abduhl occupying many quarto pages but they were in Arabic and other languages.

The name of Abduhl Latif ibn Yusef, to the majority of the English-speaking peoples, is unfamiliar and conveys little, but to a limited and thankful few it is associated with gratitude and heartfelt blessings and a return to health and happiness, as will be related in due course.

R. H. Saunders later published a follow-up book featuring transcripts of twelve lectures delivered through trance medium Eileen Garrett. Health: Its Recovery and Maintenance (1929) may now be read online without charge at the Universal Library Project website. Saunders explained that Garrett's mind "sunk into the most profound oblivion, permits spirit entities to assume control of her voice organs, and offers a clear passage for messages."

Here are some excerpts from the book's introduction written by Saunders.

I obtained a sitting with this lady and found her mediumship was of the highest order, and the evidence I secured overwhelming in character and volume. Her spirit control is a Persian who passed away over a century ago, and it occurred to me to ask him if he knew Abduhl Latif. His reply was: "Abduhl Latif has honoured my medium by speaking through her." As this was at the end of a sitting when the "power" had waned, I said, "I will arrange for another sitting and perhaps you will kindly tell Abduhl I should like the privilege of speaking with him." The guide simply replied: "That shall be."

At the next sitting Abduhl manifested at once. "This is the opportunity," he said, "I foretold would be ours, and I am pleased to say this vehicle is admirably adapted for the work I propose undertaking with your co-operation. I would wish to give to the world knowledge it does not at present possess. From my position in the Spheres, I view the functions of the body in a way no earth doctor can, and I will tell you of the action of the heart, of the lungs, of the liver and of the other organs of the body, how they are affected by the emotions, and how the subconscious and conscious minds act and react upon each other. I should be grateful if you would organize séances to enable me to do this."

A few words as to the sittings themselves. They were held in daylight at the London Spiritualist Alliance, Queensberry Place, S.W. The medium in a few minutes would enter the trance state and her guide, or Abduhl Latif, would then take charge. Normally, Mrs. Garrett has a soft and pleasant voice, speaks deliberately without any special emphasis, and does not gesticulate, but when controlled by Abduhl the transformation is quite remarkable. Her features assume a masculine appearance, the voice becomes stronger, and Abduhl plays upon the vocal chords as a master musician would upon an instrument. In his day Abduhl was one of Persia's greatest orators, and he utilizes her voice in true oratorical manner.

The research by Saunders enabled him to report that Abduhl Latif ibn Yussuf was born at Baghdad in 1162 and passed away in 1231 at the age of 69.

In the book's preface, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote:

One of the most remarkable and convincing stories in the whole wonderful annals of psychic experience is that which is given in Mr. R. H. Saunders' previous book: "Healing Through Spirit Agency," which tells of the return of the Great Persian Philosopher, Abduhl Latif, to that earth sphere which he quitted some seven hundred years ago. The narrative is absolutely convincing to anyone who knows, as I know, the scrupulous integrity of the narrator.

Since then I have been brought in contact more than once with Abduhl, and was privileged once to sit for more than an hour listening to his own account of his life, with anecdotes of ancient Cairo, Saladin, the Crusaders, and many other events which occurred under his own eyes. It was a unique experience to partake of the ripe, gentle wisdom of this great sage, never bitter, never sarcastic, eminently reasonable and courteous, answering through the lips of an unconscious woman every kind of difficult, historical, ethnological, or philosophic question.

It is these mental tests of Spiritualism, not the physical, which impress me most.

Here is the concluding paragraph from the "First Address":

It has been a privilege to talk with you, and I thank you. I look forward to many talks when we may be able to understand not only ourselves, but all those other human souls who are in brotherhood with you. When we understand the brotherhood and our relationship one to the other, then we can begin to understand the great scheme of things. I thank you, and I leave you with the blessing of the Great Infinite always about you.

Doris Stokes Described a Seance Conducted by Helen Duncan

2011-12-31T14:57:00.000-08:00

Helen Duncan (1895-1956)

There has been a previous blog article about clairaudient medium Doris Stokes (1920-1987). The following excerpt is from the memoir Voices In My Ear (1980) by Doris Stokes and Linda Dearsley. Doris was depressed in the months following the death of her infant son John Michael and her husband John suggested they go to the Spiritualist Church. During this period in her life, her interest in Spiritualism became "almost a hobby" and she didn't know that she would later be a medium herself.

We heard that Helen Duncan, a materialization medium — a medium who made spirits materialize — was holding a seance in Manchester. We were skeptical but always hoping to be proved wrong, and so though John couldn't come that day in cold December I went along.

Helen Duncan has long since passed over, but I shall never forget that seance. It started quite normally. The room was darkened with just a single red light burning, yet the dim glow was bright enough for everyone to see the medium quite clearly.

Silence fell, Helen Duncan concentrated deeply and then appeared to go into a trance. This was quite routine, and by now I'd seen it happen several times, yet there was something electric in the air. Something strange and tense that I'd never noticed before.

As we watched a thin silvery mist began to creep from the medium's nostrils and her middle, yet she remained motionless in her chair as if she was asleep.

"Ectoplasm," someone whispered behind me. Gradually the flow increased, until mist was pouring from the medium and a wispy cloud hung in the air in front of her. Then like fog stirred by a gentle breeze, it began to change shape, flowing and swirling, building up in places, melting away in places.

Before our eyes the outline of a woman was being carved in mist. Hair and features began to sharpen and refine. A small nose built up on the face, then a high brow, lips and chin, until finally the swirling stopped and she stood before us, a perfect likeness of a young girl in silvery white — and she was beautiful.

My mouth dropped open and I couldn't tear my eyes from this vision. I was seeing it, yet I couldn't believe it. Dimly I was aware that the woman next to me had gasped and clasped her hands to her mouth, but before I could register the significance of this the girl began to move.

The audience watched, riveted as she drifted across the room and stopped right in front of my neighbour.

"I've come to talk to you mother," said the medium in a light, pretty voice quite different from the one she'd used earlier. The girl spoke to her mother for several minutes, explaining that she still visited the family and knew what was going on and listed a few personal details as proof.

Then unexpectedly, she turned to me. "Would you like to touch my hand?" she asked.

Dumbly I brushed the slim, pale fingers held out to me, and then in astonishment took the whole hand. It was warm! I don't know what I'd expected. Something damp, cold and unsubstantial I suppose — but this was incredible. I'd touched a warm living hand.

Suspiciously I glanced at the medium but she was still slumped in her chair. It was impossible. It must be a fake and yet how could she have done it? Nonplussed I sank back and stared at the girl, quite speechless.

She smiled as if she could read my thoughts, then she raised her arm and out of the air, a rose appeared in her fingers. Gentle she placed it on my neighbour's lap.

"Happy Christmas mother," she said and then slowly moved back and began to shrink, getting smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter, until she disappeared through the floor.

No-one stirred. We all sat motionless as if hypnotized. The only sound was the woman next to me quietly sobbing. In her hand a deep red rose, still beaded with dew — in December.

Dear God, I thought, how marvellous to be able to do that.

It was only later I discovered that Helen Duncan was one of the greatest materialization mediums who ever lived and I was very privileged to have seen one of her seances.

Helen's daughter Gena Brealey wrote with Kay Hunter the biography The Two Worlds of Helen Duncan (1985).

New Additions at The Leslie Flint Educational Trust Website

2011-12-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

Amy Johnson (1903-1941)

Last week, this announcement was made at The Leslie Flint Educational Trust Blog:

We are happy to announce the launch of the new Leslie Flint Trust Youtube Channel. Along with a new remastering program which will eventually see the majority of the recordings in the archive professionally remastered.

The first recording to be remastered is a session with communication from Amy Johnson.

The recording was originally taped at a seance of 'Independent Direct Voice' medium Leslie Flint. The two-part video features a 25-minute recording that is reported to be more than 45 years old. Amy Johnson CBE is identified as having become an international heroine and a household name in the Commonwealth after a solo flight from London to Australia in 1920.

Beyond The Leslie Flint Trust You Tube Channel, this year ten new audio recordings of the ‘Billinghurst Collection’ and twenty new transcripts have been added to the Leslie Flint Educational Trust website. The Billinghurst Seance Collection is described as “A selection of recordings from sittings with the same group over a twenty year period.”

The Leslie Flint Educational Trust is a nonprofit organization that was created to preserve, record, authenticate and promote awareness about the work of 'Independent Direct Voice medium' Leslie Flint.

Previous posts about Leslie Flint include “Some Observations Concerning My Spiritualism Series of Articles” and “Direct Voice Seance Phenomena”.

Seasonal Reflections

2011-12-18T11:11:00.000-08:00

habitat.org holiday card with

original art by Judy Blankenship

It was around ten years ago when I decided to look for a new permanent job. I wanted something different from my writing vocation as I've always managed to devote time each week to this calling ever since I can remember. I wanted and continue to want my writing to be devoid of any commercial goal or influence. I opted to work in the education field and found an office position at a high school where I worked with administrators, teachers, parents and students.

In the fall of 2010, I learned that the school district's budget crisis would result with extensive layoffs. Among remaining employees, many would be transferred to new schools based on seniority and other complex reasons. Upon learning that I would find myself relocated to a new school among hundreds of potential sites, I considered where my new assignment might be located. I had heard accounts of staff members being reassigned to locations requiring extensive freeway commutes. The first possibility that came to my mind was perhaps I could find myself at an elementary school in North Hollywood. Weeks later, I was notified of my new assignment and the location was indeed an elementary school in North Hollywood. The new work site was located in a more distant subdistrict. This unusual 'psychic' instance reminded me that our innate intuitive abilities may be experienced as part of our natural thought process, sometimes perhaps without one even noticing it.

In my case, I was soon notified that a "match" had been found in regard to my application for reassignment closer to home. I accepted this opportunity to work at a high school without realizing that the school wasn't actually located in the subdistrict I'd authorized.

The following summer, another reduction of staff and services was ordered. The union divulged that in my job classification the latest cuts would result with what amounted to an estimated 61.35 percent elimination of positions during a two and a half year period. A certified letter informed me that in fifty days I would be relocated to a middle school in the farther subdistrict and my full-time position would be reduced to a half-time position.

This fall I had just begun working at the middle school when a new union agreement returned me and a group of other office workers to full-time positions. I received a phone call from an assignment coordinator and had to immediately select a new work site. There were no secondary schools with an available position in my residential area so I realized that the new job would be quite different. My new school is a model elementary school with a high Academic Performance Index score.

My personal perspective about Christmas is that every day is Christmas if you are in good health and have beneficial work circumstances. Although I have no time for reading or viewing fictitious narratives these days, I recall the ever-timely messages of the ghosts of the 1843 Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol that has been dramatized in many versions over the years. Writers Mitch Glazer & Michael O'Donoghue befittingly updated the story to a corporate milieu for the Paramount movie "Scrooged." The comedy's cast and filmmakers included actor Michael J. Pollard, production designer J. Michael Riva and director of photography Michael Chapman. Previous blog posts have considered the 'Michael Pattern' and testimonials about so-called ghosts and poltergeists, including "Greenbrier Ghost" and "My Search for the Ghost of Flight 401 by Elizabeth Fuller".

For me, the holiday season has always been a time of reflection and hope. This year—as during the previous few years—the world's economic and environmental problems must be on one's mind. Public services are seemingly being cut everywhere. It is my belief that a new world economic order is needed to replace the intrinsically feudal system that has become antiquated over the centuries. An evolved, more 'spiritually aware' world economic system should allow wealth to derive from services provided by people to others in all capacities, including environmental conservation and enhancement.

Some Further Observations about the 'Michael' Pattern

2011-12-11T17:23:00.000-08:00

Nostradamus

Soon after my trip to Oklahoma chronicled in the nonfiction case study Testament (1997), I became aware of the significance of the name and variations of the name 'Michael' in some prominent cases involving what is usually described as 'unexplained phenomena.' The five preceding blog posts include some observations about what one might call the 'Michael' Pattern, referring to variations of the name 'Michael' found in case studies involving so-called 'paranormal' or psychic phenomena.

Among the cases previously mentioned is that of Direct Voice medium Leslie Flint and the 'sleeping prophet' Edgar Cayce. Soon after I first began contemplating the 'Michael' Pattern after experiencing phenomena relating to what had been categorically described as a contemporary 'talking poltergeist' case, I considered if the first name of the French 'prophet' Michel de Nostredame (1503-1566) was something of significance. Although no two English translators of his writings ever seem to be in precise agreement, an important detail for one to consider is the first sentence in the letter of dedication to his son. The letter was used as the preface for the first edition of his quatrains. A phrase in this sentence was 'Divine essence.' Here is how the sentence was translated in one unattributed PDF source that I found with a recent Internet search.

Greetings and happiness to Cesar Nostradamus my son. Your late arrival, Cesar Nostredame, my son, has made me spend much time in constant nightly reflection so that I could communicate with you by letter and leave you this reminder, after my death, for the benefit of all men, of which the divine spirit has vouchsafed me to know by means of astronomy.

In the same translation source, this is how the first two Nostradamus Century 1 quatrains are worded in English.

1.
Sitting alone at night in secret study;
It is placed on the brass tripod.
A slight flame comes out of the emptiness and makes successful that which should not be believed in vain.

2.
The wand in the hand is placed in the middle of the tripod's legs.
With water he sprinkles both the hem of his garment and his foot.
A voice, fear: he trembles in his robes.
Divine splendor; the God sits nearby.

How prophetic are the Nostradamus quatrains is for each individual to decide as there are diverse opinions about the work of the author whose name has been known throughout the world for more than four centuries.

Some of my longtime readers may remember that more than twelve years ago, I commented about the Nostradamus quatrain 72 about the year 1999 from Century X. On the occasion, my voice was transmitted over the North American airwaves during a broadcast of the nationally syndicated show "Dreamland" hosted by Hilly Rose. The interview guest that evening of July 25, 1999 was Michael Peter Langevin, publisher of Mystical Blend magazine. I said on the air: "I had a comment on Nostradamus's prediction, which we've been hearing about all night and what I think is that America is the reincarnation of Mongolia. And Genghis Khan lives on in every person who assumes that whatever actions they take are somehow ordained by God . . ."

After all, many aspects of the military-industrial complex have long been a result of the lack of spiritual awareness among people conditioned to believe they are not responsible for their own actions.

John Dee

Like Nostradamus, Dr. John Dee (1527-1609) is a figure of the sixteenth century who has long fascinated me. Probably the most unusual book that I ever purchased was a large-sized 1974 limited edition reprint of the 1659 book A True & Faithful Relation of What passed for many Yeers Between Dr. John Dee (A Mathematician of Great Fame in Q. Eliz. And King James Their Reignes) and Some Spirits . . . with a preface by Meric. Casaubon. The publication presented twelve of John Dee's books that are now known as his 'spiritual diaries.'

The extant manuscripts chronicling Dee's "actions with spirits" ("spiritual creatures" and "good angels") date from the end of 1581, continuing for six years and resuming during seven months in 1607. None were published nor intended to be published by Dee during his lifetime. His 'supernatural' experiences were usually shared with 'scryers' — psychic seers working as describers. The later records left by Dee prominently feature his scryer Edward Kelly (spelled Kelley in some sources). The earlier journals by Dee spanning the period to May 23, 1583 weren't included in Casaubon's edition and these books are now known as Quinti Libri Mysteriorum or 'Book of Mysteries.' The first three books of Quinti Libri Mysteriorum can be read online at http://john-dee.org.

One comparatively easy to read version of Quinti Libri Mysteriorum has been published as John Dee's Five Books of Mystery: Original Sourcebook of Enochian Magic edited by Joseph J. Peterson. For the revised 2003 edition, Peterson explained that he added footnotes to clarify obscurities in the language, translated Latin passages and updated the text in some particulars. While reading sixteenth century English can be difficult for the contemporary sensibility, perusing the variety of Dee's autobiographical accounts generally leaves the impression that he was a compassionate man held in high esteem by those who knew him. The spiritual diaries chronicle what Dee's scryers reported seeing and hearing after beginning to gaze into a crystal globe.

I am using contemporary English spelling for excerpts featured in this article. Several of these passages were originally recorded in Latin by Dee and in these instances I am using the translations from Peterson's edition and using italics. The earliest passages of Dee's first 'book of mystery' chronicle the skryer Saul's crystal ball visions and clairvoyantly heard messages. The responses related by the various skryers are seldom what anyone might expect. For example, when Dee asked the angel Annael about hidden treasures, the response heard by Saul was "Don't bother, for these are trifles." In the second journal entry from March 1852, Edward Talbot is named as the skryer and Uriel is seen in the stone and his voice is heard by Talbot. When Dee asked "Are there any more beside you?," the response recorded is "Michael and Raphael. But, Michael is the foremost in our works."

Reading Dee's spiritual journals will allow one to learn about the scope of the visionary phenomena relating to crystal ball gazing as recorded by Dee. During his association with Talbot as chronicled in the first three books of mystery, angel Michael's comments included the following —

I will be thy Guide.

We lead time, Time leadeth not us:

I will pluck thee, from among the wicked [he spoke to my skryer.] Thou Committest Idolatry. But take heed of Temptation: The Lord hath blessed thee. This is a Mystery.

Write with reverence, These mysteries are wonderful, the Number of his name, and knowledge: Lo, this it is, 9. Behold, it is but one, and it is Marvelous.

Everything is one.

Manifold is Our God.
Mark this Mystery. Seven comprehendeth the Secrets of Heaven and earth. Seven knitteth man's soul and body together (3, in soul, and 4 in body).
In 7, thou shalt find the Unity.
In 7, thou shalt find the Trinity.
In 7, thou shalt find the Son, and the proportion of the Holy Ghost.

We are present,

Messages from Michael

2011-12-04T14:08:00.000-08:00

Paperback Cover

During my interviews in Oklahoma in 1995, I recall an incident that happened when my tape recorder was turned off. Maxine Mc Wethy showed me a paperback that somebody had apparently given her. The family often referred to the unexplained phenomena occurring in their presence by the nickname 'Michael' and this had motivated someone to bring their attention to this book Messages from Michael (1979) by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. I took one look at the paperback cover and professed my dismay.

Months later, some aspects of the case aroused my interest. A friend gave me a new edition of Messages from Michael and the recently published Michael for the Millennium. I noticed that the pseudonym surname of 'Lansing' was used for a medium involved with the case and she was described as being a publicist by profession. At the time, Sherry Lansing was the studio head of Paramount Pictures, the company with whom I'd been associated as a publicity writer for more than seven years. I began reading Yarbro's series of books. The first book's complete title is Messages from Michael on the Nature of the Evolution of the Human Soul.

Earlier Playboy Press Hardcover First Edition

The book incorporated transcribed messages and discourses transmitted via a Ouija board and planchette. The other books in the series are More Messages from Michael (1986), Michael's People (1988) and Michael for the Millennium (1995). The messages eventually were also communicated through automatic writing and trance channeling although the precise details of each session were not described in the books.

Berkley Trade Paperback Edition (1995)

Here are some of the quotations of 'Michael' to be found in Yarbro's first book.

We are here with you tonight.

Each soul is a part of a larger body, an entity. Each entity is made up of about one thousand souls, each of which enters the Physical plane as many times as is necessary to experience all aspects of life and achieve human understanding. At the end of the Cycles on the Physical plane, the fragments once again reunite as we have reunited.

We are an ancient entity that comes to all who ask.

The name we are called is Michael. That is a convenience and not a truth. Only one small fragment of this entity had that name.

There are few large carnivores roaming the city streets and yet most of you behave as though there were.

The battle for survival is but another tape loop that plays on and on, even to the point of starving large portions of the culture, while others waste and hoard.

(In response to the question "What about the I Ching?") It is another prop, like the tarot cards, the crystal ball, or, for that matter, Ouija boards. It is a method by which your false personality is set aside so that there may be inner dialogue with the essence.

There is a time axis about which parallel universes of physical reality revolve.

Concerning the association described between a soul and 'entity,' this did not refer to the numerous incarnations of a single individual.

The entity which includes David fragmented at the same point in history as did the entity which includes Jessica and Leonard.

The 'Messages from Michael' creed has always been disturbing for me to consider as, in particular, it is iconoclastic to the belief that one's "individuality" (the I expressed throughout one's entirety of incarnations) will survive (at least in the way one might expect) in future realms of existence; however, it is readily apparent that all living things are each individual aspects of a Oneness and this is another message from 'Michael': "All souls, or fragments, as we choose to call them for now, are of course a part of the universal creative force, which we call the Tao."

'Michael' is quoted in the first book:

The continuous creative force that is universal casts out entities into physical lifetimes. These entities fragment and become many different personalities. Their integration is the evolutionary pattern for all souls.

When I went on to read the declaration "There is no more a Devil than there is a God," I contemplated if this was a problem of semantics in understanding the intended meaning. As someone whose investigation of 'paranormal' phenomena confronted me with evidence of an Omnipresent Superconsciousness dedicated to improving the circumstances of human beings, 'God'—in conjunction with a 'Christ Consciousness'—seems an appropriate term while the 'Devil' is an obvious metaphor.

Many of the messages are thought-provoking about society and human relationships. Messages from 'Michael' encompass such subjects as reincarnation, karma, the planes and levels of existence, and the nature and evolution of the soul (or 'fragment'). Michael summarized some of the teachings during a session recorded in Chapter 14.

All ensouled species or conscious creatures of the Physical plane have the same Roles in essence: Slave, Artisan, Warrior, Scholar, Sage, Priest, and King. All have the same modes: Caution, Repression, Perseverance, Observation, Aggression, Passion, and Power. All have the same Goals: Rejection, Retardation, Submission, Stagnation, Dominance, Growth, and Acceptance. All have the same Attitudes: Skeptic, Stoic, Cynic, Pragmatist, Realist, Spiritualist, and Idealist. All have the same Centers from which to act: Intellectual, Emotional, Sexual, Instinctive, Moving, Higher Emotional, and Higher Intellectual. All have the same Chief Features: Self-destruction, Self-depreciation, Martyrdom, Stubbornness, Impatience, Arrogance, and Greed. There are different emphases put on these overleaves from planet to planet, from species to species.

The 'Chief Features' are explained: "There are no good Chief Features . . . The Chief Feature rules you. Enlightenment is gained by the extinguishment of the Chief Feature in adult life. This does not happen often. More commonly, the Chief Feature is changed; for example, the fragment may trade Impatience for Martyrdom." These Chief Features are each said to have a "positive pole" — sacrifice, humility, selflessness, determination, audacity, pride, and egotism.

There are statements in Messages from Michael that present contradictions, such as those shown by the following quotations from the first chapter.

We are not the path to spiritual enlightenment. We offer a way to human understanding based on our own experience . . .

Our purpose is to teach some understanding of the evolution on the Physical plane so that the student can reach some insight into human behavior which will enable him to stop brooding over interpersonal relationships or the lack thereof and concentrate on personal Life Plans.

. . . the lies must be told before the truth can be sought.

. . . the word God in your society has become masculinized and requires the use of the masculine pronoun, thus perpetuating the personification of the universal creative force, which is ethereal and not physical. This cannot be personified, even for teaching purposes with this cadre [the groups of students in contact with the entity Michael]. It would be treading on thin ice for this entity.

Some comments from 'Michael' suggested that every remark should not be accepted literally, as shown by this quotation from chapter 3.

We are not here to give you a new dogma. Remember that when the medium through whom we are transmitting is fatigued, contradictions occur.

25th Anniversary Edition (2005)

For the "updated" and expanded 25th Anniversary Edition, Yarbro identified transcript additions with brackets and explained these circumstances in a "New Introduction" to the book.

During the last decade, two members who were part of the group before I joined have offered me their transcripts of early sessions, in order to augment or supplement some of the early information in this book, which, when comparing the transcripts they had made to those from which I worked, felt that some important parts had been left out. I have accepted their generosity gladly, and pass along thanks to them, without mentioning their names, as they requested. One is a Mature Priest and one is an Old Scholar; when I use material from their transcripts, I will identify whose transcripts are being used. In the early years of the group, exact transcription of the Michaels' communications was not required, even though the answers were read back, but over time, the standard of transcription steadily increased. Now, where the transcripts disagree, the variations will be included for your comparison. In preparing this new edition, I have spoken with many present and former group members, asking what they would like to see added, deleted, or changed. Where such alterations are present, they will be identified as such.

The following statements are from the original Epilogue dictated by Michael.

. . . what is true for a Baby Slave in the Power Mode is almost never true for an Old Priest in the Observation Mode.

This we offer as the purpose of the life cycles: Man begins as a solitary hunter, an animal on the prowl. During the life cycle, man must learn to merge with his fellowmen . . .

We are not the way. We offer you our own experience of the entire life cycle and what it taught us collectively.

While reading Messages from Michael as I wrote this article, I was reminded of some cryptic elements in another mysterious case study among the annals of 'paranormal phenomena.' In Uri: A Journal of the Mystery of Uri Geller (1974) by Andrija Puharich, the book's Introduction offers an account of a trance-channeled message from the final hours of the year 1952. Here are the first two paragraphs of the discourse from intelligences speaking through Dr. D. G. Vinod in the presence of Puharich:

M calling: We are Nine Principles and Forces, personalities if you will, working in complete mutual implication. We are forces, and the nature of our work is to accentuate the positive, the evolutional, and the teleological aspects of existence. By teleology I do not mean the teleology of human derivation in a multidimensional concept of existence. Teleology will be understood in terms of a different ontology. To be simple, we accentuate certain directions as will fulfill the destiny of creation.

We propose to work with you in some essential respects with the relation of contradiction and contrariety. We shall negate and revise part of your work, by which I mean the work as presented by you. The point is that we want to begin altogether at a different dimension, though it is true that your work has itself led up to this.

In Uri, Puharich recounted his experiences testing Geller. Prior to his work with Geller, Puharich had studied the Brazilian trance channeling spiritual healer known as Arigó, the subject of the biography Arigo: Surgeon of the Rusty Knife (1974) by John G. Fuller. The following anecdote from Uri occurred during the day of January 1, 1972 when Puharich was accompanied by Ila Ziebell for a countryside drive.

We drove north toward Haifa in the dazzling bright winter sunshine. As we reached the area of the Carmel Hills near Ma'agan Michael, an unbelievably multicolored movement of clouds came in from the sea. I stopped driving, to set up my Hasselblad camera, to take purely artistic pictures of the cloud forms and colors against this incredible sky-blue background. There were mini-tornado funnels in the clouds, patches of dark thunderous clouds; I have never before seen such a display of cloud beauty in the sky.

Further observations about the Messages from Michael books are included in Part 2 of this article:

http://metaphysicalarticles.blogspot.com/2011/12/messages-from-michael-part-2.html

Messages from Michael (Part 2)

2011-12-04T14:03:00.000-08:00

Michael for the Millennium Cover Art

After writing the post "Messages from Michael," I took another look at the other three volumes in the series of books by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. It has been many years since I first read them. Hundreds of pages in More Messages from Michael (1986) are devoted to Ouija Board communication about fragments (souls) and their 'roles in essence' and assorted factors in the 'overleaves'; human relationships; and such topics as 'Monads' (experiential relationships), "the rule of Maya," the planes of existence, and diverse aspects of life on our physical plain.

A 25th anniversary "updated" edition of More Messages from Michael was published in 2010. The Introduction featuring "opening words from Michael" first appeared in the original edition and concluded with the following paragraphs.

Let us encourage each of you to question his or her life, to examine your experiences and perceptions, so that you may recognize and validate your perceptions, if you wish to seek self-awareness. Not all lives are chosen for self-awareness, just as not all persons wear the same size shoes. Essence will indicate the path you have chosen if you care to give attention to those inner promptings, if it is your desire to know. Your decision on this, as in every other issue, is yours to make.

Let us point out that every one of you is growing and evolving, as fragments, as members of entities that are themselves evolving. All choices contribute to this evolution.

Our information in given with unqualified love.

I found some comments concerning the lives of men associated with "Transcendental Soul" and "Infinite Soul" manifestations. In these messages as recorded, the obvious metaphorical significance of these men's circumstances was not articulated. The observation about "Fragments who gave up their bodies to the manifestation of the Transcendental Soul" is worded in a way that gives an impression that contradicts historical records and common knowledge.

Here is how karma is defined in one passage of the book.

Karma, as we have indicated before, is the result of removing another fragment's ability and/or right to choose for itself, and is a profoundly compelling tie between fragments until the karmic ribbon has been burned by equal payment.

Here is an excerpt with commentary on people's willingness to accept others on their own terms.

While we do not advocate tolerance—or anything else—as such, we are always aware that where true tolerance is present, growth is more likely to occur. By true tolerance, we do not mean a condescending attitude that all too often passes for tolerance, but a genuine acceptance that every fragment has its own choices to make and it's own life to live and that beyond a certain level of concern, each fragment is responsible to and for itself. By this level of concern we speak of the ability to perceive others as as valid as oneself. To be willing to release expectations, of oneself as well as of others does much to advance tolerance.

The following excerpt from More Messages from Michael is presented as an example of the subjects presented in the book. During one session 'Michael' advised Katherine about a Buddhist whom she had met while employed to work on effects for a movie:

This fragment is a second-level Mature Priest in the passion mode with a goal of growth, a realist in the intellectual part of emotional center with a very strong chief feature of arrogance.

'Michael' went on to recommend —

What might be the best procedure from here is to bring various books on Oriental philosophical and religious thought with you when you work with this difficult fragment and tell him that he has piqued your interest in Oriental religions, so you are exploring the possibilities. It would be more beneficial to avoid the works of those associated with his particular school of thought . . .

And —

It might be wise to avoid long discussions with this fragment, and say only that you have not yet studied enough to understand the material well enough to discuss it.

The following excerpts are from Michael's People (1988).

We would wish at this time to remark on what might be called the communication glut. There is so much information flooding the technologically advanced societies at this time that it might be seen as overwhelming and wholly unwieldy. This is not entirely inaccurate. While we would agree that enhanced communication is definitely a "force for good in the world," learning to adjust the communication diet is a technique that has not yet been discerned or addressed by science or art.

Let us observe that where there is total intimacy—that is, essence contact—there is true agape. Beyond this plane there are other planes of greater unity, where the consciousness of multiplicity within an entity vanishes and is superseded by a higher comprehension that is as incomprehensible to us as we are to you.

First of all, Fenella, we would wish to remind you that the fragment who is now Jessica is free to choose whatever she wishes in terms of this or any other aspect of her life. That she has chosen to stop channeling is in no way a "fault," and it is in no way a "rejection" of you.

Where the lessons of a previous life have not been fully integrated or there are aspects of the life yet to be fully validated, it is not uncommon for the fragment to have a fascination with the period of history and society where the incarnation occurred.

In a 2009 postscript published in the new edition of More Messages from Michael, Yarbro divulged that a few people in the original group remained active. ". . . over the years more than two dozen members have left the group for a variety of reasons, and over the same period of time about twenty have taken their places."

Here are some excerpts from Michael for the Millennium (1995).

All choices are equally valid and have no "right" or "wrong," only consequences.

(In response to the question "Is there any reason not to eat meat?") Only if you choose to perceive one for yourself, and it is not the imposition of someone else's choice, such as most religiously based food restrictions are, although that is a matter of choice, not of any greater validity . . .

As we have said before, ensoulment of your species took place between fifty and sixty thousand years ago, and is marked by the development of abstract thought, which in turn led to language, esthetics, defined emotions and perceptions, "flights of fancy," anticipation, worry, intimacy, including self-intimacy, identity, and then to what you on the physical plane call art. That is not to say that proto-humans did not have rudimentary verbal communications, but so do chimpanzees, and like all "clever" animals, proto-humans could recognize a very wide variety of discreet sounds. But abstract "thought" widened all the potentials of the proto-human species.

In general, we consider "morals" to be a negative influence on the societies embracing them, for the imposition of such "codes" inevitably leads to a justification of cruelty.

We do, in general, think that an understanding of ethics is far less "intrusive," and provides fewer "excuses" for the kinds of actions that have marked "moral" actions. Of course, there are fragments who "disguise" their moral postures as ethical dilemmas.

On no other plane does choice have so many forms of manifestation as it does on the physical plane, and on no other plane of existence does the nature of the plane itself impinge so relentlessly on fragments extant there.

The impact put upon any date is a cultural artifact, not a cosmic event, and while it is not amiss, from time to time, to review experience and the "state of society" if you choose to do so, there is no set "time" when this is more "auspicious" than any other, which includes the day you have designated to begin what you have defined the third millennium.

Reading the Messages from Michael books, I often wondered about the sensibility being expressed by the communicating intelligences. I perceived possible philosophical rationales for some of the responses. There were also many occasions when I was inclined to think that some manner of didactic irony was being invoked. I was also reminded that in relation to people responding to these teachings, there are different 'levels' of truth and this is due to the complex circumstances of Earth life.

In Yarbro's first book, the comment "We are not here to give you a new dogma" seems of great importance. 'Michael' explained:

It is too easy for you to be lured by your expectations into making this a new faith, which is in complete opposition to our intention. Blind faith eliminates understanding, and without understanding there can be no growth or agape, which is the goal.

During a discourse about human spiritual growth, 'Michael' commented:

We would ask you to think about your lives for a moment. When you are gardening, you think about plants and earth and fertilizer and shade and root conditions as well as the weather and the plantness of plants. When you are making a meal you think about smell and taste and texture and hunger and appearance and time and resources. When you listen to music, you think about notes and rhythms and dynamics. This is an automatic concentration, a pattern of concentration that has been learned. Most of the time, if you allow other considerations to intrude, your planting or cooking or listening will not go as well, and you will be disappointed. You will be aware of it at the time. Something will not seem right and you will get easily irritated or frustrated. It is the same with this teaching. As you learn the most workable pattern of concentration, it will be easier to maintain that concentration.

A Meditation on Christ Consciousness from the Edgar Cayce Channeled Readings Transcripts

2011-11-20T10:11:00.000-08:00

The previous blog post considered the significance of how variations of the name 'Michael' exhibit 'patterns' for placing in perspective various otherwise 'unexplained phenomena'; thus, I referred to my Edgar Cayce readings CD (2005 edition with the cover shown above) to find an example of how this pattern helped make comprehensible the concept of Christ Consciousness.

Edgar Cayce's Earth incarnation dated from 1877 through 1945. A differentiation should be made between his own beliefs and the commentary from the intelligences that communicated through him when he was in a trance. Today, his work is a franchise of the organization he founded in 1931, the Association for Research and Enlightenment, which makes available some articles about Cayce and about the readings transcripts.

'Christ Consciousness' may be one of those topics that no two sources may define in precisely the same way. I was discussing this a few weeks ago with a friend in the lunch room of the elementary school where I was recently transferred and I realized that the Edgar Cayce transcripts offer a clear and concise understanding of the concept of 'Christ Consciousness.'

There are portions of the Cayce transcripts that are challenging to construe. One example of this are the approximately one dozen sections where Michael, 'Lord of the Way,' was heard and sometimes became an admonishing sentinel. These intervals may have been instances of hyperbole with the objective of fostering reflection of moral and spiritual matters. Letters were capitalized in the transcripts to designate vocal emphasis.

The following passages provide an example of an Edgar Cayce reading transcript. The "TEXT OF READING 262-27" was given by Edgar Cayce at his home on Arctic Crescent in Virginia Beach, Virginia on September 4, 1932 "in accordance with request made by those present." These individuals included his wife Gertrude, who was the reading "conductor"; Edgar's secretary Gladys Davis, who served as stenographer; Edgar's son Hugh Lynn Cayce and many others, seventeen of whom were listed as being present. The reading commenced at 3:50 in the afternoon.

1. GC: You will have before you the group gathered here, and their work on the lesson PATIENCE, a copy of which I hold in my hand. As I call each paragraph you will go over it and suggest any changes or additions which should be made before this lesson receives its final preparation for publication. You will also answer the questions which will be asked.

2. EC: Yes, we have the group as gathered here, as a group, as individuals, and the work in preparation of the lesson. In this there is the preparation for the understandings that have come to each. Ready for questions.

(25 paragraphs - answer "Very good" to each, except 7 added "The illustrations as used here may be made more personal, or expanded upon in that manner", and 9 "Good".)

3. (Q) Please give a meditation for the lesson on THE OPEN DOOR.

(A) AS THE FATHER KNOWETH ME, SO MAY I KNOW THE FATHER, THROUGH THE CHRIST SPIRIT, THE DOOR TO THE KINGDOM OF THE FATHER. SHOW THOU ME THE WAY.

In the preparations, then, for the lessons that may be gained by each that have dedicated themselves and their efforts in the preparation of the way, the door is through the life, the spirit of the life - not the man, but the spirit as manifest in the Christ Consciousness in the material world. So, as each do manifest in their daily walks in and before men with that consciousness as the standard, so may the door be opened for that entity, that soul, to so grow and magnify that spirit to the glorifying of the Father, losing self in the service to others, that in the earth His name may be established forever.

BE STILL, MY CHILDREN! BOW THINE HEADS, THAT THE LORD OF THE WAY MAY MAKE KNOWN ONTO YOU THAT HAVE BEEN CHOSEN FOR A SERVICE IN THIS PERIOD WHEN THERE IS THE NEED OF THAT SPIRIT BEING MADE MANIFEST IN THE EARTH, THAT THE WAY MAY BE KNOWN TO THOSE THAT SEEK THE LIGHT! FOR THE GLORY OF THE FATHER WILL BE MADE MANIFEST THROUGH YOU THAT ARE FAITHFUL UNTO THE CALLING WHEREIN THOU HAST BEEN CALLED! YE THAT HAVE NAMED THE NAME MAKE KNOWN IN THY DAILY WALKS OF LIFE, IN THE LITTLE ACTS OF THE LESSONS THAT HAVE BEEN BUILDED IN THINE OWN EXPERIENCE, THROUGH THOSE ASSOCIATIONS OF SELF IN MEDITATION AND PRAYER, THAT HIS WAY MAY BE KNOWN AMONG MEN: FOR HE CALLS ON ALL - WHOSOEVER WILL MAY COME - AND HE STANDS AT THE DOOR OF THINE OWN CONSCIENCE, THAT YE MAY BE AWARE THAT THE SCEPTER HAS NOT DEPARTED FROM ISRAEL, NOR HAVE HIS WAYS BEEN IN VAIN: FOR TODAY, WILL YE HARKEN, THE WAY IS OPEN - I, MICHAEL, CALL ON THEE!

4. (Q) What should be the basis an fundamental thoughts to be presented in the lesson on THE OPEN DOOR?

(A) The Christ Spirit is the door, the truth, the way; not the man for, as the Father knoweth thee, so may ye know the Father through the exemplifying of His attributes in the earth.  Little by little, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little, for the glory of the Father - not the exaltation of thine own self; for with the exaltation of self - or the gratifying of the desires of flesh - the door closes.

5. We are through.

Some Observations Concerning My Spiritualism Series of Articles

2011-11-13T21:30:00.000-08:00

The eight previous posts concern the topic of Spiritualism. There are considerable misconceptions about this subject. Even as I wrote these posts I found other recent articles about mediumship and Spiritualism where there were blatantly erroneous statements offered as matters of fact so I remind the reader about the necessity of becoming familiar with the original nonfiction biographical books (with links to some of these books provided in previous blog posts).

My articles provided some details about aspects of seance manifestations.  The photographs of seance room materialization phenomena were carefully selected after I read corroborating testimonials.

While people such as myself have experienced what is often called 'paranormal phenomena,' I can understand how individuals might consider themselves to have no personal orientation to any events of this nature; therefore, this blog will continue to report about testimonials concerning various so-called 'unexplained phenomena.'  For example, hundreds of thousands of people understand the veracity of John of God's spiritual healing at his clinic in Brazil.  One does not often find John of God to be a subject of mainstream media reports although You Tube videos include "John of God film on Oprah"(squeamish people should not watch closely during glimpses of surgeries).

In regard to my previous blog article, I would like to clarify my commentary about 'Direct Voice' medium Leslie Flint's 'guide' nicknamed 'Mickey.'

In his autobiography, Flint referred to Mickey as "the spirit helper who acts as a sort of master of ceremonies at my seances."  There were some other speakers also known to have been heard on numerous occasions at the seances, including 'Brother John,' 'Dr. Stephen Ward,' 'Dr. Charles Marshall,' and 'Rudolph Valentino.'  (All of these recordings may be heard at http://www.leslieflint.com.)  Considering that all of these recorded communicators are messengers, the question arises — could there be a significance (unstated by Flint) to the nickname 'Mickey'?  (Mickey being a variation of the name 'Michael,' notably that of the Archangel of world spiritual traditions.)  At least where my life experience is concerned, my answer to this question would have to be in the affirmative.

When I first heard that someone had written a book entitled The Voice of Valentino (1965), my initial reaction was that some pathetic old-time movie fan had really gone overboard.  But that was before I realized that the book was the result of the mediumship of Leslie Flint.  The actual title of Lynn Russell's nonfiction case study is The voice of Valentino through Leslie Flint (also available to be read at http://survivalebooks.org).  In 2009, forty-one recordings of the Lynn Russell sessions became available to be heard without charge at the Leslie Flint Trust website.

The book features many comments about Mickey, who referred to "We" and "Us" in his communication, as channelers often do.  In her preface, Lynn Russell divulged that after eight years of research, the record of events encompassed 500 closely typed pages and an extensive collection of audio tapes.  Lynn referred to some passages of Valentino's seance room communication as coming from a hypothetical "Rudy-Plus."  She observed, "It was not just Rudolph Valentino who spoke, but the true individual whose spiritual identity remains obscure . . . The voice is the same yet the quality can be quite different; the accent is barely discernible but the characteristics remain distinctly his own.  This can be likened to a piece of music played on two pianos, one an upright model of average tone, the other a concert grand.  The notes and theme would be the same. but you would know without doubt which piano was which."

In retrospect, I think that Lynn overlooked the literal meaning of some of the communicators' statements; however, 'Oneness' may be a condition beyond complete human understanding and articulation.  One quotation designated by Lynn as "from the 'Rudy-Plus'" is:

 "The things that happened to you were not coincidences; they were pre-arranged by me and by others, and one day you will see more clearly the pattern of the tapestry which is being woven."               
This statement was attributed to Dr. Charles Marshall:

 "You have received a talk . . . sermon . . . call it what you will, not from ONE, but from MANY, all flowing through the SAME CHANNEL OF SPIRIT.  All entwined one with the other into a COMPLETE WHOLE.  We work in harmony as one body of people."
On one occasion an unidentified masculine voice was quoted:

 "We are a band of brothers and we rejoice in our knowledge, in our experience, and in our oneness with the Divine."
 Considering these statements collectively, one may gain some inkling about my rationale for 'Michael'—along with the nickname 'Mickey' of the 'guide' associated with the Leslie Flint seances—being an emblematic name of an Angelic Force Whose involvement in our lives is evident in many ways, encompassing the various forms of 'psychic phenomena' or 'extrasensory perception.'

Direct Voice Seance Phenomena

2011-11-06T15:20:00.000-08:00

Photo from the Leslie Flint autobiography Voices in the Dark showing Flint being studied by Society for Psychical Research members using infrared telescopes and microphones.

Arthur Findlay (1883-1964) began the Foreword of Where Two Worlds Meet (1951) with the statement: "During the Second World War, Mr. John Campbell Sloan kindly gave his services from time to time, without charge, at the houses of different people, so that they and their friends might obtain the phenomenon known as the Direct Voice." This form of mediumship might be simply described as unseen people who've made the transition to another realm of existence being able to make themselves heard on Earth in the presence of a human medium.

Findlay reported that Glasgow, Scotland resident Miss Jean Logan Dearie was the seance attendee who took verbatim shorthand records of all that took place. Upon reading the documents she had sent him, he realized the manuscript afforded an opportunity for a valuable addition to the records of the seances he had published in his book On The Edge of the Etheric (1931). Nineteen records of seances were selected for Where Two Worlds Meet and these transcripts used actual names of participants.

In the introduction for the later book, Findlay commented:

There is another world, about and around us, interpenetrating this physical world, into which we pass at death. It has been described to me by those who have spoken to me from it, but only in language suited to our finite minds.

Findlay's explanatory notes about a May 1942 seance included the following passage.

There was no hallucination about what took place, what one heard all heard; in fact this has been proved at other séances, from time to time, by recording what was said on gramophone records or on the dictaphone.

On The Edge of the Etheric included Findlay's perspective of the recurring communicator or seance 'control' named 'Whitefeather': "Whitefeather is recognised at once by his voice, his personality and his speech . . . By the quaint way he has of putting things he can keep us laughing for minutes on end." Other communicators mentioned by Findlay include 'Greentree' and 'Gallacher.' 'Huxley' was heard on one occasion and is quoted with a statement about evolution being "the key to the Universe."

Findlay affirmed, ". . . we find that we are surrounded by an unseen multitude who, under certain conditions, can hold converse [SIC] with us from time to time."

Details of the seances chronicled in Findlay's books were reiterated in his autobiography Looking Back (1955). Similar to what is known about Direct Voice medium Leslie Flint, Mr. Sloan "sat like the others in the circle" as seance communicators conversed with those gathered. Findlay reminded that other phenomena were continuous during the seances. Two trumpets (voice transmission enhancing devices with a simple conical structure) would be noticed to "fly around the room in the dark without knocking into each other, but frequently touching the ceiling and beating on it, the movement being at a great speed, without wires, attachments or any visible contrivances." At times the trumpets would "gently touch, stroke or caress the sitters, and at other times hit Sloan on the head without hurting him, or beat in time on the floor." Fingers were felt "to be passed through the hair of the sitters and over their faces." Lights were observed "to dance about the room" and "any part of the body" would be "touched on request."

Reading Where Two Worlds Meet, one will find consistency in the philosophy conveyed by the seance communicators. This consistency is also reflected in many of the audio recordings that were made at the Leslie Flint sittings. These recordings were the subject of two previous blog posts (1 and 2). The recordings at http://leslieflint.com corroborate Findlay's books and may be heard free of charge.

Taking into consideration the sequence of events chronicled in my published nonfiction case study Testament, I noticed an obvious parallel between the nickname 'Mickey'—whom Flint referred to as "my Cockney boy control"—and the nickname 'Michael' that was used for the being perceived to be the predominant manifesting entity by the family of the Centrahoma 'talking poltergeist' case. In my own life, 'Michael' found ways to demonstrate a guiding Intelligence not restricted by usual notions of 'time' and 'locality.'

Many of the recordings of 'Mickey' presented at the Leslie Flint Educational Trust archive reveal an astute and sympathetic commentator showing great knowledge of the human condition while speaking with a boyish modulation; however, in some recordings of 'Mickey' there may be heard a boisterous Cockney bloke who seems like a different person. Describing a demonstration for a large audience in his autobiography Voices in the Dark: My Life as a Medium (1971), Flint offered an anecdote that suggests Mickey's identity may not have been fully comprehended.

As usual Mickey spoke first, but this time, unusually, he told the huge audience that Mickey was only the name by which he was known in the world of spirit and to his medium. He said that in his life on earth he was called John Whitehead and he had sold newspapers outside Camden Town underground station until he was run over and killed by a lorry when he was ten years old. "I'm a lot happier over here than I ever was on your side," he assured the crowded hall, "you could say kicking the bucket was the best thing I ever did!" This caused a general laugh and tension throughout the hall relaxed noticeably.

Similar to Direct Voice case studies, in some of those cases referred to categorically as that of the 'talking poltergeist,' a variety of unseen communicators were heard. In The Bell Witch of Tennessee (1930) by Harriet Parks Miller, a quotation found in Miller's report of one incident showed an understanding in relation to the nature of the "invisible agency of tangible action" that wasn't so precisely articulated in other accounts.

"You know, as I've said before, I am anything and everything, here, there and everywhere. Just now I'm the spirit of an early emigrant . . ."

Other books chronicling Direct Voice phenomena include The Voices: A Sequel to "Glimpses of the Next State" (1913) by W. Usborne Moore and The Dead Have Never Died (1917) by Edward C. Randall.

In addition to the various modes of seance phenomena, so-called 'platform work' of clairaudient/clairvoyant mediums has also been a successful form of presentation to prove the continuity of human life. Two previous blog posts offer links to videotaped demonstrations of medium Doris Stokes in 1986 and Gordon Higginson in 1990.

Previous post in my Spiritualism series of articles "Willy Reichel's First Seance with 'Materialization Medium' Mr. C. V. Miller in 1903":

http://metaphysicalarticles.blogspot.com/2011/10/willy-reichels-first-seance-with.html

Willy Reichel's First Seance with 'Materialization Medium' Mr. C. V. Miller in 1903

2011-10-29T14:05:00.000-07:00

Call Building at Night, San Francisco 1903

Willy Reichel's memoir An Occultist's Travels (1908) offers an account of his "personal experiences, especially in the occult sphere" during the first years of the Twentieth Century. He found especially memorable the seances of Mr. C. V. Miller of 1084 Bush Street in San Francisco. Miller's principal 'Control' among many was 'Betsy,' whom Reichel described as "tireless and a dear, kind spirit." Betsy was a black woman known to have been a servant of the medium's grandparents. Here are excerpts from the first passages about Miller from Reichel's book, which is comparable in scope to W. Usborne Moore's Glimpses of the Next State (1911).

Mr. Miller must be described more fully, since my experiences with him surpassed everything that I had previously known, at least in his character as a materialization medium. Mr. Miller then owned a business in Japanese art wares and old pictures at 568 Geary street, and his appearance, with his modest bearing, is very prepossessing. After a long interval he had just begun again to give seances. I mentioned neither my name, nor my occupation, because he did not ask for them. On Thursday, October 1st, 1903, I went to him and found there twenty-five persons, both men and women. His so-called cabinet was a bow-window of three sections, with a curtain of black material, facing directly upon the street. When I entered, the curtain was drawn back, and I investigated everything in the most thorough manner. To come in from the outside was utterly impossible, as Bush street is well frequented and fully lighted by lamps, so that any attempt to enter from without would be impracticable on account of the pedestrians constantly passing. Miller first requested every one present to search this bow-window thoroughly, and he really made so pleasant, simple and frank an impression that harmony, which is a principal matter in such seances, was not difficult to establish.

. . . he placed himself before the curtain, which directly afterwards was opened , and now phantom after phantom appeared, whom he, without being in a trance, took by the hand and first asked for the name, which was instantly given. After the appearance of the second phantom he said suddenly: "Here is a Spirit, who calls himself So-and-so"—he mentioned a name known to me—"and says that Moppel, a dog that is still alive, remembers you vividly, and is faithfully guarding your home." Now for the explanation. At my temporary home in Southern California, I had a very faithful white Alaska dog, which I had left there, and to which I had given the name of "Moppel." No one in this seance knew me, or was aware that I was living at that time in Southern California and owned a dog named Moppel. Besides, it is a German dog-name, and Miller does not understand a word of German! The spirit, who said this, was, as I have said, known to me by name and seemed to be very familiar with my private affairs.

After a number of Spirits had first mentioned their names, they summoned several of those present and talked with them. Some of those asked for were not present, upon which the spirits withdrew with words of regret. Mr. Miller then stated that he would retire into the cabinet, because then the phantoms have more power, and from it they would go to those present. And so it was! Scarcely four minutes had elapsed, when the curtain opened entirely and Mr. Miller was seen asleep, with six fully developed phantoms in white robes beside him, who all clasped hands. Gradually the different phantoms came out of the cabinet, went to those present, and talked eagerly with them; two spoke German. As I heard later, they were conversing with Germans. Suddenly I heard distinctly, loudly, and clearly a name which I knew very well, from a phantom who wished to speak to me. Enough—they are private matters, concerning which I must keep silent. Another phantom came close to me, bowed, and I recognized it; his name, which he then uttered, corresponded. Almost at the same moment that the last phantom withdrew from our circle, Mr. Miller came out of the cabinet. There was ample light during the whole seance. The following phenomenon was also extremely interesting: a white ball, which looked like muslin, hovered a short time in front of the curtain, then sank before the eyes of all, and in scarcely two minutes a new spirit figure formed itself.

The dematerializations principally took place in full view, in front of the curtain. I can only say that during many years I have seen a great deal, but nothing like this, and I only regret that Germany does not possess such a medium. Unfortunately I was obliged to go away, but I hoped at no distant time to see Mr. Miller again. I subsequently read in the April number of Psychical Studies, Leipzig, of 1903 (page 243) a notice of Mr. Miller; Professor Maier correctly points out in a footnote that Miller was not bound at that time, and I am of the same opinion as R. Seithel, Sr. (Psychical Studies, 1900, p. 578) that binding is by no means a humane method of control, and phenomena occurring when it is used will be no more uncontrovertible than without it. At this extremely interesting seance I only observed, and immediately wrote down truthfully what I saw and heard; I examined the cabinet thoroughly before and after the seance; I saw Miller almost constantly along with the phantoms, and perceived no sign of apparatus or trickery.

Mr. Miller visited Willy Reichel in April 1904 in Los Angeles. Reichel commented about the visit: "On his arrival I examined him, as well as his two pieces of hand-luggage, and built a cabinet myself in my own private dwelling . . . In a word, these seances in my own residence presented the same phenomena as those in San Francisco. In everything I am writing down here I am perfectly aware of the full significance of my words."

Previous post "Spiritualism":

http://metaphysicalarticles.blogspot.com/2011/10/spiritualism-in-perspective.html

Spiritualism

2011-10-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

"A White Hand Ringing a Bell."

Caption from Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomena:

"This photograph shows the exact position of the medium's hands and feet during the production of this remarkable phenomenon. It will be seen that her hands are held on the extreme opposite corners of the table."

Different modalities of mediumship encompass clairvoyance relating to mental images, clairaudience involving auditory experiences deriving from unseen sources, 'physical' or 'materialization' manifestations with the medium typically entering a trance state, 'automatic writing,' and 'Direct Voice' phenomena where seance sitters have conversed with voices of people who'd passed over to another realm of being. 'Spirit contact' became better understood as seance communicators spoke about inhabiting an 'astral body' while inhabiting other 'spheres' of existence.

During the Spiritualism Movement that became prominent in the world during the mid-Nineteenth Century, people found themselves experiencing a thought-provoking gamut of unexplained phenomena. Unfortunately, some researchers seem predisposed to support a conclusion of fraud in regard to many fully documented cases where there may be found discriminating testimonials explaining the authenticity of the observed phenomena. Skeptical investigators of Spiritualism have often relied upon superficial and cursory data by others who similarly may be ignorant of the evidence offered in qualitative nonfiction sources. One such case is that of the 'physical' (manifestation) medium Eusapia Palladino, whose mediumship is chronicled in Eusapia Palladino and Her Phenomena (1909) by Hereward Carrington, among other accounts.

Dealing with the question of fraud, Carrington quoted remarks of physicist and author Oliver Lodge —

"I happen to have had only good sittings with Eusapia, and my own experience of what was likely to happen in the others was based upon what happened when she was not entranced at all. Judging from that experience, I thought it not unlikely that she may sometimes somnambulicly attempt to achieve effects which she thinks desired, in what may readily appear a fraudulent manner."

". . . All danger of unfair accusation will be avoided if sitters will only have the common sense to treat her not as a scientific person engaged in a demonstration, but as a delicate piece of apparatus, wherewith they themselves are making an investigation. She is an instrument, whose ways and idiosyncrasies must be learned, and to a certain extent humored, just as one studies and humors the ways of some much less delicate piece of physical apparatus turned out by a skilled instrument maker."

Another physical medium who continuously dedicated herself to fully cooperating with investigators was Mrs. Mina 'Margery' Crandon, the subject of the biography "Margery" the Medium (1925) by J. Malcolm Bird, who commented:

Orthodox science is inclined to say that always, if any infinitesimal possibility remains of explaining away the phenomena of the seance room, this possibility must be seized. I think orthodox science is not wholly justified in this attitude. It asks us, in effect, to assign to the possibility that there is no major discovery ahead of us, a numerical value which satisfies the mathemetician's definition of an infinitesimal—a value that shall be less than any other probability that may ever turn up, no matter how small the latter be.

Among the numerous books offering transcripts of the commentary of seance room communicators is Flashes of Light from the Spirit-Land, Through the Mediumship of Mrs. J. H. Conant (1872). The book was "compiled by Allen Putnam" from responses by "controlling spirits" of the medium. Here are some excerpts (probably not verbatim) from the book with the name of the identified 'controlling spirit' for each passage.

By William E. Channing, Jan. 6, 1868.

A. The spheres spoken of by returning spirits are not localities, by any means, but they are conditions of mind, states of being. The spirit-world proper has been derived from the spiritual emanations of this world, therefore it is like unto it, only superior to it.

By Theodore Parker, April 29, 1869.

. . . In the first place, it should be understood that these séances are not controlled at all times by the same spirit, but for each occasion an intelligence is selected best adapted to that occasion.

It should be understood that each distinct intelligence, or human spirit, retains its own special intellectual integrity after death as before.

By. Rev. Arthur Fuller, Feb. 28, 1870.

A. The theory of re-incarnation in America is a baby. In some portions of Europe it has attained its majority. Since we have the evidence of thousands of spirits — I say we, meaning myself and the spirit band with whom I am associated — since we have the evidence of thousands of spirits who remember having lived through several physical existences, of course we know that the theory is correct. We do not know that we, too, shall be again and again re-incarnated in physical life, but we believe we shall. Judging from the experience of others, we believe it to be our own fate also.

Arthur Conan Doyle profiled the events in the lives of the Fox Sisters who are often associated with the commencement of the Spiritualism Movement in The History of Spiritualism (1926). The uncanny occurrences in their house began with rapping noises. Eventually the unseen 'independent intelligence' responded to questions. "According to its own account he was a spirit; he had been injured in that house; he rapped out the name of a former occupant who had injured him; he was thirty-one years old at the time of death (which was five years before); he had been murdered for money; he had been buried in the cellar ten feet deep . . . It was a neighbor named Duesler who, first of all modern men, called over the alphabet and got answers by raps on the letters." Allegations related to the crime were made by a woman who'd served as a part-time helper to previous occupants of the house, the Bells.

An account of an earlier similar "the answers would come in raps" predicament was included in memoirs written by Richard Williams Bell concerning what is now known as the 'Bell Witch' case, one of the historical testimonials sometimes referred to categorically as 'talking poltergeist' cases (described in a previous series of blog posts).

There is a fundamental lesson to be learned from the annals of Spiritualism. What Earth people have in common with those communicating from other realms is that each is an individual personality or 'unit' of a pervasive Cosmic Consciousness.

Among the sources explaining the ascended state of human existence are the 'psychic reading transcripts' resulting from Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) going into a trance and allowing his body to be used as a channel. The communicating intelligences would speak in plurality, usually ending sessions with a comment such as "We are through for the present."

The following passage is an excerpt from Edgar Cayce Channeled Reading 3744-3 given on October 9, 1923.

11. (Q) From what source does this body EC derive its information?
(A) The information as given or obtained from this body is gathered from the sources from which the suggestion may derive its information.

In this state the conscious mind becomes subjugated to the subconscious, superconscious or soul mind; and may and does communicate with like minds, and the subconscious or soul force becomes universal. From any subconscious mind information may be obtained, either from this plane or from the impressions as left by the individuals that have gone on before, as we see a mirror reflecting direct that which is before it. It is not the object itself, but that reflected, as in this: The suggestion that reaches through to the subconscious or soul, in this state, gathers information from that as reflected from what has been or is called real or material, whether of the material body or of the physical forces, and just as the mirror may be waved or bended to reflect in an obtuse manner, so that suggestion to the soul forces may bend the reflection of that given; yet within, the image itself is what is reflected and not that of some other.

Through the forces of the soul, through the mind of others as presented, or that have gone on before; through the subjugation of the physical forces in this manner, the body obtains the information.

Photograph self-portrait by Edgar Cayce working at the Russell Brothers studio in Jacksonville, Alabama from the 1978 book Edgar Cayce's Photographic Legacy.

The five previous blog posts are about Spiritualism, including "An Extraordinary Journey: The Memoirs of a Physical Medium (2010) by Stewart Alexander":

http://metaphysicalarticles.blogspot.com/2011/10/extraordinary-journey-memoirs-of.html

An Extraordinary Journey: The Memoirs of a Physical Medium (2010) by Stewart Alexander

2011-10-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

After learning about and investigating Spiritualism for two years, Stewart Alexander decided to form a home circle and conduct seances. Months passed with no discernable results. The breakthrough occurred one night when he was invited to attend a sitting with his brother and sister-in-law. He accepted the invitation as he didn't want to miss anything should this be the occasion when something finally occurred. And it did.

Stewart heard a voice in his left ear, saying, "Turn out the light — continue to sit." He recalled, ". . . without variation those precise words were repeated again and again just as if they were on a loop of magnetic audio tape." He then became aware of "a presence" and his body reacted with spasms and tremors. "At the same time my consciousness seemed quickly to locate itself outside, behind and to the left of my body and from that position I observed my mouth fall open and with a rush the following words issued forth: 'I come speak, brother, sister.'"

These words had been spoken by a being Stewart would understand to be his "principal spiritual guide" who subsequently identified himself as 'White Feather.' Among the physical effects felt by Stewart when White Feather spoke through him, his left hand would begin to "curl in upon itself as if grossly deformed."

Stewart decided to dedicate himself to the 'great work' of mediumship after attending two sittings with Direct Voice medium Leslie Flint in 1973/4. On these occasions, Stewart recognized the individual voices of loved ones who'd passed over, including his grandmother. When White Feather spoke to him, Stewart asked if, during his earthly life, he had a physical deformity. "Instantly he replied — 'Do you mean my left hand?'"

Stewart entered a deep trance state whenever physical phenomena occurred at the meetings of his home circle. Other significant communicators who manifested through his mediumship beyond White Feather "who for some years was our single communicator" included in 1982 Lila Josephs, who in her earthly life had been a medium that was a friend of a circle member. A year later, Lila was followed by 'little Christopher,' who has been known to ease any tension among sitters with his childlike and amusing ways. In 1992 the circle was introduced to a new sitter — "the singular Walter Stuart Stinson. Students of Spiritualism and of physical research will know that the name of Walter Stinson was, during the 1920s and 1930s synonymous with the Boston (USA) medium known to the world under the pseudonym of 'Margery the Medium.'" 'Frieda Johnson' arrived in 1996 and the 'Spirit Team' was augmented again in 2000 with 'Dr. Franklin Barnett.'

Stewart's book includes appraisals of mediums whose careers were chronicled during previous epochs. He reminded that many prominent mediums cooperated fully with researchers only to find themselves regarded with suspicion and doubt. The concluding portion of the book features Stewart's profiles of two cases of 'suspect surreptitious fingerprints' resulting from seance room phenomena. These mediums were George Valiantine and Mina 'Margery' Crandon.

Photograph (detail) of a materialized hand and the entranced Mina 'Margery' Crandon during a seance.

Herbert Dennis Bradley wrote about the mediumship of George Valiantine in three books. In the first book Toward the Stars (1924), Bradley described experiencing "the most staggering event of my life" — a conversation with his sister Annie ten years after the end of her Earth life. Bradley's opinion about Valiantine changed because of two incidents in particular that are chronicled in his third book And After (1931). Stewart commented:

At séances held in 1931 in Bradley's home, it had been discovered that fingerprints, made upon smoked paper in the séance room, supposedly by the Spirits, were in fact of the medium's own right big toe or elbow joint. Dennis Bradley consulted Scotland Yard with the prints and they conclusively confirmed his suspicions. When challenged, Valiantine, according to Bradley, had broken down and claimed not to understand how such a thing could have happened.

Valiantine steadfastly maintained that he had no explanation for these circumstances. Bradley wrote in his third book that Valiantine never wavered in his denial of personal guilt concerning the incident and neither did he waver in his defense of the 'guides.'

As the case is profiled by Stewart, soon after this incident, during a seance for a man identified only as 'Mr. X' in the book, a fingerprint obtained on smoked paper was, on subsequent examination, found to be that of the middle finger of his left hand. Stewart commented, ". . . the entire matter appeared to contradict basic common sense. Prior to those sittings the medium, as we knew, was already under grave suspicion regarding the nature of his séance room fingerprints. It therefore seems inexplicable that he should have attempted to perpetrate the self-same fraud upon his host."

Concerning Mrs. Mina 'Margery' Crandon, Stewart explained: ". . . it was discovered by the leading researcher E. E. Dudley, that some of the alleged Spirit fingerprints made at séances over a period of several years and claimed by Walter to belong to him, were, in fact, identical to those of Margery's dentist." Stewart noted, "The Crandons' dentist had suggested the use of a dental compound known as 'Kerr Wax' in order for the print impressions to be made."

Stewart investigated the allegations in a remarkable way. During a 1994 meeting of Stewart's home circle, Walter himself was invited to comment on the affair.

This part of the book ends with the passage: "All these years later he [Walter] is still unable to account for the fact that beyond any reasonable doubt those [fingerprints] he knew to be paranormal were eventually found to be identical to those of his sister's dentist. It is as much a mystery to him today as it was then."

Here is a link to "The Felix Experimental Group (FEG): Applied Spiritual and Physical Spirit Manifestation" blog article "The Eclectic Margery Crandon" that is my source for the above photo.

Previous post "Alec Harris: The Full Story of His Remarkable Physical Mediumship by Louie Harris":

http://metaphysicalarticles.blogspot.com/2011/10/alec-harris-full-story-of-his.html

Alec Harris: The Full Story of His Remarkable Physical Mediumship by Louie Harris

2011-10-09T20:02:00.000-07:00

In 2009, a biography was published that offers many insights into the life of Alec Harris (1897-1974), a 'physical' (or 'materialization') trance medium. Alec Harris — The Full Story of His Remarkable Physical Mediumship was written by his wife Louie Harris. An abbreviated version had been released in 1980.

The book includes a report by Psychic News editor Maurice Barbanell, who had attended a 1946 seance. Here is the beginning of the article.

There is in South Wales one of our most remarkable materialisation mediums. At his séances Spirit forms not only show themselves in good red light, but hold sustained conversations, after having walked about 10 feet from the cabinet.

At a sitting which I attended I saw 30 forms materialise during two and a half hours, the length of the sitting. Alec Harris does not use his gift professionally, deriving his income from his work for a government department. The sittings have to be held fairly late at night because his wife is engaged in an orchestra at a local theatre.

Barbanell mentioned that "the forms always appear clothed in dazzlingly white ectoplasm, which I noticed as usual did not reflect the red light . . . On several occasions I handled the flowing ectoplasmic draperies, which were soft and silky to the touch. I shook hands with two forms. Their hands were firm and normal."

During the seance, "one materialisation parted the curtains so that we could see the form and the medium at the same time."

Here are some book excerpts representing some of the many unexpected occurrences at Alec Harris sittings. The most bizarre incidents had to be among those that Louie best remembered. She described numerous guides/communicators throughout the book. The one she accepted as her 'main guide and head of all the Circle's workers in Spirit' was 'White Wing.' Another medium described 'White Wing' to Louie as "a great Chieftain, a North American Indian" in a convincing manner as the medium addressed her with the nickname that White Wing used when speaking with her: "Faithful."

Mentioned in the following excerpt are two of the many 'guides' who manifested after Alec went into a trance — 'Fiji' and 'The Scientist.'

"Why can't I sit with you?" he protested, one night. "Why must I always sit in that wretched cabinet?" I explained that this was what the Guides had requested. "It's the way they want to work," I said. "Well I want to sit with the others," he grumbled. He seemed so put out and discontented with the present arrangement that I thought, "Why not? Let's try letting him sit with us in the circle tonight and see what happens."

So we all sat round in a complete circle, I with my back to the cabinet, while Alec sat by the wall, but close to the cabinet, eyes closed, in trance. We opened the circle as usual, and I found myself wondering what, under the present conditions, could possibly happen. Suddenly the cabinet curtains parted behind me, and I could see my little Guide, Fiji, standing beside me. I thought, 'it works just as well without Alec being inside the cabinet! I'm so glad for his sake.' Fiji was smiling and made as if to step into the circle of sitters when her little form just seemed to close up. It crumpled up and fell to the floor like an empty sack.

Quickly, an ectoplasmic arm, or rather a rod with a forked prong on the end of it, protruded from the cabinet and lifted the entranced Alec with his chair into the cabinet. I was so taken by surprise that I could only gape!

After Alec had done this disappearing trick I glanced down at the floor in the centre of the circle of sitters and saw, what I thought was Alec's handkerchief lying there. I bent and picked it up. As I did so I was horrified to hear a groan from Alec inside the cabinet. At the same time I realised that what I was holding was a piece of his ectoplasm, moist, and rather solid, and I hastily put it into the cabinet, where I knew it would be returned to Alec's body.

The experience left me shaken. The Scientist's voice then gave me a firm rebuke: "Let that be a lesson to you! You must never touch anything without first asking permission as this has a deleterious effect upon the medium."

During another unusual anecdote involving 'The Scientist,' Alec's sister Connie's materialization was mentioned. Her passing had resulted from tuberculosis in 1923. There had been past occasions at seances when Alec came out of trance sufficiently to be consciously reunited with his sister for brief interludes; however, as Louie recalled, Connie had never been able to speak during these moments.

A moment of amusement was caused once when Alec, for some reason, came out of trance while the Scientist, materalised outside the cabinet, was speaking to the sitters. Alec popped his head out of the cabinet and enquired, "Have you finished yet?" The scientist broke off his speech in the middle of a word and gave Alec a scathing look as if to say 'When you have finished I will continue!' Alec looked so surprised to see the Spirit form standing there. Somewhat shamefaced he mumbled, "I'm sorry, Sir," and quickly withdrew his head behind the curtains. A chuckle of mirth went round the sitters at the incongruity of the situation. This was an interesting incident because, as in the case of Connie's materialisation, Alec was conscious during the Spirit Scientist's manifestation and was able to talk to us, as well as to the materialised Spirit. It was a rare occurrence.

Readers who are unfamiliar with medium biographies may be surprised by the seemingly limitless diversity of interactions between manifesting communicators and sitters. There was a humorous incident involving a Chinese boy 'Guide' known as 'Toi-Toi' and boxing gloves belonging to the Harrises' son Bradley when Louie's friend Mary brought her husband to a seance.

Mary came alone earlier in the afternoon to help us prepare the room. We were collecting some of my son's toys and Mary had in her hands a pair of Bradley's boxing gloves, saying, "I hope they give my husband a good biff on the nose with these, because he is so stubborn!"

Alec came home, the sitters soon arrived, the last being Alec Hewitt, Mary's husband. He hung his big overcoat on the hall stand and came into the room. We locked the door and placed a table against it to reassure Alec Hewitt that nobody could enter. As soon as the light was extinguished, something was dropped into Mr. Hewitt's lap. While the séance was in progress he suddenly received a punch in the head with one of Bradley's boxing gloves.

Little Toi-Toi explained the reason for this action in his piping Oriental voice: "Mary say do, so Toi-Toi do." Mr. Hewitt was so startled that he roared with laughter.

When the lights were eventually put on, he found his keys in his lap. He was puzzled because he had left them in the pocket of his overcoat in the hall. Yet, there they were, transported through the locked and barricaded door. This left him with much to think about and no physical explanation to account for it.

Previous post "Essential Perspectives on Mediums and Materialization":

http://metaphysicalarticles.blogspot.com/2011/10/essential-perspectives-on-mediums-and.html

Essential Perspectives on Mediums and Materialization

2011-10-09T15:05:00.000-07:00

Fig. 98 from Clairvoyance and Materialisation
"Warsaw Experiments, September 3, 1919"

In the introduction of his 1911 book Glimpses of the Next State, W. Usborne Moore offered some descriptions of occurrences glimpsed at 1904 seances with medium Cyril Husk (along with seances of other 'materialisation mediums'). Moore noted that except for the medium's "principal control or familiar spirit" 'John King,' the materialized "faces and busts were about two-thirds of life size." During one of these seances he glimpsed the first materialization of 'Iola,' whom he would soon understand to be his own "spirit companion and guide." He recalled that the face on this occasion was "swathed round the mouth by a white bandage."

This substance likened to a "bandage" would eventually be known as 'ectoplasm' in the annals of seance phenomena yet Moore's journals of witnessed seance events indicate that the 'bandage' was not always an observable aspect of materializations. Moore contemplated the the phenomena of materialization at seances and commented, ". . . the simulacrum is seldom perfect. I have seen really good materialisations of my guide twice in England and once in America. On a great number of occasions in England I have seen her, and she has identified herself, but I cannot say the faces were good copies of the original."

It seems evident that these 'spirit guides' made known through seance room phenomena are analogous to the 'guardian angels' of religious traditions throughout the world.

Dr. Gustave Geley's book Clairvoyance and Materialisation (1927) is subtitled "A Record of Experiments." In the section concerning "Experiments in Materialisation with M. Franek Kluski," Geley explained about "The Primary Substance and Luminous Phenomena" based upon his own scientific investigation.

This primary substance may be solid, liquid, or vaporous. With Eva the solid type predominates, with most other mediums the vaporous. This is the case with Franek; the ectoplasm appears as gaseous, and only exceptionally as solid.

Geley had noticed an odor that he equated with ozone at the beginning phase of the manifestations.

Then, in weak light, slightly phosphorescent vapour floats round the medium, especially above his head, like light smoke, and in it there are gleams like foci of condensation. These lights were usually many, tenuous, and ephemeral, but sometimes they were larger and more lasting, and then gave the impression of being luminous parts of organs otherwise invisible, especially finger-ends or parts of faces. When materialisation was complete, fully formed hands and faces could be seen.

These hands and faces were often self-luminous; likewise the materialised tissues. The lights represent the first stages of materialisation—foci of condensation in the "human nebula."

In his "Introduction to the Practical Study of Mediumship," Geley considered "the strange aspect of the ectoplasmic substance." He was aware that "It may assume the likeness of more or less visible filaments, giving the unaccustomed observer the impression of threads intended to move an object fraudulently. At other times it assumes the appearance of light woven stuff like muslin, and photography shows the web. This has often been thought a proof of fraud in cases of quite genuine metapsychic phenomena."

Detail of Fig. 147/148 from
Phenomena of Materialisation (1920).

Baron Von Schrenck Notzing described the materialization seen in this photograph as "a long cord-like structure . . . looped round an anatomically well-developed finger . . ."

Previous post "Spiritualism, Maurice Barbanell, Spirit Voices and Materialization Mediumship":

http://metaphysicalarticles.blogspot.com/2011/09/spiritualism-maurice-barbanell-spirit.html

Spiritualism, Maurice Barbanell, Spirit Voices and Materialization Mediumship

2011-09-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

This etching by James Tissot was inspired by an 1885 seance and was featured in Clairvoyance and Materialisation (1927) by Gustave Geley. A caption noted that "a double materialisation by the mediumship of Eglinton" was depicted. The light illuminating the visitors was described as "bluish-white."

This summer I completed a chapter about Spiritualism for my future book and was surprised by how many 19th Century and early 20th Century books on this subject—the famous as well as the obscure—are now available to be read without charge online at such websites as www.archive.org, www.hathitrust.org, www.spiritwritings.com, www.survivalebooks.org and Google Books.

Among the authors whose books I studied were Arthur Conan Doyle, W. Usborne Moore, Edward C. Randall and J. Arthur Findlay, to name a few. Some other books are mentioned in the preceding blog post. I read two books by Psychic News founder/editor Maurice Barbanell: his autobiographical This Is Spiritualism (1959, revised edition 1967) and The Case of Helen Duncan (1945).

In This Is Spiritualism Barbanell attempted to express the momentous implications of seance room phenomena. Here is one of his recollections from his book's third chapter "Voices From Beyond."

Spirit voices can sometimes be produced in ordinary light. I heard this phenomenon at a spontaneous and unexpected demonstration when I was in America. As part of my lecture tour, I had reached Lily Dale, New York, which is America's largest Spiritualist camp. It is not, as you might infer from this description, a collection of tents. It is a small town with two hotels which, in the summer months, becomes the Mecca of thousands interested in Spiritualism. Nearly all phases of psychic phenomena are demonstrated by as many as sixty or seventy mediums. There is an auditorium which holds two thousand people.

On the day of our arrival, a tea party was given in honour of my wife and myself. To it were invited all the mediums then staying in Lily Dale. It was a brilliant summer afternoon, with sunlight streaming through the windows. There was a hubbub of conversation, as is usual when seventy or eighty people are having tea. Many of them were smoking.

Yet in these surroundings, which I would have regarded as being unfavourable to psychic phenomena, I had an outstanding experience. My wife was introduced to a stranger, a medium named Mrs. Ann Keiser, who had come from Buffalo. I must stress that this was their first meeting.

Unexpectedly, a third voice broke into the conversation and announced itself as belonging to my wife's dead grandmother. She gave her name and mentioned that my wife had been named after her. This statement was correct and was one which the medium could not have known, seeing that the grandmother had died in Britain. I say this confidently because even I did not know that my wife had been named after her maternal grandmother. She had died when my wife was three years old.

Next came the equally audible spirit voice of my wife's dead brother, a victim of the First World War, who also gave his name and said: "I have been waiting for this opportunity to talk to you." My wife came to me to describe this unexpected happening.

I took Mrs. Keiser into an adjoining room, where there was less noise, wondering whether the demonstration would be repeated. At first there was a sibilant whisper, which gradually became louder, until my dead brother-in-law was speaking quite distinctly and in a masculine voice. All that he said was of a highly evidential nature, referred to matters which had arisen since I left England and answered some questions which were in my mind, though the medium knew nothing about them.

The spirit voice, so far as I could tell, came from the region of the medium's solar plexus. All the time that the voice was speaking, Mrs. Keiser's lips were tightly closed. This was a phenomenon that could not be explained away by ventriloquism. And it was certainly not the medium's voice.

This Is Spiritualism also offered some of Barbanell's remembrances of mediums Helen Duncan and Estelle Roberts, among others. Barbanell described a seance with Mrs. Duncan that he attended just prior to her sad 1944 trial when she was charged at London's Old Bailey courthouse under the archaic Witchcraft Act of 1735. Mrs. Duncan was known as a materialization (or 'physical') medium. At her seances, she was in a trance while there were seen and heard materialized people and 'simulacrums' (representations) of people from the ascended realm.

Despite the strain of her ordeal, she willingly offered us an experimental séance which was remarkable in its results. Yards and yards of ectoplasm streamed from her, and billowed and flowed in swirling masses until even experienced Spiritualists like myself gazed with astonishment at the spectacle.

With Helen Duncan I have been privileged to see the growth of a materialisation inside the cabinet. Outside, I have observed the ectoplasmic forms as they gradually dwindled in size until they resembled small globes of light, and then finally disappeared as if sinking through the floor.

Inside the cabinet, I have watched ectoplasm exude from the medium's nostrils, mouth and ears in waving billows of luminosity that gradually solidified into the six-foot figure of her guide.

Barbanell mentioned that he had handled some of the ectoplasm immediately after it had been produced: "It was always bone dry, and had a curious stiff 'feel' . . ."

The simulacrums associated with Mrs. Duncan and some other physical mediums are something worth pondering. The witnesses who saw these forms throughout the stages of materialization understood them to be authentic yet individuals who know little about seance room phenomena when confronted with this evidence might make hasty assumptions.

A Helen Duncan Simulacrum with Ectoplasmic Veil

Barbanell also recounted witnessing a materialization at a seance with Estelle Roberts. The being that appeared was her guide 'Red Cloud,' a Sioux Indian during his Earth life. Barbanell commented about 'spirit guides' frequently being Indians: "In the days of their prime, the North American Indians were masters of psychic laws, with a profound knowledge of supernormal forces and how they operated." Barbanell wrote that the materialization seance with Roberts was a rare occasion because this form of phenomena was not often seen at her seances.

Prior to the seance, Red Cloud had requested that two luminous plaques and a red torch (lantern) be placed in the seance room. "These were put in the curtained recess which became the improvised cabinet." The medium became entranced at the beginning of the seance.

The two luminous plaques floated out of the cabinet and passed in front of the curtains. Between their phosphorescent glow I soon discerned the silhouette of a face. From the direction of its lips, I heard a voice which I identified as belonging to Red Cloud. I have heard it too many times not to recognise it.

At his invitation I approached within two or three inches of the cabinet. "Give me your hand," he said to me, while proffering his own. We shook hands. There was no doubt that I was not holding the medium's hand. The materialized spirit hand was strong and masculine, entirely different from that of Estelle's, which is slim and unmistakably feminine.

"Feel my hair," was Red Cloud's next request. When I complied, I noticed and felt, that his hair was long and silky and reached almost to where his shoulders would be.

During the seance, Barbanell stood very close to the materialized form of Red Cloud as the light from the red lantern illuminated his features. Barbanell recalled, "It was a handsome face, with eloquent eyes."

Previous post "Some Noteworthy Instances of Seance Room Photography":

http://metaphysicalarticles.blogspot.com/2011/09/some-noteworthy-instances-of-seance.html

Some Noteworthy Instances of Seance Room Photography

2011-09-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

William Crookes mentioned in Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism (1874) that there was a photograph of medium Florence Cook and the materialized 'Katie King' together (with Dr. J. M. Gully): ". . . Katie is seated in front of Miss Cook's head." He also wrote, "On one evening I timed Katie's pulse. It beat strongly at 75, whilst Miss Cook's pulse a little time after, was going as its usual rate of 90."

Charles Richet wrote in Thirty Years of Psychical Research (1923) that Bien Boa appeared five or six times and "seemed to float in the air on the left of the curtain . . . The softness and semi-vaporous outline of the hands are curious; likewise the veil surrounding the phantom has indeterminate outlines . . . A whitish fluidic mass is noticeable in front of the curtain."

This is the first photograph featured in Phenomena of Materialisation (1920) by Baron Albert Von Schrenck Notzing. The medium was the same woman who had previously been present at the seances attended by Richet that resulted with Bien Boa's materializations. The second photo seen in Schrenck-Notzing's case study (below) is captioned as "Enlargement of the hand of Fig. 1."

The photo was taken by André Bisson. Schrenck-Notzing explained about this initial photograph: "It was decided to attempt a photographic flash-light record with the consent of the medium . . . The curtain was opened. We again saw before us a figure clothed in a long white flowing veil which covered the face (medium ?). The flash-light was ignited (Figs. 1 and 2), but, at the same moment, the paper cylinder caught fire, and it appeared as if the flames would spread. A panic took place among the audience, some of the ladies screamed with fright, and fled. But we succeeded in extinguishing the fire."

This is another photo from Schrenck-Notzing's book — a detail of a photograph taken on July 1, 1913 of medium 'Stanislava P.' Richet would describe the unfamiliar matter seen during seances as 'ectoplasm.' Schrenck-Notzing observed, "The upper lip is covered by a white substance, which appears to penetrate the veil, broadening out on the outside."

This is Plate 19 from The Mediumship of Jack Webber (1940). The caption for the photo is subtitled "Ectoplasmic Voice Boxes": "Plates 18 and 19 are almost identical with similar formations photographed in America in connection with Margery Crandon's mediumship."

This photograph of "a Helen Duncan materialisation" is included in Medium On Trial: The Story of Helen Duncan and The Witchcraft Act (1996) by Manfred Cassirer. Duncan's daughter Gena Brealey wrote (with Kay Hunter) a biography of her mother entitled The Two Worlds of Helen Duncan (1985). Brealey reported that the materialized forms seen during seances could appear artificial at times. Brealey divulged that the range of materialized forms was a subject addressed by one of Duncan's 'guides' from the ascended realm: "Dr. Williams explained that the crude forms which were sometimes moulded from the ectoplasm were not intended to resemble deceased persons at this early stage . . . Eventually the materialised forms began to take on a proper physical appearance and began to appear less artificial or unreal."

Previous post with a seance room photograph:
http://metaphysicalarticles.blogspot.com/2009/05/unique-recordings-of-direct-voice.html

The ‘Poltergeist’ In Retrospect (with audio and video clip links)

2010-10-02T06:24:00.000-07:00

"Swinging lamps in the Rosenheim case

(by courtesy of Prof. H. Bender and Elek Science)"

from Poltergeists by Alan Gauld and A. D. Cornell

As those who’ve read Testament (1997) are aware, I traveled to Centrahoma, Oklahoma in August 1995 after learning about a contemporary case of “America’s Talking Poltergeist.” In the small rural town, I witnessed an array of strange phenomena that included hearing two distinctly different utterances — the laughter of a little boy and a deep masculine groan. Both were heard while I was driving a car with only one other (visible) passenger, a young woman.

I had previously researched similar cases during the first half of the 1990s. To fully understand what I found compelling about these cases, one would have to read the nonfiction books having provided the eyewitness testimonials: in particular M. V. Ingram’s An Authenticated History of the Bell Witch (1894), The Haunting of Cashen’s Gap (1936) by Harry Price and R. S. Lambert, and The Miraculous Case of Mary Jobson (Second Edition 1841) by W. Reid Clanny, M.D. Several months after returning home to Los Angeles from Oklahoma, I received a letter from Maxine Mc Wethy and it seemed oddly appropriate that her return address showed her post office box was number 13.

The most recent book I’ve read presenting circumstances that would’ve fulfilled my criteria for a ‘Talking Poltergeist’ case in the early ‘90s was This House Is Haunted: An Investigation of the Enfield Poltergeist (1980) by Guy Lyon Playfair. I had purchased a copy of the book prior to my Oklahoma trip yet didn’t realize how prominent was the ‘talking’ aspect of the case at the time. Excerpts of Maurice Grosse’s Enfield audio recordings may now be heard at http://www.zurichmansion.org/ghosts/enfield.htm. Thirteen audio clips are available along with video clips of Grosse being interviewed.

Ten years before the Oklahoma trip, I remember watching the episode of the PBS series “Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers” entitled “Things That Go Bump In The Night.” One case that was profiled had occurred at lawyer Sigmund Adam’s office in Rosenheim, Southern Germany during the winter of 1967. Eyewitnesses were shown in taped interviews. The incident I found most memorable were the hundreds of telephone calls made to the number of the ‘Speaking Clock’ (current time information) without anybody in the office having dialed the number.

Photo from The Unexplained: Great Hauntings

edited by Peter Brookesmith — Rosenheim poltergeist

(caption from source): "on the afternoon of 17 January
1967 this oak cabinet, which weighs over 400 pounds
(180 kilograms), moved a distance of more than a
foot (30 centimetres)"

A chapter of the nonfiction book The Unexplained: Great Hauntings (1984) is about the Rosenheim case. The chapter’s authors Colin Godman and Lindsay St. Claire in 1975 traveled with a camera team to make a BBC television documentary about the case. I presume this footage was featured in “Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers.” Here is an excerpt from the chapter.

On 20 October 1967, the office lights suddenly went out with a bang. Herr Bauer, an electrician from Stern’s, a local firm, was called in to repair them. He examined the lights and found that each fluorescent tube had been turned 90° in its socket and disconnected. He had finished replacing the tubes and put away his ladder when there was another bang. The tubes had twisted and disconnected themselves again. He was even more puzzled when the office staff told him that the automatic fuses in the office ejected themselves for no apparent reason, sometimes on all four circuits at once. Bauer began a full investigation of the office wiring and equipment, all of which he found in excellent order. He confessed to Adam: “I was faced with a puzzle and called it ‘witchcraft.’”

The Elektrizitätswerk (German electricity board) was asked to take over the investigation. Auxiliary Works Manager Paul Brunner found inexplicable voltage deflections occurred in the office and was quoted: “It became necessary to postulate the existence of a power hitherto unknown to technology, of which neither the nature nor strength nor direction could be defined. It is an energy quite beyond our comprehension.”

Physicists Dr.Karger and Dr. Zicha monitored experiments in the office and reached a comparable hypothesis.

While measuring sound levels, they noticed that, although no sound was heard, their monitor showed a huge deflection, so they concluded that there must have been direct pressure on the crystal in the microphone. They speculated that a similar invisible force could be acting on the pen of the Unireg [electrical instrument showing voltage fluctuations] itself, causing the unnatural loops directly, independently of the electrical current. They speculated further: the same force could be acting on the tiny springs inside the telephone, bypassing the dial. It was active only for short periods, its nature was complex and it was not electrodynamic. Known physics could not explain it.

Karger and Zicha also felt that the telephone anomalies suggested that an intelligent force was at work, because it had ‘chosen’ to focus its attention on the speaking clock.

The entrance to Herr Adam’s office was at Königstrasse 13 in Rosenheim.

Seven previous blog posts are about my research of ‘talking poltergeist’ cases during the 1990s.

10-16-10 Update: I have decided to take a hiatus from blogging to concentrate on working on my new book. It will likely be a two-volume work although I haven't yet found an appropriate publisher. For the time being, I suggest reading previous posts.

“Donald Ban and the Bocan,” Scotland: An 18th Century ‘Talking Poltergeist’ Case

2010-09-14T18:12:00.000-07:00

Culloden Moor photo from www.nts.org.uk

In the 1990s when I was researching ‘talking poltergeist’ cases, two European accounts described by Andrew Lang in The Book of Dreams and Ghosts (1897) reminded me of some of the occurrences chronicled in M. V. Ingram’s An Authenticated History of the Bell Witch (1894) although there are far more testimonials preserved about the Tennessee case of the nineteenth century. The Donald Ban account from Scotland mentions the 1746 Battle of Culloden that resulted with more than 1,000 Highlanders’ lives lost upon being outnumbered by the English soldiers.

During a recent Internet search, I found a source that shows how Lang learned about Donald Ban — an article that may be read in Folk-Lore, “a Quarterly Review of Myth, Tradition, Institution, & Custom Being The Transactions of the Folk-Lore Society and incorporating The Archaeological Review and The Folk-Lore Journal,” Vol. VI.—1895. Lang is listed as one of nine vice-presidents of the Society and the article is entitled “Donald Bán and the Bócan” by W. A. Craigie, M.A. “Read at Meeting of June 19th, 1895.” In his book’s preface, Lang wrote, “I owe much to Mr. W. A. Craigie, who translated the stories from the Gaelic and the Icelandic.”

Both the article and the portion of Lang’s book offer similar information and each cite the Gael, vol. vi., p. 142 (1877) with information about this Scotland case communicated by D. C. Macpherson. Below is the information provided in Lang’s book; however, I have omitted the translation of the verses of a hymn attributed to Donald Ban.

It is fully a hundred years since there died in Lochaber a man named Donald Ban, sometimes called “the son of Angus,” but more frequently known as Donald Ban of the Bocan. This surname was derived from the troubles caused to him by a bocan—a goblin—many of whose doings are preserved in tradition.

Donald drew his origin from the honourable house of Keppoch, and was the last of the hunters of Macvic-Ronald. His home was at Mounessee, and later at Inverlaire in Glenspean, and his wife belonged to the MacGregors of Rannoch. He went out with the Prince, and was present at the battle of Culloden. He fled from the field, and took refuge in a mountain shieling, having two guns with him, but only one of them was loaded. A company of soldiers came upon him there, and although Donald escaped by a back window, taking the empty gun with him by mistake, he was wounded in the leg by a shot from his pursuers. The soldiers took him then, and conveyed him to Inverness, where he was thrown into prison to await his trial. While he was in prison he had a dream; he saw himself sitting and drinking with Alastair MacCholla, and Donald MacRonald Vor. The latter was the man of whom it was said that he had two hearts; he was taken prisoner at Falkirk and executed at Carlisle. Donald was more fortunate than his friend, and was finally set free.

It was after this that the bocan began to trouble him; and although Donald never revealed to any man the secret of who the bocan was (if indeed he knew it himself), yet there were some who professed to know that it was a “gillie” of Donald’s who was killed at Culloden. Their reason for believing this was that on one occasion the man in question had given away more to a poor neighbour than Donald was pleased to spare. Donald found fault with him, and in the quarrel that followed the man said, “I will be avenged for this, alive or dead.”

It was on the hill that Donald first met with the bocan, but he soon came to closer quarters, and haunted the house in a most annoying fashion. He injured the members of the household, and destroyed all the food, being especially given to dirtying the butter (a thing quite superfluous, according to Captain Burt’s description of Highland butter). On one occasion a certain Ronald of Aberardair was a guest in Donald’s house, and Donald’s wife said, “Though I put butter on the table for you to-night, it will just be dirtied.” “I will go with you to the butter-keg,” said Ronald, “with my dirk in my hand, and hold my bonnet over the keg, and he will not dirty it this night.” So the two went together to fetch the butter, but it was dirtied just as usual.

Things were worse during the night and they could get no sleep for the stones and clods that came flying about the house. “The bocan was throwing things out of the walls, and they would hear them rattling at the head of Donald’s bed.” The minister came (Mr. John Mor MacDougall was his name) and slept a night or two in the house, but the bocan kept away so long as he was there. Another visitor, Angus MacAlister Ban, whose grandson told the tale, had more experience of the bocan’s reality. “Something seized his two big toes, and he could not get free any more than if he had been caught by the smith’s tongs. It was the bocan, but he did nothing more to him.” Some of the clergy, too, as well as laymen of every rank, were witnesses to the pranks which the spirit carried on, but not even Donald himself ever saw him in any shape whatever. So famous did the affair become that Donald was nearly ruined by entertaining all the curious strangers who came to see the facts for themselves.

In the end Donald resolved to change his abode, to see whether he could in that way escape from the visitations. He took all his possessions with him except a harrow, which was left beside the wall of the house, but before the party had gone far on the road the harrow was seen coming after them. “Stop, stop,” said Donald; “if the harrow is coming after us, we may just as well go back again.” The mystery of the harrow is not explained, but Donald did return to his home, and made no further attempt to escape from his troubles in this way.

If the bocan had a spite at Donald, he was still worse disposed towards his wife, the MacGregor woman. On the night on which he last made his presence felt, he went on the roof of the house and cried, “Are you asleep, Donald Ban?” “Not just now,” said Donald. “Put out that long grey tether, the MacGregor wife,” said he. “I don’t think I’ll do that to-night,” said Donald. “Come out yourself, then,” said the bocan, “and leave your bonnet.” The good-wife, thinking that the bocan was outside and would not hear her, whispered in Donald’s ear as he was rising, “Won’t you ask him when the Prince will come?” The words, however, were hardly out of her mouth when the bocan answered her with, “Didn’t you get enough of him before, you grey tether?”

Another account says that at this last visit of the bocan, he was saying that various other spirits were along with him. Donald’s wife said to her husband: “I should think that if they were along with him they would speak to us”; but the bocan answered, “They are no more able to speak than the sole of your foot.” He then summoned Donald outside as above. “I will come,” said Donald, “and thanks be to the Good Being that you have asked me.” Donald was taking his dirk with him as he went out, but the bocan said, “leave your dirk inside, Donald, and your knife as well.”

Donald then went outside, and the bocan led him on through rivers and a birch-wood for about three miles, till they came to the river Fert. There the bocan pointed out to Donald a hole in which he had hidden some plough-irons while he was alive. Donald proceeded to take them out, and while doing so the two eyes of the bocan were causing him greater fear than anything else he ever heard or saw. When he had got the irons out of the hole, they went back to Mounessie together, and parted that night at the house of Donald Ban.

A concluding paragraph by Lang mentions two further incidents that leave the reader wondering.

The bocan was not the only inhabitant of the spirit-world that Donald Ban encountered during his lifetime. A cousin of his mother was said to have been carried off by the fairies, and one night Donald saw him among them, dancing away with all his might. Donald was also out hunting in the year of the great snow, and at nightfall he saw a man mounted on the back of a deer ascending a great rock. He heard the man saying, “Home, Donald Ban,” and fortunately he took the advice, for that night there fell eleven feet of snow in the very spot where he had intended to stay.

Craigie found similarities between the Donald Ban account and a chapter in George Sinclair’s Satan’s Invisible World Discovered (1685) about “The Devil of Glenluce” although there was no mention of this case in Lang’s book so it was not known to me when I was researching ‘talking poltergeist’ cases during the first half of the 1990s.

Also noted by Craigie was “a similar Icelandic story, narrated in 1750 by the Sheriff Hans Wium, who was an eye-witness to the reality of the events.” This account was included by Lang in The Book of Dreams and Ghosts under the heading “The Devil of Hjalta-Stad.” Thus, the Glenluce and Hjalta-Stad accounts present incidents that resulted in affiliations with the Devil and Satan yet it would be absurd to take literally such associations in context with the occurrences described.

Andrew Lang’s other European account is the subject of the blog post “The Devil of Hjalta-Stad,” Iceland: An 18th Century ‘Talking Poltergeist’ Case.

“The Devil of Hjalta-stad,” Iceland: An 18th Century ‘Talking Poltergeist’ Case

2010-09-14T17:23:00.000-07:00

In addition to “Donald Ban and the Bocan,” Andrew Lang provided details in The Book of Dreams and Ghosts about an Icelandic predecessor to the ‘talking poltergeist’ cases I had researched during the first half of the 1990s. Lang cited his source: “John Arnason, in his Icelandic Folklore and Fairy Tales (vol. I., p. 309), gives an account of this as written by the Sheriff Hans Wium in a letter to Bishop Haldorr Brynjolfsson in the autumn of 1750.”

The sheriff writes: “The Devil at Hjalta-stad was outspoken enough this past winter, although no one saw him. I, along with others, had the dishonour to hear him talking for nearly two days, during which he addressed myself and the minister, Sir Grim, with words the like of which ‘eye hath not seen nor ear heard.’ As soon as we reached the front of the house there was heard in the door an iron voice saying: ‘So Hans from Eyrar is come now, and wishes to talk with me, the ------ idiot.’ Compared with other names that he gave me this might be considered as flattering. When I inquired who it was that addressed me with such words, he answered in a fierce voice, ‘I was called Lucifer at first, but now I am called Devil and Enemy.’ He threw at us both stones and pieces of wood, as well as other things, and broke two windows in the minister’s room. He spoke so close to us that he seemed to be just at our side. There was an old woman there of the name of Opia, whom he called his wife, and a ‘heavenly blessed soul,’ and asked Sir Grim to marry them, with various remarks of this kind, which I will not recount.

“I have little liking to write about his ongoings, which were all disgraceful and shameful, in accordance with the nature of the actor. He repeated the ‘Pater Noster’ three times, answered questions from the Catechism and the Bible, said that the devils held service in hell, and told what texts and psalms they had for various occasions. He asked us to give him some of the food we had, and a drink of tea, etc. I asked the fellow whether God was good. He said, ‘Yes.’ Whether he was truthful. He answered, ‘Not one of his words can be doubted.’ Sir Grim asked him whether the devil was good-looking. He answered: ‘He is far better-looking than you, you ------ ugly snout!’ I asked him whether the devils agreed well with each other. He answered in a kind of sobbing voice: ‘It is painful to know that they never have peace.’ I bade him say something to me in German, and said to him Lass uns Teusc redre (sic), but he answered as if he had misunderstood me.

“When we went to bed in the evening he shouted fiercely in the middle of the floor, ‘On this night I shall snatch you off to hell, and you shall not rise up out of bed as you lay down.’ During the evening he wished the minister’s wife good-night. The minister and I continued to talk with him during the night; among other things we asked him what kind of weather it was outside. He answered: ‘It is cold, with a north wind.’ We asked if he was cold. He answered: ‘I think I am both hot and cold.’ I asked him loud he could shout. He said, ‘So loud that the roof would go off the house, and you all would fall into a dead faint.’ I told him to try it. He answered: ‘Do you think I am come to amuse you, you ------ idiot?’ I asked him to show us a little specimen. He said he would do so, and gave three shouts, the last of which was so fearful that I have never heard anything worse, and doubt whether I ever shall. Towards daybreak, after he had parted from us with the usual compliments, we fell asleep.

“Next morning he came in again, and began to waken up people; he named each one by name, not forgetting to add some nickname, and asking whether so-and-so was awake. When he saw they were all awake, he said he was going to play with the door now, and with that he threw the door off its hinges with a sudden jerk, and sent it far in upon the floor. The strangest thing was that when he threw anything it went down at once, and then went back to its place again, so it was evident that he either went inside it or moved about with it.

“The previous evening he challenged me twice to come out into the darkness to him, and this is an angry voice, saying that he would tear me limb from limb. I went out and told him to come on, but nothing happened. When I went back to my place and asked him why he had not fulfilled his promise, he said, ‘I had no orders for it from my master.’ He asked us whether we had ever heard the like before, and when we said ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘That is not true: the like has never been heard at any time.’ He had sung ‘The memory of Jesus’ after I arrived there, and talked frequently while the word of God was being read. He said that he did not mind this, but that he did not like the ‘Cross-school Psalms,’ and said it must have been a great idiot who composed them. This enemy came like a devil, departed as such, and behaved himself as such while he was present, nor would it befit any one but the devil to declare all that he said. At the same time it must be added that I am not quite convinced that it was a spirit, but my opinions on this I cannot give here for lack of time.”

In another work (Huld, part 3, p. 25, Keykjavik, 1893) where the sheriff’s letter is given with some variations and additions, an attempt is made to explain the story. The phenomena were said to have been caused by a young man who had learned ventriloquism abroad. Even if this art could have been practiced so successfully as to puzzle the sheriff and others, it could hardly have taken the door off its hinges and thrown it into the room. It is curious that while Jon Espolin in his Annals entirely discredits the sheriff’s letter, he yet gives a very similar account of the spirit’s proceedings.

The Hieronyma ‘Talking Poltergeist’ Case of Late 17th Century Pavia, Italy

2010-09-07T20:25:00.000-07:00

Pavia photo from www.liutprand.it

Some time during the first half of the 1990s, before it became simple to find and purchase esoteric books via the Internet, I visited a local New Age bookstore and discovered an edition of Demoniality “Translated from the Latin with an Introduction and Notes by The Rev. Montague Summers.” One series of anecdotes described in eight pages of the book by author Lodovico Maria Sinistrari would catch my attention in particular, as at the time the incidents seemingly fulfilled my criteria for a categorical so-called ‘talking poltergeist’ case.

The setting of the remarkable account was northwest Italy during the late seventeenth century. A Franciscan theologian, Sinistrari shared his perspective of anecdotes of unexplained phenomena experienced by a local Pavia woman. He wrote about this near the end of his life. It is known that he died in 1701. His book De Daemonialitate, et Incubis et Succubis was printed in 1875 after Isidore Liseux discovered the original manuscript in a bookseller's shop in London.

In an introduction for the book written in 1927, Montague Summers offered a biographical profile of Sinistrari, mentioning that he was “summoned to Rome to fill the position of Consultor to the Supreme Tribunal of the Most Holy Inquisition.” Summers also provided some social and historical observations to give some background information for Sinistrari’s lurid theories about demons. At one point Sinistrari cited information “according to several authors who have related the judicial admissions of witches when on the rack . . .”

Keeping in mind my remarks at the conclusion of my previous article in this series of blog posts regarding my research of ‘talking poltergeist’ cases, the following passages are the section of Sinistrari’s book that comprise the author’s account of the Hieronyma case. There are some obvious contradictions in Sinistrari’s presentation and interpretation of the described course of events. It seems especially noteworthy that the haunting entity and the woman are not said to have ever engaged in sexual intercourse — a fact negating the literal definition of an ‘Incubus’ in association with this case. Preceding his account of Hieronyma, Sinistrari wrote, without specifying his precise participation in the events: “Of this I was an eye-witness, and I shall relate a story which verily passes human belief: but I take God to witness that I tell the actual truth, corroborated by the testimony of many reputable persons.”

28. About twenty-five years ago, when I was lecturer on Sacred Theology in the convent of the Holy Cross, in Pavia, there was living in that city a married woman of unimpeachable morality, and who was most highly spoken of by all such as knew her, especially by the Friars. Her name was Hieronyma, and she lived in the parish of S. Michael. One day, this woman had kneaded bread at home and given it out to bake. The cook-shop man brought her back her loaves when baked, and with them a large cake of a peculiar shape, made of butter and Venetian paste, as is usual for manchets to be made in that city. She declined to take it in, saying she had not kneaded any thing of the kind. “But,” said the cook, “I had no other bread save yours to bake to-day, therefore this cake also must have come from your house; you have, perhaps, forgotten.” The good wife allowed herself to be persuaded, and partook of the cake with her husband, her little girl who was three years old, and the maid servant. The next night, whilst in bed with her husband, and both were fast asleep, she suddenly woke up at the sound of a very small voice, something like a shrill hissing, whispering in her ears, yet with great distinctness, and inquiring whether “the cake had been to her taste?” The good woman, thoroughly frightened, began to guard herself with the sign of the cross and repeatedly called upon the Names of Jesus and Mary. “Be not afraid,” said the voice, “I mean you no harm; quite the reverse: I am prepared to do anything to please you; I am captivated by your beauty, and desire nothing more than to enjoy your sweet embraces.” Whereupon she felt somebody kissing her cheeks, so lightly, so softly, that she might have fancied being stroked by the finest feather-down. She resisted without giving any answer, confidently repeating over and over again the Names of Jesus and Mary, and crossing herself most devoutly. The tempter kept on thus for nearly half an hour, when he withdrew.

The next morning the dame sought her confessor, a discreet and learned man, who confirmed and encouraged her in her faith, exhorting her to maintain her stout resistance and to provide herself with some holy Relics. On the ensuing nights she was sore tempted with the same amorous words and loving kisses, and she showed the same constancy in repulsing them. Utterly weary, however, of such painful and persistent molestations, upon the advice of her confessor and other reverend men, she had herself exorcised by experienced Exorcists, in order to ascertain whether perchance she was not actually possessed. Having found in her no trace of the evil Spirit, they blessed the house, the bedroom, the bed, and strictly commanded the Incubus to cease his annoyance. But all was in vain; he kept on worse than before, pretending to be love-sick, weeping and moaning in order to melt the heart of the lady, who however, by the grace of God, remained unconquered. The Incubus then went another way to work: he showed himself in the shape of a lad or little man of great beauty, with crisped golden locks, a flaxen beard that shone like fine gold, sea-green eyes calling to mind the flax-flower, and arrayed in a comely Spanish dress. Besides he appeared to her even when she was in company, billing and cooing gently after the fashion of lovers, kissing his hand to her, and continually endeavouring by such means to obtain her embraces. She alone saw and heard him: to everybody else he was invisible.

This good lady kept persevering in her disdain with admirable constancy until, at last, after some months of courting, the Incubus, angered at her insensibility, had recourse to a new kind of persecution. First, he took away from her a silver cross filled with sacred Relics, and a holy wax or papal Agnus Dei of the blessed Pontiff Pius V., which she always carried on her person; then, although it could not be found that the locks had been tampered with or opened, he purloined her rings and other gold and silver ornaments and jewelry from the casket wherein they were stored. Next, he began to strike her cruelly, and after each beating, livid bruises and discolorations were to be seen on her face, her arms and other parts of her body, which lasted a day or two, then suddenly disappeared, the reverse of natural bruises which heal slowly and by degrees. Sometimes, too, while she was nursing her little girl, he would snatch the child away from her breast and lay it upon the roof, on the edge of the gutter, or hide it, but without ever harming it. Sometimes he would upset all the furniture, or smash to pieces saucepans, plates, and other earthenware utensils which, in a twink, he restored incontinently to their former whole state. One night whilst she was lying by her husband’s side, the Incubus, appearing in his customary shape, vehemently urged his desires, which she steadfastly resisted as usual. He thereupon withdrew in a rage, and shortly after came back with a large load of those flag stones which the Genoese, and the inhabitants of Liguria in general, use for roofing their houses. With those stones he built around the bed a wall so high that reached the tester, and the couple were unable to leave their bed without using a ladder. This wall, however, was built up unmortared, without lime; and when pulled down, the flags were laid by in a corner where, during two days, they were seen of many who came to look at them; they then disappeared.

On S. Stephen’s day, the husband had asked some military friends to dinner, and, to do fitting honour to his guests, provided a substantial repast. Whilst they were, as customary, washing their hands before taking their places, suddenly the table, just ready laid, vanished clean away from the dining-room; all the dishes, saucepans, colanders, kettles, plates and crockery in the kitchen vanished likewise, as well as the jacks, jugs, bottles, beakers, and glasses. The guests, eight in number, stood, surprised and confounded, in strange amaze. Amongst them, as it chanced, was a Spanish Captain of infantry, who, addressing the company, said boldly: “Do not be alarmed, it is but a trick: the table is certainly still where it was, and I shall soon find it by feeling for it.” With these words, he paced round the room holding his arms wide outstretched, and endeavouring to lay hold of the table; but when, after much groping and walking to and fro, it was apparent that his efforts were useless, since he continually grasped nought but thin air, he was well laughed at by his friends; and it being already high time and past for having dinner, each guest took up his cloak and was about to return home. They had already reached the street-door with their host, the husband, who, out of politeness, was attending them, when they heard a great crash in the dining-room. Astonished beyond measure, they paused awhile wondering what the cause of such a noise might be, and lo! the servant ran up hastily to announce that the kitchen was stocked with new vessels filled with food, and that the table was standing again in its former place. Having gone back to the dining-room, they were dumbfounded to see the table indeed was laid, with napery, napkins, salt-cellars, silver cruets, castors, trenchers and trays that did not belong to the house, and groaning with rich meats, pasties, pullets and puddings, which certainly had not been cooked there. On a large sideboard, too, were arrayed in perfect order crystal, silver, and gold cups, with all manner of flagons, decanters and lusty bowls filled with rare foreign wines, from the Isle of Crete, Campania, the Canaries, and the Rhine. In the kitchen there was also an abundant variety of viands, fish and game, in saucepans and dishes that had never been seen there before. At first, some of the guests had hesitated whether they should partake of that food; however, encouraged by others, they sat down, and soon ate heartily, for the dishes proved to be of exquisite flavour. Immediately afterwards, when dinner was done, as they were sitting before a good winter fire, everything vanished away, the dishes, the very orts and crumbs, and in their stead reappeared the table of the house, laid with a cloth, and thereupon the victuals which had been previously cooked; but, for a wonder, all the guests were fully satisfied, so that no one could think of supper after such a magnificent dinner. A clear proof this that the substituted viands were real and nowise fictitious.

This kind of persecution had been going on for some months, when the lady betook herself to the Blessed Bernardine of Feltre, whose body is venerated in the Church of S. James, a short distance from the walls of the city. She made a vow to him that she would wear, during a whole twelve-month, a sad-coloured frock, girt about her waist with a cord, such as is worn by the Friars Minor, the Order of which Blessed Bernardine was a member. This she vowed, in the hope that, through his intercession, she might at last be rid of the persecution of the Incubus. And accordingly, on the 28 September, the vigil of the Dedication of the Archangel S. Michael, and the festival of the Blessed Bernardine, she donned the votive habit. The next morning, which was Michaelmas Day, the afflicted woman repaired to the church of S. Michael, her own parish, already mentioned. It was now about ten o’clock, a time when crowds of people were going to mass. She had no sooner set foot on the threshold of the church, than her clothes and ornaments fell to the ground, and disappeared in a gust of wind, leaving her mother naked. There happened, fortunately, to be among the crowd two cavaliers of mature age, who, seeing what had taken place, very decently hastened to divest themselves of their cloaks with which they concealed, as well as they could, the woman’s nudity, and having put her into a close coach, accompanied her home. The clothes and trinkets carried off by the Incubus were not restored by him before six months had elapsed.

I might not impertinently relate many other most amazing tricks and naughty japeries which that Incubus played on her, were it not wearisome. Suffice it to say that, for a number of years, he persevered in his temptation of her, but that, finding at last he was losing his pains, he desisted from his vexatious and wanton importunities.

Pavia Church of San Michele Maggiore (12th Cent.)

Here is an article about St. Michael’s Basilica in Pavia: http://www.liutprand.it/articoliPavia.asp?id=195

The Morse ‘Talking Poltergeist’ Case of 1679-80 Massachusetts

2010-09-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

“The poltergeist house at Newbury, Massachusetts”
from Poltergeists by Alan Gauld and A. D. Cornell.

Increase Mather’s An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1684) included a report that began with these statements (modern spelling utilized).

In the year 1679, the house of William Morse in Newberry [Newbury] in New England, was strangely disquieted by a Daemon. After those troubles began, he did by the advice of friends write down the particulars of those unusual accidents.

This is how Alan Gauld and A. D. Cornell introduced the case in their book Poltergeists (1979).

In the afflicted house at Newbury lived an elderly shoemaker, William Morse, esteemed ‘a sincere and understanding Christian,’ his wife, Elizabeth, and their grandson, John Stiles, who was clearly a lively lad. Elizabeth Morse was, or had been, a midwife. Midwives, owing to the ready access which they had to certain items of magical import, were frequently suspected of witchcraft; and it is clear that such suspicions had been directed at Goodwife Morse long before the events of which I shall speak.

Chronicles of ‘Talking Poltergeist’ cases often have detailed a bizarre variety of unexplained phenomena, such as those found in the testimonial of the Morse case presented in Increase Mather’s book. Here are some excerpts.

On December 8, in the morning, there were five great stones and bricks by an invisible hand and thrown in at the west end of the house while the man’s wife was making the bed . . .

At another time an Iron Crook that was hanged on a nail violently flew up and down, also a chair flew about, and at last lighted on the table where victuals stood ready for them to eat, and was likely to spoil all, only by a nimble catching they saved some of their meal with the loss of the rest, and the overturning of their table.

Their keys being tied together, one was taken from the rest, and the remaining two would fly about making a loud noise by knocking against each other.

On January 23 (in particular) the man had an iron pin twice thrown at him, and his inkhorn was taken away from him while he was writing, and when by all his seeking it he could not find it, at last he saw it drop out of the air, down by the fire . . .

All this while the Devil did not use to appear in any visible shape, only they would think they had hold of the hand that sometimes scratched them; but it would give them the slip. And once the man was discernibly beaten by a fist, and an hand got hold of his wrist which he saw, but could not catch; and the likeness of a Blackmore [Blackamoor, negro] child did appear from under the rug and blanket, where the man lay, and it would rise up, fall down, nod and slip under the clothes when they endeavored to clasp it, never speaking any thing.

A paragraph of Increase Mather’s report of William Morse’s testimonial presented allegations about an acquaintance named Powell. The described events involving the boy correlate with beliefs about witchcraft at the time.

Particularly, on December 26. He barked like a dog, and clucked like a hen, and after long straining to speak, said, there’s Powel, I am pinched; his tongue likewise hung out of his mouth, so as that it could by no means be forced in till his fit was over, and then he said ‘twas forced out by Powel . . . His grandmother at last saw him creeping on one side, and dragged him in, where he lay miserable lame, but recovering his speech, he said, that he was carried above the doctor’s house, and that Powel carried him, and that the said Powel had him into the barn, throwing him against the cart-wheel there, and then thrusting him out at an hole; and accordingly they found some of the remainders of the thrashed barley which was on the barn-floor hanging to his clothes.

In the early 1990s, I took notice of the case due to the fact that the report mentioned an otherwise unattributable talking phenomenon incident. This is the paragraph recounting the family hearing a mysterious voice.

Neither were there many words spoken by Satan all this time, only once having put out their light, they heard a scraping on the boards, and then a piping and drumming on them, which was followed with a voice, singing, Revenge! Revenge! Sweet is revenge! And they being well terrified with it, called upon God; the issue of which was, that suddenly with a mournful note, there were six times over uttered such expressions as, Alas! Alas! me knock no more! Me knock no more! And now all ceased.

Following this paragraph, Increase Mather cited conjectures that were made.

The man does moreover affirm, that a seaman (being a mate of a ship) coming often to visit him, told him that they wronged his wife who suspected her to be guilty of witchcraft; and that the boy (his grandchild) was the cause of this trouble; and that if he would let him have the boy one day, he would warrant him his house should be no more troubled as it had been; to which motion he consented. The mate came the next day betimes [early], and the boy was with him until night; after which his house he saith was not for some time molested with evil spirits.

This account in the fifth chapter of An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences is included in Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases 1648-1706 edited by George Lincoln Burr and published in 1914. A footnote provides more information —

This “relation” was undoubtedly received from the Rev. Joshua Moodey, then minister at Portsmouth, in a letter of August 23, 1683 (Mather Papers, pp. 361-362); for a postscript speaks of its enclosure and says that he had it from William Morse himself. That Morse was its author we know only from Mather. Happily, there exist also many documents of the two witch-trials arising from the affair—those of Caleb Powell [the seaman] and Mrs. Morse. Some of these, preserved in the court records at Salem, were printed by Joshua Coffin in his History of Newbury (Boston, 1845), at pp. 122-134; and again, more carefully, with others, by W. E. Woodward in his Records of Salem Witchcraft (Boston, 1864), II. 251-261. Others, which had strayed from public keeping, were published by S. G. Drake, then their owner, in an appendix (pp. 258-296) to his Annals of Witchcraft (Boston, 1869), in which he summarizes the story (pp. 141-150). Two (her conviction at Boston and her release) have been printed in the Records of the Court of Assistants, I. (Boston, 1901), pp. 159, 189-190. Others still are in the Massachusetts archives (vol. CXXXV., fol. 11-19), where they have been used by Mr. W. F. Poole (see, in the N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, XXIV., his note. P. 386, to an unpublished draft of Governor Hutchinson’s account). These documents supplement, and sometimes correct, the relation of Morse. Thus, from sworn statements of December, 1679 (Coffin, Newbury, pp. 124, 131-133), it is clear that the events above ascribed to December 3 belong to November 27, that the grandson’s name was John Stiles, that the “seaman” who charged him with the mischief was Caleb Powell, that the day the boy was in his keeping was December 2, 1679, and that on the very next day Morse instituted proceedings against Powell, who was indicted for witchcraft on December 8 (the day on which the disturbances were resumed) and was tried in Ipswich in March. He succeeded in clearing himself, but at the cost of Goodwife Morse. She was a midwife, and had long been suspected of witchcraft by some of her neighbors. Indicted in March, she was tried at Boston in May before the magistrates of the colony, was found guilty and sentenced to death, but was reprieved by the magistrates, and in June, 1681, after more than a year’s imprisonment, permitted, though without acquittal, to return to her home, “provided she go not above sixteen rods from her own house and land at any time except to the meeting house.” For the end of her pitiful story see p. 412, below.

The “end of her pitiful story” is recounted in A Modest Inquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702) by John Hale (another book featured in Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases 1648-1706), as follows.

Sect. 10. About 16 or 17 years since was accused a woman of Newbury [Mrs. Morse], and upon her trial the jury brought her in guilty. Yet the Governor Simon Bradstreet Esq. and some of the magistrates reprieved her, being unsatisfied in the verdict upon these grounds.

1. They were not satisfied that a specter doing mischief in her likeness, should be imputed to her person, as a ground of guilt.

2. They did not esteem one single witness to one fact, and another single witness to another fact, for two witnesses, against the person in a matter capital. She being reprieved, was carried to her own home, and her husband (who was esteemed a sincere and understanding Christian by those that knew him) desired some neighbor ministers, of whom I was one, to meet together and discourse his wife; the which we did: and her discourse was very Christian among us, and still pleaded her innocence as to that which was laid to her charge. We did not esteem it prudence for us to pass any definitive sentence upon one under her circumstances, yet we inclined to the more charitable side.

In her last sickness she was in much darkness and trouble of spirit, which occasioned a judicious friend to examine her strictly, whether she had been guilty of witchcraft, but she said no: but the ground of her trouble was some impatient and passionate speeches and actions of hers while in prison, upon the account of her suffering wrongfully; whereby she had provoked the Lord, by putting some contempt upon his word. And in fine, she sought her pardon and comfort from God in Christ, and died so far as I understood, praying to and resting upon God in Christ for salvation.

Something I found inconsistent about the presentation of the Morse case in Increase Mather’s book is the ferocity expressed in the descriptions of the uncanny travails of the Morse family without mention of any lasting injuries. Most accounts of past centuries may be questionable to some extent as there were no ways of recording the events with total accuracy as video and audio technology may perhaps allow in our own time. Where annals of unexplained phenomena are concerned, the reader is sometimes left wondering about the extent of witness testimonials being influenced by their beliefs, emotions and objectives.

Regarding the nineteenth century Bell Witch talking poltergeist case of Tennessee, it seems obvious to me now that the account written by Richard Williams Bell shows a foremost objective of convincing readers to find the haunting presence responsible for the death of his father. Concerning what is known about the Morse case, it would seem that one can do little more than wonder. The question of accuracy in the reporting of a ‘talking poltergeist’ case is answered by my account of my investigation of the Centrahoma ‘talking poltergeist’ case found at the beginning of my book Testament, which may be read in a free Internet edition. I still have the audio cassettes that are the source of the verbatim transcripts presented in the book.

"The Daemon of Tedworth" 'Talking Poltergeist' Case

2010-08-22T15:52:00.000-07:00

I've decided to begin a series of blog posts regarding some of my research of 'talking poltergeist' cases. This research was done in the years preceding my trip to Oklahoma in 1995. I'll begin with the John Mompesson case, sometimes known as the 'Drummer of Tedworth' case first chronicled in England by Joseph Glanvill with a 1668 book. An "enlarged narrative of the Daemon of Tedworth" was featured at the beginning of the chapter "Proof of Apparitions, Spirits, and Witches, from a choice Collection of modern Relations" in Glanvill's Saducismus Triumphatus (1689).

Fifteen years ago, I had intended to profile the case in the preface of my planned book about 'talking poltergeists.' One book that I found on the subject of poltergeists was Poltergeists (1979) by Alan Gauld and A.D. Cornell, who used a variety of manuscript materials to profile the Tedworth case. The authors' objective was to offer "the fullest account of this famous case yet published"; however, they didn't include some thoughtful perspectives from Glanvill's final report on the case that was included in his book published posthumously.

Here is my description of the case that was written prior to 1995. This article utilizes modern spelling for Mompesson's statements (as did my unpublished manuscript) except for the word 'daemon.' The meaning of this word centuries ago was different from the usual contemporary interpretation of 'demon.'

A residence in North Tedworth, England became the setting for many strange events beginning in 1662. This house, a weather-boarded edifice like that of the Bells', belonged to John Mompesson, a Justice of the Peace who had once confiscated the drum of a miscreant. Details of what his family experienced were described by Mompesson in letters and a journal, with the events recounted by Joseph Glanvill in Saducismus Triumphatus (1681).

As Mompesson chronicled in a letter of December 6, 1662, his home was first plagued by a recurrent peculiar noise—a "hollow sound"—from the outside of the house, commencing as his family retired to their bedrooms each evening. For a month the thumping noise continued and then, inside the house, for two hours each night such loud sounds would reverberate from the drum—left under a board in the mother's chamber—that the windows and beds would shake. Wrote Mompesson: ". . . when it came we could hear a perfect hurling in the air over the house . . ."

Two months later, there were additional noises — in Mompesson's words: "Sometimes it would imitate the sound of peas upon boards, the shoeing of horses, the Sawyers [carpenters], and many others, but, God be praised, my wife drawing near her time of childbed, it came a little that night she was in travail and forbore the house for three weeks until she had her strength again . . . it returned with mighty violence and applied itself wholly to my youngest children, whose bed steeds it would beat . . . then it will run under the bed tick and scratch as if it had iron talons and heave up the children in the bed, and follow them from room to room and come to none else but them."

Soon, a board was seen to levitate with a sulfurous smell lingering in the room the following morning. That night, the family was joined by their minister and some neighbors in a prayer session in the children's room, which had the effect of transferring the noise to an attic. At the conclusion of the prayers, the group saw chairs moving with no obvious means of propulsion. The children's shoes were tossed over their heads and "every loose thing thrown about the room." A bed staff was thrown at the minister by the unseen force and hit him in the leg "but so softly that a lock of wool could not fall more softly."

The phenomena escalated with the children being pulled by their hair and clothing. While in their beds, the family's servants experienced their beds levitating. Sometimes the candles would not burn in proximity to what Mompesson referred to as "the spirit." The attributes of the drumming sometimes altered as it was heard every day for seven weeks.

In a letter dated December 26, Mompesson noted that the noise had evolved. A noteworthy incident followed a neighbor telling his mother that she had heard stories of fairies that left money in maidens' shoes. His mother's reply had been: "I should like that well if it would leave us some money to make us satisfaction for the trouble and charge it puts us to." That night, there was such a chinking of money heard that the family was disappointed not to find the house strewn with half crowns.

Mompesson described other events: "On Christmas Eve about an hour before day, one of my little boys arising to make water, all being quiet, a pin of the latch of the door was pulled out, and the door thrown open, and the latch hit the boy directly in a sore place of his heel, and made him cry out: one would wonder how such a little pin could be found out in the night. And on Christmas day at night it took my mother's clothes and threw all about the room and took her Bible and hid it in the ashes of the chimney, and such odd tricks every night it does."

Concerning a friend who volunteered to stay nights in the room where occurred the greatest trouble, Mompesson described: ". . . sometimes John's breeches and doublet are pulled about the room and his shoes thrown at him; then John takes his sword and recovers it, but now and then it takes John at the advantage when he is asleep and his arms in the bed, and lays so hard upon him, that for his life he cannot get one hand loose for a quarter of an hour, and then he will be in a great sweat . . . And these things others have tasted as well as strangers as others, some have had their hands caught as they have been feeling for a chamber pot, and held, their feet and stomachs laid on, but thus much we have discovered of it, that it is afraid of weapon or to be handled, and very shy of much light."

In a letter dated January 4, Mompesson described new events: "We do often hear (especially of late) a tinging in the chimney before it comes down . . . we have constantly every night been troubled, and one night more than ever, there being great lights, one whereof came into my chamber which my wife did see, which she conceived to be very blue and glimmering, and caused as she thought stiffness on her eyelids: it continued whilst forty might be distinctly told, and before she perceived it, heard something come up the stairs resembling one coming up without shoes: that light was four or five several times in my children's chamber, and as the maids constantly affirm, the doors were at least ten or more times opened and shut in their sights, and when they were opened there came in a noise as if half a dozen had come in and pressed who should come first in, and walk about the room, one whereof rustled so that they thought it had a silk garment on (the same I once heard) but all this while they saw nothing but the doors open and shut, and the lights, but when they first were troubled with the noise of the doors they set up a candle, by which they perceived the motions of the doors."

Mompesson speculated that these events were the result of witchcraft performed by the drummer, now imprisoned, that he had prosecuted. While he had heard that many houses have been troubled with unusual noises and sounds and other disturbances, Mompesson knew of no similar case where "for fourteen weeks together a spirit should come, and in the sight of so many hundreds should do such things, as if it were his chief business and design to convince the world of their infidelity in that point."

On two occasions in January, a disembodied voice was heard, yet only two words were spoken: "A WITCH, A WITCH, A WITCH, A WITCH, A WITCH, A WITCH, A WITCH, A WITCH, A WITCH, A WITCH . . ."

Mompesson's journal described many other alarming events, some involving the spirit and his daughter, such as it moving into her bed tick, running from one side of the bed to the other and heaving her up. At one time, there were three separate noises in the bed; one seeming to blow and pant like a dog out of breath. Once Mompesson and some neighbors entered the room to notice a "bloomy, hot, ill smell, and the room though without fire was very hot, and the children in the bed in a great sweat . . ."

8-22-2010 note from Mark Russell Bell: My rough draft of this portion of the planned preface of my unpublished manuscript also included a statement that Glanvill's observations about the events "only heighten the confusion surrounding the circumstances that remain one of the most famous poltergeist cases in history." However, this estimation seems simplistic after having recently read Glanvill's account of the case from the third edition of Saducismus Triumphatus. My comments about the book are presented in the second part of this article: "The Daemon of Tedworth" 'Talking Poltergeist' Case (Part 2).

"The Daemon of Tedworth" 'Talking Poltergeist' Case (Part 2)

2010-08-22T15:50:00.000-07:00

I recently read Joseph Glanvill's report of "the Daemon of Tedworth" from a facsimile reproduction of Saducismus Triumphatus or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions (1689). What most impressed me was how many parallels are evident between this case and my own experiences investigating the contemporary Oklahoma case that was referred to as "America's Talking Poltergeist" when I learned about it in 1995 (see my previous blog post).

Glanville's description of the strange events includes the comment, "In such silly tricks it was frequent." This passage reminded me of some of the anecdotes recounted to me by the Centrahoma family — seemingly, in stark contrast with cliché demonic or (back then) witchcraft associations.

In the introduction to the second part of his book, Glanvill's commentary shows that he was not without skepticism in regard to testimonials of unexplained phenomena: ". . . there are ten thousand silly lying stories of witchcraft and apparitions among the vulgar . . . I grant that melancholy and imagination have very great force, and can beget strange persuasions. And that many stories of witchcraft and apparitions have been but melancholy fancies."

Glanvill's report of the case included a description of his visit, accompanied by a friend, to the Mompesson family's house. Glanvill recounted strange sights and sounds, such as hearing "a strange scratching" from different places in the children's bedroom. I believe it is of great significance that—similar to my own experience in Centrahoma—Glanville was not frightened by his uncanny experiences at the house. He wrote:

It will I know be said by some that my friend and I were under some affright, and so fancied noises and sights that were not. This is the eternal evasion. But if it be possible to know how a man is affected, when in fear, and when unconcerned, I certainly know for mine own part, that during the whole time of my being in the room, and in the house, I was under no more affrightment than I am, while I write this relation.

In Saducismus Triumphatus Glanvill recounted a seemingly "preternatural" incident that he hadn't previously made known. There was a mysterious nocturnal "great knocking" at the door of the chamber where he was sleeping in the Mompesson house. "I asked who was there several times, but the knocking still continued without answer. At last I said, In the name of God, who is it, and what would you have? To which a voice answered, Nothing with you." Glanvill first assumed the response was from some servant of the house but in the morning Mompesson and the servants assured him that the noise had not been made by them.

Glanvill concluded about John Mompesson:

Mr. Mompesson is a gentleman, of whose truth in this account, I have not the least ground of suspicion, he being neither vain nor credulous, but a discreet, sagacious and manly person. Now the credit of matters of fact depends much upon the relators, who, if they cannot be deceived themselves nor supposed any ways interested to impose upon others, ought to be credited. For upon these circumstances, all human faith is grounded . . .

Glanvill could find no reason to doubt Mompesson's account of the extraordinary occurrences in his house.

He suffered by it in his name, in his estate, in all his affairs, and in the general peace of his family. The unbelievers in the matter of spirits and witches took him for an impostor. Many others judged the permission of such an extraordinary evil to be the judgment of God upon him, for some notorious wickedness or impiety. Thus his name was continually exposed to censure, and his estate suffered, by the concourse of people from all parts to his house, by the diversion it have him from his affairs, by the discouragement of servants, by reason of which he could hardly get any to live with him.

'Tis true, that when the gentlemen the King sent were there, the house was quiet, and nothing seen nor heard that night, which was confidently and with triumph urged by many, as a confutation of the story. But 'twas bad logic to conclude in matters of fact from a single negative, and such a one against numerous affirmatives, and to affirm, that a thing was never done, because not at such a particular time, and that nobody ever saw what this man or that did not. By the same way of reasoning, I may infer that there were never any robberies done on Salisbury Plain, Hounslow Heath, or the other noted places, because I have often traveled all those ways, and yet was never robbed . . .

Glanvill noted about Mompesson's house, ". . . the disturbance was not constant, but intermitted sometimes several days, sometimes weeks." Glanvill observed about the intermissions of the strange displays: ". . . this circumstance will afford but a very slender inference against the credit of the story, except among those who are willing to take any thing for an argument against things which they have an interest not to acknowledge."

Associated Press: "40 wealthy families pledge to donate their money"

2010-08-11T20:29:00.000-07:00

I rarely read the print version of newspapers anymore but I happened to see last Thursday's Los Angeles Times. On page A22 was the article "Billionaires make pledge to donate their fortunes." If I was the newspaper's editor, the article would have appeared on page one. A longer version of the article by Donna Gordon Blankinship appeared at Google News and many other news websites.

Billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have pledged to give at least half their wealth to charity. Now they are encouraging the nation's wealthiest individuals to agree to the pledge. Considering the world's current human and environmental challenges, this philanthropy is urgently needed. The sooner, the better.

One of the individuals reported to have signed the giving pledge is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

Bloomberg, who has a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $18 billion, said he has changed his personal philosophy over the years from wanting to be more private about his giving toward trying to play a leadership role. He said his whole family is in tune with his giving plan.

"I've always thought your kids get more benefit out of your philanthropy than your will," he added.

Others who have signed the pledge include filmmaker George Lucas, media mogul Ted Turner and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

The Beginning of My Spiritual Awakening — Fifteen Years Later

2010-08-10T07:50:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Oklahoma on Thursday, August 10 and returned to Los Angeles on Monday, August 14, 1995. The circumstances are presented in the nonfiction case study Testament (1997) available to be read in a free Internet edition.

In 1995 after researching so-called ‘talking poltergeists,’ I learned about the Mc Wethy family in Centrahoma upon reading an article in the UK magazine Fortean Times. I still remember my astonishment upon sighting the third headline on the cover mentioning “America’s Talking Poltergeist.”

My first estimation was that the article probably was just another brief profile of ‘The Bell Witch’ talking poltergeist case and then I was excited to see that the article was about an actual contemporary case. I contacted the family and many of the following events are chronicled in Testament. The book is not a creative work where fiction is disguised as nonfiction. Names of people mentioned in the book have not been altered.

In my first telephone conversation with Maxine Mc Wethy, I learned that she had been married to Carlton Bell and members of her immediate family had the Bell surname. Eventually, I accepted ‘Bell’ as my own pen name after a surprising series of events that are chronicled in the book.

M. V. Ingram’s An Authenticated History of the Bell Witch (1894) may now be read without charge in an Internet edition. In the Bell Witch case, the haunting presence was associated with an amazing variety of unexplained phenomena that included voice manifestations. This is also true about the Centrahoma case. A parallel can be found between this voice phenomena and mediumship cases where ‘Direct Voice’ communication has been heard.

The following is the first portion of my planned preface (as written in 1995) of an unpublished manuscript that has been left in a file for fifteen years. The subject of my manuscript was ‘talking poltergeist’ accounts from previous epochs.

Throughout history, there have been accounts of perplexing facets of human existence. In the early nineteenth century, a profusion of supernatural phenomena were manifested in the lives of the Bell family residing in rural Tennessee. Eyewitness accounts describe a series of events comparable to what might ensue should mankind's collective subconscious generate an incorporeal yet undeniable entity whose existence was inexorably linked with that of the Bells'.
The year was 1804 when John and Lucy Bell and their six children traveled in covered wagons to the wilderness of Tennessee. John Bell had purchased one thousand acres of land on the south bank of the Red River. Here his family prospered as farmers with a quantity of slaves. Twelve years later, hundreds of people would see and hear a startling range of uncanny events and leave eyewitness testimonials of their experiences. The family's ordeal quickly became the greatest mystery of their time.

In 1846 Richard Williams Bell recorded the events of what he referred to as his "family's trouble" with the hope of some day correcting public misconceptions surrounding the occurrences. When he died several years later, his eldest son, James Allen Bell, inherited the manuscript and preserved it.

James Allen Bell was himself near the end of his life when Mr. M. V. Ingram obtained his consent to use the document as a chapter in the anthology of recollections preserving the history of The Bell Witch. Ingram was a newspaperman of Clarksville, Tennessee and the results of his inquiries and research was published in 1894, along with the corroborative testimony left by men and women who had experienced the wonders firsthand.

Those who witnessed the Bells' astonishing experiences signed affidavits to attest to the truth of what they recorded. Something happened to the Bells that has never been comprehensible, and these events paralleled occurrences in past centuries.

Here’s a link to my November 2004 article at http://paranormalnews.com/:
“Putting Together The Poltergeist Puzzle.” The article is about the Bell Witch and two other 'talking poltergeist' cases. This article is a rough draft of information included in a chapter of a new nonfiction book that I've been working on for many years. I now plan to entitle the book My Unexpected Path of Spiritual Discovery.

"The Stuph File" Interview

2010-08-01T17:29:00.000-07:00

"The Stuph File" is a weekly radio program and podcast hosted by Peter Anthony Holder in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Peter learned about me from a recent brief article released by Wireless Flash News, an independent news agency. The interview is approximately ten minutes long and begins at 29.43 minutes of the free MP3 podcast that is less less than an hour in its entirety. Here is a link — look for episode #0050: http://peteranthonyholder.blogspot.com/. Peter's website is http://peteranthonyholder.com/.

The Value of Driving an Alternative-Fuel Car

2010-07-29T20:12:00.000-07:00

Me and my car (photos by David Samuel)

An article in a recent issue of the American Automobile Club magazine (Westways in California) posed the question, "Does it make economic sense to drive an alternative-fuel car?" I decided to share some data about my experience of owning and driving a Toyota Prius since August 1, 2006.

First, I should mention that any discussion relating to economics should identify the fallacy of any financial perspective that doesn't take into consideration the value of an unpolluted environment.

The odometer had 3 miles when I paid for the new car with a sticker price of $23,141. The sales tax was $1,912.85 and there was an electronic filing fee of $28. I received an alternative motor vehicle tax credit of $3,150 for my income tax that year.

Since buying the car, I've needed to refuel once every four weeks. The yearly gas cost total comes out to an average of $282.26. It's fortunate that I live less than four miles from where I work. Regarding annual state vehicle registration, no smog checks are required for a Prius.

I haven't had any mechanical problems with the car. Every six months, I've gone to a local Toyota dealer for a maintenance visit. I received a recall notice and an accelerator pedal modification was made at no charge. The average yearly dealer service cost has been $251.67. The average annual mileage has been 3,863.

I was glad to see the announcement of an agreement between the people of Tesla Motors, Inc. and Toyota Motor Corporation to develop an electric version of the RAV4.

I concur with the observation of Peter Bohr in the AAA article:

Fewer smog-forming emissions. Fewer climate-changing greenhouse gases. Fewer barrels of foreign-sourced petroleum. Vehicles with alternative power sources definitely benefit both the environment and society.

The Washington Post: "Top Secret America" — "A hidden world, growing beyond control"

2010-07-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

Each day at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean,

workers review at least 5,000 pieces of terrorist-related data

from intelligence agencies and keep an eye on world events.

(caption from source — photo by: Melina Mara / The Washington Post)

This article published yesterday in The Washington Post has received widespread attention. Written by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin, the article recounts that people in positions of government authority chose to bolster military and defense industries after the events of September 11, 2001 and this spending has continued to increase.

Nine days after the attacks, Congress committed $40 billion beyond what was in the federal budget to fortify domestic defenses and to launch a global offensive against al-Qaeda. It followed that up with an additional $36.5 billion in 2002 and $44 billion in 2003. That was only a beginning.

The U.S. intelligence budget is vast, publicly announced last year as $75 billion, 2 1/2 times the size it was on Sept. 10, 2001. But the figure doesn't include many military activities or domestic counterterrorism programs.

After reading the article, I was left with the realization that all this money could have been spent in ways dedicated to improving not only the lives of American citizens but also those of people throughout the world. What better way could there be to encourage diplomacy and eradicate incentives for terrorism?

Links to the article were featured on many popular websites including Yahoo!, where headline commentary referred to the article as an "intelligence-complex exposé." An estimate is given that now in the United States 854,000 people hold top-secret security clearances. A noteworthy perspective was presented from retired Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines "who was asked last year to review the method for tracking the Defense Department's most sensitive programs."

"I'm not aware of any agency with the authority, responsibility or a process in place to coordinate all these interagency and commercial activities," he said in an interview. "The complexity of this system defies description."

The result, he added, is that it's impossible to tell whether the country is safer because of all this spending and all these activities. "Because it lacks a synchronizing process, it inevitably results in message dissonance, reduced effectiveness and waste," Vines said. "We consequently can't effectively assess whether it is making us more safe."

The Post's investigation is based on government documents and contracts, job descriptions, property records, corporate and social networking Web sites, additional records, and hundreds of interviews with intelligence, military and corporate officials and former officials. Most requested anonymity either because they are prohibited from speaking publicly or because, they said, they feared retaliation at work for describing their concerns.

There is also a revealing anecdote about "an ultra-secret group of programs for which access is extremely limited and monitored by specially trained security officers" — Special Access Programs.

One military officer involved in one such program said he was ordered to sign a document prohibiting him from disclosing it to his four-star commander, with whom he worked closely every day, because the commander was not authorized to know about it. Another senior defense official recalls the day he tried to find out about a program in his budget, only to be rebuffed by a peer. "What do you mean you can't tell me? I pay for the program," he recalled saying in a heated exchange.

A simple and basic conclusion about the information presented by this article is an appraisal that clandestine agendas discount the spiritual value of honesty espoused in all of the world's wisdom traditions. It would seem humanity is faced with an age where secrecy is an accepted paradigm.

It seems important to remind that any orientation of a person toward countries, companies or a particular office as domains of perfunctory acquiescence will result with decisions weighing heavily on one's conscience as one becomes aware of concealed information or circumstances having an adverse impact on the welfare of others.

I heard Dana Priest and William M. Arkin interviewed yesterday by Neal Conan on the NPR radio program "Talk of the Nation." Here is a transcript. At one point Neal mentioned that the acting director of national intelligence, David Gompert, wrote a response to the article and said that U.S. intelligence is achieving untold successes every day. Neil commented, "The fact that there were only a few high-profile terrorist attacks and attempts recently means they are doing a good job, that the picture you paint is not the intelligence community that we know, as he put it."

Dana Priest then observed, "Well, first of all, we asked them to share with us anything they could, plots that were foiled that we could put in the paper because we didn't have many examples. We said give us things, just in generalities. You know, they're always worried about giving away too much. And we didn't receive anything back. So if they're out there, and they happened, you know, we could not find out about them."

My News Release: "Popularity of Paranormal Investigations Motivates Mark Russell Bell to Share Insights"

2010-07-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to the news release "Popularity of Paranormal Investigations Motivates Mark Russell Bell to Share Insights" that was distributed this morning by PRWeb.

There are more than one thousand amateur so-called 'paranormal investigations' or 'ghost hunters' groups in the United States. There are also numerous similar groups in other English speaking countries as found in listings of search engines and Internet directories.

People who've read the 1997 nonfiction case study Testament (available to be read without charge in a free Special Internet Edition) should understand that I had no idea of what I was getting myself into upon traveling to Oklahoma in the summer of 1995 to interview a family who'd been the subject of a Fortean Times magazine article I'd read. I witnessed a variety of unexplained phenomena and was shocked when I returned home only to find the bizarre occurrences continuing around me. I eventually decided that the best way of chronicling the case was to publish verbatim transcripts of my interviews and journals in chronological order.

These events allowed me to gain some important insights into circumstances usually categorized as 'paranormal phenomena.' Here are my quotes from the article along with the seven "observations for investigators of unexplained phenomena."

"Many decades of popular supernatural horror films and novels have cultivated for some people a mind-set that craves the sensational and the frightful. You might say that fictional depictions of unexplained phenomena require a suspension of disbelief for entertainment purposes while encountering any such events in your own life requires careful analysis for understanding the meaning of what has happened."

"In my youth, I'd read books about poltergeists and ufology without accepting anything as unquestionably valid. It was only after my experiences chronicled in Testament that I began to understand what manifestly was the basis for the phenomena."

1. Perceived instances of psychokinesis / telekinesis in relation to a specific individual should not be attributed to the individual alone but to an unseen intelligence manifesting in proximity to the person.

2. It is often the personal response of someone observing the phenomena that associates the experience with a particular word or familiar concepts such as 'poltergeist,' 'demon,' 'angel,' 'spirit,' or 'alien.'

3. Paranormal investigators should consider how their 'supernatural' beliefs about ghosts and unexplained phenomena correlate with their entire metaphysical orientation that has evolved during the full course of their life experience.

4. Regarding anomalous occurrences involving mystics, psychics, mentalists, etc., consider the concept of a Superconsciousness manifesting through or around specific individuals to expand people's spiritual awareness of what is possible. Eastern wisdom traditions offer words signifying 'Oneness' to remind that all living things are interconnected and each is linked with an all-creative Life Force.

5. I recommend you read my own book (available in a free Internet edition) as well as extensively documented cases of people who've experienced different forms of unexplained or 'psychic' phenomena during previous epochs. Some of these people include Dr. John Dee, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Edgar Cayce, and medium Leslie Flint.

6. Concerning legitimate trance channelers, the perspective of entities speaking through a person should be understood as being 'more-knowing' rather than 'all-knowing.' Each individual consciousness unit has a unique perspective based upon one's own life experiences.

7. 'Electronic Voice Phenomena' (EVP) may be obtained anywhere with all varieties of recording devices. Listen closely to unedited radio or TV broadcasts/recordings and you may be surprised.

Some Thoughts About Extraordinary People

2010-07-05T10:08:00.000-07:00

Lizzie Velásquez Is An Inspirational Speaker

Last month, a National Geographic Channel documentary brought public awareness of conjoined twins Tatiana and Krista Hogan, who were born in October 2006 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The documentary reported that the twins share a brain thalamus. An article about the twins was published in the June 19 edition of the UK Daily Mail.

Earlier this year, Prahlad Jani (see my previous blog post and this May 8 UK Daily Mail article) was reported as being monitored in a hospital in India for 15 days. During this period he was observed to abstain from consuming any food or water with no adverse consequences. Last week brought another surprising report as newspaper articles brought to public awareness a 21-year-old Texas State University student who must eat incessantly due to an undiagnosed syndrome.

The UK newspaper Daily Telegraph published an article on June 28 about Lizzie Velásquez, who has “a rare condition which prevents her from gaining weight even though she eats up to 60 small meals a day.” Abhimanyu Garg, M.D. was quoted: “We will continue to study her case and learn from her.” Another article about Lizzie was published in the UK Daily Mail. There is also a website About Lizzie and an autobiographical book co-written by Lizzie will soon be available.

In a January blog post, Lizzie wrote:

Every day when I wake up I try to think of all the positive things that day has to bring me . . . But despite all the hard days, I am beyond blessed. I have a family that loves me, friends who accept me for me, and my faith that pulls me through the days I don't want to get out of bed.

I’ve just read a short book about a professional ‘mentalist.’ Jim Karol is a nationally known entertainer who correctly predicted the number sequence 2-2-2 for the Pennsylvania Daily Lottery of December 22, 1990. The numbers were from a dream that he’d experienced the previous month. The day after the remarkable lottery results, the incident was reported in an article in the newspaper The Morning Call and brought him the nickname “Psychic Madman,” which has now been used as the title for the brief autobiographical book that Jim wrote with Lu Ann Brobst Staheli.

He performed card tricks for Allentown steel mill co-workers prior to becoming a professional magician at age 29. After performing for two decades, Jim’s act evolved after he helped his 16-year-old daughter study the Periodic Table of Elements for school. The next morning, he discovered that he’d memorized every element. He began using his “sudden super memory” in his show and has memorized such information as the names of every country and capital, thousands of digits of pi, sports statistics, the Scrabble dictionary, and the day of the week for any date.

Jim mentioned in his book that his show includes “dangerous yet well-thought-out stunts” and affirmed, “But most of my show is based on memory effects, scientific trickery, and intuition.” For anyone interested in memory training, Jim recommended the books of Harry Lorayne.

Jim wrote, “Most of my memorization has been accomplished by associating one list of things to another.” He mentioned “Celebrity Name Association” as a technique that he successfully used. For example, the number one was linked with Michael Jordan and the country of Jordan. If you think a preponderance of such associations would seem more difficult for him to remember than if he used ordinary rote memorization, your reaction is the same as mine. I’m not sure that I could even come up with a list of associations in an order that could easily be recalled.

In his book, Jim attempted to place his lottery dream in perspective —

I believe the lotto dream came to me to help spread awareness about the universal mind, the sixth sense, and the mind’s true power.

Regarding the topics of the brain and documented cases of unusual mentalities, I also encourage readers to investigate Brazilian healer John of God. Several informative books and DVDs are available about him and here is a link to one Internet page with some background information.

Clive Wearing’s Rare Predicament of Having an Extremely Limited Memory

2010-06-28T17:55:00.000-07:00

Photo of Clive Wearing from The New Yorker

Clive Wearing is a man whose extensive brain damage inhibits his memory. He has only a small and vague recall of his past and isn’t able to form new memories. His wife Deborah’s nonfiction case study Forever Today: A Memoir of Love and Amnesia was published in 2005 and documentaries about Clive are well-known to many brain researchers.

Clive was a conductor and a BBC early music producer for Radio 3 while Deborah was working in public relations for a major UK retailer in 1985 when a virus destroyed large parts of Clive’s brain. Deborah wrote, “Clive had damage in many areas of the cortex or outer mantle. He had lesions on either side (temporal lobes), back (occipital), upper back (occipital parietal) and in the frontal lobes.” The hippocampus and other structures deeper inside the brain were also damaged.

There were different phases to the aftermath of the virus. Talking developed gradually and there was an interim when he talked backwards: “The fact that Clive could spell and speak back to front with such facility and wit showed there was some real intelligence alive in there.” It was also surprising when Clive first exhibited the continuation of his musical abilities. He demonstrated that he could still read music and sing.

Deborah described various aspects of Clive’s inhibited mentality in Forever Today —

As it seemed impossible to fix anything in his mind, it was as if every waking moment was the first waking moment. Clive was under the constant impression that he had just emerged from unconsciousness . . .

Clive no longer had any episodic memory, that is, memory for events . . . But, as is the case with amnesia, he could remember general things . . . It would gradually become apparent that everything and every place was perpetually unfamiliar and every person he did not know of old was forever a stranger.

. . . one thing he did know for sure — he knew he loved me, he knew I loved him, he knew we were one, and he knew that came before everything.

. . . he was living evidence that you could lose almost everything you ever knew about yourself and still be yourself.

The nonfiction book Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks offered a biographical profile of Clive. Sacks commented about Clive’s unique journals —

. . . Clive started to keep a journal, first on scraps of paper, then in a notebook. But his journal entries consisted, essentially, of the statements “I am awake” or “I am conscious,” entered again and again every few minutes. He would write: “2.10 pm: this time properly awake. . . . 2.14 pm: this time finally awake. . . . 2.35 pm: this time completely awake,” along with negations of these statements: “At 9:40 pm I awoke for the first time, despite my previous claims.” This in turn was crossed out, followed by “I was fully conscious at 10:35 pm, and awake for the first time in many, many weeks.” This in turn was canceled out by the next entry.

A spring 2008 update letter about Clive written by Deborah is included in the expanded edition of Musicophilia. She noted some incidents where Clive was “showing new semantic memory,” such as being able to retrieve a care assistant's lighter ten or fifteen minutes after hearing that she lost it.

Below are links to You Tube videos about Clive. The first six with footage of Clive and Deborah from 1985 and 1998 are from the BBC's “The Mind — Second Edition.” The seventh video is a segment about Clive from a 2007 BBC documentary about time featuring Michio Kaku.

Part 1a Part 1b Part 2a Part 2b Part 2c Part 2d

From 2007 BBC documentary about time

Here are links to previous blog posts about the brain and unusual human mentalities.

The Unusual Mentality of Jill Price

Pictures of the Mind by Miriam Boleyn-Fitzgerald

The Brain and Psychic Phenomena

Channeled Perspectives of the Brain

Associated Press: "In bold move, Colorado alters teacher tenure rules"

2010-06-12T23:48:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press is breaking this news today in an article by Colleen Slevin and it will obviously be controversial. I am commenting because this news exemplifies how simple solutions to complex circumstances may pose obvious dilemmas. Although teachers serve a fundamental role in society, I've noticed in recent years that they and their unions sometimes become scapegoats for problems arising from a wide variety of challenging social conditions.

In some ways, the situation seems akin to a latter-day witch hunt. The article appraised, "Many education reform advocates consider tenure to be one of the biggest obstacles to improving America's schools because it makes removing mediocre or even incompetent teachers difficult."

At the school where I work, unmotivated students are among those with low scores on standardized tests. There are also many students from Spanish-speaking homes who participate in the English language standardized testing.

If teachers are evaluated annually "with at least half of their rating based on whether their students progressed during the school year," teachers will be pressured to indicate advancement of students regardless of individual effort and ability.

Each student has unique circumstances; however, chronic absences are a common factor among some students who fail classes and underperform on standardized tests. Lack of parental involvement often seems an issue when considering the situation of students who work inadequately. Sometimes it seems easier for people to blame teachers rather than scrutinize the social conditions that affect student conduct. I once met a single mother who was simultaneously holding down two eight-hour-a-day jobs at fast food restaurants to support her family.

"Beginning teachers will have to show progress for two consecutive years." Which of these new teachers will be instructing the students who have a record of success? Which teachers will find in their classrooms the students whose previous results show that they are struggling or failing? Perhaps, the teachers with the highest ethics and standards will pose the biggest disadvantage from the perspective of school administrators as they attempt to fulfill bureaucratic agendas; thus, the problem students will be placed with these teachers.

Educators have a considerable influence on their students, as do the quality of their textbooks and other learning tools but it would be foolish to exonerate students of any responsibility for their success at school.

During a financial crisis, changing tenure rules could result with a way of dismissing veteran teachers who generally are paid more than newcomers. New teachers often start at the bottom of the pay scale and rates of remuneration are based in part on teacher qualifications.

The Associated Press article quoted one Colorado teacher —

Margaret Bobb, an earth science teacher at Denver's East High School, said bad teachers are often quietly coached out of their jobs by administrators, avoiding the protracted tenure dismissal process. She contends tenure is still needed to prevent good teachers from being dismissed for running afoul of administrators and to prevent experienced — and more expensive — teachers from being let go by cash-strapped districts.

"Education is not just you and your class. It's not an individual activity. If you're doing your best, it's a system you're a part of," Bobb said.

The world financial crisis shows few signs of diminishing so it isn't surprising that education systems are impacted. It is disturbing that, in comparison, one American career field where national expenditures have risen in recent years is the military.

Homeboy's Soul by Don Armijo and Fred Stawitz

2010-05-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

The complete title of this recently published autobiography is Homeboy's Soul: Pride, Terror and Street Justice in America. As mentioned by Don Armijo and co-writer Fred Stawitz in this book, greedy record company executives and marketing moguls have encouraged young people to identify with the gangster image so it seems essential to make comprehensible the broad scope of this lifestyle, as this book accomplishes.

Don wrote in the book, "God granted me the opportunity to discover for myself that I could control the direction of my life by controlling the choices I made." Don is a former gang matón (killer) who now dedicates his life to expanding other people's awareness of life's possibilities. It is unmistakable that Don Armijo's intention in chronicling his life without glamorization is to help others in similar circumstances to reflect about their predicament. Until page 260, the book recounts the activities and feelings of a gang member who then suddenly finds himself confronted by a message of God's Love.

While growing up in eastern Los Angeles County, Don found himself attracted to "the excitement and sense of power that came with being a cholo" in a violent street gang, Pomona's Los Sharkies Calle Doce (The Sharkies Twelfth Street). An instance where the involvement of a Superconsciousness in his life was apparent occurred when he tried to sleep after participating in his first movida (drive-by hit): ". . . every time I closed my eyes, I could see those balazos [flying bullets] puncturing that ranfla [car]. I wondered if we had killed anyone. As hard as I tried to think of something else, anything else, that movie played over and over in my head."

The disingenuous behavior shown by some of Don's homeboys was an indication that his beliefs about mutual esteem among gang members were illusions. After Don dropped out of high school, he served three years in the army.

It was interesting how the drill sergeants were teaching us to be killing machines. They weren't that different from the veteranos [older men] who taught homeboys how to pull the trigger in the barrio [ghetto], but this time it was in service to America. Go figure!

Don's jobs and a brief marriage never were as important to him as his perceived identity as one of the homeboys of Calle Doce motivated by the unifying hatred of juras (police). Don would eventually understand that the "violence, threats, and intimidation to try and prove how tough we were" posed only a dead-end solution to lacking "the discipline and motivation to acquire an education, or the other tools necessary to make a successful contribution to the world . . ."

It seemed that Don's likely future was to become a soldado (soldier) for the local mafia when there came a potential turning point for his life. When his girlfriend brought him to meet her father during an evening church sermon, the preacher's message of love "was like nothing I had ever experienced before . . . it was God's love embracing the depths of my unworthy soul." When the preacher called out, "Is there anyone here who wants to change?," Don went toward the pulpit. "It felt like a host of angels had surrounded me . . ." He described conflicting emotions and the abrupt self-realization that his was a tortured soul. Talking to the pastor, he felt an unfamiliar sense of peace.

Don joined the church program helping young men to get away from the gang scene. The pastor told him that "just because we had made some wrong choices in the past, we didn't need to continue making those choices." Tragically, after a couple weeks Don left the program and ultimately realized that his church awakening had only been a first step.

. . . I'd hoped that now that I'd found the Lord, life would be a bed of roses. I didn't realize that I had only planted the seeds. Without the care and nourishment provided by a commitment to a new way of life, the roses would never bloom.

Don resumed his participation in maintaining the reputation of his gang. He shot dead a member of a rival gang and was soon apprehended by juras. Don accepted a deal with the D.A. to serve twelve years for manslaughter. A decade later, he emerged from incarceration a very different man.

One of the events that resulted in his expanded awareness of God was an instance of psychic phenomena that he experienced his first night in his prison cell. "Lights were out and everything was quiet. Mi mente [my mind] hovered in that zone between sleep and awake. I looked around and couldn't believe what I saw." A homeboy whom Don knew to be miles away was standing at the end of his bunk. Don again glimpsed a pivotal moment of his life and he knew this was a "message of hope" from God.

During my term of incarceration, I had the opportunity for some deep soul searching, which solidified my relationship with God, not as a means of escape from my responsibility for the wrongs I suffered upon others, but rather as a guide for the new direction that my life was headed. God's love brought me a greater understanding of myself and how my decisions can impact the lives of others for the good if I so decide.

J. Craig Venter Institute: "First Self-Replicating Synthetic Bacterial Cell"

2010-05-23T15:38:00.000-07:00

How important are our human intentions to the outcome of an endeavor?

This is something I'm wondering about after reading the J. Craig Venter Institute press release as well as some of the articles resulting from this announcement. The May 20 edition of Science Express presents the article "Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome" by Daniel Gibson et al.

J. Craig Venter is quoted in the release:

"We have been consumed by this research, but we have also been equally focused on addressing the societal implications of what we believe will be one of the most powerful technologies and industrial drivers for societal good. We look forward to continued review and dialogue about the important applications of this work to ensure that it is used for the benefit of all."

A Daily Mail (U.K.) article by Fiona Macrae reported that Dr. Venter had "previously succeeded transplanting one bug's genome – its entire cache of DNA – into another bacterium, effectively changing its species. He has now taken this one step further, transplanting not a natural genome but a manmade one . . . Now that the scientist, whose J. Craig Venter Institute has labs in California and Maryland, has proved the concept, the way is open for him to alter the 'recipe' to create any sort of organism he chooses. At the top of his wishlist are bugs capable of producing clean fuels and of sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere."

Victoria Gill's BBC News report of the announcement presented the cautionary response of Dr. Helen Wallace of Genewatch UK.

"If you release new organisms into the environment, you can do more harm than good," she said.

"By releasing them into areas of pollution, [with the aim of cleaning it up], you're actually releasing a new kind of pollution.

"We don't know how these organisms will behave in the environment."

Gill also provided a quote from University of Oxford professor Julian Savulescu: "We need new standards of safety evaluation for this kind of radical research and protections from military or terrorist misuse and abuse."

The Guardian (UK) report by Ian Sample heralded the published results as a "landmark experiment" and "controversial feat," explaining –

The new organism is based on an existing bacterium that causes mastitis in goats, but at its core is an entirely synthetic genome that was constructed from chemicals in the laboratory.

The single-celled organism has four "watermarks" written into its DNA to identify it as synthetic and help trace its descendants back to their creator, should they go astray.

Today 's Observer (UK) presents a profile article about Dr. Venter entitled "Craig Venter: The dazzling showman of science."

I've previously commented about the potential of individuals working among a constituency to fulfill allied objectives that are financially motivated while possibly functioning in submission to the illusion that immoral personal conduct can be obligatory or 'standard operating procedure.' Considering the threat of terrorism or depopulation programs made possible by 'designer microbes,' there have been hastily considered statements by people in various positions of social authority during the course of many years. A spiritually aware perspective involves comprehending how nationalities and companies are foremostly artificial principalities organized around and related to controlling wealth.

Many human beings pray for solutions to the problems confronting us in our world. Scientific advancements made possible by technological developments can improve conditions for humanity or lead to great hardships. Our spiritual understanding and individual intentions will always be a factor in what will occur.

The Unusual Mentality of Jill Price

2010-05-15T13:03:00.000-07:00

Jill Price was designated as “AJ” in a 2006 report in the journal Neurocase, “A Case of Unusual Autobiographical Remembering” by Elizabeth S. Parker, Larry Cahill and James L. McGaugh. Her quoted self-appraisals include:

I think about the past all the time . . .

It's like a running movie that never stops. It's like a split screen. I'll be talking to someone and seeing something else.

When I hear a date I see the day . . .

I see it as I saw it that day . . . I get to a portion of the day so I can see what day it was and whatever sticks out in my mind . . .

In the prologue of her memoir The Woman Who Can’t Forget (2008) that she wrote with Bart Davis, Jill related that if you give her a date from 1980 (when she was fourteen) to the present, she can instantly tell you what day of the week it was, what she did on that day, and any major event that took place—or even minor events—as long as she heard about them on that day.

In the book Jill recounted being tested in 2003 to write down the dates of all the Easters that she could remember. “I started in 1980, the first year of my strong recall, and within 10 minutes, I wrote down all of the dates and also short notes about what I had been doing on those days.” There was one error and it was off by two days. Furthermore:

When they asked me to write the list again, spontaneously, two years later, I got all of the dates right, and when they showed me the two versions side by side, I immediately pointed out to them the one error that I had made the first time.

The book includes commentary about other cases of remarkable mental abilities. Jill commented:

The previously documented cases of superior memory break down into two main types: people who use mnemonic devices such as imagery or rhyming to memorize vast amounts of data and savants who are naturally able to memorize incredible volumes of information, like the entire New York City phone book or a hundred years of baseball statistics. I can't even imagine doing that.

In the Neurocase article, the neuroscience researchers wrote that Jill was not able to use her talents to memorize in school. She told them that she had great difficulty with rote memorization. The article mentioned what was learned from neuropsychological testing, including: “As was the case for Luria’s S, AJ was not strong in analogical reasoning as seen in her low score on the Similarities subtest of the WAIS-R. There was a notable tendency towards concrete versus abstract answers.”

Reflecting about how she remembers days so well in the book, Jill mentioned "visuals that I just 'see' in my mind. The first of these is a time line of history . . . I see single years as circles . . . June is always at the bottom and December always at the top, and the months progress counterclockwise."

Jill acknowledged, “As I got older and my memory moved into high gear, with memories constantly flashing through my mind and beginning to drive me crazy, I found that journaling helped a great deal with keeping the swirl under control.” She explained:

When people first hear about my journals, they often think that I must have memorized them and that they explain why I have such detailed recall. But the truth is that I rarely look at them, and have never spent much time reading back through them.

The journals are voluminous: “The total number of pages in my journals written during all the years I’ve kept them is over 50,000.” Jill’s journals provide a record of her past that allows those investigating her mentality to confirm the details she offers and find extensive evidence of her extraordinary ability to recall the past.

Oil Is A Worldwide Disaster

2010-05-01T22:58:00.000-07:00

Orlando Sentinel Article Photo (April 26, 2010)

Concern for the environment and the welfare of all living things is an essential characteristic of a spiritually aware person. Recent events remind us yet again of people blindly focusing on their own financial gain as constituents of various corporate hegemonic social groups despite being confronted by evidence of the grim environmental impacts of their actions.

The Gulf of Mexico oil rig collapse could prove to be a bigger catastrophe than the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.

Earlier in April, a Chinese freighter went aground on Australia's Great Barrier Reef with around one thousand tons of fuel oil and 65,000 tons of coal. A preliminary report from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau identified crew fatigue as the central cause of the grounding. Here is a list of Major Oil Spills in Australia.

At www.bp.com, the website of the multinational energy company, I found an ironic statement about oil:

Even as new energy sources emerge, oil will be a mainstay for years to come. Learn about new technologies that are enabling oil to be extracted, refined and distributed more safely and efficiently than ever.

There also was a statement "From energy diversity comes energy security" mentioning wind, solar and biofuels among the building blocks for a more secure, stable and lower carbon energy future.

There was a bp.com article about "Life on remote platforms" that included the following.

Shifts are long, up to 12 hours a day, with breaks built in to minimize fatigue and avoid long-term exposure to noise. And each shift is followed by an equally long rest period.

After safety, the one thing on almost everyone's mind is how to keep the oil and gas flowing at the best possible rate.

Something that is often noticeable in perspectives concerning large companies (as well as in media reporting) is that the corporation—in this case PB—is treated as a thinking, self-responsible entity. In the "Gulf of Mexico response" section I found the following statements.

BP is mobilizing its full resources to fight the oil spill . . . (etc.)

"BP is fully committed to taking all possible steps to contain the spread of the oil spill." (typo from source) said BP Group Chief Executive Tony Hayward.

Actually, there is no 'BP' intent on accomplishing anything. 'BP' is a name used by people working in association with this company appellation. I always find it disturbing that responsibility for the personal conduct of a great number of people is relegated to a corporate principality that doesn't have any capability for 'responsible' transactions.

Here are some excerpts from a bp.com article entitled "The response in detail."

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico follows an explosion and fire aboard Transocean's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on Tuesday 20 April at approximately 10:00 pm US central time.

At the time of the incident, the contractor Transocean Ltd was drilling an exploration well on Mississippi Canyon Block 252. BP has a 65% interest in MC252.

The rig subsequently sank on Thursday 22 April and an extensive spill response operation was activated, involving more than 2500 people, a fleet of vessels, aircraft, dispersants and booms.

April 22 was Earth Day.

Anyone who drives a car requiring gasoline shares part of the responsibility for this environmental disaster, including myself.

There are some hopeful indications that human beings can live in this world with less environmental pollution. In the local Daily News yesterday, there was a page one article "Chinese company to locate its headquarters in Los Angeles . . ." (Actually, company executives have made this decision) with subtitle "Green-conscious firm has big plans for solar panels, electric-hybrid cars."

The moniker BYD stands for "Build Your Dreams." It has been previously announced that the all-electric, five-seat e6 vehicle would be exported to the West Coast by the end of 2010.

A follow-up article also written by Rick Orlov in today's Daily News reported that local officials offered incentives to BYD company executives to seal the deal, including a 15 percent reduction in fees at the Port of Los Angeles for the use of zero emission vehicles.

BYD's car division features an e-6 model with

a price tag of $40,000 and a range of 250 miles.

(caption from source)