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Brad Steigerand

SherryHansenSteiger

3

GEUUhttp-v3.quark 4/4/03 5:18 PM

Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and UnexplainedBrad E. Steiger and Sherry Hansen Steiger

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Steiger, Brad.Gale encyclopedia of the unusual and unexplained / Brad E. Steiger

and Sherry Hansen Steiger.p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 0-7876-5382-9 (set : hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN

0-7876-5383-7 (v. 1 : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7876-5384-5 (v. 2 : alk.paper) — ISBN 0-7876-5385-3 (v. 3 : alk. paper)

1. Parapsychology—Encyclopedias. 2. Occultism—Encyclopedias. 3.Supernatural—Encyclopedias. I. Title: Encyclopedia of the unusual andunexplained. II. Steiger, Sherry Hansen. III. Title.

BF1025.S79 2003130’.3—dc21

2003003995

Table of Contents

preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiintroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Chapter 1

How the Major Religions Viewthe Afterlife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Buddhism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Hinduism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Ancient Egypt andthe Afterlife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Egyptian Book of the Dead . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Osiris: Death and Resurrection . . . . . . . . . . 18Pyramid Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Individual Human Experiencewith Death and the Afterlife . . . 22

Deathbed Visions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Near-Death Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

The Mystery Schools . . . . . . . . . . 31

Dionysian Mysteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33Eleusinian Mysteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33Hermetic Mysteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Orphic Mysteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Pythagorus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Tribal Religions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Burial Mounds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38Land of the Grandparents . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

How the Major ReligionsView Reincarnation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Buddhism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43Hinduism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46Islam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Judaism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Contemporary Mystery Schoolsand Reincarnation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Akashic Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Anthroposophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Association for Research

and Enlightenment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53Theosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Volume 1

Experiential Quests intoPast Lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Hypnotic Regression into Past Lives . . . . . . 59Bridey Murphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62Past-Life Therapy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67Ian Stevenson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Chapter 2

Shamanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Spirit Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79Totem Animal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80Vision Quest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Spirit Mediumship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Ouija Board . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85Seance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86Spirit Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90Trance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Mediums and Channelers . . . . . . . 93

Sylvia Browne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97Florence Cook. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98Mina “Margery” Crandon . . . . . . . . . . . . 101John Edward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104Arthur Augustus Ford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105Eileen Garrett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108Daniel Dunglas Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110J. Z. Knight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115Carlos Mirabelli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117Eusapia Palladino . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120Leonora E. Piper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122James Van Praagh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124Jach Pursel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125Jane Roberts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126Rudi Schneider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129Witch of Endor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Spiritualism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

Andrew Jackson Davis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135Sir Arthur Conan Doyle . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137The Fox Sisters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139Allen Kardec. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Mystics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky . . . . . . . . . . . 147Rudolf Steiner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149Emanuel Swedenborg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Researchers into the Mysteryof Spirit Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

Hereward Carrington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158Sir William Crookes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161Harry Houdini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163William James . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

Sir Oliver Lodge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167Fredric W. H. Myers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169Society for Psychical Research (SPR). . . . . 172

Chapter 3

Antichrist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180Apocalypse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182Apparitions of Holy Figures . . . 186Armaggedon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192Cosmic Consciousness . . . . . . . . 193Demons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196Devil’s Mark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199Ecstasy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200Exorcism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204Faith Healing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209Guardian Angels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211Illumination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214Inquisition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217Miracles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220Possession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223Power of Prayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225The Rapture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231Shroud of Turin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232666 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238Snake Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239Stigmata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241Virgin of Guadalupe . . . . . . . . . . . 244Visions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246Weeping Statues and Icons . . . . 249

Chapter 4

Egyptian Mystery Schools . . . . . 257

Akhenaten . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259Isis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260Osiris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262

Greek Mystery Schools . . . . . . . 264

Delphi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265Dionysus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266Eleusis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

Christian Mystery Schools,Cults, Heresies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269

Black Madonna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272Cathars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274Gnosticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277Manichaeism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

Tribal Mysteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282

Ghost Dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283Macumba . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285Santeria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286

Satanic Cults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288

T h e G a l e E n c y c l o p e d i a o f t h e U n u s u a l a n d U n e x p l a i n e d

The Rise of Satanism in theMiddle Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Black Mass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293Catherine Montvoisin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296Gilles de Rais . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298

Anton LaVey’s First Churchof Satan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Temple of Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

UFO Cults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

Aetherius Society. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307Heaven’s Gate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309The Raelians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Twentieth-CenturySpiritual Expression . . . . . . . . . . 313

Branch Davidians. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315Eckankar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316Falun Gong. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317Order of the Solar Temple . . . . . . . . . . . . 318The People’s Temple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319Scientology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323Cumulative Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Chapter 5

The Assassins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4The Decided Ones of Jupiter. . . . . 5The Freemasons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9The Garduna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12The Holy Vehm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15The Illuminati. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16The Knights Templar . . . . . . . . . . . 19The Leopard Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24The Mau-Mau. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27The Rosicrucians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30The Thuggee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32The Tongs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Chapter 6

Alchemy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Valentine Andreae. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43Roger Bacon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44Helvetius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45Hermes Trismegistus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Albertus Magnus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Paracelsus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Magick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Abremelin Magick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49Black Magick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Enochian Magick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52Vodun/Vodoun/Voodoo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52White Magick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Magi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Agrippa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59Count Allesandro Cagliostro . . . . . . . . . . . 61Aleister Crowley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62John Dee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64Dr. Faust. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65Marie Laveau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67Eliphas Levi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68Simon Magus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69Pico della Mirandola . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70Pythagoras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70Count Saint-Germain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Wicca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

People of Wicca. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Margot Adler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77Philip Emmons (Isaac) Bonewits. . . . . . . . . 78Raymond Buckland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79Gavin Frost and Yvonne Frost . . . . . . . . . . 82Gerald Brosseau Gardner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85Sybil Leek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86Margaret Alice Murray . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87M. Macha NightMare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88Starhawk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89Doreen Valiente . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Witchcraft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Familiars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95The Inquisition—The Time of

the Burning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95Sabbats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Witchcraft Trials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101Germany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102Salem, Massachusetts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103Scotland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106Spain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Witchhunters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Jean Bodin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110Henri Boguet. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110Matthew Hopkins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111


Volume 2

Pope Innocent III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113Pierre de Lancre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Chapter 7

Astrology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Automatic Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Cartomancy/Tarot . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Telling Fortunes with ModernPlaying Cards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

Dowsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Graphology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

I Ching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Kabbalah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Necromancy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Numerology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

Palmistry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Prophets and Diviners . . . . . . . . 150

Edgar Cayce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152Delphic Oracles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154Jeane Dixon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155Irene Hughes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157Olof Jonsson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158Nostradamus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158Mother Shipton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Scrying/CrystalGazing/Crystalomancy . . . . . . . . . 162

Tea Leaf Reading(Tasseography) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

Chapter 8

Amulets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Bells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170Bloodstone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171Candles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171Cauldron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172Crystals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173Fairy Circles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176Garlic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177Hand of Glory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178Horseshoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178Knife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179Love Knots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180Mandrake Root . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181Maypole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182Mistletoe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Rings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184Salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184Silver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185Stones for Healing and Energy . . . . . . . . . 185Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187Voodoo Dolls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Tribal Empowerment . . . . . . . . . . . 190

Crystal Skulls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191Fetishes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193Megaliths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195Runes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197Talismans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197Totems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Things of Sacred Power . . . . . . . 199

The Ark of the Covenant . . . . . . . . . . . . 201Crosses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203The Holy Grail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204Philosopher’s Stone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206The Spear of Destiny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209Swastikas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210

Chapter 9

Angkor Wat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216Mt. Ararat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216Atlantis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219Avalon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225The Bermuda Triangle . . . . . . . . . 226Chartres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230Cursuses and Leys . . . . . . . . . . . . 232El Dorado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234Easter Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235Glastonbury. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238Hollow Earth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239Jerusalem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242Karnak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245Lemuria and Mu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247Lourdes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248Machu Picchu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251Mayan Temples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253Mecca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256The Nazca Lines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260The Great Pyramid(of Kfhufu), at Giza . . . . . . . . . . . 264The Sphinx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268Stonehenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272Taos Pueblo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275Tiahuanaco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277



Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiIntroduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii

Chapter 10

Ghostly Beings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Animal Spirits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Apparitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Autoscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Ghosts of the Living . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Phantoms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Poltergeists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Spirits of the Dead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Spooklights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Famous Haunted Housesand Places . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Bell Witch’s Cave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26Borley Rectory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Calvados Castle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33Epworth Rectory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36General Wayne Inn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38The Gray Man of Hinton Ampner . . . . . . . 40Myrtles Plantation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42The Tedworth Drummer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44The Whaley House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Ghosts in the Movies . . . . . . . . . . 49

Spontaneous HumanCombustion (SHC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

Chapter 11

Apelike Monsters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Bigfoot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60Orang Pendek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63Skunk Ape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65Yeti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Creatures of the Night . . . . . . . . 68

Chupacabra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70Ghoul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72Golem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72Imp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76Incubus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76Jersey Devil. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78Succubus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79Vampire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80Werewolf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83


Volume 3 Monsters of Land, Sea,and Air. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Dragons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87Loch Ness and Other Lake Monsters . . . . . . 89Sea Serpents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93Thunderbirds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Wee Folk and Their Friends . . . . . 99

Elves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100Fairies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101Gnomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103Goblins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104Gremlins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104Leprechauns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105Menehune . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106Mermaids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107Nisse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107Selkies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109Trolls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Actors Who Faced(or Became) Monsters . . . . . . . . . 109

Chapter 12

Dreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Creative and Lucid Dreaming . . . . . . . . . . 122Nightmares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125Sleep Paralysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127Symbology of Dreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

The Mechanics of Memory . . . . . . 130

False Memories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

Phobias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Altered Statesof Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Hallucinations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143Hypnosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144Meditation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149Psychedelics—

The Mind-Expanding Drugs . . . . . . . . 151Relaxation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

Extrasensory Perception:The “Sixth Sense”. . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

ESP Researchers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Clairvoyance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166Out-of-Body Experience (OBE) . . . . . . . . 170Precognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174Psychokinesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178Telepathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Chapter 13

Superstitions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

Cats. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189Days of the Week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191Dogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191The Evil Eye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193Four-Leaf Clover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195Gems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195Horseshoes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195Knocking on Wood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196Ladders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197Numbers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197Rabbit’s Foot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198Sneezing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199Spitting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

Strange Customsand Taboos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

Courtship and Marriage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203Hospitality and Etiquette . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215Burials and Funerals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Urban Legends and Beliefs . . . . 228

Deadly Reptiles in the Imported Carpets. . . 229The Fabulous Cookie Recipe . . . . . . . . . . 230Green M&Ms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231The Hook on the Car Door . . . . . . . . . . . 231If Your College Roommate

Commits Suicide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232Jesus on the Freeway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233The Phantom Hitchhiker . . . . . . . . . . . . 234Proctor & Gamble Is a

Satanist Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235The Scuba Diver in the Tree . . . . . . . . . . 236Snakes in the Toilet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236Spiders in the Hairdo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

Chapter 14

UFOs in Ancient Times . . . . . . . . . 246

Space Visitors in the Bible andOther Holy Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

The Modern UFO Era Begins . . . 251

The Air Force and Project Blue Book. . . . . 255The Condon/University of

Colorado Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258Hangar 18. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259Roswell, New Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260Socorro, New Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

UFO Contacteesand Abductees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266

George Adamski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271Daniel W. Fry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273Betty and Barney Hill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274The Men in Black (MIB). . . . . . . . . . . . . 276Whitley Strieber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279George Van Tassel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

The Influence of the Media . . . . 281

Close Encounters of the Third Kind . . . . . . . 282The Day the Earth Stood Still . . . . . . . . . . . 284War of the Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285The X-Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

The UFO Mystery Grows . . . . . . . 290

Area 51 and Reverse Engineering . . . . . . . 293Cattle Mutilations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293Crop Circles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295Majestic-12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297The Philadelphia Experiment . . . . . . . . . . 298



Preface

xi

The Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual andUnexplained (GEUU) presents com-prehensive and objective information

on unexplained mysteries, paranormal abili-ties, supernatural events, religious phenome-na, magic, UFOs, and myths that haveevolved into cultural realities. This extensivethree-volume work is a valuable tool provid-ing users the opportunity to evaluate themany claims and counterclaims regarding themysterious and unknown. Many of theseclaims have been brought to the forefrontfrom television, motion pictures, radio talkshows, best-selling books, and the Internet.

There has been a conscious effort to pro-vide reliable and authoritative information inthe most objective and factual way possible, topresent multiple viewpoints for controversialsubject topics, and to avoid sensationalismthat taints the credibility of the subject mat-ter. The manner of presentation enables read-ers to utilize their critical thinking skills toseparate fact from fiction, opinion fromdogma, and truth from legend regarding enig-mas that have intrigued, baffled, and inspiredhumankind over the centuries.

About the Authors

and Advisors

Brad E. Steiger has written over 150 bookswith over 17 million copies in print. His vastwriting experience includes biographies,books of inspiration, phenomenon and theparanormal, spirituality, UFO research, andcrimes. His first articles on the paranormalappeared in 1954 and, today, he has producedover 2,000 articles on such themes. Steigerhas appeared on such television programs asNightline with Ted Koppel, ABC Evening Newswith Peter Jennings, NBC Evening News withTom Brokaw, This Week (with David Brinkley,Sam Donaldson, and Cokie Roberts), TheMike Douglas Show, The David Susskind Show,The Joan Rivers Show, Entertainment Tonight,Haunted Hollywood, Inside Edition, The Unex-plained, and Giants: The Myth and the Mystery.Sherry Hansen Steiger is a co-author of 24books on a variety of topics on the unusual

and unexplained with her husband Brad. Hercontinual studies in alternative medicine andtherapies led to the 1992 official creation ofThe Office of Alternative Medicine under theInstitutes of Health, Education and Welfare inBethesda, Maryland. Both Steigers haveserved as consultants for such television showsas Sightings and Unsolved Mysteries.

The advisors for GEUU are Judy T. Nel-son, the Youth Services Coordinator for thePierce County Library System in Tacoma,Washington; Lee Sprince, former Head ofYouth Services for the Broward County MainLibrary in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and BradE. Steiger, author of Gale’s former Visible InkPress title The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopediaof Shape-Shifting Things. For GEUU, both Nel-son and Sprince were consulted on GEUU’ssubject content, its appropriateness, and for-mat; Steiger advised on the content’s organiza-tion before he became the author of GEUU.

Format

The Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual andUnexplained consists of fourteen broad-subjectchapters covering a wide range of high-inter-est topics: Afterlife Mysteries; Mediums andMystics; Religious Phenomena; Mystery Reli-gions and Cults; Secret Societies; Magic andSorcery; Prophecy and Divination; Objects ofMystery and Power; Places of Mystery andPower; Ghosts and Phantoms; MysteriousCreatures; Mysteries of the Mind; Supersti-tions, Strange Customs, Taboos, and UrbanLegends; and Invaders from Outer Space.Each chapter begins with an Overview thatsummarizes the chapter’s concept in a fewbrief sentences. Then the Chapter Explo-ration provides a complete outline of thechapter, listing all topics and subtopics there-in, so that the user can understand the interre-lationships between the chapter’s topics andits subtopics. An Introduction consisting of 6to 12 paragraphs follows; it broadly describesthe chapter’s theme. Then each topic is

explored, along with each subtopic, develop-ing relevant concepts, geographic places, per-sons, practices, etc. After each topic, a Delv-ing Deeper section provides complete biblio-graphical citations of books, periodicals, tele-vision programs, Internet sites, movies, andtheses used, and provides users with furtherresearch opportunities. Boldfaced cross-refer-ences are used to guide users from the text torelated entries found elsewhere in the threevolumes. Sidebars supplement the text withunusual facts, features, and biographies, aswell as descriptions of web sites, etc.

Each chapter contains photographs, linedrawings, and original graphics that were cho-sen to complement the text; in all three vol-umes, over 250 images enliven the text. Manyof these images are provided by Fortean Pic-ture Library—“a pictorial archive of mysteriesand strange phenomena”—and from the per-sonal archives of the author, Brad Steiger. Atthe end of each chapter, a glossary, calledMaking the Connection, lists significantterms, theories, and practices mentionedwithin the text. A comprehensive glossary ofthe terms used throughout all three volumescan be found at the end of each volume.

Each volume has a cumulative Table ofContents allowing users to see the organiza-tion of each chapter at a glance. The Cumula-tive Index, found in each volume, is an alpha-betic arrangement of all people, places,images, and concepts found in the text. Thepage references to the terms include the vol-ume number as well as the page number;images are denoted by italicized page numbers.

User Comments

Are Welcome

Users having comments, corrections, orsuggestions can contact the editor at the fol-lowing address: Gale Encyclopedia of theUnusual and Unexplained, The Gale Group,Inc., 27500 Drake Rd., Farmington Hills, MI48331-3535.


Prefacexii

Introduction

xiii

Understanding

the Unknown

The belief in a reality that transcends oureveryday existence is as old as humanity itselfand it continues to the present day. In fact, inrecent years there has been a tremendous surgeof interest in the paranormal and the supernat-ural. People speak freely of guardian angels, abelief in life after death, an acceptance ofextrasensory perception (ESP), and the exis-tence of ghosts. In a Gallup Poll released onJune 10, 2001, the survey administrators foundthat 54 percent of Americans believe in spiri-tual or faith healing; 41 percent acknowledgethat people can be possessed by the devil; 50percent accept the reality of ESP; 32 percentbelieve in the power of prophecy; and 38 per-cent agree that ghosts and spirits exist.

What are the origins of these age-oldbeliefs? Are they natural phenomenon thatcan be understood by the physical sciences?Some scientists are suggesting that such mysti-cal experiences can be explained in terms ofneural transmitters, neural networks, andbrain chemistry. Perhaps the feeling of tran-scendence that mystics describe could be theresult of decreased activity in the brain’s pari-etal lobe, which helps regulate the sense of selfand physical orientation. Perhaps the humanbrain is wired for mystical experiences and theflash of wisdom that illuminated the Buddha,the voices that Mohammed and Moses heardin the wilderness, and the dialogues that Jesushad with the Father were the result of brainchemistry and may someday be completelyexplained in scientific terms.

Perhaps the origin of these beliefs is to befound in psychology? Humankind’s fascinationwith the unknown quite likely began with themost basic of human emotions—fear. Earlyhumans faced the constant danger of beingattacked by predators, of being killed by peoplefrom other tribes, or of falling victim to thesudden fury of a natural disaster, such as flood,fire, or avalanche. Nearly all of these violentencounters brought about the death of a friendor family member, so one may surmise thatchief among the mysteries that troubled early

humans was the same one that haunts mantoday: What happens when someone dies?

But belief in the unknown may be morethan brain chemistry or a figment of our fears.Perhaps there is some spiritual reality that isoutside of us, but with which one can some-how communicate? Perhaps the physical activ-ity of the brain or psychological state (the twoare of course related) may be only a precondi-tion or a conduit to a transcendent world? Thecentral mystery may always remain.

Ghostly Entities and

Urban Legends

There is not a single known culture on plan-et Earth that does not have its ghost stories, andone can determine from Paleolithic cave paint-ings that the belief that there is something with-in the human body that survives physical deathis at least 50,000 years old. If there is a singleunifying factor in the arena of the unknown andthe unexplained it is the universality ofaccounts of ghostly entities. Of course, noteveryone agrees on the exact nature of ghosts.Some insist that the appearance of ghosts provesurvival after death. Others state that such phe-nomena represent other dimensions of reality.

And then there are the skeptics who groupmost ghost stories in the category of “UrbanLegends,” those unverifiable stories about out-landish, humorous, frightening, or supernatur-al events. In some instances, the stories arebased on actual occurrences that have in theirtelling and retelling been exaggerated or dis-torted. Other urban legends have their originsin people misinterpreting or misunderstandingstories that they have heard or read in themedia or from actual witnesses of an event.There is usually some distance between thenarrator and his tale; all urban legends claimthat the story always happened to someoneelse, most often “a friend of a friend.”

The Roots of Superstition

Whatever their basis in reality, certainbeliefs and practices of primitive people

helped ease their fear and the feeling of help-lessness that arose from the precariousness oftheir existence. Others in the community whotook careful note of their behavior ritualizedthe stories of those who had faced great dan-gers and survived. In such rituals lies the ori-gin of “superstition,” a belief that certainrepeated actions or words will bring the prac-titioner luck or ward off evil. Ancient super-stitions survive today in such common prac-tices as tossing a pinch of salt over the shoul-der or whispering a blessing after a sneeze toassure good fortune.

The earliest traces of magical practices arefound in the European caves of the PaleolithicAge, c. 50,000 B.C.E. in which it seems clearthat early humans sought supernatural meansto placate the spirits of the animals they killedfor food, to dispel the restless spirits of thehumans they had slain, or to bring peace tothe spirits of their deceased tribal kin. It was atthis time that early humans began to believethat there could be supernatural powers in acharm, a spell, or a ritual to work good or evilon their enemies. Practices, such as imitatingthe animal of the hunt through preparatorydance, cutting off a bit of an enemy’s hair orclothing to be used in a charm against him, orinvoking evil spirits to cause harm to others,eventually gained a higher level of sophistica-tion and evolved into more formal religiouspractices.

As such beliefs developed, certain tribalmembers were elevated in status to shamanand magician because of their ability tocommunicate with the spirit worlds, toinfluence the weather, to heal the sick, andto interpret dreams. Shamans entered atrance-like condition separating them fromlife’s mundane existence and allowing themto enter a state of heightened spiritualawareness. According to anthropologists,shamanic methods are remarkably similarthroughout the world. In our own time,Spiritualist mediums who claim to be ableto communicate with the dead remain pop-ular as guides for contemporary men andwomen, and such individuals as JohnEdward, James Van Praagh, and SylviaBrowne issue advice from the Other Side onsyndicated television programs.


Introductionxiv

Monsters and

Night Terrors

Stone Age humans had good reason to fearthe monsters that emerged from the darkness.Saber-tooth tigers stalked man, cave bearsmauled them, and rival hominid species—many appearing more animal-like thanhuman—struggled against them for domi-nance. The memories of the ancient night ter-rors surface in dreams and imagination, a kindof psychic residue of primitive fears. Anthro-pologists have observed that such half-human,half-animal monsters as the werewolf andother werecreatures were painted by StoneAge artists more than 10,000 years ago. Someof the world’s oldest art found on ancient sitesin Europe, Africa, and Australia depict ani-mal-human hybrids. Such “therianthropes,” orhybrid beings, appear to be the only commondenominator in primitive art around the plan-et. These werewolves, were-lions, and were-bats belonged to an imagined world whichearly humans saw as powerful, dangerous, andfrightening.

Images of these creatures persisted into thehistorical period. The ancient Egyptians oftendepicted their gods as human-animal hybrids.Pharaoh identified himself with the god Horus,who could be represented as a falcon or a fal-con-headed human. Anubis, the god of thenecropolis, can be shown as a jackal-headedman, probably because such carrion-eatingjackals prowled Egyptian cemeteries. Manyother civilizations felt the power of these kindsof images. For example, the ancient Greeksfashioned the minotaur (half-human, half-bull), the satyr (half-human, half-goat), theharpy (half-woman, half-bird) and a host ofother hybrid entities—the vast majority unfa-vorably disposed toward humankind. Examplescould be found in other cultures as well.

Customs and Taboos

In 2001, scientists were surprised whenbits of stone etched with intricate patternsfound in the Blombos Cave, east of CapeTown on the southern African shores of the

Indian Ocean, were dated at 77,000 years old,thereby indicating that ancient humans werecapable of complex behavior and abstractthought thousands of years earlier than previ-ously believed. In Europe, numerous sites havebeen excavated and artifacts unearthed thatprove that structured behavior with customsand taboos existed about 40,000 years ago.

Customs are those activities that havebeen approved by a social group and havebeen handed down from generation to gener-ation until they have become habitual. Whenan action or activity violates behavior consid-ered appropriate by a social group, it islabeled a “taboo,” a word borrowed from thePolynesians of the South Pacific. An act thatis taboo is forbidden, and those who trans-gress may be ostracized by others or, inextreme instances, killed.

However, customs vary from culture toculture, and customary actions in one societymay be considered improper in another.While the marriage of near-blood relations isprohibited in contemporary civilization, inearlier societies it was quite common. Theancient brother and sister gods of Egypt, Osirisand Isis, provided an example for pharaohs,who at times married their sisters. Polygamy,the marriage of one man and several womenor one woman and several men, is prohibitedin modern civilization, but there are still reli-gious groups in nearly every nation who justifyplural marriages as being ordained by the deitythey worship. Adultery, an act of infidelity onthe part of a married individual, is one of themost universal taboos. The code of Mosescondemned both parties involved in the act tobe stoned to death. Hindu religious doctrinesdemand the death, mutilation, or humiliationof both men and women, depending upon thecaste of the guilty parties.

Taboos can change within a society overtime. Many acts that were once consideredforbidden have developed into an acceptablesocial activity. While some of the old customsand taboos surrounding courtship and mar-riage, hospitality and etiquette, and burialsand funerals may seem amusing or quaint,primitive or savage, certain elements of suchacts as capturing one’s bride have been pre-


xvIntroduction

served in many traditions that are still prac-ticed in the modern marriage ceremony.

Belief in an Afterlife

Belief in the survival of some part of usafter death may also be as old as the humanrace. Although one cannot be certain the ear-liest members of man’s species (Homo sapiensc. 30,000 B.C.E.) conducted burial rituals thatwould qualify them as believers in an afterlife,one does know they buried their dead withcare and consideration and included food,weapons, and various personal belongingswith the body. Anthropologists have also dis-covered the Neanderthal species (c. 100,000B.C.E.) placed food, stone implements, anddecorative shells and bones with the deceased.Because of the placement of such funeraryobjects in the graves, one may safely conjec-ture that these prehistoric people believeddeath was not the end. There was some part ofthe deceased requiring nourishment, clothing,and protection in order to journey safely inanother kind of existence beyond the grave.This belief persisted into more recent histori-cal times. The ancient Egyptians had a highlydeveloped concept of life after death, devotingmuch thought and effort to their eternal well-being, and they were not the only early civi-lization to be concerned about an afterlife.

With all their diversity of beliefs, themajor religions of today are in accord in oneessential teaching: Human beings are immor-tal and their spirit comes from a divine worldand may eventually return there. The part ofthe human being that survives death is knownin Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as thesoul—the very essence of the individual per-son that must answer for its earthly deeds,good or bad. Hinduism perceives this spiritualessence as the divine Self, the Atman, andBuddhism believes it to be the summation ofconditions and causes. Of the major worldreligions, only Buddhism does not perceive aneternal metaphysical aspect of the human per-sonality in the same way that the others do.However, all the major faiths believe thatafter the spirit has left the body, it moves on to

another existence. The physical body is a tem-porary possession that a human has, not whata person is.

The mystery of what happens when the soulleaves the body remains an enigma in the teach-ings of the major religions; however, as moreand more individuals are retrieved from clinicaldeath by the miracles of modern medicine, liter-ature describing near-death-experiences hasarisen which depicts a transition into anotherworld or dimension of consciousness whereinthe deceased are met by beings of light. Many ofthose who have returned to life after such anexperience also speak of a life-review of theirdeeds and misdeeds from childhood to themoment of the near-death encounter.

Prophecy and Divination

The desire to foresee the future quite likelybegan when early humans began to perceivethat they were a part of nature, subject to itslimitations and laws, and that they were seem-ingly powerless to alter those laws. Mysterioussupernatural forces—sometimes benign, oftenhostile—appeared to be in control of humanexistence.

Divination, the method of obtainingknowledge of the future by means of omens orsacred objects, has been practiced in all soci-eties, whether primitive or civilized. Theancient Chaldeans read the will of the gods inthe star-jeweled heavens. The children ofIsrael sought the word of the Lord in the jewelsof the Ephod. Pharaoh elevated Joseph fromhis prison cell to the office of chief minister ofEgypt and staked the survival of his kingdomon Joseph’s interpretation of his dreams. In thesame land of Egypt, priests of Isis and Ra lis-tened as those deities spoke through theunmoving lips of the stone Sphinx.

Throughout the centuries, soothsayers andseers have sought to predict the destiny oftheir clients by interpreting signs in theentrails of animals, the movements of the starsin the heavens, the reflections in a crystalball, the spread of a deck of cards, and evenmessages from the dead. All of these ancientpractices are still being utilized today by thosewho wish to know the future.


Introductionxvi

Objects and Places of

Mystery and Power

Objects of mystery and power that becomeinfluential in a person’s life can be an every-day item that an individual has come tobelieve will bring good fortune, such as anarticle of clothing that was worn when somegreat personal success was achieved or anamulet that has been passed on from genera-tion to generation. In addition to such itemsof personal significance, some individualshave prized objects that reportedly broughtvictory or good fortune to heroes of long ago.Still others have searched for mysterious relicsfilled with supernatural attributes that werecredited with accomplishing miracles in thepast. No physical evidence is available todetermine that such an object as the Ark ofthe Covenant ever existed, but its presentlocation continues to be sought. The HolyGrail, the cup from which Jesus drank at theLast Supper, is never mentioned in the Bible,but by medieval times it had been popularizedas the holiest relic in Christendom.

In addition to bestowing mystery andpower upon certain objects, humans havealways found or created places that are sacredto them—sites where they might gather toparticipate in religious rituals or where theymight retreat for solitude and reflection. Insuch places, many people claim to experiencea sense of the sublime. Others, while in asolemn place of worship or in a natural set-ting, attest to feeling a special energy that rais-es their consciousness and perhaps even healstheir physical body.

Mysterious megaliths (large stones) werethose placed at a special location by ancientpeople. Such sites include the standing stonesof Brittany, the Bighorn Medicine Wheel inWyoming, and the monuments of EasterIsland. All of these places were ostensibly sig-nificant to an ancient society or religion, butmany were long abandoned by the time theybecame known to today’s world and their sig-nificance remains unexplained.

The most well-known megalithic struc-tures are Stonehenge in Great Britain and thecomplex of pyramids and the Great Sphinx in

Egypt. Like many such ancient places, thosesites have been examined and speculatedupon for centuries, yet they still continue toconceal secrets and occasionally yield surpris-ing information that forces new historicalinterpretations of past societies.

There are other places that have becomemysterious sites because of unusual occur-rences. The claimed miraculous healing atLourdes, France, the accounts of spiritual illu-mination at Jerusalem and Mecca, and thesacred visions at Taos, New Mexico, providetestimonies of faith and wonder that must beassessed by each individual.

There are also the “lost” civilizations andmysterious places that may never have existedbeyond the human imagination. More than2,500 years ago, legends first began aboutAtlantis, an ideal society that enjoyed anabundance of natural resources, great militarypower, splendid building and engineeringfeats, and intellectual achievements faradvanced over those of other lands. Thisancient society was described as existing on acontinent-sized area with rich soil, plentifulpure water, abundant vegetation, and suchmineral wealth that gold was inlaid in build-ings. In the ensuing centuries, no conclusiveevidence of Atlantis has been found, but itsattributes have expanded to include engineer-ing and technological feats that enhance itslegendary status.

Sometimes legends come to life. The LostCity of Willkapanpa the Old, a city rumoredto consist primarily of Incan rulers and sol-diers, was not discovered until 1912 when ahistorian from Yale University found the sitenow known as Machu Picchu hidden at 8,000feet in altitude between two mountains,Huayana Picchu (“young mountain”) andMachu Picchu (“ancient mountain”) in Peru.

Mystery Schools

and Cults

Once a religion has become firmly estab-lished in a society, dissatisfied members oftenwill break away from the larger group to createwhat they believe to be a more valid form of


xviiIntroduction

religious expression. Sometimes such splintergroups are organized around the revelationsand visions of a single individual, who is rec-ognized as a prophet by his or her followers.Because the new teachings may be judged asheretical to the original body of worshippers,those who follow the new revelations arebranded as cultists or heretics.

Even in ancient times, the dissenters wereforced to meet in secret because of oppressionby the established group or because of theirdesire to hide their practices. Since only devo-tees could know the truths of their faith,adherents were required to maintain thestrictest silence regarding their rites and ritu-als. The term “mysteries” or “mystery religion”is applied to these beliefs. The word “mystery”comes from the Greek word myein, “to close,”referring to the need of the mystes, the initi-ate, to close his or her eyes and the lips and tokeep secret the rites of the cult.

In ancient Greece, postulants of the mys-tery religions had to undergo a rigorous initia-tion that disciplined both their mind andbody. In order to attain the self-masterydemanded by the priests of the mysteries, theneophytes understood that they must restruc-ture their physical, moral, and spiritual beingto gain access to the hidden forces in the uni-verse. Only through complete mastery of one-self could one see beyond death and perceivethe pathways of the after-life. Many timesthese mysteries were taught in the form of aplay and were celebrated in sacred groves or insecret temples away from the cities.

In contemporary usage, the word “cult”generally carries with it negative connotationsand associations. In modern times, a numberof apocalyptic cults, such as the BranchDavidians and the People’s Temple, havealarmed the general population by isolatingthemselves and preparing for Armageddon,the last great battle between good and evil.The mass suicides carried out by members ofHeaven’s Gate, People’s Temple, and Order ofthe Solar Temple have also presented alarm-ing images of what many believe to be typicalcultist practice. Recent statistics indicate thatthere are 2,680 religions in the United States.Therefore, one must be cautious in labeling

any seemingly unorthodox religion as a cult,for what is regarded as anti-social or blasphe-mous expression by some may be hailed as sin-cere spiritual witness by others.

Secret Societies

and Conspiracies

There will always be envious individualswho believe that wealthy and powerful mem-bers of society have been able to acquire theirposition only because of secret formulas, magi-cal words, and supernatural rituals. Rumorsand legends of secret societies have fueled theimaginations, fears, and envy of those on theoutside for thousands of years. Many secretsocieties, such as the Assassins, the Garduna,the Thuggee, and the Tongs, were made up ofhighly trained criminals who were extremelydangerous to all outsiders. Others, such as theKnights Templar, the Illuminati, and the Rosi-crucians, were said to possess enough ancientsecrets of power and wealth to control theentire world.

Conspiracy enthusiasts allege that thereare clandestine organizations which for cen-turies have remained a threat to individualfreedoms, quietly operating in the shadows,silently infiltrating political organizations, andsecretly manipulating every level of govern-ment and every facet of society. One of thefavorites of conspiracy theorists, the Freema-sons, while once a powerful and influentialgroup throughout the Western world, is todayregarded by many as simply a philanthropicand fraternal organization. Another secretsociety, the Illuminati, deemed by many con-spiracy buffs to be the most insidious of all,faded into obscurity in the late eighteenthcentury. However, there is always a new secretsociety that seeks to divine arcane and forbid-den avenues to wealth and power.

Sorcery, Alchemy

and Witchcraft

Although Christianity affirms the exis-tence of a transcendent reality, it has always


Introductionxviii

distinguished between religio (reverence forGod) and superstitio, which in Latin means“unreasonable religious belief.” Christianitybecame the state religion of the RomanEmpire in 395 C.E., and in 525 the Council ofOxia prohibited Christians from consultingsorcerers, diviners, or any kind of seer. Acanon passed by the Council of Constantino-ple in 625 prescribed excommunication for aperiod of six years for anyone found practicingdivination or who consulted with a diviner.

Although the Church had issued manycanons warning against the practice of witch-craft or magic, little action was taken againstthose learned men who experimented withalchemy or those common folk who practicedthe old ways of witchcraft. In 906 C.E., AbbotRegino of Prum recognized that earlier canonlaws had done little to eradicate the practicesof magic and witchcraft, so he issued his Deecclesiaticis disciplinis to condemn as hereticalany belief in witchcraft or the power of sorcer-ers. In 1,000 C.E., Deacon Burchard, whowould later become archbishop of Worms,published Corrrector which updated Regino’swork and stressed that only God had thepower to transform matter. Alchemists couldnot change base metals into gold, and witchescould not shapeshift into animals.

In spite of such decrees, a lively belief in aworld of witches and ghosts persistedthroughout the Middle Ages and co-existedin the minds of many of the faithful with themiracle stories of the saints. To the nativebeliefs were added those of non-Christianpeoples who either lived in Europe or whomEuropeans met when they journeyed far fromhome, as when they went on the Crusades. Bythe twelfth century, magical practices basedupon the arcane systems of the SpanishMoors and Jewish Kabbalah were establishedin Europe. The Church created the Inquisi-tion in the High Middle Ages in response tounorthodox religious beliefs that it calledheresies. Since some of these involved magi-cal practices and witchcraft, the occult alsobecame an object of persecution. The harshtreatment of the Manichaean Cathars insouthern France is an example of society’sreaction to those who mixed arcane practicewith heterodox theology.

In spite of persecution, the concept ofwitchcraft persisted and even flourished inearly modern times. At least the fear of it did,as the Salem witch trials richly illustrate. Inthe early decades of the twentieth century,schools of pagan and magical teachings werereborn as Wicca. Wiccans, calling themselves“practitioners of the craft of the wise,” wouldresurrect many of the old ways and infuse themwith modern thoughts and practices. Whatev-er its origin, the occult seems to be an object ofpermanent fascination to the human race.

Are We Alone?

Is the earth the only inhabited planet?Imagine the excitement if contact is madewith intelligent extraterrestrial life forms andhumankind discovers that it is part of a largercosmic community. It would change the waywe think of ourselves and of our place in theuniverse. Or is the belief in extraterrestrials acreation of our minds? The universe is so vastwe may never know, but the mysteries of outerspace have a grip on the modern psyche, sinceit seems to offer the possibility of a world thatmay be more open to scientific verificationthan witchcraft.

Purpose of Book

Whatever the origin and veracity of theunusual, these beliefs and experiences haveplayed a significant role in human experiencesand deserve to be studied dispassionately. Thesevolumes explore and describe the research ofthose who take such phenomena seriously;extraterrestrials, ghosts, spirits, and hauntedplaces are explored from many perspectives.They are part of the adventure of humanity.

Acknowledgements

Compiling such an extensive work as athree-volume encyclopedia of the unusual andunexplained proved many times to be a mostformidable task. During those moments whenI felt the labor pains of giving birth to such a


xixIntroduction

large and exhausting enterprise might bebeyond me, I was able to rely upon a numberof wonderful midwives. My agent Agnes Birn-baum never failed to offer encouragement andsupport; my remarkably resourceful andaccomplished editor Jolen Marya Gedridgecontinued to assure me that there truly waslight at the end of the tunnel and that thegreat enterprise would one day be completed;the always pleasant and helpful staff at Gale—

Julia Furtaw, Rita Runchock, Lynn Koch, andNancy Matuszak—stood by to offer assistance;and most of all, I am forever indebted to mywife Sherry Hansen Steiger for her tirelesscompiling of the glossaries, her efforts in writ-ing sidebars, her invaluable talents as aresearcher, her patience and love, and heralways providing a shoulder to cry on duringthe all-night writing sessions.

—Brad E. Steiger


Introductionxx

Chapter 10

Ghosts and Phantoms

There is not a single culture on planet

Earth that does not have its ghost stories.

Paleolithic cave paintings depicting the

human body surviving physical death

indicate that this belief is many thousands

of years old. In this chapter the universality

of accounts of the manifestation of ghostly

entities is explored.

1

Chapter Exploration

Ghostly Beings

Animal SpiritsApparitionsAutoscopy

Ghosts of the LivingPhantoms

PoltergeistsSpirits of the Dead

Spooklights

Famous Haunted Housesand Places

Bell Witch’s CaveBorley RectoryCalvados CastleEpworth Rectory

General Wayne InnThe Gray Man of Hinton Ampner

Myrtles PlantationThe Tedworth Drummer

The Whaley House

Ghosts in the Movies

Spontaneous HumanCombustion (SHC)

Introduction

Aghost is believed to be a physical mani-festation of the surviving spirit of a per-son who is known to be deceased. The

spirit form of the ghost may appear as a mistlike,amorphous mass; a lifelike, but transparent,image of a person; or an exact physical replica ofan individual known to be dead. Even if theperson represented by the manifestation is wellknown or loved by those who encounter itspresence, the appearance of a ghost most oftenprovokes feelings of fear or awe.

Although the terms “ghosts” and “phan-toms” are generally interchangeable in popularusage, many psychical researchers who special-ize in such areas of the unknown draw the dis-tinction that phantoms are most often associat-ed with locales that over the years have built upunique atmospheres, such as places of battle,tragedy, or great suffering. In such hauntings,certain ethereal figures may be reported sooften over so many years that they seem almostto have assumed an independent life force thathas enabled them to continue to exist withinthe context of a specific battlefield, the ruins ofa burned building, or the shadowed places in ahospital corridor. In this chapter the many cat-egories of ghosts and phantoms will beexplored, such as apparitions of the dead, thepossibility of animal spirits, the phenomenon of“spooklights,” and the disrupting energy of thepoltergeist, a noisy, rambunctious ghost. Inaddition, the details of such classic hauntings asthe Bell Witch’s Cave, the Borley Rectory,

the Whaley House, and the Myrtle Plantationwill be examined.

A Gallup Poll conducted in May 2001revealed that 38 percent of Americans surveyedbelieved in the existence of ghosts. Respondingto another question in the same survey, 42 per-cent of the respondents admitted that theybelieved in the reality of haunted houses, a 13percent increase since a poll conducted in1990. In the largest survey of paranormalbeliefs ever conducted in the United Kingdom,the Consumer Analysis Group found that 57percent of the British public believe in ghosts.

Television documentaries, such as the“Haunted History” series on The HistoryChannel and the remaking of “In Search Of”on the Sci Fi Channel, present evidence ofghosts and hauntings that the viewing publicis eager to accept as proof of spirits existing incastles, cottages, and taverns around theworld. Motion picture producers have foundvast audiences eager for such stylish ghost sto-ries as The Sixth Sense (1999), Sleepy Hollow(1999), and The Others (2001).

Books about ghosts—both fiction and non-fiction—remain high on readers’ lists of popu-lar titles. Barnes & Noble.com carries 8,102books with the key words “ghost stories.”

And then there is the Internet. There aremore than 650,000 websites devoted to thetopics of ghosts and hauntings.

In spite of such remarkable interest in ghostsby a large segment of the general public, one ofthe main reasons why neither science nor soci-ety at large has seriously considered the questionof ghosts and phantoms is the lack of what sci-entists consider to be tangible physical evidencethat proves that there is anything other than avoid waiting for humans upon death. Skepticsremain untouched by the most moving, fright-ening, or inspirational anecdotes of personalencounters with spirits, and even the mostopen-minded of contemporary scientists arereluctant to get involved in “ghost hunting” forfear of tarnishing their shields of objectivity.And since ghosts are allegedly spirits of theonce-living who have survived physical death,many scientists wish to avoid what they believeto be areas that transgress into abstract and eso-teric elements of faith and religion.


Ghosts and Phantoms2

“Poltergeist” movie. (THE

KOBAL COLLECTION)

But however relentlessly science strives toignore the evidence for ghosts or to deny theexistence of a life after death, the more popularghost stories seem to become among the gener-al public. The more that science seeks todemystify the world, the more that averagepeople wish to retain a sense of mystery andwonder through belief in ghosts and the super-natural. In such works as Leaps of Faith: Science,Miracles, and the Search for Supernatural Conso-lation (1999), psychologist Nicholas Humphreyinsists that science will never be able to explainthe world and reassure men and women thatthere is meaning to life as completely as canbelief in the supernatural or the divine.

M Delving Deeper

Associated Press. “Haunted Experiences Draw Skepti-cal Society Together.” Boston Globe, July 22, 2001.[Online] http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/203/metro/Haunted_experiences_draw_skeptical_ socie.

Denning, Hazel M. True Hauntings. St. Paul, Minn.:Llewellyn Publications, 1996.

Murphy, Gardner. The Challenge of Psychical Research.New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

“Spooky! We’re Still Haunted by Ghosts.” SydneyMorning Herald, July 23, 2001. [Online] http://www.smh.com.au/news/0107/23entertainment/entertain2.html

Steinour, Harold. Exploring the Unseen World. NewYork: Citadel Press, 1959.

Sullivan, Lawrence E., ed. Death, Afterlife, and theSoul. New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1989.

Tyrrell, G. N. M. Apparitions. New York: CollierBooks, 1963.

Ghostly Beings

There is not a single culture on planetEarth that does not have its ghost sto-ries. While individuals around the

world may argue politics, religion, and philos-ophy from the perspective of their own cultur-al biases, if there is a single unifying factor inthe arena of the unknown and the unex-plained, it is the manifestation of ghostly enti-ties. Of course not everyone who believes inghosts agrees on what exactly a ghost is. Someinsist that the appearance of ghosts proves sur-vival after death. Others state that such phe-nomena represent other dimensions of reality.

And not everyone in contemporary culturesbelieves in ghosts, but polls and surveys con-tinue to indicate that a good many do.

A Gallup Poll done in May 2001 foundthat 38 percent of Americans surveyed wereconvinced that ghosts exist, a 13 percentincrease from a survey conducted in 1990.While the current era is considered the age ofscience, the image of the traditional ghostappears to be as compelling and awesome asever. Perhaps this is because science can neverexplain the Big Questions or reassure thehuman psyche as completely as can belief inthe supernatural.

The famous psychoanalyst Dr. Carl Jung(1875–1961) described a personal encounterwith a ghost in Fanny Moser’s book Spuk(1950). In 1920, Jung was spending a weekendat an English country house a friend had rent-ed. The nights afforded no rest, however, forthe house was subject to the complete reper-toire of a full-scale haunting. There were rapson the walls, noxious odors, and the mysteri-ous dripping of liquid. Jung always experi-enced a sensation of incapacity whenever thephenomena would begin, and cold perspira-tion would bead his forehead.

The climax of the haunting occurred whenthe head of a woman materialized on the pillowof Jung’s bed about 16 inches from his own. Theghostly head had one eye open, and it stared atthe astonished psychoanalyst. Jung managed tolight a candle, and the frightening specter disap-peared. He later learned from the villagers thatall previous tenants of the country house hadterminated their occupancy in short order aftera night or two in the haunted house.

In the jargon of parapsychology—thebranch of behavioral science that undertakes toexamine such phenomena—a ghost is usually astranger to the one who perceives it while anapparition is well known by the one who sees it


3Ghosts and Phantoms

PSYCHOANALYST Dr. Carl Jungclaimed to have a personal encounter with a ghost.

and is instantly recognizable as the image of aparent, sibling, or friend. An apparition usuallyappears at some time of crisis—most often thatof physical death—and usually appears onlyonce. In the records of parapsychology and psy-chical research there are also accounts of exper-imental cases in which individuals have delib-erately attempted to make their apparition,their ghostly image, appear to a particular wit-ness, as in efforts to project one’s spiritualessence during an out-of-body experience.

A poltergeist is a projection of psychicenergy that finds its energy center in theunconscious mind, most commonly in adoles-cents, and emanates, therefore, from the liv-ing rather than from the dead. A poltergeist isa ghost only in common parlance, which linksthe two because of the “spook-like” nature ofthe poltergeist that causes the invisible pseu-doentity to prefer darkness for its violent exer-

cises of tossing furniture, objects, and peopleabout the room.

Accounts of people reporting having seenspirits of the dead are among the most com-monly described ghosts in all the cultures ofthe world. These post-mortem appearances ofthe dead, in which a recognized ghostly imageis seen or heard long after the actual personrepresented by the apparition has died, are feltby many observers and researchers to provesurvival of the human spirit beyond the grave.

Ghosts or apparitions that habitually appearin a room, house, or locale are known as phan-toms, eerie phenomena that often appear overthe years to attain a life force of their own, as ifthey were some kind of psychic marionettes.

Although people have been reporting see-ing ghosts and the spirits of the dead since theearliest historical records of human activity, the



Ghost with hand on light

bulb. (ARCHIVES OF

BRAD STEIGER)

first organized effort to study such phenomenaoccurred in 1882, as the first major undertakingof the newly formed Society for PsychicalResearch (SPR) in London. By means of a cir-culated questionnaire, the SPR asked whetherits recipients had ever, when they believedthemselves to be completely awake, experi-enced some kind of visual or auditory phenom-ena. Of the 17,000 people who responded,1,684 answered “yes.” From this, the committeemembers who were conducting the survey esti-mated that nearly 10 percent of the populationof London had experienced some kind of para-normal manifestation, and they sent formsrequesting additional details to all those whohad indicated such encounters. Subsequentinvestigation and interviews enabled the earlypsychical researchers to arrive at a number ofbasic premises regarding ghosts.

For example, the committee was able toconclude that although ghosts are connectedwith other events besides death, they are morelikely to be linked with death than with any-thing else. Visual sightings of ghosts were themost common, and of such cases reported, near-ly one-quarter had been shared by more thanone percipient. Those who answered the secondform of the questionnaire requesting more infor-mation stated that they had not been ill whenthey had witnessed the paranormal visitationsand they insisted that these manifestations werequite unlike the bizarre, nightmarish creaturesthat might appear during high fevers or highalcoholic consumption. Of those cases in whichthe percipients had experienced auditory phe-nomena, such as hearing voices, one-third werecollective, that is, witnessed by more than onepercipient at the same time.

After the findings of the research commit-tee had been made public, the SPR began tobe flooded by personal accounts of sponta-neous cases of ghosts and spirits. In order toaid the committee in the handling of such aninflux of information, the SPR worked out aseries of questions that could be applied toeach case that came in. Among the questionswere the following: Is the account firsthand?Has the principal witness been corroborated?Was the percipient awake at the time? Wasthe apparition recognized? Was the percipientanxious or in a state of expectancy? Could rel-

evant details have been read back into thenarrative after the event?

Today, over 120 years after the BritishSociety for Psychical Research began itsearnest efforts to chart and categorize ghosts,42 percent of the residents of that metropoli-tan area believe in ghosts and almost half ofthis number said that they had seen or felt thepresence of a ghost, according to a surveyreleased on March 20, 2000, by television sta-tion GMTV in London.

In the exploration of the paranormal, it isfound that most types of phenomena appear tobe universal, the individual circumstances ofthe accounts fitting themselves to the uniquecultural interpretations of whatever area inwhich they manifest. The ghostly beingsdescribed in this chapter are listed by looselydefined categories, for it will soon be apparentthat these entities know no strictly set bound-aries—especially those established by humanswho attempt to explain or to identify them.

M Delving Deeper

Associated Press. “Haunted Experiences Draw Skepti-cal Society Together.” Boston Globe, July 22, 2001.[Online] http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/203/metro/Haunted_experiences_draw_skeptical_socie


“Spooky! We’re Still Haunted by Ghosts.” SydneyMorning Herald, July 23, 2001. [Online] http://www.smh.com.au/news/0107/23entertainment/entertain2.html.



Animal Spirits

Just as a large percentage of the population ofall cultures believe that the ghosts of the dear-ly departed members of their human families



A poltergeist is a projection of psychic energy.

might appear to them, so also do many indi-viduals maintain that they have witnessed thespirit of a beloved pet return to a person or aplace after physical death.

One of the most beloved authors of dogstories, Albert Payson Terhune (1872–1942),was a great animal lover who kept dozens ofpets in Sunnybank, his estate near PomptonLakes, New Jersey. Although Terhune’sfavorite dogs were collies, he did have onecrossbreed named Rex, who was completelydevoted to the writer.

Rex was a large dog with a vicious-lookingscar across his forehead which made himappear much more ferocious than he really was.And though he felt it his duty to bark at everyguest who walked across the threshold, Rexwould contentedly curl up at Terhune’s feet as

he sat at the typewriter creating another canineadventure for his legions of devoted readers.

Due to a series of unfortunate events, Rexwas killed in March 1916, and the saddenedTerhune wrote the story Lad: A Dog as a trib-ute to the memory of his dear pet.

Many months after Rex’s death, Terhunewas paid a visit by Henry A. Healy, a financier,who knew how much his host had loved hisbig dog—but who apparently had not beentold of Rex’s passing. Just before leaving thatevening, Healy sighed wistfully and said, “Bert,I wish there was someone or something onearth that adored me as much as Rex worshipsyou. I watched him all evening. He lay there atyour feet the whole time, looking up at you as adevotee might look up to his god.”

Terhune was shocked by his guest’s com-ments. “Good lord, man!” he exclaimed. “Rexhas been dead now for more than a year and ahalf.”

Healy turned pale, but stood by the testi-mony of his own senses: “I can swear that hewas lying at your feet all evening—just as I’veseen him do since he was a puppy.”

Some weeks later, a longtime friend of Ter-hune’s, Rev. Appleton Grannis, paid a visit toSunnybank, and after a stroll around the estateand a pleasant afternoon meal, remarked thathe thought Bert fancied collies. Terhunereplied that was true. In fact all the dogs thathe presently owned were collies.

Rev. Grannis firmly disagreed. “Then whatdog was it that stood all afternoon on theporch looking in through the French windowat you? He’s a big dog with a nasty, peculiarscar on his forehead.”

While the author knew at once that it washis old friend Rex returning for another visitfrom the spirit world, Terhune thought betterthan to attempt to explain the situation to aconventional man of the cloth.

Terhune said that even the other dogswere able to sense the presence of old Rex.One of the collies that had always been care-ful to keep his distance from the big scar-facedcrossbreed continued to skirt very carefullyaround the rug where Rex had always sat wait-ing for his master to sit down to write.



Native American

dressed like an animal

spirit. (CORBIS

CORPORATION)

Tulsa, Oklahoma, attorney M. Jean Holmesis not an animal activist, but her extensivestudy of the Bible for her book Do Dogs Go toHeaven? (1999) convinced her that the dis-tinction between humans and animals allegedto be found in Scripture is the result of an oldtranslator’s “philosophical construction.” Inher opinion, an examination of the originalHebrew texts for such concepts as “soul” and“spirit” clearly tells that the authors of the var-ious books of the Bible believed that animalshave souls and spirits, just as humans do. Stat-ing that she has been enriched by her explo-ration of various religious practices, fromCatholicism to Pentecostalism, Holmes offersa suggestion for those individuals who are trou-bled about orthodox teachings that deny spiri-tuality to animals. She urges them to allow theHoly Spirit to be their teacher.

Attorney Holmes says that she is notashamed to be compared to animals, “for mostare of the highest character and are very goodcompany. We have much to learn about andfrom animals.”

Holmes was inspired to write her book byher late mother, Irene Hume Holmes, whowould often question members of the clergy ofvarious faiths: Did animals have spirits? And ifthey did, would they go to heaven when theydied? Although her mother usually receivedthe standard response that animals did notpossess souls and that humans had dominionover their four-legged companions, Holmes’sextensive research enabled her to answer atlast her mother’s oft-posed query, “Do dogs goto heaven?” in the affirmative.

Janice Gray Kolb, author of Compassion forAll Creatures, says that she had been taughtsince childhood that her beloved pets did nothave souls. Today, however, she states that shehas a firm conviction that there will be animalsin heaven. “Once I had this inner convictionfrom the Holy Spirit that animals and all God’screatures do inhabit Heaven with us, then Icould never believe otherwise,” she writes. “Itwas irrevocable! No matter what anyone elsemay argue, I cannot be shaken on this.”

As a student of the Bible, Kolb states thatGod created humans out of the ground, andHe created animals out of the ground. The

New American Catholic Bible uses for man“clay of the ground” (Genesis 2:7) and theLiving Bible says “dust of the ground.” Inregard to the animals, the New AmericanCatholic Bible states that they were “formedout of the ground” and the Living Bible states“formed from the soil.” Kolb argues that sincehumans and animals came from the same sub-stance, many Bible scholars, including herself,believe that animals must therefore have asoul. The holy breath that God breathed intoman was the same breath that He breathedinto the animals, birds, and other creatures. Itis Kolb’s further contention that God’s act ofblessing the animals is further proof that allcreatures have a soul. “‘Blessed,’” she pointsout, “means ‘to make holy,’ ‘sanctify,’ toinvoke divine favor upon, ‘to honor as Holy.’”God blessed his creation of man and woman,and thereby granted them a soul. Why elsewould God have blessed the animals if it werenot to bestow a soul upon them?

In July 2001, ABC News and Beliefnetreleased the result of their poll of Americansregarding the question of whether pets wouldone day meet their owners in heaven. Forty-seven percent of pet owners declared theirbelief that they would be reunited with theirbeloved animals in heaven; 35 percent of petowners said heaven was reserved for humans;48 percent of those respondents who did notown pets believed heaven was off-limits foranimals; and about 17 percent said that theywould reserve judgment until they themselveswalked through the pearly gates.

M Delving Deeper

Boone, J. Allen. Kinship with All Life. New York:Harper & Row, 1954.

Holmes, M. Jean. Do Dogs Go to Heaven? Tulsa,Okla.: JoiPax Publishing, 1999.

Kolb, Janice Gray. Compassion for All Creatures. Neva-da City, Calif.: Blue Dolphin Publishing, 1997.



ORTHODOX teachings deny spirituality to animals.

Smith, Scott S. “The Evidence for Animal Afterlife.”Fate, March 2001, 20–21.

———. Pet Souls: Evidence that Animals SurviveDeath. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Light SourceResearch, 1994.

Sussman, Dalia. “See Spot Go to Heaven? The Pub-lic’s Not So Sure.” ABCNews/Beliefnet Poll, 2001.[Online] http://www.beliefnet.com/story/78/story_7888. html.

Apparitions

There is usually agreement among psychi-cal researchers that when someone refers to anapparition, he or she is generally speaking of a“ghost” that is known to the percipient, ratherthan some ethereal unknown presence.Among the most common and universal of allpsychic phenomena is that of the “crisisapparition,” that ghostly image which is seen,heard, or felt when the individual representedby the image is undergoing a crisis, especiallydeath. A familiar example might be that of aman who is sitting reading in his home inDearborn, Michigan, who glances up from hisnewspaper to see an image of his father,dressed in his customary three-piece businesssuit, waving to him in a gesture of farewell.The percipient is startled, for his father livesin Austin, Texas. However, within the nextfew minutes the telephone rings, and it is acall from his sister in Austin, informing himthat their father has just passed away.

Some psychical researchers have theorizedthat at the moment of death the soul is freedfrom the confines of the body and is able tosoar free of time and space and, in someinstances, is able to make a last, fleeting con-tact with a loved one. These projections at themoment of death betoken that somethingnonphysical exists within humans that iscapable of making mockery of all accepted

physical laws—and even more importantly, iscapable of surviving physical death.

Documented stories of such apparitionsmay be found in the literature of all eras andall cultures. Images of loved ones who havecome to say farewell, to offer comfort andsolace before their transition to another planeof existence, appear to rich and poor alike.

On the night of June 11, 1923, GladysWatson had been asleep for three or four hourswhen she was awakened by someone callingher name. As she sat up in bed, she was able todiscern the form of her beloved grandfatherleaning toward her. “Don’t be frightened, it’sonly me. I have just died,” the image told her.

Watson started to cry and reached acrossthe bed to awaken her husband. “This is howthey will bury me,” Grandad Parker said, indi-cating his suit and black bow tie. “Just wantedto tell you I’ve been waiting to go ever sinceMother was taken.”

The Watsons’ house was next door to theLilly Laboratories in Indianapolis, Indiana.The bedroom was dimly illuminated withlights from the laboratory. Grandad Parkerwas clearly and solidly to be seen. Then,before Gladys Watson had awakened her hus-band, Grandad Parker had disappeared.

Mr. Watson insisted that his wife had had anightmare. He told her that her grandfather wasalive and well back in Wilmington, Delaware.

Gladys Watson was adamant that sheknew that she had seen Grandad Parker andthat it had been no dream. He had come tobid her farewell.

It was 4:05 A.M. when Watson called hiswife’s parents in Wilmington to prove that theexperience had been a dream. Mrs. Parker wassurprised to receive the call. She had been upmost of the night with her father-in-law andhad been waiting for morning before shewould let the Watsons know that Grandadhad passed away at 4:00 A.M.

Watson had been awakened by the fullyexternalized apparition of her grandfather atapproximately 3:30 A.M. Indianapolis time.Her husband had gotten out of bed and madethe telephone call at about 4:05 A.M. Grandad



IT is theorized that at the moment of death the soul is freed from the body and is able to soar free

of time and space.

Parker had died at 4:00 A.M. Eastern time—half an hour before Gladys Watson saw him.

Watson wrote an account of her experiencefor the Journal of the American Society for Psychi-cal Research (Vol. LXV, No. 3) in which shementioned that both she and her husband werechildren of Methodist ministers “…schooledagainst superstition from the time of theirbirth.”

When Watson was asked by an investiga-tor for the ASPR whether the experience ofhearing her grandfather speak could be com-pared to hearing someone in the flesh or tohearing with one’s “inner ear,” she answeredthat it had been as if Grandad Parker hadbeen there in the flesh, speaking in a soft, yetdetermined voice.

Watson’s father, Rev. Walter E. Parker, Sr.,corroborated his daughter’s story in a letter tothe ASPR in which he wrote, in part, thatGladys had always been his father’s favoritegrandchild and that they had promised to lether know if and when Grandad became seri-

ously ill. (He made his home with them.) “Hetook sick the day before. We called the doctorand thought he was going to be all right. Theend came suddenly around four o’clock in themorning. We were going to wait until later inthe morning to get in touch with Gladys. Ibelieve sincerely in the truth of this experi-ence as my daughter writes it.”

John Frederick Oberlin (1740–1826), thefamous pastor, educator, and philanthropist,literally transformed the whole life of the Ban-de-la-Roche valley in the Vosges Mountainsof Alsace. Shortly after the clergyman’s arrivalin the district, he expressed his immediate andearnest displeasure regarding the superstitionsof the natives. Oberlin became especially agi-tated over the villagers’ reports concerningthe apparitions of dying loved ones. The newpastor resolved to educate the simple folk, andhe launched a vociferous pulpit campaignagainst such superstitious tales.

In spite of his orthodox denial of appari-tions, the reports of such phenomena continuedunabated, and Oberlin was honest enough to



“Ghostbusters” movie.

(THE KOBAL COLLECTION)



The HMS Eurydice, a 26-gun frigate thatcapsized and sank in Sandown Bay duringa blizzard in 1878, is a famous phantomvessel that has been sighted by sailors

over the years. On October 17, 1998, Prince Edward ofEngland (1964– ) and the film crew for the televisionseries “Crown and Country” saw the three-mastedship off the Isle of Wight and managed to capture itsimage on film.

Perhaps the most famous of all ghost ships is theFlying Dutchman, whose legend states that as punish-ment for his impiety and blasphemy, the captain, Cor-nelius Vanderdecken, must sail until doomsday. Theappearance of this supernatural vessel is consideredby seafarers to be an omen of ill-fortune.

Another one that is a forerunner of disaster is theghost ship of the Yangtze River, a medieval Chinesepirate junk. The ghost junk has been said to heraldwars, famines, and the deaths of thousands. Off of theChileo Island, in South America, a ship apparitioncalled the Caleuche, is claimed to leave broken downboats and drowned men in its wake.

On January 5, 1931, the MS Tricouleur, with acargo of chemicals, exploded and sank after leavingCalcutta en route to Bombay. Sailors off Ceylon stillreport seeing her pass them before disappearing intothe fog.

Inhabitants along Bay Chaleur of New Brunswick,Canada, sight a “fire ship” that has been appearingfor more than a century. Some theorize the ship wasan immigrant vessel that sailed mistakenly into thebay instead of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Struck bylightning, it burned and ran aground at the mouth ofthe Restigouche River.

Many New Englanders claim to have seen anoth-er burning vessel, The Palatine, a ship from Hollandthat met with foul play during Christmas week, 1752,and sunk off Block Island near the coast of RhodeIsland. In his poem “The Palatine,” John GreenleafWhittier (1807–1892) made the unfortunate tragedy ofthe ill-fated ship a part of American literature.

Sources:

Rickard, Bob, and John Michell. Unexplained Phenomena.

London: Rough Guides, 2000.

Spaeth, Frank, ed. Mysteries of the Deep. St. Paul, Minn.:

Llewellyn Publications, 1998.

Winer, Richard. Ghost Ships: True Stories of Nautical

Nightmares, Hauntings and Disasters. New York: Berkley

Publishing Group, 2000.

Ghost Ships

admit that he was beginning to feel his dogmacrumbling around him. In 1806 a dreadfulavalanche at Rossberg buried several villages,and the reports of visions of the dying appearingto loved ones became so numerous that Oberlinat last came to believe that the villagers wereindeed perceiving spirits of the departed.

In Footfalls on the Boundary of AnotherWorld (1848), Robert Dale Owen relates thatOberlin came to believe that his wifeappeared to him after her death. The clergy-man maintained that his wife’s spirit watchedover him as though she were a guardian angel.Furthermore, Oberlin claimed that he couldsee his wife’s spirit, talk with her, and makeuse of her counsel regarding future events.Oberlin compiled extensive manuscripts thatdescribed in detail a series of manifestations inwhich his wife appeared to him and dictatedinformation regarding life after death. Oberlinbecame convinced that the inhabitants of theinvisible world can appear to the living, andwe to them, and that we humans are appari-tions to them, as they are to us.

The question that may remain is whetherthe percipients of apparitions actually observe adiscarnate entity, which occupies an objectivearea in time and space, or whether they perceivethe result of a successfully implanted telepathicmessage-image, which had been transmitted atthe moment of death by the dying loved one.The witnesses themselves, however, insist thattheir experiences cannot be dismissed as onlydramatic devices of their imaginations.

M Delving Deeper

Baird, A. T., ed. One Hundred Cases for Survival AfterDeath. New York: Bernard Ackerman, 1944.

Crookall, Robert. Intimations of Immortality. London:James Clarke Co., 1968.

Dingwall, Eric J., and John Langdon-Davies. TheUnknown—Is It Nearer? New York: New Ameri-can Library, 1968.

Smith, Alson J. Immortality: The Scientific Evidence.New York: Prentice Hall, 1954.


Autoscopy

A phenomenon that may be closely related tothe projection of the astral self in out-of-body

experiences is that of the appearance of one’sown double. Goethe (1749–1832), a Germanpoet, had the astonishing experience of meet-ing himself as he rode away from Strassburg.The phantom wore a pike grey cloak with goldlace that Goethe had never seen before. Eightyears later, as Goethe was on the same roadgoing to visit Frederika, it occurred to himthat he was dressed in precisely the same cloakthat his phantom had been wearing on thatearlier occasion.

In 1929, an archbishop wrote to Sir OliverLodge to tell him of a most peculiar incidentwhich had occurred one evening when he hadreturned to his home feeling tired. He satdown in a favorite easy chair, and immediatelyfell asleep. Then, he wrote in the letter, hewas sharply aroused in about a quarter of anhour (as he perceived by the clock). As heawoke he saw an apparition, luminous,vaporous, wonderfully real of himself, lookinginterestedly and delightedly at himself. Afterthe archbishop and himself had looked ateach other for the space of about five seconds,the ghostly self vanished for a few seconds,and then returned even clearer than before.

Such weird phenomena are termed “auto-scopic hallucinations.” They appear to serveno dual purpose, such as providing a warningor disclosing valuable information, but onlyseem to present a projection of one’s own bodyimage. One sees oneself, as it were, without amirror.

Dr. Edward Podolsky has compiled a num-ber of cases of people who have reported seeingtheir own ghosts, and he recorded the experi-ence of a Mr. Harold C. of Chicago, Illinois,who returned home after a hard day at theoffice with a splitting migraine. As he sat downto dinner, he saw, sitting opposite him, an exactreplica of himself. This astonishing doublerepeated every movement he made during theentire course of the meal. Since that time, Mr.



A doppleganger is the astral self in out-of-bodyexperiences and appears as one’s own double.

C. has seen his double on a number of occa-sions—each time after an attack of migraine.

As Mrs. Jeanie P. was applying makeup,she saw an exact duplicate of herself alsotouching up her features. Mrs. P. reached outto touch the double, and the image reachedout to touch her. Mrs. P. actually felt her facebeing touched by her mysterious double.

There are two main theories about thecause of autoscopy. One theory regards thephenomenon as being due to the result of someirritating process in the brain, particularly ofthe parietotemporal-occipital area (the visualarea). A more psychological theory sees inautoscopy the projection of memory pictures.Certain pictures are stored in the memory andwhen conditions of stress or other unusual psy-chological situations arise these memories maybe projected outside the body as real images.

M Delving Deeper

Black, David. Ekstasy: Out-of-the-Body Experiences.New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975.

Crookall, Robert. More Astral Projections. London:Aquarian Press, 1964.

Fodor, Nandor. Mind Over Space and Time. New York:Citadel Press, 1962.

Steinour, Harold. Exploring the Unseen World . NewYork: Citadel Press, 1959.


Ghosts of the Living

Psychical research has identified the followingtypes of situations in which out-of-body experi-ences (OBEs) or astral projections might occur:

1. Projections that occur while the subjectsleeps.

2. Projections that occur while the subject isundergoing surgery, childbirth, tooth ex-traction, etc.

3. Projections that occur at the time of acci-dent, during which the subject suffers aviolent physical jolt that seems, literally, tocatapult the spirit from the physical body.

4. Projections that occur during intensephysical pain.

5. Projections that occur during acute illness.

6. Projections that occur during near-deathexperiences (NDEs), wherein the subject

is revived and returned to life throughheart massage or other medical means.

7. Projections that occur at the moment ofphysical death when the deceased subjectappears to a living percipient with whomhe or she has had a close emotional link.

In addition to these spontaneous, involun-tary experiences, there also seem to be thosevoluntary and conscious projections duringwhich the subjects deliberately endeavor tofree their spirit, their soul, from their physicalbody. It would appear that certain people haveexercised this peculiar function of the tran-scendent self to the extent that they can pro-ject their spiritual essence at will and produceghosts, apparitions, of the living.

Early psychical researcher Edmund Gurney(1847–1888) told of the incredible experi-ments of a Mr. S. H. Beard in his Phantasms ofthe Living, published in 1886. Beard began hisexperiments with “astral projection” inNovember of 1881 on a Sunday evening afterhe had been reading about the great powerwhich the human will is capable of exercising.Exerting the whole force of his being on thethought that he would be present in spirit onthe second floor of a particular house, Beardmanaged to project an apparition of himselfthat was visible to his fiancee, Miss L. S. Verity.

Three days later, when Beard went to callupon Verity, a very excited young woman toldhim that she and her 11-year-old sister hadnearly been frightened out of their wits by anapparition that had looked just like him. Beardfelt quite pleased with the success of his experi-ment. Verity’s sister confirmed his “ghost’s”appearance; in fact, the whole matter of a spec-tral visitation had been brought up withoutany allusion to the subject on Beard’s part.

Verity later told Edmund Gurney that shedistinctly saw Beard in her room, about oneo’clock. “I was perfectly awake and was muchterrified,” she said. “I awoke my sister byscreaming, and she saw the apparition herself.Neither my sister nor I have ever experiencedhallucinations of any sort.”

Although Beard did not disclose his inten-tions to Verity, he was by no means finishedwith his experiments. The second time he wasseen by a married sister of Verity’s, whom he



had met briefly only once before. Beardwalked up to the bed on which the sister lay,took her long hair into his hand, and, a bitlater, took her hand into his.

When investigator Gurney learned ofBeard’s second successful projection, he wrotehim a note and urged him to let him know thenext time that he planned to experiment. Beardcomplied, and, in a letter dated March 22, 1884,he told the researcher simply, “This is it.”

Gurney next heard from Beard on April 3.A statement from Verity was enclosed: “OnSaturday night…I had a distinct impressionthat Mr. S. H. B. was present in my room, andI distinctly saw him whilst I was widely awake.He came towards me and stroked my hair . . . .The appearance in my room was most vividand quite unmistakable.”

Again, Verity testified that she had volun-tarily given Beard the information without anyprompting on his part. Beard concluded hisexperiments after this episode for Verity’s nerves“had been much shaken, and she had beenobliged to send for a doctor in the morning.”

Sylvan J. Muldoon was one of those whoclaim that astral projection can be learned,developed, and mastered by the serious-mind-ed. In his two books, The Projection of the AstralBody (1929) and The Case for Astral Projection(1936), Muldoon offers a detailed record ofmany experiments he personally conducted,and provides a systematic method of inducingthe conditions necessary for astral projection.According to Muldoon, it is possible to leavethe body at will and retain full consciousnessin the “astral self.” Muldoon was also cognizantof a “silver cord” connecting the phantombody and the physical body. This cord, saidMuldoon, is extremely elastic and permits ajourney of considerable distance. Muldoonclaimed to have been able to move objectswhile in his astral self and to have gainedinformation that he could not have acquiredvia any of the normal sensory channels.

In his book Far Journeys (1987), RobertMonroe provides details of his Gateway Pro-gram, which claims to be able to teach anyserious subject the ability to travel out of thebody and to escape the known dimensions ofthe physical universe. Monroe has spent many

years researching various techniques in mov-ing the soul or mind out of the physical bodyand has established an institute where studentscan experience his methods and techniques.

The area of “living ghosts” that has receivedthe greatest amount of study in the twenty-firstcentury is that of the near-death-experience(NDE). In December 2001, the prestigiousBritish medical publication The Lancet releasedthe results of an extensive study conducted byDr. Pim van Lommel and his colleagues at Hos-pital Rijnstate in Arnhem, Netherlands, whichindicates that a number of subjects experiencedvisions or lucid thoughts while they were clini-cally dead. Some of those subjects also reportedout-of-body experiences, indicating that themind/soul and the brain are independent of oneanother and that consciousness can exist when



Electronic Voice

Phenomena—

Recording Ghosts

on Tape

Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931), who firstdeveloped the cylinder recorder, did so inan effort to communicate with the dead,not to record music. Edison believed that

the soul was composed of swarms of highly chargedentities that lived in the cells, and that left the physicalbody after death, entering another cycle of life andbecoming immortal.

Sources:

American Association for Electronic Voice Phenomena. [Online]

http://www.dreamwater.com/aaevp/.

Estep, Sarah Wilson. Voice of Eternity. New York: Fawcett Gold

Medal, 1988.

International Network for Instrumental Transcommunication.

[Online] http://www.worlditc.org.

Raudive, Konstanin. Translated by Nadia Fowler. Ed. by Joyce

Morton. Breakthrough. New York: Taplinger, 1971.

the brain has flatlined and the electroencephalo-graph registers no measurable brain activity.

Frederic W. H. Myers (1843–1901) haswritten that cases of astral projection presentperhaps not the most useful, “but the mostextraordinary achievement of the human will.What can lie further outside any known capac-ity than the power to cause a semblance ofoneself to appear at a distance? What can bemore a central action—more manifestly theoutcome of whatsoever is deepest and mostunitary in man’s whole being? Of all vital phe-nomena, I say, this is the most significant; thisself-projection is the one definite act which itseems as though a man might perform equallywell before and after bodily death.”

M Delving Deeper

Black, David. Ekstasy: Out-of-the-Body Experiences.New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975.


Ingram, Jay. “Can Consciousness Exist When theBrain Is Off-line?” Toronto Star, January 15, 2002.[Online] http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Prin.

Monroe, Robert A. Far Journeys. New York: Double-day, 1987.

Muldoon, Sylvan, and Hereward Carrington. ThePhenomena of Astral Projection. London: Rider &Co., 1966.

Phantoms

Almost every city, town, or village in theworld has a bit of folklore about a PhantomDog with red eyes that guards the grave of amaster long dead, a Phantom Nun who stillwalks the ruins of a convent that burned to



Russ Tamblyn, Clair

Bloom, and Richard

Johnson in a scene from

the 1963 movie “The

Haunting.” (THE KOBAL

COLLECTION)

the ground decades ago, a Phantom Horsemanwho patrols the grounds of an old battlefield.Phantoms comprise that category of ghoststhat have been seen again and again by count-less men and women over many years andhave literally begun to assume independentexistences of their own, becoming, in a sense,“psychic marionettes,” responding to the fearsand expectations of their human percipients.In some dramatic instances, an entire sectionof landscape seems to be haunted. In mostcases of this particular type of haunting, atragic scene from the past is recreated in pre-cise detail, as some cosmic photographer hadcommitted the panorama to ethereal filmfootage. Battles are waged, trains are wrecked,ships are sunk, the screams of earthquake vic-tims echo through the night—all as it actuallytook place months, years, or centuries before.

Thomas A. Edison (1847–1931), the elec-trical wizard, theorized that energy, like matter,is indestructible. He became intrigued by theidea of developing a radio that would be sensi-tive enough to pick up the sounds of timespast—sounds which were no longer audible toany ears but those of the psychically sensitive.Edison hypothesized that the vibrations ofevery word ever uttered still echoed in theether. If this theory ever should be established,it would explain such phenomena as therestoration of scenes from the past. Just as theemotions of certain individuals permeate a cer-tain room and cause a ghost to be seen by thosepossessing similar telepathic affinity, so might itbe that emotionally charged scenes of the pastmay become imprinted upon the psychic etherof an entire landscape. An alternate theorymaintains that surviving minds, emotionallyheld to the area, may telepathically invade themind of sensitive individuals and enable themto see the scene as they, the original partici-pants, once saw the events occurring.

Whatever the reasons may be, it cannot bedenied that some locales definitely have builtup their own “atmospheres” over the years andthat such auras often give sensitive peoplefeelings of uneasiness—and often sensationsof fear and discomfort. Whether this may becaused by surviving minds, a psychic residue,or an impression of the actual event in thepsychic ether is a question that remains

unsolved at the present stage of parapsycho-logical research.

Paranormally restored battle scenes offerexcellent examples of what seem to be phan-toms caused by the collective emotions andmemories of large groups of people. Perhapsthe most well-known, most extensively docu-mented, and most substantially witnessed wasthe Phantom Battle of Edge Hill which was“refought” on several consecutive weekendsduring the Christmas season of 1642. Theactual battle was waged near the village ofKeinton, England, on October 23 between theRoyalist Army of King Charles and the Parlia-mentary Army under the Earl of Essex.

It was on Christmas Eve that several coun-tryfolk were awakened by the noises of violentbattle. Fearing that it could only be anotherclash between soldiers that had come to dese-crate the sanctity of the holy evening and thepeace of their countryside, the villagers fledfrom their homes to confront two armies ofphantoms. One side bore the king’s colors; theother, Parliament’s banners. Until three o’clockin the morning, the phantom soldiers restagedthe terrible fighting of two months before.

The actual battle had resulted in defeat forKing Charles, and the monarch grew greatlydisturbed when he heard that two armies ofghosts were determined to remind the popu-lace that the Parliamentary forces had tri-umphed at Edge Hill. The king suspected thatcertain Parliamentary sympathizers had fabri-cated the tale to cause him embarrassment.The king sent three of his most trusted officersto squelch the matter. When the emissariesreturned to court, they swore oaths that theythemselves had witnessed the clash of thephantom armies. On two consecutive nights,they had watched the ghostly reconstructionand had even recognized several of their com-rades who had fallen that day.



ALMOST every city, town, or village in theworld has a bit of folklore about a phantom.

On August 4, 1951, two young English-women vacationing in Dieppe, France, wereawakened just before dawn by the violentsounds of guns and shell fire, dive bombingplanes, shouts, and the scraping of landingcraft hitting the beach. Cautiously peering outof their windows, the two young women sawonly the peaceful pre-dawn city. They knew,however, that just nine years previously, near-ly 1,000 young Canadians had lost their livesin the ill-fated Dieppe raid.

Demonstrating an unusual presence ofmind, the young Englishwomen kept a recordof the frightening sounds of war, noting theexact times of the ebb and flow of the invisi-ble battle. They presented their report to theSociety for Psychical Research, whose investi-

gators checked it against detailed accounts ofthe event in the war office. The times record-ed by the women were, in most cases, identi-cal to the minute of the raid that had takenplace nine years before.

Another area which seems to be drenchedwith the powerful emotions of fighting anddying men is that of the small island of Cor-regidor, where in the early days of World WarII (1939–45), a handful of American and Fil-ipino troops tried desperately to halt theJapanese advance against the city of Manilaand the whole Philippine Islands, valiantlyfighting almost beyond human endurance.According to several witnesses, their ghostshave gone on fighting.

Today, the only living inhabitants of theisland are a small detachment of Filipinomarines, a few firewood cutters, and a caretak-er and his family. And then there are the non-living inhabitants.

Terrified wood cutters have returned to thebase to tell of bleeding and wounded men whostumble about in the jungle. Always, theydescribe the men as grim-faced and carryingrifles at the ready. Marines on jungle maneuvershave reported coming face to face with silentlystalking phantom scouts of that desperate last-stand conflict of more than 60 years ago. Manyhave claimed to have seen a beautiful red-head-ed woman moving silently among rows of ghost-ly wounded, ministering to their injuries. Mostoften seen is the ghost of a nurse in a Red Crossuniform. Soldiers on night duty who have spot-ted the phantom have reported that, shortlyafter she fades into the jungle moonlight, theyfind themselves surrounded by rows and rows ofgroaning and dying men in attitudes of extremesuffering. According to the caretaker and hisfamily, the sounds that come with evening arethe most disconcerting part of living on anisland full of phantoms. Every night the air isfilled with horrible moans of pain and thesounds of invisible soldiers rallying to defendthemselves against phantom invaders.

Veterans of the Korean conflict returnedwith tales of a phantom town that came to lifeon cold, still nights. By day, Kumsong, Korea,was nothing but piles of battered rubble. Thepopulation had long since given up residence



Phantom attacker.

(FORTEAN PICTURE LIBRARY)

of their war-ravished village to the rats. TheAmerican troops, who looked down on thecharred ruins from their positions in the front-line bunkers, called Kumsong “The Capital ofNo Man’s Land.” But on some nights, soldierswould come back from their frozen bunkerswith stories of music, singing, and the laughterof women that had drifted up from the ghosttown. So many Allied troops heard the ghost-ly music that “Ching and his violin” became areality to the front-line soldiers.

Although both haunted landscapes andhaunted houses seem most liable to receivetheir emotional energy from the psychiccharges generated by scenes of violence andtragedy, there have been reports of pleasantrestorations of the past.

On a rainy evening in October of 1916,Edith Olivier was driving from Devizes toSwindon in Wiltshire, England. The eveningwas so dreary that Olivier wished earnestly fora nice, warm inn in which to spend the night.Leaving the main road, she found herself pass-ing along a strange avenue lined by huge graymegaliths. She concluded that she must havebeen approaching Avebury. Although Olivierhad never been to Avebury before, she wasfamiliar with pictures of the area and knewthat the place had originally been a circularmegalithic temple that had been reached bylong stone avenues.

When she reached the end of an avenue,she got out of her automobile so that she mightbetter view the irregularly falling megaliths. Asshe stood on the bank of a large earthwork, shecould see a number of cottages, which hadbeen built among the megaliths, and she wassurprised to see that, in spite of the rain, thereseemed to be a village fair in progress. Thelaughing villagers were walking merrily aboutwith flares and torches, trying their skill at var-ious booths and applauding lustily for the tal-ented performers of various shows.

Olivier became greatly amused at the care-free manner in which the villagers enjoyedthemselves, completely oblivious to the rain.Men, women, and children walked about with-out any protective outer garments and not asingle umbrella could be seen. She would havejoined the happy villagers at their fair if she

had not been growing increasingly uncomfort-able in the rain, which was becoming steadilyheavy. She decided that she was not made ofsuch hardy stock as the sturdy villagers and gotback into her automobile to resume her trip.

Edith Olivier did not visit Avebury againuntil nine years had passed. At that time, shewas perplexed to read in the guidebook that,although a village fair had once been an annu-al occurrence in Avebury, the custom hadbeen abolished in 1850. When she protestedthat she had personally witnessed a village fairin Avebury in 1916, the guide offered Oliviera sound and convincing rebuttal. Even moreastounding, perhaps, was the information sheacquired concerning the megaliths. The par-ticular avenue on which she had driven onthat rainy night of her first visit had disap-peared before 1800.

Edith Olivier’s experience begs the ques-tion: Just how substantial is a phantom? Can ascene from the past return and assume tempo-rary physical reality once again? Did Olivierdrive her automobile on an avenue that wasno longer there, or did she drive on a solid sur-face that had once been there and had tem-porarily returned?

According to those who have encounteredthem, a materialized phantom seems as solid asany human. Modern science no longer regardssolids as solids at all but rather as congealedwave patterns. Psychical researcher JamesCrenshaw notes that the whole imposing arrayof subatomic particles—electrons, protons,positrons, neutrinos, mesons—achieve “parti-cle-like characteristics” in a manner similar tothe way that wave patterns in tones and over-tones produce characteristic sounds. Crenshawtheorizes that ghosts may be made up of transi-tory, emergent matter that “…appears and dis-appears, can sometimes be seen and felt beforedisappearing…behaves like ordinary matterbut still has no permanent existence in theframework of our conception of space andtime. In fact, after its transitory manifestations,it seems to be absorbed back into anotherdimension or dimensions.…”

M Delving Deeper

Edsall, F. S. The World of Psychic Phenomena. NewYork: David McKay, 1958.




Stevens, William Oliver. Unbidden Guests. New York:Dodd, Mead & Co., 1957.


Poltergeists

The perverse talents of the poltergeist (Ger-man for “pelting or throwing ghost”) rangefrom the ability to toss pebbles and smashvases, to the astonishing ability to materializehuman or beastlike entities, complete withvoices, intelligent responses, and disagreeableodors. From humankind’s earliest records totoday’s newspaper story, every reported polter-geist case follows the same basic patterns. Cul-tural influences seem to matter little, if at all.A poltergeist manifestation is similar in char-acter whether it takes place in Indonesia, Ice-land, or Long Island. Only the interpretationof the disturbance varies. What is attributedto the destructive impulse of a demon to one

people, is attributed to the destructive impulseof a fragmented psyche to another.

According to many contemporary psychi-cal researchers poltergeist manifestations aredramatic instances of psychokinesis (PK) (themind influencing matter) on the rampage.Although the pranks of the poltergeist wereformerly attributed to malicious tricks perpe-trated by demons and disembodied spirits, thegreat majority of psychical researchers todayhold that some faculty of PK is at work. “Thepoltergeist is not a ghost,” the psychoanalystDr. Nandor Fodor once wrote, “but a bundleof projected repressions.”

Quite probably, according to manyresearchers, the sex changes that occur duringpuberty have a great deal to do with the pecu-liar type of PK that is responsible for poltergeistactivity. Researchers have only begun to realizesome of the vast chemical changes that takeplace in the body during adolescence. Who cansay what may happen in the lower levels of thesubconscious? Psychical researchers have notedthat more often a girl than a boy is at the center



“Poltergeist” movie. (THE

KOBAL COLLECTION)

of poltergeistic disturbances and that the sexualchange of puberty is associated with either thebeginning or the termination of the phenome-na. Researchers have also observed that thesexual adjustments of the marital state can alsotrigger such phenomena.

The poltergeist often finds its energy cen-ter in the frustrated creativity of a broodingadolescent, who is denied accepted avenues ofexpression. Those who have witnessed polter-geistic activity firsthand have been convincedthat the energy force is directed by a measureof intelligence or purpose. Observers rangingfrom skeptical scientists, hard-nosed journal-ists, and innocent bystanders alike havereported seeing poltergeist-borne objects turncorners, poltergeist-manipulated chalk writeintelligible sentences on walls, and polter-geist-flung pebbles come out of nowhere tostrike children. But, as one investigator com-mented, the phenomena are exactly such aswould occur to the mind of a child. In Polter-geists (1940), Sacheverell Sitwell wrote thatthe poltergeist always directed its powertoward “the secret or concealed weaknesses ofthe spirit…the recesses of the soul. The mys-teries of puberty, that trance or dozing of thepsyche before it awakes into adult life, is afavorite playground for the poltergeist.”

Why it should be the baser elements of theadolescent human subconscious that findtheir expression in the poltergeist is a matterof great speculation among psychicalresearchers. Physical violence is almost alwaysexpressed toward the adolescent energy centerof the poltergeist—and a parent, a brother, ora sister may come in for their share of the pun-ishment as well. If the poltergeist sticksaround long enough (its average life is abouttwo weeks) to develop a voice or the ability tocommunicate by raps or automatic writing, itscommunications are usually nonsensical, rib-ald, or downright obscene.

Cases of poltergeists pelting innocent fami-lies with stones and pebbles comprise by far thelargest single category of poltergeistic phenom-ena and therefore seem to be the most commonexample of PK running wild. Natural scientistIvan T. Sanderson cautioned researchersagainst using the term “throwing” when speak-

ing of poltergeist activity. According to Sander-son’s observations, the stones are “dropped” or“lobbed” or “just drift around” rather thanthrown. “Stone-dropping is a purely physicalphenomenon,” stated Sanderson, “and can beexplained on some physical principles, thoughnot necessarily on Newtonian, Einsteinian, orany others that concern our particular space-time continuum.”

M Delving Deeper

Carrington, Hereward, and Nandor Fodor. HauntedPeople. New York: New American Library, 1968.

Fodor, Nandor. The Haunted Mind. New York: NewAmerican Library, 1968.

Sanderson, Ivan T. Things. New York: Pyramid Books,1967.



Enfield poltergeist

case/investigator

Maurice Gross. (GUY

LYON PLAYFAIR/FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

PSYCHICAL researchers believe poltergeist manifestations are dramatic instances of psychokinesis.

Sitwell, Sacheverell. Poltergeists. New York: Universi-ty Books, 1959.


Spirits of the Dead

According to the “USA Snapshots” feature inthe April 20, 1998, issue of USA Today, 52percent of adult Americans believe thatencounters with the dead are possible. In his1994 analysis of a national sociological survey,Jeffrey S. Levin, an associate professor at East-ern Virginia Medical School, found that two-thirds of Americans claimed to have had atleast one mystical experience. Of that remark-ably high number, 39.9 percent said that theyhad an encounter with a ghost or hadachieved contact with the spirit of a deceasedperson. According to a survey published in theDecember 1997 issue of Self, 85 percent of itsreaders believed in the reality of communica-tion with the spirit world.

The more that is learned of the remarkablepowers of the human psyche, the more difficultit is to prove that one has actually made con-tact with a spirit of a deceased person, ratherthan experienced some facet of extrasensoryperception, such as clairvoyance or telepathy.In order for psychical researchers to consider

accounts of alleged communication with thedead to be authentic, they must first of all beveridical; that is, they must relate to an actualevent that was occurring, had occurred, orwould occur. In addition, these cases musteach contain an independent witness whocould further testify to the truth and import ofthe experience. The account of James Chaf-fin’s will is a case that truly seems suggestive ofsurvival of the human personality after death.

On September 7, 1921, James Chaffin ofDavie County, North Carolina, died as theresult of a fall. A farmer, Chaffin was survivedby his widow and four sons, but the will thathe had had duly attested by two witnesses onNovember 16, 1905, left all of his property tothe third son, Marshall.

One night in the latter part of June 1925,four years after James Chaffin’s death, JamesPinkney Chaffin, the farmer’s second son, sawthe spirit figure of the deceased standing at hisbedside and heard the specter tell of anotherwill. According to the son, his father hadappeared dressed as he often had in life. “Youwill find the will in my overcoat pocket,” thespirit figure said, taking hold of the garmentand pulling it back.

The next morning James Pinkney Chaffinarose convinced he had seen and heard hisfather and that the spirit had visited him forthe purpose of correcting some error. Hisfather’s black overcoat had been passed on toJohn Chaffin, so James traveled to YadkinCounty to examine the pocket to which thespirit had made reference. The two brothersfound that the lining of the inside pocket hadbeen sewn together, and when they cut thestitches, they found a roll of paper that borethe message: “Read the 27th chapter of Gene-sis in my daddie’s [sic] Old Bible.”

James P. Chaffin was then convinced thatthe specter had spoken truthfully, and hebrought witnesses with him to the home of hismother where, after some search, they locatedthe dilapidated old Bible in the top drawer ofa dresser in an upstairs room. One of the wit-nesses found the will in a pocket that hadbeen formed by folding two of the Bible’spages together.



Ghost image of a woman

frightening an elderly

man in a double exposed

film from ca. 1910.

(CORBIS CORPORATION)

The new will had been made by JamesChaffin on January 16, 1919, 14 years afterthe first will. In this testament, the farmerstated that he desired his property to be divid-ed equally among his four sons with the admo-nition that they provide for their mother aslong as she lived.

Although the second will had not beenattested, it would, under North Carolina law,be considered valid because it had been writ-ten throughout in James Chaffin’s own hand-writing. All that remained was to present suf-ficient evidence that the hand that had writ-ten the second will was, without doubt, that ofthe deceased.

Marshall Chaffin, the sole beneficiaryunder the conditions of the old will, hadpassed away within a year of his father, nearlyfour years before the spirit of James Chaffinhad appeared to his second son, JamesPinkney Chaffin. Marshall’s widow and sonprepared to contest the validity of the secondwill, and the residents of the county began tolook forward to a long and bitter court battlebetween members of the Chaffin family. Thescandal mongers were immensely disappoint-ed when 10 witnesses arrived in the court-room prepared to give evidence that the sec-ond will was in James Chaffin’s handwriting.After seeing the will, Marshall Chaffin’s wifeand son immediately withdrew their opposi-tion. It seemed evident that they, too,believed the will had been written in the handof the testator.

James Pinkney Chaffin later told an inves-tigator for the Journal of the Society for Psychi-cal Research that his father had appeared tohim before the trial and told him that the law-suit would be terminated in such a manner.“Many of my friends do not believe it is possi-ble for the living to hold communication withthe dead,” James Pinkney Chaffin said, “but Iam convinced that my father actuallyappeared to me on these several occasions andI shall believe it to the day of my death.”

It seems strange that James Chaffin shouldhave kept the second will secret, especially inview of the subsequent claim that his disturbedspirit came back from beyond the grave toright the wrong that had been done to his

widow and three disinherited sons. Perhaps thefarmer had intended some sort of deathbedrevelation and had these plans go unrealizedwhen his life was cut short by accident.

Society for Psychical Research investiga-tors were unable to establish any kind of casefor a subconscious knowledge of the will inthe old Bible or of the message in the coatpocket. Fraud must be ruled out because of theease in which 10 reliable witnesses, well-acquainted with James Chaffin’s handwriting,could be summoned to testify to the authen-ticity of the handwriting in the will. Chargesof a fake will would seem to be further negatedby the immediate withdrawal from the contestof Marshall Chaffin’s widow and son oncethey were allowed to examine the document.



Joel Grey and Patrick

Stewart in the television

production of “The

Christmas Carol.” (THE

KOBAL COLLECTION)

Evidently they, too, recognized the handwrit-ing of the elder Chaffin.

The Journal’s summation of the strangecase of James Chaffin’s will stated the difficul-ty in attempting to explain the case alongnormal lines. For those willing to accept asupernormal explanation of the event, itshould be noted that the Chaffin case is of acomparatively infrequent type, in which morethan one of the witness’s senses is affected bythe spirit. J. P. Chaffin both “saw” his father’sspirit and “heard” him speak. The auditoryinformation provided by the spirit was notstrictly accurate, for what was in the overcoatpocket was not the second will, but a clue toits whereabouts. But the practical result wasthe same.

M Delving Deeper

Baird, A. T., ed. One Hundred Cases for Survival AfterDeath. New York: Bernard Ackerman, 1944.

Crookall, Robert. Intimations of Immortality. London:James Clarke, 1968.

Fiore, Edith. The Unquiet Dead. New York: Double-day, 1987.


Watson, Lyall. The Romeo Error. New York: DellBooks, 1976.

Spooklights

Nestled far from the nearest city of Hickory,the Brown Mountain region of North Caroli-na has been a subject of fascination for morethan 100 years, for nearly every night alongthe mountain ridges mysterious lights can beseen for which scientists have failed to findany logical explanation. From sunset untildawn, globes of various colored lights, rangingin size from mere points to 25 feet in diameter,can be seen rising above the tall trees andflickering off again, as they fall to the moun-tain passes below.

Various legends have sprung up about theorigin of the lights. Some say the Cherokeespirits and Catawba braves made the lightsand search the valley for maiden lovers. Itseems that the two tribes had a big battle hun-dreds of years ago, in which nearly all of themen of the two tribes were killed. Apparentlythis legend has some basis in fact, because atleast a half a dozen Native American graveshave been found in the area.

According to some local residents, thelights first began to be sighted on a regular basissometime in 1916. At the time it was thoughtthat the mystery lights might have been causedby the headlights on locomotives or cars run-ning through a nearby valley. However, duringthe spring of that year, all bridges were knockedout by a flood and the roads became too muddyfor cars to travel—yet the Brown Mountainlights were seen in greater number than before.

Some who have witnessed the phenomenabelieve that the lights are intelligently con-trolled. They say that they have seen thembutting into each other and bouncing like bigbasketballs. Certain observers swear that theyhave tracked the lights at speeds of almost 100miles per hour. On one Saturday night in1959, according to some area residents, morethan 5,000 persons turned out to see the lights.

Some of the spookiest lights on record arethe ones linked popularly to ghosts and theirhaunting grounds. In the little town of SilverCliff, Colorado, ghost lights have plagued thelocal cemetery since 1880. Silver Cliff is itselfalmost a ghost town: In 1880 it boasted a pop-ulation of 5,087; by the 1950s it had only 217inhabitants.

The ghost lights reached the mass mediain the spring of 1956 in the Wet Mountain Tri-bune, and on August 20, 1967, in the NewYork Times. Local folklore has it that the lightswere first seen in 1880 by a group of minerspassing by the cemetery. When they saw theflickering blue lights over the gravestones,they left in a hurry. Since then, the lights havebeen observed by generations of tourists andresidents of Custer County. Many of these wit-nesses have noted that the curious blue lightscannot be seen as clearly on the sandstonemarkers. This convinced several spectators



FIFTY-TWO percent of Americans believeencounters with the dead are possible.

that the lights were only a reflection of house-lights in the valley.

Not so, insisted county judge August Men-zel. In the New York Times he told of the nightwhen everyone in Silver Cliff and nearbyWestcliff shut off their lights. Even the streetlights were turned off, but the graveyard lightsstill danced as brightly as ever.

If the ghostly gravemarkers cannot beattributed to the reflection of ordinary houseand municipal lights, just what can they be?Old-timers and younger theorists have comeup with many suggestions. Some believe thatthe lights are reflections from the stars. Yet thelights are just as clear on a starless, moonlessnight. Others theorize that they are caused byphosphorescing ore and glowing wood—butthe darker the night, the brighter the lights. Itwas suggested that radioactive ores were caus-ing the flickering lights. But Geiger counterswere then employed to cover the entire area,and no radioactivity was discovered.

Finally the seekers of a plausible explana-tion confessed total bafflement. None of thetheories would hold water, and the lights them-selves could never be approached for a closeenough look. As soon as anyone came too near,the lights would disappear, only to pop up againin another section of the cemetery. Photogra-phers were hired, but no one managed to cap-ture the elusive blue lights on film.

At this point the old-timers simply smileand provide the fitting explanation for anyclassic ghost story. According to local legend,the cemetery, which is still in use, is the finalresting place for many miners who died whiledigging precious ores. The flickering lights ofthe graveyard resemble the little lights wornon the miners’ caps, and the ghostly lightsbelong to the restless souls of the miners, whostill search for the gold they never found.

A far more notorious ghost light is locatedin the tri-state area of Spooksville, in a corner ofMissouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.Spooksville’s ghostly light is advertised as atourist attraction, and brings in countless num-bers of the curious. The mysterious light, knownvariously as “spook light” or “ghost light” to thevisitors and inhabitants of the region, was offi-cially dubbed a UFO by the U.S. Air Force.

This alone has caused the Spooksville area to becalled the “UFO” airport.

In appearance the ghost light resembles abright lantern. Often the light dims before thespectators, then bounces back over the moun-tains in a brilliant blaze of light. Hundreds offirsthand encounters with the mysterious ghostlight are on record. These accounts demon-strate actual experiences with the unknown,sometimes frightening, but always interesting.

During World War II (1939–45) the U.S.Corps of Engineers scoured the entire area,using the latest scientific equipment of thetime. For weeks they tested caves, mineraldeposits, and highway routes, exhausting everypossible explanation for the origin of the mys-tery lights. They finally left, confounded.

Perhaps the most famous spook lights inthe United States are the eerie illuminationsthat appear in the night sky just east of Marfa,Texas, a small ranching community southeastof El Paso. Settler Robert Ellison, who fearedthat he was seeing Apache campfires in thedistance, first spotted the strange lights in1883. When he investigated the next day, hecould find no ashes where he had seen thelights. Local folklore soon attributed the ghostlights to the spirits of slain warriors seekingpeace, the ghosts of murdered settlers, therestless spectre of the Apache chief Alsate, orthe quests of lost lovers yearning to be reunit-ed. Some area residents have stories of beingguided home to safety by the mysterious lights,while others tell of being terrified by closeencounters with the glowing orbs.

Theorists have ascribed the Marfa Lightsto natural phenomena, such as ball lightning,electrostatic charges, or gas emissions. Certainscientists have blamed a combination of solaractivity and seismic activity that creates akind of underground lightning that on occa-sion rises above ground level to be seen as theeerie lights.

There are many more ghost lights haunt-ing the nooks and crannies, mountain peaksand valleys, of the planet Earth. Experts havetried to explain the mystery of spook lights byusing the existing structure of physics andknown natural phenomena, such as ball light-ning, will o’ the wisps, and swamp gas, but so



far all attempts at scientific explanation havebeen unsuccessful.

M Delving Deeper

Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord. Unexplained Mysteries ofthe 20th Century. Chicago: Contemporary Books,1989.

Clark, Jerome. Unexplained! Detroit and London: Vis-ible Ink Press, 1999.

Floyd, Randall. Ghost Lights and Other Encounters. Lit-tle Rock, Ark.: August House, 1993.

Gaddis, Vincent H. Mysterious Fires and Lights. NewYork: Dell Books, 1968.

Steiger, Brad. Beyond Belief. New York: Scholastic,1991.

Famous Haunted Houses

and Places

In a Gallup Poll conducted in May 2001, 42percent of the respondents said that theybelieved that houses could be haunted by

ghosts or spirits of the dead. Psychoanalyst Dr.Nandor Fodor theorized that genuinely haunt-ed houses were those that had soaked up emo-tional unpleasantness from former occupants.Years, or even centuries, later, the emotionalenergy may become reactivated when lateroccupants of the house undergo a similar emo-tional disturbance. The “haunting”—mysteri-ous knocks and rappings, opening and slam-ming doors, cold drafts, appearance of ghostlyfigures—is produced, in Fodor’s hypothesis, bythe merging of the two energies, one from thepast, the other from the present. In Fodor’stheory, the reservoir of absorbed emotions,which lie dormant in a haunted house, canonly be activated when emotional instability ispresent. Those homes which have a history ofhappy occupants, the psychoanalyst believed,are in little danger of becoming haunted.

Psychic investigator Edmund Gurney putforth the hypothesis that the collective sight-ing of a ghost is due to a sort of telepathic“infection.” One percipient sees the ghostand, in turn, telepathically influences anotherperson, and so on.

In his presidential address to the Societyfor Psychic Research in 1939, H. H. Price, a

distinguished professor of logic at Oxford Uni-versity, put forth his “psychic ether” theory ofhauntings. Price hypothesized that a certainlevel of mind may be capable of creating amental image that has a degree of persistencein the psychic ether. This mental image mayalso contain a degree of telepathic ability bywhich it can affect others. Price’s theory holdsthat the collective emotions or thoughtimages of a person who has lived in a housesome time in the past may have intensely“charged” the psychic ether of the place—especially if there had been such powerfulemotions as fear, hatred, or sorrow, super-charged by an act of violence. The originalagent, Price theorized, has no direct part inthe haunting. It is the charged psychic etherwhich, when presented with a percipient ofsuitable telepathic affinity, collaborates in theproduction of the idea-pattern of a ghost.

Ghosts, according to Price, may be mani-festations of past events that have beenbrought to the minds of persons sensitiveenough to receive a kind of “echo” from thepast. These sensitive individuals receiveimpressions from those emotion-chargedevents that have left some trace of some ener-gy in the inanimate objects at the place wherethey occurred. This information, or memory,may be transmitted as telepathic messagesthat can be received at some deep level of thehuman subconscious. These impressions thenexpress themselves in the conscious mind insuch a form as an uneasy feeling or a ghost.

Perhaps every old house, courtroom, hos-pital ward, apartment, or railroad depot is“haunted.” Any edifice that has been muchused as a setting for human activity almostcertainly has been saturated with memorytraces of the entire gamut of emotions. But itmay be this multiplicity of mental images thatworks against the chances of a ghost poppingup in every hotel room and depot lobby. Anover-saturation of idea-patterns in the majori-ty of homes and public places may have leftonly a kaleidoscopic mass of impressions thatcombine to produce the peculiar atmosphereone senses in so many places. It is only whenan idea-pattern that has been superchargedwith enormous psychic intensity finds themental level of a percipient with the necessary





Because Hollywood has produced so manymotion pictures portraying ghosts and theafterlife, it should come as no surprise thatmany former homes and places of certain

movie stars who have passed on to the other side aresaid to be haunted. The following places are said tobe haunted by Hollywood greats:

• Ever since the late 1920s, the spirit form of theGreat Lover, Rudolph Valentino (1895–1926),has been seen in and around his former home,Falcon’s Lair, on Bella Drive.

• The former house of Joan Crawford (1904–1977) on Bristol Avenue has an eerie history ofmysterious fires that kept breaking out on thewall where the headboard of her bed oncerested.

• Clifton Webb (1891–1966), who in life was amilitant nonsmoker with a distaste for cats, issaid to make life difficult for cigarette smokersand cat fanciers in his former home on Rex-ford Drive.

• The ethereal form of Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) has been seen to materialize in front ofher earthly home on Helena Drive.

• When popular singer Englebert Humperdinckbought Jayne Mansfield’s (1933–1967) “PinkPalace” on Sunset Boulevard shortly after herdeath, he claimed he encountered her ghost.

• Guests at the Roosevelt Hotel on 7000 Holly-wood Boulevard have reported encounterswith the ghosts of Marilyn Monroe and Mont-gomery Clift (1920–1966). People have sightedthe spirit of Monroe near the full-length mirroron the lower level, and many guests have hadtheir sleep interrupted by Clift blowing on atrumpet in Room 928 as his spirit still rehears-es for his role as the bugler in From Here toEternity (1953).

• Mae West (1892–1980) loved to host seances inher old home in the Ravenswood Apartmentson Rossmore Avenue, and her spirit hasremained strongly attached to the building.

• The “Man of Steel,” George Reeves (1914–1959), who starred in the series Superman(1950–57), is claimed to have been seen in thehome on Benedict Canyon Drive where hisbody was found.

Sources:

Hauck, Dennis William. Haunted Places. Reprint. New York:

Penguin USA, 1996.

Jacobson, Laurie, and Mark Wanamaker. Hollywood Haunted.

Los Angeles: Angel City Press, 1999.

Steiger, Brad, and Sherry Hansen Steiger. Hollywood and the

Supernatural. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.

Haunted

Hollywood

degree of telepathic affinity that a real ghostcan appear.

A ghost, then, in Price’s theory, has noth-ing to do with the “supernatural.” The appear-ance of a specter is an out-of-the-ordinaryoccurrence, a paranormal happening, butthere is a “natural” cause for the manifestationof the ghost. Once science determines justhow the energy released by intense emotionsis able to permeate the matter of wood, stone,metal, and gems and just how the furnishingsof a room are able to absorb these vibrations,it will be as easy to “dehaunt” a house as it isto rid it of pests. Medical doctors have learnedto deal with the unseen world of viruses;physicists have learned to work with suchunseen lines of force as electricity; so may it beone day with the “psychic germs” that infecthaunted houses and the invisible field of forcethat dictates the mechanism of ghosts.

In the hauntings described in this chapter,however, there were no psychical researchersavailable who had the ability to negate theeffect of the powerful psychic energies thathad been released by entities from otherdimensions, spirits of the dead, or unconsciouspsychokinetic projections of the living.

M Delving Deeper

Bardens, Dennis. Ghosts and Hauntings. New York:Ace Books, 1965.





Tyrell, G. N. M. Apparitions. New York: CollierBooks, 1963.

Bell Witch’s Cave

According to most accounts, the disturbancesbegan one night in 1817 with mysterious rap-pings on the windows of the Bells’ cabin nearClarksville, Tennessee. Twelve-year-old Eliza-beth “Betsy” Bell began to complain of aninvisible rat gnawing on her bedpost at night,and the entire family, including the parents,John and Luce, experienced the midnightconfusion of having their covers pulled offtheir beds.

When the Bell family arose one morning,stones littered the floor of their front room andthe furniture had been overturned. The chil-dren, Betsy, John, Drewry, Joel, and Richard,were goggle-eyed and spoke of ghosts and gob-lins. John Bell lectured his family severely.They would keep the problem to themselves.They didn’t want their family to become thesubject for common and unsavory gossip.

That night, Richard was awakened bysomething pulling his hair, raising his headright off the pillow. Joel began screaming athis brother’s plight, and from her room, Betsybegan howling that the gnawing rat hadbegun to pull her hair, too.

Most of the family awakened the next daywith sore scalps, and John Bell reversed hisdecision. It was obvious that they needed help.That day he would confide in James Johnson,their nearest neighbor and closest friend.

Johnson accompanied his friend to thecabin that evening. The tale that Bell told wasan incredible one, but Johnson knew that hisneighbor was not given to flights of fancy.While he watched at Betsy’s bedside thatnight, Johnson saw the young girl receive sev-eral blows on the cheeks from an invisibleantagonist. He adjured the spirit to stop in thename of the Lord Jesus Christ, and there wasno activity from the ghost for several minutes,but then Betsy’s hair received a yank thatbrought a cry of pain from her lips. AgainJohnson adjured the evil spirit, and it releasedthe girl’s hair.

Johnson concluded that the spirit under-stood the human language and that Betsy wasthe center of the haunting. He met with otherneighbors, and they decided to help the Bellfamily as best they could. A committee kept



HAUNTINGS are in the minds of persons sensitive enough to receive a kind of “echo”

from the past.

watch at the Bell house all night to try to pla-cate the spirit, but all this accomplished was tobring about an especially vicious attack on theunfortunate Betsy. A number of neighbors vol-unteered their own daughters to sleep withBetsy, but this only managed to terrorize theother girls as well. Nor did it accomplish anyuseful purpose to take Betsy out of the cabininto the home of neighbors—the trouble simplyfollowed her there and upset the entire house.

By now the haunting had achieved widenotoriety, and the disturbances were thoughtto be the work of a witch, who had set her evilspirits upon the Bell family. Each night thehouse was filled with those who sat up tryingto get the “witch” to talk or to communicatewith them by rapping on the walls. The distur-bances soon became powerful enough to moveoutside the cabin and away from Betsy. Neigh-bors reported seeing lights “like candles orlamps” flitting through the fields, and farmersbegan to suffer stone-throwing attacks fromthe Bell Witch.

These particular peltings seemed to havebeen more in the nature of fun than some ofthe other manifestations of the spirit. Youngboys in the area would often play catch withthe witch if she happened to throw somethingat them on their way home from school. Oncean observer witnessed several boys get sudden-ly pelted with sticks that flew from a nearbythicket. The sticks did not strike the boys withmuch force, and, with a great deal of laughter,the boys scooped the sticks up and hurledthem back into the thicket. Once again, thesticks came flying back out. The observer cutnotches in several of the sticks with his knifebefore the boys once again returned thewitch’s volley. He was able to identify hismarkings when the playful entity once againflung the sticks from the thicket.

The witch was not so gentle with thescoffers who came to the Bell home to exposethe manifestations as trickery. Those whostayed the night invariably had their coversjerked from their beds. If they resisted thewitch’s yanking, they were slapped soundly onthe face.

Spiritists, clergymen, reporters, and curios-ity seekers had waged a ceaseless campaign to

urge the witch to talk and declare herself andher intentions. At last their efforts wererewarded. At first the voice was only awhistling kind of indistinct babble, then itbecame bolder—a husky whisper speakingfrom darkened corners. At last, it became afull-toned voice that spoke not only in dark-ness but also in lighted rooms and, finally, dur-ing the day as well as the night. Immediatelythe charge of ventriloquism was heard fromthe skeptical. To put a halt to the accusationsof trickery, John Jr. brought in a doctor, whoplaced his hand over Betsy’s mouth and lis-tened at her throat while the witch’s voicechatted amicably from a far corner of theroom. The doctor decreed that the girl was inno way connected with the sounds.

From the beginning of the witch’s visita-tion, it had minced no words in its dislike ofJohn Bell, Betsy’s father. The spirit oftenswore to visitors in the Bell home that shewould keep after him until the end of his days.

To a visitor’s question concerning its iden-tity, the witch once answered that it was a spir-it who had once been very happy, but it hadbeen disturbed and made unhappy. Later, thewitch declared itself to be the spirit of an Indi-an and sent the family on a wild bone chase togather up all of its skeletal remains. If herbones were all put back together, she would beable to rest in peace, the entity lied to them.

Later, the witch told the family with amerry cackle that she was the ghost of old KateBatts, a woman who had been an eccentricrecluse and who had earned the appellation of“witch” from the citizens of Clarksville. Whenthe word spread that it was the ghost of oldKate who was haunting the Bells, the entiremystery became much more believable to sev-eral doubting neighbors.

The Bell home became crowded, indeed,when the witch’s “family” moved in with her.Four hell-raisers named Blackdog, Mathemat-ics, Cypocryphy, and Jerusalem, each speakingin distinct voices of their own, made everynight party time during their stay with their“mother.” The sounds of raucous laughter rat-tled the shingles of the Bell home, and wit-nesses noted the strong scent of whiskey thatpermeated every room in the house.



When two local preachers arrived to inves-tigate the disturbances, the witch deliveredeach of their Sunday sermons word for wordand in a perfect imitation of their own voices.

The Bell Witch was adept at producingodd objects apparently from thin air. Once, atone of Mrs. Bell’s Bible study groups, theladies were showered with fresh fruits. Betsy’sfriends were treated to bananas at one of herbirthday parties. Although the father, JohnBell, was the butt of malicious pranks andcruel blows, the witch looked after Mrs. Bellsolicitously. Once when she was ill, the witchwas heard to tell her to hold out her hands.When Luce Bell did so, a large quantity ofhazelnuts dropped into her palms. When Mrs.Bell weakly complained that she could notcrack them, family members and neighborswatched in wide-eyed fascination as the nutscracked open and the meats were sorted fromthe shells.

Next to the materialization of fruits andnuts, the witch was especially fond of produc-ing pins and needles. Mrs. Bell was providedwith enough pins to supply the entire county,but sometimes the witch would impishly hidethem in the bedclothes or in chair cushions—points out.

John Jr., Betsy’s favorite brother, was theonly member of the family besides the motherwho received decent treatment from thewitch. The invisible force often whipped Joeland Richard soundly, and Drewry was sofrightened of the witch that he never married,fearing that the entity might someday returnand single out his own family for particularattention. John Jr. was the only one of Betsy’sbrothers who could “sass back” at the witchand get away with it. The witch even went tospecial pains to get John Jr. to like it, and themysterious entity often performed demonstra-tions of ability solely for his benefit.

The cruelest act perpetrated on Betsy wasthe breaking of her engagement to Joshua Gard-ner (or Gardiner). Friends and family acclaimedthe two young people to be ideally suited forone another, but the witch protested violentlywhen the engagement was announced. Thewitch screamed at Joshua whenever he enteredthe Bell home and embarrassed both young peo-

ple by shouting obscenities about them in frontof their friends.

A friend of the family, Frank Miles,learned of the witch’s objection to Betsy’sengagement and resolved to stand up to theevil spirit on her behalf. He challenged theentity to take any form it wished, and hewould soon send her packing. Suddenly hishead jerked backwards as if a solid slap hadstung his cheeks. He put up his forearms toblock a series of facial blows, and thendropped his guard as he received a viciouspunch in the stomach. Miles slumped againsta wall, desperately shaking his head to recoverhis senses.

Frank Miles looked helplessly at BetsyBell, who watched the one-sided boxingmatch. Reluctantly, he picked up his hat andcoat. A man couldn’t fight an enemy hecouldn’t see.

General Andrew Jackson (1767–1845),Old Hickory himself, decided to have his try atdefeating the witch. An old friend of John Bell,Jackson set out from The Hermitage accompa-nied by a professional “witch-layer” and severalservants. As his party approached the Bellplace, Jackson was startled when the wheels ofhis coach suddenly froze and the full strength ofthe horses could not make them budge an inch.A voice from the bushes cackled a greeting toJackson and uttered a command that “unfroze”the wheels. The general and his men realizedthat the element of surprise was lost. The witchknew they were coming.

That night the witch-layer fled in terrorwhen the witch attacked him, and GeneralJackson’s men followed him out the door.According to the old stories, Jackson toldJohn Bell that fighting the witch was worsethan having faced the British at the battle ofNew Orleans. Old Hickory wanted to stay fora week and face down the spirit, but his com-mittee of ghost chasers had had enough, so heleft with his men.

With the decisive defeat of her champions,Miles and Jackson, Betsy had no choice but togive in to the witch’s demands and break herengagement with Joshua Gardner. On thenight on which Betsy returned the ring, the



witch’s laughter could be heard ringing victo-riously from every room in the house.

Shortly after the entity had accomplishedthe severing of Betsy’s marriage agreementwith her fiancé, it once more began to concen-trate its energy on the destruction of John Bell.Richard was walking with his father on thatday in December of 1820 when John Bell col-lapsed into a spasmodically convulsing heap.

John Bell was brought home to his bedwhere he lay for several days in a weakenedcondition. Even during the man’s illness, thewitch would not leave him in peace, but con-tinued to torment him by slapping his faceand throwing his legs into the air. On themorning of December 19, 1820, John Belllapsed into a stupor from which he wouldnever be aroused. The witch sang bawdy songsall during John Bell’s funeral and annoyed theassembled mourners with sounds of its crudecelebration throughout the man’s last rites.

After the death of her father, the witchbehaved much better toward Betsy. It neveragain inflicted pain upon her and actuallyaddressed her in terms of endearment. Duringthe rest of the winter and on into the springmonths, the manifestations decreased steadily.Then, one night after the evening meal, alarge smoke ball seemed to roll down from thechimney of the fireplace out into the room. Asit burst, a voice told the family: “I’m goingnow, and I will be gone for seven years.”

True to its word, the witch returned to thehomestead in 1828. Betsy had entered into asuccessful marriage with another man; John Jr.had married and now farmed land of his own.Only Mrs. Bell, Joel, and Richard remained onthe home place. The disturbances primarilyconsisted of the witch’s most elementarypranks—rappings, scratchings, pulling the cov-ers off the bed—and the family agreed toignore the unwanted guest. Their plan worked,and the witch left them after two weeks of pes-tering them for attention. The entity soughtout John Jr. and told him in a fit of pique thatit would return to one of his descendants in“one hundred years and seven.”

Dr. Charles Bailey Bell should have been therecipient of the Bell Witch’s unwelcome returnvisit, but Bell and his family survived the year

1935 without hearing the slightest unexplainedscratch or undetermined rapping. Charles Bellhas written the official record of the mysteriousdisturbances endured by his ancestors in The BellWitch: A Mysterious Spirit, or Our Family Troubles(reprint of pamphlet, 1985).

Today, the abandoned homestead of theBell family is owned by a private trust, and novisitors are allowed to explore the property.The only site connected with the legends ofthe Bell Witch and open to the public is theBell Witch Cave, which continues to produceaccounts of unusual lights and eerie images onphotographs.

M Delving Deeper

Bell, Charles, and Harriet P. Miller. Mysterious Spirit:The Bell Witch of Tennessee. Forest Knolls, Calif.:Elders Publishing, 1985.



Hays, Tony. “The Bell Witch Project.” World NetDaily, June 14, 2001. [Online] http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=2312.

Norman, Michael, and Beth Scott. Historic HauntedAmerica. New York: Tor, 1996.


Borley Rectory

The haunting phenomena usually began eachnight in Borley Rectory shortly after Reverendand Mrs. Smith had retired for the evening.They would be lying in bed, and they wouldhear the sound of heavy footsteps walking pasttheir door. Reverend G. E. Smith soon took tocrouching in the darkness outside of their roomwith a hockey stick gripped firmly in his hands.Several nights he lunged at “something” thatpassed their door—always without result.

Bells began to ring at all hours and becamean intolerable nuisance. Hoarse, inaudiblewhispers sounded over their heads. Small peb-bles appeared from nowhere to pelt them. Awoman’s voice began to moan from the centerof an arch leading to the chapel. Keys poppedfrom their locks and were found several feet



from their doors. The Smiths found themselvesliving in what Dr. Harry Price would soon cometo call “the most haunted house in England.”

In the summer of 1929, Price answered theplea of the haunted rector and his wife. Leav-ing London, Price and an assistant drove to thesmall village of Borley, reviewing what theyalready knew about the eerie rectory. Thebuilding, though constructed in modern times,stood on the site of a medieval monasterywhose gloomy old vaults still lay beneath it.Close at hand had been a nunnery, whose ruinswere much in evidence. About a quarter of amile away stood a castle where many tragicevents had occurred, ending with a siege byOliver Cromwell. There was a persistent leg-end about a nun who had been walled up alivein the nunnery for eloping with a lay brotherwho had been employed at the monastery. Thelay brother, who received the punishmentmeted out for such sins, was hanged. Inhabi-tants of the rectory, and several villagers, hadreported seeing the veiled nun walkingthrough the grounds. A headless noblemanand a black coach pursued by armed men hadalso been listed as a frequent phenomenon.

The rectory had been built in 1863 by theReverend Henry Bull (sometimes called Mar-tin in the literature of psychical research). Hehad fathered 14 children and had wanted alarge rectory. He died in the Blue Room in1892 and was succeeded in occupancy by hisson, Harry, who died at the rectory in 1927.The building was vacant for a few months—while a dozen clergymen refused to take upresidence there because of the eerie tales theyhad heard—until Reverend G. E. Smith andhis family accepted the call in 1928.

Price, the well-known psychical researcher,did not have to wait long for the phenomenato put on a show for him. Price and his assis-

tant had just shared a lunch with Mr. and Mrs.Smith when a glass candlestick struck an ironstove near the investigator’s head and splashedhim with splinters. A mothball came tumblingdown the stairwell, followed by a number ofpebbles.

Price busied himself for the next severaldays with interviewing the surviving daughtersof Henry Bull, the builder of the rectory, and asmany former servants as had remained in thevillage. The eldest of the three survivingdaughters told of seeing the nun appear at alawn party on a sunny July afternoon. She hadapproached the phantom and tried to engage itin conversation, but it had disappeared as shehad drawn near to it. The sisters swore that theentire family had often seen the nun and thattheir brother had said that, when dead, hewould attempt to manifest himself in the sameway. It was their father, Henry Bull, who hadbricked up the dining room window so that thefamily might eat in peace and not be disturbedby the spectral nun peeping in at them.

A man who had served as gardener for theBull family told Price that every night foreight months he and his wife heard footstepsin their rooms over the stables. Several formermaids or grooms testified that they hadremained in the employ of the Bulls for onlyone or two days before they were driven awayby the strange occurrences which manifestedthemselves on the premises.

Mrs. Smith was not at all reluctant to admitthat she, too, had seen the shadowy figure of anun walking about the grounds of the rectory.On several occasions, she had hurried to con-front the phantom, but it had always disap-peared at the sound of her approach. TheSmiths left the rectory shortly after Price’s visit.They had both begun to suffer the ill effects ofthe lack of sleep and the enormous mentalstrain that had been placed on each of them.

Borley Rectory presents an interestingcombination of a “haunting” and the phe-nomenon of poltergeistic activity. Harry Pricemaintained that approximately one-half of allhauntings include some type of poltergeisticdisturbance. Henry Bull had 14 children wholived in the rectory. Phenomena began tobecome active about 10 years after he had



BORLEY Rectory presents a combination of a “haunting” and the phenomenon of

poltergeistic activity

moved into the rectory with his family. It isalso interesting to record that the phenomenareached new heights of activity when theReverend Lionel Algernon Foyster, a cousin ofthe Bull family, took up residence in the Rec-tory on October 16, 1930. The reverendbrought with him his wife, Marianne, and hisfour-year-old daughter Adelaide. (Manyaccounts of Borley Rectory refer to the Foys-ters as Rev. B. and Marianne Morrison.)

The Foysters had lived there only a fewdays when Mrs. Foyster heard a voice softlycalling, “Marianne, dear.” The words wererepeated many times, and, thinking her hus-band was summoning her, she ran upstairs.Foyster had not spoken a word, he told her,but he, too, had heard the calling voice.

Once, Mrs. Foyster laid her wristwatch byher side as she prepared to wash herself in thebathroom. When she completed her washing,she reached for the watch and discovered thatthe band had been removed. It was neverreturned. Reverend Foyster was quick to realizethat the weird tales that he had heard aboutBorley Rectory had all been true. He couldhardly deny them in view of such dramatic evi-dence. He was not frightened, however, as hefelt protected by his Christian faith. He used aholy relic to quiet the disturbances when theybecame particularly violent and remainedcalm enough to keep a detailed journal of thephenomena that he and his family witnessed.

Marianne Foyster received the full fury ofthe haunting’s attack from the beginning oftheir occupancy. One night, while carrying acandle on the way to their bedroom, shereceived such a violent blow in the eye that itproduced a cut and a black bruise that was vis-ible for several days. A hammerhead wasthrown at her one night as she prepared forbed. She received a blow from a piece of metalthat was hurled down a flight of stairs. Anoth-er time, she narrowly missed being struck by aflat iron, which smashed the chimney of thelamp that she was carrying.

In addition to persecuting Mrs. Foyster,the entity seemed determined to establishcontact with her. Messages were foundscrawled on the walls: “Marianne…please…get help.”

The entity may or may not have been sug-gesting that the Foysters once again bring Dr.Harry Price upon the scene. At any rate, thatis exactly what they did. Advised by the Bullsisters of the famed investigator’s interest inthe Borley phenomena, Reverend Foysterwrote to London to inform Price of renewedactivity in the rectory.

Price gained permission to stay in the rec-tory with two friends, and upon arrival, theresearcher and his party once again examinedthe house from attic to cellar. The hauntingwasted no time in welcoming the returninginvestigator. While he was examining anupstairs room, an empty wine bottle hurleditself through the air, narrowly missing him.The party was brought back down to thekitchen by the screams of their chauffeur, whohad remained behind to enjoy a leisurelysmoke. The distraught man insisted that hehad seen a large, black hand crawl across thekitchen floor.

During conversation, Mrs. Foyster dis-closed that she had seen the “monster” thathad been causing all the eerie disturbances.Reverend Foyster showed Price the entry thathe had made in his journal on March 28 whenhis wife had confronted the entity whileascending a staircase. She had described it as amonstrosity—black, ugly, and ape-like. It hadreached out and touched her on the shoulder.Price later learned that others had seen thecreature on different occasions.



The Borley Rectory—The

Most Haunted House in

England. (FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

The Foysters also told Price and his teamthat the phenomena had begun to produceitems that they had never seen before. A smalltin trunk had appeared in the kitchen whenthe family was eating supper. A powder boxand a wedding ring materialized in the bath-room, and, after they had been put away in adrawer, the ring disappeared overnight. Stone-throwing had become common, and ReverendFoyster complained of finding stones in theirbed and under their pillows as well.

Although Reverend Foyster was a braveman, he had never enjoyed good health nor thekind of stamina necessary to outlast a full-scalehaunting. The Foysters endured the phenome-na at the rectory for five years before leaving inOctober of 1935. After the Foysters left, thebishop decreed that the place was for sale.

In May of 1937, Harry Price learned that therectory was empty and offered to lease the placefor a year as a kind of ghost laboratory. His sumwas accepted, and the investigator enlisted acrew of 40 assistants, mostly men, who wouldtake turns living in the rectory for a period ofone year. Price outfitted the place and issued abooklet that told his army of researchers how tocorrectly observe and record any phenomenathat might manifest themselves.

Shortly after the investigators began toarrive, strange pencil-like writings began toappear on the walls. Each time a new markingwas discovered, it would be carefully circledand dated. Two researchers reported seeingnew writing form while they were busy ringingand dating another. It appeared that the entitymissed Mrs. Foyster. “Marianne…Marianne…” it wrote over and over again. “Marianne…prayers…please help.”

The organized investigators were quick todiscover a phenomenon that had not beennoted by any of the rectors who had lived inBorley. This was the location of a “cold spot”in one of the upstairs passages. Certain peoplebegan to shiver and feel faint whenever theypassed through it. Another “cold spot” wasdiscovered on the landing outside of the BlueRoom. Thermometers indicated the tempera-ture of these areas to be fixed at about 48degrees, regardless of what the temperature ofthe rest of the house may have been.

The phantom nun was seen three times inone evening by one observer, but was notnoticed at all by any of the other investigators.A strange old cloak kept the researchers baf-fled by continually appearing and disappear-ing. Several of Price’s crew reported beingtouched by unseen hands.

On the last day of Harry Price’s tenancy onMay 19, 1938, Marianne Foyster’s missingwedding ring once again materialized. Theinvestigator snatched it up, lest it disappear,and brought it home to London with him.

In late 1938, the Borley Rectory was pur-chased by a Captain W. H. Gregson, whorenamed it “The Priory.” He was not at all dis-turbed by warnings that the place was haunted,but he was upset when his faithful old dogwent wild with terror on the day they movedin and ran away, never to be seen again. Hewas also mildly concerned with the strangetrack of unidentified footprints that circled thehouse in fresh fallen snow. The tracks were notcaused by any known animal, the captainswore, nor had any human made them. He fol-lowed the tracks for a time until they mysteri-ously disappeared into nothingness.

Captain Gregson did not have long to puz-zle out the enigma of Borley. At midnight onFebruary 27, 1939, the “most haunted housein England” was completely gutted by flames.Gregson testified later that a number of bookshad flown from their places on the shelves andknocked over a lamp, which had immediatelyexploded into flame.

Borley Rectory has remained one of themost haunted houses in Britain, but in Decem-ber 2000, Louis Mayerling, who claimed Borleywas a second home to him until it burned in1939, wrote a book entitled We Faked the Ghostsof Borley Rectory in which he claimed that HarryPrice and the world had been taken in byhoaxsters. Mayerling states that he first arrivedat Borley in 1918 to find Rev. Harry Bull and hisfamily taking great delight in perpetuating localfolklore about a phantom nun and other para-normal activity. According to the author, theFoysters were also in on the hoax, encouragingMayerling, a teenager at the time, to walkaround the gardens at dusk in a black cape.



Mayerling admits that there was one inci-dent he was unable to explain. On Easter in1935, the acclaimed playwright GeorgeBernard Shaw; T. E. Lawrence, the famous“Lawrence of Arabia”; Sir Montagu Norman,Governor of the Bank of England; andBernard Spilsbury, the Home Office criminalforensic scientist—all believers in the haunt-ing phenomena at Borley—joined Mayerlingand Marianne Foyster for a seance at the rec-tory. All at once, Mayerling recalls, all thekitchen bells clanged as one and a brilliantsilver-blue light seemed to implode aroundthem from the walls and the ceilings. Fromhis previous experience creating eerie soundsand noises in the rectory, Mayerling knewthat it was impossible to make all the bellssound at once and he had no idea what hadcaused the lightning-like flash around them.He was, in fact, blinded by the phenomenonand eventually recovered sight in only oneeye. Shaw and Norman refused to stay thenight after such a violent display of the para-normal, and Mayerling confesses in his bookthat memory of the experience still set hisspine to tingling.

Mayerling’s confession of pranks duringthe occupancy of the Bull and Foyster familiesdoes not explain the extensive phenomenareported by Price’s team of researchers duringits year-long observation of the rectory nor themanifestations noted by Gregson after heassumed ownership of Borley. Since theadmitted pranksters were not present at therectory during those years, the authenticity ofthe haunting of Borley will remain a contro-versial subject among psychical researchers.

M Delving Deeper


Hill, Amelia. “Hoaxer’s Confession Lays the FamedGhosts of Borley.” The Observer, December 31,2000. [Online] http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,416556,00.html.

Price, Harry. The Most Haunted House in England.London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1940.

———. Poltergeist Over England. London: CountryLife, 1945.


Calvados Castle

The disturbances that took place in the Nor-man castle of Calvados, France, from October12, 1875, to January 30, 1876, were written upand published in the Annales des Sciences Psy-chiques in 1893 by M. J. Morice. Although themaster of Calvados kept a diary that couldlater be used as a documentary of the phenom-ena, he insisted that his family name not bementioned in connection with the “haunt-ing.” He is, therefore, referred to in the narra-tive only as M. de X. His immediate familyconsisted of Mme. de X, and their son, Mau-rice. The remainder of the household consist-ed of Abbe Y., tutor to Maurice; Emile, thecoachman; Auguste, the gardener; Amelina,the housemaid; and Celina, the cook.

On the evening of October 13, Abbe Y.came down to the drawing room and told M.and Mme. de X. that his armchair had justmoved. He insisted that he had distinctly seen itmove out of the corner of his eye. M. de X.calmed the abbe and returned with him to hisroom. He attached gummed paper to the foot ofthe cleric’s armchair, fixed it to the floor, andtold him to call if anything further should occur.

About ten that evening, the master of Cal-vados was awakened by the ringing of theabbe’s bell. He got out of bed and hurried to theman’s room. Here he found the tutor with hiscovers pulled up to the bridge of his nose, peek-ing out at him as if he were a frightened child.M. de X. saw that the armchair had movedabout a yard and that several candlesticks andstatuettes had been upset. And, the abbe com-plained, there had been rappings on his wall.

The next evening, the manifestations didnot confine themselves to the abbe’s room.Loud blows were heard all over the castle. M.de X. armed his servants and conducted asearch of the entire building. They could findnothing. It would be a pattern that they wouldrepeat again and again as the haunting phe-nomena began its siege in earnest. Night afternight, its hammering fist would pound ondoors and rap on walls. The inhabitants of Cal-vados Castle would not know a night of unmo-lested slumber for more than three months.

The curate of the parish arrived to witnessthe phenomena and was not disappointed. Nei-



ther was Marcel de X., who had come to try todetermine the origin of the manifestations.That night, the sound of a heavy ball was hearddescending the stairs from the second floor tothe first, jumping from step to step.

The parish priest was also invited to stay anight in the castle. He heard the heavy treadof a giant descending the stairs and proclaimedthe activity to be supernatural. Marcel de X.agreed with the priest. He had quickly con-cluded that this ghost would be a most difficultone to banish and had decided to leave Calva-dos Castle to the noisy spirit. He wished M. deX. the best of luck and returned to his home.

On Halloween, the haunting seemed tooutdo itself with a display of phenomena thatkept the household from going to bed untilthree o’clock in the morning. The center ofthe activity had now become what was calledthe green room, and the phenomena seemedalways to either begin or end with loud rap-pings in this empty room. The ghost nowseemed to walk with a tread that had nothinghuman about it. It was like two legs deprivedof their feet and walking on the stumps.

It was during a violent November rain-storm that the ghost acquired a voice. Highabove the howl of the wind and the rumble ofthe thunder, the beleaguered household hearda long shriek that at first sounded like awoman outside in the storm calling for help.The next cry sounded from within the castle.The members of the household gatheredtogether as if seeking strength from theirunity. Three sorrowful moans sounded as thething ascended the staircase.

The men of Calvados left the sitting roomto carefully inspect the castle. They foundnothing. There was no woman in the castle,and no sign that anything had entered the cas-tle from the storm. They heard no more soundsuntil everyone was awakened at 11:45 the next

night by terrible sobs and cries coming fromthe green room. The cries seemed to be thoseof a woman in horrible suffering. During thenext few nights, the activity seemed to becomeintensified and the cries of the sorrowfulwoman in the green room had become shrilland despairing.

Shortly after the “weeping woman” hadarrived to add to the confusion at Calvados, acousin of Mme. de X., an army officer,appeared to pay them a visit. He scoffed at thewild stories the members of the householdtold him, and against all their pleas, he insist-ed upon sleeping in the green room. Theyneed not worry about him, he assured them,he always had his revolver at his side.

The officer strode boldly to the greenroom, left a candle burning as a night light,and went straight to sleep. He was awakened ashort time later by what seemed to be the softrustling of a silken robe. He was instantlyaware that the candle had been extinguishedand that something was tugging at the coverson his bed. In answer to his gruff demands toknow who was there, he felt a cold breath ofair blow out the candle he had relit and therustling noise seemed to become louder, andsomething was definitely determined to robhim of his bedclothes. When he shouted thatwhoever was there must declare himself or hewould shoot, the only response to his demandwas an exceptionally violent tug on the covers.

It was a simple matter to determine wherehis silent adversary stood by the sound of therustling and the pull on the bedclothes, so hedecided to shoot three times. The lead slugsstruck nothing but the wall, and he dug themout with a knife that next morning.

The abbe fared the worst of any member ofthe household throughout the duration of thephenomena. Whenever the cleric left hisroom, he always made certain that the win-dows were bolted and his door was locked.The key to his room was secured to a leatherthong that he kept belted to his waist. Theseprecautions never accomplished the slightestbit of good. Upon returning to his room, theabbe would inevitably find his couch over-turned, the cushions scattered about, his win-dows opened, and his armchair placed on his



THE abbe fared the worst throughout the durationof the phenomena.

desk. Once he tried nailing his windowsclosed. He returned to find the windows wideopen, and by way of punishment, the couchcushions were balanced precariously on theoutside windowsill. Such pranks the abbecould bear with much more patience than thetime the invisible invader dumped every oneof his books on the floor. Only the Holy Scrip-tures remained on the shelves.

The most vicious attack on the clergymanoccurred once when he knelt at his fireplacestirring the coals, preparatory to placing newkindling on the andirons. Without warning, ahuge deluge of water rushed down the chim-ney, extinguishing the fire, blinding the abbewith flying sparks, and covering him withashes. The tutor woefully concluded that suchactions could only be the work of his satanicmajesty, the devil.

The only other person who actually suf-fered physical pain dealt out by the hauntingphenomena was Mme. de X., who was in theact of unlocking a door when the key suddenlydisengaged itself from her grip and struck heracross the back of her left hand with such forcethat she bore a large bruise for several days.

One night the invisible creature roamedthe corridors as if it were a lonely wayfarerseeking admittance to the rooms of each ofthe members of the household. It knockedonce or twice on the doors of several bed-rooms, then, true to pattern, it paused to deal40 consecutive blows to the abbe’s door beforeit returned to thump about in the green room.

The weary household had its only respiteduring the long siege when the reverendfather H. L., a Premonstrant Canon, was sentthere by the bishop. From the moment theReverend Father entered the castle until themoment he left, there was not the slightestsound from the noisy nuisance. But after theclergyman had made his departure there was asound as if a body had fallen in the first-floorpassage, followed by what seemed to be arolling ball delivering a violent blow on thedoor of the green room—and the hauntinghad once again begun its devilment in earnest.

On January 20, 1876, M. de X. left for atwo-day visit to his brother, leaving his wife tokeep up the journal of the haunting. Mme. de

X. recorded an eerie bellowing, like that of abull, which bothered everyone during themaster’s absence. A weird drumming soundwas also introduced and a noise much likesomeone striking the stairs with a stick.

Upon the master’s return to Calvados, theghost became more violent than it had everbeen before. It stormed into the rooms ofAuguste the gardener and Emile the coach-man and turned their beds over. It whirledinto the master’s study and heaped books,maps, and papers on the floor. The midnightscreams increased in shrillness and urgencyand were joined by the roaring of a bull andthe furious cries of animals. A rhythmic tap-ping paraded up and down the corridors as if asmall drum and bugle corps were conductingmanuevers. For the first time, the rappingsseemed to direct themselves to the door of



Haunted Hotels

in the US

• The Old Stagecoach Inn, Waterbury, Vermont

• St. James Hotel, Cimarron, New Mexico

• Kennebunk Inn, Kennebunkport, Maine

• The Dorrington Hotel, Dorrington, California

• Hotel Monte Vista, Flagstaff, Arizona

• The Brookdale Lodge, near Boulder Creek, California

• The Horton Grand Hotel, San Diego, California

• The Hotel del Coronado, San Diego, California

Sources:

Blackman, W. Haden. The Field Guide to North American

Hauntings. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1998.

Hauck, Dennis William. Haunted Places. Reprint. New York:

Penguin USA, 1996.

Mead, Robin, and Pamela Wright, illus. Haunted Hotels: A Guide

to American and Canadian Inns and Their Ghosts.

Nashville, Tenn.: Rutledge Hill Press, 1995.

Murray, Earl. Ghosts of the Old West. New York: Tor Books, 1994.

Maurice, the son of M. and Mme. de X. Terri-ble screams sounded outside his room, and theviolence of the successive blows on his doorshook every window on the floor.

On the night of January 26, the parishpriest arrived with the intention of conduct-ing the rites of exorcism. He had also arrangedfor a Novena of Masses to be said at Lourdesthat would coincide with his performance ofthe ancient ritual of putting a spirit to rest.The priest’s arrival was greeted by a long,drawn-out cry and what sounded like a stam-pede of hoofed creatures running from the firstfloor passage. There came a noise similar tothat of heavy boxes being moved, and thedoor to Maurice’s room began to shake as ifsomething demanded entrance.

The rites of exorcism reached their climaxat 11:15 on the night of January 29. From thestairway came a piercing cry, like that of a beastthat had been dealt its deathblow. A flurry ofrappings began to rain on the door of the greenroom. At 12:55, the startled inhabitants of Cal-vados Castle heard the voice of a man in thefirst-floor passage. M. de X. recorded in his jour-nal that it seemed to cry Ha! Ha!, and immedi-ately there were 10 resounding blows, shakingeverything all around. A final blow struck thedoor of the green room; then there was thesound of coughing in the first-floor passage.

The family rose and cautiously began tomove about the castle. The priest slumped inexhaustion, sweat beading his forehead from thelong ordeal. There was no sound of the hammer-ing fist, no raucous screams, no shaking of doors,no shifting of furniture. They found a largeearthenware plate that had been broken into 10pieces at the door to Mme. de X.’s room. No onehad ever seen the plate before that night.

Although it appeared that the hauntingwas over, several days after the exorcisms hadbeen performed, Mme. de X. was sitting at awriting desk when an immense packet of holymedals and crosses dropped in front of her onher paper. It was as if the ghost had but suf-fered a momentary setback and was announc-ing that it must retreat for a time to recuperateand lick its wounds.

Towards the end of August, soft knockingsand rappings began to be heard. On the third

Sunday in September, the drawing room furni-ture was arranged in horseshoe fashion withthe couch in the middle. A few days after-ward, Mme. de X. lay terrified in her bed andwatched the latch to her room unbolt itself.M. de X. was out of the castle for a few days onbusiness, and she was alone with the servants.

The duration of the phenomena was muchbriefer this time, and the restless ghost seemedto be content to play the organ and to movean occasional bit of furniture about the roomof Maurice’s new tutor. Eventually the phe-nomena became weaker and weaker until theonly thing that haunted Calvados Castle wasthe memory of those terrible months whenthe haunting phenomena had run rampant.

M Delving Deeper

Flammarion, Camille. Haunted Houses. London: T.Fisher Unwin, 1924.

Hauck, Dennis William. International Directory ofHaunted Places. New York: Penguin, 2000.


Epworth Rectory

One of the most famous cases in the annals ofnoisy hauntings is the one that visited theReverend Samuel Wesley and his family atEpworth Rectory in 1716. Among the 19 chil-dren of the Reverend Wesley who witnessedthe phenomena were John and Charles, thefounders of Methodism and the authors ofsome of Christendom’s best-loved hymns.

It was on the first of December that thechildren and the servants began to complainof eerie groans and mysterious knockings intheir rooms. They also insisted that they couldhear the sound of footsteps ascending anddescending the stairs at all hours of the night.

Reverend Wesley heard no noises forabout a week and severely lectured the childor servant who brought him any wild taleabout a ghost walking about in the rectory. Ifthere were any noises in the rectory, he toldhis family one night at dinner, they wereundoubtedly caused by the young men whocame around in the evenings. The reverendhad four grown daughters who had begun toentertain beaus and suitors, and their father’s



veiled sarcasm did not sit at all well withthem. “I wish the ghost would come knockingat your door, Father,” one of them told him.

The girls were so angry with their fatherthat they fought down their fright and vowedto ignore the noises until they became so loudthat their no-nonsense parent could not helpacknowledging them. They didn’t have longto wait. The very next night, nine loudknocks thudded on the walls of Reverend andMrs. Wesley’s bedchamber. The clergymanthought some mischief-maker had managed toget into the rectory unnoticed and was tryingto frighten them. He would buy a dog bigenough to gobble up any intruder.

True to his word, the clergyman obtained ahuge mastiff and brought it into the rectory.That night, however, as the knocks began tosound, Reverend Wesley was startled to see hiscanine bodyguard whimper and cower behindthe frightened children.

Two nights later, the sounds in the houseseemed so violent that Wesley and his wifewere forced out of bed to investigate. As they

walked through the rectory, the noises seemedto play about them. Mysterious crashing soundsechoed in the darkness. Metallic clinks seemedto fall in front of them. Somehow managing tomaintain their courage, the Wesleys searchedevery chamber but found nothing.

After he called a family meeting to pooltheir knowledge about the invisible guest, Rev-erend Wesley learned from one of the older girl’sobservations that the disturbances usually beganat about ten o’clock in the evening and werealways prefaced by a “signal” noise, a peculiarkind of winding sound. The noises followed apattern that seldom varied. They would beginin the kitchen, then suddenly fly up to visit abed, knocking first at the foot, then the head.These seemed to be the ghost’s warming-upexercises. After it had followed these prelimi-naries, it might indulge any spectral whimwhich appealed to it on that particular night.

“Why do you disturb innocent children?”Wesley roared in righteous indignation onenight as the knockings in the nursery becameespecially violent. “If you have something tosay, come to me in my study!”



Epworth Rectory.


As if in answer to Wesley’s challenge, aknock sounded on the door of his study withsuch force that the cleric thought the boardsmust surely have been shattered.

Wesley decided to secure reinforcementsin the fight against the “deaf and dumbdevil” which had invaded his rectory. Hesent for Mr. Hoole, the Vicar of Hoxley, andtold him the whole story. The Vicar said thathe would lead devotions that night and see ifthe thing would dare to manifest itself in hispresence.

The “thing” was not the least bit awed bythe Vicar of Hoxley. In fact, it put on such agood show that night that the clergyman fledin terror, leaving Wesley to combat the demonas best he could.

The children had overcome their initialfear of the invisible being and had come toaccept its antics as a welcome relief from theboredom of village life. “Old Jeffery,” as theyhad begun to call their strange guest, hadalmost achieved the status of a pet, and it wassoon observed that it was quite sensitive. Ifany visitor slighted Old Jeffery by claimingthat the rappings were due to natural causes,such as rats, birds, or wind, the haunting phe-nomena were quickly intensified so that thedoubter stood instantly corrected.

The disturbances maintained their sched-uled arrival time of about ten o’clock in theevening until the day that Mrs. Wesleyremembered the ancient remedy for ridding ahouse of evil spirits. They would get a largetrumpet and blow it mightily throughoutevery room in the house. The sounds of a loudhorn were said to be unpleasing to evil spirits.

The ear-splitting experiment in exorcismwas not only a complete failure, but now thespirit began to manifest itself in the daylight aswell. The children seemed almost to welcomethe fact that Old Jeffery would be available dur-

ing their playtime hours as well as being anamusing nighttime nuisance. Several witnessesreported seeing a bed levitate itself to a consid-erable height while a number of the Wesleychildren squealed gaily from the floating mat-tress. The only thing that bothered the chil-dren was the creepy sound, like that of a trail-ing robe, Old Jeffery had begun to make. Oneof the girls declared that she had seen the ghostof a man in a long, white robe that dragged onthe floor. Other children claimed to have seenan animal similar in appearance to a badger,scurrying out from under their beds. The ser-vants swore that they had seen the head of arodent-like creature peering out at them from acrack near the kitchen fireplace.

Then, just as the Wesleys were gettingaccustomed to their weird visitor, the distur-bances ended as abruptly as they had begun.Old Jeffery never returned to plague EpworthRectory with its phenomena, but the memoryof its occupancy has remained to bewilderscholars of more than two centuries.

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Price, Harry. Poltergeist Over England. London: Coun-try Life, 1945.



General Wayne Inn

Located on the old Lancaster roadway betweenPhiladelphia and Radner, the General WayneInn has been in continuous operation since1704 when Robert Jones, a Quaker, decided toserve travelers with a restaurant and a place oflodging. The land was purchased from fellowQuaker William Penn and was originallycalled the Wayside Inn. Because of the inn’slocation near Merion, the site of numerousbattles during the Revolutionary War(1775–83), it was renamed the General WayneInn in 1793 in honor of a local hero, GeneralAnthony Wayne (1745–1796). During thecolonies’ war of independence, the inn playedhost to General George Washington and theMarquis de la Fayette, as well as a number of



EPWORTH Rectory is the most famous casesin the annals of noisy hauntings.

their antagonists, the British Redcoats andtheir Hessian mercenaries. From time to timethroughout its history, the inn has also servedas a post office, a general store, and a socialcenter for newly arrived immigrants.

No longer an inn, the three-story stoneand timber building still serves meals as wellas an extensive menu of ghosts—some say asmany as 17. When Barton Johnson bought theGeneral Wayne Inn in 1970, he was wellaware of its reputation for being haunted. In1972, New Jersey psychics Jean and BillQuinn conducted a seance in which at least17 different entities declared their presenceand provided a bit of their personal history.Johnson, his wife, and their two sons also par-ticipated in the seance.

When Wilhelm, a Hessian soldier who waskilled in the Revolutionary War, identifiedhimself, he explained that most of the time heliked to stay down in the cellar. His spiritclaimed that it was restless because he hadbeen stripped of his clothes at the time of hisdeath so that another soldier might use them.Wilhelm had been humiliated by being buriedin his underwear, so he was searching for aproper uniform to wear in the afterlife. Therestaurant’s maitre de had little sympathy forWilhelm’s plight, however. He had seen theghost on so many occasions that he finallytold Johnson that he would no longer venturedown to the cellar.

In addition to Wilhelm, who manifested atthe 1972 seance, there was a little boy ghost,who cried for his lost mother; two female enti-ties who had worked at the inn and had diedyoung under bizarre circumstances; eight otherHessian soldiers who had once been quarteredat the inn and who had died nearby in battle; aNative American who seemed primarily to beobserving the others; and an African Ameri-can who was an entity of few words. Many cus-tomers and employees had seen the spirits ofthe Hessians over the years. Usually theyplayed harmless pranks, such as blowing on thenecks of young women, but one of their spec-tral number enjoyed terrifying anyone whosejob it was to stay after closing and clean up.

Ludwig, the spirit of another Hessian soldier,materialized for many nights at 2:00 A.M. in the

bedroom of Mike Benio, a contractor who alsohad psychic abilities. The entity appealed toBenio to unearth his bones, which had beenburied in the basement of the inn, and givethem a proper burial in a cemetery. When John-son returned from a vacation, Benio asked per-mission to excavate a certain area of the cellarthat was under the parking lot. Here, Beniofound a small, unknown room that containedfragments of pottery and some human bones.After giving the remains a proper burial, theghost of Ludwig was at peace and no longermanifested at the General Wayne Inn.

On one occasion, when Johnson wished totest the claims made during the seance thatthe Hessian soldiers frequented the inn’s barafter closing time, he placed a tape recorder inthe room. The next morning during playback,Johnson could clearly hear the sounds of barstools being moved about, the water faucetbeing turned on and off, and glasses catchingthe water. Some nights later, on a Mondaynight when the bar was closed for the entireevening, a customer looking in the inn’s frontwindow claimed to have seen a man dressed ina Revolutionary War-era Hessian’s uniform,sitting slumped at the bar.

Jim Webb and his partner Guy Sileobought the inn in 1995. When Webb wasfound murdered in his office on December 27,1996, and Felicia Moyse, a 20-year-old assis-tant chef, committed suicide on February 22,1997, some people felt that the place hadadded two more ghosts to its roster. Othersrecalled that one of the General Wayne Inn’smost frequent customers in 1839 would havefound the growing ghostly and gory history ofthe place to be right up his alley. The guest inquestion was Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849),who scratched his initials on a window of theinn in 1843.



THE spirits of the Hessians had been seen bymany customers and employees at the GeneralWayne Inn.

M Delving Deeper

Brown, Jennifer. “Legendary Inn Haunted by Ghosts,Aura of Death.” Centre Daily Times, March 1,1997. [Online] http://tristate.pgh.net/~bsilver/HAUNTED.htm.

Hauck, Dennis William. Haunted Places: The NationalDirectory. New York: Viking/Penguin, 1996.

Norman, Michael, and Beth Scott. Historic HauntedAmerica. New York: Tor, 1996.

The Gray Man of Hinton Ampner

The account of the disturbances that grippedHinton Ampner was first set down by MaryRicketts, who, with her children, servants,and her brother, witnessed manifestations of amost eerie and frightening sort. Ricketts wasintelligent and widely read, and her reputa-tion for truthfulness forever went unsullied.Her brother, John Jervis, was named BaronJervis and Earl St. Vincent for his distin-guished naval services. The Hinton Ampnercase was published in the Journal of the Societyfor Psychical Research in April 1893.

In 1757, Mary had married William HenryRicketts of Canaan, Jamaica, and they movedinto the large country home outside of HintonAmpner, England. From the very first there hadbeen disturbances, the sound of doors slam-ming, the shuffling of footsteps. Ricketts hadspent many nights watching for the “prowlers”that he was convinced had somehow gainedentrance into the house. They had lived therefor about six months when their nurse sworethat she saw a gentleman in a drab-colored suitof clothes go into the yellow room. Such thingsas these the Rickettses tolerated for four years,firmly convinced that the noises were the resultof wind and prowlers, and that the gray manand a once-sighted figure of a woman were theproducts of the servant’s imagination.

For several years, Mary Ricketts accompa-nied her husband on his frequent businesstrips to the West Indies, but, in 1769, havingnow mothered three children, she decided toremain alone in England at the old manorhouse that they occupied. Because they wereconvinced of a natural explanation for the dis-turbances, William had no pronounced anxi-ety when Mary told him that she felt that sheshould remain in England with the children

while he made the trip to Jamaica. After all,she did have eight servants to assist her, and itwas quite unlikely that any prowler would tryto take on such odds.

The phenomena seemed almost to havebeen waiting for William Ricketts to leave onan extended trip before it began its manifesta-tions in earnest. He had only been gone ashort time when, one afternoon while lyingdown in her room, Mary heard the noise ofsomeone walking in the room and the rustlingof silk clothing as it brushed the floor. Sheopened her eyes to see absolutely no one. Shecalled the servants and a thorough search wasmade of the upstairs rooms and closets. Thecook reminded her mistress that she had heardthe same rustling noise descending the stairson several occasions and had once seen thetall figure of a woman in dark clothes. Rickettsfound herself being less dismissive of the ser-vants’ stories now that she, too, had heard thespectral rustling of an invisible lady.

Nocturnal noises continued, and, onenight, as Mary Ricketts lay sleeping in the yel-low room which the “gray man” had been seento enter, she was awakened by the heavy plod-ding steps of a man walking toward the foot ofher bed. She was too frightened to reach forthe bell at her bedside. She jumped from herbed and ran from the room into the nursery.The children’s nurse was instantly out of herbed, rubbing her sleep-swollen eyes and won-dering what on earth had so upset the mistressof the house. The nurse became immediatelyawake when Mary Ricketts told her about theheavy footsteps. The rest of the servants weresummoned and again a fruitless search wasmade to discover some human agency whomight be responsible for the disturbance.

It was in November that the knocking andrappings began. A few months later, after thefirst of the year, Mary Ricketts and her house-hold noticed that the entire house seemed to befilled with the sound of a “hollow murmuring.”A maid, who had spent the night in the yellowroom, appeared at the breakfast table palefacedand shaken over the dismal groans that she hadheard around her bed most of the night.

By midsummer the eerie sound of voices inthe night had become intolerable. They began



before the household went to bed, and withbrief intermissions were heard until after broadday in the morning. Mary Ricketts could fre-quently distinguish articulate sounds. Usually ashrill female voice would begin, and then twoothers with deeper and manlike tones joinedin the discourse. Although the conversationoften sounded as if it were taking place close toher, she never could distinguish actual words.

At last, Mary Ricketts appealed to herbrother, the Earl St. Vincent, to come to heraid. Earlier, he had spent a few days at HintonAmpner and had heard nothing, but now theurgency in his sister’s letter convinced himthat whatever was troubling her was real—atleast to her and the servants. When the EarlSt. Vincent arrived at the mansion, he had inhis company a well-armed manservant. Theearl was convinced that some disrespectfulpranksters had conspired to annoy his sisterand her household, and he was determined todeal out swift justice. Captain Luttrell, aneighbor of the Rickettses, joined in this cam-paign to exorcise the spooks. Captain Luttrellwas familiar with the old legends of the areaand had accepted the possibility of a supernat-ural agency at work, but he had volunteeredhis services to determine the cause of the dis-turbances, regardless of their origin.

The three armed men were kept on the goall night by the sound of doors opening andslamming. Mary Ricketts’s brother became abeliever in the world unseen. He soon con-cluded that the disturbances were definitelynot the results of any human activity. CaptainLuttrell declared that Hinton Ampner wasunfit for human occupancy and urged MaryRicketts to move out at once.

The Earl St. Vincent agreed with his sis-ter’s neighbor, but he realized that she couldnot quit the house so easily. She needed a cer-tain amount of time to notify her husband andlandlord of her decision, and the necessarypreparations had to be made to obtain a differ-ent house. He told Mary that he would standguard every night for a week, sleeping by dayand watching by night.

The brother had maintained his vigil forabout three nights when Mary was awakenedby the sound of a pistol shot and the groans of

a person in mortal agony. She was too fright-ened to move, but she felt secure in theknowledge that her brother and his servantwere quite capable of handling any monster.

When her brother awakened the nextafternoon, Mary quickly questioned him aboutthe struggle that she heard the night before.The Earl St. Vincent frowned and shook hishead in disbelief. He had heard no shot norany of the terrible groaning.

The earl himself was forced to experiencethe frustration of hearing sounds that no oneelse could perceive on the next day. He waslying in his bed, having just awakened from hisafternoon’s sleep, when he heard a sound as ifan immense weight had fallen through theceiling to the floor. He leaped out of bed, fullyexpecting to see a gaping hole in both ceilingand floor. There was not the slightest splinter,nor had anyone else in the mansion heard thecrash. Even his servant, who slept in the bed-room directly below, had heard nothing.

The earl insisted that his sister leave atonce, and, because he was unable to stay atHinton Ampner any longer, he ordered hisLieutenant of Marines to the mansion to assistMary in her moving chores and to maintainthe nightly watch. Mary Ricketts gave noticeto her landlord, Lady Hillsborough, and imme-diately set the servants to work packing trunksand bags. The night after her brother left, sheand the entire household heard a crash such asthe one that he had described. The crash wasfollowed by several piercing shrieks, dyingaway as though sinking into the earth.

To disguise her fear, the nurse flippantlyremarked how pleasant the sound was andhow she would love to hear more noises suchas that. The unfortunate woman was troubledwith horrid screaming and groaning in herroom every night until the household moved.



PAST wrongs doings began to form a chain of evilat Hinton Ampner.

Mary Ricketts returned to Hinton Ampneronly once after she had moved away. Sheentered the house alone and heard a soundthat she had never heard before, a sound thatshe said caused her “indescribable terror.”

Lady Hillsborough sent her agent, a Mr.Sainsbury, to stay a night in the house and totest the truth of the rumors about her manor.Mr. Sainsbury did not last the night.

In 1772, a family named Lawrence movedinto Hinton Ampner. Their servants reportedseeing an apparition of a woman, but theLawrences threatened their servants not tomake any statements. They lasted a yearbefore they moved out. After their occupancy,the house was pulled down to be used in theconstruction of a new manor.

When Mary Ricketts resided in the man-sion, an old man had come to her with a taleabout having boarded up a small container forLord Stawell, the original owner of HintonAmpner. He had suggested that the small boxmight have contained treasure and might offera clue to the haunting. Workmen discoveredthe container when they were stripping themansion. It was found to conceal the skeletonof a baby.

When Mary Ricketts learned of this star-tling discovery, it seemed to offer the final keyto the legend of Hinton Ampner. The vil-lagers said Lord Stawell had engaged in illicitrelations with the younger sister of his wife,who had lived with them at the manor. It hadbeen the subject of ancient gossip that his sis-ter-in-law had borne his child—a child thathad been murdered at its birth. When LadyStawell died, her sister, Honoria, became themistress of Hinton Ampner. The past wrongsbegan to form a chain of evil: The first LadyStawell, wronged by a younger sister and anindiscreet husband; the innocent babe, bornof an illicit union, murdered, its body boardedup in the walls of the manor. Lord Stawell, theperpetrator of most of the sins, was himself lefton his bed in the yellow room to die in agony,while his family waited outside, ignoring hisgroans of pain.

It was shortly after Lord Stawell’s death in1755 that the groom swore that his old masterhad appeared to him in his room. The groom

knew that it was the master because of thedrab-colored gray clothing that Lord Stawellwas so fond of wearing. From that time on, the“gray man” and his groans and plodding foot-steps were heard in the corridors of HintonAmpner. The lady was said to have been thephantom of the first Lady Stawell.

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Myrtles Plantation

According to the Smithsonian Institution, theMyrtles Plantation located three miles northof St. Francisville, Louisiana, is the mosthaunted house in the United States. Built onthe site of an ancient Native American burialground in 1794 by General David Bradford,the plantation has been the location for atleast 10 violent deaths. Throughout the years,owners and their guests have fled the house inthe middle of the night, terrified by theappearance of frightening ghosts—and theentities continue to be sighted to this day.

The haunting began when Bradford’sdaughter Sara Matilda married a young judgenamed Clark Woodruffe. Although theWoodruffes were happily married and theirunion had produced two daughters, Clarkbegan an extramarital affair with Chloe, oneof the house slaves, when Sara Matilda wascarrying their third child, who would also be adaughter. Although Judge Woodruffe had areputation for integrity with the law, he wasalso known as being promiscuous. At first,Chloe tried to deny the sexual demands of hermaster, but she knew that if she fought againstthem, she could be sent to work in the fields.Eventually, the judge grew tired of her andchose another house slave as his new mistress.When Chloe saw that she had fallen fromfavor, she feared that she would also lose herposition as a servant in the mansion and beordered to the fields.

Chloe hoped that she might somehow winback Woodruffe’s affections and not be in dan-ger of being sent to the brutal work in thefields. One evening, as she stood nearby the



judge and Sara Matilda, listening for any men-tion of her name and what she feared wouldbe her dreaded fate, Woodruffe grew annoyedwith her presence and accused her of eaves-dropping on a private family conversationwith his wife. Angrily, the judge ordered hisoverseers to cut off one of Chloe’s ears as pun-ishment. From that time on, Chloe wore agreen headscarf with an earring pinned to it tohide her missing ear.

Wise in the ways of herbs and potions,Chloe came up with what she believed mightbe the perfect means that would guarantee herstatus of house slave and keep her out of thefields. She baked a birthday cake for theWoodruffes’ oldest daughter and placed olean-der, a poison, into the mix, scheming that thefamily would become ill and her serviceswould be required to nurse them back tohealth. Tragically, Chloe inadvertently sprin-kled too much oleander into the cake mix andSara Matilda and two of her daughters becameextremely ill and died within hours after thebirthday party. Neither the judge nor the babyate any of the poisoned cake.

Grief-stricken and ashamed of what shehad done, Chloe confided in another slavethat she had only intended to make the moth-er and her daughters ill so that she would bethe one to take care of them. Chloe’s choice ofa confidante proved to be her undoing, forrather than keeping the secret, the womanloudly proclaimed to her fellow slaves that thedeath of the mistress of the house and her twodaughters had not been due to some mysteri-ous sudden illness. A mob made up of both theWoodruffes’ slaves and their white neighborschased Chloe into the surrounding woodswhere they caught her and hanged her. Laterher body was cut down, weighted with rocks,and thrown into the river. Judge Woodruffeclosed off the room where the birthday partyhad been held and never allowed it to be usedagain while he lived. This decree was relative-ly short-lived, for Clark Woodruffe was mur-dered a few years later.

Since that scene of mob violence in ante-bellum Louisiana, the ghost of Chloe has beenoften sighted both inside and outside of theplantation house. She is most often seen wear-

ing a green headscarf wrapped turban-stylearound her head with an earring pinned overher missing ear. Her spirit is also held respon-sible for stealing earrings from many guestsover the nearly 200 years since her hanging.

John and Teeta Moss, the current owners ofthe Myrtles Plantation, have converted theplace into a bed and breakfast, and Hester Eby,who manages house tours of the mansion andgrounds, states that the haunting phenomenacontinue unabated. Teeta Moss even pho-tographed a shadowy image of Chloe standingnear the house. According to Eby and membersof the staff, resident ghosts frequently reportedinclude those of the two poisoned Woodruffegirls, who are often heard playing and runningin the halls. Many guests have heard babies cry-ing when there are no infants present in themansion, and a floating candle moving slowlyup the stairs has been often reported.

Other ghosts include those of a woman in ablack skirt who floats about a foot off the floorand who is seen dancing to music that cannotbe heard by the living; a man who was stabbedto death in a hallway over an argument con-cerning a gambling debt; an overseer who wasrobbed and killed in 1927 and who angrilydemands that guests leave the place and returnto their own homes; an unseen pianist whoplays the grand piano but who ceases at once ifsomeone enters the room. There is anotherghost of a young girl that seems to appear onlywhen a thunderstorm approaches the planta-tion. The spectral image has long curly hair,wears an ankle-length dress, and is seen cup-ping her hands and trying to peer inside thewindow of the game room.

Many guests have heard the sounds of foot-steps on the stairs and have seen the image of aman staggering to reach the hallway at the top.Hester Eby says that it is commonly believedthat the ghost is that of William Winter, anattorney who owned the Myrtles Plantation in



MYRTLES Plantation is the most hauntedhouse in the United States.

the late nineteenth century. According to thestory surrounding his death, a stranger onhorseback who claimed to be in desperate needof an attorney called him to the porch oneevening. When Winter stepped outside to seehow he might be of service, the man shot himand rode away. Fatally wounded, Winter stag-gered through the house, painfully climbed thestairs, and died in the arms of his wife.

Throughout the years, many residents andtheir employees have heard their names calledby invisible entities. The haunting phenome-na seemed to fade and flow, intensifying andthen lessening in its manifestations. Now thatthe place is also a bed and breakfast hotel, Ebysaid that the staff knows when the Myrtles ishaving a bad night by the number of guestswho call up at midnight and demand to leavethe place at once.

M Delving Deeper

Hauck, Dennis William. Haunted Places: The NationalDirectory. New York: Viking/Penguin, 1996.

Norman, Michael, and Beth Scott. Historic HauntedAmerica. New York: Tor Books, 1996.

Taylor, Troy. “The Myrtles Plantation ‘One of Ameri-ca’s Most Haunted.’” Ghosts of the Prairie. [Online]http://www.prairieghosts.com/myrtles.html.

Turnage, Sheila. Haunted Inns of the Southeast. Win-ston-Salem, Mass.: John F. Blair, 2001.

The Tedworth Drummer

The bizarre haunting phenomena that besetthe family of John Mompesson of Tedworth,England, in March of 1661 had overtones ofwitchcraft and the fixing of a terrible curse.The “demon” of Tedworth is so much a part ofthe legend and folklore of England that balladsand poems have been written in celebration ofthe incredible prowess of the pesky ghost.

John Mompesson, a justice of the peace,had brought before him an ex-drummer inCromwell’s army, who had been demandingmoney of the bailiff by virtue of a suspiciouspass. The bailiff had believed the pass to becounterfeit, and Mompesson, who was famil-iar with the handwriting of the gentlemanwho had allegedly signed the note, immedi-ately declared the paper to be a forgery.

The drummer, whose name was Drury,begged Mompesson to check his story withColonel Ayliff of Gretenham. The colonelwould vouch for his integrity, the drummerinsisted. Mompesson was swayed by the drum-mer’s pleas that he not be put into jail, but hetold the man that he would confiscate hisdrum until he had checked out his story. Drurydemanded that his drum be returned, butMompesson told him to be on his way and togive thanks for his own freedom.

Mompesson had the drum sent to his housefor safekeeping, then left on a business trip toLondon. Upon his return, his wife informedhim that the household had been terrorized bystrange noises in the night. She could onlyaccredit the sounds to burglars trying to breakinto the house. On the third night of his return,Mompesson was brought to his feet by a loudknocking that seemed to be coming from a sidedoor. With a pistol in one hand and another inhis belt, Mompesson opened the door. No onewas there, but now the knocking had begun atanother door. He flung that one open, too, andfinding no one there, walked around the out-side of the house in search of the culprit. Hefound no one on his search, nor could heaccount for the hollow drumming that soundedon the roof when he went back to bed.

From that night on, the drumming camealways just after the Mompessons had gone tobed. It made no difference whether theyretired early or late, the invisible drummer wasever prepared to tap them an annoying lullaby.After a month of being contented with rooftopmaneuvers, the disturbances moved inside—into the room where Mompesson had placedthe ex-soldier’s drum. Once it had establisheditself in the home, the ghostly drummerfavored the family with two hours of martialrolls, tattoos, and points of war each evening.

On the night in which Mrs. Mompessonwas being delivered of a child, the drummerwas respectfully quiet. It maintained thissilence for a period of three weeks, as if it wereallowing the mother to fully recover herstrength before it began its pranks in earnest.

The children were the ones who sufferedmost when the drummer terminated its truce.With terrible violence, the thing began beat-



ing on their bedsteads at night. It would raisethe children’s beds in time with its incessantdrumming, and, when it finally did quietdown, it would lie under their beds scratchingat the floor. The Mompessons hopefully triedmoving their children to another room, but itdid no good. The drummer moved right alongwith them.

By November 5, the ghostly drummer hadachieved such strength that it could handboards to a servant who was doing some repair

work in the house. This was witnessed by aroomful of people, but Mompesson soon for-bade his servant such familiarities with theirinvisible tormenter.

When the thing began to leave behindoffensive, sulphurous fumes, the Mompessonstook this as sufficient evidence that theirunwelcome guest had come directly from thepit of Hades. A Reverend Cragg was sum-moned to conduct a prayer meeting in thehouse. The drummer maintained a reverent



“The Tedworth

Drummer” poltergeists

(1662–1663). (FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

silence during the minister’s prayers, but uponthe last “amen,” it began to move chairs aboutthe room, hurl the children’s shoes into theair, and toss every object that it could get itsinvisible hands on. A heavy staff struck Rev.Cragg on the leg, but the astonished clergy-man reported that a lock of wool could nothave fallen more softly.

The knocking had become so loud atnights that it awakened neighbors severalhouses away. The Mompessons’ servants hadalso become subject to receiving nocturnalvisits from the drummer. Their beds wereraised while they attempted to sleep, and attimes it curled up about their feet.

The ghost particularly delighted inwrestling with a husky servant named John. Itwould jerk the bedclothes off the sleeping man,throw shoes at his head, and engage in a heartytug-o’-war with the man, who was trying des-perately to keep the covers on his bed insteadof on the floor. At times, the powerful entitywould entwine itself around John and forciblyhold him as if he were bound hand and foot.With a tremendous effort of brute strength, theservant would free himself from the grasp of hisinvisible opponent and reach for the sword thathe kept beside his bed. John had found that thebrandishing of his sword was the only actionthat could make the thing retreat.

By January 10, 1662, nearly a year after itsunwelcome arrival, the entity had acquired avoice and the ability to simulate the sound ofrustling silk and the panting of animals. It hadbegun by singing in the chimney, then movedinto the children’s bedroom where it chanted:“A witch, a witch! I am a witch!” WhenMompesson rushed into the nursery with hispistol, the disturbances ceased at once.

That night it came to his bedside, pantinglike a large dog. The bedroom, even though

lacking a fireplace, and on a particularly coldand bitter winter’s night, became very hot andfilled with a noxious odor.

On the following morning, Mompessonscattered fine ashes over the chamber floor tosee what sort of imprints might be made by theincredible entity. He was rewarded by the eeriediscovery of the markings of a great claw, someletters, circles, and other weird footprints.

It was at this point in the manifestationsthat Rev. Joseph Glanvil arrived to conducthis investigation. The phenomena were mostcooperative for Rev. Glanvil and providedhim with ample evidence of their existencefrom the very first moment of his arrival. Itwas eight o’clock in the evening and the chil-dren were in bed, enduring their nightly ritualof scratching, bed-liftings, and pantings. Rev.Glanvil tried desperately to trace the source ofthe disturbances, but could find nothing. Hewas momentarily elated when he noticedsomething moving in a linen bag, but uponscooping up the cloth, and hoping to find a rator a mouse in his clutches, he was dismayed tofind himself left holding an empty bag.

Later that night, when Rev. Glanvil and afriend retired for the evening, they were awak-ened by a loud knocking. When the clergymandemanded to know what the entity wished ofthem, a disembodied voice answered that itwanted nothing of the two men. The nextmorning, however, Rev. Glanvil’s horse wasfound trembling in a state of nervous exhaus-tion, appearing as though it had been riddenall night. Glanvil had scarcely mounted thehorse for his return trip when the animal col-lapsed. Although the horse was well-attendedand cared for, it died within two days.

One night in the children’s bedroom, thevoice shrieked its claim that it was a witchover a hundred times in rapid succession. Thenext day, the harried Mompesson fired his pis-tol at an animated stick of firewood and wasastonished to see several drops of blood appearon the hearth! The firewood fell to the floorand a trail of blood began to drip on the stair-way as the wounded ghost retreated.

When the invisible thing returned threenights later, it seemed to vent its anger on thechildren. Even the baby was tormented and not



BALLADS and poems have been written incelebration of the incredible prowess of the

Tedworth Drummer.

allowed to sleep. At last Mompesson arrangedto have the children taken to the house offriends. At this tactic, the drummer poundedseverely on Mompesson’s bedroom door, thenquit its post there to show itself to a servant.

The terrified man told Mompesson that hecould not determine the exact proportions ofthe entity, but he had seen a great body withtwo red and glaring eyes, which for some timewere fixed steadily upon him.

When the children were returned to theirhome, the thing seemed to want to make up tothem. The Mompessons and their servantscould hear distinctly a purring, like that of acat in the nursery. The contented purring,however, turned out to be but another ploy ofthe devilish drummer. Four hours later, it wasbeating the children’s legs against the bedpostsand emptying chamber pots into their beds.

A friend who had stayed the night in thehaunted house had all of his coins turnedblack. His unfortunate horse was discovered inthe stables with one of its hind legs firmly fas-tened in its mouth. It took several men work-ing with a lever to dislodge the hoof from theanimal’s jaws.

About this time, Drury, the man whosedrum Mompesson had confiscated, was locat-ed in Gloucester Gaol where he had been sen-tenced for thievery. Upon questioning, hefreely admitted witching Tedworth’s justice ofthe peace. He boasted that he had plaguedhim and that Mompesson would have nopeace until he had given him satisfaction fortaking away his drum.

Mompesson had the drummer tried forwitchcraft at Sarum, and the man was con-demned to be transported to one of the Eng-lish colonies. Certain stories have it that theman so terrified the ship’s captain and crew by“raising storms” that they took him back toport and left him on the dock before sailingaway again. Witchcraft was a real thing to thepeople of 1663, and noisy hauntings wereoften recognized as the work of Satan. Whileon board ship, Drury had told the captain thathe had been given certain books of the blackarts by an old wizard, who had tutored him inthe finer points of witchcraft.

By the time a king’s commission hadarrived to investigate the haunting, the phe-nomena had been quiet for several weeks. Thecavaliers spent the night with the Mompes-sons, then left the next morning, declaringthat the entire two-year haunting was either ahoax or the misinterpretation of natural phe-nomena by credulous and superstitious men.

Reverend Joseph Glanvil’s frustration withHis Majesty’s investigators is obvious in theconclusion of Saducismus Triumphatus, hisaccount of the Mompesson family’s ordeal,where he stated that it was bad logic for theking’s investigators to conclude a matter offact from a single negative against numerousaffirmatives, and so affirm that a thing wasnever done. “This is the common argument ofthose that deny the being of apparitions,”Glanvil declared. “They have traveled allhours of the night and have never seen anything worse than themselves (which may wellbe) and thence they conclude that all appari-tions are fancies or impostures.”

M Delving Deeper





The Whaley House

The Thomas Whaley mansion, completelyfurnished with antiques from the days of earlyCalifornia, is also considered to be a hauntedhouse. Immediately after its construction wascompleted in 1857, the mansion became thecenter of business, government, and socialaffairs in Old San Diego. The oldest brickhouse in Southern California, the Whaleyhouse served as a courthouse, a courtroom, atheater, and a boarding house—as well as thefamily home of Thomas and Anna Whaleyand their children.

Today, no one is allowed in the WhaleyHouse after 4 P.M., but police officers andresponsible citizens say that someone—or



something—keeps walking around half thenight turning all the lights on. Located at 2482San Diego Avenue in Old San Diego, theWhaley House has been restored and is nowowned and operated by the San Diego Histori-cal Society as a tourist attraction. Often, whileconducting tours through the old mansion,members of the society have heard eerie foot-steps moving about other parts of the housewhen the rooms were visibly unoccupied.

June Reading, a former director of theWhaley House, told of footsteps being heardin the master bedroom and on the stairs. Win-dows, even when fastened down with threefour-inch bolts on each side, would fly open oftheir own accord—often in the middle of thenight, triggering the burglar alarm. Peopleoften reported having heard screams echoingthroughout the second story of the mansion,and once a large, heavy china closet had top-pled over by itself. Numerous individuals hadsensed or psychically seen the image of a scaf-fold and a hanging man on the south side ofthe mansion.

According to Reading, 10 years beforeThomas Whaley constructed his home on thesite, a sailor named Yankee Jim Robinson hadbeen hanged on the spot of what would laterbecome the arch between the music room andthe living room in the mansion. Whaley hadbeen an observer when Yankee Jim kept hisappointment with the hangman.

Some visitors to the Whaley House havereported seeing a gaudily dressed woman witha painted face lean out of a second-story win-dow. In Reading’s opinion, that could well bean actress from one of the theatrical troupesthat had leased the second floor in November1868.

The Court House Wing of the mansion isgenerally thought to be the most haunted spotin the Whaley House, due to the violent emo-

tions that were expended there in the earlydays of San Diego. Many individuals whohave visited the old house have heard thesounds of a crowded courtroom in session andthe noisy meetings of men in Thomas Wha-ley’s upstairs study. According to many psychi-cal researchers, the fact that this one singlemansion served so many facets of city life, inaddition to being a family home, almost guar-antees several layers of psychic residue perme-ating themselves upon the environment.

Many sensitive visitors to the WhaleyHouse have also perceived the image of AnnaWhaley, who, some feel, still watches over themansion that she loved so much. And who,according to a good number of those whohave encountered her presence, deeply resentsthe intrusion of strangers.

Reading remembered the night in 1964when television talk show host Regis Philbinand a friend saw Anna Whaley as they sat onthe Andrew Jackson sofa at 2:30 A.M. Theghostly image floated from the study, throughthe music room, and into the parlor. At thatmoment, Philbin, in nervous excitement, dis-solved the apparition with the beam of hisflashlight.

In the fall of 1966, a group of newspeoplevolunteered to stay in Whaley House to spendthe night with Yankee Jim. Special permissionwas granted to the journalists by the historicalsociety, and the ghost hunters settled in fortheir overnight stay. The wife of one of thereporters had to be taken home by 9:30 P.M.She was badly shaken and claimed that shehad seen something on the upper floor thatshe refused to describe. The entire party ofjournalists left the house before dawn. They,too, refused to discuss the reason for their pre-mature departure, but some people say theghost of Yankee Jim, still protesting the horrorof his death, confronted them. Since thattime, night visits have not been permitted inWhaley House.

In addition to the sightings of the primaryspirits of Thomas and Anna Whaley, Readingsaid that the other ghosts most often seeninclude those of Yankee Jim, who walks acrossthe upstairs sitting room to the top of thestairs; a young girl named Washburn, a play-



NO one is allowed in the Whaley House after 4 P.M.

mate of the Whaley children; and “Dolly Var-den,” the family’s favorite dog. And thenthere are the screams, the giggles, the rattlingdoorknobs, the cooking odors, the smell ofThomas Whaley’s Havana cigars, Anna’ssweet-scented perfume, the sound of footstepsthroughout the house, and the music box andpiano that play by themselves.

M Delving Deeper

Lamb, John. San Diego Specters. San Diego: SunbeltProductions, 1999.

May, Antoinette. Haunted Houses and WanderingGhosts of California. San Francisco: San FranciscoExaminer Division, 1977.

Norman, Michael, and Beth Scott. Historic HauntedAmerica. New York: Tor Books, 1996.

Smith, Susy. Prominent American Ghosts. New York:Dell, 1969.

Ghosts in the Movies

From the very beginnings of photographyand cinema, spiritualists and psychicalresearchers have hoped to be able to

capture evidence of ghosts on film and there-by offer proof of the survival of the humanspirit. While there are thousands of allegedspirit photographs that psychics claim to beauthentic; reel upon reel of ghostly phenome-na caught on film that investigators purport tobe genuine; and, more recently, an increasingnumber of videocassettes of glowing lights inhaunted houses that the amateur photogra-phers insist are real, the great majority of suchphotographic evidence has only garneredcharges of trickery or gullibility from the skep-tics. However, even the skeptics like a spine-tingling ghost story now and then. Among thebest are the following films:

Topper (1937)—A comedy with decidedlynonthreatening ghosts, this film delightedtheater audiences and removed tales of haunt-ings from the familiar creepy castles and thewild-eyed people with psychotic impulses thathad become overly familiar in the horror filmsof the 1920s and 1930s. Directed by NormanZ. McLeod, the script was adapted from theThorne Smith novel about Cosmo Topper, ameek and mild banking executive, who was

the only one who could see George and Mari-an Kirby, the ghostly couple who harassed himand tried to get him to enjoy a more relaxedlifestyle. The fact that the ghostly couple wereplayed with wit and style by Cary Grant andConstance Bennett, two popular and attrac-tive actors, no doubt boosted the appeal of thefilm and its two sequels.

The Uninvited (1943)—This motion picturepresents an eerie and compelling story, as wellas delivering a serious study of haunting phe-nomena. Roderick Fitzgerald (Ray Milland)and his sister Pamela (Ruth Hussey) move intoa home on the Cornish coast of England thathas been abandoned for many years. Soon, theydiscover that the house is haunted.

Milland and Hussey portray two ordinary,but intelligent and rational, people who mustdeal with a place occupied by an evil entity.The film is extremely subtle in presenting thespirits, and therein lies much of its power toseize the imagination and to provoke genuinechills. Director Lewis Allen never forces hishand, but focuses instead on allowing theaudience to feel the emanations from the spir-it world along with the actors.

The Innocents (1961)—This adaptation ofHenry James’s The Turn of the Screw (1898) ismade particularly effective by director JackClayton’s decision to allow the audience tosee the ghosts only through the eyes of theprotagonist, the governess Miss Gliddens(Deborah Kerr). The film is a psychologicalmasterpiece, dealing with ghosts that may ormay not be truly there.

The Haunting (1963)—This film hasbecome a classic with horror film buffs andserious psychical researchers, both of whomlaud director Robert Wise for choosing to usesubtlety in the manner in which he presentsthe ghosts in this adaptation of Shirley Jack-son’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959).Although the motion picture contains a num-ber of chilling scenes, the spirits themselvesare ambiguous, as well as frightening. The pre-sentation of the haunting phenomena in thismotion picture is extremely effective, andWise uses camera angles and lighting tech-niques that emphasize a sense of a terrible



reality within a surrealistic world of the super-natural. The 1999 version is far inferior.

The Shining (1980)—Adapted from StephenKing’s 1977 novel, director Stanley Kubrickcrafted a film that many assess as a masterpieceof horror. Director Kubrick manages to create afilm that interacts with the viewer’s own imagi-nation on many levels, thereby making evenmore credible the appearance of ghosts and theprotagonist’s descent into violence and insanity.

Ghost Story (1981)—Four successful elder-ly men (Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Dou-glas Fairbanks, Jr., and John Houseman),members of the Chowder Society, have shareda terrible secret for 50 years. Although thePeter Straub novel upon which this film isbased held many more levels of ghostly andghastly surprises, director John Irvin does afine job of converting a multigenerationalghost story to the motion picture medium.

Poltergeist (1982)—Steven Spielberg statedthat in Poltergeist he, as screenwriter, and TobeHooper, who assumed the directorial reins forthe film, sought to walk the thin line betweenthe scientific and the spiritual. Starring CraigT. Nelson and JoBeth Williams as Steve andDiane Freeling, who move into a new homewhich unknown to them has been built over agraveyard, the film became extremely popularwith motion picture audiences. The tension inthe film centers on little Carol Anne (HeatherO’Rourke), who announces that “they’rehere,” shortly before the entities pull her into aspiritual vortex. The challenges faced by theFreeling family as they struggle to reclaimCarol Ann from the spirit world make for apresentation of unrelenting suspense. Neitherof the sequels was able to maintain the edge-of-the-seat tensions of the original film.

Ghost Busters (1984)—Three parapsychol-ogy professors (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, andHarold Ramis) lose their funding at the uni-versity, so they establish a ghost-removal busi-ness. Big trouble arises when Dana Barrett(Sigourney Weaver) discovers an ancient godin her refrigerator and becomes possessed byZuul, the Gate Keeper. Ghosts and evil spiritsgalore will plague the entire planet if the GateKeeper meets with Vinz Clortho (Rick Mora-nis), the Key Master. It is up to the Ghost

Busters to save the world. The sequel, GhostBusters II (1989), although retaining all theprincipals of the original, lacked the energyand the excitement to sustain another boxoffice success.

Ghost (1990)—In addition to presentingan interesting depiction of the interaction ofa ghost (Patrick Swayze) and a spirit medium(Whoopi Goldberg), this film also offers atouching love story. Ghost is ranked as num-ber 32 on the list of the top-grossing moviesof all time.

The Sixth Sense (1999)—M. Night Shya-malan won the Academy Award for Best Orig-inal Screenplay and was nominated as BestDirector for this film, ranked as number 14 onthe list of the top-grossing movies of all time.The plaint of young Cole Sear (Haley JoelOsment) to child psychologist MalcolmCrowe (Bruce Willis) “I see dead people” wasamong the most familiar quotes of 1999.Because the audience is able to see the ghosts,the “dead people,” along with Cole, the spiritsare presented as solid, physical beings, ratherthan wispy, ethereal images. The film has atwist ending that brought many audiencesback for a second viewing.

The Others (2001)—While Grace Stewart(Nicole Kidman) awaits the return of her hus-band in the final days of World War II (1939–45), she lives with her two children (JamesBentley, Alakina Mann) in an old mansion onthe island of Jersey. The children suffer from adisease that does not allow them to betouched by direct sunlight.

The children begin to fear that the largeold house is haunted, and they insist to theirmother that they have even seen ghosts incertain rooms. Grace Stewart will have noneof such talk, and she reprimands Bertha Mills(Fionnula Flanagan), her principal domestic,that neither she nor any member of the house-hold help should ever encourage such childishfantasies. But eventually, Stewart must alsoface the reality that has overtaken all of them.

M Delving Deeper

Clarens, Carlos. An Illustrated History of the HorrorFilm. New York: Capricorn Books, 1968.

Hardy, Phil. The Encyclopedia of Horror Movies. NewYork: Harper & Row, 1986.





Although ghosts and phantoms are fre-quent subjects for television documen-taries, there have been few series thathave treated the spirit world in a serious

manner. In 1953, Topper, a fantasy-comedy about abusinessman who is harassed by a ghostly couple try-ing to get him to loosen up and enjoy life, became asuccessful television series. The characters werederived from Topper (1937), a comedy that becamepopular enough among motion picture audiences toproduce two sequels.

On Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond, which pre-miered in the 1950s, serious students of psychicalresearch recognized many classic cases of ghostsand phantoms presented in a balanced manner, butwith the actual names and places changed.

The emphasis was on romantic comedy in the tele-vision series The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1968–70) inwhich the restless spirit of a handsome sea captain(Edward Mulhare) haunted a beautiful widow (HopeLange) in a picturesque New England seaside cottage.The series was another successful adaptation of apopular motion picture (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1947).

Serious treatment of ghosts and phantomsremained largely the province of documentaries untilThe X-Files premiered in the 1993–94 season.Although FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny)and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigated manyareas of the paranormal, hauntings and ghostly phe-nomena were treated as matters of serious inquirythroughout the series’ nine-year run.

The Others (1999–2000) also treated the spiritworld seriously, but was canceled after one season.The series starred Julianne Nicholson as a collegestudent with latent mediumistic abilities who wasmentored by an experienced medium (Bill Cobbs).

In September 2002, the series Haunted premieredwith Matthew Fox as a private investigator whoreceived assistance from the spirit world while solv-ing crimes. In October 2002, the Sci Fi Channel beganan eight-week revision of the classic series In SearchOf with host Mitch Pileggi offering occasional seg-ments on ghosts.

Today, the most popular television programs deal-ing with ghosts and the afterlife are Crossing Overwith John Edward and Beyond with James VanPraagh. Their presentations consist primarily of theirprofessed ability as mediums to establish communi-cation with spirits and to relay personal communica-tions to family members who have come to the studioas members of the audience.

Sources:

Internet Movie Database Inc. [Online] http://us.imdb.com.

Maltin, Leonard, ed. Leonard Maltin’s 1999 Movie & Video Guide.

New York: Dutton Signet, 1998.

Steiger, Brad, and Sherry Hansen Steiger. Hollywood and the

Supernatural. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.

VideoHound’s Golden Movie Retriever. Farmington Hills, Mich.:

Visible Ink Press, 1999.

Ghosts on

Television Series


Maltin, Leonard, ed. Leonard Maltin’s 1999 Movie &Video Guide. New York: Dutton Signet, 1998.

Stanley, John. Creature Features: The Science Fiction,Fantasy, and Horror Movie Guide. New York:Boulevard, 1997.

Steiger, Brad, and Sherry Hansen Steiger. Hollywoodand the Supernatural. New York: St. Martin’s Press,1990.

Spontaneous Human

Combustion (SHC)

The enigma of spontaneous human com-bustion (SHC) is considered the mostbizarre and frightening of all the phe-

nomena in the world of the unexplained andthe unknown. Some believe that stories ofSHC are only urban legends, eerie tales ofpeople bursting into flames that never reallyhappened to real people. But this is not thecase. Urban legends happen to a friend of afriend, but are really untraceable back to anytrue original narrator of the event. In the caseof spontaneous human combustion, one is leftwith the charred remains and ashes of individ-uals who were once fully living, breathing,feeling human beings.

Spontaneous human combustion is includedin the chapter on ghosts and hauntings becausefor centuries certain scientists and psychicalresearchers have suggested that the phenomenamay be due to some kind of internalized psy-chokinetic facet of the human mind. Polter-geists have been known to cause spontaneousoutbreaks of fires, and mysterious fires and lightshave been part of the repertoire of a hauntedhouse since humans first began to keep recordsof such phenomena. Then, too, there are thosetheorists who place the blame for SHC directlyon vengeful spirits or malicious entities fromother dimensions of reality. Whatever the truecause of SHC, such accounts have haunted menand women for centuries, thus the mystery isplaced in this chapter.

In December 2001, a 73-year-old womanin Garden Grove, California, died from thethird-degree burns that she had suffered over

90 percent of her body. Firefighters and thecoroner’s office were left with the puzzle ofhow this could be possible when the fire tookonly four minutes to extinguish and was con-fined to a couch, a table, and the chair inwhich the victim was sitting.

Was this another case of spontaneoushuman combustion? In many ways it is simil-iar to so many other unexplained instances ofSHC.

On March 24, 1997, 76-year-old JohnO’Connor was found dead in his living roomat Gortaleen in northern Ireland. An intenseand localized heat had left only his head,upper torso, and feet unburned, as well as thechair in which he was sitting. There was verylittle smoke damage done to the room or thefurniture.

In December 1956, Virginia Caget of Hon-olulu, Hawaii, walked into the room of YoungSik Kim, a 78-year-old disabled person, to findhim enveloped in blue flames. By the timefiremen arrived on the scene, Kim and his easychair were ashes. Strangely enough, nearbycurtains and clothing were untouched by fire,in spite of the fierce heat that would havebeen necessary to consume a human being.

On August 19, 1966, Doris Lee Jacobs ofOccano, California, burned to death in hertrailer home at 1342 23rd Street. AlthoughJacobs suffered burns on over 95 percent ofher body, the inside of the trailer was only par-tially scorched. Officials could offer no expla-nation for the fire, because it was the woman,not the trailer, who had burst into flames.

How can human flesh be heir to such dan-gers as spontaneous combustion? Spontaneouscombustion, it is assumed, is confined to oilyrags and newspapers piled up in poorly venti-lated corners of basements and garages.

On September 20, 1938, in Chelmsford,England, a woman burst into blue flames inthe midst of a crowded dance floor. No onewas able to extinguish the blaze that seemedto be fed by her own flesh, and in minutes shewas but a heap of ashes.

On July 30, 1937, a woman who had beenpaddling about in a small boat with her hus-band and children at England’s Norfolk



Broads was engulfed by terrible blue flamesand was nothing but a mound of ash in a mat-ter of a few horrifying moments. Neither anymember of her family nor the wooden boatwas harmed.

Dr. D. J. Gee, a lecturer in forensic medi-cine at the University of Leeds, England,wrote of a case of SHC for the journal Medi-cine, Science and the Law (5:37–8, January1965). According to Gee, the victim was aslim, 85-year-old woman who lived with herson and daughter-in-law in a ground-floorapartment. Her family had left the apartmentby 9:30 A.M. on the day she died. Neighborshad discovered smoke issuing from a kitchenwindow and found the smoldering remains ofa human body on the hearth.

When Gee visited the apartment twohours later, he noticed that the room wasexceedingly warm and the ceiling felt hot. Thepaintwork was blistered and the walls and fur-nishings begrimed by soot. Only a part of thewooden edge of the hearth was burned, and asmall section, approximately one foot in diam-eter, of the floor was damaged. The rug had notbeen burned, but it was greasy with tiny frag-ments of fat. A tea towel lying near where thebody had been found was barely singed, and alarge pile of dry firewood remained unaffected.

Gee concluded from his examination thatthe woman must have suffered a heart attackand fallen into the fire. The body was ignited atthe head by the fire and had been sufficientlyinflammable to burn to such an extensive degreewithout any other source of heat, like a candle.The draft from the chimney had prevented thespread of flames to other parts of the room.

In a 1961 study Dr. Gavin Thurston stud-ied the literature of SHC and came to a num-ber of conclusions, among them:

1. That under certain conditions a body willburn in its own fat with little or no damageto surrounding objects.

2. The combustion is not spontaneous, butstarted by an external source of heat.

3. This has occurred where the body hasbeen in the path of a draft up a chimneyfrom a lighted fire. Oxygenation of the flueprevents outward spread of the fire.

In order to test Thurston’s theories, Geeconducted some experiments of his own. Helearned that human fat, when melted in a cru-cible, would only burn at a temperature some-where near 250 degrees centigrade. However,a cloth wick prepared in liquid fat will burneven when the temperature of the fat hasdropped as low as 24 degrees centigrade.

Gee also enveloped a layer of human fat inseveral layers of thin cloth in order to producea roll about eight inches long. Combustion ofthe roll proceeded slowly along its length,burning with a smoky yellow flame and pro-ducing a great deal of soot. In both of theseexperiments, a fan was arranged so that com-bustion would proceed in a direction oppositethe flow of air.

Gee admitted that these experiments wereby no means conclusive, but argued that theysupported the theory put forward by Thurston,which he believed to be the most reasonableexplanation for the occurrence of spontaneoushuman combustion.

On April 7, 1969, Grace Walker of LongBeach, California, was found on the floor of herliving room with burns covering 90 percent ofher body. Although she was still alive when dis-covered, she was pronounced dead on arrival atthe hospital. Investigating police officers said



Men sifting through the

aftermath of an alleged

spontaneous combustion

incident. (FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

that the only signs of fire in the house were theashes left from Walker’s clothes, which hadbeen burned from her body by the flames fromher flesh. There were no burners lighted on thestove and not a single match was to be found inWalker’s house. Friends and relatives said thatthe woman did not smoke and never carriedmatches on her person.

The strange phenomenon of ball lightninghas been used by many scientists in anattempt to explain the even stranger mysteryof spontaneous human combustion, but it is asdifficult to isolate in laboratories for study asSHC. In 1960, Louise Matthews of SouthPhiladelphia survived an eerie experience thatmight substantiate the theory of ball lightningas a factor in at least some of the mysteriouscremations that have taken place throughoutthe world and throughout all recorded time.Matthews claimed that she was lying on herliving room sofa when she glanced up to see alarge red ball of fire come through both theclosed window and the venetian blinds with-out harming either. At first Matthews thoughtthat an atomic bomb had fallen, and sheburied her face in the sofa. But the ball of firepassed through the living room, into the din-ing room, and drifted out through a closeddining room window. Matthews said that itmade a sizzling noise as it floated through herhouse. And she was able to exhibit visibleproof of her experience: As the ball of fire hadpassed over her, she had felt a tingling sensa-tion in the back of her head. Her scalp was leftas smooth and clean as her face.

In his experiments regarding the effects offire on flesh and bone, Dr. Wilton Krogman,professor of physical anthropology at the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, tested bones stillencased in human flesh, bones devoid of fleshbut not yet allowed to dry out, and bones thathave dried. He burned cadavers in a wide vari-

ety of fires fed by such combustibles as hickoryand oak, gasoline, oil, coal, and acetylene.Krogman learned that it takes a terrificamount of heat to completely consume ahuman body, both flesh and skeleton. Cadav-ers that were burned in a crematorium burn at2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for more than eighthours, burning under the best possible condi-tions of both heat and combustion, witheverything controlled, are still not reduced toash or powder. Only at temperatures in excessof 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit did he observebone fuse so that it ran and became volatile.

How, then, can a human being burnbeyond recognition—in a number of cases inless than an hour—yet not cause the fire tospread beyond the chair in which the victimwas sitting or the small area of the floor onwhich he or she might have sprawled? Accord-ing to Krogman, the temperatures required tobring about such immolation should ignite andconsume anything capable of burning within aconsiderable radius of the blaze.

In what has become one of the classiccases of SHC, Mary H. Reeser of St. Peters-burg, Florida, was last seen relaxing comfort-ably in an armchair in her apartment at 9:00P.M. on Sunday evening, July 2, 1951. When atelegram was delivered to her 11 hours later,nothing remained of the 170-pound womanbut a skull that had shrunk to the size of abaseball, one vertebra, and a left foot wearingthe charred remains of a black slipper.

St. Petersburg Fire Chief Nesbit said that hehad never seen anything like it in all his years ofinvestigating fires. Police Chief J. R. Reichartreceived an FBI report stating that there was noevidence that any kind of inflammable fluids,volatile liquids, chemicals, or other accelerantshad been used to set the widow’s body ablaze. Aspokesman for a St. Petersburg mattress compa-ny pointed out that there is not enough materialin any overstuffed chair to cremate a humanbody. Cotton, he said, comprises the basic stuff-ing of such a chair, and this material is oftencombined with felt and hair or foam-rubbercushions. None of these materials is capable ofbursting suddenly into violent flames, althoughthey do possess properties that enable them tosmolder for long periods of time.



SPONTANEOUS human combustionseems to strike without warning and without

leaving a clue.

At first Krogman theorized that a “superlightning bolt” might have struck Reeser, herbody serving as a conductor to ground the cur-rent through a wall-type heater behind thechair. He discarded this theory as soon as helearned that local weather bureau recordsshowed no lightning in St. Petersburg on thenight Reeser met her bizarre death.

Krogman remarked that he had never seena skull so shrunken or a body so completelyconsumed by heat. Such evidence was con-trary to normal experience, and he regarded itas the most amazing thing he had ever seen. Ifhe were living in the Middle Ages, he mused,he would suspect black magic.

Spontaneous human combustion seems tostrike without warning and without leaving aclue. It seems to occur primarily among theelderly and among women, but there is no stan-dard rule for these grim cases of preternaturalcombustibility. Nearly every theory, such asthat those who imbibe heavily might be moresusceptible to the burning death, has been dis-proved and rejected. At this time, no investiga-tor has determined the critical set of circum-stances that might bring body cells to the stageat which they might spontaneously burst intothe flames that feed on the body’s own fatty tis-sue, and SHC remains a baffling mystery in theannals of the unexplained and the unknown.

M Delving Deeper

Arnold, Larry E. Ablaze! The Mysterious Fires of Spon-taneous Human Combustion. New York: M. Evans& Co., 1996.

“Ball Lightning Link to Human Combustion.”Ananova, December 12, 2001. [Online] http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_479064.html.


Gaddis, Vincent H. Mysterious Fires and Lights. NewYork: David McKay, 1967.

Rickard, Bob, and John Michell. Unexplained Phenom-ena. London: Rough Guides, 2000.

Making the Connection

apparition The unexpected or sudden appear-ance of something strange, such as a ghost.

From the Latin apparitus, past participle ofapparere, meaning to appear.

astral self Theosophical belief that humanspossess a second body that cannot be per-ceived with normal senses, yet it coexistswith the human body and survives death.

automatic writing Writing that occurs in anunconscious state or when one is in atrance or supposed telepathic contact witha spirit.

discarnate The lack of a physical body.Coined from dis- and the Latin stem carn,meaning flesh.

Geiger counter An instrument named after itsinventor, German physicist Hans Geiger(1882–1945), that is used to measure anddetect such things as particles from radioac-tive materials.

hallucinations A false or distorted perceptionof events during which one vividly imag-ines seeing, hearing or sensing objects orother people to be present, when in factthey are not witnessed by others.

megalith Very large, sometimes enormousstones that stand alone or are a part ofarchitecture of prehistoric structures.

Novena of Masses In the Roman CatholicChurch, the recitation of prayers or devo-tions for a particular purpose, for nine con-secutive days. From the Latin nus,meaningnine each and from novern, meaning nine.

paranormal Events or phenomena that arebeyond the range of normal experienceand not understood or explained in termsof current scientific knowledge.

phenomena Unusual or extraordinary thingsor occurrences that are experienced or per-ceived. From Latin via the Greek wordphainomenon, meaning that which appears.Past participle of phainein, to bring to lightor to shine.

philanthropist Someone who is benevolent orgenerous in his or her desire or activities toimprove the social, spiritual or materialwelfare of humankind. From the lateLatin, ultimately, Greek philanthropos,



humane; philos; loving and anthropos,human being.

psychoanalyst One who uses the therapeuticmethods of psychiatric analysis, such asdream analysis and free association, asdeveloped by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)

to treat patients in order to gain awarenessof suppressed subconscious experiences ormemories that might be causing psycho-logical blocks.

rectory The house or dwelling that a rectorlives in.



Chapter 11

Mysterious Creatures

Stone Age humans feared “monsters” that

emerged from the darkness. Saber-toothed

tigers stalked them; cave bears mauled

them, and rival hominid species struggled

against them for survival. Ancient night-

terrors surface in the dreams and

imaginations of present-day humans, and

sometimes the monsters turn out to be real.

57

Chapter Exploration

Apelike Monsters

BigfootOrang Pendek

Skunk ApeYeti

Creatures of the Night

ChupacabraGhoulGolem

ImpIncubus

Jersey DevilSuccubusVampireWerewolf

Monsters of Land, Sea, and Air

DragonsLoch Ness and Other Lake Monsters

Sea SerpentsThunderbirds

Wee Folk and Their Friends

ElvesFairies

GnomesGoblins

GremlinsLeprechaunsMenehuneMermaids

NisseSelkiesTrolls

Actors Who Faced(or Became) Movie Monsters

Introduction

Some psychologists have suggested thatthere is something within the humanpsyche that craves monsters and mysteri-

ous creatures. For some individuals, the veryidea that vampires, werewolves, and chu-pacabras are out there, lurking in the shad-ows, makes the adrenaline surge in an other-wise humdrum and dull workaday world. Oth-ers may find that the notion of long-neckedmonsters swimming in the world’s lakes, ape-like giants prowling the forests and prehistoricbehemoths trampling down remote junglesignites their creative fires. Creatures that defyscience, reason, and logic can thrive well inthe human imagination.

Other researchers see some people’s fear ofmonsters as a kind of psychic residue of primi-tive fears when early humankind dreaded night-fall and the predators that stalked the darknessfor victims. Dr. Christopher Chippindale ofCambridge University’s museum of archaeologyand anthropology has observed that such half-human, half-animal monsters as the werewolfand other were-creatures were painted by StoneAge artists more than 10,000 years ago. Some ofthe world’s oldest art found at ancient sites inEurope, Africa, and Australia depict animal-human hybrids. “In other words,” Chippindaletold the Guardian newspaper, “werewolves andvampires are as old as art.” Composite beingsfrom a world between animals and humans, hesaid, are a common theme to be found in theearliest of cave and rock art. Such “theri-anthropes,” or hybrid beings, are, in fact, theonly common denominator in primitive artaround the planet. These werewolves, were-lions, and were-bats belonged to an imaginedworld that early humans saw as powerful, dan-gerous, and frightening.

Chippindale commented that theseancient depictions of were-animals remainamong the most potent images thathumankind has ever created. When modernanthropologists or archaeologists enter thecaves with electric lights, he said, the paint-ings “are still frightening.”

Once humankind’s psyche had absorbedsuch hybrid monsters from the Stone Age, it

continued to fashion human-animal deities ofgreat power, such as the gods of ancient Egypt,which included the cat goddess Bast, thecanine-headed Anubis, the hawkman Horus,and so on. From such were-beings, it was anatural progression to fashion other mysticalcreatures, such as the minotaur (half-human,half-horse), the satyr (half-human, half-goat),the harpy (half-woman, half-bird), and a hostof other hybrid entities—the vast majorityunfavorably disposed toward humankind. Andsomewhere along the way, certain peopledeveloped a genetic disorder known as por-phyria, which often brought about psychosisand an extreme hypersensitivity to sunlight,thereby suggesting that they were truly vam-pires. Others succumbed to the mental illnesscalled lycanthropy (from the Greek, lykan,wolf, and thrope, man; literally, “wolf man”) inwhich people believed themselves to becomeactual werewolves.

While many psychologists and anthropol-ogists perceive the origin of humankind’s fearof vampires, werewolves, and other blood-sucking monsters to lie in the ancient night-mares of Stone Age peoples, other researcherscalled cryptozoologists (from kryptos, Greekfor hidden) seek to prove that such creaturesas Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and seaserpents really exist. Such determined indi-viduals point out that the mountain gorillawas considered a superstition of the nativepeople of Africa until 1902 when Oscar vanBeringe, a German explorer, shot two of themwhile climbing a volcano in the easternCongo. Cryptozoologists argue that such phys-ical evidence as hair samples, feces, and castsof footprints indicate that unknown species ofapes or apemen unrecognized by science mayexist in the Himalayan mountains, the remoteforests of northern California and Canada,and other parts of the world.

Some cryptozoologists claim that the LochNess Monster and sea serpents could be sur-vivors from the age of the dinosaurs. Thecoelacanth, a bizarre fish older than the greatreptiles by millions of years, was thought tohave been extinct for 65 million years untilone was caught off the coast of South Africain 1938. Since that time, more than 200 haveturned up in fishnets from Indonesia to Kenya.


Mysterious Creatures58

If the coelacanth survived for over 380 mil-lion years, cryptozoologists maintain, whycouldn’t certain of the giants from the rela-tively recent Jurassic Era, roughly 150 millionyears ago, be hiding in our deepest forests,seas, and lakes?

Michael Shermer, founder of the SkepticsSociety and author of Why People BelieveWeird Things (1997), says that people believein monsters and other things that go bump inthe night because they satisfy a human searchfor significance and a desire to have meaningin their lives. Robert Pyle, an ecologist andauthor of Where Bigfoot Walks, expresses hisopinion that creatures such as Bigfoot fill ahuman need for something to believe in andkeep alive the concept of wilderness in themodern world.

In this chapter a wide range of mysteriouscreatures will be encountered, from thosemonsters dwelling only in the nightmaresinherited from Stone Age ancestors to thosethat just might be waiting to be discovered bythe next expedition into a hitherto unex-plored region of jungle, forest, or ocean depth.

M Delving Deeper


Heuvelmans, Bernard. On the Track of Unknown Ani-mals. New York: Hill and Wang, 1958.

McKie, Robin. “Stone Age Man’s Terrors Still StalkModern Nightmares.” The Observer, November25, 2001. [Online] http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,605611,00.html.

Pyle, Robert. Where Bigfoot Walks. Boston: HoughtonMifflin, 1997.

Sanderson, Ivan T. Abominable Snowmen: LegendCome to Life. Philadelphia: Chilton Company,1961.

Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things.New York: MJF, 1997.

Apelike Monsters

Sightings of monstrous apelike creatureslurking in the darkness of forests andmountainous regions of the world have

been reported since the Middle Ages. In 840C.E., Agobard, the Archbishop of Lyons, toldof three such demons, “giant people of the for-est and mountains,” who were stoned to deathafter being displayed in chains for several days.In his Chronicles, Abbot Ralph of CoggeshallAbbey, Essex, England, wrote of a “strangemonster” whose charred body had been foundafter a lightning storm on the night of St.John the Baptist in June 1205. He stated thata terrible stench came from the beast with“monstrous limbs.”

Villagers of the Caucasus Mountains havelegends of an apelike “wildman” going back forcenturies. The same may be said of theTibetans living on the slopes of Mt. Everestand the Native American tribes inhabiting thenorthwestern United States. The Gilyaks, aremote tribe of Siberian native people, claimthat there are animals inhabiting the frozenforests of Siberia that have human feelings andtravel in family units. Based on the eyewitnessdescriptions of hundreds of reliable individualsaround the world who have encountered thesecreatures, it would seem that the creatures aremore humanlike than apelike or bearlike. Forone thing, these giants are repeatedly said bywitnesses to have breasts and buttocks. Nei-ther apes nor bears have buttocks—nor dothey leave flatfooted humanlike footprints.

In 1920, the term “abominable snowman”was coined through a mistranslation of theTibetan word for the mysterious apelike mon-ster yeti, “wildman of the snow.” For the nexttwo decades, reports of the creature were com-mon in the Himalayan mountain range, but itwas not until the close of World War II(1939–45) that world attention became focusedon the unexplained humanlike bare footprintsthat were being found at great heights and freez-ing temperatures. The Himalayan activityreached a kind of climax in 1960 when SirEdmund Hillary (1919– ), conqueror of Mt.Everest, led an expedition in search of the elu-sive yeti and returned with nothing shown forhis efforts but a fur hat that had been fashionedin imitation of the snowman’s scalp.

The humanlike creature—whether sightedin the more remote, wooded, or mountainousregions of North America, South America,


59Mysterious Creatures

Russia, China, Australia, or Africa—is believedby some anthropologists to be a two-footedmammal that constitutes a kind of missing linkbetween humankind and the great apes, for itsappearance is more primitive than that ofNeanderthal. The descriptions given by wit-nesses around the world are amazingly similar.Height: six to nine feet. Weight: 400 to 1,000pounds. Eyes: black. Dark fur or body hair fromone to four inches in length is said to cover thecreature’s entire body with the exception of thepalms of its hands, the soles of its feet, and itsupper facial area, nose, and eyelids.

Some question the existence of giant ape-like creatures because there is so little physicalevidence besides casts of huge humanlike foot-prints. Some researchers respond by pointingout that Mother Nature keeps a clean house.Scavengers soon eat the carcasses of the largestforest creatures and the bones are scattered.Zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson suggested that ifthese beings are members of a subhuman race,they may gather up their dead for burial in spe-cial caves. Dr. Jeanne-Marie-Therese Koffmanagreed that the creatures might bury their deadin secret places. It may be, she theorized, thatthey may throw the corpses of the deceasedinto the rushing waters of mountain rivers orinto the abysses of rocky caverns. Othersremind the skeptical that it is not unusual forcertain of the higher animals to hide the bod-ies of their dead. Accounts of the legendary“elephants’ graveyard” are well-known; and inCeylon, the phrase “to find a dead monkey” isused to indicate an impossible task.

Proving the existence of such creaturesmay seem to many scientists to be an impossi-ble task, but persistent searchers for undeni-able evidence of the apelike beings feel thatproof is right around the next corner in somedarkened forest.

M Delving Deeper


Coleman, Loren. Mysterious America. Boston: Faber& Faber, 1985.

Dash, Mike. Borderlands. New York: Dell Books, 2000.

Sanderson, Ivan T. Abominable Snowmen: LegendCome to Life. Philadelphia: Chilton, 1961.

Bigfoot

Reports of a large apelike creature in the Unit-ed States and the Canadian provinces are to befound in the oral traditions of native tribes, thejournals of early settlers, and accounts inregional frontier newspapers, but wide publicattention was not called to the mysteriousbeast until the late 1950s when roadbuildingcrews in the unmapped wilderness of the BluffCreek area north of Eurka, California, beganto report a large number of sightings of NorthAmerica’s own “abominable snowman.” Oncestories of giant humanlike monsters tossingaround construction crews’ small machineryand oil drums began hitting the wire services,hunters, hikers, and campers came forwardwith a seemingly endless number of storiesabout the shrill-squealing, seven-foot forestgiant that they had for years been calling bysuch names as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Wauk-Wauk, Oh-Mah, or Saskehavis.

In North America, the greatest number ofsightings of Bigfoot have come from the FraserRiver Valley, the Strait of Georgia, and Van-couver Island, British Columbia; the “ApeCanyon” region near Mt. St. Helens in south-western Washington; the Three Sisters Wil-derness west of Bend, Oregon; and the areaaround the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation,especially the Bluff Creek watershed, northeastof Eureka, California. In recent years, extreme-ly convincing sightings of Bigfoot-type crea-tures have also been made in areas of NewYork, New Jersey, Minnesota, South Carolina,Tennessee, and Florida.

Reports of Bigfoot-type creatures in Cali-fornia go back to at least the 1840s when min-ers reported encountering giant two-leggedbeastlike monsters during the gold rush days.Sightings of the Oh-Mah, as the native tribescalled them, continued sporadically untilAugust 1958, when a construction crew wasbuilding a road through the rugged wildernessnear Bluff Creek, Humboldt County, and dis-covered giant humanlike footprints in theground around their equipment. For severalmornings running, the men discovered thatsomething had been disturbing their smallequipment during the night. In one instance,an 800-pound tire and wheel from an earth-moving machine had been picked up and car-



ried several yards across the compound. Inanother, a 300-pound drum of oil had beenstolen from the camp, carried up a rockymountain slope, and tossed into a deepcanyon. And in each instance, only massive16-inch footprints with a 50-to-60-inch strideoffered any clue to the vandal’s identity.

When media accounts of the huge foot-prints were released, people from the areabegan to step forward to exhibit their ownplaster casts of massive, mysterious footprintsand to relate their own frightening encounterswith hairy giants—stories that they hadrepressed for decades for fear of being ridiculed.Not to be outdone, Canadians began telling oftheir own startling encounters with Sasquatch,a tribal name for Bigfoot, that had been circu-lating in the accounts of trappers, lumberjacks,and settlers in the Northwest Territories sincethe 1850s. Long before the frontier folk discov-ered the giant of the woods, the Sasquatch hadbecome an integral element in many of themyths and legends of the native people.

Perhaps the most remarkable and mostthoroughly documented account of aSasquatch from those early days in Canadaoccurred in 1884 and was recorded in theDaily British Colonist, July 4, 1884. In theimmediate vicinity of Number 4 tunnel, 20miles from Yale, British Columbia, a group ofrailroad men captured a creature that couldtruly be called half-man and half-beast. Themen called him “Jacko” and described him aslooking much like a gorilla, standing aboutfour feet, seven inches and weighing 127pounds. The only sound that issued from himwas a kind of half-bark and half-growl. Jackowas described as having long, black, stronghair and resembling a human being with theexception that his entire body, except hishands and feet, were covered with glossy hairabout one inch long. His forearm was muchlonger than a man’s forearm, and he possessedextraordinary strength.

The man who became Jacko’s “keeper,”George Telbury of Yale, announced his inten-tion to take the man-beast to London, Eng-land, to exhibit him. All traces of Jacko van-ished after the rash of news stories recountingthe details of his capture.

On October 20, 1967, near Bluff Creek,north of Eureka, California, Bigfoot huntersRoger Patterson and Bob Gimlin managed toshoot several feet of movie film of what appearsto be a female Bigfoot. With its glossy black hairshining in the bright sun, the Bigfoot walks awayfrom the camera with a stride that is human. Ithas pendulous breasts, and it looks back at thecameraman as it walks steadily toward a growthof trees. It does not appear to be frightened, butit is obvious that it wishes to avoid contact.Experts say that the creature in the filmstrip isover seven feet tall and estimate its weight ataround 400 pounds. It left footprints 17 incheslong, and it had a stride of 41 inches. Pattersonand Gimlin felt that they had at last providedthe scientific community and the world at largewith proof of Bigfoot’s existence.

After his examination of the Patterson-Gimlin film, Dr. John R. Napier, director of the



An alleged Bigfoot

photographed in 1967

near Bluff Creek,

California. (AP/WIDE

WORLD PHOTOS)

THE seven-foot forest apelike creature is knownas Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Wauk-Wauk, Oh-Mah, orSaskehavis.

Primate Biology Program of the SmithsonianInstitution, commented that while he sawnothing that pointed conclusively to a hoax, hedid express some reservations about the exag-gerated, fluid motion of the creature. He alsosaid that he thought the Bigfoot was a male, inspite of the pendulous breasts, because of thecrest on its head, a signature of male primates.

Dr. Osman Hill, director of Yerkes RegionPrimate Research Center at Emory University,stated his opinion that the Bigfoot in the film-strip was hominid (humanlike) rather thanpongoid (apelike). If the being in the film wasa hoax, Hill commented, it had been incredi-bly well done.

Technicians at the Documentary FilmDepartment at Universal Pictures, Holly-wood, agreed with the scientists’ assessmentand said that it would take them a couple ofmillion dollars to duplicate the monster onthe filmstrip. First, they stated, they wouldhave to create a set of artificial muscles, trainan actor to walk like the thing on the film,then place him in a gorilla skin.

Most scientists remained skeptical, andthe controversy raged for 30 years. On Octo-ber 19, 1997, just prior to a press release by theNorth American Science Institute that wouldannounce their analyses that the creaturedepicted on the film was genuine, storiesappeared in the media claiming that JohnChambers, the academy award-winning make-up artist of The Planet of the Apes (1968), hadbeen responsible for creating the gorilla suitthat had fooled the monster hunters. Accord-ing to Howard Berger of Hollywood’s KNBEffects Group, it was common knowledgewithin the film industry that Chambers haddesigned the costume for friends of Pattersonwho wanted to play a joke on him. MikeMcCracken Jr., an associate of Chambers,stated his opinion that he (Chambers) wasresponsible for designing the gorilla suit.

Roger Patterson died in 1972, neverdoubting that he had caught a real Bigfoot onfilm. And none of the individuals whoallegedly asked John Chambers to design agorilla costume in order to hoax Pattersonhave ever stepped forward and identifiedthemselves. Chambers himself, who was living

in seclusion in a Los Angeles nursing homewhen the story of the gorilla suit hoax broke,refused to confirm or deny the reports.

Chris Murphy, a Bigfoot researcher, toldthe Sunday Telegraph (October 19, 1997) that“very high computer enhancements of thefilm show conclusively that, whatever it was,it was not wearing a suit. The skin on thecreature ripples as it walks.”

Other Bigfoot experts have declared thePatterson-Gimlin film to be an authentic doc-umentary of a genuine female hominoid. TwoRussian scientists, Dmitri Bayanov and IgorBourtsev, minutely analyzed every movementof the female Bigfoot on the controversial filmand concluded that it had passed all their testsand their criteria of “distinctiveness, consis-tency, and naturalness.” Who, they ask rhetor-ically in their chapter in The Sasquatch andOther Unknown Hominoids, “other than Godor natural selection is sufficiently conversantwith anatomy and bio-mechanics to ‘design’ abody which is perfectly harmonious in termsof structure and function?”

On September 22, 2000, a team of 14researchers that had tracked the elusive Big-foot for a week deep in the mountains of theGifford Pinchot National Forest in Washing-ton State found an extraordinary piece of evi-dence that may end all arguments aboutwhether or not the creature exists. There, in amuddy wallow near Mt. Adams, was animprint of Bigfoot’s hair-covered lower body asit lay on its side, apparently reaching over toget some fruit. Thermal imaging equipmentconfirmed that the impression made by themassive body was only a few hours old.

The team of Bigfoot hunters who discov-ered the imprint—Dr. LeRoy Fish, a retiredwildlife ecologist with a doctorate in zoology;Derek Randles, a landscape architect; andRichard Noll, a tooling metrologist—nextmade a plaster cast of what appeared to beimpressions of the creature’s left forearm, hip,thigh, and heel. More than 200 pounds ofplaster were needed to acquire a complete 3-1/2 x 5-foot cast of the imprint. Dr. Jeff Mel-drum of Idaho State University stated that theimprint had definitely not been made by ahuman getting into the mud wallow.



On October 23, Idaho State Universityissued a press release stating that a team ofinvestigators, including Dr. Meldrum; Dr.Grover Krantz, retired physical anthropologistfrom Washington State University; Dr. JohnBindernagel, Canadian wildlife biologist; JohnGreen, retired Canadian author and longtimeBigfoot hunter; and Dr. Ron Brown, exotic ani-mal handler and health care administrator, hadexamined the plaster cast obtained from themud wallow and agreed that it could not be“attributed to any commonly known Northwestanimal and may present an unknown primate.”

According to the university press release,after the cast had been cleaned, “extensiveimpressions of hair on the buttock and thighsurfaces and a fringe of longer hair along theforearm were evident.” In addition, Meldrum,associate professor of anatomy and anthropol-ogy, identified what appeared to be “skin ridgepatterns on the heel, comparable to finger-prints, that are characteristic of primates.”

While the cast may not prove without ques-tion the existence of a species of North Ameri-can ape, Meldrum said that it “constitutes signif-icant and compelling new evidence that willhopefully stimulate further serious research andinvestigation into the presence of these primatesin the Northwest mountains and elsewhere.”

M Delving Deeper


Byrne, Peter. The Search for Big Foot: Monster, Myth orMan? Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1976.


———. “Top Cryptozoolgical Stories of the Year2001.” The Anomalist, January 4, 2001. [Online]http://www.anomalist.com/features/topcz2001.html.

Green, John. On the Track of the Bigfoot. New York:Ballantine Books, 1973.


Orang Pendek

Sumatra has an ancient tradition of apemenknown as orang pendek (“little man”) or orang-

utan (“man of the woods”), sometimes referredto as the “Sumatran Yeti.” According to tradi-tion, the first recorded sighting of orang pendekdates back to 1295 when Marco Polo(1254–1324) saw it on one of his expeditions tothe island. While many naturalists regard thetales of the orang pendek as native folklore, in1916 Dr. Edward Jacobson wrote in a Dutch sci-entific journal of his encounter with one of thecreatures. Since Jacobson’s sighting, there havebeen many accounts of people seeing the orangpendek, including that of a Mr. van Herwaar-den, who spotted one while scouting the forestsfor good lumber in 1923. Most witnessesdescribe the creature as standing about five feettall and as being covered with short dark hair. Itis definitely bipedal, and its arms are propor-tioned more like that of a human, rather thanthe extended arms of an ape. Remarkably, theorang pendeks have been heard conversing withone another in some unintelligible language.

Debbie Martyr, former editor of a Londonnewspaper, went in search of the elusive Suma-tran apeman and returned in March 1995 withnumerous consistent eyewitness accounts of theorang pendek and plaster casts of its footprints.She stated that she even saw the creature forherself on three occasions. The first time thatshe sighted the orang pendek, she admittedthat she was so shocked that she didn’t snap apicture. She hadn’t really expected to see anactual bipedal erect primate. She remarked thatthe orang pendek is wonderfully camouflagedbecause its colors correspond to those of theforest floor—beige, tawny, rust red, yellow tan,and chocolate brown. If the creature remainsimmobile, she said, it is impossible to see.

The orang pendek may be the most likelyof the Bigfoot-type creatures to be proved tobe real. Too many scientists have heard itscalls, followed its trails through the jungle,and caught glimpses of the creature. On Octo-ber 29, 2001, the London Times reported that



THE orang pendek may be the most likely of theBigfoot-type creatures to be proved to be real.



In April 2001, British zoologist Rob McCall pre-sented a hair sample allegedly taken from aHimalayan Yeti to Bryan Sykes, professor ofhuman genetics at the Oxford Institute of Mole-

cular Medicine, one of the world’s leading experts onDNA analysis.

Sykes said that laboratory analysis of the mysteri-ous hairs yielded some DNA, but the experts were notable to identify it.

The Orang Pendek of Sumatra is much less famil-iar. After Marco Polo visited the island in 1292, hementioned an encounter with an apelike animal thathas come to be known as the Sumatran Yeti. Since1818, various English and European explorers of thethick jungle growth of Sumatra have told of sightingan apeman that the native people call Orang Pendek,“little man of the forest.”

Witnesses describe the Orang Pendek as stand-ing about five feet tall and covered with short brownor orange hair. It walks upright without the assistanceof its front fists, and its arms are of humanlike propor-tions. Many have asserted that they heard the OrangPendeks conversing with one another in some unin-telligible language. In 1918 L. C. Westenek, the Suma-tran governor, wrote of several sightings, includingone in which he claimed to have seen an Orang Pen-dek attempting to light a fire.

In September 2002 Hans Brunner, an associate ofDeakin University in Melbourne, Australia, acknowl-edged to be one of the world’s most renowned hairexperts, released his findings that alleged Orang Pen-dek hair samples that had been provided by a three-man team of British explorers were different from anyspecies against which he had tested them.

Sources:

“Do ‘Orang Pendek’ Really Exist…?” [Online] http://www.

jambiexplorer.com/content/orangpendek.htm, n.d.

Henderson, Mark. “Yeti Hair Sample Defies DNA Analysis,” The

Times, April 2, 2001. [Online] http://www.thetimes.co.uk/

article/0,,2-108351,00.html.

“North-East Adventurer Set to Prove Abominable Snowman

Exists.” This Is the North East, September 4, 2002. [Online]

http://www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/the_north_east/archive/

2002/09/04/abom.re.html.

“Scientists Are Hair’s Breadth from the Yeti.” The Herald,

September 5, 2002. [Online] http://www.theheard.co.uk/

news/archive/5-9-19102-23-54-40.html.

The Real Manimal?

an early analysis of hair samples taken by aBritish expedition to the mountain rainforestnear Gunung Kerinci in western Sumatra didnot appear to have come from any known pri-mate in the area. Adam Davies, the leader ofthe expedition, stated that he had no doubtthat orang pendek truly exists.

M Delving Deeper

Henderson, Mark. “Team ‘Find Traces of SumatranYeti.’” The Times, October 29, 2001. [Online]http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-2001373161,00.html.


“Man-Beast Hunts in the Far East.” Fortean Times 83(October/November 1995): 18–19.

Martyr, Deborah. “An Investigation of the Orang-Pendek, the ‘Short Man’ of Sumatra.” Cryptozool-ogy 9 (1990): 57–65.


Skunk Ape

With the rash of media reports about Bigfootsightings beginning in the late 1950s and early1960s, Floridians began coming forward tomake their encounters with their “Skunk Ape”known. As with Bigfoot in the NorthwesternUnited States and Sasquatch in Canada, leg-ends of an apelike monster that haunts themore remote areas of Florida have been in cir-culation since the early days of that state’s his-tory. And as with the legends of the hairy giantsof the North, members of Native Americantribes insisted the centuries-old tales were true.

On December 5, 1966, Orlando Sentinelstaff writer Elvis Lane wrote about twohunters who claimed to have wounded themonster. Although it left a trail of blood, thecreature—at that time dubbed the “FloridaSandman,” in contrast to the “AbominableSnowman”—seemed relatively unscathed bytheir volley, and the two men fled in theopposite direction. In another report, Lanedescribed how the son of a ranch hand hadgone to investigate the sounds of someoneopening their garage and had surprised thehairy giant raising the door. When the youngman shouted his alarm, the monster threw aheavy tire at him.

Area residents also complained about theSandman or Skunk Ape peeping in their win-dows at night. Others said that they had hadgarbage cans upset by a huge creature thatretreated into the night when they clicked onyardlights. The more observant eyewitnessesdescribed the nocturnal marauder as standingbetween six and seven feet tall and weighingsomewhere between 300 and 400 pounds.Nearly every witness mentioned the terriblestench that accompanied the giant intruder.

According to some of its pursuers, the crea-ture lives in muddy and abandoned alligatorcaves deep in the steamy Everglades swamp.The alligators leave the rotting remains of theirkills behind to putrefy in the heat of their hide-aways, and the Skunk Apes absorb the stenchinto their hair, thus accounting for their awfulsmell. Although the Skunk Ape is said to beprimarily a vegetarian and often steals producefrom area gardens, Everglades hunters claim tohave seen the giant kill a deer and split open itsbelly to get at the liver and entrails.

In 1980, large footprints, complete withthe impression of toes, were found in theOcala National Forest. The sheriff ’s depart-ment estimated that the unknown creaturethat had made the prints was about 10 feet talland weighed around 1,000 pounds.

On Monday evening, July 21, 1997, VinceDoerr, chief of the Ochopee Fire Central Dis-trict, told the Miami Herald that he had seen“a brown-looking tall thing” run across theroad ahead of him. He was certain that thething was not a bear. Ochopee borders theEverglades, and a few days after Doerr’s sight-ing, a group of six British tourists and theirguide, Dan Rowland, saw a Skunk Ape onTurner River Road, just north of the town.According to Rowland’s statement in theMiami Herald (July 28, 1997), the unknownapelike creature was between six and sevenfeet tall, “flat-faced, broad-shouldered, cov-



THE Skunk Apes’ hair absorbs the stench ofrotting animal carcasses left behind by alligators.

ered with long brown hair or fur and reekingof skunk.” The seven witnesses observed theSkunk Ape “in a slough covered with baldcypress trees.” Rowland added that “…it lopedalong like a big monkey or gorilla, then it dis-appeared into the woods.”

In February 2001, the Sarasota Sheriff ’sDepartment received an anonymous lettercontaining some photographs of an apelikecreature that had been taken by a woman whofeared that an orangutan was running loose inthe area of Myakka State Park and mightharm members of her family. CryptozoologistLoren Coleman, who examined the picturesalong with animal welfare specialist DavidBarkasy, said that they appeared to be goodgraphic evidence for the unknown anthropoidknown as the Florida Skunk Ape. Accordingto Coleman, “The photographs clearly show alarge, upright dark orangutan-like animalamong the palmettos, showing eye-shine andtypical anthropoid behavior of fright due tothe woman’s flash camera.”

M Delving Deeper


———. “Top Cryptozoolgical Stories of the Year2001.” The Anomalist, January 4, 2001. [Online]http://www.anomalist.com/features/topcz2001. html.

Otto, Steve. “Absolute Kinda Irrefutable Proof ofSkunk Ape.” Tampa Tribune, February 13, 2001.[Online] http://news.tbo.com/news/MGACIN7J3JC.html.


Yeti

Tales of hairy monsters existing in the Asianwilderness can be found in the writings of sev-eral venerable Chinese scholars who linkedthese creatures to the “time of the dragon,”the presumed genesis of Asian civilization.Despite an occasional report by a Europeanvisitor to the region, the apelike creatures didnot receive any sort of widespread notorietyuntil the beginning of the twentieth century.

During an expedition into the Himalayasin 1906, botanist H. J. Elwes was astonished toglimpse a hairy figure racing across a field ofsnow below him. The scientific establishment

dismissed his report until several scholars dis-covered the journals of Major Lawrence Wad-dell, who, during his 1887 expedition, reportedhaving found humanlike tracks in the snow.

The First Everest Expedition was launchedin 1921, led by Colonel C. K. Howard-Bury.The climbing party of six British men and 26native porters was crawling slowly up thenorth face of Everest, near the Lhakpa La Pass,when Howard-Bury spotted tracks in themorning snow. Most of them were easily recog-nizable as those of rabbits or foxes, but one setof indentations was peculiar, appearing as if aman walking barefoot had made them. A Sher-pa guide identified the tracks as belonging tothe Yeti or the “mehteh kangmi,” the man-beast of the mountains who lived in the snow.

Later, when Howard-Bury telegraphed hisreports to Calcutta, he mentioned the inci-dent briefly. Unfortunately, the telegraphicfacilities were very primitive and the words“mehteh kangmi” were garbled into “metchkangmi.” The expedition’s assistants in Cal-cutta were confused by the term and asked aCalcutta newspaper columnist to translate theterm. The columnist told them that “metch”was a term of extreme disgust, so it might betranslated as the “horrible snowman” or the“abominable snowman.”

A reporter for one of England’s most sensa-tional newspapers was in the office when thetelegram was translated. He raced for thecable office in Calcutta, wiring his paper thatthe First Everest Expedition had encountereda frightening creature known as the “abom-inable snowman.” Thus the hairy wild men ofthe Himalayas were named in error and theterm has persisted to this day. When Howard-Bury and his unsuccessful mountain climbersadmitted defeat on Mt. Everest, they returnedto civilization and discovered that newspaperreporters were eager for more informationabout the abominable snowmen.

In the 1930s scientists studied the reportsof explorer Frank Smythe’s discovery of Yetitracks in the snow at 14,000 feet. The foot-prints measured 13 inches in length and werefive inches wide. Famed mountaineer Eric E.Shipton claimed that he saw similar tracks onhis expedition to Everest in 1936.



World War II (1939–45) stopped moun-taineering and scientific exploration of theformidable Himalayas, but in 1942, SlavomirRawicz and four other men escaped from aCommunist prison camp in Siberia and struckout on a “long walk” toward India. Theyreported meeting two Yeti during their incred-ible journey.

Sightings of Yeti mushroomed in the 1950sas several scientists seriously investigated thesnowmen. In 1950, natives reported Yeti inthree different locations, including a sightingby a large group of monks near Thyangboche.A Yeti also ventured out of the forest andhung around the Thyangboche Monasteryuntil it was finally chased away by monks whoblew bugles, struck gongs, and shrieked at it.The following year, Eric Shipton discoveredtracks and photographed them while on hisway to Everest with an expedition.

In 1952, Sir Edmund Hillary and GeorgeLowe found “snowman” hair in a high moun-tain pass, and tracks were reported by a Swissexpedition. In 1954, an expedition financedby the London Daily Mail set out to capture aYeti. They found tracks in several differentlocations, but returned without their prize.Three other scientific groups also reportedfinding tracks.

In 1957, the first expedition sponsored bythe American millionaire Tom Slick foundhair and footprints at several locations. Twoporters said Yeti had been sighted in thoseregions earlier that year. Peter and BryanBryne said they had seen a snowman when theSlick Expedition was in the Arun Valley. In1958, Gerald Russell and two porters with theSecond Slick Expedition encountered a smallsnowman near a river, and in the followingyear, tracks were reported by the Third SlickExpedition, as well as by members of a Japan-ese expedition.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the man who con-quered Mt. Everest, created a sensation whenhe returned with the alleged scalp of a Yeti.Hillary later proved that the so-called scalpwas actually goat skin, and he declared thatsnowman tracks were made by foxes, bears,and other animals that became enlarged whenthe snow is melted by the sun.

In August 1981, Soviet mountain climberIgor Tatsl told the Moscow News Weekly that heand his fellow climbers had seen a Yeti and thatthey had attempted a friendly, spontaneouscontact with the creature. Tatsl went on tostate that his team had made a plaster cast of animprint of a Yeti’s footprint that they had foundon a tributary of the Varzog River. This particu-lar river rushes through the Gissar Mountainsin the Pamiro-Alai range of Tadzhik in CentralAsia. In Tatsl’s considered opinion the Yeti mayquite likely be humankind’s closest evolution-ary relative. He further believed that their sens-es were more highly developed than those ofthe human species.

Russian scientists have sponsored seriousefforts to track down the Yeti for more than aquarter of a century. Although each Russianprovince may have its own name for the mys-



An alleged Yeti, or

abominable snowman,

on the 1952 issue of

Radar magazine. (MARY

EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY)

THE Yetis have been linked to the “time of thedragon,” the presumed genesis of Asian civilization.

terious giants of the mountain—in Dagestan,“kaptar”; in Azerbaijan, “mesheadam”; inGeorgia, “tkys-katsi”; while the Chechens,Ingushes, Kabardins, and Balkars call it the“almasti”—each startled eyewitness seems todescribe the same strange beast.

The Chinese call the snowman “yeren,”and in 1977, 1980, and 1982, expeditionssearching for the manbeast set out to trackdown their quarry in the Shennongjia ForestPark in western Hubei province. In September1993, a group of Chinese engineers claimed tohave seen three yeren walking on trails in theShennongjia Forest Park.

In October 1994, the Chinese governmentestablished the Committee for the Search ofStrange and Rare Creatures, including amongits members specialists in vertebrate paleontol-ogy and palaeanthropology. A loose consensusamong interested members from the ChineseAcademy of Sciences maintains that the yerenare some species of unknown primates. Thelargest cast of an alleged wildman footprint is16 inches long, encouraging estimates that theyeren itself would stand more than seven feettall and weigh as much as 660 pounds. The sci-entific committee has also studied and exam-ined eight hair specimens said to have comefrom yeren ranging through China and Tibet.The analyses of the hairs, varying in color fromthe black collected in Yunnan province andthe white collected in Tibet to the reddishbrown from Hubei, indicate a nonhumansource, but no known animal.

In April 1995, a yeren expedition of 30members led by Professor Yuan Zhengxin setout for the Hubei mountains. Although theenthusiastic Professor Zhengxin expressed con-fidence that the well-equipped group wouldcapture a yeren within three years, by July mostof the expedition members had returned to Bei-jing with little more than some possible hairsamples to show for their three-month safari.

In January 1999, Feng Zuoguian, a zoolo-gist for the Chinese Academy of Sciences,announced through the state-run China Dailynewspaper that China was officially proclaim-ing its firm opposition to any outsiders whoattempted to organize expeditions to capturethe Yeti or the yeren. According to the official

proclamation, after much debate in December1998 the members of the Chinese scientificcommunity had decreed once and for all thatthe creatures do not exist.

However, in spite of the official pronounce-ment from the Chinese Academy of Sciencesthat neither the Yeti nor the yeren exist,anthropologist Zhou Guoxing reminded hiscolleagues that unidentifiable hair specimensand 16-inch casts of footprints had been foundduring scientific expeditions to the Shen-nongjia region. In his opinion, even if 95 per-cent of the reports on the existence of the wildman are not credible, it remains necessary forscientists to study the remaining five percent.

In April 2001, British scientists on the trailof the Yeti announced the best evidence yet forthe existence of the mysterious creature of theHimalayas—a sample of hair that provedimpossible to classify genetically. Dr. RobMcCall, a zoologist, removed strands of theYeti hair from the hollow of a tree and broughtthem back to Britain to be analyzed. Dr. BryanSykes, Professor of Human Genetics at theOxford Institute of Molecular Medicine, oneof the world’s leading authorities on DNAanalysis, stated that they could not identify theDNA that they had discovered in the hair andthat they had never before encountered DNAthat they couldn’t recognize.

M Delving Deeper


Dash, Mike. Borderlands. New York: Dell Books, 2000.

Henderson, Mark. “‘Yeti’s hair’ Defies DNA Analy-sis.” The Times, April 2, 2001. [Online] http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-108351,00.html.



Creatures of the Night

There is no known culture on this plan-et that has not at one time or anothercowered in fear because of the savage



attacks of a nocturnal predator known as atherianthrope, a human-animal hybrid such asa werewolf, “werebear,” “werelion,” or a “were-something.” Such creatures were painted byStone Age artists more than 10,000 years agoand represent some of the world’s oldest caveart—and they probably precipitated some ofthe world’s first nightmares.

Some time in those fierce and frighteningprehistoric years when every day was a strugglefor survival for the primitive hunter-gatherersthere came the realization that the flowing of avictim’s vital fluid after a fatal attack from acave bear’s claws and jaws was connected withthe release of the life force itself. Blood becamesacred. Once the association was madebetween blood and the life force, a large num-ber of magical and religious rituals becamecentered around the shedding of blood, andthousands of members of ancient priesthoodshave raised chalices filled with the dark, holyelixir of life over thousands of altars stainedwith both animal and human blood.

As respect for the spiritual quality ofhuman life evolved, the sacrifice of men,women, and children was considered forbid-den. And while in less civilized times thedrinking of an animal’s vital fluid had beendeemed an appropriate way in which to absorbthe strength or virility of the lion, the bear, orthe boar, religious law now admonishedagainst both the drinking of animal blood andthe eating of meat from which the blood hadnot been thoroughly drained.

The Old Testament book of Leviticus(17:14) acknowledges that blood is “the life ofall flesh, the blood of it is the life thereof,” butthe children of Israel are instructed that they“shall not eat of the blood of no manner offlesh; for the life of all flesh is the blood there-of: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.”Again, in Deuteronomy 12:20–24, the Lordwarns, “…thou mayest eat flesh, whatsoeverthy soul lusteth after…Only be sure that thoueat not the blood: for the blood is the life; andthou mayest not eat the life with the flesh.Thou shalt not eat [blood]; thou shalt pourestit upon the earth as water.”

Similar warnings against the ingesting ofblood for religious or health reasons were

soon a part of the teachings of all major faithsand cultures. But while culture, magic, andreligion had amassed thousands of years ofprohibitions concerning the shedding ofblood, what could be more repulsive to thehuman psyche than the hybrid half-human,half-animal monsters bite the throats anddrink the blood of men, women, and chil-dren? Vampires rose from their dank graves bynight to sustain their spark of life through thedrinking of blood. Werewolves devoured theflesh and blood of their victims by night orday. How could people defend themselvesagainst these blood-hungry creatures whenthey also had the ability to shapeshift intobats, wolves, and luminous fogs? And thenthere were the supernatural beings, such asthe incubus and the succubus, who weremore interested in seizing human souls thanin sucking human blood.

It is difficult for those living in the mod-ern world to imagine the night terrors of ourancestors as they prepared to face thedemon- and monster-riddled world after sun-down. Today, vampires, werewolves, andcreatures of the dark have become the sub-jects of entertainment, scary movies, andthrilling television programs that bring relieffrom the tensions of the real world of home-work, peer acceptance, work-related stress,taxes, and providing for one’s children. Yetthere seems within each human being adesire to be frightened—safely frightened,that is—by those dormant memories of thosedemon-infested nights when the creatureswaited in the shadows to seize their victims.As one watches the late-night creature fea-ture on television and hears that strangesound outside the window, the thought popsuneasily into the mind that all things arepossible—even those things that everyoneknows cannot possibly exist.



THERIANTHROPES, a human-animalhybrid, were painted by Stone Age artists more than10,000 years ago.

M Delving Deeper


Clark, Jerome, and Loren Coleman. The Unidentified.New York: Warner Paperback Library, 1975.

Coleman, Loren. Curious Encounters. Boston andLondon: Faber & Faber, 1985.

Gordon, Stuart. The Encyclopedia of Myths and Leg-ends. London: Headline Books, 1994.

Jones, Alison, ed. Larousse Dictionary of World Folk-lore. New York: Larousse, 1995.

Keel, John A. Strange Creatures from Time and Space.Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, 1970.

Chupacabra

Named for its seeming penchant for attackinggoats and sucking their blood, the Chupacabra(“goat sucker”) both terrified and fascinatedthe public at large when it first burst upon thescene in Puerto Rico in the summer of 1995.From August of 1995 to the present, the mon-ster has been credited with the vampirelikedeaths of thousands of animals, ranging fromgoats, rabbits, and birds to horses, cattle, anddeer. While some argue that the creature is anew monster, others point out that such enti-ties have always existed and been reported byfarmers and villagers in Puerto Rico and Cen-tral and South America.

The beast has been observed by numerouseyewitnesses as it attacked their livestock, andthey have described it as nightmarish in appear-ance. Standing erect on powerful goatlike legswith three-clawed feet, the monster is generallydescribed as slightly over five feet in height,though some reports list it as over six and a halffeet. Its head is oval in shape and it has an elon-gated jaw with a small, slit mouth and fangs thatprotrude both upward and downward. A fewwitnesses have claimed to have seen small,

pointed ears on its reptilianlike head, but allwho have seen the Chupacabra after dark statethat they will never forget its red eyes that glowmenacingly in the shadows. Although its armsare thin, they are extremely powerful, ending inthree-clawed paws.

A most unusual attribute of the Chu-pacabra is its chameleonlike ability to changecolors even though it appears to have a strong,coarse black hair that covers its torso. Some-how, the creature is able to alter its colorationfrom green to grayish and from light brown toblack, depending upon the vegetation thatsurrounds it. Another peculiarity of the beastis the row of quill-like appendages that runsdown its spine and the fleshly membrane thatextends between these projections, which canflare or contract and also change color fromblue to green or from red to purple.

Some witnesses have claimed that theChupacabra can fly, but others state that it isthe beast’s powerful hindlegs that merely cata-pult it over walls, small trees, and one-storybarns or outbuildings. It is those same stronglegs that enable the creature to run atextremely fast speeds to escape its pursuers.

It wasn’t long after the night terrors beganin Puerto Rico before reports of Chupacabrabegan appearing in Florida, Texas, Mexico,and among the ranchers in Brazil’s southernstates of Sao Paulo and Parana. In Brazil, theranchers called the monster “O Bicho,” theBeast, but there was no mistaking the brutalsignature of the Chupacabra on the mutilatedcorpses of sheep and other livestock. And thedescription provided by frightened eyewit-nesses was also the same—a reptilian creaturewith thin arms, long claws, powerful hind legs,and dark gray in color.

On May 11, 1997, the newspaper Folha deLondrina in Parana State, Brazil, published theaccount of a slaughter that had occurred at aranch near Campina Grande do Sul when in asingle corral 12 sheep were found dead andanother 11 were horribly mutilated. Whilesome authorities attributed the attacks to wilddogs or cougars, those who had been eyewit-nesses to the appearance of the beast arguedthat the creature that they had seen walkingon its hind legs and seizing livestock by the



FROM August of 1995 to the present, theChupacabra has been credited with the vampirelike

deaths of thousands of animals.

throat had most certainly not been any kindof known canine or cat.

Rumors concerning Chupacabra’s originbegan to circulate at a furious pace. FromApril to September 2000, the bloodsucker inChile slaughtered more than 800 animals,and both the people and the authorities werebecoming concerned about what kind ofmonster was running amuck in their country.Some witnesses to the bloody rampages of thecreature described it as a large rodent, othersas a mutant kangaroo; still others perceived itas a winged, apelike vampire. A number ofauthorities began to speculate that the Chu-pacabra-type creatures had been manufac-tured by some secret government agency, abizarre hybrid of various animals, created forwhom knew what purpose. A number of cler-gymen issued pronouncements stating thatthe creatures were heralding the end of theworld. UFO enthusiasts theorized that aliensbrought the monsters to test the planet’satmosphere, in order to prepare a mass inva-sion of Earth. Anthropologists reminded peo-ple that tales of such mysterious, vampirelikemonsters that sucked the blood out of live-stock had been common in Central Americafor centuries.

A widely popular story spread throughoutChile that Chilean soldiers had captured aChupacabra male, female, and cub that hadbeen living in a mine north of Calama. Then,according to the account, a team of NASAscientists arrived in a black helicopter andreclaimed the Chupacabra family. The crea-tures, so the story claimed, had escaped from asecret NASA facility in the Atacama Desertof northern Chile where the U.S. spaceagency was attempting to create some kind ofhybrid beings that could survive on Mars.

On August 30, 2000, Jorge Luis Talavera, afarmer in the jurisdiction of Malpaisillo,Nicaragua, had enough of the nocturnaldepredations of Chupacabra. The beast hadsucked the life from 25 of his sheep and 35 ofhis neighbor’s flock, and he lay in wait withrifle in hand for its return. That night itseemed that Talavera accomplished what noother irate farmer or rancher had been able todo. He shot and killed a Chupacabra.

Scott Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufol-ogy, reported that a specialist of veterinarymedicine examined the carcass and acknowl-edged that it was an uncommon creature withgreat eye cavities, smooth batlike skin, bigclaws, large teeth, and a crest sticking outfrom the main vertebra. The specialist saidthat the specimen could have been a hybridanimal made up of several species, createdthrough genetic engineering.

However, on September 5, 2000, the offi-cial analysis of the corpse by the universitymedical college was that Talavera had shot adog. A furious Luis Talavera declared that theofficials had switched carcasses. “This isn’t mygoatsucker,” he groused as the college returnedthe skeleton of a dog for his disposal.

Today, Chupacabra reports continuedunabated from nearly all the South Americancountries. While the creature remains contro-versial and arguments ensue whether it is



Chupacabra. (JOHN

SIBBICK/FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

some kind of vampire, extraterrestrial alien, ora creation of some secret branch of the U.S.government, frightened and angry peoplecomplain that whatever Chupacabra is, itcontinues to suck the blood from their live-stock.

M Delving Deeper

Astuya, Juan Carlos. “Chile Homeowner Terrified byChupacabras.” Trans. by Scott Corrales. La Estrel-la de Valparaiso, October 14, 2001. [Online]http:// www.rense.com/general15/chu.htm.

Corrales, Scott. Chupacabras and Other Mysteries.Murfreesboro, Tenn.: Greenleaf Publications,1997.

———. “How Many Goats Can a Goatsucker Suck?”Fortean Times 89 (September 1996): 34–37.

Del Valle, Fernando. “The ‘Goat Sucker’ LegendClaws Its Way into Texas.” USA Today, May 15,1996.

Ocejo-Sanchez, Virgilio. “Eyewitness Describes FlyingChupacabras.” Trans. by Mario Andrade. Septem-ber 21, 2001. [Online] http://ufomiami.dventures.com/.

Ghoul

The ghoul is linked with both the vampireand the werewolf in traditional folklore, butthere are a number of obvious reasons why theentity has never attained the popularityachieved by the Frankenstein monsters, Drac-ulas, and Wolfmen of the horror films. Thecategory of ghoul encompasses a number ofdifferent entities. One type of ghoul, like thevampire, is a member of the family of theundead, continually on the nocturnal prowlfor new victims. Unlike the vampire, however,this ghoul feasts upon the flesh of thedeceased, taking the corpses from cemeteriesand morgues. The ghoul more common to thewaking world is that of the mentally unbal-anced individual who engages in eating orotherwise desecrating the flesh of deceasedhumans. Yet a third type of ghoul would bethose native of Arabic folklore, the ghul(male) and ghulah (female), demonic jinnsthat haunt burial grounds and sustain them-selves on human flesh stolen from graves.

It is easy to envision how the legend of theghoul began in ancient times when graveswere shallow and often subject to the distur-

bances of wild animals seeking carrion. Later,as funeral customs became more elaborate andmen and women were buried with their jewel-ry and other personal treasures, the lure of easywealth superseded any superstitious or ecclesi-astical admonitions that might have otherwisekept grave robbers away from cemeteries andfrom desecrating a corpse’s final rest.

Then, in the late 1820s, surgeons and doc-tors began to discover the value of dissection.The infant science of surgery was progressingrapidly, but advancement required cadavers—and the more cadavers that were supplied, themore the doctors realized how little they actu-ally knew about the anatomy and interiorworkings of the human body, and thus themore cadavers they needed. As a result, soci-eties of grave robbers were formed called the“resurrectionists.” These men made certainthat the corpses finding their way to the dis-secting tables were as fresh as possible. And, ofcourse, digging was easier in unsettled dirt.The great irony was that advancement inmedical science helped to perpetuate the leg-end of the ghoul.

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Fodor, Nandor. Between Two Worlds. New York:Paperback Library, 1967.

———. The Haunted Mind: A Psychoanalyst Looks atthe Supernatural. New York: New AmericanLibrary, 1968.

Hurwood, Bernardt J. Vampires, Werewolves, andGhouls. New York: Ace Books, 1968.

Mack, Carol K., and Dinah Mack. A Field Guide toDemons, Fairies, Fallen Angels, and Other Subver-sive Spirits. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.

Masters, R. E. L., and Eduard Lea. Perverse Crimes inHistory. New York: Julian Press, 1963.

Golem

The Golem is the Frankenstein monster of Jew-ish tradition, but it is created from virgin soiland pure spring water, rather than the bodyparts of cadavers. It is also fashioned by thosewho purify themselves spiritually and physical-ly, rather than heretical scientists in forebodingcastle laboratories who bring down electricityfrom the sky to animate their patchworkhuman. Once the Golem has been formed, it isgiven life by the Kabbalist placing under its





”The Golem of Prague”

(1920) was directed by

Paul Wegener.

(GETTY IMAGES)

tongue a piece of paper with the Tetragramma-ton (the four-letter name of God) written on it.

According to certain traditions, the cre-ation of a Golem is one of the advanced stagesof development for serious practitioners ofKabbalah and alchemy. Instructions for fash-ioning a Golem according to the Talmudictradition was set down sometime in the tenthcentury by Rabbi Eliezar Rokeach in The Book

of Formation, and in his modern adaptation ofthe ancient text, Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan stressedthat the initiate should never attempt to makea Golem alone, but should always be accom-panied by one or two learned colleagues for itcan become a monster and wreak havoc.When such a mistake occurs, the divine namemust somehow be removed from the creature’stongue and it be allowed to revert to dust.



Boris Karloff in the 1931

production of

“Frankenstein.”




The novel Frankenstein: A Modern Prome-theus (1818) with its story of the daring sci-entist Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the mon-ster made of human parts that he brought

to life is one of the most famous works of fiction. MaryWollstonecraft Godwin (1797–1851) was 16 when shemet the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822). Maryran off to Europe with Shelley in 1816, and they spentthe summer with Lord George Gordon Byron(1788–1824) and his friend and personal physician Dr.John Polidori (1795–1821) in Geneva. To pass the timeduring a dreary summer, Lord Byron suggested thateach of them should write a ghost story. Eighteen-year-old Mary was the only one of the four who actu-ally fulfilled the assignment, publishing her novel twoyears after she married Shelley in December 1816.

While the novel has been hailed as a masterpieceand a work of genius, scholars have long debated thesource of Mary Shelley’s inspiration. What—orwho—suggested the character of Dr. Victor Franken-stein, who became the prototype of the mad orobsessed scientist?

In 2002, while researching the influence of sci-ence upon the poetry of Percy Shelley, Chris Goulding,a Ph.D. student at Newcastle University, found histori-cal documents that indicated that the model for VictorFrankenstein was Dr. James Lind (1736–1812), Shel-ley’s scientific mentor at Eton in 1809–10. Lind hadbecome fascinated with the ability of electricalimpulses to provoke muscle movement in the legs ofdead frogs, and he was quite likely the first scientist inEngland to conduct experiments similar to those thatenabled Dr. Frankenstein to focus electricity fromlightning and bring his monster to life. Percy Shelleywas interested in science, and Goulding points outpassages in Mary Shelley’s unfinished biography ofher husband wherein she commented that Percyoften spoke of the great intellectual debt that he owedto Dr. Lind.

Sources:

Hardy, Phil. The Encyclopedia of Horror Movies. New York:

Harper & Row, 1986.


Stanley, John. Creature Features: The Science Fiction, Fantasy,

and Horror Movie Guide. New York: Boulevard, 1997.

Radford, Tim. “Frankenstein May Have Been Based on Scots

Scientist.” The Guardian, May 1, 2002. [Online]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4404697,00.html.

Veitch, Jennifer. “So Who Is Behind the Monster?” Edinburgh

Evening News, May 3, 2002. [Online] http://www.edinburgh

news.com/capitalcity.cfm?id=476592002.

Who Was the

Inspiration for

Dr. Frankenstein?

The most famous Golem is “Yossele,” thecreature said to be created by Judah Loew BenBezalel (1525–1609) to help protect the Jewsof Prague from the libel that the blood of aChristian child was used during the PassoverSeder. There are many accounts of how Yosse-le saved Jews from reprisals directed againstthem by those citizens who had been incitedby the anti-Semitic libel. Once the Golemhad served its purpose, the rabbi locked it inthe attic of Prague’s Old-New Synagogue,where it is widely believed that the creaturerests to this day. The synagogue survived thewidespread destruction directed against Jewishplaces of worship by the Nazis in the 1930sand early 1940s, and it is said that the Gestapodid not even enter the attic. A statue of Yosse-le, the Golem of Prague, still stands at theentrance to the city’s Jewish sector.

M Delving Deeper

“Frankenstein and the Golem.” Jewish Gothic.[Online] http://www. jewishgothic.com/golem.html.

Kaplan, Aryeh. Sefer Yetsirah: The Book of Creation inTheory and Practice. New York: Samuel Weiser,1990.

Unterman, Alan. Dictionary of Jewish Lore and Legend.London and New York: Thames and Hudson,1991.

Winkler, Gershon. The Golem of Prague. New York:Judaica Press, 1994.

Imp

In Old English impe means a young plantshoot or a tree sapling. Over the years, theword came to refer to smallish entities thatwere direct offspring of the Devil and sentfrom hell to do evil deeds to humans on Earth.Imps might well be called junior demons, andone of their principal assignments, accordingto Christian authorities, was to disguise them-selves as black cats, owls, ravens, or some

other animal and serve as a witch’s familiar.In many of the transcripts of the Europeanwitchcraft trials, the demonic spirit given bythe Devil to a witch to do his or her biddingwas referred to as an imp.

In most of the descriptions of imps givenby witches or those theologians who claimedto have exorcised the entities, their appear-ance apart from the animals they possessedwas always a solid black in color. Since theywere creatures without souls sired by theDevil, imps were condemned to be dark shad-ow beings, forever denied the light of God.

Over the centuries, the meaning of theword has lost its satanic implications. Whenone speaks of someone having an impishsmile, one is likely to mean that that individ-ual has wry sense of humor. To refer to chil-dren as “little imps” suggests that they are mis-chievous, rather than malignant.

M Delving Deeper

Larousse Dictionary of World Folklore. New York:Larousse, 1995.

Michelet, Jules. Satanism and Witchcraft. New York:Citadel Press, 1939, 1960.

Walker, Barbara. The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols &Sacred Objects. Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 1988.

Incubus

According to ancient tradition, there are twomain classifications of demons that sexuallymolest humans—the incubi that assaultwomen and the succubi that seduce men.Both sexual predators are said to have beenborn as a result of Adam’s sexual intercoursewith Lilith, a beautiful demonic entity, oftensaid to have been his first wife, or in other tra-ditions, a fantasy wife created to alleviate hisloneliness before the advent of Eve. The incu-bi were said to seduce unsuspecting women byappearing to them in the guise of their hus-bands or lovers, and as one might suspect, theincubi played an important role in the historyof the Inquisition. Even pious nuns appearedbefore the tribunals, attesting to their afflic-tion by persistent incubi that tried to persuadethem to break their vows of chastity. Epi-demics of demon possession and erotomaniaswept such convents as Loudon, Louviers,Auxonne, and Aixen-Provence.



THE most famous Golem is “Yossele,” that wasallegedly created by Judah Loew Ben Bezalel

(1525–1609) to help protect the Jews of Prague.



David J. Skal, author of The MonsterShow: A Cultural History of Horror (1997),has made the observation that the histo-ry of horror entertainment closely paral-

lels the great social traumas of the twentieth century.

Monsters became popular at the box office dur-ing World War II (1939–45), particularly during thesecond half of the conflict, and Hollywood film studiosresponded to the demand by creating horror tales fea-turing vampires, werewolves, and mummies. In 1944alone, 21 horror films were released.

After the war ended in 1945, audiences no longerwere attracted to such classic monsters. Science fic-tion tales of UFOs and aliens replaced Earth-basedsupernatural monstrosities.

During the Vietnam conflict, monsters and mad-men returned with a vengeance, and a remarkable 54horror films were released in 1972. Then, after theUnited States Armed Forces pulled out of Vietnam, themovie monsters retreated again. In 1975, only 17 hor-ror films were released by major studios.

In 2001, the Media Psychology Lab at CaliforniaState in Los Angeles polled people across the UnitedStates from ages 6 to 90 in all ethnic groups to deter-mine which movie monsters ranked as the favorites.According to the survey, the most frightening motionpicture of all time for all groups was The Exorcist (1973).The favorite top ten monsters were the following:

1. Dracula, the aristocratic vampire, in the 1931version, Dracula, with Bela Lugosi as the blood-sucking count.

2. Freddy Krueger, the slayer of teenagers withthe razor-sharp metal talons on his fingers,from A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

3. The Frankenstein monster, the original versionwith Boris Karloff, Frankenstein (1931).

4. Godzilla, the prehistoric giant reptile that spewsradioactive rays and stomps cities to rubble,from the original Japanese film, Godzilla of theMonsters (1954).

5. King Kong, the giant ape, from the originalKing Kong (1933).

6. Chucky, the possessed, murderous doll, fromChild’s Play (1988).

7. Michael Myers, the masked murderer, who isdescribed in the film Halloween (1978).

8. Hannibal Lecter, the erudite, cannibalistic ser-ial killer from The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

9. Jason, the unstoppable monster in the hockeymask, from Friday the 13th (1980).

10. The Alien, the multi-jawed, many-fanged crea-ture in Alien (1979).

Sources:

Seiler, Andy. “Oh, the Horror! Oh, Boy!” USA Today, October 25,

2001. [Online] http://www.usatoday.com/life/lphoto.htm.

Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror.

New York: Boulevard, 1997.

Stanley, John. Creature Features: The Science Fiction, Fantasy,

and Horror Movie Guide. New York: Boulevard, 1997.

Theokas, Christopher. “Bela’s Dracula Still Has Bite.” USA Today,

October 31, 2001. [Online] http://www.usatoday.com/life/

enter/movies /2001-10-31-scary-movies.htm.

The Top Ten

Movie Monsters

In his book Eros and Evil, R. E. L. Mastersremarked on the scant amount of records fromthe Inquisition concerning the experiences ofmen who succumbed to seductive succubi incontrast to the enormous number of recordedinstances in which women yielded to the sex-ual attentions of the incubi. Such lack ofreports did not imply that succubi were lessseductive than incubi, but rested on the beliefof the inquisitors and clergy of the day thatwomen were “naturally inclined to vice…andwould always put up defenses more feeble thanthose offered by males.”

The incubus could prove to be a jealouslover. In April 1533, according to oldchurch records, an incubus became enragedwhen he discovered his human mistress inthe arms of the son of the tavernkeeper atSchilttach, near Freiburg. In his furious stateof mind, the incubus not only set the tavernablaze, but he burned the entire village tothe ground.

Church authorities dealt with the problemof how a spirit could develop a corporeal bodyby advancing such theories as these: incubifashion temporary bodies out of water vapor orgases; they have no actual physical bodies, butthey possess the power to create an illusion ofcorporeality; they inhabit recently deceasedcorpses and animate them for the purpose ofsexual intercourse with the living; they actual-ly have material bodies that they can manipu-late into any shape they desire.

Father Montague Summers theorized thatsuch demons as the incubi might be com-posed of that same substance known as ecto-plasm from which the spirits of the dead drawtheir temporary body during materializationseances with mediums. He reasoned thatsuch psychic drainage could occur if a frus-trated young person encouraged the atten-tions of an evil entity by fantasizing abouterotic materials.

M Delving Deeper




Masters, R. E. L. Eros and Evil. New York: JulianPress, 1962.

Spence, Lewis. An Encyclopedia of Occultism. NewHyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1960.

Jersey Devil

Some witnesses say that the Jersey Devil thathaunts the Pine Barrens in southeastern NewJersey is a cross between a goat and a dog withcloven hoofs and the head of a collie. Othersswear that it has a horse’s head with the bodyof a kangaroo. Most of the people who havesighted the creature mention a long tail, andnearly all of the witnesses agree that the thinghas wings. But it doesn’t really fly as much asit hops and glides.

Whatever the Jersey Devil is, people havebeen sighting it in the rural area in South Jerseysince 1735, which, according to local legend, isthe year that it was born. Rather than somemonstrous animal that was somehow spawnedin the one million acres of pines that stillremain some distance from the state’s cities andrefineries, the Jersey Devil has at least a semi-human origin. It seems that there was a promi-nent family in South Jersey whose patriarchdemanded a large number of heirs to carry onthe Leeds name to future generations. Whilethat might have been well and good for Mr.Leeds, when she learned that she was about tobear her thirteenth child, Mrs. Leeds decidedthat she had enough. She had grown tired ofbeing continually pregnant to satisfy her hus-band’s ego. In a fit of rage, it is said that shecursed the unborn child within her and criedout that she would rather bear the devil’s childthan give birth to another Leeds for posterity.

Visualizing the image of Satan, Mrs. Leedsdecreed that she wished the child to be bornwith claws and fangs, fierce and wild as somevicious beast. The old legend said that Mrs.



INCUBI fashion temporary bodies out of watervapor or gases.

Leeds was granted her angry wish of revenge.The baby was born a monster with devilishfangs, claws, tail, and cloven hoofs, but theextremes of its viciousness soon eclipsed the bor-ders of Leeds’s curse. The little monster ate everyone of the other Leeds children and escaped outof the chimney to begin its reign of terror amongthe farmers and villagers of the region.

For well over 200 years, terrified witnesseshave claimed to encounter the Jersey Devil.The most famous series of sightings occurredin January 1909 when hundreds of men andwomen reporting seeing or hearing the fright-ening creature. So many people refused toleave the safety of their homes that local millswere forced to shut down for lack of workers.

As with so many of its kind, local folklorehas it that the Jersey Devil serves as an omenof tragedy and war. According to some wit-nesses, the being was sighted just prior to theonset of the Civil War (1861–65) and againbefore the start of the Spanish-American con-flict (1898) and World War I (1914–18).

M Delving Deeper

Clark, Jerome, and Loren Coleman. The Unidentified.New York: Warner Paperback Library, 1975.

Jones, Alison, ed. Larousse Dictionary of World Folk-lore. New York: Larousse, 1995.

Keel, John A. Strange Creatures from Time and Space.Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, 1970.

Seibert, Trent. “Scary Legend Has Roots in Wilder-ness of New Jersey.” Denver Post, June 2, 2001.[Online] http://www.100megsfree4. com/farshores/cjdevil.htm.

Succubus

According to certain mystical traditions, thedemonic sexual molesters known as the incubiand the succubi were the children of FatherAdam’s consorting with a beautiful fallen angelnamed Lilith, who in the view of certain Jewishmystics, was Adam’s wife before the creation ofEve. Succubi appear to men as beautiful, sensualwomen, tempting and promising, but they alsomay be vampires thirsting for human blood.While those males who consort with a succubusoften meet an untimely end, on occasion theirinteraction with the entity brings about a hordeof demonic children, who will one day gather athis deathbed and hail him as their father.

Lilith, according to the Midrash, preys notonly on males as they lie sleeping, but alsoupon mothers who have just given birth, aswell as their newborn babes. Amulets of pro-tection against the approach of Lilith may befound in many traditional Jewish bookstores.

The plural form of “Lilith” in Hebrew is“lilim,” which is found in Talmudic and Kab-balistic literature as a term for spirits of thenight. Sometimes the word lilith is translatedas “night-owl,” which would seem to refer toLilith, the succubus, having wings and beingcapable of flight. Sometimes, according toHebrew scholars, the term lilith represents“wind-spirit,” and in Hebrew the word for“spirit” (ruach) also means wind. Lilith isoften depicted as a beautiful woman withlong, unkempt hair and large batlike wings.



Jersey Devil, 1901

illustration. (FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

SUCCUBI appear to men as beautiful, sensualwomen, but they also may be vampires thirsting forhuman blood.

M Delving Deeper



“Jewish Vampires.” Jewish Gothic. [Online] http://www.jewishgothic.com/vampire.html.


Unterman, Alan. Dictionary of Jewish Lore and Legend.London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991.

Vampire

Contrary to the glamorous image popularizedby motion pictures depicting handsome vam-pires and their beautiful “brides,” the appear-ance of a true vampire in folklore is grotesque,

a nightmarish creature of the undead withtwisted fangs and grasping talons. After BramStoker’s novel Dracula (1897) became a popu-lar stage play, and, in 1931, a classic horrorfilm, the image of the vampire as a hideousdemon was transformed into an attractivestranger who possesses a bite that, while fatal,also promises eternal life. The vampire of leg-end, a demonic presence, wrapped in a rottingburial shroud, intent only on sating its blood-lust, was forgotten and replaced by the beguil-ingly romantic figures that have appeared eversince in films and popular novels.

The cinematic depiction of the vampire inF. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) presented amuch more accurate characterization of thetraditional vampire. In this film actor MaxSchreck’s loathsome bloodsucker creeps aboutin the shadows with dark-ringed, hollowedeyes, pointed devil ears, and hideous fangs.



In the summer of 2002, Romanian Tourism Minis-ter Dan Agathon announced plans to build aDracula theme park on a hilltop near themedieval town of Sighisoara, the birthplace of

the fifteenth-century Romanian count Vlad Tepes(1431?–1476?), said to have been the inspiration forBram Stoker’s (1847–1912) famous vampire novel,Dracula (1897).

Critics immediately opposed the idea of such anenterprise, stating that the park would underminemore dignified projects to restore the medieval spiritof Sighisoara.

Tourism Minister Agathon denied any rumorssuggesting that the concept of a Dracula theme parkwas being abandoned due to the efforts of opposingcritics, and he requested that all groups support theeffort to attract more tourists to the medieval town.

Sources:

“Ghostbuster Believes Dracula’s Ghost Is Haunting Theme Park

Site,” Ananova, June 26, 2002. [Online]

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_616089.html?men

u=news.scienceanddiscovery.p...

Marinas, Radu. “Dracula Park Plan ‘Undead.’” Reuters.com, July

1, 2002. [Online] http://reuters.com/jhtml?type=

entertainmentnews&StoryID=1151684.

Count Dracula

Theme Park

With his long, blood-stained talons, his egg-shaped head, and his pasty white complexion,Schreck’s Nosferatu looks more like the crea-ture of the undead as seen in the collectivenightmares of humankind throughout thecenturies. E. Elias Merhige’s Shadow of theVampire, released on December 29, 2000,teased audiences with the unsettling sugges-tion that the monstrous Nosferatu (WillemDafoe) who assumed the title role in the clas-sic film by F. W. Murnau (John Malkovich)was actually portrayed by a real vampire,rather than an actor.

The vampire legend is universal, and everyculture has its own name for the monster. Theword itself rises from the slavonic Magyar—vam, meaning blood; pir, meaning monster. Tocite only a few other appellations for the vam-pire from different languages, there is theolder English variation, vampyr; the Latin,sanguisuga; Serbian, vampir; Russian, upyr;Polish, Upirs; and the Greek, Brucolacas.From the villages of Uganda, Haiti, to theUpper Amazon, all indigenous people knowthe vampire in its many guises. TraditionalNative American medicine priests, ArcticEskimo shamen, and Polynesian Kahuna allknow the vampire and take precautionsagainst those who were once human who arenow undead and seek blood by night to sus-tain their dark energies.

With each succeeding generation, the darkpowers of the vampire have grown. His hyp-notic powers have become irresistible, and hisstrength is that of a dozen men. He can trans-form himself into the form of a bat, a rat, anowl, a fox, and a wolf. He is able to see in thedark and to travel on moonbeams and mist.Sometimes, he has the power to vanish in apuff of smoke.

Over the centuries certain precautionshave been determined, such as liberally apply-ing wolfbane and sprigs of wild garlic at everydoor and window. A crucifix can be wornabout one’s neck and placed prominently onseveral walls. And if people are truly seriousabout putting a stop to the nocturnal predator,they can hunt down his grave or coffin andplace thereon a branch of the wild rose tokeep him locked within. If that doesn’t work,

then the only courses of action remaining areto pry open his coffin during the daylighthours while the vampire lies slumbering andpound a wooden stake through his heart—or,perhaps a bit safer, destroy the coffin while heis away and allow the rays of the early morn-ing sun to scorch him into ashes.

In 1982, parapsychologist Stephen Kaplan,director of the Vampire Research Center inElmhurst, New York, discovered a vampiresubculture living among the general popula-tion. Kaplan estimated that there were approx-imately 21 “real” vampires living secretly inthe United States and Canada. He spoke tomany of these self-professed creatures of thenight, some of whom claimed to be as old as300 years, and he established the demograph-ics of vampires, placing Massachusetts in thelead with three; followed by Arizona, Califor-nia, and New Jersey, with two each; and theremaining 15 vampires scattered throughoutthe other states and provinces.

Today, with the ever-growing popularity ofthe Gothic movements, the various vampire



The 1922 silent German

film “Nosferatu” was the

first film which

introduced vampires into

the cinema. (CORBIS

CORPORATION)

THE vampire legend is universal, and everyculture has its own name for the monster.

role-playing games, the continuing bestsellingstatus of the Anne Rice vampire novels, andthe high ratings of television series based onvampires and the occult, it would be animpossible task to estimate the current popu-lation of those who define themselves as somefacet of the term “vampire,” or to establish anybut the most approximate demographics. Mil-lions of readers and viewers have agreed withRice that the vampire is a romantic,enthralling figure. The author’s major vampirecharacter, Lestat de Lioncourt, and her seriesof books in the “Vampire Chronicles” series,portray the undead as far from grotesque,shroud-wrapped monsters. Rice has stated thatshe perceives the vampire as an individualwho never dies, who exerts a charm over peo-ple, then accepts their blood as a sacrifice thathe might live. In her opinion, the image of thevampire is alluring, attractive, seductive, andthe idea of being sacrificed to keep such anentity alive becomes rather romantic.

In the November 24, 2000, issue of TheNew York Times, Margaret Mittelbach andMichael Crewdson reported on the city’s vam-pire scene that has been going strong since themid-1990s and the many nightclubs that caterto the “daylight-challenged” in their article,“Vampires: Painting the Town Red.” The jour-nalists describe the activities in “dens” whereas many as 300 “undead heads” dance, drink,and make merry late into the night. The dresscode in such establishments is “gothic,” “dark-fetish,” “faerie,” “Wiccan,” or “Celtic” and theoverwhelmingly predominant color of theclothing is black. On the “rare occasion”when a patron of these vampire havens smiles,Mittelbach and Crewdson noted, one canmake out “the glint of white fangs.”

Other researchers have discovered thatthese “Human Living Vampires” believe thatthey require blood in order to function at theirhighest level of proficiency. They realize thatthey are not really immortal beings, but theymay feel that they have extrasensory abilitiesthat border on the supernatural that areaccentuated with the ingestion of humanblood. Most often the vital fluid is obtainedfrom willing donors who permit the vampiresto make small cuts or punctures in their fleshand lick or suck the blood.

The vast majority of those enthralled bythe vampire lifestyle are those young peoplewho find dressing the part of an attractive andseductive member of the undead appeals totheir romantic sensibilities. For them it is likebeing able to dress up for Halloween at leastone night per week all year long.

While role-playing as vampires and vic-tims may be considered quite harmless as longas the participants know when to draw theline between fantasy and reality, those whocross the boundaries of mental abnormalityinto blood fetishism and obsessive blood-drinking may gradually develop a psychosisthat can force them to mutilate or even killothers. On February 1, 2002, a 23-year-oldwoman who said that she became a vampire inLondon, then murdered a man in Germanyand drank his blood, was jailed for the crime.

According to psychologists, the true lair ofthe vampire must be sought in the hiddenrecesses of the human mind, rather than insecluded burial vaults. The desire to assumethe guise of a vampire, is highly suggestive ofpathologically immature, dependent personal-ities, who cannot fend for themselves in nor-mal everyday living, but who must attachthemselves to a more productive personality,just as the vampire attaches itself to thosehosts on whose blood it feeds. Such individu-als almost always subconsciously desire toreturn to the state of complete dependencecharacteristic of the prenatal state. Psychoan-alysts often discover that in those pathologicalcases in which subjects believe themselves tobe vampires the grave or coffin comes to sym-bolize the womb. The vampire’s dependenceupon the grave or coffin as a place of safetyseems again to betray a deep longing for theprenatal security of the womb. The act ofsucking a victim’s blood is in itself significant,for many psychologists state that such an actwould be a sign of mother-fixation.

M Delving Deeper






Melton, J. Gordon. The Vampire Book: The Encyclope-dia of the Undead. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Visi-ble Ink Press, 1998.

“Self-styled Vampire Reveals British Link.” TheGuardian, February 1, 2002. [Online] http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,642870,00. html.

Werewolf

Unlike the vampire, werewolves are not mem-bers of the undead who promise everlastinglife in exchange for a little bite on the neck.When werewolves are in their human form,they can walk about tranquil forest paths orbustling city streets appearing as ordinary asanyone on his or her way to work or shopping.They needn’t fear the scorching rays of the ris-ing sun. They have no use for a coffin inwhich to sleep during the daylight hours.They have no dread of mirrors that may notshow their reflection. Crucifixes don’t distressthem in the least, and they themselves wouldprobably use garlic for seasoning.

Contrary to the legend popularized by Holly-wood horror films, one does not undergo apainful transformation into a wolf after beingbitten or scratched by a werewolf. According tothe ancient traditions, those who became were-wolves were generally of two types: 1) Power-hungry sorcerers who deliberately sought theability to shapeshift into the form of a wolfthrough an application of black magic so thatthey might more effectively rob or attack theirvictims. Those who became werewolves throughincantations, potions, or spells took evil delightin their savage strength and their ability to strikefear into the hearts of all those whom theyencountered. 2) Innocent men or women whoran afoul of a sorcerer who had vengefully placeda curse of lupine transformation upon them.Those innocents who had become werewolvesagainst their will may have been filled with dis-gust at their acts of slashing, ripping, and ofteningesting the flesh of their human victims, butthey were powerless to resist such gruesome andmurderous desires while they remained underthe spell that had been placed upon them.

According to a number of ancient magicaltexts, one of the methods by which one mightwillingly become a werewolf was to disrobe andto rub completely over one’s naked body anointment made of the fat of a freshly killed ani-mal and a special mixture of herbs. The personwho wished to accomplish the lupine transfor-mation should also wear a belt made of humanor wolf skin around the waist, then cover his orher body with the pelt of a wolf. To acceleratethe process of shapeshifting, the apprenticewerewolf should drink beer mixed with bloodand recite an ancient magical incantation.

The prefix were in Old English means“man,” so coupled with wolf, it designates acreature that can alter its appearance fromhuman to beast and become a “man wolf.” InFrench, the werewolf is known asloup garou; inSpanish, hombre lobo; Italian, lupo manaro;Portuguese, lobizon or lobo home; Polish, wilko-lak; Russian, olkolka or volkulaku; and inGreek, brukolakas.

Native American tribes tell of bear-people,wolf-people, fox-people, and so forth, and statethat in the beginning of things, humans were asanimals and animals as humans. Stories ofwomen who gave birth to werecreatures arecommon among the North American tribalmyths. Early cultures throughout the Americas,Europe, Asia, and Africa formed totem clansand often worshipped minor deities that werehalf-human, half-animal. Norse legends tellabout hairy, humanlike beings that live in theunderworld caves and come out at night to feaston the flesh of unfortunate surface dwellers. Tothe people of the Middle Ages, there was littlequestion that such creatures as werewolves trulyexisted, and the Inquisition was certain toinclude these demonic entities in their arrests.

Switzerland can lay claim to the first offi-cial execution of werewolves, when in 1407,



STORIES of women who gave birth towerecreatures are common among the NorthAmerican tribal myths.

several individuals so accused were torturedand burned in Basel; but the inquisitors inFrance have the dubious distinction of record-ing the most cases of werewolfism in all ofEurope—30,000 between 1520 and 1630. Thewerewolf trials began at Poligny in 1521when, after enduring the torture chamber,three men admitted to consorting with she-wolves and demons in order to gain the powerto transform themselves into wolves—thenthey confessed to having killed and devouredmany small children over a 19-year period.They were summarily burned at the stake.

The famous case of Gilles Garnier, whowas executed as a werewolf at Dole, France, in1573, provides grim details of attacks onnumerous children, in which Garnier used hishands and teeth to kill and to cannibalize hisyoung victims. In view of the heinous crimesand Garnier’s confession that he was a were-

wolf, the court was quick to decree that heshould be executed and his body burned andreduced to ashes.

The infamous werewolf Peter Stubbe ofCologne revealed that he possessed a magicbelt that could instantly transform him into awolf. To return to human form, he had but toremove the belt. Although the authoritiesnever found his magical werewolf belt, theybeheaded him for his crimes in 1589.

According to testimony in the case againstJacques Roulet in 1598, a group of hunterscame upon two wolves devouring the body ofa 15-year-old boy. Since they were well-armed, the men pursued the wolves and wereastonished to see the pawprints slowly becom-ing more humanlike. At last, they trackeddown and apprehended a tall, gaunt man withlong matted hair and beard, barely clothed infilthy rags, his hands red with blood and hislong nails clotted with human flesh. Theloathsome creature identified himself as avagabond named Jacques Roulet, who with hisbrother and a cousin possessed a salve thatenabled them to assume the form of wolves.Together, the three werewolves claimed tohave attacked, killed, and eaten many chil-dren in various parts of the countryside.

Sometimes it becomes difficult to establishthe line of demarcation that separates leg-endary accounts of werewolves and otherwereanimals devouring human victims fromthe early historical records of savage humanpredators ambushing their victims by night. Inthe Middle Ages, large bands of beggars andbrigands roamed the European countrysidesafter dark, often dressed in wolfskins andhowling like a pack of wolves on the hunt. Inthe rural areas of France, Germany, LowerHungary, Estonia, and other countries, thesenocturnal marauders were called “were-wolves.” The old Norwegian counterpart towerewolf is vargulf, literally translated as“rogue wolf,” referring to an outlaw who sepa-rates himself from society. In addition to thesehuman wolf packs that preyed upon isolatedfarmers and small villages, historical recordsare replete with illustrations of ancient war-riors who went into battle wearing the skins ofwild animals, hoping that the ferocity and



A werewolf from the

1980 film “The Howling.”


strength of the beasts would magically rub offon them. Most often, in the Northern Euro-pean tribes, the fierce animal of choice wasthe wolf or the bear.

In ancient Scandinavia, the Norse wordsulfhedhnar (“wolf-clothed”) and berwerker referto the wolf or bear skins worn by the fierceViking warriors when they went “berserk,”war-mad, and fought with the fury of viciousanimals against opponents. In the Slavoniclanguages, the werewolf is called vlukodlak,which translates to “wolf-haired” or “wolf-skinned,” once again suggesting the magicaltransference desired from wearing the skin of abrave animal into battle.

Interestingly, the popular conception thatone becomes a werewolf after having been bit-ten or scratched by such a creature of thenight originated not in ancient tradition butin the motion picture The Wolf Man (1941).Such werewolf deterrents as sprigs of garlic,wolf bane, and the deadly silver bullet werealso created for classic werewolf stories fromFrankenstein Meets the Werewolf (1943) to AnAmerican Werewolf in Paris (1997). Even theancient “gyspy folklore” repeated by Ankers,the heroine in The Wolf Man, was created bySiodmak: “Even a man who’s pure in heartand says his prayers at night, may become awolf when the wolfbane blooms and theautumn moon is bright.”

Just as certain humans imagine themselvesto be vampires, others believe themselves toshapeshift into wolves. Psychologists recog-nize a werewolf psychosis (lycanthropy orlupinomanis) in which persons so afflictedmay believe that they change into a wolf atthe full moon. Those who are so disturbedmay actually “feel” their fur growing, their fin-gernails becoming claws, their jaw lengthen-ing, their canine teeth elongating. In theirpaper “A Case of Lycanthropy,” published inthe American Journal of Psychiatry in 1977,psychiatrist Harvey Rosenstock and psycholo-gist Kenneth Vincent discussed the case histo-ry of a 49-year-old woman who received dailypsychotherapy and antipsychotic drugs andwho still perceived herself as a wolfwomanwith claws, teeth, and fangs. Medical person-nel would manage to get the woman under

control until the next full moon—when shewould snarl, howl, and resume her wolflikebehavior. Rosenstock and Vincent stated thatthe woman was eventually discharged andprovided with antipsychotic medication, butshe declared that she would haunt graveyardsuntil she had found the male werewolf of herdreams.

M Delving Deeper

Clark, Jerome, and Loren Coleman. Creatures of theOuter Edge. New York: Warner Books, 1978.

Eisler, Robert. Man into Wolf. London: Spring Books,n.d.




Steiger, Brad. The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopedia ofShape-Shifting Beings. Farmington Hills, Mich.:Visible Ink Press, 1999.

Monsters of Land, Sea,

and Air

While so many of the mysterious crea-tures that are frightening and dis-turbing may belong completely to

the realm of the supernatural and fanciful,judgment must be reserved concerning someof the monsters reported roaming the forestsand jungles. In recent decades a large numberof animals previously unrecognized by theexperts, although well-known to the aborigi-nal inhabitants of the locales that were thecreatures’ natural habitat, have been officially“discovered.”

Although hunters in Kamchatka, Man-churia, and Sakhalin had long been tellingexcited stories of the giant carnivorous brownbear they had encountered, European scien-tists did not accept the existence of the bearuntil 1898. The largest land animal next to theAfrican elephant is the white rhinoceros,which remained officially unacknowledged



until 1900. The largest of the apes, the moun-tain gorilla, was considered a native supersti-tion until 1901. The dragons of KomodoIsland, Indonesia, were considered the cre-ations of a strange myth conjured up by theislanders until 1912. And the British zoologistwho described the bizarre “royal hepard”—ahalf-leopard and half-hyena beast long claimedby the natives of Rhodesia to be an actualbeast of prey—wondered how such a large ani-mal, and one so distinct from other species,could have remained “unknown” for so long.

In June 1994, the first living specimen of theVu Quang ox was caught in a rugged area on theVietnamese-Laotian border, and its verifiedexistence was hailed as the zoological find of thehalf-century. This horned mammal, weighingmore than 200 pounds with cinnamon, black,and white coloration, is a hemibovid, a speciesancestral to both oxen and antelope that wasthought to have become extinct four millionyears ago. Zoologists estimated their presentpopulation to be in the hundreds.

In July 1999, zoologists saw the first photo-graphic evidence that the Javan rhinoceros,thought completely wiped out on the Asianmainland in the 1960s, still thrived 130 kilo-meters north of Ho Chi Minh City in the LamDong province of Vietnam. These huge ani-mals, which can weigh more than 3,000pounds, have somehow been misplaced ormissed for nearly 40 years.

In December 2000, scientists set out tosearch the northern jungles of Thailand forconclusive proof of the sightings of large, hairyelephants that witnesses claim strongly resem-ble the long-extinct woolly mammoth. Whatthese scientists and forestry officials may dis-cover is either a new species of elephant orlong-lost descendants of the great-tuskedmammoth of the Ice Age.

For at least 200 years now, stories haveemerged from the swamps, rivers, and lakes ofAfrican jungles that there exists a brownish-gray, elephant-sized creature with a reptiliantail and a long, flexible neck. The native peo-ple call it “mokele-mbembe” (“the one whostops the flow of rivers”) or “emela-ntuka”(“the one who eats the tops of trees”). In1980, Dr. Roy Mackal led an expedition into

African swamps that are “Mokey’s” hangoutsand stated later that the descriptions of thebeast would fit that of a sauropod, the giantplant-eating reptile that supposedly becameextinct about 60 million years ago.

J. Richard Greenwell, an expedition mem-ber from Tucson, Arizona, told of having dis-covered huge tracks that led into the LikoualaRiver. In his opinion, no animal smaller thanan elephant could have left such a paththrough the thickets near the river, and,Greenwell noted, elephants always leave anexit trail when they leave a river. Whateverleft these massive prints made no such sign ofan exit, which may indicate that Mokey is amarine, as well as land, creature.

Tracking even dinosaur-sized creatures isnot that simple in the Likouala swampland,which is twice the size of Scotland, and thickwith venomous snakes and disease-bearinginsects. On November 28, 1981, HermanRegusters, an aerospace engineer from SouthPasadena, California, and his wife, Kia,claimed to have seen and to have pho-tographed a dinosaurlike animal in a remoteAfrican lake. Kia Regusters said that thegigantic reptile was dark red with a long, thickneck, and longer than two hippopotamuses.Unfortunately, the photograph taken by theRegusters was rather fuzzy, and their taperecording of the “roaring trumpeting noise”heard frequently around Lake Tele was impos-sible to identify.

Dr. Bill Gibbons, a zoologist who special-izes in attempting to track down new species,told the (London) Sunday Times (June 3,1999) that he is certain that mokele-mbembeexists. According to Gibbons, cryptozoologistshad heard reports that hunters from theKabonga tribe had killed a mokele-mbembeand had tried to eat it. Its flesh proved inedi-ble and the carcass was left to rot and begnawed and pecked at by scavengers.

If there are monsters from the Age of Rep-tiles surviving in the remote jungles of theworld, what giant creatures might be thrivingin the vast depths of the seas and a number ofthe larger lakes throughout the world? Whatprehistoric monsters might be survivingunchanged, unscathed by the Earth changes



that annihilated their cousins more than 60million years ago? Supporting such specula-tions were the discoveries of numerous coela-canths (crossoptergian fish) off the coast ofsoutheast Africa in 1938. The coelacanthsthat were dragged from the ocean by the netsof fishermen had survived almost unchangedfor 70 million years—from a time even beforethe Age of Reptiles. Then, after nearly 200 ofthe supposedly extinct “living fossils” hadbeen discovered on the southeast Africancoast, the fourth coelacanth, a female almostfive and a half feet long, was caught off thecoast of Madagascar in March 2001. If a num-ber of coelacanth, whose species preceded thedinosaurs, have survived, why not some aquat-ic descendants of the giant reptiles?

A popular theory to explain the existenceof sea monsters is that they may be survivorsof one of the giant reptiles of the MesozoicAge. Philip Gosse, the famous nineteenth-century naturalist, was an avid exponent ofthe possibility that plesiosaurs could still bethriving in the Earth’s oceans. While theMesozoic Age ended tens of millions of yearsago, he argued, there was no a priori reasonwhy some of the descendants of the great seareptiles could not have survived. Othermarine zoologists favor the unverified exis-tence of an aquatic mammal related to thewhales as their candidate for the mantle of seamonster. They maintain that the horselikemane often reported on the so-called sea “ser-pents” would be an unlikely appendage for areptile—and, they argue that only a warm-blooded mammal would be able to survive inthe cold water of the North Atlantic where somany sea monster stories originate.

Still other marine researchers haveexpanded the theory of the monstrous seamammal and combined it with another candi-date for survival from prehistory. Theyhypothesize the survival of an ancient speciesof whale known as Zeuglodon or Basilosaurus,whose fossil remains are well-known. Well-equipped for the role of a sea monster,Basilosaurus was a huge beast with a slim,elongated body measuring over 70 feet inlength. Its skull was long and low, and thecreature propelled itself by means of a singlepair of fins at its forward end. This massive

marine monster is known to have survivedinto the Miocene Epoch, just over 30 millionyears ago. If the coelacanth has survived for 70million years, it seems possible that the rela-tively young Basilosaurus could still be inhab-iting the seas.

After years of researching Nessie in LochNess and similar long-necked lake creaturesall around the Northern Hemisphere, Dr. RoyMackal has come to believe that rather thanbeholding “monsters” in the waters, people arewitnessing small, remnant bands of Zeu-glodons. In Mackal’s theory, the creaturesmigrate from oceans to lakes, following suchprey as spawning salmon. Lake Champlain islinked to the Atlantic Ocean by the Richelieuand St. Lawrence Rivers of Quebec. LochNess is connected to the sea, and so is LakeOkanagan in British Columbia, where Ogo-pogo is frequently sighted.

Smaller than the Basilosaurus, a laterdevelopment on the evolutionary ladder, Zeu-glodons bear little resemblance to modernwhales. Mackal said that the fossil remnants ofthe creature at the Smithsonian Institute“looks like a big anaconda [a large semiaquaticboa constrictor] with a ridge down its back.”

M Delving Deeper

Coleman, Loren. Mysterious America. New York: Par-aview, 2002.

———. “Top Cryptozoological Stories of the Year2001.” The Anomalist, January 4, 2001. [Online]http://www.anomalist.com/features/topcz2001.html.


Mackal, Roy P. A Living Dinosaur? In Search of Mokele-Mbembe. New York: E. J. Brill, 1987.

———. Searching for Hidden Animals: An Inquiry intoZoological Mysteries. Garden City, N.Y.: Double-day, 1980.

Dragons

One of the most universal monster myths isthat of the dragon. The awesome, reptilelikebeasts appear in the folklore of nearly everycountry. And the fact that the creature wastruly regarded as an actual monster ratherthan a myth can be demonstrated in several



writings of the day. Edward Topsell, writing inhis Historie of Serpents (1608), commentedthat among all the kinds of serpents, there isnone comparable to the Dragon, or thatafforded and yielded “so much plentiful matterin history for the ample discovery of thenature thereof.”

While examining the “true accounts” ofdragons in the folklore and records of severalcultures, one cannot help wondering if therereally were dragonlike monsters prowling theearth, devouring hapless villagers, receivingperiodic sacrifices of young maidens, spreadingterror into the hearts of all, and being thwart-ed only by courageous knights. For years, chil-dren have been read tales, seen motion pic-tures, and heard songs of reluctant dragons,kindly dragons, affectionate dragons, magicdragons, and timid dragons.

Behind every myth smolders some spark oftruth and reality. A few scientists hold thetheory that a number of dinosaurs might have

survived into the Age of Man. Pick up anybook on dinosaurs and it is apparent that aTyrannosaurus Rex would have made a terrificdragon in anyone’s legend. Such a huge reptilethudding about the countryside of earlyEurope or Asia could certainly fit even themost dramatic descriptions of a dragon.

No theorist favoring the survivingdinosaur solution to dragons claims that thegreat reptiles existed in anything approachingabundance. But even a handful of suchancient monsters existing in isolated lakes andforested valleys would not have gone unno-ticed, even in the sparsely populated Europe ofthe Dark Ages. The discovery of even just afew of these great reptiles would have givenrise to a far-reaching legend.

A more palatable theory is that theancient historians were actually describinghuge snakes such as the python, which oftenreaches a length of more than 30 feet. A num-ber of dragon stories from the Middle Ages tellhow the dragon wound itself about its preyand slowly crushed it.

The giant snake theory does not accountfor descriptions of the dragon’s feet or its abili-ty to walk on all fours, but some species ofgiant lizard, such as the Komodo dragon,attains a length of 10–12 feet. The Komodopresently resides in the East Indies, but inancient times, it is possible that St. Georgeand his fellow dragon-killers might havefought some unknown species of monsterlizard in Europe and Asia.

A third, more believable theory has anadventurer of the Middle Ages coming upon acave filled with the bones of a giant cave bearand mistaking them for the skeletal remains ofa dragon. Workmen excavating earth for acathedral might even have unearthed the fossilremains of a dinosaur. It was not until thenineteenth century that scientists realized thatthe age of fossil bones often ran into millionsof years. Previously, the skeletons were consid-ered to have been the remains of some giantcreature only recently dead. If, at the time thedragon legend was flourishing in Europe, a dis-covery of fossil remains was unearthed or sight-ed in a cave, the find would seem to offer con-clusive proof for the existence of dragons. It is



Lynne Cherry‘s

illustration from The

Dragon and the Unicorn.

(HARCOURT, INC.)

A few scientists hold the theory that a number ofdinosaurs might have survived into the Age of Man.

likely that the bones of the mammoth, thewoolly rhinoceros, and the giant cave bearwere not that uncommon in early Europe. Thetusk of the mammoth was often called for inthe recipes of medieval love potions.

In the marketplace of the Austrian city ofKlagenfurt, there is a statue of a giant killing adragon. The dragon’s head has quite obviouslybeen modeled on the skull of a woolly rhinoc-eros. The connection can be proven by thefact that old records note the discovery of a“dragon’s skull” in Klagenfurt in the sixteenthcentury, 30 years before the statue was con-structed. The skull has been preserved allthese years by the city fathers and can be iden-tified today as that of the Ice Age rhinoceros.

M Delving Deeper

Carrington, Richard. Mermaids and Mastodons. Lon-don: Arrow Books, 1960.


Mackal, Roy P. A Living Dinosaur? In Search of Mokele-Mbembe. New York: E. J. Brill, 1987.

Loch Ness and Other Lake Monsters

In 1936, Glasgow filmmaker Malcolm Irvinefilmed a dark blob, approximately 30 feet inlength, moving slowly across Loch Ness andoffered what he believed to be proof that themost famous monster in the world actually exist-

ed in the Scottish lake where it had been sightedsince the fifteenth century. With that brief film-strip, Nessie mania had been brought into thetwentieth century and has never subsided, seem-ingly growing stronger each year. And in spite ofIrvine’s intentions, his cinematic record of theLoch Ness Monster did not put an end to thecontroversy over the creature’s existence.

Sightings of Nessie, most often described asa long-necked monster resembling a prehis-toric brontosaurus, have been seen in and nearLoch Ness since St. Columba made the firstrecorded sighting in 565, and nearly two mil-lion tourists each year come to Scotland to seeif they might obtain a glimpse and a photo-graph of the elusive water beast. For the pastseveral decades, volunteer Nessie spotters workin relays from mid-May to mid-October. Eachvolunteer is equipped with log pads, field glass-es, and video cameras with telephoto lenses.

Could a prehistoric creature actually beliving in a lake in Scotland? Loch Ness is cer-



Dennis Quaid (right) in

the 1996 movie

“Dragonheart.” (THE

KOBAL COLLECTION)

NEARLY two million tourists visit Scotland tosee if they might obtain a glimpse and a photograph ofthe Loch Ness Monster.

tainly large enough and deep enough. It is 24miles long by about a mile across. It has amean depth of 433 feet, twice that of theNorth Sea into which it flows through theRiver Ness at its eastern end. Five rivers and50 mountain streams feed Loch Ness. Theloch never freezes, and snow rarely lies near itsshores. Its temperature remains fairly constantat about a chilling 42 degrees Fahrenheit,summer or winter.

One of the more verifiable of the sightingsof a large creature in Loch Ness was made inthe mid-1960s by Tim Dinsdale, a member ofthe Defense Ministry’s Joint Air Reconnais-sance Center (JARIC), who said that the 12-to-16-foot-long thing that he photographedtraveling at a speed of 10 knots was “almostcertainly animate.”

On January 24, 1966, the Royal Air Forceissued its analysis of the Dinsdale filmstrip,stating that the movement in the water of the“hump” of the creature indicated that theobject was moving at a speed of about 10 milesper hour. After much technical discussionabout the relative size and perspective of the“solid black, approximately triangular shape”

(the hump) and a comparison of the unidenti-fied creature with a motorboat moving in thesame area (filmed immediately after the crea-ture had swum past), the RAF conceded thatthe object was “not a surface vessel.” And:“One can presumably rule out the idea that itis any sort of submarine vessel for various rea-sons, which leaves the conclusion that it prob-ably is an animate object.”

In the spring of 1968, David James, a for-mer member of the British Parliament andhead of the Loch Ness Phenomena Investiga-tion Bureau, stated that in the studied opinionof the bureau, it should be made clear thatthere was no single monster that had lived inLoch Ness for a few thousand years. What thebureau was investigating was the possibility ofan unidentified creature, “breeding, evolvinglike any other species…cut off from the sea,for 5,000 to 7,000 years.” The Loch Ness Phe-nomena Investigation Bureau also wished tomake one assertion clear: “There is somethingthere. Too many reliable persons have seentoo much, with too little possibility for coinci-dence, connivance, or conjuration to pass theentire matter off as only a figment of some-one’s imagination.”

In 1968, Dr. Roy P. Mackal, University ofChicago biologist and head of the U.S. branchof the bureau, received a three-year grant fromField Enterprises Educational Corporation ofChicago that incorporated the services and thesubmarine of Dan Taylor. Although the expedi-tion had sophisticated photographic equip-ment, biopsy darts, and other advancedresearch materials the murky brown waters ofLoch Ness rendered all the underwater devicesrelatively useless. Mackal has theorized that thetype of creature that most neatly fits the mass ofdescriptive evidence and photos compiled byresearchers and witnesses has to be some kindof large aquatic mammal that would be capableof thriving above 50-degrees north latitude.

Dan Taylor of Hardeeville, South Carolina,accompanied Mackal on the 1969 quest forNessie that was sponsored by Field Enterprises,publishers of the World Book Encyclopedia. Hehad been selected to become a part of the expe-dition because of his expertise with submarines,and he brought with him a small fiberglass sub-



A picture of the alleged

Loch Ness Monster

taken from Urquhart

Castle on May 21, 1977.




No monster in history has been pursuedas actively as the creature that is said toinhabit the depths of Loch Ness in Scot-land. Since 1936, there have been 27

recorded films taken of “Nessie” and hundreds of offi-cially recorded sightings.

Although hundreds of photographs of the LochNess Monster have been taken and alleged to beauthentic, all but a very few have been easilyexplained by scientists as ripples in the lake’s surface,floating debris, or deliberate hoaxes.

A new controversy regarding the authenticity of aseries of photographs of Nessie arose in September2002 when Roy Johnston, a retired printer, releasedfour photographs to the media that showed a largesnakelike creature arching out of the water and with-drawing beneath the surface of the lake with a splash.While some photographic experts declared the pic-tures to be genuine, others scoffed and argued thatthe images were not taken in sequence, as Johnstonhad said they were.

In 2001 Janet McBain, curator of the ScottishScreen Archive, found the original 16mm film that firstlaunched the Nessie craze. Made on September 22,1936, by Glasgow filmmaker Macolm Irvine for theScottish Film Productions Company, the film hadbecome nearly as legendary as the lake monster thatit depicted. McBain said that while the existence ofthe Irvine newsreel was well documented, it wasthought to have been destroyed and lost.

According to eyewitness accounts, Irvine hadfirst sighted the creature in 1933, but his camerajammed. Three years later, Irvine and his film crewspent three weeks at the lakeside before he got thefootage he wanted. On the footage, which lasts aboutone minute, the creature’s head and neck appearabove the surface of the water, then its two humps,one behind the other, and finally what appears to be atail, thrashing behind from side to side.

The area near the ruins of Urquhart Castle atDrumnadrochit is still the most common vantage pointfor Nessie sightings and is said to attract more than200,000 visitors per year.

Sources:

Fraser, Stephen. “New Nessie Pictures Spark Debate.” Scotland

on Sunday, September 8, 2002. [Online] http://www.news.

scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1000212002.

Milne, Meg. “Unearthed: The 1936 Film That First Launched

Nessie Mania.” Scotland on Sunday, November 25, 2001.

[Online] http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/text_only.

cfm?id=SS01045931.

Watson-Smyth, Kate. “Heritage Panel Rules on How to Hunt for

Nessie.” Independent, January 5, 2001. [Online] http://

www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/This_Britain/2001-01/

nessieo50101.shtml.

Nessie on Film

marine that he had built to explore the murkydepths of Loch Ness. It was on one of his lastruns around the loch that Taylor encounteredNessie. The submarine was hovering around adepth of 250 feet when he said that he felt thecraft beginning to turn, unnaturally, “like thesecondhand of a clock being pushed backwardby a finger,” he told J. R. Moehringer of the LosAngeles Times (August 16, 1998). Taylor knewthat something had pushed up against the sub-marine and turned it around, but he said that itdidn’t dawn on him that it had been Nessieuntil he surfaced.

D. Gordon Tucker, head of the electronicengineering department at Birmingham Uni-versity, and a team of sonar experts did havebetter luck finding evidence of Nessie in thepeat-stained loch waters with the specialequipment that he had developed. During anumber of expeditions to the lake (1968–70)and probing Loch Ness with sonar, Tucker’sstudy appeared to provide evidence that a fam-ily of monsters does indeed inhabit the loch. Inone 13-minute period, Tucker stated, sonarechoes defined large objects moving underwa-ter. A massive object was recorded swimmingat a speed as high as 17 miles per hour and div-ing at a rate of 450 feet a minute. “From theevidence we have,” he concluded, “there issome animal life in the loch whose behavior isdifficult to reconcile with that of fish.”

In 1971, Bob Rines, a world-renownedpatent attorney, physicist, and engineer, saw

Nessie for himself. In the middle of the lake,his binoculars focused clearly on the creaturefor 10 minutes, he saw what looked like theback of an elephant. He shrugs off the skepticswho say that he merely saw a school of fish ora trick of the light. He is familiar with thedwellers of the deep. It was his groundbreak-ing research on sonar that was used to locatethe Titanic.

In 1972, Rines set up an underwater soundstage at the lake, designed to trigger lights andstart a camera whenever a large object passed thestation. In 1975, the camera, rigged to roll at oneframe every 45 seconds, captured the image of acreature that he believes resembles a plesiosaur,an aquatic, air-breathing dinosaur that shouldhave been extinct 65 million years ago.

In March 1998, Scottish pet food salesmanRichard White won a prize award of $825.00for the best photograph of the Loch Ness Mon-ster of the year. White had been on his way tothe village of Foyers above the loch when henoticed an unusual disturbance in the waterhalfway across the loch toward Urquhart Cas-tle on the opposite bank. He stopped to take atook, grabbed his camera, and began snappingphotos of the monster in the water.

Gary Campbell, president of the OfficialLoch Ness Monster Fan Club, declaredWhite’s photos of “Nessie” to be among thebest that he had ever seen. The fact that scien-tists using computer enhancement techniqueshad been unable to assess exactly what the pic-tures showed, Campbell said, only added to themystery of Loch Ness. Although Nessie is farand away the most famous of all monstersinhabiting inland bodies of water, there arereports of equally large, equally strange aquaticcreatures in lakes all over the world.

M Delving Deeper

Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord. Alien Animals. Harris-burg, Penn.: Stackpole Books, 1981.


Dey, Iain. “Monster-hunters Set to Trap Nessie withthe Net.” The Scotsman, October 30, 2001.[Online] http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/text_only.cfm?id=119742.

Dinsdale, Tim. Loch Ness Monster. 4th ed. Boston:Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982.



Film crew preparing to

film a lake monster.

(ARCHIVES OF

BRAD STEIGER)

Mackal, Roy P. The Monsters of Loch Ness. Chicago:Swallow Press, 1976.

“Monster Hunter.” 60 Minutes II, December 5, 2001.[Online] http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,320220-412,00.shtml.

Russell, Davy, ed. “When Lake Monsters Attack!” X-Project, August 16, 2001. [Online] http://www.xprojectmagazine.com/archives/cryptozoology/lmaattack.html.

Sea Serpents

“Any fool can disbelieve in sea serpents,”commented Victoria, British Columbia, news-paper editor Archie Willis in 1933. Willis’spronouncement came as a sharp rejoinder tothe skeptics who laughed at the hundreds ofwitnesses who swore that they had seen a largesnakelike creature swimming in the waters offthe coast of the Pacific Northwest. Willischristened the sea monster “Cadborosaurus,”and the nickname stuck.

The creature with its long serpentine body,its horselike head, humps on its back, and itsremarkable surface swimming speed of up to40 knots, has been a part of coastal lore fromAlaska to Oregon for hundreds of years. Whilethe waters of the Pacific Northwest borderone of the deepest underwater trenches on theplanet—where almost any massive seabeastcould reside—the greatest number of sightingsof Cadborosaurus have occurred in the inlandwaters around Vancouver Island and thenorthern Olympic Peninsula.

In Cadborosaurus: Survivor of the Deep(2000), Vancouver biologist Dr. Edward L.Bousfield and Dr. Paul H. Leblond, professor ofoceanography at the University of BritishColumbia, describe the creature as a classic seamonster with a flexible, serpentine body, anelongated neck topped by a head resemblingthat of a horse or giraffe, the presence of anteri-or flippers, and a dorsally toothed or spiky tail.

When the crew of the yacht Valhalla sight-ed a sea monster off Parahiba, Brazil, onDecember 7, 1905, it was fortunate to haveamong its passengers E. G. B. Meade-Waldoand Michael J. Nicoll, two expert naturalists,Fellows of the Zoological Society of Britain,who were taking part in a scientific expeditionto the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean.

Meade-Waldo prepared a paper on the sight-ing, which he presented to the society at itsmeeting on June 19, 1906. In his report, hetold how his attention was first drawn to a“large brown fin…sticking out of the water,dark seaweed-brown in color, somewhat crin-kled at the edge.” The creature’s fin was anastonishing six feet in length “and projectedfrom 18 inches to two feet from the water.”Under the water and to the rear of the fin, thezoologist said that he could perceive “theshape of a considerable body. A great headand neck did not touch the [fin] in the water,but came out of the water in front of it, at adistance of certainly not less than 18 inches,probably more. The neck appeared to be thethickness of a slight man’s body, and fromseven to eight feet was out of the water.”

The head, according to Meade-Waldo’sexpert observation, had a “very turtlelikeappearance, as had also the eye…it moved itsneck from side to side in a peculiar manner;the color of the head and neck was darkbrown above and whitish below.” Meade-Waldo also stated that since he saw the crea-ture, he has reflected on its actual size andconcluded that it “was probably considerablylarger than it appeared at first.”

Nicoll discussed the incident of the Valhal-la sea monster sighting two years later in hisbook Three Voyages of a Naturalist: “I feel cer-tain that [the creature] was not a reptile…buta mammal. The general appearance of thecreature, especially the soft, almost rubberlikefin, gives one this impression.”

Off shore on the Atlantic seacoast ofNorth America, there is a sea serpent that hasbeen paying periodic visits to the Cape Annarea and Gloucester, Massachusetts, for morethan 340 years. An Englishman named JohnJosselyn, who was returning to London, madethe first sighting of the creature as it lay“coiled like a cable” on a rock at Cape Ann.Seamen would have killed the serpent, buttwo Native American crew members protest-ed such an act, stating that all on board wouldbe in danger of terrible retribution if the seacreature was harmed.

On August 6, 1817, Amos Lawrence,founder of the mills which bore his name,



sighted the sea monster and issued a proclama-tion to that effect. Col. Thomas H. Perkins,one of Boston’s wealthiest citizens, also testi-fied to the reality of the great serpent, statingthat it was about 40 feet in length with a singlehorn nine to 12 inches long on its head.

On that same August day, a group of fish-ermen spotted the marine giant near EasternPoint and shouted that it was making its waybetween Ten Pound Island and the shore.They said later that they could clearly see thething’s backbone moving vertically as itappeared to be chasing schools of herringaround the harbor. Shipmaster SolomonAllen judged the serpent to be between 80and 90 feet in length.

Generations of Gloucester residents andtourists have sighted the Cape Ann sea ser-

pent, often as they sailed the harbor and near-ly always stating that they were frightened bythe appearance of a huge snakelike creature atleast 70 feet in length.

In April 1975, some fishermen saw themonster up close and personal and were ableto provide one of the more complete descrip-tions of the monster.

According to Captain John Favazza, theyhad sighted a large, dark object on their star-board side, about 80 feet away, that they hadat first thought was a whale. Then a serpent-like creature lifted its head from the surface,saw the fishing boat, and began to swimdirectly toward them. Favazza later toldreporters that the sea serpent was black,smooth rather than scaly, with a pointed head,small eyes, and a white line around its mouth.



Sea serpent. (MARY

EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY)



The giant squid, one of the most terrifyingmonsters of the sea, has never been seenalive. A member of the class Cephalopoda,which includes the octopus and the nau-

tilus, the giant squid is the largest invertebrate in theworld.

The statement that the monster has never beenseen alive should be amended to read that no marinezoologist or other scientist has been able to observethe giant squid in its natural habitat. The huge crea-ture, commonly known as the kraken, has beenreported throughout nautical history. There have beenfrightening reports of people snatched from theirboats or the seashore by the tentacles of the kraken,numerous sightings of whales being attacked by thegiant squid, and stories of entire ships being pulledbeneath the surface by a beast with tentacles morethan 200 feet long. Some scholars of marine lore insistthat the great giant squid fight scene in Jules Verne’s(1828–1905) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870) wasbased on an actual encounter with a kraken thatinvolved the French battleship Alecton in 1861.

On a weekend in July 2002, early morning joggersdiscovered the remains of a giant squid almost com-pletely intact, stretching nearly 50 feet in length andweighing over 500 pounds. Observers said the beasthad eyes the size of small dinner plates and a parrot-like central beak. Dr. David Pemberton, Senior Curatorof Zoology at Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery,rushed to the scene in time to save the fragile corpsefrom the incoming tide.

Six months earlier, another nearly complete spec-imen of giant squid had been washed ashore nearAberdeen, Scotland. In December 2001, scientistsfrom the United States, Japan, Spain, and Francereported eight separate sightings in various oceans ofan unknown species of squid that if not giant squidswere certainly very large creatures. Underwatervideo cameras recorded footage of what may be anew species of squid 13 to 23 feet long gliding throughocean depths of 11,000 feet.

Sources:

Askwith, Richard. “They Came from the Deep.” The Independent,

August 7, 2002. [Online] http://news.independent.co.uk/

world/environment/story.jsp?dir=507&story=322280&host=....

“Deep-sea Monster Caught on Tape.” Science News from

MSNBC, December 20, 2001. [Online] http://www.msnbc.

com/news/674647.asp.

Heuvelmans, Bernard. In the Wake of Sea-Serpents. New York:

Hill and Wang, 1968.

Are Giant Squids

the True

Sea Monsters?

It swam sideways in the water, like a snake. Itwas longer than his 66-foot boat, and he esti-mated its girth as about 15 feet around.

Some cryptozoologists, individuals whostudy the possibility of such creatures as seaand lake monsters truly existing, have theo-rized that plesiosaurs, one of the giant reptilesof the Mesozoic Age, which ended about 70million years ago, could have survived in thedepths of the relatively unchanged environ-ment of Earthl’s oceans. Because some seamonster sightings occur in cold waters, otherresearchers favor the survival of an ancientspecies of mammals, such as the ancestor ofthe whale known as Zeuglodon or Basilosaurus.The Basilosaurus had a slim, elongated, snake-like body measuring more than 70 feet inlength which the huge creature propelled bymeans of a single pair of fins at its forward end.

The debate over what monstrous creaturesbest wear the mantle of “sea monster” couldhave been solved for all time back in 1852when two New Bedford whaling vessels, theMonongahela and the Rebecca Sims, were drift-ing slowly in the Pacific doldrums, their sailslimp from lack of wind. When the lookout’sshout of “something big in the water” causedCaptain Seabury of the Monongahela to use histelescope to view the object; he could distin-guish only a huge living creature, thrashingabout in the water as if in great agony. Thecaptain’s immediate deduction was that theyhad come upon a whale that had been wound-ed by the harpoons of another whaler’s long-boats and was now dying.

Seabury ordered three longboats over theside to end the beast’s pain, and he was in thefirst boat as it pulled alongside the massivething that he still believed was a woundedwhale. The instant a harpoon struck the beast,a nightmarish head 10 feet long rose out of thewater and lunged at the boats. Two of the long-boats were capsized in seconds. Before themonster submerged, the terrified whalers real-ized at once that they were dealing with a seacreature the likes of which they had never seen.

Unfurling her sails to catch what little windthere was, the Monongahela managed to comealongside the capsized longboats and began topick up the seamen who were bobbing in the

water, fearing that the hideous beast might atany moment resurface and eat them. TheRebecca Sims, under the command of CaptainGavitt, pulled alongside her sister ship, and thecrews of the two ships began discussing thestrange monster that they had encountered.

The next morning, the crewmen hadpulled in only about half of the line when themassive carcass suddenly popped to the sur-face. It was much greater in length than theship, which measured 100 feet from stem tostern, and it had a thick body that was about50 feet in diameter. Its color was a brownishgray with a light stripe about three feet widerunning its full length. Its neck was 10 feetaround, and it supported a grotesque head thatwas 10 feet long and shaped like that of agigantic alligator. The astounded crewmencounted 94 teeth in its ghastly jaws—andeach of the three-inch, saberlike teeth werehooked backward, like those of a snake.

Seabury was fully aware of the ridiculeaccorded to sailing masters and their crewswho claimed to have encountered “sea ser-pents,” so he gave orders that the hideous headbe chopped off and placed in a huge picklingvat in order to preserve it until they returnedto New Bedford. In addition, he wrote adetailed report of their harpooning the seamonster and he provided a complete descrip-tion of the thing. Since Gavitt and his crewwere homeward bound, Seabury gave him thereport in order to prepare New Bedford for theastonishing exhibit that he and his men wouldbring with them upon their own return.

If only Seabury would have transferred thegrisly head to Gavitt’s vessel along with hisreport of the monster, the doubting worldwould have had its first mounted sea serpent’shead more than 150 years ago. CaptainSeabury’s account of the incredible sea serpentarrived safely in New Bedford and was enteredinto the records along with the personal oathof Captain Gavitt. But the Monongahela neverreturned to port with its incredible cargo.Years later her nameboard was found on theshore of Umnak Island in the Aleutians.

M Delving Deeper

Carrington, Richard. Mermaids and Mastodons. Lon-don: Arrow Books, 1960.



Cleary, Ryan. “Monster Beached.” The Telegram,August 2, 2001. [Online] http://www.thetelegram.com/topstories/news/story.asp?id=46701&In=In.


Ellis, Richard. Monsters of the Sea. New York: AlfredA. Knopf, 1994.

Heuvelmans, Bernard. In the Wake of the Sea Serpents.New York: Hill and Wang, 1968.

Thunderbirds

The Thunderbird figures prominently in thetraditions of many Native American tribes. Forsome, it is the flapping of the Thunderbird’swings that one hears during rainstorms rum-bling in the skies and it is the Thunderbird’seyes and beak that flash the lightning. To theLakota of the prairie, the Thunderbird is anembodiment of the Great Mystery, the SupremeBeing, which created all things on Earth. Forthe tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy of thenortheast, Hino, the Thunderbird, guardian ofthe skies and the spirit of thunder, could assumethe form of a human when it suited its purpose.The cosmology of many of the western tribesestablish a Thunderbird in each of the four cor-ners of the world as guardians and protectors,fighting always to keep away evil spirits.

Many scholars over the centuries haveattributed the Native American myths of theThunderbird to their reverence for the eagle,the largest of indigenous birds in North Amer-ica. Interestingly, however, many people haveclaimed to have seen for themselves a greatbird, far larger than the eagle, flying overhead.In fact, even in the nineteenth century, somewitnesses were claiming to have seen flyingmonsters that resembled pterodactyls, thewinged reptiles that should have been extinct60 million years ago.

On April 9, 1948, a farm family outside ofCaledonia, Illinois, saw a monster bird thatthey all said was bigger than an airplane. Indifferent parts of the state on the same day, aFreeport truck driver said that he, too, hadseen the creature. A former army coloneladmitted that he had seen a bird of tremen-dous size while he stood talking with the headof Western Military Academy and a farmernear Alton. On April 10, several witnesses

saw the gigantic bird. One man said that hehad at first believed it to be a type of planethat he had never before seen. On April 24,back at Alton, a man described it as an enor-mous, incredible thing, flying at about 500feet and casting a shadow the same size as thatof a Piper Cub at the same height. Two police-men said that the monster bird was as big as asmall airplane.

Giant Thunderbird-type creatures havecontinued to be sighted in various parts of theUnited States, from the northeast to thenorthwest and many points in between. OnSeptember 25, 2001, a witness sighted a giantbird flying over South Greensburg, Pennsylva-nia. Researchers soon found other witnesseswho claimed to have had sightings of Thun-derbirds in Westmoreland County, Pennsylva-nia. On November 5, a resident of Bristol,Connecticut, who was out walking his dog atdawn, said that he had sighted a giant birdlikecreature the size of an ultralight plane flyingover a community center.

In addition to the ancient Native Ameri-can legends of the Thunderbird, there are cer-tain old pioneer records that support the exis-tence of giant birdlike creatures in the skies ofNorth America. From the mouth of the Illi-nois River at Grafton to Alton (Illinois), adistance of 20 miles, the Mississippi River runsfrom west to east, and its north bank (the Illi-nois side) is a high bluff. When the first whitemen explored the area, they found that someunknown muralist from some forgotten tribalculture had engraved and painted hideousdepictions of two gigantic, winged monsters.The petroglyphs were each about 30 feet inlength and 12 feet in height.

Father Jacques Marquette (1637–1675), thecelebrated Jesuit priest-explorer, mentioned thestrange petroglyphs in his journals of the Mis-



THE Thunderbird is an embodiment of theGreat Mystery, the Supreme Being, which created allthings on Earth.

sissippi, published in Paris in 1681. In a smallvolume published in 1698, Father Louis Hen-nepin (1626–after 1701), another early explor-er of the wilds of the west, had also describedthe two enormously large petroglyphs. In his48-page booklet The Piasa or the Devil Amongthe Indians (Morris, Ill., 1887), P. A. Armstrongdescribed the creatures as having “the wings ofa bat, but of the shape of an eagle’s…They alsohad four legs, each supplied with eagle-shapedtalons. The combination and blending togetherof the master species of the earth, sea, andair…so as to present the leading and most ter-rific characteristics of the various species thusgraphically arranged, is an absolute wonder andseems to show a vastly superior knowledge ofanimal, fowl, reptile, and fish nature than hasbeen accorded to the Indian.”

Whatever the petroglyphs truly represent-ed, all the native tribes of what then consti-tuted the Northwest Territory had a terribletradition associated with the creatures theycalled the Piasa (or Piusa). Sometime in the1840s, Professor John Russell of Jersey County,Illinois, explored the caves that the Piasa weresaid to have inhabited and reported that theroof of the cavern was nearly 20 feet high andvaulted. The shape of the cave was irregular,but so far as Professor Russell and his guidecould judge, the bottom averaged 20 by 30feet. According to Russell: “The floor of thecave throughout its whole extent was onemass of human bones. Skulls and other boneswere mingled together in the utmost confu-sion…we dug to the depth of three or four feetin every quarter of the cavern and still foundonly bones. The remains of thousands musthave been deposited there.”

Some of the traditions of the native peoplestate that the Piasa was fond of bathing in theMississippi and was a rapid swimmer. When itwas splashing about in the Father of Waters, itraised such a commotion as to force great wavesover the banks. Other ancient traditions statethat when the Piasa was angry it thrashed theground with its tail until the whole earth shookand trembled. The Piasa was generally fearedbecause of its propensity for snatching tribes-people and making off with them. John Russellpublished an account of the Piasa’s insatiableappetite for human flesh in the 1848 July issue

of The Evangelical Magazine and Gospel Advo-cate: “[the Piasa] was artful as he was powerful,and would dart suddenly and unexpectedlyupon an Indian, bear him off into one of thecaves of the bluff and devour him. Hundreds ofwarriors attempted for years to destroy him, butwithout success. Whole villages were nearlydepopulated, and consternation spread throughall the tribes of the Illini.”

In the legends of the Miami tribe, theMiamis were fighting their traditional ene-mies, the Mestchegamies, at the upper end ofthe lower canyon near the cave of the Piasa.As the fighting was reaching its climax, thewar whoops apparently disturbed the Piasa,and two fierce, winged creatures emerged fromtheir caves, “uttering bellowings and shrieks,while the flapping of their wings upon the airroared out like so many thunderclaps.” Theawful winged beasts swooped low over theheads of the combatants, and each snatched aMiami chieftain in its massive talons. TheMiamis became instantly demoralized, believ-ing that the Great Spirit had sent the Piasa toaid and assist their enemies.

The Miamis were so crippled as a nationthat the survivors fled toward the WabashRiver and did not feel safe until they hadcrossed its waters. Here they remained for gen-erations before returning to Illinois territory. Ifthese stories are true, then the seeming assis-tance by the Piasa to the Mestchegamies intheir desperate battle with the Miamis nearAlton, Illinois, proved to be a terrible curseinstead of a sudden blessing. Soon after thePiasa had flown off with the screaming andstruggling Miami chieftains in their talons, themonsters apparently developed a taste forhuman flesh. Consequently, the Mestchegamicame to pay for their victory over the Miamisthrough an unending sacrifice of their people tofeed the ever-hungry Piasa, which now seemedinsatiable in their forays for human flesh.

According to Armstrong’s little book andhis recounting of the Miami tradition, thePiasa existed “several thousand winters beforethe palefaces came.” Armstrong goes on to sug-gest the Piasa could have been surviving ptero-dactyl from the age of the great reptiles. “Thefossil remains of some 25 species of this mon-



ster have been found [c. 1887], and it is some-times called the pterosaur or flying lizard,” hewrites. “But the most singular monster of theage yet discovered [and its shape and compo-nent parts analyzed] is the ramphorhyneus,which seems to be a connective link betweenbirds, beasts, and reptiles. Its body and neckresemble that of the Piasa, while its tail is iden-tical with it, except it is pictured as draggingbehind instead of being carried around thebody or over its back and head. The shape ofthe head is drawn to resemble that of a duck,with the long bill of a snipe or bittern, but it isfull of sharp, round teeth, like those of thecrocodile. It had four legs, with eagle’s talons,and a pair of bat-like wings…its entire lengthfrom head to tip of tail was probably 30 feet ormore. In many respects the Piasa is a faithfulcopy of the ramphorhyneus. The form, shape,and description of the Piasa, according to theIndian tradition, were painted from actualsight of the living subject…Thus may the tra-ditions of these Indians be true…”

Numerous sightings of birds the size ofsmall airplanes were reported in southwestPennsylvania in the summer and early fall of2001. On June 13, a resident in Greensville,who said that he was familiar with the wildlifein the area, at first mistook the huge bird for anultralight aircraft. He estimated the wingspanto be about 15 feet and the body to be nearlyfive feet in length. In July, a witness in ErieCounty claimed to have seen a large, black-colored bird with a wingspan of about 17 feet.On September 25, a witness who said that hehad a strong interest in ornithology, encoun-tered a massive bird with a head about threefeet long and a wingspan of 10 to 15 feet.

In October 2002, Alaskan villagers inTogiak and Manokotak reported seeing a hugebird larger than anything they had seenbefore. Pilot John Bouker, owner of BristolBay Air Service, said that while flying toManokotak he and his passengers sighted alarge “raptorlike” bird with a wingspan thatmatched the length of his Cessna 207, about14 feet. When Moses Coupchiak, a heavyequipment operator from Togiak, spotted themonster bird flying toward him, he said thathe thought it was a small airplane until itbanked to the left and flew away.

Biologists in the region said that theybelieved the witnesses sighted a bird known asthe Steller’s sea eagle, a species native tonortheast Asia, that occasionally shows up onthe Aleutian islands and on Kodiak, Alaska.The Steller’s sea eagle can have a wingspan ofeight feet and is about three times as large as abald eagle.

M Delving Deeper

Armstrong, P. A. The Piasa or the Devil Among theIndians. Morris, Ill., 1887.

Coleman, Loren. ”Top Cryptozoological Stories of theYear 2001.” The Anomalist, January 4, 2001.[Online] http://www.anomalist.com/features/topcz2001.html.

Porco, Peter. “Southwest Alaskans See Bird They SayIs Super Cub-sized.” Anchorage Daily News, Octo-ber 15, 2002. [Online] http://www.adn.com/1962481p-2066841c.html.

Steiger, Brad. Worlds Before Our Own. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1978.

Wee Folk and

Their Friends

All cultures have their stories of the weefolk, the nature entities, that appear sooften to be a mirror-image of

humankind and somehow indicate thathumans are part of a larger community ofintelligences—both physical and nonphysical.Since the beginning of time, the human raceand the wee folk have shared this planet, expe-riencing a strange, symbiotic relationship. Insuch cultures as ancient Rome, the householdspirits were called “Lares,” and the tradition ofeach home having its own guardian of thehearth survived throughout most of Europe.Although the great majority of modern peoplestereotypically envision fairies, elves, brown-ies, and so forth gamboling about only in thewoodlands, there are long traditions of friendlyspirits who guard the home and look after thebarn, stables, and farm animals.

In many traditions, especially in theBritish Isles and Scandinavia, the fairy folkwere supernormal entities who inhabited amagical kingdom beneath the surface of theearth. In all traditions, the wee people are



depicted as possessing many more powers andabilities than humans, but somehow they arestrongly dependent on human beings andfrom time to time they seek to reinforce theirown kind by kidnapping both human childrenand adults.

While the wee people and their associatedentites—elves, gnomes, and leprechauns—aremost often depicted as sweet, little winged“Tinkerbells” and jolly forest creatures inbright costumes and pointed hats, each of thefairy folk and their kin have a dark side. Someof the nursery tales throughout the centurieshave depicted a certain mischievous nature tothe wee people, but the creatures can becomedownright nasty—even dangerous—if pro-voked.

Medieval theologians seemed to favorthree possibilities to explain the origin ofthese beings:

1. they are a special class of demoted angels,

2. they are spirits of the dead or a special classof the dead, or

3. they are fallen angels.

Most of the ancient texts declare thatthese entities are of a middle nature, “betweenhumans and angels.” Although they are of anature between spirits and humans, they canintermarry with humans and bear half-humanchildren. One factor has been consistent in alltraditions: the “middle folk” continually med-dle in affairs of humans, sometimes to do themgood, sometimes to do them ill.

C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), author of manybooks on spiritual matters, once suggested thatthe wee folk are a third rational species. Theangels are the highest, having perfect goodnessand whatever knowledge is necessary for themto do God’s will; humans, somewhat less per-fect, are the second; fairies, having certainpowers of the angels but no souls, are the third.

Because the folklore of the wee people is somulticultural and worldwide, some theoristshave suggested that the fairy folk may actuallyhave been the surviving remnants of a pastcivilization populated by a species of earlyhumans or humanoids that were of diminutivestature compared to evolving Homo sapiens.These little people may have been quite

advanced and possessed a technology thatseemed to be magical compared to the primi-tive tools of the primitive hunter-gathererhumans who later became the established resi-dents of the area. The little people may havedied out, they may have been assimilated intothe encroaching culture by interbreeding, orthey may largely have gone underground,emerging topside often enough to be perpetu-ated in folklore and legend.

M Delving Deeper

Bord, Janet. Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People.New York: Dell Publishing, 1998.

DuBois, Pierre, with Roland Sabatier and ClaudineSabatier, illustrators. The Great Encyclopedia ofFairies. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Jones, Alison, ed. Larousse Dictionary of World Lore.New York: Larousse, 1995.

Keightley, Thomas. The World Guide to Gnomes,Fairies, Elves, and Other Little People. New York:Random House, 2000.


Rose, Carol. Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins:An Encyclopedia. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.

Spence, Lewis. The Fairy Tradition in Britain. London:Rider, 1948.

Elves

In old Germany, “elf” was a name applied toany kind of supernatural spirit, especially onethat inhabited fields or forests. The Germansalso blamed elves for sitting on their chestswhile they slept and causing them to have anightmare.

In Scotland, England, and Scandinavia,“elf” was another name for a member of thefairy folk. Then, as fairy lore developed andbecame more intricate and complex, with lev-els and classes within their supernatural ranks,the English designated elves as smaller mem-bers of the fairy population and the Scots gavethe title of elf to those beings who were gener-ally of human size. Things changed a bit inScandinavia, as well, when the people therebegan to distinguish two categories of elves—the benign light ones and the dastardly darkones. Scottish lore developed to perceive the



kindly elves as the “seelie court” and the nastyspirits as the “unseelie court.”

Scandinavians also called the elves the“huldre folk” and envisioned two principledivisions of the beings. There were the lovely,charming elves, who easily passed for humansand who loved to join in folk dances and in vil-lage parties. These elves, especially the femalesof the bunch, could easily seduce any humanmale into obeying their will. The male elves,though appearing handsome and dashing in thefirelight of a village festival, would usually beexposed as ugly when moonlight struck them inthe forests. The Danes also noticed that eventhe attractive elves occasionally betrayedthemselves with a long cowlike tail that poppedout of their dress or trousers.

In contemporary presentations, elves areusually portrayed as jolly creatures, humanlikein appearance, but extremely diminutive insize, who love teasing humans and playingpranks on them.

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Froud, Brian. Good Faeries, Bad Faeries. New York:Simon & Schuster, 1998.






Fairies

According to those who speak the Gaelictongue of Scotland and Ireland, the wee folkprefer to be known as “sidhe” (also spelledsidh, sith, sithche) and pronounced “shee.”There is disagreement as to the exact meaning

of sidhe. Some say that it refers to the moundsor hills in which the supernatural folk abide.Others say that it means “the people ofpeace,” and that is how the sidhe generallybehave toward humans unless the topsidedwellers offend them in some way.

Traditionally, the fairies are a race of beingswho are the counterparts of humankind inphysical appearance but, at the same time, arenonphysical or multidimensional. They aremortal, but lead longer lives than their humancousins. Fairies have always been consideredvery much akin to humans, but also as some-thing other than mortal.

The fairies are said to be able to enchanthumans, to take advantage of them in numer-ous ways, and even cast a spell on likely youngmen or women and marry them. They oftenseem intent upon kidnapping children andadults and whisking them off to their under-ground kingdom. Those who return from themagical kingdom have experienced missinghours, days, weeks—even years.

On the plus side, fairies have also beenreported to help farmers harvest their crops orassist housemaids in cleaning a kitchen. There



Fairies—magical

winged beings.


are accounts of fairy folk guiding humans toachieve material successes, and stories are toldof fairy midwives who stand by to assist at thebirths of favored human children and whoremain to guide and tutor them for the rest oftheir lives.

Some scholars and researchers of the con-siderable body of worldwide fairylore maintainthat fairies are entities who belong solely tothe realm of spirit. Many of the ancient textsdeclare that the fairies are somehow of a “mid-dle nature betwixt Man and Angel.” Somebiblically inspired authorities have sought tocast fairies as an earthly incarnation assumedby the rebellious angels who were driven outof heaven during the celestial uprising led byLucifer. These fallen angels, cast from theirheavenly abode, took up new residences in theforests, mountains, and lakes of Earth. As fall-en angels, they now existed in a much-dimin-ished capacity, but still possessed more thanenough power to be deemed supernatural bythe human inhabitants of the planet.

In a variation of that account of the fairies’origin, other scholars contend that after the

war in heaven, the dispossessed angels materi-alized on Earth and assumed physical bodiessimilar to those of humans—those beingsdeclared “a little lower than the angels.”Eventually, these paraphysical beings tookhumans as mates, thereby breeding a hybridspecies of entities “betwixt Man and Angel.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) madefairies famous in a number of his masterworks.He is largely responsible for the concept of thewee folk as mostly benign—mischievous, per-haps, but never evil. Alexander Pope(1688–1744) wrote lovely passages idealizingfairies, but once satirically remarked that hebelieved many of the woodland sprites were pos-sessed by the souls of deceased socialites whoeven after death refused to give up earthlyamusements. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832)emphasized the beauty of the fairy realm andthe struggle of the fairies to achieve humanlikesouls. The famed poet William Butler Yeats(1865–1939) had a nearly obsessive interest inthe supernatural and strongly believed in fairies.

It was the creator of Sherlock Holmes, SirArthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), who came



“Fairy Tale: A True

Story.” (THE KOBAL

COLLECTION)

to the defense of Elsie Wright and Frances Grif-fiths, the two little girls who allegedly pho-tographed fairies in the famous Case of the Cot-tingley Fairies in 1917. Doyle became convincedthat fairies are genuine psychic phenomena andthat just as some people can act as mediums andothers have unusual powers of extrasensory per-ception, so do others—especially certain chil-dren—have the ability to see fairies. Concerningfairies themselves, Doyle theorized that they areconstructed of material that emits vibrationseither shorter or longer than the normal spec-trum visible to the human eye.

Although in the 1980s it was revealed thatthe two girls had quite likely faked the pho-tographs of the fairies, in 1997 a motion pic-ture entitled Fairy Tale: A True Story chose toemphasize the magical qualities of the Cotting-ley incident. Charles Sturridge, the director,was quoted in Premiere, November 1997, assaying that he didn’t want to make a film aboutwhether or not the two young girls had fakedthe fairy photographs. Sturridge emphasizedthat his film was really all about, “The need tobelieve beyond what you can see.” Interesting-ly, yet another film about the Cottingleyfairies, Photographing Fairies, appeared in 1998,and director Nick Willing chose to depict theelemental beings primarily as spirits.

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Chollet, Laurence. “Under the Fairy Influence.” TheRecord, March 14, 2001. [Online] http://www.bergen.com/yourtime/lc14200103146.htm.






“More Than Just a Fairy Story.” The KingstonGuardian, February 12, 2001. [Online] http://

www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/local_london/news/weird/2001/february12/ed01120201.htm.


Gnomes

Traditionally, gnomes are most often repre-sented as gnarled, wrinkled, hunched old menwho have been assigned to guard some ancienttreasure. Over the years, the entities have beenconfused with images of mischievous elves,fun-loving fairies, or dwarves working in dia-mond mines, but classically, the role of thegnome is that of a supernatural guardian whocan release the treasures of the earth to theearnest alchemist or magician. The gnome,according to the alchemists of the Renais-sance, had the ability to move through theearth in a manner similar to a human movingthrough air or a fish through water. Thealchemist would seek to invoke the energy ofthe salamander, a lizardlike entity whose ele-ment was fire, and the gnome, whose elementwas earth, and combine their energies with airand water to create gold from base metals.

The name applied to the guardian of theearth’s treasures is thought to be derived fromthe Greek “genomos,” earth-dweller. Popularimages of little men and women with pointedhats who inhabit flower gardens and forestshave most likely confused gnomes with elves.

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Goblins

Goblins are closely related to demonic enti-ties. Although some Europeans recognize agentler variety known as a “hobgoblin,” gob-lins seem never to be satisfied with creatingmischief. Their specialty is wreaking havocand malicious acts of harm. Usually portrayedas small, grotesque beings, the basic nature ofgoblins is as foul as their appearance.

The spunkie is a Scottish goblin that par-ticularly has it in for those travelers who ven-ture out after dark. The spunkie is consideredso nasty that tradition claims it to be a directagent of Satan. It hovers about in the dark-ness, just waiting for a traveler to become lostin the night, perhaps during a rainstorm whenvisibility is especially bad. The goblin mani-fests a light that appears to the desperate way-farer like illumination shining through a win-dowpane, thus signaling shelter and a dryplace to spend the inclement evening. But asthe hopeful traveler approaches the light, itkeeps moving just a bit farther away. Since thepoor, drenched pilgrim has no choice in thedarkness but to keep pursuing the light source,the spunkie keeps moving it just a bit fartheron—until the evil goblin has lured the unfor-tunate traveler over a cliff.

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Gremlins

Although gremlins are a recent addition tothe folklore of the wee folk, it would seem thattheir antecedents are the goblins of old. Theterm “gremlin” was derived from the Old Eng-lish word greme, which means to vex andannoy. And that is certainly what the grem-lins did to the pilots and their aircraft inWorld War II (1939–45) when the pesky enti-ties were routinely blamed for engine troubles,electronic failures, and any other thing thatmight go wrong with an airplane.

Although the tales of gremlins receivedtheir greatest notoriety annoying the pilots ofGreat Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) in theperiod 1940–45, Dave Stern, an aerospace, avi-ation, and history writer, says that the legendbegan in 1923 when a British navy pilotcrashed into the sea. Once he was rescued, heblamed the accident on some little people whohad jumped out of a beer bottle and had tor-mented him all night. It was these wee trouble-makers who had followed him into the air-plane, entered into the engine, messed with theflight controls, and caused him to crash. Notlong after this reported gremlin attack, somepilots and mechanics stationed at an overseasRAF aerodrome complained of being botheredby the annoying entities, and by 1925, Britishpilots were cussing the little monsters andblaming gremlins for almost anything thatmight possibly go wrong with their aircraft.

According to airmen who swore that theyhad survived close encounters with the mis-chief makers, the gremlins dressed in red orgreen double-breasted frock coats, old-fash-ioned tricorn hats with a feather (or some-times stocking caps with tassels at high alti-tudes), tights, and pointed footwear. Some ofthe gremlins loved to suck the high octane gasout of the tanks; others messed with the land-ing gears; and still others specialized in jam-ming the radio frequencies. Just as the pilotsand mechanics were learning to respect thegremlin crowd, it wasn’t long before they alsobegan to be annoyed by the gremlins’ girl-friends, the finellas, nicknamed the widgets.



When the U.S. Army Air Force pilotswere stationed in Great Britain after the Unit-ed States entered World War II in December1941, they found the gremlins waiting forthem. The men may have scoffed at theirallies at first, but they were soon sufferingunexplained attacks on their instrument pan-els, their bombing sights, and the de-icermechanisms. The Yanks found that they hadalso fallen victims to the annoying antics ofthe gremlins.

Although the most intense activity of thegremlin throng occurred during World War II,one stills hears on occasion a pilot cussing amechanical failure in his aircraft as havingbeen caused by a gremlin attack.

M Delving Deeper




Stern, Dave. “The Great Gremlin Caper.” Fate(December 2001): 8–13.

Leprechauns

The classic tale of the leprechaun is that ofthe Irishman catching one of the wee folk anddemanding to be given the little fellow’s crockof gold. In these stories, the sly leprechaunalways manages to trick the greedy lout whohas grabbed him by causing the human toglance away from him for even a moment.Once a human takes his or her eyes off theleprechaun he or she has somehow managedto glimpse in the first place, the wee one hasthe power to vanish in a flash.

The origin of the leprechaun derives froma tale much like the old story of the shoemak-er and the elves. The leprechaun, dressed inhis bright green clothing with a red cap and aleather apron, was originally known as thecheerful cobbler, a wee person who takesdelight in repairing humans’ shoes for areward of a bowl of porridge.

The countryfolk of Ireland take their weefolk seriously, and they know better than to dis-

turb the mounds or raths in which the lep-rechauns dwell. Those who would wantonlyviolate the wee one’s domicile is to invitesevere supernatural consequences upon oneself.

The trouble at the rath outside the villageof Wexford began on a morning in 1960 whenthe workmen from the state electricity boardbegan digging a hole for the erection of a lightpole within the parameters of a rath. The vil-lagers warned the workmen that the polewould never stay put, because no self-respect-ing community of wee folk could abide a dis-turbance on their mound.

The big city electrical workmen had alaugh at the expense of the villagers and saidsome uncomplimentary things about the levelof intelligence of the townsfolk of Wexford.They finished digging the hole to the depththat experience had taught them was ade-quate; then they placed the post within thefreshly dug opening and stamped the blackearth firmly around its base. The satisfied fore-man pronounced for all within earshot to hearthat no fairy folk or leprechaun would movethe pole from where it had been anchored.

However, the next morning the pole tiltedat a sharp angle in loose earth. The villagersshrugged that the wee folk had done it, butthe foreman of the crew voiced his suspicionsthat the leprechauns had received some help



Model from the film

“Gremlin.” (FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

from some humans bent on mischief. Glaringhis resentment at any villagers who wouldmeet his accusative eyes, the foreman orderedhis men to reset the pole.

The next morning that one particular polewas once again conspicuous in the long line ofnewly placed electrical posts by its weird tilt inthe loose soil at its base. While the other polesin the line stood straight and firmly upright,that one woebegone post was tilted askew.

The foreman had endured enough of suchrustic humor at his expense. He ordered thecrew to dig a hole six feet wide, place the poleprecisely in the middle, and pack the earth sofirmly around the base that nothing short of abomb could budge it.

But the next morning the intrusive polehad once again been pushed loose of the littlepeople’s rath. The foreman and his crew fromthe electricity board finally knew when theywere licked. Without another word to thegrinning villagers, the workmen dug a secondhole four feet outside of the mound anddropped the pole in there. And that waswhere it stood as solid as the Emerald Isle formany years to come.

M Delving Deeper







Menehune

The Menehune are the wee people of theHawaiian Islands; and just as there are folk leg-ends and beliefs that the fairies of the BritishIsles were originally an early diminutive people,so do some traditions in Polynesia maintainthat the Menehunes were an ancestral pygmyrace that averaged about two feet in height.There are ancient sites in the Hawaiian Islandsthat some inhabitants still believe are the ruinsof temples built by the Menehunes.

For most Polynesians, however, the pre-vailing accounts of the Menehune are told as ifthe beings have always been members of a spir-it race that coexists with humans. The Mene-hune often serve as guardians and guides forthe people, and the help of the “little vanish-ing ones” is sought in all tasks, from erecting ahome to building a canoe. Much like the oldEuropean traditions of setting out food for theelves to come at night and assist the farmer orshoemaker, workers in Hawaii will sometimesset out sweets to insure the cooperation of theMenehune in the completion for their workproject. The Menehune are highly regarded asengineers, and very often construction workersin Hawaii will ask a traditional priest, a Kahu-na, to ask the blessing of the Menehune beforeany major building has begun. To neglect to doso may bring dire consequences if the work hasbeen scheduled on a site that the Menehuneregard as sacred. In this case, the Kahuna mustoffer prayers and gifts to pacify the spirit beingsand win their cooperation.



Illustration of a

leprechaun from A

Treasury of Irish Stories.

(ELSIE LENNOX)

From time to time, native inhabitants andtourists to the islands claim to caught aglimpse of the Menehune as they scurry frombush to bush in the forested regions. Mostpeople describe the little people with light orslightly reddish-colored skin and large fuzzymops of hair.

M Delving Deeper

Beckwith, Martha. Hawaiian Mythology. Honolulu:University of Hawaii Press, 1970, 1989.

Grant, Glen. Obake Files: Ghostly Encounters in Super-natural Hawaii. Honolulu: Mutual Publishing,1996.

Westervelt, William D. Hawaiian Legends of Ghostsand Ghost-Gods. Rutland, Vt.; Tokyo: Charles E.Tuttle Co., 1963, 1971.

Mermaids

There are few tales of the fairy folks’ friendsthat are as captivating as those that deal withthe mermaid, those ocean-dwelling divinitiesthat are half-human and half-fish. Althoughthere are mermen, the greater fascination hasalways been on the mermaid with her top halfa beautiful woman and her bottom half that ofa fish. Traditionally, the mermaid is also giftedwith a lovely singing voice, which can be usedto warn sailors of approaching storms or jaggedrocks ahead. Or, in many of the ancient stories,the seductive siren song of the mermaids lurethe seamen onto the jagged rocks and to theirdeaths. As with all of the “middle-folk,” mer-maids can be agents of good or of destruction.

As in the folklore of the selkie, sometimesmermaids fall in love with humans and areable to come ashore in human shape and tolive on land for many years. They may evenhave children with their human husbands.But in all of these tales of mercreatures andhuman mates, the mermaid longs to return tothe sea, and one day she will leave her humanfamily and do so.

The Ceasg is a type of mermaid thathaunts the lakes of the Scottish highlands.Her upper body and facial features are those ofa beautiful, well-endowed woman, but herlower half is that of a large salmon. Like mostsupernatural beings, the Ceasg is of a dualnature. If a handsome young man should cap-ture her attention and treat her well, she may

assume human shape and marry him, at thesame time granting him three wishes that maymake them wealthy. If she feels that she hasbeen disrespected or treated badly, she mayuse her beauty to lure a fisherman to the deep-est part of the lake and drown him.

In Lake Tanganyika in the small EastAfrican country of Burundi, the Mambu-mutuis very much the classical mermaid, halfattractive woman and half large fish. In hercase, however, she does not fancy humans,and her only intention is to drag them underthe lake’s surface and suck their blood.

In Estonian folklore, the Nakh are shape-shifting water demons who walk freely on landas handsome young men or beautiful womenwho lure their victims with the sound of theirsweet, seductive singing. Once they haveenchanted their victims, they lead them toriver, lake, or ocean and entice them to waterygraves.

The Nix is a particularly nasty shape-shift-ing entity who, like all the fairy folk, loves todance. According to German folklore, theNix are attracted to the sound of music atfairs, carnivals, or outdoor concerts, and theyappear as attractive men or women whoenthrall the human audience with their skilland grace on the dance floor. Once they havelured a charmed human to join them atwater’s edge with the promise of romantic dal-liance, they reveal themselves to be ugly,green-skinned fairies who drag their victimsinto the water and death by drowning.

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Shuker, Karl P. N. “Menagerie of Mystery.” Strange(spring 1995): 20–23; 54–56.

Nisse

In the Scandinavian tradition, the nisse is ahousehold entity that looks after hearth andhome, a kind of guardian entity—but with anattitude. Nisse can be extremely volatile ifprovoked, and they are often mischievous lit-



tle pranksters. Naughty children sometimeshave their hair pulled and their toys hidden bythe nisse, who is always watching with disap-proving eyes any sign of misbehavior or dis-obedience. And a cat that becomes too curi-ous will likely have its tail yanked good andproper by the annoyed nisse.

The nisse is also the farmer’s friend, and itoften sleeps in the barn to keep watch overthe animals. If a hired hand should be slow infeeding the cattle or other livestock, the nissewill be certain to give them their grain—andto mete out punishment to the sluggish hiredman who was tardy in his duties. The nissemight trip him as he walks up the stairs to hisbedroom or spill his hot soup on his lap at theevening meal. If treated with respect, the nisseremains an effective guardian over hearth andoutbuildings. He does demand payment forthe performance of his duties, and the wisehouseholder will be certain to leave hot por-ridge on the step at night and to make itknown that the nisse is free to take whatevergrain from the bin that he might require forhis own needs.

Closely related to the nisse are the hul-drefolk, the hidden people, the fairy folk ofScandinavia, who are generally quite benign iftreated with respect. If one should be foolishenough to anger them or violate their territo-ry, they can become extremely malicious.Generally, though, as the following story illus-trates, the hidden people are quite reasonable.

In 1962, the new owners of a herring-pro-cessing plant in Iceland decided to enlargetheir work area. According to Icelandic tradi-tion, no landowner must fail to reserve a smallplot of his or her property for the hidden folk,and a number of the rural residents earnestlypointed out to the new proprieters that anyextension of the plant would encroach uponthe plot of ground that the original ownershad set aside for the little people who livedunder the ground.

The businessmen laughed. For one thing,they didn’t harbor those old folk superstitions.For another, they had employed a top-notch,highly qualified construction crew who pos-sessed modern, unbreakable drill bits andplenty of explosives.

But the bits of the “unbreakable” drillsbegan to shatter one after another. An oldfarmer came forward to repeat the warning thatthe crew was trespassing on land that belongedto the hidden folk. At first the workmenlaughed at the old man and marveled that suchprimitive superstitions could still exist in mod-ern Iceland. But the drill bits kept breaking.

Finally, the manager of the plant, althoughprofessing disbelief in such superstitions,agreed to the old farmer’s recommendationthat he consult a local seer to establish con-tact with the hidden folk and attempt to makepeace with them. After going into a brieftrance-state, the seer returned to waking con-sciousness to inform the manager that therewas one particularly powerful member of thehidden folk who had selected this plot as hisdwelling place. He was not an unreasonablebeing, however. If the processing plant reallyneeded the plot for its expansion, he wouldagree to find another place to live. The hid-den one asked only for five days without anydrilling, so that he could make his arrange-ments to move.

The manager felt a bit strange bargainingwith a being that was invisible—and as far ashe had previously been concerned, imaginary.But he looked over at the pile of broken drillbits and told the seer that the hidden one hada deal. Work on the site would be shut downfor five days to give him a chance to move.

After five days had passed and the work-men resumed drilling, the work proceededsmoothly and efficiently until the addition tothe plant was completed. There were no moreshattered bits on the unbreakable drill.

M Delving Deeper

Booss, Claire, ed. Scandinavian Folk & Fairy Tales .New York: Gramercy Books, 1984.




Simek, Rudolf. Dictionary of Northern Mythology.Trans. by Angela Hall. Rochester, N.Y.: D. S.Brewer, 1993.



Selkies

Selkies, the seal people of the Orkney andShetland Islands, wish to live harmoniouslywith those humans who love the sea as muchas they do. They have sometimes been con-fused with the sirens of Greek lore that haveno interest in creating anything but death andchaos for seafarers. The selkies can shape-shiftand appear in human form, resuming theirtrue forms only when they wish to travelthrough the sea.

The selkies are among a small number ofgentle and supernatural beings. They oftentake human spouses and produce childrenwho occasionally have webbed hands and feetand who are always born with a love for thesea. But one day the selkie’s desire for the seawill overwhelm her, and she will reclaim herdiscarded seal skin and return to the ocean,where she will keep in touch with her humanfamily only by her song and an occasionalappearance near the shore. John Sayles wroteand directed an enchanting film about theselkies in The Secret of Roan Inish (1994),adapted from Rosalie Frye’s novella The Secretof Ron Mor Skerry.

M Delving Deeper

Benwell, Gwen, and Arthur Waugh. Sea Enchantress:The Tale of the Mermaid and Her Kin. New York:Citadel Press, 1965.



Trolls

Trolls bear no resemblance to the cute littledolls with big bug-eyes, dolphin grins, andbushy red hair. Rather, trolls are nasty mon-sters who can assume gigantic proportions andwreak havoc wherever they choose. They arefiendish giants, often associated with dark-sidesorcerers.

To the old Norse, the term “troll” wasapplied only to hostile giants. By the time ofthe high Middle Ages, trolls had become a bitsmaller and more fiendish, but they had alsobecome capable of working black magic andsorcery. Regardless of their size, trolls are unre-

lenting enemies of humankind. Those occa-sional Scandinavian folk heroes who dared toengage them in mortal combat were able todefeat the trolls with their superior intelli-gence, rather than might of arm or sword.Trolls are most often quite slow-witted, andthey become confused and weak if they can besomehow tricked into stepping out of theirdarkened caves into direct sunlight.

In more contemporary times, the troll isregarded as a denizen of mountain caves, larg-er than the average human, and exceedinglyugly, who often crouches under bridges wait-ing for unsuspecting victims.

M Delving Deeper

Booss, Claire, ed. Scandinavian Folk & Fairy Tales.New York: Gramercy Books, 1984.


Simek, Rudolf. Dictionary of Northern Mythology.Translated by Angela Hall. Rochester, N.Y.: D. S.Brewer, 1993.

Actors Who Faced (or

Became) Movie Monsters

Even the most casual fan of Hollywoodhorror films is familiar with the classiccreatures of movie monsterdom and the

actors who portrayed them—such as theFrankenstein monster, as enacted by BorisKarloff (1887–1969); the Wolf Man, as playedby Lon Chaney, Jr. (1906–1973); and thevampire Count Dracula, as immortalized byBela Lugosi (1882–1956). However, some ofthe most well-known actors in motion pic-tures or television encountered monsters—orimpersonated them—before their stars hadbegun to rise or after their clout at the boxoffice had begun to grow less powerful. Ofcourse there are also the cases in which anestablished star simply enjoys playing a bonafide monster for a change of pace.

Dana Andrews (1909–1992), a minister’sson, starred in such Hollywood classics as TheOx-Bow Incident (1943), Laura (1944), andThe Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Then, inCurse of the Demon (1957), he played an



American psychic investigator in Londonwho was forced to battle a group of devil-wor-shippers who paid obeisance to a hideousancient demon.

Before James Arness (1923– ) becametelevision’s invincible Matt Dillon in thelong-running series Gunsmoke (1955–75), heplayed an alien being, a giant, carnivoroushumanoid vegetable who terrified a group ofscientists at an isolated Arctic research stationin The Thing (1951). In Them! (1954), he wasa government agent trying to subdue giantmutant ants that had taken over the LosAngeles sewer system.

The recipient of a special Academy Awardin 1949 for his contribution to motion pic-tures, actor/dancer Fred Astaire (1899–1987),the master of the Hollywood musical,appeared in Ghost Story (1981) as one of agroup of elderly men being stalked by a venge-ful female shape-shifting spirit.

In the science fiction classic The War of theWorlds (1953), Gene Barry, who starred in suchtelevision series as Bat Masterson (1958–61)and Burke’s Law (1963–66), was a scientistattempting to thwart a Martian invasion ofEarth. He also appeared in The Devil and MissSarah (1971), an offbeat Western about a satan-ic outlaw harassing his tormentor’s wife.

Raymond Burr (1917–1993), television’smasterful attorney in the long-running lawand order series Perry Mason (1957–66), wasnot quite so articulate in Bride of the Gorilla(1951). Burr portrayed a scheming murdererwho was transformed into a human gorilla bya witch, the mother of a native girl he hadbetrayed. In the movie monster classic Godzil-la (1956), he was an American journalist inTokyo covering the story of a radioactive, pre-historic monster’s devastation of Japan’s capi-tal. Burr’s scenes were deftly spliced into theoriginal Japanese footage to ensure the filmobtaining a worldwide audience.

In The Devil Within Her (1975), JoanCollins (1933– ), the manipulative Alexis ofthe television series Dynasty (1981–89), hadthe role of a nightclub entertainer whose babyhad been cursed by an evil dwarf. She faredlittle better in Empire of the Ants (1977), whenCollins portrayed a real estate broker who,

through a bizarre transformation machine,became a slave to intelligent, human-sizedants.

In the science fiction classic Donovan’sBrain (1953), Nancy Davis (Mrs. Ronald Rea-gan) (1921– ) played the girlfriend of a sci-entist who falls under the telepathic control ofthe rich man’s brain that he is keeping alive.

The star of such motion picture master-pieces as Champion (1949), Lust for Life(1956), and Spartacus (1960), Kirk Douglas(1916– ) faced supernatural monsters in twofilms. In The Chosen (1978), he played anuclear power industrialist whose son (SimonWard), turned out to be the Antichrist, per-haps the ultimate monster. In The Fury(1978), Douglas’s luck as a father was littlebetter when his son (Andrew Stevens) devel-oped incredible psychokinetic powers that hebegan to use against others.

Although Clint Eastwood (1930– )handily dealt with thugs, outlaws, and crimi-nals later in his career as hardened police offi-cers or lawmen, in his cinematic green years,he was put up against bizarre monsters thatwere much too large to punch out or even tobring down with a .357 Magnum. In Revengeof the Creature (1955), he played a laboratoryassistant to a scientist who was involved inplacing the captured Gill Man from the BlackLagoon on exhibit at a Florida aquarium. Thatsame year, Eastwood was a jet pilot trying tokill a giant tarantula that had been created ina laboratory experiment in Tarantula.

Peter Graves (1921– ) became wellknown as Jim Phelps, the authoritative direc-tor in the television series Mission Impossible(1967–73; 1988–90). As a scientist in RedPlanet Mars (1952), Graves established radiocontact with Martians. Courageously, Gravesattempted to thwart the takeover of Earth by aVenusian creature in It Conquered the World(1956), and in The Beginning of the End(1957), he battled aliens and their under-ground menagerie of huge creatures.

In The Power (1968), George Hamilton(1939– ) is a man gifted with supernaturalpowers imparted to him at birth by extrater-restrials who is forced to battle another power-ful, but evil, mind similarly endowed. In Love



at First Bite (1979), Hamilton brought his filmcareer back from limbo with his portrayal of acomedic vampire.

In 1968 Charlton Heston (1924– ), thestar of The Ten Commandments (1956) andBen Hur (1959), for which he won an Oscar,appeared in Planet of the Apes as an astronautwho arrived in Earth’s future to discover thatintelligent apes were ruling the planet. Hecontinued his role as an astronaut displaced bytime in Beneath the Planet of the Apes in 1970.In the grimly futuristic The Omega Man(1971), Heston is the single human immuneto a terrible virus that is decimating Earth’spopulation after the radiation effects of anuclear war and is turning most of those sur-viving into murderous mutants. In The Awak-ening (1980), he was an archaeologist facedwith the decision of whether or not to kill hisdaughter, who has been possessed by the spiritof an ancient mummy.

Before he was “Little Joe” on television’svenerable Western series Bonanza (1959–72),before he was a nearly perfect father on LittleHouse on the Prairie (1974–82), and longbefore he was an angel on Highway to Heaven(1984–89), Michael Landon (1936–1991) wasa hairy monster in I Was a Teenage Werewolf(1957). Landon played a troubled high schoolyouth who was transformed into a werewolf bya misguided scientist who believed that he wasconducting experiments to improve thehuman race.

The winner of the Best Actor Oscar in1975 for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, asBest Supporting Actor in 1983 for Terms ofEndearment, and again as Best Actor for AsGood As It Gets (1997), in his early years as anactor Jack Nicholson (1937– ) squared offagainst two masters of the supernatural in TheRaven (1963) with his portrayal of the son of aman transformed into a large raven (Peter



Two characters from the

film “How to Make a

Monster.” (DEL

VALLE GALLERY)

Lorre, 1904–1964) by a nasty wizard (BorisKarloff). In The Terror (1963), Nicholson wasa Napoleonic officer who encountered a witch,a mad baron (Karloff), and the vengeful spiritof a young woman. Nicholson walked the thinline of madness in The Shining (1980) anderupted on the screen in demonic, axe-wield-ing fury, goaded to violence by the supernatur-al forces in a mountain resort. In The Witchesof Eastwick (1987), Nicholson got promotedfrom the demonically insane to an entity thatmay have been Satan himself—or at least ahigh-ranking demon. Nicholson made anexcellent werewolf in the film Wolf (1994),skillfully achieving the trauma and terror of anordinary man undergoing supernatural trans-formation. In Mars Attacks! (1996), he was thepresident of the United States attempting todefeat the bug-eyed invaders from Mars.

Leonard Nimoy (1931– ) was playingaliens long before he became Mr. Spock, thescience officer of the Enterprise on the originaltelevision series Star Trek (1966–69). In InSatan’s Satellites (also known as Zombies of theStratosphere, 1958), he was an alien soldierwho was part of a squadron determined toconquer Earth. He also had a small part in TheBrain Eaters (1958), wherein alien creaturesfeasted on human gray matter.

Donald Sutherland (1934– ) pounded astake into the heart of his bride in Dr. Terror’sHouse of Horrors (1965) when he learned thatshe was a vampire. In Invasion of the BodySnatchers (1978), he was a man desperately try-ing to destroy pods from outer space that grewinto human beings, replacing the original per-sons with look-alike alien creatures. Sutherlandreturned to fighting vampires with a vengeanceas The Chosen One’s mentor in the originalfilm version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992).

M Delving Deeper

Halliwell, Leslie. Halliwell’s Film Guide. 6th ed. NewYork: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1987.

Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Put-nam Publishing, 1982.

Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A Cultural History ofHorror. New York: Boulevard, 1997.



anthropology The scientific study of the ori-gins, behavior, physical, social, and cultur-al aspects of humankind.

bipedal Any animal that has two legs or feet.From the Latin stem biped, meaning two-footed.

cadaver A dead body that is usually intendedfor dissection. From the Latin cadere,meaning to fall or to die.

cryptozoology The study of so-called mythicalcreatures such as Sasquatch or Bigfoot,whose existence has not yet been scientifi-cally substantiated.

demarcation The process of setting borders,limits or marking boundaries. From theSpanish demarcacion, literally meaning,marking off.

elixir Something that is a mysterious, magicalsubstance with curative powers believed toheal all ills or to prolong life and preserveyouthfulness. From the Arabic al-iksir andthe Greek xerion, meaning dry powder fortreating wounds.

hoax An act of deception that is intended tomake people think or believe something isreal when it is not.

jinni In Islamic or Muslim legend, a spirit thatis capable of taking on the shape ofhumans or animals in order to performmischievous acts or to exercise supernatur-al power and influence over humans. Fromthe Arabic jinn, which is the plural of jinni.

Kabbalist/Kabbalah Jewish mystical teachingsthat are based on hidden meanings in theHebrew Scriptures. Can also be spelledCabala. From the Hebrew qabbalah, mean-ing tradition, and from quibbel, to give,receive or accept, ultimately somethingthat is handed down.

lupinomanis Having the excessive character-istics of a wolf, such as being greedy or rav-enously hungry.

lycanthropy The magical ability in legendsand horror stories of a person who is able



to transform into a wolf, and take on all ofits characteristics.

metrology The scientific system or study ofmeasurements. From the Greek metrologie,meaning theory of ratios and metron, ormeasure.

paleoanthropology The study of humanlikecreatures or early human beings moreprimitive that Homo Sapiens, usually donethrough fossil evidence.

paleontology The study of ancient forms oflife in geologic or prehistoric times, usingsuch evidence as fossils, plants, animals,and other organisms.

putrefy Causing something to decay, usuallyindicating a foul odor. From the Latin stem,putr, meaning rotten, plus facere, to make.

sauropod Any of various large semi-aquaticplant-eating dinosaurs that had a longneck and tail and a small head. From thesuborder Sauropoda, a Latin word meaninglizard foot.

therianthropic Used to describe a mythologi-cal creature that is half human and halfanimal. Coined from the Greek therion,meaning small wild animal, and anthropo,meaning human being.

Wiccan Someone who is a witch, a believer orfollower of the religion of Wicca.

zoology The scientific branch of biology thatstudies animals in all their characteristicsand aspects. From the Greek zoologia, liter-ally the study of life and from zolion, or lifeform.



Chapter 12

Mysteries of

the Mind

Throughout the centuries, philosophers,

poets, prophets, and scientists wondered

who humans really are. Many believe the

greatest adventure is available to those

who wish to explore the mysteries of the

mind—the miracle of consciousness, the

enigma of dreams, and the mind beyond

the physical bodies.

115

Chapter Exploration

Dreams

Creative and Lucid DreamingNightmares

Sleep ParalysisSymbology of Dreams

The Mechanics of Memory

False Memories

Phobias

Altered States of Consciousness

HallucinationsHypnosis

MeditationPsychedelics—The Mind-Expanding Drugs

Relaxation

Extrasensory Perception:The “Sixth Sense”

ESP Researchers

ClairvoyanceOut-of-Body Experience (OBE)

PrecognitionPsychokinesis

Telepathy

Introduction

Perhaps the greatest mystery of thehuman mind is how the brain gives riseto consciousness. A three-pound mass

of spongy tissue somehow makes humans con-scious of what they see, hear, touch, taste,smell, think, remember, and dream. This samegrey matter allows humans to have subjectiveexperiences of love, friendship, and the appre-ciation of music, art, and literature. In addi-tion to conscious awareness, mystical states ofconsciousness appear to permit extrasensorycommunication with other human beings andeven allow prophetic glimpses of the future.

The psychologist William James (1842–1910) once wrote that we know what con-sciousness is—as long as no one asks us todefine it. Nobel Laureate Gerald M. Edelman,director of the Neurosciences Institute, hascommented that what is most daunting aboutconsciousness is that it doesn’t seem to be amatter of behavior—it just is. “Multiple andsimultaneous in its modes and objects,ineluctably ours,” Edelman has said, “it is aprocess and one that is hard to score. We knowwhat it is in ourselves, but can only judge itsexistence in others by inductive inference.”

While no contemporary scientist woulddisagree that it is the brain that generates con-sciousness, there is no consensus regardingwhich parts of the brain are responsible forconscious experience. By assuming, as manyscientists do, that consciousness is generatedby neurons with special properties or locationsin the brain, they leave unanswered the fun-damental question: What is the process bywhich the brain gives rise to consciousness?

Which raises another question: How doesconscious brain activity differ from the brainactivity directing all of the unconscious actionsthat have become as automatic as breathing?

Scientists generally agree about theprocess involved in the brain responding withthought when, for example, one sees anobject. Signals from the retina of the eye trav-el along nerves as waves of electricallycharged ions. When these waves reach thenerve terminus, the signal is transmitted tothe next nerve via neurotransmitters. Based

on the totality of impulses that it receivesfrom the upstream nerves, the receiving nervedecides whether or not to fire. In this manner,electrical impulses are processed in the brainbefore being transmitted to the physical body.However, while this movement of ions andchemicals may trace the process of thinkingand reacting, it still does not reveal the regionof the brain that specializes in consciousness.

Professor Johnjoe McFadden from theSchool of Biomedical and Life Sciences at theUniversity of Surrey in the United Kingdom,has remarked that it is consciousness thatmakes individuals human. Without conscious-ness, “…language, creativity, emotions, spiri-tuality, logical deduction, mental arithmetic,our sense of fairness, truth, ethics, are allinconceivable,” McFadden told the May 17,2002, issue of Science News.

McFadden theorizes that the mystery ofconsciousness might be solved by consideringthe conscious mind as an electromagneticfield. Every time a nerve fires, according toMcFadden, the electrical activity sends a sig-nal to the brain’s electromagnetic (em) field.However, unlike solitary nerve signals, infor-mation that reaches the brain’s em field isautomatically linked together with all theother signals in the brain, and the brain’s emfield creates the binding process that is char-acteristic of consciousness.

While the conscious electromagneticinformation field remains a theory, McFaddenbelieves that it explains, among other things,why conscious actions feel so different fromunconscious ones, “because they plug into thevast pool of information held in the brain’selectromagnetic field.” And the em field ofthe brain is more than a repository of informa-tion. It can influence human activity by push-ing some neurons toward firing and othersaway from firing. If his theory can be demon-strated to be true, McFadden says, it willreveal “many fascinating implications for theconcept of free will, the nature of creativity orspirituality, consciousness in animals, andeven the significance of life and death.”

This chapter will explore many mysteriesof the mind, most of which presently defy sci-entific elucidation. While science may be able


Mysteries of the Mind116

to define the process by which many of thesemysteries manifest, the actual region of thebrain that gives rise to these enigmas remainsas unknown as the secret of human conscious-ness itself. Perhaps one must look outside ofthe brain and begin to search for evidence ofthe human soul to explain dreams and theirsymbols, the higher levels of awareness thatmay be achieved in various altered states ofconsciousness, and the riddle of ESP(extrasensory perception), the mind express-ing itself outside of the traditional boundariesof space and time.

M Delving Deeper

Anderson, Mark K. “Awareness: Mystery of theMind.” Wired News. [Online] http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,51765,00.html. 15 April2002.

Chalmers, David J. “The Puzzle of Conscious Experi-ence.” Scientific American Special Issue: Mysteriesof the Mind 7, no. 1 (1997): 30–37.

Cosmiverse Staff Writer. “The Conscious Mind MayBe Electric.” Cosmiverse [Online] http://www.cosmiverse.com/news/science/science05170201.html. 17 May 2002.

Hellmich, Nanci. “When Sleep Is But a Dream.”USA Today. [Online] http://www.usatoday.com/life/llead.htm. 27 March 2001.

Tart, Charles, ed. Altered States of Consciousness. NewYork: John Wiley & Sons, 1969.

Dreams

Whether in ancient or in contemporarytimes, dreams are a mystery of themind that everyone has experienced.

Quite likely, most individuals have also pon-dered the meaning of their dreams. Whetherthese sleep-time adventures are considered voy-ages of the soul, messages from the gods, thedoorway of the unconscious, or accidental by-products of insufficient oxygen in the brain,down through the ages thoughtful men andwomen have sought to learn more about thisintriguing activity of the sleeping consciousness.

Among the ancients there were the dreamincubation temples of Serapis, Egyptian god ofdreams; and later, of Aesculapius, the Greekgod of healing. Thousands of people made

their pilgrimage to these holy places to seekadvice and healing from their dreams. Afterrigorous periods of fasting, prayer, and sacredritual, they would attempt to induce revelato-ry nocturnal visions by spending the night inthe temple. This practice was commonlyemployed by the cultic prophets and the kingsof the ancient cities of Lagash in Sumer andUgarit in Syria.

Plato (c. 428–348 or 347 B.C.E.) saw dreamsas a release for passionate inner forces. In thesecond century, another Greek, Artemidorousof Ephesus, produced the Oneirocritica, theencyclopedia that was the forerunner to thou-sands of dream books throughout the ages.

In Hinduism, it is believed that theimmortal soul within the physical body is ableto leave the “house of flesh” during sleep andto travel wherever it desires. It is also thoughtthat the passing to the next life after deathmay be compared to a sleeper awakening froma dream. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishadstates that the soul, the “self-luminous being,”may assume many forms, high and low, in theworld of dreams. “Some say that dreaming isbut another form of waking, for what a manexperiences while awake he experiences againin his dreams.…As a man passes from dreamto wakefulness, so does he pass at death fromthis life to the next” (Brihadaranyaka Upan-ishad, 4.3.11–14, 35).

The Mesopotamian and Egyptian courtsemployed skilled professionals who sought tointerpret dreams and visions. The Israelites,by contrast, believed that interpretation ofdreams could be accomplished only with theLord’s guidance. “For God speaketh once, yeatwice, yet a man perceiveth it not. In a dream,in a vision of the night, when sleep fallethupon men in slumberings upon the bed; thenHe openeth the ears of men, and speakeththeir instructions, that he may withdraw manfrom his purpose and hide pride from man”(KJV: Job 33:14). The Talmud, the Hebrewsacred book of practical wisdom, reveals thatthe Jews gave great importance both to thedream and to the one whom the Lord gave theknowledge to interpret the dream. Joseph andDaniel were two Israelites who attained highregard for their skill as dream interpreters.


117Mysteries of the Mind

Dreams, or night visions, might be audito-ry and present a direct message (as in Job33:15–17, Genesis 20:3,6) or at other times besymbolic, requiring skilled interpretation.Jacob had a dream of a ladder set up on Earth,the top of it reaching to heaven. He beheld inthis dream angels of God ascending anddescending on the ladder with the Lord stand-ing above it, confirming the covenant ofAbraham to Jacob (Genesis 28:12). KingSolomon received both wisdom and warningin dreams (I Kings 3:5, 9:2).

The New Testament accounts surroundingthe birth of Jesus (c. 6 B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.) recorda number of revelatory dreams. Joseph wasinstructed to wed Mary and was assured of herpurity (Matthew 1:20), in spite of the apparentfact that she was already pregnant. Later,Joseph was warned to flee to Egypt (Matthew2:13), return to Israel, (2:19) and to go toGalilee (2:22). The Magi (the three wise men)were warned in a dream not to return to theirnative land along the same route as they hadcome (2:12) because of Herod’s evil inten-tions. Acts 2:17 contains the prophetic verse:“And it shall come to pass in the last days saith

God, I will pour out of my spirit upon all flesh;and your sons and daughters shall prophesy[preach] and your young men shall see visions,and your old men shall dream dreams.”

By the late nineteenth century, dreamswere being examined from a physiological per-spective. The ancient notion that God spokedirectly to men in dreams was pretty muchdismissed by a culture that was becomingmore scientific and materialistic. Then camethe groundbreaking work of Sigmund Freudand Carl G. Jung.

In 1899 Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), aViennese psychiatrist and the founder of psy-choanalysis, brought dreams into the realm ofthe scientific community with the publicationof his monumental work, The Interpretation ofDreams, in which he maintained that thedream is “the guardian of sleep” and “the royalroad” to understanding the human uncon-scious. Freud’s theory was basically that thedream was a disguised wish-fulfillment ofinfantile sexual needs, which were repressedby built-in censors of the waking mind. Theapparent content of the dream was only con-cealing a shockingly latent dream. Throughthe use of a complex process of “dream work,”which Freud developed, the dream could beunraveled backward, penetrating the uncon-scious memory of the dreamer and thereby set-ting the person free.

According to Dr. Stanley Krippner (1932– ),former director of the Dream Laboratory atMaimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York,contemporary experiments in sleep laborato-ries have confirmed many of Freud’s specula-tions and cast doubt upon others. Some psy-chiatrists, including Lester Gelb, argue thatthe concept of the unconscious should betotally abandoned in explaining humanbehavior. Gelb feels it would be more useful torecognize several states or types of conscious-ness—working, sleeping, dreaming, daydream-ing, trance, and so forth—each of which canbe productively studied by behavioral scien-tists. Krippner stated that possible confirma-tion of Freud’s emphasis on sexual symbolismdoes occur occasionally in modern electroen-cephalographic dream research, but he furtherobserved that human thought processes are too



Dreaming of worlds

beyond. (ANDREW C.

STEWART/FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

SIGMUND Freud brought dreams into therealm of the scientific community with his publication

The Interpretation of Dreams.

varied to allow any single, unitary explanationof dreaming to be adequate.

Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung (1875–1961), a student and later dissenter of Freudiantechniques, added new dimensions to theunderstanding of the self through dreams.From Jung’s perspective, Freud expressed acontempt for the psyche as a kind of waste binfor inappropriate or immoral thoughts. InJung’s opinion, the unconscious was far morethan a depository for the past; it was also full offuture psychic situations and ideas. Jung sawthe dream as a compensatory mechanismwhose function was to restore one’s psycholog-ical balance. His concept of a collectiveunconscious linked humans with their ances-tors as part of the evolutionary tendency of thehuman mind. Jung rejected arbitrary interpre-tations of dreams and dismissed free Freudianassociation as wandering too far from thedream content. Jung developed an intricatesystem of “elaborations,” in which the dreamerrelates all that he or she knows about a sym-bol—as if he or she were explaining it to a visi-tor from another planet.

Jung found startling similarities in theunconscious contents and the symbolicprocesses of both modern and primitivehumans, and he recognized what he called“archetypes,” mental forces and symbologywhose presence cannot be explained by any-thing in the individual’s own life, but seemedto be “aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapesof the human mind.” Jung believed that it iscrucial to pay attention to the archetypes metin dream life. Of special importance is the“shadow,” a figure of the same sex as thedreamer, which contains all the repressed char-acteristics one has not developed in his or herconscious life. The “anima” is the personifica-tion of all the female tendencies, both positiveand negative, in the male psyche. Its counter-part in the female psyche is the “animus.”

The most mysterious, but most significant,of the Jungian archetypes is the self, which M.L. von Fram describes in Man and His Symbols(1964) as the regulating center that bringsabout a constant expansion and maturing ofthe personality. The self emerges only whenthe ego can surrender and merge into it. The

ego is the “I” within each individual. It is thethinking, feeling, and aware aspect of self thatenables the individual to distinguish himselfor herself from others. In psychoanalytic theo-ry, the ego mediates between the more primi-tive drives of the “id,” the unconscious,instinctual self, and the demands of the socialenvironment in which the individual mustfunction. (Jung saw the self as encompassingthe total psyche, of which the ego is only asmall part.) Jung called this psychic integra-tion of the personality, this striving towardwholeness, the process of “individuation.”

Many authorities consider Dr. NathanielKleitman (1895–1999) to be the father ofmodern scientific dream research, for he pur-sued the subject when his colleagues dismissed



The god Hermes pours

sleep into the eyes of

mortals. (GETTY IMAGES)

MANY authorities consider Dr. NathanielKleitman (1895–1999) to be the father of modernscientific dream research.

the area as having no value. As a professor ofphilosophy at the University of Chicago,Kleitman asked a graduate student, EugeneAserinsky, to study the relationship of eyemovement and sleep; and in 1951, Aserinskyidentified rapid eye movement (REM) anddemonstrated that the brain is active duringsleep, thus establishing the course for otherdream researchers to follow. Although discus-sions of REM are now commonplace in theconversations of informed laypeople, it shouldbe noted that prior to the work of Kleitmanand Aserinsky most scientists maintained thatthe brain “tuned down” during sleep.

Pursuing the REM research, Kleitman andanother of his medical students, William C.Dement, found what may be the pattern for a“good night’s sleep.” They discovered a night-ly pattern of sleep that begins with about 90minutes of non-REM rest during which brain-waves gradually lengthen and progressthrough four distinct stages of sleep, withStage Four the deepest stage. It is then thatthe first REM episode of the night begins.Rapid eye movement is now observable, butthe body itself remains still. The central ner-vous system becomes extremely active duringREM. It becomes so intensely active that Dr.Frederick Snyder, of the National Institute ofMental Health (NIMH), termed the activity“a third state of earthly existence,” distinctfrom both non-REM sleep and wakefulness.

The breathing is even in non-REM sleep.During the REM episode breathing may accel-erate to a panting pace. The rhythm of theheart may speed up or slow down unaccount-ably. Blood pressure can dramatically fall.Other physiological changes also occur duringREM. The flow of blood to the brain increasesabout 40 percent. Then the individual stirsand returns to the non-REM sleep cycle. Thispattern repeats itself throughout the night.

Dreaming, in Dr. Stanley Krippner’s esti-mation, is a primary means of brain develop-ment and maturation. Newborn infants spendabout half of their sleeping time in the rapideye movement or dream state. Although suchdreams probably are concerned with tactileimpressions rather than memories, he believesthat these dreams probably prepare the

infants’ immature nervous systems for theonslaught of experiences that come with thematuration of vision, hearing, and the othersenses. To further support this theory, Krippn-er cites studies done with older subjects thatindicate that young adults spend 25 percent oftheir time dreaming while the proportiondecreases to 20 percent among the elderly. Itseems that the brain, once it is functioningwell, does not need as much dream time.

Recent experiments demonstrate that sim-ple forms of mental functioning go on at nighteven when the individual is not dreaming.The brain appears to require constant stimula-tion even during sleep and may use dreamperiods to “keep in tune” and to process infor-mation that has accumulated during the day.

In the mid-1950s, Drs. William Dement andCharles Fischer, working at Mount Sinai Hospi-tal in New York, asked a group of volunteers tospend several nights in the laboratory. Whenthe volunteers fell asleep, they were awakenedthroughout the night each time the electroen-cephalographs indicated the start of a dreamperiod. These volunteers got all of their regularsleep except for their dream time. After fivenights of dreamlessness, they became nervous,jittery, irritable, and had trouble concentrating.One volunteer quit the project in a panic.

Another group of volunteers in another partof the hospital was awakened the same numberof times each night as those in the first group,but they were awakened when they were notdreaming. In other words, they were allowedapproximately their usual amount of dreamtime. These volunteers suffered none of thetroubles and upsets that afflicted the first group.

For the first time, the Dement and Fischerexperiment presented evidence that regulardream sleep is essential to physical well-being.Some of the volunteers went as long as 15nights without dream sleep, at which pointthey tried to dream all of the time, and theresearchers had to awaken them constantly.When their dream time was no longer inter-rupted, the volunteers spent much more timethan normal in dream sleep and continued todo so until they had made up their dream loss.

Dement summed up the results of theirexperiment by concluding that when people are



deprived of REM sleep, a rebound effect occurs.If individuals are not getting their proper shareof REM and non-REM rest and are feelingsleepy, they can become a menace. People whohave accumulated a large sleep debt are danger-ous drivers on the highway, for example.

Krippner believes that dreaming is as nec-essary to humans as eating and drinking. Notonly does dreaming process data to keep thebrain “in tune,” but there is also evidence thata biochemical substance that accumulates dur-ing the day can only be eliminated from thenervous system during dream periods. Individ-uals should be just as concerned about receiv-ing adequate dream time at night as they areabout receiving adequate food during the day.Any disturbance that interrupts sleep willinterfere with dream time, thus leaving theindividual less well prepared—physically andpsychologically—to face the coming day.Alcohol, amphetamines, and barbituratesdepress the amount of dreaming an individualcan experience during the night, and users ofthese drugs should be aware of the fact. Coffee,however, does not seem to depress dream time.

Today there are at least 170 sleep clinicsoperating in the United States, and their analy-ses cite more than 50 sleep disorders. A generalconsensus of the researchers at such clinicsexpresses the opinion that—second only to thecommon cold—sleep disorders constitute themost common health complaint. In March2001, the National Sleep Foundation releasedthe results of a poll that revealed that 51 per-cent of adults complained of insomnia, theinability to fall into a restful sleep, a few nightsper week over the period of a year; 29 percentsaid that they had experienced insomniaalmost every night over a year’s time.

Researchers also have noted a mysteriouskinship between mental illness and sleep—and even longevity and sleep. Daniel Kripke,a professor of psychiatry at the University ofCalifornia at San Diego, led a study thattracked the sleeping habits of 1.1 millionAmericans for six years and concluded that,contrary to popular belief, people who sleepsix or seven hours per night live longer thanthose who sleep eight or more. The controver-sial study, the largest of its kind, was published

in the February 15, 2002, issue of Archives ofGeneral Psychiatry and provoked criticismfrom other sleep experts who stated that themain problem with America’s sleep habits isdeprivation, not oversleeping.

Dr. Patricia Carrington, a Princeton Uni-versity psychologist, has expressed herhypothesis that humankind would be betterserved if it followed the natural rhythms, thebiological alternation of rest and relaxationthat is seen in animals. Only in human beingsis there such a thing as 17 hours of constantwakefulness.

Many sleep and dream researchers havetheorized that one of the reasons why humansuse drugs, alcohol, caffeine, and other meansof altering states of consciousness may be tosomehow manipulate the body-mind structureinto obeying the schedule forced upon it—rather than permitting it to follow the naturalcycles and rhythms of life itself. Dr. JurgenZulley, psychologist at the Max Planck Insti-tute for Psychiatry in Munich, Germany, hasfound evidence for a four-hour sleep-wakecycle with nap periods at approximately 9:00A.M., 1:00 P.M., and 5:00 P.M. Zulley feels thatindividuals shouldn’t try to combat their nat-ural drowsiness at these times with coffeebreaks or with exercise. In his opinion indi-viduals should seek to be biologically correct.It would be better for human health, Zulleyadvises, if individuals took a short nap or justleaned back in a chair for a bit of relaxationrather than reaching for a soft drink or a cupof coffee to keep the mental motors running.

Dream researchers also have learned thatenvironment appears to have a marked effecton dreams. One may have unusual dreamswhen spending the night in a friend’s home orin a motel room. In their series of studies at theMaimonides Dream Laboratory, the researchteam found that the subjects’ dreams oftencontained references to the electroencephalo-graph and to the electrodes on their heads,especially during the first night in which theyparticipated in the study. Charles Tart, one ofthe nation’s most eminent sleep and dreamresearchers, suggests that dream content alsowill differ with the demands placed upon thedreamer; dreams that are written down at



home and given to a researcher will differ fromdreams given to a psychotherapist, because inthe latter instance the emphasis is on the per-son’s inner life and his or her attempts tochange his or her behavior.

It has been noted that patients who go toFreudian psychotherapists eventually begin toincorporate Freudian symbols into theirdreams while patients who see Jungian ana-lysts do the same with Jungian symbols.

Opinions on the degree to which externalevents influence dreams vary widely. Somedream researchers contend that all dreams arethe result of presleep experiences, whileFreudian psychoanalysts emphasize the inter-nal determinants of dream content (i.e., one’sunconscious drives and defenses). Othersargue that the presleep experiences of one’sdaily activities may be used by the uncon-scious, but they are not of major significancein dream interpretation.

In 1967, Tart presented a list of the variousitems that influence dreams. Tart’s list includ-ed the dreamer’s actual life history; the dream-er’s memories of what has happened to him orher, especially during the past week; the “dayresidue,” which includes immediate presleepexperiences; and currently poorly understoodfactors such as atmospheric concentration,barometric pressure, and paranormal stimulisuch as telepathic messages.

Dream researchers are not sure how thevisual dimensions in dreams compare with thevisual dimensions in everyday life. Dreamreports indicate that most often the dream ison a “cinemascope screen” rather than on asmall “television screen.” People usually areseen full-length and in about the same dimen-sions as they appear during waking hours.

One reason REMs (rapid eye movements)are associated with dreams may be that theeyes scan the visual scene just as they do dur-ing the waking state. On the other hand, eyemovements also occur when subjects reportno movement in their dreams, suggesting thatthe relationship between rapid eye move-ments and dreams is highly complex.

There is not a one-to-one relationshipbetween waking time and dream time. How-ever, extreme time distortion rarely occurs in

dreams despite the fact that many psycholo-gists used to believe that dreams lasted only asecond or two.

The subjects at the Maimonides DreamLaboratory recalled the visual elements in theirdreams most clearly, but auditory (sound) andtactile (touch) impressions also were common.While subjects in the dream laboratories reportauditory and tactile impressions in addition tovivid visual dreams, some individuals stubborn-ly insist that they “never dream.” Sinceresearchers have established that dreaming is asnecessary to mental and physical health as eat-ing and drinking, it becomes apparent thatindividuals who claim that they never dreamsimply are not remembering their dreams, orare having dreams they wish to forget—thenightmares.

M Delving Deeper

Faraday, Ann. Dream Power. New York: BerkleyMedallion Books Edition, 1973.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. NewYork: Basic Books, 1955.

Hall, Calvin S. The Meaning of Dreams. New York:McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1953, 1956.

Jung, C. G., ed. Man and His Symbols. London: AldusBooks, 1964; New York: Dell Publishing, 1968.

Kramer, Milton, ed. Dream Psychology and the NewBiology of Dreaming. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C.Thomas, 1969.

Krippner, Stanley. Dreamtime and Dreamwork: Decod-ing the Language of the Night. Los Angeles: JeremyP. Tarcher, 1990.

Perls, Frederick S. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.Lafayette, Calif.: Real People Press, 1969.

Sechrist, Elsie. Dreams—Your Magic Mirror. NewYork: Dell Publishing, 1969.

Stekel, Wilhelm. The Interpretation of Dreams. NewYork: Washington Square Press, 1967.


Vedantam, Shankar. “Study Links 8 Hours’ Sleep toShorter Life Span.” Washington Post, February 15,2002. [Online] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12305-2002Feb14.html.

Creative and Lucid Dreaming

Data currently being researched indicates thatdreams provide a fertile field for the examina-



tion of creative processes. The act of dream-ing, that most personal and subjective experi-ence, may well be a key to humankind’s hid-den powers. Many artists, writers, inventors,musicians, and other creative people havereceived inspiration in their dreams or haveused their dreams as problem-solving catalysts.

All through Easter Day in 1920, Dr. OttoLoewi, research pharmacologist at the NewYork University College of Medicine, pon-dered a strange dream that revisited thedetails of an experiment that he had discarded17 years before. Acetylcholine, the chemicalthat he had used in the experiment, had firstbeen isolated by Dr. H. H. Dale, Loewi’s closefriend, in 1914, but the new test inspired byLoewi’s dream brought about an abruptchange in the theory of muscle stimulation.Loewi and Dale shared the Nobel Prize forphysiology and medicine in 1936.

Although the experiment itself had a strik-ing effect on the academic world of physiology,the manner in which the idea came to Loewi isperhaps even more astounding. It is conceiv-able that ideas can be transferred from onemind to another during sleep, but when suchideas are not in the mind of another person,from where could they possibly arise? Beforehis death in 1961, Loewi stated that he couldnot possibly answer this question. Perhaps noone can, but it is certain that Loewi’s dreamprovided the key to subsequent research thateventually gained him the Nobel Prize.

Solving problems via the dream state is asold as humankind itself. Thomas Edison(1847–1931), the “Genius of Menlo Park,” itis said, had the habit of curling up in his roll-top desk to catch brief naps that sometimesconstituted his entire sleep schedule. Aftersuch a nap he would emerge with the answers



One myth about the human brain is theclaim that humans use only about 10percent of their brain capacity. Medicaldoctors and psychologists insist that the

statement is not supported by any scientific evidence.

It is likely the myth that humans use only about 10percent of their brains arose during 1930s researchwhen scientists were uncertain regarding the func-tions of large areas of the cortex. In recent years,researchers have been able to “map” the functions ofdifferent areas of the brain.

The neocortex, by which higher thinking is per-formed, consists of a sheet of cells about 2.5 millime-ters in thickness. Without the neocortex, conscious-ness, would not exist.

Although the neocortex is a large part of humanevolution, it does contain cavities without any braincells, as well as considerable amounts of cere-brospinal fluid, white matter, blood vessels, blood, and“non-thinking cells.” However, scientists say theseareas should not be constituted as the mythicalunused 90 percent of the brain.

Sources:

Czerner, Thomas B. What Makes You Tick? The Brain in Plain

English. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001.

Nolte, John. The Human Brain: An Introduction to Its Functional

Anatomy. Philadelphia: Mosby Publishing, 2002.

Restak, Richard M., and David Grubin. The Secret Life of the

Brain. Washington, D.C.: Joseph Henry Press, 2001.

The Unused Brain

to problems that had plagued him during hiswaking state.

Elias Howe (1819–1867) failed at the con-scious level to perfect a workable sewingmachine. Then one night he dreamed that asavage king ordered him to invent a sewingmachine, and when he was unable to comply,the spear-armed natives raised their weaponsto kill him. At that exact moment, he noticedthat each spear had a hole in it just above thepoint. This vision gave him the much-neededclue to the commercial perfection of thesewing machine.

Another famous scientist who used hisdreams to solve problems was Niels Bohr(1885–1962), who one night dreamed of a suncomposed of burning gas with planets spin-ning around it, attached by thin threads. Herealized that this explained the structure ofthe atom, which eventually led to the field ofatomic physics and, ultimately, atomic energy.

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) credit-ed dreams for the many poems he wrote.“Kubla Khan” was the result of a dream bySamuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834). Theclassic novel Jane Eyre (1847) was spun fromthe dreams of Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855).

Some of the world’s most successful businessexecutives never make a decision until theyhave a chance to allow it to pass through theirminds during the hours of sleep, permittingsolutions to come during dreams. Once thispractice of “sleeping on a problem” becomeshabit, these successful individuals find thatthere is really nothing magical about theprocess of dreaming solutions. Creative dream-ing simply appears to be a matter of training themind to do certain things. The subconsciouslevel of the mind does the work, rather thanthe intellectual level. The subconscious under-stands symbols far better than words, and, ingeneral, can be likened to an electronic com-

puter. Material must be fed into it or it cannotproduce effective answers. To the intellect, aparticular plan may sound silly, but to the sub-conscious it may make a lot of sense.

The concept of the dream as a creativetool may be somewhat alien to Westernthought, but numerous Eastern writings,including the ancient Hindu Upanishads,speak of this aspect of the dream. One of theUpanishads says that “…Man in his dreamsbecomes a creator. There are no real chariotsin that state…no blessings…no joys, but hehimself creates blessings, happiness and joys.”Psychologists Montague Ullman, JosephAdelson, Howard Shevrin, and FrederickWeiss have done much to advance the thesisthat dreams basically are creative.

Psychoanalyst Ullman cites four creativeaspects of dreaming:

1. the element of originality;

2. the joining together of elements into newpatterns;

3. the concern with accuracy;

4. the felt reaction of participating in aninvoluntary experience.

Ullman concedes that the final product ofa dream’s creativity may be either dull orecstatic, but he insists that it is an act of cre-ation to have the dream in the first place.

Lucid dreaming is simply the technique ofdreaming while knowing that one is stilldreaming. The word “lucid” is used to indicatea sense of mental clarity. A lucid dream usual-ly occurs while one is in the midst of a dreamand suddenly realizes that the experience thathe or she is undergoing is not happening inphysical reality, but in the framework of adream scenario. Often the dreamer noticessome impossible occurrence in the dream,such as having a conversation with a deceasedrelative or having the ability to fly, whichprompts this awareness. While experiencinglucid dreaming is not quite the same thing asexercising control over one’s dreams, thedreamer who realizes that he or she is dream-ing may greatly influence the course of theevents in the dream scenario. Some practi-tioners of lucid dreaming promise extendedcreativity, the ability to overcome nightmares



SOLVING problems via the dream state is asold as humankind itself.

and other sleep problems, the healing of mindand body—and even spiritual transcendence.

Those who teach lucid dreaming state thatthe two essentials are motivation and effort.Lucid dreaming techniques allow the individ-ual dreamer to focus intention and to preparea critical mind. The exercises taught by thoseconducting lucid dreaming workshops rangefrom ancient Tibetan techniques to modernprograms developed by dream researchers.

M Delving Deeper




Krippner, Stanley, with Montague Ullman and AlanVaughan. Dream Telepathy: Experiments in NocturnalESP. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Publishers, 1989.

LaBerge, Stephen. Lucid Dreaming. New York: Ballan-tine, 1986.

Lucidity Institute. [Online] http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html.


Van de Castle, Robert L. Our Dreaming Mind. NewYork: Ballantine, 1994.

Nightmares

A nightmare differs considerably from afrightening dream. The terror of a nightmareis more intense and does not present an imageor a dream sequence. Dreamers in the throesof a nightmare cry out while in deep sleep.They sweat, have difficulty in breathing, andoften appear as if paralyzed.

In 1968 Dr. R. J. Broughton compiled con-siderable evidence that indicates that bed-wet-ting, sleepwalking, and nightmares occur dur-ing periods of deep sleep rather than duringperiods of dreaming, as the layperson oftenassumes. Bed-wetting is common among unsta-ble individuals, and the sleepwalker, in about25 percent of the cases, is also a bed-wetter.Dream researcher Dr. Stanley Krippner agreesthat nightmares, bed-wetting, and sleepwalk-ing rarely coincide with dream periods.

Psychiatrist Ernest Hartmann of Tufts Uni-versity believes that the nightmares of peoplewho seem physically healthy but who regularlysuffer from “bad dreams” are reflecting theirpersonalities rather than a traumatic past or apresent struggle with health problems. Hart-mann found evidence of “thin boundaries” inpeople prone to recurrent nightmares. In hisassessment they were men and women whotended to be more open and sensitive than theaverage. They were, he discovered, peoplewith a tendency to become quickly and deeplyinvolved in relationships with other individu-als. At the same time, paradoxically, they alsotended to be “loners,” people who did notidentify strongly with groups of any kind.

Hartmann developed a 138-item “Bound-ary Questionnaire” that he administered tomore than a thousand people, including a widerange of students, nightmare sufferers, andnaval officers. The findings supported earlierstudies that suggested that many of the menand women who endure nightmares are artisticor otherwise creative people. Naval officers,not surprisingly, most often turned up on theopposite end of the scale with rather “thickboundaries.” Hartmann speculates that“boundary thickness” may reflect a basic orga-nizational pattern of the brain—one that isgenetically determined or established early inlife. The general openness of “thin-bound-aried” people may predispose them to creativi-ty, but it also binds them to a childlike vulner-ability that leaves them at the mercy of thenight creatures that go “bump” in the darkness.

Nightmares, then, just might be the pricethat some otherwise healthy and untroubledpeople pay for their sensitivity and creativity.The nightmare may work out the vulnerability,Hartmann states, especially if the suffererlearns to maneuver the frightening dream froma place of vulnerability to a place of control.



NIGHTMARES might be the price thatsome otherwise healthy and untroubled people pay fortheir sensitivity and creativity.

On October 2, 2001, clinical psychologistAlan Siegel, editor of Dream Time magazine,told Mike Conklin, reporter for the ChicagoTribune, that the people of the United Stateshad entered a “national epidemic of night-mares” brought on by the destruction of theWorld Trade Center on September 11. “Night-mares are a cardinal symptom of somethingtraumatic in [One’s] life,” Siegel said. “In thiscase, we’ve lost our sense of security, and this issomething more traumatic than most Ameri-cans have really experienced before.”

Dr. Michael Friedman, a sleep specialist atRush-Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center inChicago, agreed that there was no questionthat they had begun treating many patientswith sleep problems and nightmares related tothe incidents of that terrible event. DeirdreBarrett, a psychology professor at HarvardMedical Center who supervised counselors at

Boston’s Logan Airport following the hijack-ings of the jets that crashed into the Twin Tow-ers, cautioned that in some cases it might be sixmonths or a year before certain people wouldbegin having traumatic dreams of the series ofevents that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Siegel went on to explain that such night-mares should be considered the brain’s natur-al means of dealing with the trauma, dis-pelling it through the subconscious whilepeople are sleeping. Although people tend tothink of nightmares as a kind of mental poi-son, Siegel said that, in reality, “they are aform of vaccine.”

M Delving Deeper

Conklin, Mike. “Plague of Nightmares Descend onElm Street.” Tribune, October 2, 2001. [Online]http://chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0110020007oct02.story?coll=chi-leisureterr.



“The Nightmare”

engraving by Henry

Fuseli. (FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)


Hall, Calvin, S. The Meaning of Dreams. New York:McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1953, 1956.

Kramer, Milton, ed. Dream Psychology and the NewBiology of Dreaming. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C.Thomas, 1969.




Sleep Paralysis

Sleep paralysis is a condition that occurs inthat state just before falling to sleep (hypna-gogic state) or just before fully awakeningfrom sleep (hypnopompic state). Althoughthe condition may last for only a few seconds,during that time a person undergoing sleepparalysis is unable to move or speak and oftenexperiences a sense of fear that there is someunknown presence in the room. Along withsuch hallucinations as seeing ghosts, angels,devils, and extraterrestrial beings, many indi-viduals undergoing sleep paralysis also reportthe sensation of being touched, pulled, or feel-ing a great pressure on the chest.

A general consensus among researcherslinks sleep paralysis with rapid eye movement(REM), the dream state. While in the normalstate of dreaming, the muscles relax and thebrain blocks signals that would permit thelimbs to move, thus preventing the body fromacting out its dreams. In the case of sleepparalysis, the usual barrier between sleepingand wakefulness temporarily drops and certainsleep phenomena, of which immobility is one,enter into wakefulness. Some individuals,momentarily paralyzed, suffer feelings ofdread, helplessness, and become convincedthat they have been visited by some supernat-ural presence.

The 1990 International Classification ofSleep Disorders reports that sleep paralysismay occur to 40 to 60 percent of the popula-tion once or twice in a lifetime, but happensquite frequently to people who suffer from

narcolepsy, a sleep disorder. Research has alsodetermined that instances of sleep paralysisusually begin around the ages of 16 and 17,increases through the teen years, and general-ly declines during the 20s. Although the con-dition is comparatively rare during the 30s,roughly 3 to 6 percent of the general popula-tion may continue on occasion to experiencesleep paralysis throughout their lives, especial-ly if they undergo sleep deprivation or experi-ence frequent sleep disruption.

Because the experience is extremely fright-ening for many who suffer from sleep paralysis,they may be reluctant to discuss the problembecause they have become convinced thatthey have witnessed a supernatural visitationor because they fear they are going insane.Researchers insist that while the condition ofsleep paralysis may be unpleasant and unset-tling, it is not indicative of any serious long-term psychological problem. Those enduringsevere sleep paralysis have been successfullytreated with certain antidepressants thatinhibit REM sleep. Even more effective, manysleep researchers maintain, is to understandmore about what the condition is and learnnot to fear it.

M Delving Deeper

Hellmich, Nanci. “When Sleep Is But a Dream.”USA Today, March 27, 2001. [Online] http://www.usatoday.com/life/llead.htm.

Hufford, David J. The Terror That Comes in the Night:An Experience-Centered Study of SupernaturalAssault Traditions. Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1989.

Krippner, Stanley, with Joseph Dillard. Dreamwork:How to Use Your Dreams for Creative Problem-Solving. Buffalo, N.Y.: Bearly, 1988.

Rowlands, Barbara. “In the Dead of Night.” TheObserver, November 18, 2001. [Online] http://www.observer.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,596608,00.html.



RESEARCHERS links sleep paralysis withrapid eye movement (REM), the dream state.

Symbology of Dreams

Fritz Perls (1893–1970), the founder ofGestalt therapy, believed that dreams were“the royal road to integration.” In his view thevarious parts of a dream should be thoroughlyexamined and even role-played to gain self-awareness and to integrate fragmented aspectsof the personality into wholeness. Accordingto Perls, the different parts of a dream are frag-ments of the human personality. To become aunified person without conflicts, one must putthe different fragments of the dream together.

The Gestalt approach to learning aboutoneself through dreams lies in a concertedattempt to integrate one’s dreams, rather thanseeking to analyze them. This can be accom-plished by consciously reliving the dreams, bytaking responsibility for being the people and

the objects in the dream, and by becomingaware of the messages contained in the dream.

Perls found that in order to learn fromdreams, it is not essential to work out theentire dream structure. To work even withsmall bits of the dream is to learn more aboutthe dreamer. In order to “relive” a dream onemust first refresh one’s memory of it by writ-ing it down or by telling it to another personas a story that is happening now, in the pre-sent tense.

Perls used the present tense in all ofGestalt dream work. In his view, dreams arethe most spontaneous expression of the exis-tence of the human being. One might per-ceive dreams being much like a stage produc-tion, but the action and the direction are notunder the same control as in waking life.Therefore, Perls advised, it is helpful to visual-ize a dream as a script from one’s own internalstage production.

Each part of the dream is likely to be dis-guised or to bear a hidden message about thedreamer. When the message comes through,the individual will feel that shock of recogni-tion that Gestalt called the “Ah-ha!”

Perls concluded that every dream has amessage to reveal to the dreamer. Like mostdream researchers, he recommends that onekeep a paper and pencil at bedside in order torecord the important points of one’s dreams asthey are remembered.

Dr. Stanley Krippner (1932– ), formerlyof the Maimonides Dream Laboratory in NewYork City, said if one were to lie quietly in bedfor a few moments each morning the finaldream of the night would often be remem-bered. In Krippner’s opinion, no dream sym-bols carry the same meaning for every person.Despite certain mass-produced “dream inter-pretation guides,” the research in the dreamlaboratories indicates that only a skilled thera-pist, working closely with an individual over along period of time, can hope to interpretdream symbolism with any degree of correct-ness. Even then the therapist’s interpretationswould hold true for only that one subject.

Krippner points out, however, that certaindreams do occur with great frequency amongpeoples all over the world. Dr. Carl G. Jung



Dr. Carl Jung (1875–1961).

(THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

IN order to learn from dreams, it is not essential towork out the entire dream structure.

(1875–1961) spoke of “archetypal images” inhumankind’s “collective unconscious.” In thispart of the mind, Jung believed, were imagescommon to all people everywhere. People liv-ing in different times and different places havedreamed of “wise old men,” “earth mothers,”“mandalas” (circles within a square), andother “archetypes.”

Jung’s theories are rejected by many psy-chologists and psychiatrists as being too mysti-cal, but Krippner believes Jung’s hypothesesreally are not in conflict with what the dreamresearchers call “scientific common sense.”There must be something structural in thebrain comparable to the structural form ofother body parts. If so, this structure woulddevelop along certain general lines eventhough an individual were isolated from otherhuman beings.

According to a general consensus amongdream researchers, the number one rule inunderstanding one’s dreams is to understandoneself. It is only by knowing oneself as com-pletely as possible that any individual will beable to identify and fully comprehend thedream symbols that are uniquely his or herown. Here are a number of symbols common-ly seen in dreams and general meanings thathave been applied to them by certainresearchers:

• Angel. Contact with Higher Self or super-consciousness. Guidance. Wisdom. Truth.

• Bathing. Spiritual cleansing. Need to “cleanup” one’s life.

• Cat. Universal symbol for woman. Mayrefer to gossip; beware of gossip. The myste-rious. Independence.

• Church. The realm of Inner Awareness.Higher Self. Spiritual need.

• Desert. Spiritual thirst. Emotional barren-ness. Sterility.

• Devil. Unpleasant person. Authoritarianfigure of negative emotions. Parent figurefor unhappy childhood. Search for forbid-den knowledge.

• Earthquake. Inner turmoil. Old ideas andproblems coming forth. Literal or prophet-ic. Changes.

• Falling. A natural fear and common to chil-dren. Falling from grace or higher spiritualrealms. Defeat.

• Hair. If soft and clean: spiritual beauty; ifmatted and dirty: spiritually unclean; ifthinning or bald: a man may feel conscious-ness of his age, or of aging. Gray or whiterepresents wisdom. A haircut may repre-sent loss of vitality.

• Island. Seclusion. Desire to get away from itall. Security. A place of inhibitions.

• Judge. Authority figure. One who viewsobjectively and fairly. Need for Self-disci-pline. Hidden guilt.

• Key. The answer to a problem. Openingnew doorways of opportunity. Gaining ofnew knowledge or wisdom.

• Lake. Water symbol for spirit. Peace if placidor smooth.



Dr. Sigmund Freud

(1856–1939). (THE LIBRARY

OF CONGRESS)

• Mirror. Reveals one’s true Self. good, bad, orindifferent. A reflection of the truth. Canalso represent illusion, that which is notreal, only a reflection.

• Needle. Sewing indicates repairing errors ofthe past or may be someone giving some-one the “needle.”

• Ocean. Spirit, God, Higher Self. Peace,unless a rough sea, then turmoil, strife, etc.

• Pig. Selfishness. • Relatives. Relatives often represent parts of

the dreamer’s Self playing various roles ofhis or her life.

• Suitcase. Prosperity. Desire to travel. Pres-tige. Subconscious desire for someone elseto go away.

• Sun. Spiritual light and awareness.• Teeth. The loss of a tooth or teeth may fore-

tell the loss of something of value.• Water. Source of Life. Spirit, God, Univer-

sal.

M Delving Deeper






Krippner, Stanley, with Mark Waldman. Dreamscap-ing: New and Creative Ways to Work with YourDreams. Los Angeles: Lowell House, 1999.

Perls, Frederick S. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim.Lafayette, Calif.: Real People Press, 1969.


Stekel, Wilhelm. The Interpretation of Dreams. NewYork: Washington Square Press, 1967.

The Mechanics of Memory

Memory is the ability to retain and torecall personal experiences, informa-tion, and various skills and habits.

While memory is easy to define, there is noagreement among researchers to explain howit works, and scientists have not yet estab-lished a model for the actual mechanics ofmemory that is consistent with the subjectivenature of consciousness.

Dr. Daniel L. Schacter, a Harvard professorof psychology and an expert on memory, statesthat subjectivity in the process of rememberinginvolves at least three important aspects: Mem-ories are mental constructs fashioned in accor-dance with the present needs, desires, and influ-ences of the individual; memories are oftenaccompanied by emotions and feelings; and theactual act of remembering something usuallyinvolves a conscious awareness of the memory.

In the twenty-first century, some scientistsfavor the comparison of the brain to a com-puter and memories as programs that havebeen encoded into the system. Behavioristsargue that memories, and the thinking processin general, are products of learned behavior.

Many researchers have long observed thatthe more traumatic an experience, the morelikely an individual is to recall it later. Neuro-scientists point to numerous current studiesthat indicate that memory involves a set ofencoded neural connections that can occur inseveral parts of the brain. The more powerfulthe images accompanying an event, the morethe brain is stimulated and likely to make it apart of long-term memory.

Although scientists have yet to understandhow memory really works, a survey of psychol-ogists conducted in 1996 revealed that 84 per-cent of them believed that every experience aperson undergoes throughout his or her life isstored in the mind. However, a great manycurrent studies suggest that such is not thecase. An increasing amount of research onmemory indicates that every moment of everybit of sensory data experienced by individualsthroughout the course of their normal day-to-day life process is not retained by the brainand is not able to be recalled at some futuretime. Rather than the brain serving as a kindof repository for a complete audio or videorecording of everything that has ever hap-pened to a person, the only memories that arestored are bits and fragments of one’s more



meaningful experiences that are somehowencoded in engrams within the neural net-work of the brain. The process of memoryinvolves an act of consciousness that with-draws a significant or emotional event in anepisodic montage or collage of images, ratherthan a complete recall of sensory data.

Scientists believe that long-term memoryrequires an extensive encoding in the innerpart of the temporal lobes of the brain. Mostmemories are lost, because they were neversuccessfully encoded. Strong encoding of amemory may depend upon the individual’sinterests, perception, and needs. Thinkingand talking about an experience at the time itoccurred will also assist in an encoding thatmay be recalled at a later time.

Scientists believe that they may have dis-covered a biological reason why two peoplewho witnessed the same event may, severalyears later, have different memories of whatreally occurred. According to research con-ducted at the Center for Neural Science atNew York University by Drs. Karim Naderand Glenn Shafe, every time an older memoryis recalled and is brought into consciousnessby an individual, the brain reassembles it,updates it, and makes new proteins beforeplacing the memory back in long-term stor-age. Dr. Daniel L. Schacter commented thatthe research of Nader and Shafe had offeredthe first good neurobiological explanation ofthe method in which memories may be updat-ed. Schacter added that it is a mistake tobelieve that once the brain has recorded amemory it remains forever fixed.

Some scientists have theorized that existingolder memories may eventually be erased in thebrain by a process that involves the generationof new neurons. The clearing out of certainmemories to make more room for newer onesmay be important in order to store more recentmemories and information. Joe Tsien and hiscolleagues at the Department of MolecularBiology at Princeton University reported theirdiscovery that the generation of new neurons isimportant for the memory-clearance processand suggested that chronic abnormalities in theclearance process may contribute to the memo-ry disorder associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Although numerous anecdotal accountsclaim that dreams are a vital element in theprocess of encoding information absorbed dur-ing the waking hours as memories, Dr. JeromeSiegel, a neuroscientist at the University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles, released his findingsto the contrary in 2002. He argued that thereis no solid evidence to indicate that dreamsare needed to consolidate memories. In addi-tion, Siegel contested the hypothesis that theprevention of rapid-eye-movement sleepblocked memory formation.

Certain studies on memory show that peo-ple often construct their memories after thefact and that they may be susceptible to sug-gestions from others as to the “truth” of whatactually occurred. Therefore, it is possible tocreate false memories in some people’s mindsby suggesting that certain events have hap-pened to them when, in fact, such circum-stances never occurred.

Closely related to false memories, whichmay be instilled within certain individuals’minds, is source amnesia in which people accu-



A chart showing the

stages of memory,

encoding, and storage.

(STANDLEY PUBLICATIONS)

MEMORY is the ability to retain and to recallpersonal experiences, information, and various skillsand habits.

rately recall an event, but forget the source ofthe memory. People may remember the detailsof a terrible blizzard that their grandparentsrecounted so vividly to them when they werechildren that they later incorporate theirgrandparents’ experience as a part of their ownmemories and tell the story to others as if ithad happened to them. Likewise, children see-ing dramatic portrayals of hardships or disastersin the theaters or on their television screensmay in their adult years remember those depic-tions as their own memories of enduring diffi-cult times. Scientific studies indicate that suchmemories of a memory that happened to some-one else is common—and suggest that one’smemory of an event is not the most reliablerecord of what actually occurred.

Memory researchers, such as Schacter, listseveral types of memory systems. Semanticmemory reveals conceptual and factual infor-

mation stored by the brain. Procedural memoryis the facility of recollection that permits oneto learn new skills and retain habits. Episodicmemory is the ability to remember those per-sonal experiences that define one’s life andindividuality.

In addition, scientists recognize field memory,a process of recollection wherein one, as if in adream, sees oneself in the scene. Observer memo-ries are those memories in which the remem-brance is perceived through one’s own eyes.

Researchers as early as Sigmund Freud(1856–1939) have theorized that the fact thatso many memories appear to be field memoriesis additional evidence that for many peoplethe process of recalling a particular memorymay be largely reconstructive. Freud also isfamous for his theory of memory repression, inwhich he asserted that unpleasant memories,



Professor Nathaniel Kleitman (1895–1999), aUniversity of Chicago physiologist and co-conductor of the Kleitman-Dement dreamresearch findings, is known as the father of

modern sleep research. Kleitman said that dreams arehard to remember because the higher centers of thebrain are deactivated during sleep—or are operatingat a much slower pace than during hours of con-sciousness.

The cerebral cortex is that portion of the brainthat selects, abstracts, sorts, and memorizes when itis fully activated; but when the rest of the body sleeps,it, too, takes a nap, and that makes the memory ofdreams a bit difficult at best.

The memory of dreaming, then, must in some wayawaken the cerebral cortex, on cue, so that individu-als can better remember what they dream. The habitof writing a dream down immediately upon awakeningwill, to a degree, help set the cortex on the alert so itcan go into action on a moment’s notice.

Sources:

Faraday, Ann. Dream Power. New York: Berkley Medallion Books

Edition, 1973.

Hall, Calvin S. The Meaning of Dreams. New York: McGraw-Hill

Book, 1953, 1956.

Kramer, Milton, ed. Dream Psychology and the New Biology of

Dreaming. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1969.

Krippner, Stanley. Dreamtime and Dreamwork: Decoding the

Language of the Night. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher,

1990.

Sechrist, Elsie. Dreams—Your Magic Mirror. New York: Dell

Publishing, 1969.

Keeping a

Dream Diary



Dr. John Lorber (1915–1996), neurologyprofessor at the University of Sheffieldin the United Kingdom, recalled the timein the 1970s when the campus doctor

asked him to examine a student whose head was a bitlarger than normal. Instead of the normal 4.5-centime-ter thickness of brain tissue between the ventriclesand the cortical surface, Lorber discovered that thestudent had only a thin layer of mantle measuringabout a millimeter and his cranium was filled mainlywith cerebrospinal fluid.

The man had hydrocephalus, a condition in whichthe cerebrospinal fluid, instead of circulating aroundthe brain, becomes dammed up inside the craniumand leaves no space for the brain to develop normally.Such a condition is usually fatal within the first fewmonths of life. If individuals should survive beyondinfancy, they are often severely retarded. In the caseof the math major from the University of Sheffield, hehad an IQ of 126 and graduated with honors.

Lorber collected research data concerning sev-eral hundred people who functioned quite well withpractically no brains at all. Upon careful examination,he described some of the subjects as having no“detectable brains.”

Dr. Patrick Wall, professor of anatomy at Univer-sity College, London, stated that there existed“scores” of accounts of people existing without dis-cernable brains. The importance of Lorber’s work,Wall said, was that he had conducted a long series ofsystematic scanning, rather than simply collectinganecdotal material.

Lorber and other scientists theorized there maybe such a high level of redundancy in normal brainfunction that the minute bits of brain that these peoplehave may be able to assume the essential activities ofa normal-sized brain.

David Bower, professor of neurophysiology at Liv-erpool University, England, stated that although Lor-ber’s research did not indicate that the brain wasunnecessary, it did demonstrate that the brain couldwork in conditions that conventional medical sciencewould have thought impossible.

Sources:

“Is Your Brain Really Necessary?” Alternative Science News,

September 9, 2002. [Online] http://www.alternativescience.

com/no_ brainer.htm.

Lewin, Roger. “Is Your Brain Really Necessary?” Science 210

(December 12, 1980). Also [Online] http://www.enidreed.

com/serv01.htm.

Nolte, John. The Human Brain: An Introduction to Its Functional

Anatomy. Philadelphia: Mosby Publishing, 2002.

Living without

a Brain

especially those involving sexual abuse or mis-behavior, were pushed back or repressed bythe psyche of the individual. Such repressioncould in later years lead to phobias or neurosesthat could be healed by psychoanalysis.

In 2001 Michael Anderson, a psychologistat the University of Oregon, conducted amemory repression experiment with collegestudents. The study supported Freud’s theoryabout the mind’s ability to repress thoughts,especially painful or disturbing ones, accord-ing to Martin Conway, a psychologist at theUniversity of Bristol in England. Additionalfindings at the University of Oregon revealedthe results of a study of children that disclosedthat they were less likely to recall abuse at thehands of their parents or guardians than astranger, quite likely because the children hadto forget in order to cope with their daily lives.

M Delving Deeper

Ashcraft, Mark H. Human Memory and Cognition.Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1994.

Loftus, Elizabeth F. Memory: Surprising New Insightsinto How We Remember and Why We Forget. Read-ing, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1980.

“New Memories Erase Old by Generating New Neu-rons,” UniSci—Daily University Science News. 6December 2001. [Online] http://unisci.com/stories/20014/1206014.htm.

Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.

Schacter, Daniel L. Searching for Memory—The Brain,the Mind, and the Past. New York: Basic Books,1996.

False Memories

The ease with which a false memory could becreated was demonstrated by an experimentconducted in 2001 by University of Washing-ton memory researchers Jacquie E. Pickrelland Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus. About one-third ofthe 120 subjects in the experiment who wereexposed to a fake advertisement showing BugsBunny at Disneyland later said that they hadalso met the cartoon character when they vis-ited Disneyland and had even shaken hishand. Such a scenario could never haveoccurred in real life, because Bugs Bunny is acartoon character owned by Warner Brothersand would not be seen walking around Dis-

neyland with such cartoon creations as Mick-ey Mouse and Donald Duck.

Pickrell, a doctoral student in psychology,stated that the study suggested how easily afalse memory can be created and just how vul-nerable and malleable memory is. The experi-ment also demonstrated how people mightcreate many of their autobiographical refer-ences and memories. Even the nostalgicadvertising employed by many commercialcompanies can lead individuals to rememberexperiences that they never really had.

Loftus, professor of psychology and adjunctprofessor of law at the University of Washing-ton, began her research into memory distor-tion in the 1970s. When she wrote an articleon creating false memories for the September1997 issue of Scientific American, Loftus andher students had conducted more than 200experiments documenting how exposure tomisinformation may induce memory distor-tion. Loftus and her colleagues found thatmemories are more easily modified when a sig-nificant amount of time has passed betweenthe event and the recollection. Theresearchers also found that individuals whohave witnessed a particular event, such as anautomobile accident, may have their recollec-tions distorted when they are later exposed tonew and misleading information concerningthe event.

While it is understandable that details of aparticular memory might change over time,Loftus and her research associate, Pickrell,decided to undertake the challenge of deter-mining how false memories could be implant-ed in an individual’s mind. Over the course ofa series of interviews, 29 percent of the 24 sub-jects claimed to remember a fictitious eventthat had been constructed for them by theresearchers. In two follow-up interviews, 25percent continued to insist that the event hadactually occurred to them. “The study pro-vides evidence that people can be led toremember their past in different ways,” Loftussaid, “and they can be coaxed into ‘remember-ing’ entire events that never happened.”

Loftus’s more than 30 years of research intothe various processes of memory have led herto suggest that false memories are often created



by three common methods: yielding to socialor professional demands to recall particularevents; imagining events when experiencingdifficulty remembering; and being encouragedto abandon critical thinking regarding thetruth of their memory constructions.

False memories, according to Loftus andher research colleagues, are most often con-structed “by combining actual memories withthe content of suggestions received from oth-ers.” During such a process, individuals mayexperience source confusion and forget howmuch of the memory is valid and how muchcame from external sources.

In March 1998, a report commissioned bythe Royal College of Psychiatrists in Englandaccused its own members of having destroyedinnocent lives by implanting false memories byusing irresponsible techniques of delving intopatients’ childhood events. According to thereport, nearly 1,000 parents stated that theyhad been falsely accused of sexual abuse aftertheir adult children allegedly recovered suchmemories of the attacks during psychotherapy.

Dr. Sydney Brandon, emeritus professor ofpsychiatry at Leicester University, warned hiscolleagues that such incidents of alleged recov-ered memories could bring the whole of psy-chiatry into disrepute. When such memories ofabuse are brought forth after long periods,sometimes decades of amnesia, Brandon said,there is a high probability that they are false.

In the November 1998 issue of the journalPsychological Science, Dr. C. J. Brainerd and Dr.V. F. Reyna of the University of Arizona in Tuc-son published their findings that many individ-uals often believed more strongly in suggested,false memories than in actual recollections ofevents. Police interviews and psychotherapysessions are structured around a theme that isdesigned to help a witness or a patient remem-ber scenes of the past. Psychoanalysis is moti-vated by the task of uncovering a past traumaand may involve a series of questions that maylead a patient to accept a suggested, rather thanan actual, truth. When strong themes are oper-ative in such explorations of memory, theresearchers state, things that were not reallyexperienced can seem more real to the individ-ual than his or her actual experiences.

M Delving Deeper

Ashcraft, Mark H. Human Memory and Cognition.Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1994.

Associated Press. “Study of Mind’s Ability to RepressBacks Freud.” The New York Times, March 15,2001. [Online] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/15/health/16ap-memory.html.

Loftus, Elizabeth F. “Creating False Memories.” Scien-tific American, September 1997, 71–75.

———. Memory: Surprising New Insights into How WeRemember and Why We Forget. Reading, Mass.:Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1980.

Loftus, Elizabeth F., and Katherine Ketcham. TheMyth of Repressed Memory. New York: St. Martin’sPress, 1994.

“New Memories Erase Old by Generating New Neu-rons.” UniSci—Daily University Science News,December 6, 2001. [Online] http://unisci.com/stories/20014/1206614.htm.

Pinker, Steven. How the Mind Works. New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.


———. The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind For-gets and Remembers. Boston, Mass.: HoughtonMifflin, 2001.

———, ed. Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brainsand Societies Reconstruct the Past. Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.

University of Washington. “New Evidence ShowsFalse Memories Can Be Created,” June 13, 2001.[Online] http://www.washington.edu.

Phobias

Aphobia is a persistent irrational fear thatcauses a person to feel extreme anxiety.When people have a phobic reaction to



MEMORIES are more easily modified whena significant amount of time has passed between theevent and the recollection.

a situation, a condition, or a thing, they mayexperience sweating, increased heart rate, diffi-culty in breathing, and an overwhelming desireto run away. Sometimes they even fear thatthey are in imminent danger of dying.

Phobias are the most common of anxietydisorders, and they affect men and women ofall ages, income levels, and ethnic groups. Aphobia may develop from an unpleasant child-hood memory. For example, an individual mayfeel uneasy around cats because of being bit-ten or scratched as an infant. If over the yearssuch an uneasiness develops into an unreason-ing fear of cats that causes the person toscream, run, or faint at the very presence of acat, that person has ailurophobia (from theGreek words ailuro for cat, phobia for fear).Those individuals who have this phobia maytake some comfort in knowing that a fear ofcats also troubled such military conquerors asAlexander the Great, Julius Caesar, andNapoleon Bonaparte.

Psychologists have categorized as many as500 phobias, and according to the estimates ofsome health professionals, as many as 50 mil-lion individuals in the United States sufferfrom some kind of phobia. While the causes ofphobias remain unknown and open to muchspeculation, some of the most frequent theo-ries name biological, chemical, cultural, andpsychological origins—or a mix of the four.Health care professionals stress that the mostimportant thing for people with phobias toremember is that phobic disorders respondwell to treatment and a phobia is not some-thing that they must continue to endure.

Among the most common phobias is a fearof flying, aviophobia (avio, Latin for bird;avion, French for airplane). In 1980, a studyconducted by Boeing Aircraft Corporationfound that 25 million Americans readilyexpressed a fear of getting on board an air-plane. Many individuals who suffer from thisphobia break out into cold sweat and sufferfrom difficulty in breathing even while board-ing the aircraft. Nearly all are consumed by anoverwhelming conviction that the aircraftwill crash and they will die in the ensuing dis-aster. Such a phobia can make life extremelydifficult for those professionals who must trav-

el for their work, and many refuse to flyregardless of the consequences to their liveli-hood. The “First Lady of Soul,” singer ArethaFranklin, refuses to fly, even if it means can-celing a concert date. Academy Award-win-ning screenwriter Billy Bob Thornton refusesto commit to any appearance that requireshim to board an airplane. Although sciencefiction author Ray Bradbury has taken hisreaders to outer space on numerous occasions,he avoids airplanes. Actors Tony Curtis,Whoopi Goldberg, and Cher are also avio-phobes. Prescription tranquilizers and othermedications have proven effective for mostindividuals who suffer from aviophobia.

Agoraphobia is considered the most dis-abling of all the phobias. Treatment is difficultbecause those who suffer from this phobia fearbeing someplace outside of their home wherethey will not be able to escape if they shouldexperience a panic attack—and that can beanywhere from a supermarket, the office, or acrowded street. Usually defined as a fear ofopen spaces and unfamiliar places, the phobiatakes its name from agora, the Greek word formarketplace, and literally translates as “fear ofthe marketplace.” Some people develop thisphobia so severely that they choose to leavetheir home and familiar surroundings as sel-dom as possible. Interestingly, Sigmund Freud(1856–1939), the famous psychotherapist whosought to unravel the phobias of his patients,suffered from agoraphobia. The wealthy andextremely eccentric aviator and investorHoward Hughes numbered agoraphobiaamong his fears. Academy Award-winningactress Kim Basinger is another agoraphobic.Treatment generally consists of behavioraltherapy combined with antianxiety or antide-pressant medications.

Psychologists generally agree that it iscommon for children to have extreme fearreactions before the age of seven and to learnto distinguish between actual dangers andlegitimate fears as they mature. Thoseresearchers who delve into the origins of pho-bic responses have theorized that as many as40 percent of all those who suffer from specificphobias have inherited those fears from theirparents or close relatives. Whether one’smother jumped up on a chair and screamed at



a spider, one’s father went into a frenzy at thesight of a rat, or one’s aunt fainted at the sightof blood, the child who perceives such dra-matic demonstrations of fear is likely toremember them forever and to enact them inhis or her own life experiences.

Other experts state that childhood trau-mas, such as being bitten by a cat, being stungby a bee, or becoming lost for a time in a dark,wooded area, create more than enough memo-ries of fears to be lodged in the brain as phobicresponses to cats, bees, and forests. Individualsensitivity may also play an important role inthe development of a trauma. Two individualsmay experience a similar trauma as children,but only the more emotionally sensitive personwill develop a phobia because of the incident.

Most experts identify phobias as fallinginto one of three basic kinds of fears: socialphobias, in which the individual suffers from aparalyzing dread of social or professionalencounters; panic disorders, in which the suf-ferer is periodically assailed by a sudden over-whelming fear for no apparent reason; andspecific phobias, in which the person has ahorror of a single thing, such as spiders,snakes, air travel, and so forth. Of the three,psychologists generally agree that specificphobias are the easiest to treat because theyare the easiest to comprehend. In addition,there are understandable reasons why individ-uals might not wish to encounter a poisonoussnake or spider or why they might be fearful offlying after the media has publicized a numberof airline crashes. Because some phobias havedeveloped out of an appropriate response to alegitimate fear, it is sometimes difficult todraw clear distinctions between phobic reac-tions and normal responses to danger that mayhave become exaggerated by imagination.

Many experts believe that it is no coinci-dence that specific phobias most often fallinto one of four categories: fear of insects andanimals; fear of the natural environment, suchas dreading what lies in the dark; fear of dan-gerous situations, such as being trapped in atight place or falling from a high place; andfear of blood or being injured. Each of thesecategories reflect fears that have enabled thehuman species to survive.

Because of a keen development of the fearand flight response of humankind’s ancientancestors over many centuries, millions ofcontemporary men and women have inheritedfears that may no longer be as valid and as life-threatening as they once were. The commonfear of snakes is an example of survival learn-ing that has been passed on from generationto generation. Although the number of mod-ern people who live in an environmentthreatened by poisonous reptiles has beenvastly reduced, millions of individuals retainan unreasoning fear of snakes.

Of those who suffer from a specific phobia,researchers state that as many as 90 percentare women. According to the National Insti-tute of Mental Health, phobias were the mostcommon psychiatric illness among women inall age groups and the second most commonillness among men over 25. Perhaps morewomen than men admit to having a phobiabecause of hormones, genes, and being rearedin a culture in which men are not encouragedto acknowledge mental or physical problems.

Psychologists have made great strides inunderstanding the nature of phobias and help-ing those vulnerable to such fears to overcomethem. There are depressant or stimulant med-ications that phobics can take to help over-come their fears, and there are many kinds oftreatment programs. There are exposure ther-apies that habituate phobic individuals tobecome nonresponsive to the thing that onceterrorized them; virtual-reality programs thatsimulate the thing the phobic person mostfears in a safe environment; and various drugsto treat anxiety that have been approved bythe U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

There are a number of other phobias thatare quite common:

Acrophobia, a fear of heights, may havedeveloped in an individual because of a child-



A phobia is a persistent irrational fear that causes aperson to feel extreme anxiety.

hood fear of falling. Some individuals are unableto ascend to the upper floors of buildings or areeven unable to climb up on ladders to hang pic-tures in their home because of such a dread offalling. The name of this phobia is derived fromthe Greek word acro to denote a great height.

Arachnophobia, a fear of spiders, is anextremely common fear that undoubtedly hasits basis in the reality that some spiders are poi-sonous or inflict painful bites. The name for thisphobia comes from the Greek word for spider,arachne. There is also the Greek myth ofArachne, a woman from the ancient city ofLydia, who had the boldness to challenge thegoddess Athena to a weaving contest. As a pun-ishment, Arachne was changed into a spider.

Claustrophobia, a fear of being enclosed ina small or tight place, was experienced by thegreat escape artist Houdini, who often accept-ed the challenge of freeing himself from verysmall and tight boxes and trunks. Disciplininghimself to conquer his phobia was one of hisgreatest feats. The name of this phobia comesfrom the Latin word claustro, to shut or toclose. The word is also very close to cloister, inwhich individuals voluntarily shut themselvesoff from the world. The singer-actor DeanMartin tried to avoid elevators whenever pos-sible because of his claustrophobia. EdgarAllan Poe (1809–1849), the writer and poet,was a claustrophobic, and he is said to havedrawn on such fears when he wrote such sto-ries as “Premature Burial” (1844).

Glossophobia, a fear of public speaking, isone of the most common of phobias and onethat must be overcome by many individualswho find themselves in the position of havingto make a speech to a group of people for busi-ness, professional, or educational reasons. Fromthe Greek word for tongue, glosso, many peoplefind themselves tongue-tied, feeling faint, theirheart pounding when they are placed in theposition of speaking in public. Even profession-al entertainers can experience cold sweat, nau-sea, vomiting, and light-headedness when theystep before an audience. Extreme stage frightkept singer-songwriter Carly Simon from per-forming live for many years.

Hemaphobia, a fear of blood, is likelyencouraged by the reverence that was placed

upon the shedding of blood in religious sacri-fices for thousands of years. Although medicalscience has added knowledge to the definitionof what constitutes a fully functioning humanbody, on the unconscious level it is likely thatmany people still regard blood as the physicalexpression of the life force. Reinforcing suchan ancient belief is the importance that isgiven to samples of blood in diagnosing ill-nesses and in identifying everything from cul-pability in a crime to responsibility in parent-hood. The word comes from the Greek haima,meaning blood.

Mysophobia, a fear of germs or dirt, origi-nates from the Greek myso, filth. This phobiais an environmental one that causes the suffer-ers constantly to wash their hands, to cleansethe area around them, and to avoid any type ofdirt or any source that might breed bacteria.Many people with this disorder become house-bound and often cause dermal harm to them-selves by constantly scrubbing and washingtheir skin. Singer-songwriter Michael Jacksonhas become well-known for his phobia regard-ing germs. Millionaire-eccentric HowardHughes and actress Joan Crawford were amongthose who shared this fear.

Necrophobia, a fear of dead people or ani-mals, is likely one of those phobias that has itsroots in humankind’s earliest taboos andreflects such commonsense reasoning as thedanger of contracting diseases from thedeceased. All of the world’s religions have strictrules about how the dead should be handledand how a proper burial should be conducted.And all world cultures have superstitions andlegends about vampires, zombies, and othermembers of the undead who seek the blood ofthe living. Tales of the dead returning to com-municate with their relatives or exact revengeon their enemies are known to every society.With such a heritage of fear of the dead lurkingin the unconscious, it is to be expected thatsome individuals would develop such a crip-pling dread of a deceased person that therapy ormedications must be prescribed. The wordcomes from the Greek nekros, meaning deadbody or deceased person.

Scotophobia, a fear of the dark, is anotherbasic human response to centuries of concern





Aplacebo is a tablet or a liquid with nomedical qualities that physicians willgive to calm the anxieties of patients whoinsist upon receiving drugs when none

are deemed necessary. In other instances, pharma-cologists who wish to test the effects of a new drugmay give placebos to a control group and the realdrug to another as a method of gaining a more accu-rate determination of the effectiveness of the drugunder development.

On April 30, 2002, researchers at the University ofTexas Health Science Center announced their find-ings that depressed people given a placebo exhibitedchanges in their brain that were nearly identical tothose produced by a popular antidepressant. Theleader of the research group, Dr. Helen Mayberg, Uni-versity of Toronto Professor of Neurology and Psychi-atry, said that patients who responded to the placeboand those who responded to the actual antidepres-sant showed similar metabolic changes in cortical(thinking) and limbic-paralimbic (emotional) regions oftheir brains. Of the 15 men who completed the study atthe health center, eight had experienced a noticeableimprovement in their symptoms. Four had been admin-istered the drug, and four had been given a placebo.

Volunteers in a pain relief experiment conductedby the Neurophysiology Research Group in Stock-holm, Sweden, also demonstrated that both placebosand powerful painkilling drugs activate the sameareas of the brain. Brain scans indicated that both thetrue painkilling drug and a salt water placebo activat-ed the same two areas of the brain—the rostral ante-rior cingular cortex and the brain stem.

Ingvar said that perhaps the most unexpectedfinding of the experiment was that those individualswho responded most strongly to the true drug alsoresponded most positively to the placebo injection.Such a discovery may indicate that certain peoplehave “stronger pathways in the brain for pain relief.”According to the researchers, pain relief may often lit-erally be a case of mind over matter.

Sources:

Czerner, Thomas B. What Makes You Tick? The Brain in Plain

English. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001.

Fox, Maggie. “Placebo, Drugs Both Activate Brain in Pain

Relief.” Yahoo! News/Reuters, February 7, 2002. [Online]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u/nm/20020

207/sc_nm/science_pain_dc_1.

Moore, Oliver. “Placebo Can Fool the Brain, Study Finds.” Globe

and Mail, April 30, 2002. [Online] http://www.globeandmail.

com/servlet/RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate?tf=tgam/realtime/

ful.

Shapiro, Arthur K., and Elaine Shapiro. The Powerful Placebo:

From Ancient Priest to Modern Physician. Baltimore, Md.:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Mind Over Matter

with Placebos

for the dangers in venturing out after nightfallwhere wild animals or savage people may liein ambush, waiting to attack the vulnerable.While even in modern times it seems only anexercise of common sense to be cautious whileout walking after dark, an unreasoning fearand overwhelming dread of dark places cancause individuals to be confined to theirhomes after nightfall. The word comes fromthe Greek scoto, darkness.

Xenophobia, fear of strangers or foreignersand their customs, can be especially trouble-some in modern times when the globe shrinksmore every year, and cultures once far removedfrom one another become closely involved intrade, tourism, or international tension. Inprimitive times when people encounteredindividuals from different tribes, a caution orfear of strangers was the most primitive kind ofprotective device. Although few areas of theworld remain isolated from the technology ofmodern communications and few people are soisolated as to remain ignorant of people outsideof their own tribal boundaries, ancient beliefs,superstitions, and fears concerning those dif-ferent from themselves perpetuate xenophobia(from the Greek xenos, for stranger or foreign-er) even among certain individuals living inmodern society. Education and an encourage-ment to learn about and to appreciate the sim-ilarities, rather than the differences, among allpeople is the only cure for xenophobia.

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Beck, Aaron, and G. Emery. Anxiety Disorders & Pho-bias: A Cognitive Perspective. New York: BasicBooks, 1985.

Dumont, Raenn. The Sky Is Falling: Understanding andCoping with Phobias, Panic, and Obsessive-Compul-sive Disorders. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.

Hovanec, Erin M. Everything You Need to Know AboutPhobias. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, 2000.

Kahn, Ada P. Facing Fears: The Sourcebook for Phobias,Fears, and Anxieties. New York: Bantam Books,1999.

Kluger, Jeffrey. “Fear Not!” Time, April 2, 2001, 51–62.

Olshan, Neal, and Julie Wang. Everything You Wantedto Know About Phobias But Were Afraid to Ask.New York: Beaufort Books, 1981.

Online List of Phobias. [Online] http://www.phobialist.com.

Stern, Richard. Mastering Phobias—Cases, Causes andCures. New York: Penguin, 1995.

Altered States of

Consciousness

An altered state of consciousness is abrain state wherein one loses the senseof identity with one’s body or with

one’s normal sense perceptions. A person mayenter an altered state of consciousnessthrough such things as sensory deprivation oroverload, neurochemical imbalance, fever, ortrauma. One may also achieve an altered stateby chanting, meditating, entering a trancestate, or ingesting psychedelic drugs.

The testimonies of mystics and medita-tors who claim that their ability to enteraltered states of consciousness has broughtthem enlightenment or transcendence aregenerally regarded with great skepticismamong the majority of scientists in Westernsociety. Other researchers, especially those inthe field of parapsychology, maintain thatWestern science must recognize the value ofstudying altered states of consciousness andface up to the fact that what scientists con-sider baseline or normal consciousness is notunitary. In the opinion of many parapsychol-ogists, science must abandon the notion thatwaking, rational consciousness is the onlyform of any value and that all other kinds arepathological.

Researchers who study aspects of humanconsciousness have suggested that within thecourse of a single day an individual may flickerin and out of several states of consciousness.Some theorize that there are six states of“nonreflective consciousness,” characterizedby the absence of self-consciousness. Thesestates include:

1. Bodily feelings, which are induced by nor-mal bodily functioning and are character-ized by nonreflective awareness in theorgans and tissues of the digestive, glandu-lar, respiratory, and other bodily systems.This awareness does not become self-con-scious unless such stimuli as pain or hungerintensify a bodily feeling.



2. Stored memories, which do not becomeself-conscious until the individual reacti-vates them.

3. Coma, which is induced by illness, epilep-tic seizures, or physical injuries to thebrain, and is characterized by prolongednonreflective consciousness of the entireorganism.

4. Stupor, which is induced by psychosis, nar-cotics, or over-indulgence in alcohol, andis characterized by greatly reduced abilityto perceive incoming sensations.

5. Non-rapid-eye-movement sleep, which iscaused by a normal part of the sleep cycleat night or during daytime naps, and ischaracterized by a minimal amount ofmental activity, which may sometimes berecalled upon awakening.

6. Rapid-eye-movement sleep, which is anormal part of the nighttime sleep cycle,and is characterized by the mental activityknown as dreams.

The reflective, or self-conscious, states ofconsciousness are:

1. Pragmatic consciousness, the everyday,waking conscious state, characterized byalertness, logic, and rationality, cause-and-effect thinking, goal-directedness. In thislevel of consciousness, one has the feelingthat he or she is in control and has theability to move at will from perceptualactivity to conceptual thinking to idea for-mation to motor activity.

2. Lethargic consciousness, characterized bysluggish mental activity that has beeninduced by fatigue, sleep deprivation, feel-ings of depression, or certain drugs.

3. Hyperalert consciousness, brought aboutby a period of heightened vigilance, suchas sentry duty, watching over a sick child,or by certain drugs, such as amphetamines.

Levels or types of consciousness with vary-ing degrees of what could be considered analtered state might include:

1. Rapturous consciousness, characterized byintense feelings and overpowering emo-tions and induced by sexual stimulation,the fervor of religious conversion, or theingestion of certain drugs.

2. Hysterical consciousness, induced by rage,jealousy, fear, neurotic anxiety, violentmob activity, or certain drugs. As opposedto rapturous consciousness, which is gener-ally evaluated as pleasant and positive innature, hysterical consciousness is consid-ered negative and destructive.

3. Fragmented consciousness, defined as alack of integration among important seg-ments of the total personality, often resultsin psychosis, severe neurosis, amnesia,multiple personality, or dissociation. Sucha state of consciousness is induced bysevere psychological stress over a period oftime. It may also be brought about tem-porarily by accidents or psychedelic drugs.

4. Relaxed consciousness, characterized by astate of minimal mental activity, passivity,and an absence of motor activity. This stateof consciousness may be brought about bylack of external stimulation, such as sun-bathing, floating in water, or certain drugs.

5. Daydreaming, induced by boredom, socialisolation, or sensory deprivation.

6. Trance consciousness, induced by raptattentiveness to a single stimulus, such asthe voice of a hypnotist, one’s own heart-beat, a chant, certain drugs, or trance-inducing rituals and primitive dances. Thetrance state is characterized by hypersug-gestibility and concentrated attention onone stimulus to the exclusion of all others.

7. Expanded consciousness, comprising fourlevels: A) the sensory level, characterizedby subjective reports of space, time, bodyimage, or sense impressions having beenaltered; B) the recollective-analytic level,which summons up memories of one’s pastand provides insights concerning self,



A person may enter an altered state ofconsciousness through such things as sensorydeprivation or overload, neurochemical imbalance,fever, or trauma.

work, or personal relationships; C) thesymbolic level, which is often character-ized by vivid visual imagery of mythical,religious, and historical symbols; D) theintegrative level, in which the individualundergoes an intense religious illumina-tion, experiences a dissolution of self, andis confronted by God or some divinebeing. Each of these four levels might beinduced by psychedelic drugs, hypnosis,meditation, prayer, or free association dur-ing psychoanalysis. Through the ages,many of humankind’s major material andspiritual breakthroughs may have comefrom these virtually unmapped, unchartedregions of the mind.

There are many reasons why the greatmajority of scientific researchers remain doubt-ful about the validity of altered states of con-sciousness, such as the misuse of hypnosis byamateur practitioners, the lack of understand-ing by professionals and public alike of the cre-ative processes, and the disastrous results of therecreational use of LSD and other psychedelicdrugs. Descriptions of mystical revelationsbecome almost florid as self-proclaimed seersand mystics attempt to translate their psyche-delic drug or trance state experiences into thelanguage of a technically oriented society.Quite frequently, creative geniuses of Westernculture have compared their moods of inspira-tion to insanity. The composer Peter IlyichTchaikovsky (1840–1893) once compared hisbehavior during creative periods to that of amadman. Such comparisons are regrettable,and it is unfortunate that modern culture hasfew models other than madness to describe thethroes of creativity.

William James (1842–1910), the great pio-neer of the study of consciousness, wrote in

the Varieties of Religious Experience that what iscalled “normal waking consciousness” is butone special type of consciousness, while allabout it, separated by the slightest of barriers,“there lie potential forms of consciousnessentirely different.” While many individualsmay go through life without suspecting theexistence of these states of consciousness,“…apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touchthey are there in all their completeness…Noaccount of the universe in its totality can befinal which leaves these forms of conscious-ness disregarded.”

While skeptical psychological researcherscontinue to label claims of revelation andtranscendence through altered states of con-sciousness as delusional and self-deceptive,others call for a serious examination of variousstates of consciousness and ask for moreresearch to learn the particular significance ofeach state on the totality of the human entity.Many parapsychologists firmly believe thatcontinued research into altered states of con-sciousness may well reveal that humankind’smost important discoveries, its highest peaksof ecstasy, and its greatest moments of inspira-tion occur in reverie, in dreams, and in statesof consciousness presently ignored by the pro-fessional world and the general public.

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Krippner, Stanley, with Etzel Cardena and Steven J.Lynn. Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examin-ing the Scientific Evidence. Washington, D.C.:American Psychological Association, 2000.

Monroe, Robert A. Far Journeys. Garden City, N.Y.:Doubleday, 1987.

Ostrander, Sheila, and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Dis-coveries Behind the Iron Curtain. Englewood Cliffs,N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Pearce, Joseph Chilton. The Biology of Transformation:A Blueprint of the Human Spirit. Rochester, Vt.:Inner Traditions International, 2002.



SKEPTICAL psychological researchers label claims of revelation and transcendence

through altered states of consciousness as delusionaland self-deceptive.

Rhine, J. B. The Reach of the Mind. New York:William Sloane Associates, 1947.

Rhine, Louisa. Hidden Channels of the Mind. Clifton,N.J.: Sloane Associates, 1961.

Targ, Russell, and Harold E. Puthoff. Mind-Reach: Sci-entists Look at Psychic Ability. New York: Dela-corte Press/Eleanor Friede, 1977.

Tart, Charles T. Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Para-psychology of Spirituality. Hampton Roads, 1997.

———, ed. Altered States of Consciousness. New York:John Wiley & Sons, 1969.

Hallucinations

The term hallucination comes from the Latinalucinari, meaning “to wander in the mind.”When a person sees, hears, smells, or feelssomething or someone that is not really there,he or she has experienced a hallucination.Although the hallucinatory state is commonlyconfused with that of an illusion, the latter iscaused by real sense perceptions that havebeen misinterpreted, whether by natural phe-nomena or in the case of a stage illusion, bysomeone deliberately misdirecting and trick-ing an audience.

Hallucinations result when certain situa-tions have altered one’s brain metabolismfrom its normal level. Common causes of hal-lucinations are a high fever, an adverse reac-tion or side effect of a drug, the deliberateingestion of a psychedelic or hallucinogenicsubstance (LSD, peyote, opium), an adversereaction to alcohol, or a post-traumatic stressdisorder. The grief of suffering the recentdeath of a loved one sometimes prompts hal-lucinations of hearing or seeing the relative orclose friend. Those individuals experiencingpsychosis or delirium are also susceptible tothe manifestations of hallucinations.

While people often associate a hallucina-tion with dramatic circumstances, sleep depri-vation can prompt the phenomenon, as canboredom, fatigue, and the frightening experi-ence of “highway hypnosis,” when peoplehave been behind the wheel driving too longand the monotony of the road causes them tosee things that aren’t really there.

Many individuals who suffer from migraineattacks report certain kinds of hallucinations,especially those of colored, shimmering geo-

metric shapes, quite likely induced by changesin the retina or the visual pathway. Someresearchers suggest that some of the visionsexperienced by certain mystics and saints wereset in motion by migrainous hallucinations.

Some people have hypnopompic episodes, akind of hallucinatory experience, while eitherfalling asleep or waking up. They may believethat some kind of supernatural being hasentered the room and settled on their chest.They may even hear the entity speaking tothem in a peculiar language. Some researcherssuggest that such hypnopompic hallucinationsmight explain the incubus and succubus phe-nomena of nighttime demonic attacks thathave been reported since medieval times.

Hallucinations caused by sleep or sensorydeprivation require no medical treatmentunless the individual continues to abuse thenormal bodily demands for rest. Those causedby substance and alcohol abuse may likelyneed medical help to allow the individual toestablish normality. Hallucinatory manifesta-tions that continue without an individual’sbeing able to determine any physical or mentalreason may require a psychiatric consultation.

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“Hallucinations.” Medline Plus. [Online] http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003258.htm. 18 November 2002.


Sacks, Oliver. Seeing Voices. Los Angeles: Universityof California Press, 1989.

———. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.New York: Summit Books, 1985.

Siegel, Ronald K. Fire in the Brain: Clinical Tales ofHallucination. New York: Dutton/Plume, 1992.



HALLUCINATIONS result whencertain situations have altered one’s brain metabolismfrom its normal level.

Starker, Steven. Fantastic Thought: All About Dreams,Daydreams, Hallucinations, and Hypnosis. NewYork: Prentice-Hall, 1982.


Hypnosis

The process of hypnosis generally requires ahypnotist who asks a subject, one who hasagreed to be hypnotized, to relax and to focushis or her attention on the sound of the hyp-notist’s voice. As the subject relaxes and con-centrates on the hypnotist’s voice, the hypno-tist leads the person deeper and deeper into atrancelike altered state of consciousness.When the subject has reached a deep level ofhypnotic trance, the hypnotist will haveaccess to the individual’s unconscious.

Many clinical psychologists believe thathypnotherapy permits them to help their clientsuncover hidden or repressed memories of fearsor abuse that will facilitate their cure. In certaincases, police authorities have encouraged thewitnesses of crimes to undergo hypnosis to assist

them in recovering details that may result in aspeedier resolution of a criminal act. Increasingnumbers of clinical or lay hypnotists employhypnosis to explore cases suggestive of past livesor accounts of alien abductions aboard UFOs.There are also show business hypnotists whoinduce the trance state in their subjects for thegeneral amusement of their audiences.

Skeptical scientists doubt that hypnosis isa true altered state of consciousness and con-tend that the people who are classified as goodsubjects by professional or lay hypnotists arereally men and women who are highly sug-gestible, fantasy-prone individuals. While itmay be true that some psychologists and hyp-notherapists make rather extravagant claimsregarding the powers inherent in the hypnoticstate, what actually occurs during hypnosiswith certain subjects remains difficult eitherto define or to debunk.

Throughout the ages, tribal shamans, witchdoctors, and religious leaders have used hypno-sis to heal the sick and to foretell the future.Egyptian papyri more than 3,000 years old



Three students cover

their faces with their

shoes while under

hypnosis. (AP/WIDE

WORLD PHOTOS)



Fate magazine featuring

its cover story on

hypnotism. (LLEWELLYN

PUBLICATIONS/FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

describe the use of hypnotic procedures byEgyptian soothsayers and medical practitioners.

In the early 1500s, Swiss physician/alchemist Paracelsus (1493–1541) released histheory of what he called magnetic healing.Paracelsus used magnets to treat disease, believ-ing that magnets, as well as the magnetic influ-ence of heavenly bodies, had therapeutic effects.Magnetic treatment theories went through sev-eral stages of evolution and many successive sci-entists. It was during the latter part of the eigh-teenth century that Franz Anton Mesmer(1734–1815), acting upon the hypotheses ofthese predecessors, developed his own theory of“animal magnetism” and hypnosis.

According to Mesmer, hypnosis entailedthe specific action of one organism uponanother. This action is produced by a magnet-ic force that radiates from bodily organs andhas therapeutic uses. Hypnotism makes use ofthis force, or the vibrations, issuing from thehypnotist’s eyes and fingers.

When Mesmer reintroduced hypnotism tothe modern world, paranormal activities andoccult beliefs were associated with his works.In the latter part of the nineteenth century,the British Society for Psychical Researchappointed a commission for the study of paintransference from hypnotist to hypnotized sub-ject. At the same time, psychologist EdmundGurney and his assistant Frank Podmoreexperimented with the same area of research.In the Gurney-Podmore experiments the hyp-notist stood behind the blindfolded subject.The hypnotist was then pinched, and the sub-ject told that he would be able to feel the painin the corresponding area of his own body.Gurney and Podmore reported substantial suc-cess, although none of their experiments werecarried out with the hypnotist and researcherat any great distance from the subject.

Those earlier psychical researchers wereintrigued by the fact that the hypnotic state soclosely resembles the state of consciousness inwhich manifestations of ESP occur. Althougha description of the hypnotic state is difficultto achieve, it appears to be much like thatsomnambulistic state between sleep and wak-ing. Somewhere within this nebulous region,conscious mental activity ceases and deprivesthe mind of its usual sensory impressions,thereby directing all attention to that onearea from which psychic impressions presum-ably come. To the psychical researcher, thereseems scant difference between the trance of apsychic and an individual in the hypnoticstate. The only immediately discernible differ-ence is that the one is self-induced, while theother is induced by, and subject to, the controlof the hypnotist. The argument therefore pre-sented itself that if ESP can manifest undertrance, then why cannot a hypnotist somanipulate the hypnotic state as to achievethe proper state of consciousness and, thereby,literally, induce ESP?

Research continued into the extrasensoryaspects of hypnosis, despite hostility from theestablished sciences. In 1876 Sir William Bar-rett, an English physicist, presented the resultsof his experiments in clairvoyant card readingto the British Association for the Advancementof Science. A number of Barrett’s colleaguesrewarded the physicist’s extensive endeavor bywalking out during his presentation.

Hypnosis arrived on the threshold of thetwentieth century under much the same cloudthat had covered it since Mesmer’s day; and, inspite of decades of research and experimenta-tion, the great majority of scientific researchersmaintain a solid skepticism toward hypnosis atthe dawn of the twenty-first century.

The Stanford Hypnotic SusceptibilityScales, a scientific yardstick by which to mea-sure the phenomenon of hypnosis, was devel-oped in the late 1950s by Stanford Universitypsychologists Andre M. Weitzenhoffer andErnest R. Hilgard. Scoring on the Stanfordscales ranges from 0 for those individuals whodo not appear to respond to any hypnotic sug-gestions, to 12, for those who are assessed asextremely responsive to hypnosis. Most peo-



HYPNOTHERAPY permits psychologiststo help clients uncover hidden or repressed memories

of fears or abuse.

ple, according to extensive experimentation,place somewhere in the middle range, between5 and 7.

Among the results of the studies ofWeitzenhoffer and Hilgard were demonstra-tions that a person’s ability to be hypnotized isunrelated to his or her personality traits. Earli-er suggestions that those individuals who couldbe hypnotized were gullible, submissive, imagi-native, or socially compliant proved unsup-ported by the data. People who had the abilityto become absorbed in such activities as read-ing, enjoying music, or daydreaming didappear to be the more hypnotizable subjects.

Another objection by the skeptics that theprocess of hypnosis was simply a matter of thesubject having a vivid imagination alsoproved to be a false assumption. Many highlyimaginative people tested by the experi-menters proved to be bad hypnotic subjects,and there appears to be no relation betweenthe ability to imagine and the ability tobecome a good hypnotic subject.

The Stanford experiments also learnedthat hypnotized subjects were not passive

automatons who would obey a hypnotist’scommands to violate their moral or culturalideals. Instead, the subjects remained activeproblem solvers while responding to the sug-gestions of the hypnotist.

By using hypnosis, the scientists at Stanfordwere able to create transient hallucinations,false memories, and delusions in some subjects.By using positron emission tomography, whichdirectly measures metabolism, the researcherswere able to determine that different regions ofa subject’s brain would be activated when he orshe was asked simply to imagine a sound orsight than when the subject was hallucinatingunder hypnotic suggestion.

The mechanisms by which the process ofhypnosis can somehow convince certain sub-jects not to yield to pain remain a mystery.Many researchers theorize some hypnotic sub-jects and experienced meditators can allowthe altered state of consciousness to bringabout an analgesic effect in brain centershigher than those that register the sensationsof pain. A 1996 National Institutes of Healthpanel assessed hypnosis to be an effective



A patient is hypnotized

into a state of rigidity.


method of alleviating pain from cancer andother chronic conditions. Numerous clinicalstudies demonstrated that hypnosis could alsoreduce acute pain faced by pregnant womenundergoing labor or the pain experienced byburn victims. In some instances, it was judgedthat hypnosis accomplished greater relief thansuch chemical pain killers as morphine.

While such experiments certainly indicatethat something is going on within a subject’smind during the process of hypnosis, manypsychologists, such as Dr. Nicholas Spanos,argue that hypnotic procedures merely influ-ence behavior by altering a subject’s motiva-tions, expectations, and interpretations. Suchinfluences have nothing to do with placing aperson into a trance or exercising any kind ofcontrol over that person’s unconscious mind.Hypnosis, in Spanos’s view, is an act of socialconformity, rather than a unique state of con-sciousness. The subject, he maintains, is onlyacting in accordance with the hypnotist’s sug-gestions and responds according to the expec-tations of how a hypnotized person is supposedto behave.

Critics of hypnotic procedures duringpolice investigations are concerned that toomany law enforcement officers consider hyp-nosis as a kind of magical way to arrive at thetruth of a case. The American Society of Clin-ical Hypnosis has certified about 900 psychol-ogists, only five of whom specialize in forensichypnosis and assist in police work. Federalcourts and about a third of the state courtsallow testimony of hypnotized individuals ona case-by-case basis.

Dr. William C. Wester, a nationally recog-nized psychologist, has used hypnotism toassist victims and witnesses of crimes toremember the details of more than 150 cases.Wester agrees that hypnosis is not magic, but

maintains that it is an effective tool in policework. “Hypnosis doesn’t always lead to anarrest,” Wester told Janice Morse of TheCincinnati Enquirer in 2002. “But it almostalways generates some additional investigativeleads for the police to follow.”

Since 1991, Wester and John W. Kilnapp, aspecial agent and forensic artist with theBureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,have teamed up to work on more than 50 rob-beries, rapes, kidnappings, and murders nation-wide. After Wester has hypnotized a witness orvictim of a crime and assisted that person todescribe minute details of the events, Kilnappworks on a composite sketch of the perpetratorof the crime. While the team of artist and psy-chologist admitted that it was the police whosolved the crimes, they estimated that in 95percent of their cases, they helped expand abrief description of a suspect to fill severalpages for investigators to use.

The Society for Clinical and ExperimentalHypnosis has stated that hypnosis should notstand alone as the sole medical or psychologi-cal treatment for any kind of disorder, but thesociety suggests that there is strong evidencethat hypnosis may be an effective componentin the broader treatment of many physicalproblems and in some conditions may increasethe effectiveness of psychotherapy. While theclinical use of hypnosis has not become anaccepted means of treatment among medicalpersonnel and psychologists, it has gainedmany scientific supporters and evolved greatlyfrom its occult and superstitious roots.

M Delving Deeper

Baker, Robert A. They Call It Hypnosis. Buffalo, N.Y.:Prometheus Books, 1990.

Bowers, Kenneth. Hypnosis for the Seriously Curious.New York: W. W. Norton, 1983.

Carroll, Robert Todd. “Hypnosis.” The Skeptic’s Dictio-nary. [Online] http://skepdic.com/hypnosis.html.18 November 2002.

Fromm, Erika, and Michael R. Nash. ContemporaryHypnosis Research. New York: Guilford Press,1992.

Morse, Janice. “Hypnosis Proves Valuable PoliceTool.” The Cincinnati Enquirer, April 30, 2002.[Online] http://enquirer.com/editions/2002/04/30/loc_hypnosis_provides.html.



EGYPTIAN soothsayers and medicalpractitioners used hypnotic procedures over

3,000 years ago.


Spanos, Nicholas P. Multiple Personalities and False Mem-ories: A Sociocognitive Perspective. Washington,D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1996.

Meditation

Meditation is generally defined as the act ofextended thought or contemplation/reflectionand is most often associated as being spiritual ordevotional in nature. Interest in Eastern reli-gions from the 1960s through the 1980sbrought about a vast amount of scientificresearch regarding the benefits of meditation,which as a result has broadened its definitioninto two main categories: mystical and secular.Either type can include any of a variety of disci-plines of mind and body, and although thetechniques and desired goals of meditation arevaried, the results are quite similar and include:achieving a higher state of consciousness, psy-chic powers, self-discovery, self-improvement,stress reduction, reduced anxiety, spiritualgrowth, better health, creativity, increasedintelligence, and union with the Creator orGod. Meditation itself doesn’t directly provideor guarantee these benefits but somehow isbelieved to facilitate their cultivation.

Many have said there are only two ways toobtain a mystical state or altered state of con-sciousness and that is either through drugs ormeditation. Hoping to achieve that alteredstate, there are those who take up meditationas the safe means to the more spectacular psy-chic experiences of visions, voices, out-of-body experiences, and traveling to an astralrealm and to have the mystical “high” withoutinducing chemicals.

Throughout time, mystics, saints, andgurus have reported these expansive occur-rences as commonplace amongst dedicatedand longtime meditators; however, most ofthem caution against entering meditation inorder to seek such incidents. Ancient textscaution that whatever the mind meditates on,it eventually takes the shape of or becomesthe object habitually dwelled upon.

Zen Buddhism urges meditation practi-tioners to see the “extraordinary in the ordi-

nary” or the “splendor in the simple” andwarns that such mystical, supernatural experi-ences as those listed above are irrelevant tothe process of spiritual development andshould they occur, they should not be givenany special attention at all, as the ultimategoal is to achieve the state of nirvana, whichis defined as the complete release from allphysical limitations of existence.

Although the founder of Buddhism, Sid-dhartha Gautama (c. 563 B.C.E.–486 B.C.E.),himself found spiritual enlightenment whilemeditating under a bodhi tree, the Buddhistapproach to spiritual awakening does not onlyconsist of meditation but of three waysbelieved to work together. Those ways are:

1. Sila or Purification

2. Samadhi or Concentration

3. Punna or Insight

Sila, or purification, is simply cleansing thebody, mind, spirit. Samadhi, or concentration,involves fixing one’s mind or attention on asingle object that can be any object such as acolored wheel, a candle, reflections on attrib-utes of Buddha or the elements of nature, etc.



Meditation. (FIELD MARK

PUBLICATIONS)

THE two main categories of meditation aremystical and secular.

Punna, or insight, doesn’t come until the stu-dent masters mindfulness of the body, feelings,mind, and mind objects, and even then it issaid that there are many states in between thatmay trick one into rapturous states or feelingssuch as happiness, lucidity and the like, thatmight make the student believe the state ofnirvana has been reached when in fact theremay be many other levels yet to be mastered.

Once the three levels are achieved, medi-tation becomes effortless and consciousnessceases to have a need of any object of anykind, thus all attachments to the materialworld are severed to the “wakened being.”This final stage is said to only be able to lastfor seven days as the person’s pulse, metabo-lism, and all other physical functions drop solow that death would occur.

In Tibetan Buddhism, training is composedof three parts as well. Those three parts are:

1. Hearing, which includes reading and lis-tening to lectures, or studying and the like.

2. Contemplation.

3. Meditation.

Meditation dates back to antiquity as theRia Veda, the earliest recorded religious litera-ture of Northern India, written about 1000B.C.E., in an Indo-European language, des-cribes in detail the ecstasy experienced inmeditation.

In the Taoist work, Tao Teh Ching ofChina, written four or five centuries B.C.E.,formalized meditation is also recorded. TheTaoists emphasized breath control in medita-tive practice and believed it to be a skill to beachieved in many stages. The ultimate stageor goal is to be able to breathe without inhal-ing or exhaling—to the point of the completecessation of the pulse. If one were able toarrive at this stage successfully, it was said theywould transcend conscious thought to thestate of what they called the Great Quies-

cence, or the highest form of enlightenmentand the goal of Taoist meditation.

The Upanishads of India give a detaileddescription of the psychology of meditation asbeing the way to control the physical sensesand actions, thereby freeing oneself from thebondage of the external world. The Upan-ishads speak of the cultivation of a one-point-ed mind through meditation as being the pre-lude to attaining God consciousness.

Kabbalistic literature and teachings, aswell as biblical references to prayer and medi-tation throughout both the Old and New Tes-taments, cite setting self apart from the massesand going to a still, quiet place—within andwithout—as a source of mystical communica-tion with God.

The process of meditation, whether spiri-tual or secular, is most often described as sim-ply being a way of learning to still the mind—to slow it down, enabling one to listen within,to the “voice within.” Although most individ-uals are not aware of the myriad of thoughtsand chatter that rampage through the mindlike a wild, untamed horse at each and anygiven moment, that is the challenge—to slowdown all thoughts to a single thought or evento no thoughts at all—complete stillness, theunruly beast tamed at last.

Another analogy often used to describethe process of meditation is to compare thehuman mind to a lake that contains greattreasures deep within, but an intense stormagitates and stirs the waters—clouding theview of the treasures below. Even if an occa-sional glimpse of the treasures is possiblethrough the windswept waters, the view wouldbe distorted. Here again, to gain mental con-trol and focus is the aim of slowing down theraging storm or the “mental tapes” that con-tinually play in one’s head.

Some say that even the descriptions them-selves of meditation are a misnomer by defini-tion. Experts say it is not a manipulation ofthe mind, but a going beyond mind, beyondthought—to the total absence of thought.That “beyond mind” state—much like a calm,clear reflective pool—that not only mirrorsthe mind’s surface, but also reveals its depths.Accomplishing this mental/spiritual state isn‘t



THE Upanishads says meditation is the preludeto attaining God consciousness.

something that occurs in a one-time medita-tion and sitting; it is an achievement of muchdiscipline and consistency.

In the early 1970s and 1980s, the NationalInstitutes of Health conducted a series ofexperiments to determine the efficacy of thereported abilities of gurus from India to slowdown their heartbeat, pulse rate, and even toraise and lower their body temperature toextremes through meditative states. Medically,this had been considered impossible, as it wasbelieved that the autonomic nervous systemwas responsible and it could not be manipulat-ed or controlled by mind or thought. Researchproved this to be untrue and a whole bevy ofhuman possibilities began to emerge whichgave rise to the secular use of meditation.

As research continued, not only in the Insti-tutes of Health, but in universities worldwide,new and astounding data emerged and contin-ues to emerge on a regular basis. Scientists haveproven the benefits of meditation in areas as far-reaching as crime reduction to improved health,longevity of life, and stress reduction. TheNational Institutes for Health and the NationalHeart, Lung and Blood Institute now recom-mend meditation as a viable treatment for mod-erate hypertension. Their research also showsthat certain types of heart arrhythmia or irregu-larities respond to meditation.

In his groundbreaking book, The Relax-ation Response (1975), Dr. Herbert Bensondocuments some interesting research on medi-tation. Benson found that by having a patientfocus on a sacred sound, or a mantra, as usedin transcendental meditation, the person’sheart rate decreased, as did their breathingrate and oxygen consumption. In fact, Ben-son’s findings were so convincing that theMind/Body Medical Institute, of which Ben-son is president, received $2.7 million fromthe Centers for Disease Control and Preven-tion (CDC) to continue to investigate the sci-entific basis of the relaxation response.

Dr. Andrew Weil is an internationally rec-ognized Harvard Medical School graduate andan advocate of alternative approaches to med-icine, including the use of meditation. In hisbook Spontaneous Healing (1995), he recom-mends meditation to his patients as a means of

restoring balance in their lives. Mood swings,depression, erratic energy levels, hectic sched-ules, unhealthy eating habits, and unstablerelationships are all signs of a life out of bal-ance, which is a high disease factor. Weil andmany other doctors are advising and/or teach-ing a variety of meditation techniques withgreat success in treating these and other afflic-tions. Research and documentation continuesglobally in the use of meditation to treathypertension, pain, muscle tension, and evenhigh cholesterol.

M Delving Deeper

Carrington, Patricia. The Book of Meditation: TheComplete Guide to Modern Meditation. Worch-ester, Great Britain, UK: Element, 1998.

Leichtman, Robert, and Carl Japikse. Active Medita-tion: The Western Tradition. Columbus, Ohio:Ariel Press, 1982.

Levy, Jodi. The Healing Handbook: A Beginner’s Guideto Meditation. New York: Pocket Books, 1999.

Mason, Paul. The Maharishi: The Biography of the ManWho Gave Transcendental Meditation to the West.London: Element Books, 1994.

Ozaniec, Naomi. Essential Meditation—101 Tips. Lon-don: Dorling Kindersley Press, 1997.

Rosenberg, Larry. Breath by Breath. Boston: ShambalaPress, 1998.

West, Serene. Very Practical Meditation. VirginiaBeach, Va.: Donning, 1999.

Psychedelics—The

Mind-Expanding Drugs

Throughout the tenure of the human specieson Earth, certain mushrooms, extracts fromcacti, various roots and herbs, and otherunlikely substances have been chewed andingested, not for the purpose of sustaining life,but for the physiological and psychologicaleffects that they have on the body and thebrain. Cults of mystical expression have grownup around the use of these mind-altering sub-



CERTAIN types of heart arrhythmia orirregularities respond to meditation.

stances, for many shamans and priestsbelieved that they could open portals to high-er planes of consciousness and even to otherworlds by ingesting certain plants. Theancient Greeks held the mushroom sacred,and some contemporary researchers have pos-tulated that the famed Oracle at Delphi mayhave ingested some form of psychedelic drug,along with the fumes the entranced womaninhaled. Other cultures have also held themushroom or the cactus sacred. The MayanIndians of Central America erected stonemonuments to the mushroom earlier than1000 B.C.E. These monuments have beenfound in the tombs of the wealthier citizens ofthe Mayan culture, and for many years werethought to be fertility symbols.

Such drugs as mescaline from the peyotecactus, ibogaine from the root of a rain forestshrub, and the so-called “magic mushrooms”came to be known as psychedelic, because theycause people to hallucinate, to see and hearthings that are not really there. Dr. HumphreyOsmond (1917– ) began studying hallucino-gens at a hospital in Saskatchewan in 1952when he was examining the similaritiesbetween mescaline and the adrenaline mole-cule. It was Osmond who coined the word “psy-chedelic” to describe the effects of the mind-altering drugs, and it was also he who super-vised the author Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)in the well-known series of experiments withmescaline that Huxley recorded in his bookThe Doors of Perception (1953).

While modern research techniques focuson psychedelics for purposes of learning moreabout the human brain, relieving pain, findingantidotes to drug overdoses, and other medicalapplications, the ingestion of such drugs in thepast was most often done to achieve transcen-dence or to accentuate mystical experiences.

In 1953, R. Gordon Wasson (1898–1986), avice president of the J. P. Morgan Company,and his wife observed a rite of the MixtecIndians that involved the use of a sacredmushroom by a curandero, or witch doctor,who was said to have powers of prophecy afterhe had consumed the mushrooms.

The curandero made extensive prepara-tions long before the all-night ritual began.For five days before and five after, he did notallow himself the company of a woman. Heexplained his actions to the Wassons by sayinghe feared he would go mad if he consortedwith any female. He drank no alcohol for thesame period and fasted for 24 hours before theceremony began.

The Wassons first became involved in theritual at nine o’clock in the evening when thewitch doctor called them to a small room con-taining articles of ceremonial religious obser-vance and asked them what information theysought. The Wassons answered that theywanted to know about their son, Peter, whomthey had left in Boston.

Then in the small, dark room, illuminatedonly by candles, the witch doctor began theceremony. By 10:30 P.M., he had eaten 14 pairsof the mushrooms. Other facets of the riteincluded the precise arrangement of the cere-monial articles in the room and the rubbing ofgreen tobacco on the curandero’s head, neck,and stomach. Then the candles were extin-guished and they waited.

At 1:00 A.M. the witch doctor claimed thathe was receiving a vision of the Wassons’ son.He shocked them by saying that Peter neededthem because of some emotional crisis in hislife. The man continued, telling them thattheir son was no longer in the city they hadthought he was in and that he was eithergoing to war or joining the army. He ended hisstring of predictions by stating that a close rel-ative of R. Gordon Wasson’s would becomeseriously ill within a year.

It was not long after this ceremony thatreality bore out the witch doctor’s predictions.Peter Wasson had joined the army at theunhappy end of a romance that had left himemotionally distraught. He was only 18 at thetime, but he had joined the service and was



DR. Humphrey Osmond coined the word“psychedelic” to describe the effects of the mind-

altering drugs.

shipped to Japan before the Wassons couldprotest. At the time of the ceremony, he hadbeen not in Boston but in New York. The lastportion of the curandero’s prognosticationalso came true when one of R. Gordon Was-son’s first cousins died of a heart attack withinthe one-year period the man had foreseen.

Intrigued by the witch doctor’s perfor-mance, the Wassons became interested in try-ing the mushrooms themselves. They traveledthe back trails of Mexican bush country untilthey found a village where the natives werewilling to let them join a mushroom ceremony.

The Wassons were given explicit instruc-tions on what and what not to eat before theyconsumed the mushrooms. The gathering washeld in the basement of one of the villager’sdwellings, and each person present consumedsix pairs of the greasy-tasting mushrooms withina half an hour. The scene was lit by the moonthat shone through an opening in the wall.

About a half an hour later, Wasson saidthat he felt as if his soul had been scoopedfrom his body and had been projected to apoint far away. He went on to describe scenesresembling those commonly described by theusers of mind-expansion drugs. Yet, in hiscase, there was no instance of any kind ofprophecy or clairvoyance.

The question of whether psychedelic drugscan induce or enhance psychic phenomena orextrasensory abilities remains poised beforeresearchers without an answer. Although thedrug-induced experiences are similar qualita-tively to those described by mystics and medi-ums all over the world, they may be only anaccompanying manifestation of the brain stateof these sensitives.

In 1960 Dr. Erick-Will Peuckert, professorat Germany’s Gottingen University, found aformula for witches’ salve in an ancient bookon witchcraft. Peuckert was aware that thesalve was known to contain such psychedelicdrugs as the thorn apple, the Deadly Night-shade, and other regional fruits and roots, buthe and an unnamed attorney friend decided totest the ancient recipe in the exact ritualmanner prescribed by the book of magic.

After the salve had been applied, bothmen fell into a state of consciousness that

resembled sleep. They were both entrancedfor 20 hours and awakened with mammothhangovers, complete with dry mouths, sorethroats, and headaches. Peuckert and hisfriend both claimed that they had witnessedthe Black Sabbat of the witches.

In spite of the hangovers both men hadupon awakening from the trance, they imme-diately set about writing separate accounts ofwhat they had envisioned. Except for differ-ences in wording, they described the samescenes. Peuckert’s theory is that the Sabbat wasoften manifest with the use of such salves, andalthough the people involved actually had nophysical experiences, they could be made toconfess to their witchcraft because they couldnot separate hallucinations from reality.

Dr. Sidney Cohen, a Los Angeles psychia-trist-pharmacologist, author of The BeyondWithin: The LSD Story (1972), commented, “Itis hardly necessary to invoke supernaturalexplanations for the mind’s more exceptionalactivities.…Intuition, creativity, telepathicexperiences, prophecy—all can be understoodas superior activities of brain-mind func-tion.…The experience called hallucinogenicwill play a role in leading us into the future. Itpoints out the existence of unique mentalstates that must be studied and understood.”

On May 2, 1938, Dr. Albert Hofmann ofthe Sandoz Research Laboratories in Basel,Switzerland, first synthesized Lyserg-Saeure-Diaethylamid (LSD). Lysergic acid is foundnaturally in ergot, a fungus that grows on ryeand other grains, and throughout history it hasbeen used in various medications. Someresearchers have even attributed ingestion ofergot to hallucinations that in the MiddleAges may have caused people to believe thatthey could fly through the air like witches ortransform themselves into werewolves.

Five years after synthesizing the drug, Hof-mann accidentally inhaled a minute quantity



LYSERGIC acid is found naturally in ergot, afungus that grows on rye and other grains.

while working with other ergot derivativesand experienced a kind of pleasant feeling ofinebriation, which consisted of hallucinationsthat lasted for several hours. Since Hofmann’saccidental discovery, scientists have been try-ing to fit LSD-25 and other drugs with hallu-cinogenic properties into biochemicalschemes of many kinds. In the 1960s and1970s, substances and chemicals that formerlyhad an aura of mystery around them werebeing broken down by chemical analysis andwere hailed by some individuals as “mind-expanders” and by others as recreational drugsthat could be exploited for fast “trips” to “far-out” places.

During the 20 years following World WarII (1939–45), LSD was used to study brainchemistry and to trace its effectiveness intreating patients with schizophrenia and othermental disorders. It was also utilized in con-junction with cancer patients and alcoholics.

LSD was found to create such primaryeffects as the following:

1. a feeling of being one with the universe;

2. recognition of two identities;

3. a change in the usual concept of self;

4. new perceptions of space and time;

5. heightened sensory perceptions;

6. a feeling that one has been touched by aprofound understanding of religion or phi-losophy;

7. a gamut of rapidly changing emotions;

8. increased sensitivity for the feelings of oth-ers;

9. such psychotic changes as illusions, halluci-nations, paranoid delusions, severe anxiety.

In 1966 the investigational drug branch ofthe Food and Drug Administration (FDA)distinguished four stages of LSD action:

1. Initial, lasting for about 30 to 45 minutesafter oral ingestion of 100 to 150 micro-grams of LSD, producing slight nausea,some anxiety, dilation of pupils;

2. Hallucinations, associated with significantalteration of consciousness (confusedstates, dreamlike revivals of past traumaticevents or childhood memories), distortionof time and space perspective, anxiety,

autistic withdrawal, alteration of personal-ity, impairment of conscience lasting fromone to eight hours;

3. Recovery, lasting for several hours andconsisting of feelings of normality alternat-ing with sensations of abnormality;

4. Aftermath, consisting of fatigue and ten-sion during the following day.

According to many researchers, LSD is notaddictive. It is, in fact, self-limiting. If onewere to take the drug for three days in a row, itwould no longer produce a psychic effect. Aweek or longer would have to pass before thedrug would again expand the mind.

Long-term use of LSD has been known tocause permanent psychoses, schizophrenia,and severe depression. Some researchers havenoticed a change in the aging process amongnative shamans and diviners who steadily par-take of their own home-brewed psychedelics.Rapid aging might be an as yet unforeseenresult of extensive use of psychedelics. Somepsychiatrists maintain that a psychotic distur-bance can occur days, weeks, or even monthsafter receiving LSD.

In 1963, Dr. Timothy Leary and Dr.Richard Alpert were discharged from theirpositions at Harvard University for theirenthusiasm in advocating the mind-expandingproperties of LSD. Undaunted, the two wenton to establish a number of colonies of theirInternational Federation of Internal Freedom.Throughout most of the 1960s, Leary was theprimary and most well-known prophet of theLSD movement, and he predicted that by1970, as many as 30 million persons, most ofthem young, would have embarked on voyagesof discovery through the limitless inner spaceof their own minds. According to Leary, thesevoyagers would return much wiser and muchmore loving than when they began.

Years before Leary’s predicted voyages bymillions through their inner space, lawenforcement officials had begun to regard traf-fic in LSD and other hallucinogens as justanother racket and feared that they wouldsoon have to contend with a black market inthe drugs and that it would be aided and abet-ted by the crime syndicates. The growing useof psychedelics by the counterculture, the



“hippies,” and those who felt alienated frommainstream American society because of theiranti-Vietnam War sentiments, all contributedto a growing traffic in illegal distribution ofthe drugs on the streets of cities throughoutthe United States. Physicians and psychia-trists warned against the indiscriminate use ofLSD and other psychedelics and the possibili-ties that people could provoke otherwise hid-den psychotic processes within themselves.

In 1966 further FDA research noted thatextended use of the drug could lead to moodswings, including depression, which could inturn lead to suicide. Those who had continuedto use LSD could also suddenly experience asense of euphoria, which could lead to sociallyembarrassing situations. Time and space distor-tions could present obvious traffic dangers. Asudden onset of hallucinations could endangerthe users and those with them.

Arguing the unpredictable results ofuncontrolled use of such drugs as LSD-25,

mescaline, and psilocybine, critics of unre-stricted use of the drugs demanded legislationthat would curb the distribution of psyche-delics. In 1970 the U.S. Controlled Sub-stances Act, responding to the unsuperviseduse and abuse of psychedelic drugs by millionsof young adults, made open distribution ofsuch mind-altering substances illegal. Sincethat time, however, the Food and DrugAdministration has allowed projects by med-ical researchers to continue to explore thepotential of psychedelics, explaining that theControlled Substances Act was never intend-ed to hinder legitimate research, only the mis-use and abuse of the drugs.

Because the drugs are now classified as con-trolled substances, research scientists mustapply to the Drug Enforcement Administrationfor a permit and file an application with theNational Institute on Drug Abuse and the Fed-eral Drug Administration. During the 1990s,researchers reported medical promise for theuse of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of



Tim Leary portrayed in a

piece of computerized

hallucinations artwork.

(AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS)

alcoholism, addiction to pain medications, andalleviation of pain in cancer patients.

Individuals who continue to use psyche-delics obtained through various means otherthan the Drug Enforcement Administrationhave organizations of their own and are deter-mined to meet what they consider a challengeto their personal freedoms. They claim thatthe benefits gained from the psychedelic expe-rience is valuable and should not be forbiddenanyone who, of his or her own volition, wouldlike to explore it.

Although mind-expansion drugs have notbeen found to be narcotic in the sense thatthey set up a physical craving within the user,possible long-term effects of the drugs havenot yet been determined. If the drug is used asa means of escape from reality, it is possiblethat a user could become dependent upon it inthe same manner that many people becomedependent upon alcohol. Psychedelics havebeen studied extensively since ibogaine wasisolated in the early 1900s, mescaline in the1920s, and LSD since 1943, but governmentscientists state that it is still too early to deter-mine whether or not the drugs have serious orpractical medicinal uses.

M Delving Deeper

Albert Hofmann Foundation: The Homepage of theInventor of LSD. [Online] http://www.hofmann.org. 18 November 2002.

Council on Spiritual Practices. [Online] http://www.csp.org/.

Hayes, Charles. Tripping: An Anthology of True LifePsychedelic Adventures. New York: Penguin-Put-nam, 2000.


Kurtzwell, Paula. “Medical Possibilities for Psychedel-ic Drugs.” U.S. Food and Drug Administration.[Online] http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/795_psyche.html.

Masters, R. E., and Jean Houston. The Varieties of Psy-chedelic Experience. New York: Dell/Delta, 1966.

McKenna, Terrence, and Tom Robbins. Archaic RevivalSpeculations on Psychedelic Mushroom, the Amazon,Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, theRebirth of the Goddess & the End of History. SanFrancisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.

Merkur, Daniel. Psychedelic Sacrament Manna, Medita-tion & Mystical Experience. Rochester, Vt.: InnerTraditions International, 2001.


Psychedelic Library. [Online] http://www.psychedelic-library.org/.



Relaxation

Unlike hypnosis, in relaxation the subjects donot enter a sleep or trancelike state. Instead,they are deeply relaxed and helped by a practi-tioner to achieve a positive state of mindwherein they can visualize (imagine) the alle-viation of an illness or perceive a means bywhich they might achieve a certain objectiveor goal in their life. Generally, subjects arerelaxed and led on a guided meditation or cre-ative visualization by someone who reads theprocess from a script. In some cases, the indi-vidual may have prerecorded the script in hisor her own voice and may thereby repeat theprocess as often as desired for reinforcement ofthe technique. Often, soft, soothing music isplayed in the background as the individualundergoes the relaxation process.

Relaxation and creative visualization utiliz-ing symbolic imagery became increasingly pop-ular among those in the New Age Movementin the 1970s, and seminars and workshops fea-turing such techniques continued to draw largeaudiences into the 1990s. Basically, the philos-ophy behind the relaxation process is quite



FDA research noted that extended use of LSDcould lead to mood swings, including depression,

which could in turn lead to suicide.

likely as old as the first healers in ancientBabylon, Egypt, and Greece, who believed thatthe evil spirits within the ill could be replacedby good spirits if the patient concentrated onpositive images of benevolent entities. NewAge practitioners believe that in order toachieve a complete healing of body, mind, andspirit, one must counter the negative inputthat the individual has placed in his or hermind over decades of negative reinforcement.The individual must fill himself or herself withpositive memories and images. Phobias, com-pulsions, and unresolved feelings of guilt canall be removed by relaxation techniques andhealing miracles can be accomplished.

Generally, the person undergoing therelaxation process lies or sits in a comfortableposition, undergoes a brief breathing exercise,then relaxes further by visualizing a peacefulscene. Once the individual appears to be asrelaxed as possible, the practitioner guideshim or her on a symbolic journey of discovery,in which valuable insights will be acquired.

M Delving Deeper

Denning, Melita, and Osborne Phillips. The LlewellynPractical Guide to Creative Visualization: TheDynamic Way to Success, Love, Plenty & SpiritualPower. St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn, 1985.

Gawain, Shakti. Creative Visualization. Mill Valley,Calif.: Whatever Publishing, 1979.

Soothing Yourself, Relaxation Techniques. [Online]http://www.soothingyourself.com/. 18 November2002.

WildMind. “Guide to Meditation Techniques, Relax-ation, and Stress Management. [Online] http://www.wildmind.org/. 18 November 2002.

Extrasensory Perception:

The “Sixth Sense”

Extrasensory perception—ESP—is definedby parapsychologists as the acquisitionby a human or animal mind of informa-

tion it could not have received by normal, sen-sory means. Some researchers, however, takeissue with the term “extrasensory perception.”They protest that the phenomena may not be“perception” at all, as the receiver of this infor-mation does not know if the knowledge is rightor wrong when he or she first perceives it. Ittakes a corroborating incident to convinceanyone that he or she has perceived anythingvia extrasensory means. Some parapsycholo-gists prefer to say “paranormal cognition,” butthis term is subject to the same sort of criticismif the receiver is not instantly certain of thevalidity of the information. Besides, theresearchers insist that the material in theirfield will eventually merge with present-dayphysics, so the adjective “paranormal” may beconsidered a misnomer.

Contrary to common usage, a parapsychol-ogist is not a psychic, a mentalist, anastrologer, or one who gives psychic readings.A parapsychologist is generally a member ofthe Parapsychological Association, which wasfounded in 1957 and elected an affiliate of theAmerican Association for the Advancementof Science in 1969. A parapsychologist is ascientist who is seriously interested in theparanormal (or anomalous phenomena),which includes telepathy, clairvoyance, pre-cognition, psychokinesis, hauntings, reincar-nation, and out-of-body or near-death experi-



Yoga is used as a form of

relaxation. (THE

GALE GROUP)

ences. Here are brief definitions of the areas ofESP that are studied by parapsychologists:

Clairvoyance is the awareness, withoutphysical aids or normal sensory means, of whatis going on elsewhere. In recent years, clair-voyance has sometimes been called remoteviewing.

Out-of-body experience (also called astralprojection) is the apparent projection of themind from the body, often with the seemingability to travel great distances in a matter ofseconds.

Precognition (premonition) is the obtain-ing of information about the future that couldnot have been gained through normal means.

Psychokinesis (telekinesis) is the move-ment of objects, seemingly caused by someforce unknown to physical science. The directaction of mind on matter is the parapsycholo-gists’ current nominee as the energy involvedin poltergeist cases—those bizarre occurrenceswhen bottles and crockery float through the air,fires break out on living room tables, or disem-bodied voices cackle threats and obscenities.

Telepathy is the transference of thoughtfrom one mind to another. Distance and timeseem unable to affect this phenomenon.

Even from these brief definitions, itbecomes apparent that many attributes ofparapsychological, or psi, phenomena overlap.It has long been a contention of serious para-psychologists that each of these types of phe-nomena is but a single aspect of the life andthe universe of which humans are a part. Ifsuch parascientific phenomena as the projec-tion of the astral self, the ability to glimpse thefuture, and the facility to convey telepathicimpressions are established, the boundaries ofhumankind’s universe become limitless.

Nearly everyone has at one time or anotherreceived what seemed to have been a glimpseinto the world of ESP: Dreaming of a friendfrom whom one has not heard in months, thenreceiving a letter from that person in the nextmorning’s mail; hearing a telephone ring andbeing so certain of the identity of the callerthat one calls him or her by name the instantone lifts up the receiver. These incidents are socommon that they receive little more thanhalf-joking comment. It is only when a para-normal event of shocking or dramatic impactstartles the emotions that one relates it to oth-ers and, perhaps, even records it.

According to parapsychological laboratorywork with such phenomena, nearly everyonehas some degree of ESP. Perhaps many peopleutilize extrasensory perception to a consider-able degree as children, but as they mature,tend to inhibit these subconscious faculties orallow them to atrophy. Many parapsycholo-gists, psychologists, anthropologists, and psy-choanalysts, including Sigmund Freud(1856–1939), have theorized that telepathymay have been the original archaic method bywhich individuals understood one another. Asa better means of communication evolved—one that could be readily intelligible to thesensory organs—the original archaic methodswere pushed into the background of thehuman subconscious where they may still per-sist, waiting to manifest themselves under cer-tain conditions.

It is obvious to psi researchers that someindividuals, functioning largely according to



Bruce Willis and Haley

Joel Osment in the film

“The Sixth Sense”.


EXTRASENSORY perception is definedthe acquisition by a human or animal mind of

information it could not have received by normal,sensory means.



An opinion poll conducted in Canada inOctober 2002 discovered that 40 percentof Canadians believe that certain individu-als have extrasensory perception that

enable them to see into the future. The poll alsorevealed that 30 percent of the respondents had con-sulted with a medium, a psychic, or an astrologer.

In the United States, the National Science Foun-dation’s biennial report on the state of science under-standing, research, education, and investment con-ducted in April 2002 found that 70 percent of adults donot understand the scientific process. According totheir poll, 60 percent of the respondents believed thatthere were individuals who possessed psychic pow-ers or extrasensory perception.

Peter Brugger, a neurologist from the UniversityHospital in Zurich, Switzerland, has suggested thatwhether or not one believes in the paranormaldepends entirely upon one’s brain chemistry. As anexperiment, Brugger gathered 20 individuals whobelieved in the paranormal and 20 who said that theywere skeptical. The subjects were asked to distinguishreal faces from scrambled images flashed briefly on ascreen. The second phase consisted of the volunteersforming real words from made-up ones.

In his July 2002 report, Brugger stated that duringthe first stage of the experiment the individuals whobelieved in the paranormal were much more likely tosee a face or a word when there was none. The skep-tics were more likely to miss the real words and faceswhen they appeared on the screen.

Next, the volunteers were given L-dopa, a drugthat increases levels of dopamine in the brain.Dopamine is a chemical utilized in the brain’s systemof reward and motivation and in deciding whetherinformation received is relevant or irrelevant.

Under the influence of L-dopa, both groups haddifficulty in distinguishing real faces and words fromthe scrambled ones—but interestingly, the skepticalindividuals developed a greater ability to interpret thejumbled images as the real thing.

Brugger theorized that the improvement in theskeptics’ performance suggests that paranormalthoughts are associated with high levels of dopaminein the brain. The dopamine allows people to see pat-terns and to become less skeptical regarding the per-ception of relationships between events.

Sources:

“Of Soothsayers and Skeptics.” The Globe and Mail, October 27,

2002. [Online] http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/

RTGAMArticleHTMLTemplate?tf=tgam/realtime/fu.

Philips, Helen. “Paranormal Beliefs Linked to Brain Chemistry.”

NewScientist.com, July 24, 2002. [Online] http://www.

newscientist.com/news/print.jsp?id=ns99992589.

“Survey Finds Few in U.S. Understand Science.” CNN.com, April

30, 2002. [Online] http://cnn.technology.

Paranormal

Beliefs and

Brain Chemistry

their moods and psychic needs, are able todraw upon their latent ESP abilities. Somegifted individuals are even able to make regu-lar and practical use of the seemingly rarepowers of psi.

It is interesting to note how many psi activ-ities are experienced while the percipient iseither asleep or in the sleeplike states of tranceor hypnosis. This may indicate that each indi-vidual, in his or her subconscious, has the fac-ulties necessary to focus on the consciouslyunperceived world of ESP. Dr. Montague Ull-man has observed that many persons who areincapable of effective communication in nor-mal ways can communicate at a telepathiclevel and surprise the therapist with a telepath-ic dream of rich awareness even of the physi-cian’s problems. The same laws of psychody-namics that apply to the dream also appear toapply to psi phenomena. Both the dream andpsi are incompatible with currently acceptednotions of time, space, and causality.

More conventional scientists, who workwithin the confines of those currently accept-ed boundaries of known physical laws, insistthat parapsychologists satisfy the requirementsdemanded of all other sciences and that theydo the following: (1) produce controlled andrepeatable experiments; (2) develop a hypoth-esis comprehensive enough to include all psiactivity from telepathy to poltergeists, fromwater dowsing to materializations.

The enormous difficulty in fulfilling theserequirements can be immediately grasped byanyone with the slightest knowledge of psiphenomena. It would be impossible, for exam-ple, to repeat the apparition of a man’s fatheras it appeared to him at the moment of hisfather’s death. This sort of crisis apparitionoccurs only at death, and the man’s father isgoing to die only once. Psi phenomena is

almost completely spontaneous in nature, andungovernable elements of mood and emotionplay enormously important roles in any type ofparanormal experience. As researcher G. N.M. Tyrrell commented, a percipient is neveraware of a telepathic, clairvoyant, or precog-nitive process at work within him. He is onlyaware of the product of that process. In fact, itseems apparent from laboratory work thatconscious effort at determining any psi processat work within oneself will either completelydestroy it or greatly diminish its effectiveness.Therefore, laboratory experiments have some-times established, by incredibly laborious testsand veritable mountains of statistics, onlyslightly better-than-chance evidence of thevalidity of telepathy, clairvoyance, precogni-tion, and psychokinesis.

Parapsychologists suggest that their col-leagues in the physical sciences resist becomingdogmatic. Each generation seems to forget thatscientists have had to admit some seeminglyimpossible facts in the past. Electricity, forexample, was unknown except through a fewsporadic events completely devoid of explana-tion, such as lightning and the mysteriousattraction of bits of paper to rubbed amber. Asfacts became gradually accumulated, the theoryof an electromagnetic field pervading all spacewas evolved. Perhaps one day, psi phenomenawill be recognized as another kind of energythat pervades time, space, and matter.

M Delving Deeper

Consciousness Research Laboratory. “FrequentlyAsked Questions About Parapsychology.”[Online] http://www.psiresearch.org/para1.html.

Krippner, Stanley, with John White. Future Science:Life Energies and the Physics of Paranormal Phenom-ena. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1977.

Krippner, Stanley, with Montague Ullman and AlanVaughan. Dream Telepathy: Experiments in Noctur-nal ESP. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Publishers,1989.



Tyrell, G. N. M. Science and Psychical Phenomena.New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938.



TELEPATHY may have been the original archaic method by which individuals

understood one another.

ESP Researchers

In their biennial report on the state of sci-ence understanding released in April2002, the National Science Foundation

found that 60 percent of adults in the UnitedStates agreed or strongly agreed that somepeople possess psychic powers or extrasensoryperception (ESP). In June 2002, the Con-sumer Analysis Group conducted the mostextensive survey ever done in the UnitedKingdom and revealed that 67 percent ofadults believed in psychic powers. Reportauthor Jan Walsh, commenting on the statis-tics that found that two out of three surveyedbelieved in an afterlife, said that as far as theBritish public was concerned, “the supernatur-al world isn’t so paranormal after all.”

Michael Shermer, author of Why PeopleBelieve Weird Things (2002) and publisher ofSkeptic magazine, was among those scientistswho deplored the findings that such a highpercentage of Americans accepted the realityof ESP. In Shermer’s analysis, such statisticsposed a serious problem for science educators.Complaining that people too readily acceptedthe claims of pseudoscience, Shermer con-cluded his column for Scientific American(August 12, 2002) by writing that “for thoselacking a fundamental comprehension of howscience works, the siren song of pseudosciencebecomes too alluring to resist, no matter howsmart you are.”

Ever since he entered the field of parapsy-chology full time in 1947, Dr. Robert A.McConnell, holder of a doctorate in physicsand the leader of a radar development group atthe Massachusetts Institute of Technology dur-ing World War II (1939–45), has primarilydevoted his efforts to answering the question ofwhy so many scientists reject ESP. As early as1943, after reading the literature on Britishand American scientific psychical research inthe Harvard library, he came to the conclusionthat ESP did occur, although presently beyondexplanation by known physics and psychology.McConnell is a life senior member of the Insti-tute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, afellow of the American Psychological Society,research professor emeritus of Biological Sci-ence, and a fellow of the American Associa-

tion for the Advancement of Science. Hebecame the founding president of the Parapsy-chological Association in 1957 and saw thatgroup admitted to the American Associationfor the Advancement of Science in 1969. InMcConnell’s opinion the adamant denial ofthe existence of extrasensory perception bymaterialist scientists can best be explained bytheir fear of the consequences that might fol-low in the event of their acceptance.

According to McConnell in Joyride toInfinity (2000), “all general textbooks of psy-chology and physics would have to be rewrit-ten.” In the field of physics, recognition of psy-chic phenomena might require no more thanan acknowledgement that there is a nonphysi-cal realm “with which the physical realm caninteract, both spontaneously and experimen-tally.” In psychology, however, McConnellstates that “the fallout from a universal recog-nition of the reality of [ESP] would be cata-strophic.” Experimental psychology as it is cur-rently practiced would be destroyed as a “scien-tific enterprise.” Psychiatry would have to goback to its beginnings and start all over again.The prevailing contemporary worldview ofmaterialist science would shatter, McConnellsays, and “any attempt by a thoughtful scientistto reconcile the established facts of parapsy-



J. B. and Louisa Rhine.

(DR. SUSAN

BLACKMORE/FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

CERTAIN psychic-sensitives might have theability to direct random energy at subatomic levels.

chology with his understanding of his philo-sophic commitment to his profession wouldencounter an emotional block.”

In September 2001 physicist Brian Joseph-son of Cambridge, England, winner of theNobel Prize for physics in 1973, provoked anacademic controversy when he declared thatthere was a great deal of evidence to supportthe existence of telepathy, but scientific jour-nals censored such research and would notpublish articles on the paranormal. Josephsonexpressed his belief that certain psychic-sensi-tives might have the ability to direct randomenergy at subatomic levels and that develop-ments in quantum physics “may lead to anexplanation of processes such as telepathy stillnot understood within conventional science.”

Serious-minded scientists have beenresearching ESP since the mid-nineteenthcentury. It was Max Dessoir (1867–1947) whofirst coined the term “parapsychology” in anarticle he wrote for the German periodicalSphinx in 1889. Although he would laterbecome a distinguished professor of philoso-phy, Dessoir was a student when he defined“parapsychologie” (in German) as something

that went beyond the ordinary, as phenomenathat was outside of the usual processes of theinner life. The study of this unknown areabetween ordinary and pathological states, this“paraphysical” phenomena, he suggested,should be called parapsychology.

William James (1842–1910), the foremostAmerican psychologist of the nineteenth cen-tury, explored the nonphysical realm of psychicphenomena and mysticism in his classic workThe Varieties of Religious Experience (1902).

Sir William Barrett (1844–1925), professorof physics and fellow of the Royal Society ofLondon, became convinced of the reality oftelepathy and was one of the founders of theBritish Society for Psychical Research in 1882.

Frederic Myers (1843–1901), a classicallecturer at Cambridge, wrote Human Personal-ity and Its Survival of Bodily Death, which waspublished posthumously in 1903.

Psychologist William McDougall (1871–1938), fellow of the Royal Society, providedsponsorship to Drs. J. B. (1895–1980) andLouisa E. (1891–1983) Rhine, which allowedthem to conduct parapsychological research atDuke University, Durham, North Carolina, in1927.

Gardner Murphy (1895–1979), an Ameri-can psychologist, championed the early ESPexperiments at Duke University and served asthe editor of the Journal of Parapsychology fortwo years.

L. L. Vasiliev (1891–1966), professor ofPhysiology at the Institute of Brain Researchin the University of Leningrad, holder of theOrder of Lenin, carried out experiments inESP from 1921 to 1938, focusing on the theo-ry that ESP was a form of electromagneticradiation.

By 1930, Drs. J. B. and Louisa Rhineexpanded their investigations of ESP beyondcollege courses at Duke University and estab-lished the first scientific laboratory dedicatedto research of psychic phenomena. It wasRhine who first coined the term “extrasensoryperception” (ESP) to describe the ability ofsome individuals to acquire information with-out the apparent use of the five known senses.He also applied the term “parapsychology” to



ESP researcher Harold

Sherman. (ARCHIVES OF

BRAD STEIGER)

distinguish research in psychic phenomenafrom the pursuits of mainstream psychology.

Considered by many to be the “Father ofModern Parapsychology,” Rhine first collabo-rated with Professor McDougall, chairman ofthe Department of Psychology at Duke Uni-versity, on a series of experiments in the areaof extrasensory perception. Most of these testsinvolved the use of Zener cards, a speciallydesigned deck of 25 cards that include fivecards each of five symbols—a cross, star, wavylines, circle, and square. The Rhines enlistedhundreds of volunteer subjects to guess thesymbols of the cards or to determine the num-ber of dots in rolled dice. Louisa Rhinebecame a leading parapsychologist as a resultof her own studies in spontaneous psychicphenomena, exploring such areas of ESP asclairvoyance, precognition, and telepathy.

Louisa Weckesser and Joseph Rhine hadbeen teenaged friends who married in 1920.Although they had both earned doctorates inbotany from the University of Chicago andhad embarked on promising careers in thefield, a lecture by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle(1859–1930) on his research into psychicphenomena changed their lives. The youngcouple were so inspired by the prospect ofconducting serious investigations into theworld of mediumship and the afterlife, thatthey made the decision to abandon botany forpsychical research.

Some of their early experiences sittingwith spirit mediums were discouraging, for theRhines felt that they caught the individualsemploying trickery to delude others intoaccepting their abilities to contact the realmof spirit. In their opinion, psychical researchwould best be examined in the laboratoryunder controlled conditions. Learning of Dr.William McDougall’s interest in the paranor-mal, the Rhines contacted him at Duke Uni-versity, and Professor McDougall invited themto join him at Durham.

In 1934, after they had established theparapsychology laboratory, J. B. Rhine wrote amonograph entitled “Extra-Sensory Percep-tion,” which managed to get noticed by themedia and subsequently gained wide attentionfor the ESP lab at Duke. The monograph led

to Rhine’s New Frontiers of the Mind (1937),which became a Book-of-the-Month Clubselection. Within a short time after achievingsuch a level of celebrity, Rhine had a prime-time radio program and was focusing attentionon the work in psychical research that wasbeing conducted at Duke. Such attention didlittle to earn the approval of many of the pro-fessors in the material sciences at the universi-ty, who were dismayed that Duke was becom-ing known as a center for pseudoscience andweird research projects.

After decades of conducting controlledexperiments in ESP, the Rhines offered theirconclusion that such psychic abilities as telepa-thy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokine-sis did exist. Many scientists were unimpressedby the Rhines’ accumulated research and ques-tioned the validity of their statistical analyses.

In the summer of 1957, J. B. Rhine sug-gested that parapsychologists form an interna-



Dr. Stanley Krippner.

(DENNIS STACY/FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

DRS. J. B. and Louisa Rhine expanded theirinvestigations of ESP and established the firstscientific laboratory dedicated to research of psychic phenomena.

tional professional society in parapsychology,and on June 19, 1957, the ParapsychologicalAssociation was founded with R. A.McConnell, president; Dr. Gertrude R.Schmeidler, vice president; and Rhea White,secretary-treasurer.

For six years during the 1950s, Dr. KarlisOsis (1917–1997) worked with J. B. Rhine atthe parapsychology laboratory at Duke Uni-versity. Born in Latvia, Osis received his doc-torate in psychology from the University ofMunich in 1950. His dissertation topic, “AHypothesis of Extrasensory Perception,”reflected an interest in the field of parapsy-chology prompted by an experience as ateenager in which he had undergone a mysti-cal encounter with a mysterious light sourcethat had filled him with sublime joy.

Osis had a long and distinctive career inparapsychology, and he worked in such areasas animal ESP, distance effects on extrasensoryperception, psychokinesis, out-of-body experi-ences, and life after death. In the 1960s, Osisdid a pilot study of deathbed visions for theAmerican Society for Psychical Research,which was later verified across several differ-ent cultures. Osis was a past president of theParapsychological Association, director ofresearch for the Parapsychology Foundationfrom 1957 to 1962, and the author of morethan 70 scientific articles.

In 1962 the Rhines dissociated theirresearch with Duke and established the Foun-dation for Research on the Nature of Man.Although the foundation remained inDurham, J. B. Rhine felt that their controver-sial work required the scientific freedom ofbecoming a privately funded, independentresearch organization.

In 1964 experimental methods for study-ing ESP during dreams was pioneered underthe directorship of Dr. Montague Ullman and

Dr. Stanley Krippner (1932– ) at the DreamLab at the Maimonides Medical Center inNew York. Krippner received a doctorate inEducational Psychology from NorthwesternUniversity, and he has done pioneering workin the scientific investigation of human con-sciousness, especially such areas as the rela-tionship of creativity to parapsychologicalphenomena and altered states of conscious-ness. Extremely prolific and diverse in hisinterests in investigating the mysteries of psy-chic phenomena, Krippner has written morethan 500 articles and many books, such asHuman Possibilities (1980), Dream Telepathy(with Montague Ullman and Alan Vaughan;1989), and Healing States (with Alberto Villol-do; 1986).

In the 1970s, Dr. Russell Targ and Dr.Harold Puthoff conducted some of the best-known experiments on the connectionsbetween ESP “senders” located at a distancefrom the “receivers” of the psychic communi-cation. The designated receiver was placed ina sealed, opaque and electrically shieldedchamber, while the scientists would situatethe sender in another room where he or shewas subjected to bright flashes of light at regu-lar intervals. Each of the experimental sub-jects was connected to an electroencephalo-graph (EEG) machine that registered theirbrain-wave patterns. After a brief period oftime, the receiver began to produce the samerhythmic pattern of brain waves as the sender,who was exposed to the flashing light. Targand Puthoff also carried out experiments inwhat came to be known as “remote viewing,”in which sender and receiver were separatedby distances that eliminated any possibility ofany form of ordinary sensory communicationbetween them.

Dr. Charles T. Tart (1937– ) studied elec-trical engineering at the Massachusetts Insti-tute of Technology before deciding to becomea psychologist. He received his doctorate inpsychology from the University of North Car-olina in Chapel Hill in 1963 and while amember of the faculty at the University ofCalifornia at Davis for 28 years became inter-nationally known for his research on thenature of consciousness, particularly alteredstates. Tart is one of the founders of the field



ESP research remains a source of constant controversy.

of transpersonal psychology and has authoredsuch classic books as Altered States of Con-sciousness (1969), Transpersonal Psychologies(1975), and Learning to Use Extrasensory Per-ception (1976). Tart considers his primarygoals as being able to build a bridge betweenthe scientific and the spiritual communitiesand to help accomplish an integration ofWestern and Eastern approaches for knowingthe world.

In 1995, in honor of the 100th anniversaryof J. B. Rhine’s birth, the Foundation forResearch on the Nature of Man was renamedthe Rhine Research Center. On June 8, 2002,the Rhines’ daughter, Sally Feather, welcomedwell-wishers to the Rhine Research Centerwhen it officially opened its first new building.Feather had worked with her parents at thefacility at Duke and later at their ESP labora-tory when they left the university in 1964.The new building, said to be the mostadvanced parapsychological facility in theUnited States, was declared by Feather as “theculmination of a dream that my parents had,but it’s my dream now.”

ESP research remains a source of constantcontroversy between parapsychologists andtheir colleagues in the material sciences. Dr.Robert Morris, director of the Koestler Para-psychology Unit at the University of Edin-burgh, Scotland, told New Scientist magazine(March 3, 2001) that he recognized the skep-tics’ mocking accusation that ESP stood for“Error Some Place” and he understood thatparapsychology needed two things to satisfythe critics: “One, effects of sufficient strengthand consistency, so you know something isgoing on that isn’t readily understood by othermeans…[Two]…coming up with a mecha-nism. One big question is whether we are talk-ing simply about one mechanism or three orfour.” Morris stated that he is convinced thatESP is presently “above and beyond what pre-sent-day science could account for,” but heremains confident that future scientists willone day figure it out.

M Delving Deeper

Auerbach, Loyd. “A Farewell to Dr. Karlis Osis.” Fate,April 1, 1998. [Online] http://www.llewellyn.com/archive/fate/62.

“Belief in Supernatural Is ‘Bigger Than Jesus,’ SaysNew Report.” PR Newswire on Behalf of Living TV,June 10, 2002. [Online] http://www.prenewswire.co.uk/cgi/release?id=86400.


Krippner, Stanley, Fariba Bogzaran, and Andre PerciaDe Carvalho. Extraordinary Dreams and How toWork with Them. Albany, N.Y.: State Universityof New York Press, 2002.

Krippner, Stanley, with Etzel Cardena, and Steven J.Lynn. Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examin-ing the Scientific Evidence. Washington, D.C.:American Psychological Association, 2000.

McConnell, R. A. Joyride to Infinity: A Scientific Studyof the Doomsday Literature. Washington, D.C.:Scott-Townsend, 2000.

McKie, Robin, ed. “Nobel Guru in Telepathy Row.”The Observer, September 30, 2001. [Online]http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,560604,00.html.



Radin, Dean I. The Conscious Universe: The ScientificTruth of Psychic Phenomena. San Francisco:HarperEdge, 1997.

Rhine, J. B. New Frontiers of the Mind. New York: Far-rar & Rinehart, 1937.

———. The Reach of the Mind. New York: WilliamSloane Associates, 1947.

Rhine, J. B., and J. G. Pratt. Parapsychology: FrontierScience of the Mind. Springfield, Ill.: CharlesThomas, 1957.


Schwarz, Berthold E. A Psychiatrist Looks at ESP. NewYork: New American Library, 1968.

Shermer, Michael. “Smart People Believe WeirdThings.” Scientific American,August 12, 2002.[Online] http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=002F4E6-8CF7-ID49-90FB809EC5.

“Survey Finds Few in U.S. Understand Science.”CNN.com, April 30, 2002. [Online] http://cnn.technology.printthis.clickability.com/pt/printThis?clickMap=printThis&fb=Y&u.



“Tales of the Paranormal.” New Scientist, March 3,2001. [Online] http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinion.jsp?id=ns22805.


Tart, Charles T. Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Para-psychology of Spirituality. Charlottesville, Va.:Hampton Roads, 1997.


Wise, Jim, and Julian Pecquet. “Rhine Research Cen-ter Opens Building.” The Herald Sun, June 8,2002. [Online] http://www.herald-sun.com/tools/printfriendly.cfm?StoryID=235501.

Clairvoyance

The Netherlands’ Gerard Croiset (1909–1980)was claimed to be a gifted clairvoyant. Perhapsthe most remarkable of the many experimentsconducted with Croiset was an endless series ofchair tests that had been devised for him byProfessor Tenhaeff of the Dutch Society forPsychical Research. From the outset of thetests in October of 1947, the results were star-tling and Croiset repeated the experiment sev-eral hundred times in front of scientists in fiveEuropean nations.

The test itself was conducted quite simply.Croiset was taken to a theater, an auditorium,or a meeting house, where a chair number wasselected completely at random by a disinter-ested third party. Croiset then predicted, any-where from one hour to 26 days, who would sitin the chair. The descriptions given by theparagnost (as such sensitives are called in Hol-land) were never vague and generalized butquite exact and astonishingly detailed. Often,not only was the individual’s appearancedescribed but also characteristics of his or her

personality and even certain emotional diffi-culties that the subject may have been experi-encing at the time. Sometimes Croiset saw thesubject’s past and was able to predict thingsabout the person’s future.

In June of 1964, Croiset was consulted inthe murder case of the three Mississippi civilrights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Good-man, and Michael Schwerner. Via transat-lantic telephone wire, Croiset accuratelydescribed the area where the three youngmen’s bodies would be found and correctlyimplicated the local law enforcement officersas participants in the slayings. Although theFBI later made no formal acknowledgment ofthe clairvoyant’s aid in the case, according towriter Jack Harrison Pollack, the federalagents actively sought information from theUtrecht sensitive.

Another famous Dutch clairvoyant, PeterHurkos (1911–1988), manifested latent pow-ers after he had suffered a fractured skull inJune of 1943. After the Second World War(1939–45), Hurkos began to devote most ofhis time to psychic crime detection. In one ofhis first cases as a psychic sleuth working withpolice, Hurkos had only to hold the coat of adead man to be able to describe the man’smurderer in detail that included the assailant’seyeglasses, mustache, and wooden leg. Whenpolice admitted that they already had such aman in custody, Hurkos told them where theman had hidden the murder weapon.

Clairvoyants have been cooperating withlaw enforcement agencies for years, but usual-ly in an unofficial capacity, the Dutch policebeing among the few official agencies whoopenly consult clairvoyants for assistance incrime detection. In the United States, Eng-land, and Canada, in spite of some astonishingresults achieved with the help of such psychicsas Irene F. Hughes, Dorothy Allison, and BevyJaegers, the official policy is to discuss suchimportant cooperation only in “off the record”interviews and unofficial statements.

In an attempt to determine the amount ofclairvoyance the hypnotic state might pro-duce, extensive laboratory tests have beendeliberately designed to allow the subject toachieve a hypnotic state amenable to manifes-



CLAIRVOYANTS have been cooperatingwith law enforcement agencies for years, but usually

in an unofficial capacity.

tations of ESP. In one experiment Dr. JarlFahler, a Finnish psychologist, had four sub-jects go through 360 runs of an ESP deck, per-forming half of them in a waking state, andthe other half in a hypnotic state.

The results of this experiment showedscoring at chance level in the waking statewith significantly higher scoring in the hyp-notic state. The subjects did much better onthe part of the experiment that tested clair-voyance than on the precognition portion.

Experiments combining clairvoyance andhypnosis go back for centuries. In 1849 thefamous mathematician, Augustus de Morgan(1806–1871), wrote of his first experience withwhat came to be known as “traveling clairvoy-ance.” The early mesmerists (hypnotists) car-ried out many experiments during which thesubjects would be asked to “go somewhere”mentally and to describe what they saw. In theparticular experiment of which de Morganwrote, the mathematician told of dining at afriend’s house that was about a mile from hisown. De Morgan’s wife was not present, havingremained at home to treat a young epilepticgirl with mesmeric therapy. When de Morganreturned to his home, his wife greeted himwith the words: “We have been after you.”While in a hypnotic trance the girl—whoseclairvoyant abilities had been demonstrated onnumerous previous occasions—had beeninstructed to “follow Mr. de Morgan.”

When the girl’s mother had heard thename of the street on which the mathemati-cian could be located, she told Mrs. de Mor-gan that her daughter could never find herway there, for she had never been so far awayfrom home. But in a moment, the girlannounced that she stood before the house.Mrs. de Morgan told her that she shouldknock at the door and go in. The hypnotizedclairvoyant answered by saying that she couldnot knock at the door until she had enteredthe gate. Mrs. de Morgan was puzzled at this,and it was only upon Mr. de Morgan’s returnthat the mystery was explained. Having neverbeen to this particular friend’s house, Mrs. deMorgan was not aware of the fact that thehouse stood in a garden and that the frontdoor was reached only after one had entered

at the garden gate. But the hypnotist bade hersubject to simulate entering the house andcontinue in her pursuit of Mr. de Morgan.

The girl said that she was inside the houseand could hear voices upstairs. She “walked”up the stairs and gave a detailed description ofthe people assembled, the furniture, objects,pictures in the room, and the colors of thedrapes and curtains. De Morgan, admittedlyawed by the clairvoyantly gained information,verified that each detail was precise and exact.He was even more astonished when the girlrepeated the conversations she had overheardand described the dinner menu.

Dr. Milan Ryzl, a Czechoslovakian chemistand physicist who became interested in thefield of parapsychology in the 1960s, devel-oped the working hypothesis that if a hypnot-ic trance could produce the proper level ofconsciousness for manifestation of ESP, thenthese extrasensory abilities could be not onlyinduced hypnotically but eventually broughtforth spontaneously by the subject withoutthe aid of hypnosis. Ryzl’s experimentsinvolved three major phases: 1) achievementof the proper level of consciousness throughhypnosis; 2) perfecting the manifested ESP bya long and intense training period; 3) self-induction by the subject for the state of con-sciousness receptive to psi manifestation, withencouragement for the subject to use his otherESP faculties independently of the experi-menter who trained him or her.

Ryzl originated his experiment with 463subjects, mostly university student-volunteersbetween the ages of 16 and 30. Out of thislarge group only three individuals had suffi-cient patience and diligence to complete theextensive training period with any degree ofproficiency. The parapsychologist’s most tal-ented subject was Pavel Stepanek, a man whocame to Ryzl’s laboratory at the age of 30 and



EXPERIMENTS combining clairvoyanceand hypnosis go back for centuries.

who had the tenacity to stay with the programfor three years.

When he began the experiment, Stepanekdemonstrated no extrasensory abilities and wasevaluated as psychologically normal. Stepanekwas given a standard test throughout theexperiment. He was asked to tell whether thegreen or the white side of a two-color card wasfacing up. Under these conditions a chancescore would have been 50 percent.

To test the repeatability of Stepanek’sabove-chance scoring and to confirm to visit-ing researchers that the subject was free fromany dependency on Ryzl, the testing procedureinvolved three phases. In the first, or control,phase of the experiment, Ryzl handled theproceedings with the visitors observing. In thesecond phase, Ryzl was present to stimulatethe subject with the procedure in the hands ofthe guests. The third phase was conductedentirely by the visitors, with Ryzl in no waypresent or participating.

In the actual procedure of the experiment,Pavel Stepanek was to ascertain the color ofthe face-up card from a series of ten two-colorcards completely enclosed in opaque covers.As the experiment progressed, even more pre-cautions were taken. The cards were shut upin packs of opaque cardboard and wrapped inlayers of blue wrapping paper. Enclosed in thepack was a strip of sensitive photographic film,which was examined after each test for furtherassurance that the deck had not been opened.

In an adjoining room Mrs. Ryzl preparedthe cards, determining their order by astro-nomical data available for the day of theexperiment. She handed the cards to Ryzl,then sat in a corner of the room. Ryzl andStepanek were separated by an opaque screenthrough which there was no possibility of see-ing the cards or the envelopes.

The first test of 200 sets was run, giving atotal of 2,000 individual cards. For this testStepanek performed under hypnosis, not hav-ing achieved a high enough degree of profi-ciency to function without it. He scored 1,144hits and 856 misses. In all successive tests thesubject brought himself to the level of con-sciousness in which ESP manifests.

Several parapsychologists began acceptingRyzl’s invitation to come to Prague to take partin the experiments. Among those who camewere British psychologist John Beloff, Americanparapsychologist John Freeman, Indian parapsy-chologist B. K. Kanthamni, and American para-psychologist J. G. Pratt. Each of these men sug-gested variations of the test; and from thesevariations, additional observations were devisedfor the steadily growing body of research.Stepanek consistently scored above chance.

At one point, however, his abilities didbegin to deteriorate. To help him regain hisability, Ryzl gave Stepanek a deck and told himto go home and try to rebuild his psychic pow-ers himself. Ryzl suggested that he return whenhe once more felt confidence in his abilities.

This Stepanek did, and eventually hereturned to the lab, stating that he once morefelt assured of successful high scoring. Thetests were resumed and Stepanek immediatelyregained his former high level of accuracy.Ryzl interpreted Stepanek’s ability to retrainhis ESP ability by himself, without any outsidehelp, as indicative of the fact that the subjectexerted at least some conscious control overhis extrasensory process.

In a review of the total experiment, Ryzlconcluded that there had been a number ofobstacles to be overcome. The first of theseobstacles occurred during the initial phase ofthe experiment, when the subject was firstbrought to a hypnotic trance corresponding tothe proper level of consciousness in whichESP manifests. At this stage the subject was inan extremely suggestible state. Unfortunately,the maintenance of such a state requires thesuspension of critical thinking. Without thisdiscriminatory aid the subject makes mistakes,as he or she is unable to determine the differ-ence between true impressions and other sen-sory impressions. To overcome this difficulty,Ryzl juggled the different levels of hypnosis.Thus, while the subject was in deep sleep, hewas more receptive to extrasensory impres-sions, and while in the lighter stages, he coulduse his critical faculties and memory. In thisway the subject was able to progress by cor-recting his own mistakes and by learning torely upon, and trust, his own judgment.



An interesting difficulty that arose con-cerned the resistant aspect of psychic impres-sions. Psi impressions do not seem to occur inthe same set patterns and symbology as dosensory impressions. Extrasensory perceptionsare usually perceived subjectively and mani-fest most frequently through the physical sens-es as hallucinatory experiences. This meansthat a color may manifest itself as a texture,sound, or temperature.

Ryzl learned that one of the difficulties intesting for ESP lies in the fact that psychicallyreceived impressions, manifesting as false sen-sory hallucinations, are frequently indistin-guishable from conventional hypnotic hallu-cinations. ESP subjects must double theirenergy for they must constantly be assessingtheir impressions against what they know tobe reality.

In addition to tests for clairvoyance andother manifestations of ESP conducted underhypnosis, numerous experiments have beenconducted with the subjects under the influ-ence of various psychotropic or psychedelicdrugs. In 1966 R. E. L. Masters, a psychologist,and Jean Houston, a philosopher, were run-ning LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin experi-ments at the Foundation for Mind Research.While engaged in this study, a number of sub-jects reported instances of telepathy and clair-voyance. These consistent reports wereresponsible for Houston’s and Masters’ inaugu-ration of a specific ESP experiment. Theirgoal was to elicit extrasensory impressionsduring the psychedelic sessions.

The original setup of the experimentrequired 27 subjects to run through a ZenerESP deck (five cards for each of the symbolscircle, square, cross, wavy line, star) ten times.The cards were reshuffled after each run of 25.This procedure proved boring to the subjects,who were more interested in following the sub-jective impressions being triggered in theirminds by the drug. The majority of the subjects,23 of the 27, scored consistently at chance orbelow-chance levels. They averaged a score of3.5, which is below chance. The other four sub-jects averaged a score of 8.5—considerablyabove chance—and were personal friends ofthe guide. They were cooperative throughout

the test, providing additional indication thatattitude influences psi performances.

Masters and Houston learned from thisexperience to make their tests more compati-ble to the psychedelic state. The testing fur-ther revealed that a subject was more likely tomanifest ESP during the leveling-off segmentof his “trip” than during the core of the expe-rience. The attention span was much greaterand more easily motivated toward taking partin the experiment.

On the basis of these developments, Mas-ters and Houston designed a test utilizing 10emotionally charged images of historic oraesthetic content in place of the ESP cards.These pictures attempted to trigger the sub-jective, visual impressions a subject wouldreceive while in the drug state. The agentopened the envelopes containing the targetimages in an adjoining room. In the roomcontaining the subjects, an assistant attempt-ed to elicit verbal responses from the 62 indi-viduals who had volunteered for the test. Ofthe 62, 48 described approximate images atleast two times out of 10. Of the 62, only 14were unable to give descriptions correspond-ing to at least two of the images, and thesepoor performers were either unknown to theexperimenter, anxiety-ridden, or “primarilyinterested in eliciting personal psychologicalmaterial.” The full results of this experimentwere published in 1966 by Masters andHouston in their The Varieties of PsychedelicExperience.

M Delving Deeper

Grof, Stanislav. Realms of the Human Unconscious:Observations from LSD Research. London: Sou-venir Press, Ltd., 1995.

Masters, R. E., and Jean Houston. The Varieties of Psy-chedelic Experience. New York: Dell/Delta, 1966.

Ostrander, Sheila, and Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Dis-coveries Behind the Iron Curtain. Englewood Cliffs,N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970. Reprint, Park StreetPress, 2000.






Spraggett, Allen. The Unexplained. New York: NewAmerican Library, 1968.


Stevens, Jay. Storming Heaven: Lsd and the AmericanDream. New York: Grove Press, 1988.


Out-of-Body Experience (OBE)

To primitive humans, a dream was an actualexperience enacted by the soul as it wanderedabout during sleep. Today a great deal is stillunknown about the mysteries of sleep anddreams, but electroencephalograph records ofbrain waves and the study of rapid-eye-move-ment patterns have convinced psychologistsand dream scientists that the action of adream (for most people) takes place withinthe individual dream machinery and is con-fined within the brain. However, some indi-viduals have experiences in which they feelcertain that their soul, their mind, truly didleave the body during sleep or an altered stateof consciousness and travel to other dimen-sions or other geographical locations on Earth.Are such out-of-body experiences (OBEs)actual journeys of the soul or are they onlyvivid dreams or hallucinations?

Dr. Hornell Hart’s investigation of out-of-body experiences (also known as astral projec-tion) and psi phenomena led him to theorizethat the brain was but an instrument by whichconsciousness expressed itself, rather than agenerator that produced consciousness. Hartcontended that the available evidence strong-ly supported the testimonies of those individu-als who claimed that their personal conscious-ness had observed scenes and acted at longdistances away from their physical bodies.

Dr. Eugene E. Bernard, professor of psychol-ogy at North Carolina State University, who

studied astral projection extensively, stated thathe found it highly improbable that so manypeople who were apparently psychologicallyhealthy were having hallucinations of leavingtheir bodies. Bernard estimated one out ofevery 100 persons has experienced some sort ofout-of-body projection and stated that his studyindicated that such projections occurred mostoften during times of stress, such as undergoingnatural childbirth or minor surgery, and attimes of extreme fear. In addition to these kindsof spontaneous instances, Bernard stated healso had encountered a number of individualswho seemed to be able to have out-of-body pro-jections almost at will. Acknowledging thatthere was still much that remains unknownabout the mind and its abilities, he expressedhis opinion that the astral projection theorycan be proved and controlled.

In Human Personality and Its Survival of Bod-ily Death, his classic work published in 1903,psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers(1843–1901) believed out-of-body experiencesto be the most extraordinary achievement ofthe human will. What, he wondered, “could bea more central action—more manifestly theoutcome of whatsoever is deepest and mostunitary in man’s whole being—than the abilityto leave one’s body and return to it?” Such anability, this self-projection, Myers said, was themost significant of all vital phenomena. And,even more wondrous, astral projection“appeared to be the one profound act of thespirit that one might perform equally wellbefore and after physical death.”

Here are some of the most common typesof out-of-body experiences, or situations inwhich OBEs might occur:

1. Projections that occur while the subjectsleeps.

2. Projections that occur while the subject isundergoing surgery, childbirth, toothextraction, etc.

3. Projections that occur at the time of anaccident, during which the subject suffersa violent physical jolt that seems, literally,to catapult the spirit from the physicalbody.

4. Projections that occur during intensephysical pain.



TO primitive humans, a dream was an actualexperience enacted by the soul.

5. Projections that occur during acute illness.

6. Projections that occur during near-deathexperiences (NDEs), wherein the subjectis revived and returned to life throughheart massage or other medical means.

7. Projections that occur at the moment ofphysical death when the deceased subjectappears to a living percipient with whomhe or she has had a close emotional link.

In addition to these spontaneous, involun-tary experiences, there are also those volun-tary and conscious projections during whichthe subject deliberately endeavors to free hisor her mind from the physical body.

Dr. Robert Crookall, the British geologistand botanist who was also a pioneer in the studyof out-of-body experience, stated in the intro-duction to his More Astral Projections (1964)that the astral, the etheric, body “is normallyenmeshed in, or in gear with the familiar physi-cal body” so that most people are not aware ofits existence. “But many people have becomeaware of it, for . . . [their] Soul Body separated orprojected from the physical body and was used,temporarily, as an instrument of consciousness.”

Crookall perceived this “Soul Body” asconsisting of matter, “but it is extremely subtleand may be described as ‘super-physical.’” Inhis view the physical body is animated by asemi-physical “vehicle of vitality” that bridgesthe physical body and the Soul Body and is the“breath of life” to which the book of Genesisrefers. Crookall suggests that some projections“involve the Soul Body only; others merelyrepresent an extrusion of part of the vehicle ofvitality; most are a combination of the two—the Soul Body goes out accompanied by a tinc-ture of substance from the vehicle.”

Many individuals who have undergoneout-of-body experiences have made mentionof a kind of cord of silver color that seems toattach their soul or mind to the physical body.Such glimpses of the silver cord have prompt-ed those experiencers and researchers of a reli-gious orientation to recall the verses in thebook of Ecclesiastes which refer to the time ofdeath when “the silver cord is loosed and thegolden bowl be broken.…Then shall the dustreturn to the earth as it was: and the spiritshall return unto God who gave it” (KJV

Ecclesiastes 12:5–7). In Tibetan Buddhist tra-dition, out-of-body experiencers have alsolong observed that a strand exists between theastral double and the physical body. In diversecultures, many individuals who have under-gone out-of-body phenomena have noticedthat their “silver cords” were highly elastic. Inthe oft-cited case of the Reverend Bertrand,the French clergyman saw that his ethericdouble was attached to his physical body by “akind of elastic string.” An American studentof OBE, Sylvan Muldoon, reported “an elas-tic-like cable” linking his two bodies.

On many occasions, out-of-body experi-encers have commented that the silver cordappeared to be luminous, like a beam of light.Others state that it was not really any kind ofactual physical cord, but a stream of light thatcontinued to connect them to their physicalbodies. Crookall mused from his gathering ofaccounts of OBE that the so-called silver cordcorresponds “to the umbilical cord in child-birth (where an old body gives birth to a newbody)”; and if such is the case, its severancemay mean death.

Dr. Alexander Cannon saw the variousstrata of physical and nonphysical humanbeings a bit differently. In his Sleeping ThroughSpace (1938), Cannon related the view of theMaster-the-Fifth of the Great White Lodge ofthe Himalayas, Kushog Vogi of NorthernTibet, who believed that the astral body sur-rounds the physical body “like an eggshell sur-rounds the egg within it and is linked up withthe physical body by invisible vibrations onthe ether in the air being carried to the mindcenters on the plexuses of the involuntarynervous system.” In Cannon’s view, the astralbody is the scriptural “golden bowl” and theetheric body is the linking “silver cord.”

“The astral body,” he wrote, “is mainly theemotional body and has to do with emotions,moods, and feelings. The astral body is notonly linked up with the physical body throughthe solar plexus, but also linked up with theetheric body through vibrations passing fromit through the physical body between theeyes…to the top of the etheric body.”

Cannon compared the etheric body to a“streak of light running down the front of the



spinal cord of the physical body but indepen-dent of either the astral or physical body,whereas the physical body is dependent,through the involuntary sympathetic nervoussystem, on the astral body, and in turn theastral body is dependent on the etheric body.”

According to Cannon, the East has longbelieved that when the physical body dies, theastral body containing the etheric body sepa-rates from the physical body after three days,and that after years, perhaps centuries, theastral body dies and leaves only the ethericbody to become a spirit. The Eastern schoolsof initiation, Cannon informed, teach thechela (student) how to withdraw his or herastral body under the direction of a master. Toachieve such control of the spirit, the studentmust subject himself or herself to a rigorousand prolonged period of highly intensive andspecialized training. Such esoteric knowledge,Cannon reminded his readers, had beenacquired by centuries of effort and experimen-tation by Eastern adepts. The Western worldis only beginning to be made aware of theexistence of the spiritual self.

Students of astral projection, bilocation,and OBE have frequently commented on thephenomenon of dual consciousness, i.e., hav-ing complete awareness of one’s body, its func-tions, and the room in which it is lying at thesame time that one is traveling astrally to visita faraway person or place. The lines betweenout-of-body travel and other psi phenomenaare nebulous and may overlap a great deal.

In 1951 Sylvan Muldoon, who was accom-plished in seemingly leaving his body almostat will, collaborated with Hereward Carring-ton (1880–1958), a psychical researcher ofinternational reputation, to produce The Phe-nomena of Astral Projection. In this book, theauthors felt confident that they had presented

a considerable number of case histories thatproved beyond reasonable doubt that astralprojection is a fact, that humans can leavetheir physical bodies spontaneously and pro-ject to considerable distances at will. Muldoonand Carrington were certain that such a factrepresented an important truth to allhumankind: individuals are not their materialbrains, nor are they a product of their brains’functional activities. Muldoon and Carring-ton argued that if humans are here and nowspiritual entities, then the prospect of anotherlife in a spiritual world becomes not only apossibility but nearly a certainty.

There is nothing new about the belief inimmortality and in humankind’s possession ofa nonphysical capacity that remains aloof tothe physical considerations of time, space, andmatter. But just how could science go aboutproving out-of-the-body experiences? Can anastral, or soul, body be weighed and measured?Can it be seen as it rises from the host body ofa laboratory volunteer? Certainly it cannot befollowed to determine the validity of theexperience, nor can it disturb carefullyarranged flour dusted on the floor.

Dr. Charles T. Tart (1937– ), a core fac-ulty member of the Institute of TranspersonalPsychology in Palo Alto, California, is respon-sible for pioneer work in bringing the soul outof the body and into the laboratory. His booksAltered States of Consciousness (1969) andTranspersonal Psychologies (1975) are consid-ered classics in the field of consciousness stud-ies and scientific parapsychology. The first ofTart’s experiments with OBE were conductedin the electroencephalography laboratory atthe University of Virginia Hospital during theearly 1960s. At that time, Tart was primarilyconcerned with spontaneous OBEs during thesleep state, as this appears to be the most com-mon state in which such projection occurs.His two subjects, a man and a woman, wereindividuals who claimed knowledge of leavingtheir bodies in sleep. To test the validity of theout-of-body experience, the two subjects wereasked to read a five-digit numeral placed onthe shelf of the equipment room in the labora-tory. The number was so placed that the sub-jects would be unable to see it under normalconditions, but in a state of conscious disen-



STUDENTS of astral projection, bilocation,and OBE have commented on the phenomenon of

dual consciousness.

gagement from the body, they could supposed-ly read it off with ease.

In the experiment, electrodes wereattached to each subject’s head for electroen-cephalograph (EEG) readings. (The EEGrecords brain waves.) Additional equipmentwas used to measure the subjects’ rapid eyemovements (REMs). A great deal of study inrecent years has indicated that REMs accom-pany dreams and early sleep stages, but areabsent in later stages. Finally, an electrocar-diogram was made, recording heart action.Tart hoped, with such equipment, to providepsychophysiological substantiation to eachsubject’s out-of-body projection. He alsowished to learn from bodily responses more ofthe nature of an OBE.

The male subject was tested on nine differ-ent nights. Although he claimed he could pro-ject himself at will, he was unable to do so, byhis own account, until the next to the lastnight of the experiment. On that evening hereported leaving his body twice within a fewminutes. The subject’s first OBE found him inthe presence of two men and one woman, allunknown to him. He tried to arouse theirawareness of him by pinching and touching,but he was unsuccessful in his attempts. Thevalidity of this experience could not be verified.During his second OBE, he reported walkingthrough the doorway into the equipment room.Not finding the technician on duty, he contin-ued on his way to the office section of thebuilding. There he found the technician, talk-ing with a man whom he did not know. Againhe tried to attract attention to his presence.When he was once more unsuccessful, hereturned to his body, awakened, and called outto the technician. She confirmed that she hadbeen in the office with her husband. The sub-ject’s description of her husband was exact.

It was determined by the EEG record with-in the few minutes before he awakened—which was the time the subject indicated hehad been out of his body—that he had been ina state of Stage One dreaming. It is in this statethat sleep is lighter and dreams are accompa-nied by rapid eye movements. Since the sub-ject’s experience had occurred not in the lateror deeper stages of sleep and not in a state of

drowsiness, but totally during the dream state,Tart labeled the experiment “inconclusive.”Even though there was objective evidence thatthe technician was not at the controls whenthe subject said she was not, and she had beenin the office with her husband, whom the sub-ject was able to describe, Tart did not feel hecould offer irrefutable evidence that an actualOBE had occurred.

The female subject was tested for four non-successive nights over a period of two months.This woman was subjected to even stricterlaboratory controls and physiological responsemeasuring devices. Her efforts were concernedmainly with attempts to read the test numeralTart had placed on the shelf. On the thirdnight of the experiment, the subject claimedthat she had visited her sister in another city,and although this astral flight could not beverified, her EEG pattern sequence was“unusual.” On the fourth and final night ofthe experiment, the subject correctly identi-fied the number on the shelf as 25,132.

Tart termed the experiment a “conditionalsuccess,” but he refused to call it conclusive.Jumping ahead of the skeptics’ disclaimers,Tart said that the subject could possibly haveseen the number high on the shelf reflected inthe black plastic case of a clock. Although hedid not himself believe this to be the case, hedeemed it necessary to make due note of it.

Tart, who for 28 years was professor of psy-chology at the Davis Campus of the Universi-ty of California, has stated that to him themost significant aspect of his early experimen-tation was not the tentative findings that theyproduced, but the fact that such traditionally“occult” manifestations as astral projection,OBEs, can be subjected to scientific study. Aconsiderable number of scientists havebecome convinced of the reality of out-of-body travel because of such pioneering experi-ments as those conducted by Tart, but itremains extremely difficult to satisfy the morematerial sciences’ demand for controlled andrepeatable laboratory proof. Science is the artof definition; therefore, the intangible mustsomehow be made tangible.

“Once we rid ourselves of the stubborn andconventional notions that man is separate



from his universe, that external reality is sepa-rate from internal reality, and that the study ofconsciousness is a waste of time, the taboosagainst imaginative investigation in creativity,parapsychology, hypnosis, and the psyche-delics will diminish,” Dr. Stanley Krippner hasobserved. “To perceive and understand realityin its totality, we will want to utilize theinsights obtained in altered states of con-sciousness, as well as those available to us inthe everyday, waking state.”

In the assessment of many parapsycholo-gists, the thousands of anecdotal cases of spon-taneous out-of-body projection and laboratoryexperiments in controlled mind travel demon-strate that the human psyche is not to be heldin thrall by the limitations of time and space.Even while humans’ physical bodies exist inthis physical world, wherein the limitations ofmass, energy, space, and time shape and con-trol the environment, the human essence iscapable of extending outside of itself.

M Delving Deeper

Cannon, Alexander. Sleeping Through Space.Woodthorpe, Nottingham, England: WalcottPublishing, 1938.


Hart, Hornell. The Engima of Survival. Springfield,Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, Publishers, 1960.


Monroe, Robert A. Far Journeys. Garden City, N.Y.:Doubleday, 1987.

Muldoon, Sylvan. The Case for Astral Projection.Wehman, 1969.

Muldoon, Sylvan, and Hereward Carrington. ThePhenomena of Astral Projection. London and NewYork: Rider, 1951.


Tart, Charles T. Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Para-psychology of Spirituality. Charlottesville, Va.:Hampton Roads, 1997.


Precognition

Precognitions, visions of future events tocome, have been noted regularly not only inthe literature of psychical research but in thatof science itself for more than 2,000 years.The Bible includes a collection of divinelyinspired prophecies and promises. Over thecenturies, an argument that time is not anabsolute has been building up. A great numberof psi researchers have suggested that thecommon concept of time might be due to thespecial pattern in which humankind’s sensoryapparatus has evolved. One thing seems cer-tain about true precognition: whether itcomes about through a dream or the vision ofa seer, the percipient does not see possibilitiesbut actualities.

In 1934, H. F. Saltmarsh issued a report tothe London Society for Psychical Research inwhich he had made a critical study of 349cases of precognition. In the report, and laterin his book Foreknowledge (1938), Saltmarshestablished the following conditions thatwould, in his estimation, make a case of pre-cognition wholly satisfactory:

1. It should have been recorded in writing ortold to a witness or acted upon in some sig-nificant manner before the subsequentincident verified it.

2. It should contain a sufficient amount ofdetail verified by the event to makechance coincidence unlikely.

3. Conditions should be such that the follow-ing phenomena may be ruled out as expla-nations: telepathy, clairvoyance, auto-sug-gestion, inference from subliminallyacquired knowledge and hyperaesthesia.

Saltmarsh used the above criteria to pro-claim 183 of the 349 cases as being wholly sat-isfactory cases of precognition. One of these,the “Case of the Derailed Engine,” will serveas an illustration of the sort of experience thatSaltmarsh assessed as truly precognitive.

A minister’s wife and daughter were stay-ing at lodgings at Trinity, near Edinburgh,Scotland, on July 15, 1860. It was a brightSunday afternoon, and between three and fouro’clock, Mrs. W. told her daughter to go outfor a short walk on the “railway garden,” thename that she had given a strip of ground



between the seawall and the railway embank-ment. The daughter had only been gone a fewminutes when Mrs. W. distinctly heard a voicewithin her say: “Send for her to come back orsomething dreadful will happen to her.”

Mrs. W. was seized by a sense of forebodingthat progressed into a feeling of terror thatsoon had her trembling and physically upsetover the nameless dread. She ordered a ser-vant to go and bring her daughter home atonce. The servant, seeing her mistress visiblydistraught, set out immediately. Mrs. W. pacedthe floor, more upset than ever, fearful thatshe would never again see her daughter alive.

In about a quarter of an hour, the servantreturned with the daughter, who was safe andwell. Mrs. W. asked the child not to play onthe railroad embankment and obtained herpromise that she would sit elsewhere and noton the spot where she usually played.

Later that afternoon an engine and tenderjumped the rails and crashed into the wallwhere her daughter had been playing beforethe servant brought her home. Three men outof five who were there, were killed. Muchlater, Miss W. and her brother visited thescene of the tragedy and saw that the smashedengine had crashed into the precise spotwhere she had spent two hours with herbrother on the previous Sunday afternoon.

Saltmarsh theorized that what is called the“present moment” is not a point of time, but asmall time interval called the “specious pre-sent.” According to his theory, the humansubconscious mind has a much larger “spe-cious present” than the conscious level ofbeing. For the subconscious, all events wouldbe “present.” If, on occasion, some of this sub-conscious knowledge were to burst into theconscious, it would be interpreted as either amemory of a past event or a precognition of afuture event. The past is neatly catalogedsomewhere in the subconscious. Some psiresearchers, such as H. F. Saltmarsh, believethat all events—past, present, and future—arepart of the “present” for the deeper transcen-dental mind.

In view of such concepts as Saltmarsh’s,some researchers maintain that the age-oldquery, “Can the future be changed?” has no

meaning. The foreknowledge of the future, ofwhich some level of the subconscious is awareand of which it sometimes flashes a dramaticbit or scene to the conscious in a dream ortrance, is founded on the knowledge of howthe individual will use his or her freedom ofchoice. The “future event” conditions the sub-conscious self. The level of the subconsciousthat “knows” the future does not conditionthe “future event.” The transcendent elementof self that knows what “will be” blends alltime into “what is now and what will alwaysbe.” For the conscious self, what is now thepast was once the future. One does not lookupon past events and feel that one acted with-out freedom of will. Why then should onelook at the future and feel that those eventsare predetermined? That a subconscious levelin the psyche may know the future, theseresearchers insist, does not mean that the con-scious self has no freedom of choice. Simplystated, if the future could be changed it wouldnot be the future. In a true precognitive expe-rience when one perceives the future, he orshe has glimpsed what will be and what, for alevel of subconscious, already exists.

The fact that precognitive dreams that tellof future events, accomplishments, dangers,and deaths appear to be so common has per-suaded many psi researchers that somehow, ina way that is not yet understood, every individ-ual is aware of the future at an unconsciouslevel of his or her mind. Such knowledge usu-ally lies imprisoned at a subconscious level, outof the grasp of the conscious mind. Occasion-ally, however, in especially dramatic dreams,bits and snatches of scenes from the futurebubble up to become conscious memories.Then, later, as the experience is lived throughin waking reality, it is astonishing to have thedream play itself again before conscious eyes.

Psychiatrist Dr. Jan Ehrenwald has theorizedthat at the lower level of the subconscious—



PRECOGNITIONS are visions of future events.

which Freudian analysts refer to as the “id”—time and spatial relationships may be all mixedup. Here and there, past, present, and futuremay all be interlocked and interchangeable.

Is it possible to avoid foreseen danger? Thequestion is probably as old as humankinditself. Can one change the course of futureevents or is everything inexorably preor-dained? It is perhaps not so much a question offree will as it is a matter of what constitutestime. “In any attempt to bridge the domains ofexperience belonging to the spiritual andphysical sides of our nature, time occupies thekey position,” mused A. S. Eddington in Sci-ence and the Unseen World (1929).

There is a general consensus among psiresearchers that there are five types of precog-nitive experiences. At the most elementarylevel is subliminal precognition, or the“hunch” that proves to be an accurate one.Next would come trivial precognition, whichtakes place only a short time before the actualoccurrence of a rather unimportant event.Then, in the area of full-blown, meaningfulprecognitions, which indicate a power of mindnot limited by space or time, there are benefi-cial, non-beneficial, and detrimental pre-visions. In a beneficial premonition, the tran-scendent self may over-dramatize a futureevent in such a way that it proves to be awarning that is acted upon by the consciousself ’s characteristic reaction to such a crisis.

On a July morning in 1952, according to acase in the files of Louisa E. Rhine, a womanin New Jersey attempted to avoid the death ofa child as she had foreseen it in a precognitive“vision.” In this glimpse of the future, whichhad occurred as she lay resting in a darkenedroom, she envisioned the aftermath of adreadful traffic accident. A child had beenkilled and lay covered on the ground. Becausethe child was covered, the woman could notidentify the victim.

In the morning, she told her next-doorneighbor of the strange dream and begged herto keep close watch on her five-year-old child.Next she phoned a son, who lived in a busysection of the town, and admonished him tokeep an eye on his two small children. Shehad another son who lived in the country, but

she felt there was little need to warn him to bewary of traffic. Nonetheless, it was his littleKathy who was killed that same day when atownship truck backed into her.

To take a final example from LouisaRhine: A young mother in Washington Stateawakened her husband one night and relateda horrible dream. She had seen the large orna-mental chandelier that hung above theirbaby’s crib crash down into the child’s bed andcrush the infant to death. In the dream, asthey ran to discover the terrible accident, shenoticed that the hands of the clock on thebaby’s dresser were at 4:35.

The man laughed at his wife’s story, rolledover, and went back to sleep. Although shefelt foolish for doing so, the young woman slidout of bed, went into the nursery, and returnedwith the baby. Placing the sleeping child gen-tly between them, the woman fell at once intoa deep sleep.

A few hours later, the young couple wereawakened by a loud, crashing noise. Thesound had come from the nursery, and thecouple found that the chandelier had falleninto the baby’s crib. The clock on the baby’sdresser indicated the time as 4:35.

For the young woman’s deep level of sub-conscious, the falling of the chandelier was apresent fact that was still a future fact for herconscious self. The absence of the baby in itscrib was also a present fact to the transcendentalself because it was aware of how the consciousself of the young mother would react if she knewthe safety of her child were threatened. To stim-ulate the woman to action, the deep level of herpsyche formulated a dramatic precognitivedream with an attached tragic ending. Thefuture, therefore, had not been altered by thewoman’s action, only implemented.

In his book An Experiment with Time(1938), J. W. Dunne gave many examples of hisown precognitive dreams, which he recordedover a period of several years. Dunne firmlybelieved in sleep and dreams as the prime open-ers of the subconscious and formulated a philos-ophy, which he called “Serialism,” to accountfor precognition. In Dunne’s view, time was an“Eternal Now.” All events that have everoccurred, that exist now, or that ever will, are



everlastingly in existence. In a person’s ordi-nary, conscious, waking state, his or her view isonly of the present. In sleep, however, the indi-vidual’s view might be sufficiently enlarged toallow several glimpses of the future.

Although Dunne’s theory is considered toodeterministic by the majority of psi researchersand has been generally discredited, one of histheories in regard to deja vu, the sense of thealready seen, is quite intriguing. Dunne sug-gested that this curious experience (whichalmost everyone has had at one time or anoth-er) of “having been here before” is due to thestimulation of a partially remembered precog-nitive dream. When the conversationbecomes familiar or the new location becomessuddenly recognizable, one may, according toDunne, simply be remembering a precognitivedream, which had been driven back into thesubconscious.

For those researchers who study precogni-tion, the conventional idea of time existing assome sort of stream flowing along in onedimension is an inadequate one. In this linearview of time, the past does not exist: it is goneforever. The future does not exist because it hasnot yet happened. The only thing that exists isthe present moment. But the present does notreally exist, either, since it is no sooner “now”than that “now” becomes part of the past. If thepast completely ceased to exist, one shouldhave no memory of it. Yet each individual has alarge and varied memory bank. Therefore, thepast must exist in some sense—perhaps not as aphysical or material reality, but in some sphereof its own. Similarly, certain psi researchersmaintain, the future must also exist in someway in a sphere of its own. The subconsciousdoes not differentiate between past, present,and future but is aware of all spheres of time aspart of the “Eternal Now.”

There are certain kinds of precognitiveexperiences that can be easily identified as partof the normal process of the subconscious. Awoman dreams of coming down with themeasles and laughs it off. She did not succumbto the disease as a child; why should she weak-en as an adult? In two days, she is in bed withthe annoying rash covering her body. Ratherthan judge this to be a prophetic dream, one

might better regard the experience as an exam-ple of the subconscious mind being much moreaware of the condition of the inner body thanthe superficial conscious mind.

In other cases, a keen intellect and a greatawareness of one’s environment will enableone to make predictions. Much of the afflu-ence of the contemporary economy, fromstock market juggling to hemline raising, isbased upon the ability of certain knowledge-able people to make predictions concerningthe preferences of a mass society.

In contrast to these “explainable” predic-tions, however, are the many examples of menand women who seem beyond any doubt tohave experienced precognitions. Parapsychol-ogists will state that this “power of prophecy”rested not in some occult knowledge, butwithin the transcendent self, which seems tobe aware of events that belong in the realm ofthe future for the superficial self.

Some psi researchers have presented timein an analogy that has a man riding on therear platform of a train. The man looks to theleft and to the right. As the train chugs along,he is able to see a panorama of new scenes asthey come into his view. As the train contin-ues, these scenes fade into the distance andare lost to view. They have become the man’spast. But these scenes do continue to existafter they have passed from the man’s view,and they were in existence before the manperceived them, even though he was only ableto see them at the time that they were his pre-sent. However, if another man were flyinghigh above the train in an airplane, he wouldbe able to see what has become the train pas-senger’s past and present, as well as foreseeingfuture scenes that lie beyond the man’s limitedground level view. All scenes for the man inthe airplane exist as an “Eternal Now.”

M Delving Deeper

Dunne, J. W. An Experiment with Time. New York:Macmillan, 1938.

Rhine, J. B. New World of the Mind. New York:William Sloane Associates, 1953.


Saltmarsh, H. F. Foreknowledge. London: G. Bell &Sons, 1938.




Psychokinesis

Apart from the uncontrolled eruptions of psy-chokinetic power examined in the cases ofpoltergeist hauntings described in chapter ten,there are individuals who have demonstratedthe ability to discipline psychokinesis (PK).Professional gamblers have long alleged thatthey can “make the dice obey” or make the lit-tle white ball in the roulette wheel stop wher-ever they wish.

Parapsychologist Dr. J. B. Rhine began hisexperimental lab work in PK in 1934. Usingdice-throwing experiments and utilizing sev-eral volunteers who claimed to have been ableto use “mind over matter” to bring in tangiblerewards at the gaming tables, Rhine and hisassociates conducted tests and accumulateddata until 1943 before they made anyannouncement of their results. In his TheReach of the Mind (1947), Rhine set forth ananalysis of this data and concluded that psy-chokinesis had been established beyond allquestion.

In 1964, when Loyola University professorJames Hurley was contemplating writing abook on ESP, he contacted Rhine, the dean ofacademic parapsychologists, and was toldabout the remarkable psychic-sensitive OlofJonsson (1918–1998), who had the ability toproduce psychokinetic effects, as well asdemonstrate clairvoyance and telepathy. Onenight in the summer of 1964, Hurley and Jons-son were finishing dinner in a Chicago restau-rant when Jonsson demonstrated PK by caus-ing an individual globe to move in a chande-lier located across the dining room.

Two Swedish doctors, Anders Perntz andSven Erik Larsson, conducted numerous psy-chokinetic experiments that they conductedwith Jonsson under full control. In one test,Jonsson turned a pewter candlestick weighing1.25 kilograms 180 degrees while standing threeyards away. In another experiment, Jonssonstood in front of a table and caused a piece ofwood sculpture to slide at an even speed acrossthe table top before it fell down to the floor.

The Danish psychical researcher and pho-tographer Sven Turck conducted repeated testsof Jonsson’s psychokinetic powers, guardingagainst any possible trickery by creating strongcontrols in his laboratory. In Turck’s laboratoryin Copenhagen, the researcher photographedJonsson, together with a select group of psy-chic-sensitives, performing feats of psychoki-nesis. Turck set up three cameras at differentangles, so that one always showed the actionfrom behind, one from underneath, and onefrom above. After a series of sittings with thesensitives, chairs and objects began to move. Alarge worktable rose up on one leg and beganto whirl around its own base, pirouetting fasterand faster. Turck’s greatest wish was that theymight get the table to soar freely in the air sothat he might photograph the phenomenon oflevitation. A few evenings later, the photogra-pher was able to capture the fulfillment of hiswish on the film of three cameras.

These phenomena were repeated oftenduring the course of several months’ of sittingsin Turck’s laboratory and were always dutifullyrecorded by the trio of cameras that had beenloaded with infrared film. On one occasion, alarge commode, of such a weight that two mencould not lift it without great effort, wasmoved soundlessly out into the middle of thelaboratory floor.

Author Stig Arne Kjellen said that Turckhad never been able to believe in such dra-matic displays of psychokinetic force until hehad become a participant in the sessions heldin his own laboratory. In principle, the psy-chokinetic moving of a candlestick is just asremarkable as the moving of a heavy table.Both feats are quite impossible in the view oforthodox science. The series of photographstaken during Turck’s experiments in Copen-hagen were carefully examined by five of Den-mark’s foremost photographic technicians,among them the director of the Danish photo-graphic professional school, TheodoreAndresen, who had full access to the photo-graphic negatives. Each of the photographersagreed that no manipulations whatsoever hadbeen worked upon the negatives.

Kjellen recorded 140 carefully controlledexperiments in psychokinesis before Jonsson



left Sweden in 1953 at the invitation ofRhine, who asked him to come to Duke Uni-versity for a series of parapsychological tests.Kjellen tells of how without any previouspreparations whatsoever, accompanied bypeople he had never met before and in placesso distracting and mundane as restaurants andhotel vestibules, Jonsson got bottles, flowers,jars, ashtrays, toothpick holders, and candle-sticks into motion, while talking to otherswith an altogether untroubled smile. Fre-quently such demonstrations took place withJonsson situated a great distance away, and yethe was able to exert such force that, on someoccasions, objects were moved several yards inone direction or another, sometimes directlyup into the air.

In Rhine’s view, clairvoyance and telepa-thy are sensory types of phenomena, matteraffecting mind; PK is a motor-type phenome-non, mind affecting matter. In his opinion,the existence of one implies the existence ofthe other and he maintained that they areclosely related phenomena.

In his series of tests, Rhine noted thatdice-throwers with marked control over thedies were much more successful at the begin-ning of a run. The same sort of “decline” effectthat has been noted by agents testing tele-pathic percipients in card-guessing tests was inevidence in testing for PK.

Other similarities existed between ESPand PK tests as observed in the Duke Univer-sity parapsychology laboratories where Rhineand his colleagues conducted the tests. Forexample, mechanical devices made no differ-ence in the effectiveness of PK, and neitherdid distance. Once again, as in ESP testing, arelaxed, informal atmosphere produced thebest PK results. Another important similaritybetween the two paranormal abilities is thefact that the person who expects success and“believes” in his or her ability to produce thedesired result will always score much higherthan the individual who is indifferent to ESPor PK.

It appears that psychokinesis as well asextrasensory perception is a talent that can bedeveloped and encouraged and is an abilitypresent, to a certain degree, in all people.

M Delving Deeper




Spraggett, Allen. The Unexplained. New York: NewAmerican Library, 1968.

Steiger, Brad. The Psychic Feats of Olof Jonsson. Engle-wood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971.



Telepathy

In his The Psychopathology of Everyday Life(1904), Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) had dis-cussed several alleged supernormal occur-rences and expressed a profound skepticismabout prophetic dreams and telepathic phe-nomena. However, in 1922, he published hisarticle “Dreams and Telepathy” and publiclyproclaimed that he admitted the possibility oftelepathic phenomena. He had written amuch less cautious full-length essay, “Psycho-analysis and Telepathy,” which he would haveread to the International Psychoanalytic Con-gress of 1922 if Ernest Jones, founder of theBritish Psychoanalytical Society, had not per-suaded him to consider the damaging reper-cussions his outspoken attitude might have onthe whole fledgling psychoanalytic move-ment. Consequently, the article did not seeprint until 1941, after Freud’s death.

In 1924 Freud wrote a letter to Jones inwhich he remarked how strongly he had beenimpressed with a report on telepathic experi-ments that Gilbert Murray had prepared forthe Society for Psychical Research. Freud con-fessed that he was ready to give up his opposi-tion to the existence of thought-transferenceand said that he would even be prepared tolend the support of psychoanalysis to the mat-ter of telepathy. Once again, the skeptic Jones,fearful of the damage that such a public decla-ration might deliver to psychoanalysis, con-vinced Freud not to publish any such offer ofsupport to parapsychological research.



Today psychiatrists and psychoanalystsvary greatly in their attitudes toward psiresearch. Those who profess nothing but anadamant skepticism say that the illustrationsof ESP brought forward by their colleaguesexpress nothing but the analyst’s own desire tobelieve in their validity. Those who considerpsi research to be a serious and valuable con-tribution to human understanding insist thatparanormal activities, particularly those oftelepathy and clairvoyance, are too numerousto be dismissed by an arched eyebrow and acursory examination.

Many psychiatrists have developed arespect for psi research when, during thecourse of analysis, a close relationship that canonly be described as psychic, has developedbetween a doctor and his or her patient. Somedoctors have reported patients who haverelated dreams that have dramatized actualincidents that the analysts themselves haveexperienced that day or even the week before.In several cases, the key to a patient’s mentaldisturbance has been located in a dream expe-rience of the analyst. Reports have even beenmade of several patients of the same analystsharing dreams or reenacting group or individ-ual experiences, as if some strange circle oftelepathic dreams had been established.

Parapsychologists have long contendedthat telepathy (and ESP in general) functionsbest between individuals who have a strongemotional link. This particular level of thehuman mind seems to operate best sponta-neously, especially when a crisis situationmakes it necessary to communicate throughother than the standard sensory channels.

For quite some time, psi researchers havebeen aware that twins show unusually hightelepathic rapport. A series of tests conductedby psychologists at the University of Alberta,Canada, confirmed this theory by establishingstatistical evidence that identical twins, and

to a lesser extent, fraternal twins, haveremarkable ability to communicate with oneanother through ESP.

At the behest of Dr. J. B. Rhine of DukeUniversity, Olivia Rivers, a psychologist atMississippi State University, conducted testswith identical twins, Terry and Sherry Young.The Jackson, Mississippi, twins were able topass entire sentences to each other via telepa-thy. The girls seemed to be in constant rapport;and even when separated, each knew if theother had turned an ankle, gotten a toothache,or developed a cold. Sherry was better as thereceiver; Terry as the sender. Their school-teachers despaired of ever receiving an accu-rate test from either girl. Even when placed inseparate classrooms the girls still used similarphrases and got similar marks. They made nosecret of the fact that they helped one anotherin their school work, but insisted that it was bytelepathy alone. It was not cheating to them,nor could anyone consider it as being unfair ordishonest of the girls. It was not their fault iftheir minds functioned as one.

Remarkable experiments have been con-ducted with nontechnological traditional peo-ples to test the hypothesis that telepathy is anarchaic means of communication, which,although remaining as a vestigial function ofthe mind, was once the sole method for con-veying ideas. It has been observed that thebushmen in Australia can accurately transmitthoughts, feelings, and ideas to friends and rel-atives several miles away. They also use psiabilities to locate missing objects, straying cat-tle, and thieving enemies. In many cases, eventoday some bushmen live a virtual Stone Ageexistence. Their normal sensory abilities havebeen heightened by their struggle for survival.Their eyes can identify objects at great dis-tances without the aid of field glasses. Theirpowers of smell are incredible. Their ESP tal-ents are even more remarkable.

Dr. A. P. Elkin, an anthropologist from Syd-ney University, was forced to rearrange some ofhis scientific thinking after he conducted stud-ies among the bushmen. In his Aboriginal Menof High Degree, Elkin writes that although hisarrival was never announced by messenger,drums, or smoke signals, each village was pre-



IN 1922, Freud publicly admitted the possibility oftelepathic phenomena.

pared for his arrival, knew where he had justcome from, and was aware of the purpose of hiswilderness trek. Whenever the anthropologistheard of a case where a native claimed to havegained personal information telepathicallyfrom a faraway village, subsequent investiga-tion proved the knowledge to be accurate.Whether the information concerned a dyingparent, the birth of a nephew, or the victory ofa successful hunt, the recipients’ knowledge ofthe event was completely in accordance withthe actual happening.

Laboratory tests have indicated a numberof interesting facts concerning the conditionsunder which telepathy—and, in general, alltestable psi phenomena—work. Distanceseems to have no effect on telepathy or clair-voyance. Equally remarkable results have beenachieved when the percipient was a yard awayfrom the agent or when the experimenterswere separated by several hundred miles. Dr.S. G. Soal, the British researcher who hasconducted extensive tests with “mind-read-ers,” has written: “In telepathic communica-tion it is personality, or the linkage of person-alities, which counts, and not spatial separa-tion of bodies. This is what we might expecton the assumption that brains have spatiallocation and spatial extension, but that mindsare not spatial entities at all…we must consid-er brains as focal points in space at whichMind produces physical manifestations in itsinteraction with matter.”

Parapsychological researchers have learnedthat the percipient’s attitude is of great impor-tance in achieving high ESP scores. Personali-ties do enter into psi testing even as they dointo other aspects of human relationships. Ithas also been demonstrated that those whobelieve in their psi powers score consistentlyhigher than those who are skeptics and whoregard it all as a lot of nonsense.

Although the staff in a parapsychologylaboratory must be careful to create and fostera friendly and cheerful atmosphere, sponta-neous psi seems to work best under conditionsthat Dr. Jan Ehrenwald terms a “state of psy-chological inadequacy.” Naming this state ofpsi readiness the “minus function,” Ehrenwaldbelieves that “a necessary condition for tele-

pathic functioning is a state of inadequacy ordeficiency such as loss or clouding of con-sciousness (sleep, hypnosis, trance, fever,brain defects).”

The psi researcher faces another risk in thelaboratory when he is engaged in the long-term testing of a percipient: the decline effectsin ESP that can be brought on by sheer bore-dom in the method of testing. The exercise ofpsi ability does sap psychic energy and evenexcellent performers invariably score higherwhen they are fresh. Once the novelty of thetest has worn off, the interests of the percipientwander elsewhere, and so, apparently, does hisor her ESP. It is difficult to force psi into thelaboratory for the controlled and repeatableexperiments demanded by orthodox science.

It is interesting to note that, on the aver-age, a man is more effective as an agent, asender, and a woman is more effective as a per-cipient, a receiver. This seems to apply tospontaneous instances of telepathy and otherfunctions of psi as well as to roles assumedunder laboratory conditions.

In 1930 the novelist Upton Sinclair(1878–1968) published a record of experi-ments in telepathically transmitted drawings,which had been conducted with his wife andhis brother-in-law, R. I. Irwin. Mrs. Sinclairwas always the percipient, the receiver, andwhen Irwin was the agent, the sender, he“transmitted” from more than 40 miles away.The agent would make a set of drawings ofsuch simple items as a nest with eggs, a flower,or a tree, and enclose each sketch in an opaque



Twins being tested for

telepathy capabilities.


envelope. At the agreed-upon time, or later,Mrs. Sinclair would lie down on a couch andallow her mind and body to enter a state ofcomplete relaxation. Experience soon taughther that other levels of mind would attempt to“guess” the sketch and thereby often confusethe true information that would come from adeeper level of authentic knowledge.

Mrs. Sinclair commented that for bestresults in such tests, one must develop the abil-ity to hold in consciousness, without any senseof strain, a single idea, such as the petal of aflower. Association trains must not be allowedto develop, and, above all, no thinking aboutthe idea must take place. A completely relaxedstate of body and mind must be achieved.

It is difficult to measure the success of suchtests with drawings, because often an ideaassociated with the drawing would comeacross rather than the actual sketch. In theSinclair experiments of 290 drawings, 65 werejudged successes, 155 partial successes, and 70were failures. Professor William McDougall(1871–1938), a fellow of the Royal Society, abrilliant British-American pioneer of parapsy-chology, said of the Sinclairs’ experimentswith their “mental radio,” that the degree ofsuccess and the conditions of the experimentwere such that they could not be rejected andshould be accepted as evidence of “some modeof communication” not presently explicablein accepted scientific terms.

While acknowledging the existence oftelepathy, many parapsychologists becameinterested in proving that far from simplybeing a “mental radio,” telepathy must besome form of electromagnetic radiation thatcould be measured and understood. Russianparapsychologists, especially, seemed con-cerned with demystifying telepathy and ESPin general. In the 1920s, Vladimir M.Bekhterev worked with subjects who had beenhypnotized and enclosed in an electromagnet-ically screened chamber known as a Faradaycage. The hypnotist, who was stationed in aseparate room, mentally suggested that thesubject perform certain tasks. This experimentwas carefully planned so that the door to thescreening chamber could be opened andclosed without the knowledge of either the

subject or the hypnotist. As long as the sub-ject was screened electromagnetically fromthe hypnotist, none of the man’s telepathicsuggestions were followed. When the door wasopened, the subject responded to his sugges-tions with a high degree of accuracy.

These and other experiments (one ofwhich even attempted to direct the telepathicsignals with the use of a metal mirror) seemedto confirm the hypothesis that telepathy wasbasically electromagnetic in character. Thisschool of Russian parapsychology was underthe influence of the Italian neurophysiologistF. Cazzamalli, whose conclusions also pointedto an electromagnetic wave character for tele-pathic signals. Cazzamalli’s experiments havebeen criticized several times since the 1920swhen they were performed, since they werenot conducted under rigid controls.

Even while these experiments were beingcarried out, one of Bekhterev’s pupils, LeonidL. Vasiliev (1891–1966), was disturbing thispet theory with some astounding results of hisown. Vasiliev’s original experiments were alsoconducted with volunteer subjects and hypno-tists, but his concern was not to solicitresponses from the suggestion of the hypno-tists via telepathic means, but to induce thetrance state itself by the use of telepathy.

The subject was given an inflated rubberball that was attached by a hose to a pressure-sensitive recording device. He was theninstructed to squeeze the ball with his hand.These contractions were recorded as notcheson the moveable graph. When the subject washypnotized, the rhythmic contractions wouldstop, and the notches would no longer appearon the graph. The subject and the hypnotistwere separated by two intervening walls. Theroom between housed the recording equip-ment and those in charge of monitoring it.Time for each attempt of this telepathic hyp-nosis was determined by the use of a roulettewheel, and was thus completely random.

In 1932, Vasiliev was fortunate enough tofind three very sensitive subjects with whomthe goal of long-distance hypnosis was attain-able. When the hypnotist was instructed toinduce a trance on the person he could notsee, he was able to perform the feat. Later,



when instructed to bring the subject out of thetrance, the hypnotist was again able to accom-plish this by the force of his will, without oncecoming in contact with the subject during theentire course of the test.

As work in this series of experiments con-tinued, a few unforeseen problems began todevelop. After a number of trials, the subjectsbecame so accustomed to the surroundings andthe preparations for the tests, that they wouldautomatically fall into trance. Such auto-hyp-nosis is not uncommon, even when the hypno-tist is not trying to induce the trance state viatelepathy. But even when this occurred, theeffect of a telepathic impulse was striking. Asubject could be put in a trance state two orthree times faster when the hypnotist attempt-ed to send a telepathic signal than when theauto-hypnosis was allowed to occur. As thesetests with the same subject continued, itbecame more difficult to bring the subject outof the trance state with the use of telepathy.Yet telepathy was still a factor as the hypnotistcould revive the subject momentarily beforehe would fall back into a trance.

Because these results were consistentlygood, Vasiliev was able to devise even moreinteresting tests. He placed the subjects withinchambers that were heavily sealed from allforms of electromagnetic radiation. In this testthe subjects responded exactly as they had with-out the shielding, contradicting the results ofthe other Soviet experimenters. Vasiliev’s rigid-ly controlled experiments showed that therewas more to telepathy than electromagneticwaves. A Russian physicist, V. Arkadev, sup-ported Vasiliev’s contention by saying that theintensity of the waves that could be spawned bythe electric currents in the brain is so low thatdissipation occurs very close to the skull. Eventhough it has been proven that electromagneticradiation can affect the central nervous system,the electromagnetic waves generated by theelectric currents that are constantly surroundingmodern men and women are of a much higherintensity than any kind of electromagnetic radi-ation the brain could muster.

These contradictory results have not yetbeen explained, but former Soviet scientistsand psi researchers have since leaned away

from the theory that telepathic signals areelectromagnetic waves. Even more than inother scientific endeavors, parapsychologistsmust be certain to eliminate all prejudice fromtheir minds. It is possible that a researcher’sbrain state may have as much effect on a sub-ject as an intended telepathic signal. Theearly Soviet experiments may have shownthat telepathy was electromagnetic in charac-ter because the investigators, under the heavyinfluence of the Italian Cazzamalli, wanted orexpected them to show it. A prejudice thatcannot be separated from the mind may be adecisive factor in any experiments involvingpsychic phenomena. These possibilities onlyadd to the difficulty of conducting experi-ments, but they cannot be ignored.

Research into the nature of telepathy con-tinues in parapsychological laboratories aroundthe world. While telepathy is commonlythought of as mind-reading, psi researchershave commented that instances of telepathy inthe laboratory seldom involve the actual per-ception of another’s actual thoughts. Andsometimes the information that the percipientreceives from the agent does not really seem tohave been an instance of mind-to-mind com-munication, but rather an example of clairvoy-ance. Once again it must be recalled that thereis a great deal of “bleed-through” from oneparapsychological phenomenon to another.

M Delving Deeper

Garrett, Eileen J. Telepathy. New York: BerkleyMedallion Books, 1968.

Krippner, Stanley. Human Possibilities: Mind Researchin the USSR and Eastern Europe. Garden City,N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1980.

Krippner, Stanley, with Montague Ullman and AlanVaughan. Dream Telepathy: Experiments in Noctur-nal ESP. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Publishers,1989.



Sinclair, Upton. Mental Radio. New York: Macmillan,1971.

Soal, S. G., and F. Bateman. Modern Experiments inTelepathy. London: Faber and Faber, 1954.



Soal, S. G., and H. T. Bowden. The Mind Readers:Recent Experiments in Telepathy. New Haven,Conn.: Yale University Press, 1954.



amnesia The loss of memory which can betemporary or long term and usuallybrought on by shock, an injury, or psycho-logical disturbance. Originally from theGreek word amnestos, literally meaningnot remembered and from a later alter-ation of the word: amnesia: forgetfulness.

banal Boring, very ordinary and common-place. From the French word ban, original-ly used in the context of a mandatory mili-tary service for all or common to all.

clairvoyance The ability to see things beyondthe normal range of the five human senses.From the French word clairvoyant, mean-ing clear-sighted and voyant, the presentparticiple of voir to see.

consciousness Someone’s mind, thoughts orfeelings, or can be referring to the part of themind which is aware of same. The state ofbeing aware of what is going on around you,either individually or the shared feelings ofgroup awareness, feelings or thoughts.

ecstatic Intense emotion of pleasure, happi-ness, joy or elation.

electroencephalographic dream researchResearching dreams using a electroen-cephalograph to aid the researcher in thebrain activity of the one being studied.

electroencephalograph A device or machinethat through the use of electrodes placedon a person’s scalp, monitors the electricalactivity in various parts of the brain. Theseare recorded and used as a diagnostic toolin tracing a variety of anything from braindisorders, tumors or other irregularities todream research.

electrodes Two conductors through whichelectricity flows in batteries or other elec-trical equipment.

electromagnetic Of or pertaining to the char-acteristics of an electromagnet, which is adevice having a steel or iron core and ismagnetized by an electric current thatflows through a surrounding coil.

encode To convert a message from plain textinto a code. In computer language, to con-vert from analog to digital form, and ingenetics to convert appropriate genetic data.

false memory Refers to situations where sometherapies and hypnosis may actually beplanting memories through certain sugges-tions or leading questions and comments;thereby creating memories that the patientor client believes to be true, but in realitythey are not.

Gestalt therapy A type of psychotherapy thatputs a great deal of emphasis on a person’sfeelings as revealing desired or undesiredpersonality traits and how they came to be,by examining unresolved issues from thepast.

hallucination An experience of something orsomeone being present when it is not, orwhen one imagines hearing, seeing or sens-ing an occurrence vividly, but it is not real.

hypnagogic Relating to or being in the statebetween wakefulness and sleep where oneis drowsy. From the French hypnagogiquemeaning literally leading to sleep.

hypnopompic Typical of or involving the statebetween sleeping and waking. Coinedfrom hypno and Greek pompe, meaning asending away.

hypnosis The process of putting or being in asleeplike state, although the person is notsleeping. It can be induced by suggestionsor methods of a hypnotist.

hypothesis An explanation or assumption fora phenomenon that sets the basis for addi-tional investigation. From the Greekhupothesis meaning foundation or base.

ions An atom or group of atoms that are elec-trically charged through the process ofgaining or losing one or more electrons.From the Greek ion meaning movingthing; and from the present participle ofienai meaning to go —from the movement



of any ion toward the electrode of theopposite charge.

narcolepsy A condition where a personuncontrollably falls asleep at odd timesduring daily activities and/or for longextended periods of time. Hallucinationsand even paralysis might also accompanythis condition. Coined from narco andlepsy, from the model of epilepsy.

neuron The basic functional unit of the ner-vous system: a cell body that consists of anaxon and dendrites and transmit nerveimpulses. A neuron is also called a nervecell. Via German from Greek neuron,meaning sinew, cord, nerve.

parapsychology The study or exploration ofmental phenomena that does not have ascientific explanation in the known psy-chological principles.

pharmacologist The study of or science ofdrugs in all their aspects, includingsources, chemistry, production, their use in

treating ailments and disease, as well asany known side effects.

physiology The study of the functioning andinternal workings of living things, such asmetabolism, respiration, reproduction andthe like. From the Latin word physiologiaand the Greek phusiologia, and phusismeaning nature.

psi The factor or factors responsible for para-psychological phenomena. Derived fromthe Greek letter psi which is used to denotethe unknown factor in an equation.

psyche The soul or human spirit or can referto the mental characteristics of a person orgroup or nation. Via Latin from Greekpsukhe meaning breath, soul, mind andfrom psukhein: to breathe.

psychiatrist A doctor who is trained to treatpeople with psychiatric disorders.

psychoanalysis The system of analysis regard-ing the relationship of conscious andunconscious psychological aspects and theirtreatment in mental or psycho neurosis.



Chapter 13

Superstitions,

Strange Customs,

Taboos, and

Urban Legends

Out of the fears and feelings of

helplessness, there arose accounts of

personal rituals of survival. Superstitions

and religions evolved into accepted rules for

appropriate human behavior (customs) and

forbidden behavior (taboos). Many of

these societal customs, and religious and

cultural taboos, are perpetuated in the

urban legends of today.

187

Chapter Exploration

Superstitions

CatsDays of the Week

DogsThe Evil Eye

Four-Leaf CloverGems

HorseshoesKnocking on Wood

LaddersNumbers

Rabbit’s FootSneezingSpitting

Strange Customs and Taboos

Courtship and MarriageHospitality and Etiquette

Burials and Funerals

Urban Legends and Beliefs

Deadly Reptiles in the Imported CarpetsThe Fabulous Cookie Recipe

Green M&MsThe Hook on the Car Door

If Your College Roommate CommitsSuicide.…

Jesus on the FreewayThe Phantom Hitchhiker

Proctor & Gamble Is a Satanist CompanyThe Scuba Diver in the Tree

Snakes in the ToiletSpiders in the Hairdo

Introduction

Perhaps the oldest and most basic ofhuman instincts is that of fear. Earlyhumans experienced an array of bewil-

dering hostility lurking all around them. Inaddition to predators from the animal kingdomwho pursued them as prey, there were suchfrightening and unexplained natural phenome-na as the rumbling terror of thunder and light-ning, the glowing eyes of the stars in the nightsky, and the deadly volcanic craters that shotfire into the air. Equally as terrifying as thephysical threats of their world were the fiendishcreatures that sprang from their imaginations,specters that could come to life from their ownshadows on the walls of their caves or huts.

Out of these primitive fears and feelings ofhelplessness, certain beliefs and practices arosethat helped to ease the terrors of existence.The experiences of those who had faced greatdangers and lived to tell the tale were ritual-ized by others who listened carefully to suchaccounts and took note of what the survivorshad worn, thought, said, or did to escapedeath. As the sharing of the survivors’ storiesspread, highly individualized personal ritualsgrew out of the methods by which these heroeshad been able to ward off evil or the deadlyattack of predators or human enemies. Thesepersonal rituals became the beginning of whatis called superstition and evolved over timeinto systems of magic and religious practices.

As the belief in magic and superstitiongrew stronger, witches, wizards, and magicianswere increasingly regarded with awe and greatrespect. Everyone, rich and poor alike, soughttheir counsel and advice, for it was believedthat the magicians were in direct communica-tion with the spirit world and were able toforetell the future. They could prevent stormsor make the rain to fall in time of drought.They could pacify angry deities and thus save

the people of the tribe or community fromimpending punishment.

Magical words and spells were created, andtalismans, amulets, and good luck charmswere invented.

In ancient times, the amulet or talisman wasa charm intended to exert a magical influenceupon evil spirits and frighten them away. In thetwenty-first century, the good luck charm isintended to attract good rather than to repelevil. The transition has given rise to the customof accepting certain objects and certain happen-ings as good luck omens. The word “luck” itselfappears to have been derived from an oldAnglo-Saxon verb meaning “to catch.”

Magic practices were divided into two dis-tinct kinds—black magic and white magic.Simply stated, the term “black magic” appliedto all those practices that caused evil and harmto others, and the practices termed “whitemagic” were intended to counter the influencesof black magic, achieving good instead of evil.

As human society continued to evolve intocities with a hierarchy of rulers, a class systemof the citizenry, and respected priests to guidegroup worship of gods and goddesses, what hadonce been superstitions became formalizedsocial customs and established religious prac-tices. Identification with a particular nationand its borders continued to grow among thepeople. The more primitive forms of religionsevolved into large and organized systems offaith. Distinctive and unique customs repre-sentative of specific religions or identified withethnic groups became more firmly fixed in themass consciousness. Because what is customand what is taboo—forbidden or improperbehavior—depends so much upon the individ-ual’s cultural, societal, and religious orienta-tion, it is difficult to judge between what maybe harmless conduct in one group and an act ofevil intent in another.

This chapter will examine those universalsocial occasions of courtship, marriage, hospi-tality, and the respect of the dead that are prac-ticed by all societies and religious institutions.The chapter concludes with a review of a num-ber of so-called urban legends—those remark-able experiences that the storytellers alwaysinsist really happened to “a friend of a friend.”


Superstitions, Strange Customs, Taboos, and Urban Legends188

AN amulet or talisman was a charm intended toexert a magical influence upon evil spirits.

Superstitions

Throughout the centuries, the earlysuperstitions that brought solace to thefear-stricken primitive mind have

spawned thousands upon thousands of magicpractices and beliefs—all with the goal of ward-ing off danger, of placating angry deities, or ofsummoning good fortune. Since humankind’searliest awareness of the final destiny of thegrave that awaits all individuals, people havefeared death and they have imagined omens, orwarnings, in the simplest things, such as theappearance of a black cat, the spilling of salt,the number 13.

In a broad sense, superstitions are a kind ofwhite magic in that people will believe thattheir observing or practicing the personal ritu-al will bring them good luck, prevent illness,and ward off evil. And many superstitionsoffer procedures for overcoming the negativeacts threatened by these omens, such as cast-ing a pinch of salt over the shoulder or whis-pering a blessing after a sneeze.

Out of these early forms of magic and super-stition grew many curious customs that remainto this day. For example, in time of illness themedicine man applied his lips to the part thatissued pain and “sucked out the evil spirit.”Mothers around the world still kiss the bruisedfinger or knee of their crying children to “kiss itand make it well.” Many people still “knock onwood” to guard against their words or thoughtshaving been misunderstood by eavesdroppingspirits who might wish to punish them bybringing bad luck upon them. Some believethat the howling of a dog during the full moonpredicts the death of its owner. To place threechairs in a row accidentally means a death inthe family. If a sick person is changed from oneroom to another it is a sure sign that he will die.One who counts the number of automobiles ina funeral procession will die within the year.An open umbrella, held over the head indoors,indicates approaching death.

Scores of superstitions such as these stillexist among people everywhere. Centuriesago, human beings entered into a superstitiousbondage from which they have never whollyescaped. Many men and women today, in spite

of the wonders of contemporary technology,still feel a great sense of helplessness as theyattempt to chart their individual fates in ahostile environment. In many instances, theterrors of the modern world surpass the hor-rors that lurked in the shadows in that timelong ago when primitive humans first dared toventure out of their caves. Even the mostsophisticated of today’s men and women maystill knock on wood and carry a rabbit’s foot intheir pockets for luck.

Niels Bohr (1885–1962), the DanishNobel Prize-winning physicist, kept a horse-shoe nailed over the door to his laboratory.When someone once asked him if he reallybelieved the old superstition about horseshoesbringing good luck, he replied that he didn’tbelieve in it, but he had been told that itworked whether one believed in it or not.

David Phillips, lead author of an extensivestudy of the effect of superstitions on the livesof those who believe in them, has stated thatsuperstitions of any kind can raise stress andanxiety levels. The scientists who conductedthe study, which was published in March2002, concluded that it is as if superstitionsare hard-wired into the human brain, for theyaffect all people, regardless of educationallevel or ethnicity. While numerous studieshave demonstrated that positive attitudes andcertain religious practices, such as prayer andmeditation, can reduce stress, superstitionsthat have become ingrained in someone’sbelief system can become extremely harmful.

Cats

Perhaps no animal has inspired as much super-stition as the cat. Throughout history, cats havebeen worshipped as gods by certain culturesand abhorred as demons by others. In Europeanfolklore, the black cat is the traditional com-panion of witches. Because of this old belief,


189Superstitions, Strange Customs, Taboos, and Urban Legends

SUPERSTITIONS are a kind of white magic.

the black cat has become an omen of misfor-tune and ill luck, and a popular notion is thatunhappiness will follow quickly in the wake ofthe black cat that crosses one’s path.

An old book called Beware the Cat (1584)gives warning that black cats are witches indisguise, and that killing a cat does not neces-sarily mean killing the witch, for a witch cantake on the body of a cat nine times. In theMiddle Ages, the brain of a black cat was con-sidered an essential ingredient in all recipes ofthe witches and witch doctors.

The old belief that a cat has nine lives goesback to ancient Egypt. The cat-headed god-dess, Bast (or Ubasti), was associated with thebenevolent aspect of Hathor, the Lioness, andwas said to have nine lives. The Egyptians didnot fear the cat, but rather reverenced it, andthey elevated cats far above the role of domes-tic pet. To the Egyptians, the cat was trans-formed from mouse catcher to supreme deity,the “Sayer of Great Words.” The Egyptianword for cat was Mau, which is at once an imi-tation of the animal’s call and the nearly uni-

versal human cry for mother. Cats came to beworshipped with such intensity that the wan-ton killing of a cat was punishable by death.

Because the old Egyptians had a great fearof the dark, they observed with awe that thecat, a creature of the night, walked the shad-owed streets with confidence. Carefully con-sidering the import of the cat’s midnight vig-ils, the Egyptian sages decided that the cat wassolely responsible for preventing the worldfrom falling into eternal darkness.

At the same time, the cat’s nocturnalexcursions made it a symbol of sexuality andfertility. It seems quite likely that long beforeCleopatra worked her magic on Caesar andAntony, the sirens of the Nile used makeupthat mimicked the hypnotic eyes and facialmarkings of the cat.

Bubastis, a city in Lower Egypt, dedicateditself to the worship of the cat. Each Maysome 700,000 pilgrims journeyed to the city toparticipate in the festival of the cat.

During the Persian invasion of 529 B.C.E.,the Egyptians’ deification of the cat provedtheir undoing. Knowing of the obsession of theEgyptian people with the divinity of felines,Cambyses II, king of the Persians, made a catpart of the standard issue to each of his sol-diers. The Nile-dwellers led by King PsamtikIII laid down their spears and bows for fear ofharming the cat that each enemy soldier car-ried, and the Persians conquered the city ofPelusium without shedding a drop of blood.

Some people believe that the unwaveringstare of the cat can bring about illness orinsanity or even cause death. Such an unrea-soning, fearful response to cats is known as ail-urophobia. Henry III of England (1207–1272)would faint at the sight of a cat. Adolf Hitler(1889–1945) had plans to dominate the worldwith his Third Reich, but the sight of a cat sethim trembling. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) arrogantly snatched the crown of theHoly Roman Emperor from the pope and con-quered nearly all Europe, but when he spotteda cat in his palace, he shouted for help.

Such dread of cats may be geneticallytransmitted: when Joseph Bonaparte (1768–1844), King of Naples, visited Saratoga Springsin 1825, he complained just before he fainted



If a black cat crosses

one’s path, it is also

considered a sign of bad

things to happen.

THROUGHOUT history, cats have beenworshipped as gods by certain cultures.

that he sensed a cat’s presence. Although hishosts assured His Majesty that no such animalwas anywhere present, a persistent searchrevealed a kitten hiding in a sideboard.

Besides a glance that can bring on terror,folklore also empowers the cat’s eyes with theability to see in the dark. Since all other crea-tures can see only in the daylight, to see atnight reverses the natural order of things andis perceived as sinister and satanic.

Today the cat is not feared as it was in ear-lier times, and it is now the most popular petamong people in the United States, Australia,and France. However, many superstitious peo-ple still regard a cat as an unlucky omen andbelieve that not only the black cat, but allcats, have nine lives.

Days of the Week

The belief in lucky and unlucky days is veryold and appears to have been originally taughtby the magicians of ancient Chaldea. Thenatives of Madagascar have since the earliesttimes believed in lucky and unlucky days ofbirth, and in previous times if a child was bornon what they considered the unlucky day, itwould be killed.

The ancient Greeks believed that the 13thday was unlucky for sowing, but favorable forplanting. Many early peoples harbored thesuperstitious belief that it was best to sow seedat the full of the moon. Others maintained thatit was best to gather in the harvest when themoon was full. Still others regarded the cres-cent moon as a fortunate omen. Even today inSouth Africa, many people consider it unluckyto begin a journey or undertake a work ofimportance during the last quarter of the moon.

The Romans marked their lucky days with apiece of chalk, their unlucky days with char-coal. From this custom of marking unlucky dayswith charcoal started the phrase “black-letterday.” Today, “black-letter days” are generallyones remembered with regret because of someunfortunate occurrence connected with them.

“Blue Monday” is an old phrase still ingeneral usage. In early days those whose busi-ness circumstances forced them to work onSunday, the official day of rest, were consid-

ered entitled to a holiday on Monday. OnMonday, therefore, while others were back atwork, the people who worked on Sunday hada day of rest. Because the churches throughoutEurope were decorated with blue on the firstMonday before Lent—which was a holiday or“lazy day” for everyone—the day of restthroughout the rest of the year for the Sundayworkers came to be known as “Blue Monday.”Although the term is still used, now whenpeople speak of a “Blue Monday,” they mostoften wish to convey that they feel lazy, tired,or would rather be on holiday than at work.

The origin of the superstition concerningFriday is traced by most authorities to the cru-cifixion of Jesus Christ (c. 6 B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.)on that day. But some writers advance the the-ory that Friday is regarded as an unlucky daybecause, according to ancient tradition, it wason Friday that Adam and Eve partook of theforbidden fruit and were cast out of paradise.

Followers of Islam try to avoid beginningany new enterprise on Wednesdays. For rea-sons long forgotten, Wednesday is seen as abad day. Even today, many Muslims avoideven getting their hair cut on that day. Andsuch important occasions as weddings arenever scheduled for a Wednesday.

A familiar old rhyme preserves the oldsuperstitions concerning the personalities ofvarious children on various birthdays: “Mon-day’s child is fair of face,/Tuesday’s child is full ofgrace,/Wednesday’s child is sour and sad,/Thurs-day’s child is merry and glad,/Friday’s child isloving and giving,/Saturday’s child must workfor a living,/But the child that is born on Sun-day/Is blithe and bonny, good and gay.”

Dogs

Dogs, “man’s best friend,” do not have any ofthe kind of sinister superstitions that surroundthe cat, their domesticated companion and



THE custom of marking unlucky days withcharcoal started the phrase “black-letter day.”



A witch riding a black

dog from the 1926 book

La Vie Execrable de

Guillemette Babin by M.

Carron. (FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

competitor in hundreds of thousands of house-holds around the world. Not only have dogsbeen humankind’s most consistent and consid-erate animal friend, but certain scientificresearch now suggests that the human speciesmight not be here today if it hadn’t been for anancient linkup with the canine family. In hisbook Evolving Brains, biologist John Allman ofthe California Institute of Technology statedthat canines and humans formed a commonbond more than 140,000 years ago and evolvedtogether in one of the most successful partner-ships ever fashioned.

To the Native American tribes, as well asto all aboriginal people throughout Europe,Asia, and the Americas, the wolf was the greatteacher, and the social structure of earlyhumans was largely patterned after the exam-ples set by their canine instructors. Althoughamong the vast majority of mammals the careof the young is left solely to the mother,human tribes soon adopted the cooperativerearing strategy employed by the wolf, withboth parents participating in the rearingprocess.

According to the legends of several NativeAmerican tribes, the first humans were creat-ed in the shape of wolves. At first these wolfpeople walked on all fours; then, slowly, beganto develop more human characteristics untilthey became men and women.

Among the superstitions associated withthe dog is the ancient belief that the howlingof dogs portends death and calamities. Thisappears to be a relic of the time when humansmade deities of animals, and as a deity, the dogwas supposed to be able to foresee death andgive warning of it by howling or barking. Thissuperstition became perpetuated among theEgyptians, who depicted the god that presidedover the embalming of the dead as Anubis,the jackal-headed deity. It was also Anubis’stask to lead the spirits of the deceased to thehall of judgment.

Among many Native American tribes, it isthe dog who awaits the spirit of the newlydeceased on the Way of Departed Spirits andwho accompanies the entity to the Land ofthe Grandparents. In addition to its role as aguide to the other side, a number of tribes

associated the dog with the moon and the sun.Such an association with the moon may havestemmed from the dog’s howling at the moonon shadowy nights. The connection with thesun may derive from the dog’s habit of walkingaround in a small circle before it lies down. Toearly people, the making of such a circle wasto create a symbol of the sun.

In ancient Persia, dogs were believed to beable to protect the dying soul from possessionby evil spirits. When a person was dying, a dogwas stationed by the bedside to keep away thenegative spirits that hovered near newlyreleased souls.

The Greeks believed that dogs had theability to perceive the presence of Hecate, thegoddess of darkness and terror. While thismalign entity remained invisible to humaneyes and was thus able to work her evil unde-tected, dogs were able to see her and warntheir human companions by barking andgrowling at her unseen presence in darkenedcorners.

There is an old superstition that good luckwill be granted to a person who is followed bya stray dog. If the dog should follow someoneon a rainy night, however, such action bringsbad luck.

The Evil Eye

Among many people and cultures, the fear ofthe evil eye persists as strongly today as inancient times. In the contemporary world ofsuperstitious beliefs, both men and womencan possess the evil eye and direct its negativi-ty toward those who invoke its wrath. A vastarray of charms, spells, and incantations forthe purpose of warding off evil influences hasbeen passed down from generation to genera-tion. In ancient times, the amulet intendedfor protection against the evil eye was usuallyjust a bit of stone, a shell, or an image carved



CANINES and humans formed a commonbond more than 140,000 years ago.

on wood or bone. Today these amulets havetaken the form of good-luck charms and areoffered in such forms as miniature wishbonesor horseshoes, little china pigs or elephants.

The Dutch, the Irish, the Italians, theEgyptians, and the Chinese all fear the evil eyeand have charms for the purpose of warding offits evil influence. The Dutch place broad stripsof black paint upon their farmhouses; the Irishhave special charm phrases; the Chineseemploy the universal means of fighting off theevil eye by spitting over the shoulder to fright-en away the Evil One. Italians, especially themen, wear a charm shaped like a small hornaround their necks as a deterrent to malocchio,the evil eye. Some individuals may also spitover their shoulder and cross themselves whenthey feel they have been the victim of maloc-chio. Even more effective than the sign of thecross, many Italians feel, is to make the sign ofthe devil’s horns by extending the index andlittle finger. Ever since ancient times, if onedoes not have a special amulet to defend

against the evil eye, then the prescribed anti-dote is to spit as quickly as possible over theshoulder—preferably the left.

Even today among the country people ofGreece, people with blue or green eyes arebelieved to be capable of matiasma, the evileye. Those people whose eyebrows are con-nected are also under suspicion, as well asthose individuals who, when they were babies,had their breastfeeding interrupted. MostGreeks believe that those who possess matias-ma are not necessarily evil or malicious peo-ple, but may simply have the uncontrolledpower to kill or injure livestock, causemechanical breakdowns in machinery, andprecipitate various accidents.

The belief in the evil eye remains powerfulamong the Muslim and Christian Arabs of theMiddle East. Mothers purposely leave theirchildren unwashed and shabbily clothed sothey will not attract the attention of malignantmen and women who might curse them withthe evil eye if their offspring should appear too



Basket of evil eye

charms for sale at an

outdoor market in

Istanbul. (CORBIS

CORPORATION)

healthy or attractive. If one should ever inquireabout her child’s health, the affectionate moth-er will hastily emphasize any defect or illnessthe child has. Poor mothers dress their babysons as girls to counter the evil eye. Some givetheir children nonsensical names, such as “san-dal” or “toy marble,” so the possessor of the evileye will overlook them. Any compliment thatmay be directed at a woman’s child will quicklyprompt the exclamation, “Mashallah!” (by thegrace of God) from the wary mother.

Four-Leaf Clover

The superstition that the finding of a four-leafclover can bring good luck is so old that its ori-gin is lost in antiquity. One of the oldest legendshas it that Eve, upon being ejected from theGarden of Eden, took a four-leaf clover withher. Because the clover was a bit of green fromparadise, its presence in one’s own garden cameto be looked upon as an omen of good luck.

According to some traditions, a youngwoman seeking a husband should go in searchof a four-leaf clover. If she is fortunate enoughto find one, she is to eat it. The first unmarriedman she encounters after eating the clover willbe the one she will wed. Another tradition ofgaining a husband or wife is to find a four-leafclover and place it in one’s shoe first thing inthe morning. The first unmarried member ofthe opposite sex encountered that day will beone’s future spouse.

Gems

The popular superstitions concerning gems aresurvivals of the ancient custom of wearingamulets. An amulet (from the Arab wordhamala, “to carry”) is anything hung around theneck, wrists, ankles, or in any way attached tothe person for the purpose of warding off evil orprotecting against illness. For many individuals,the gem amulets of modern times carry the samepowers to deflect the evil eye or other negativeforces as they did in the days of the pharaohs.

Amber is one of the oldest of all gemamulets. Because it is said to change colorwith the state of one’s health, it is an excellentindicator of one’s physical condition. There isalso a belief that amber has the power to pre-vent illness, and that it will provide a special

protection against throat problems if it is wornon a ribbon around the neck.

Coral also is said to change color accord-ing to the state of one’s health. An old tradi-tion instructs mothers to hang an amulet ofcoral around an infant’s neck to save it fromfalls and illness. During the Middle Ages,coral amulets were worn as protection fromevil wrought by witchcraft.

For centuries, opals have been thought tobe lucky gems and to possess supernaturalpowers.

The sapphire has also been a symbol ofgood luck since the most ancient of times.The Greeks believed that to wear the sapphirewas to invite the favor of the gods. The dia-mond was also considered lucky, particularlyamong the Romans.

In many Arabian countries the favoritegood-luck amulet is turquoise, which is oftenengraved with the name of Allah or a versefrom the Koran.

While certain people believe that pearlsbring bad luck, the Romans and Greeks worepearls to win the favor of the goddess Venus.Asians generally esteem pearls to have medic-inal properties and believe that to wear themgreatly improves the clearness and beauty ofthe skin.

The custom of wearing one’s birthstoneas a lucky gem still exists. Following are thebirthstones that are traditionally believed tobring good luck to the wearers: January, gar-net; February, amethyst; March, bloodstone;April, diamond; May, emerald; June, agate;July, ruby; August, sardonyx; September,sapphire; October, opal; November, topaz;December, turquoise.

Horseshoes

There is no greater symbol of good luck thanfinding a horseshoe with the open hoof space



AMBER is one of the oldest of all gem amulets.

facing toward the fortunate discoverer. No illomens seem to be connected with this partic-ular superstition. Even if a person merelydreams of finding a horseshoe, good luck willcome to him or her. In the modern world, it isnot quite as easy to find a discarded horseshoeas it was in the days before the automobilebecame the principal means of transportation,so perhaps the horseshoe is even luckier in thetwenty-first century than it was in the past.

According to one application of the oldsuperstition, the individuals who find a horse-shoe must first examine it to see how manynails still remain in the holes. They must nextcount the number of holes, which then deter-mines how many weeks, months, or years(depending upon the beliefs of the region) itwill be before they will become rich or will bemarried. In a variation on this process, it is thenumber of nails remaining that must becounted to determine the length of timebefore good luck arrives. According to yetanother interpretation, the number of nailsremaining in the horseshoe indicates thenumber of years of good luck that the finderwill enjoy. Some traditions advise that oneshouldn’t even bother with a found horseshoeunless it still has some nails remaining in it.

Some old accounts advise that one toss thehorseshoe over the left shoulder and spit after itto increase the good luck that will soon arrive.

The last letter in the Greek alphabet,Omega, is shaped like a horseshoe, and per-haps the ancient Greeks used reverse psychol-ogy when they tacked a symbol of “the end”on their walls to protect themselves from theplague. The Romans must have thought thehorseshoe was an able defender against theterrible disease, for they followed the Greekcustom of placing a horseshoe on their walls.

The U-shaped image of the horseshoe wasundoubtedly revered even before humans

domesticated horses and shod their hooves.Many prehistoric stone monuments and struc-tures, such as Stonehenge, are set in a horse-shoe shape, quite likely associated with theearly humans’ attempt to trace the move-ments of the sun.

Nailing a horseshoe to the threshold ofone’s home helps to bring good fortune to thefamily. The horseshoe, tacked in place withthree nails and the open end down, wards offevil.

In the old days, sailors used to see to it thata horseshoe was nailed to the foremast of theirvessels to keep witches and wizards from curs-ing the voyage or damaging the ship.

Some traditions prescribe the hanging ofa horseshoe in the bedroom to preventnightmares from invading one’s sleep. If thehorseshoe is tacked points upward, thesleeper’s masculine powers will be increased.If the sleeper is female, her latent powerswill be awakened if the points are facingdownward.

Knocking on Wood

The old superstition of knocking on or touch-ing wood to ensure continued good health orfortune remains common today. One oftenhears the expression used after someone hasstated something like, “I’ve never had atoothache,” then quickly adds, “knock onwood.” Many authorities on folklore and tra-ditions believe that the custom may have orig-inated in the practice of touching wood uponevery occasion of happiness or good fortune ingratitude and veneration to Christ who diedupon a wooden cross.

Others state that their research indicatesthat the ancient Druids of Great Britain andNorthern Europe began the practice withtheir belief that the trees housed deities.Touching the trees in a respectful mannerencouraged the gods and goddesses within togrant one’s physical selves health and prosper-ity and one’s spirit eternal life. Through theprocess of cultural evolution within the massconsciousness, the custom of touching orknocking on wood came to be looked upon asa means of warding off ill luck.



THE last letter in the Greek alphabet, Omega,is shaped like a horseshoe.

Ladders

Ladders are among humankind’s earliest toolsand constitute one of its most universal sym-bols. But where did the superstition originatethat bad luck would dog one’s path if he or shewalked under a ladder? It would seem to makegreat sense not to walk under a ladder while acarpenter is standing on it pounding in nailswith a heavy-headed hammer. Is this supersti-tion just plain common sense?

Going back to ancient Egypt, when thepriests placed ladders in the tombs for thedead so they might ascend upward if theychose to do so, it was believed that spirits col-lected in the space that formed in the areabetween the ladder and the wall that it leanedagainst. When a ladder leans against a wall, itforms a natural triangle, and that particulargeometric shape has been regarded as sacredsince the most ancient of times. And since itis a region to be venerated, it is also a space tobe avoided. Evil, as well as benign, spirits maybe resting there.

Those people who have somehow walkedunder a ladder can placate the disturbed spiritsby immediately placing their thumb betweentheir index and middle finger. This is an age-old method of warding off bad luck.

In Christian Europe in the Middle Ages,individuals who inadvertently walked under aladder would cross their fingers on both hands,calling upon the sign of the cross to protectthem from any evil entities lurking in theshadows existing between wall and ladder.Others would employ the always-reliablemethod of spitting to banish the negativebeings, for best results, three times—one forthe Blessed Virgin, one for the Son, and onefor the Holy Ghost.

More optimistic folks altered the supersti-tion to state that if a person was, through unusu-al circumstances, forced to walk under a ladderagainst his or her will, he or she might receiveanything wished for. This is much preferable tothe superstition that to tread under a ladder is toforeshadow one’s being hanged.

On the symbolical level, the ladder oftenrepresents an individual’s spiritual quest as itmoves from a lower to a higher level. Seen indreams, the ladder may symbolize that the per-

cipient is about to achieve a transition to ahigher state of awareness.

The archetypal ladder vision or dream forChristians and Jews is the one received byJacob at Bethel when he perceived angelsdescending and ascending a ladder and givingassurance to him that he would be the chosenvessel to extend the Jewish people into agreat nation (Genesis 28:11–19). Since thatseminal experience, dreams or visions of lad-ders have been associated with communica-tion with a higher source or with the rites ofpassage.

Numbers

One of the most widespread of superstitiousbeliefs is that the number 13 is unlucky. Sopervasive is this notion that many hotels andoffice buildings in Europe and the UnitedStates do not have a room number 13.

In Scandinavian mythology there were 12Aesir or gods living in relative harmony untilthe god Loki came among them, making the13th. Loki was cruel and evil, and accordingto the myths, he took special delight in caus-ing human misfortunes. Because he was evil,and because he was the 13th member of thehierarchy of the gods, the number 13 came tobe looked upon as an omen of ill luck. Anoth-er explanation for the origin of this supersti-tion also comes from Scandinavian mytholo-gy, which states the winged Valkyries, whowaited to escort the heroes fallen in battle toValhalla, were 13 in number.

The most popular explanation for thesuperstition surrounding the number 13 is thatthere were 12 apostles and their master Jesus(c. 6 B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.) who partook of the LastSupper, Judas Iscariot being represented as the13th guest. According to Christian tradition,Judas betrayed his master after they hadobserved the Passover meal. Judas later hanged



LADDERS are among humankind’s earliest tools.

himself because of his guilt, and he was said tobe damned for all time as his punishment.

It has long been a matter of etiquette inFrance to avoid having exactly 13 guests at adinner or party. Napoleon (1769–1821)wouldn’t allow a dinner to begin if there were13 guests at the table. There is a custom of the“quartrozieme,” a professional guest who canbe called on short notice to avoid having only13 people dining at a dinner party. Althoughthe superstition of 13 guests is not quite sostrong in the United States, President HerbertHoover (1874–1964) would not permit a gath-ering of 13 while he was in the White House.President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)had the same superstition, and it is said thathis personal secretary was often called upon tobe the 14th guest at a dinner party.

The number seven has been regarded withsuperstitious awe for centuries—some considerseven to be lucky; others, unlucky. Rather thanbeing viewed as bringing good fortune or mis-fortune, the number seven has long been con-sidered a digit of great power. For example,there are seven ecstasies of Zoroaster, the sev-enth day that celebrates the Sabbath, the sevendays of the week, the seven golden candlesticksof Solomon’s temple. Among various early peo-ples, the seventh son of a seventh son wasbelieved to be born with supernatural powers, aboy who would become a wizard when he grewto manhood. Likewise, the seventh daughter ofa seventh daughter was believed to be bornwith gifts of prophecy and healing.

Chinese and Japanese people have a super-stitious fear of the number four, because theword for death, shi, sounds just like the word forfour. Even in the contemporary United States,cardiac deaths for Chinese and Japanese Amer-icans spike 7 percent higher on the fourth ofeach month. The number four is considered so

unlucky in China and Japan that many build-ings don’t list a fourth floor, the Chinese airforce will not assign the number to any of itsaircraft, and even cartoon characters that haveonly four fingers are deemed bad luck.

Among many Jews, even numbers are con-sidered unlucky, even dangerous. While thereare no official Christian teachings regardingany numbers being lucky or unlucky, manypeople believe that the number 12 has signifi-cance because of the 12 apostles. And thenthere is the unholy number 666, which manyChristians attribute to Satan or the Antichrist.

Rabbit’s Foot

Experts cannot agree why the rabbit’s foot hasbecome synonymous with good luck. Thesuperstition that a front paw—or a hind paw—of a rabbit can bring good fortune is so old thatits origins are lost in the mists of time. While itmay be forgotten exactly why the furry littlefoot is lucky, the rabbit’s foot remains one ofthe most common of good-luck charmsthroughout Europe and North America.

Those who believe in the superstitiondon’t seem to be able to agree if the footshould be carried in the right pocket or theleft. Some insist that it must be the right footof the rabbit carried in the left pocket or theleft foot tucked into the right pocket. The footmay also be secured in a purse, a makeup kit,or the door pocket of an automobile.

Wherever one carries the rabbit’s foot, thegeneral procedure is to stroke it three or fourtimes before entering into any kind of socialevent, athletic contest, or gambling effort.Actors take out their rabbit’s foot before goingon stage or filming a big scene. Lecturersstroke their bunny’s paw before approachingthe lectern and making the speech that willinspire the audience. Athletic coaches likelywear out several rabbit’s feet during a singleseason of sporting contests.

Some experts suggest that the most likelyorigin of the rabbit’s foot bringing good luck isthe gentle creature’s association with the holi-day of Easter, which for Christians celebratesthe resurrection of Jesus (c. 6 B.C.E.–c. 30C.E.). In actuality, there is nothing to connecta rabbit with any scriptural references to the



A professional guest, “quartrozieme,” can be calledon short notice so a host can avoid having only 13

people at dinner party.

death or resurrection of Jesus. Christian tradi-tion borrowed the symbols of a rabbit and col-ored eggs for children to hunt on Easter morn-ing from an even older religious tradition inNorthern Europe that portrayed the rabbit asthe escort of the fertility goddess Eastre (East-er). As Christianity spread through Europe,the adaptation and incorporation of the ritesand symbols of Eastre into the celebration ofJesus’ resurrection transferred to the rabbit thedubious distinction of people attributing goodfortune to the act of removing one of his hindlegs and carry it on their person.

Sneezing

Many people believed that the soul was locatedinside the head, so they regarded the sneeze as asign that the soul was giving them an omen,which some interpreted as a lucky omen, othersas unlucky. The Greeks, Romans, and Egyp-tians considered the sneeze a kind of internaloracle that warned them in times of danger andforetold future good or evil. Sneezing to theright was considered lucky; to the left, unlucky.

An old Flemish belief maintained that asneeze during conversation proved the truthof a remark. Such a superstition was alsoprevalent among the Greeks, the Romans,and the Egyptians.

The custom of uttering a benediction, a“God bless you,” after the sneeze is universal,and each country has its own particular super-stition concerning it. The Romans believedthat the sneeze expelled evil spirits; therefore,the act of sneezing was considered an effort onthe part of the person to rid his or her systemof evil spirits, and those present at the timewould say, “Good luck to you.”

There is an old legend that before the timeof the Old Testament patriarchs, peoplesneezed only once, and died. But the patriarchJacob interceded on behalf of humankind andobtained a cessation of this law on the condi-tion that the benediction “God bless you!”follow every sneeze.

In Iceland, according to legend, there wasonce a dreadful epidemic in which many peopledied. In a certain household, a brother and sisterobserved that everyone around them who suc-cumbed to the disease was first seized by a sneez-

ing attack. Therefore, when they themselvessneezed they cried, “God help me!” Because ofthis prayer they were allowed to live, and theyspread the story of the healing benediction to allthe inhabitants of the district. The Icelandershave continued the custom of saying, “God helpme!” when they themselves sneeze and “Godhelp you!” when others sneeze.

In England during the seventeenth centu-ry, it was the custom for all those withinearshot of someone who sneezed to removetheir hats, bow, and shout, “God bless you!” Innineteenth-century England, someone origi-nated a rhyme regarding the consequences ofsneezing on certain days of the week:

Sneeze on Monday, sneeze for dan-ger. Sneeze on Tuesday, kiss a stranger.Sneeze on Wednesday, sneeze for a let-ter. Sneeze on Thursday, somethingbetter. Sneeze on Friday, sneeze forwoe. Sneeze on Saturday, a journey togo. Sneeze on Sunday, your safetyseek—for Satan will have you for therest of the week!

Many people believe that the custom ofuttering the benediction “God bless you!” aftera sneeze dates from the Great Plague that sweptLondon in 1665. Other traditions are firm instating that the practice began much earlierduring the pontificate of Gregory the Great (c.540–604; pope 590–604). During this period adeadly pestilence raged throughout Italy thatproved fatal to those who sneezed. The popeissued prayers to be said against the plague,accompanied by signs of the cross. It was duringthis era, according to some scholars, that thecustom of crying “God bless you!” to personswho sneezed became definitely established.

Spitting

Since ancient times, one’s spittle has been val-ued as a charm against all evil. Spitting is a



PEOPLE believe a sneeze is a sign that the soulwas giving them an omen.

way of consecrating or anointing. To spit onanything has been accepted as a method ofensuring good luck or success in an undertak-ing for so long that no one can determinewhen the practice began.

Sailors spit on their ships for luck. Fisher-men spit over the edge of their boats to guar-antee a good catch. Schoolboys spit on theirshooter marbles for luck in knocking the otherplayers’ marbles out of the circle. In the olddays, those about to engage in a fistfight spiton their knuckles to increase the power oftheir blows. Even today, some people who areabout to undertake a difficult physical taskfirst spit on their hands to make the job easier.

In many cultures, if people accidentallydrop their money, they must spit on it for luckafter they retrieve it. Others spit on theirmoney for luck before placing a bet on a sport-ing event. Some individuals spit on their pay-check to bless it before cashing it. Modernpostal employees are used to seeing people spiton the envelopes containing contest entriesbefore the hopeful contestants drop them inthe mail slot.

Almost universally, if people feel that a per-son with evil intent has put the evil eye onthem, they must spit immediately to protectthemselves from the curse. Whenever individu-als sense that a spell of witchcraft for sorcery hasbeen directed toward them, they must spit overtheir left shoulder. If one should awaken from afrightening nightmare, one must spit over theleft shoulder three times to be certain that itdoesn’t come true. Even if one should encounterSatan himself, the Prince of Darkness can bemade to disappear if one spits between his horns.

In the gospel accounts of the ministry ofJesus (c. 6 B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.), the miracle workerfrom Nazareth healed people of blindness anddeafness with his spittle. The ancient Greeksbelieved that eye troubles could be cured by

rubbing them with the spit of someone whohad been fasting. On occasion, mothers world-wide use their spittle to rub over their child’sbruise or cut to make it heal faster.

M Delving Deeper

Bradley, John R. “The Evil Eye.” Arab News, April27, 2002. [Online] http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=1472.

Gordon, Stuart. The Encyclopedia of Myths and Leg-ends. London: Headline Books, 1993.

Hendrick, Bill. “Superstition Can Be Hazardous toHealth, Researchers Find.” Cox News Service,March 8, 2002. [Online] http://www.news-journalonline.com/cgi-bin/printext.pl.

Opie, Iona, and Moira Tatem, eds. A Dictionary ofSuperstitions. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,1989; New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1999.

Shermer, Michael. Why People Believe Weird Things.New York: W. H. Freeman, 1998.

Spencer, Linda. Knock on Wood. New York: GramercyBooks, 1995.

Vyse, Stuart A. Believing in Magic: The Psychology ofSuperstition. Oxford, UK: Oxford UniversityPress, 1978.

Walker, Barbara A. The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Mythsand Secrets. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.

Waring, Philippa. A Dictionary of Omens and Supersti-tions. London: Souvenir Press, 1978.

Strange Customs

and Taboos

In 2001, bits of stone etched with intricatepatterns were found in the Blombos Caveeast of Cape Town on the southern African

shores of the Indian Ocean. Scientists were sur-prised when the chunks of stone were dated at77,000 years old, indicating that ancienthumans were capable of complex behavior andabstract thought thousands of years earlier thanpreviously expected. In Europe, thousands ofsites have been excavated and artifactsunearthed that prove that what would be con-sidered modern behavior existed there about40,000 years ago. From everything that weunderstand about human evolution, certainforms of behavior were already being acceptedas customs and certain actions judged as tabooseven in those earliest of times.



SINCE ancient times, one’s spittle has beenvalued as a charm against all evil.

Customs are those activities that havebeen approved by a social group and havebeen handed down from generation to genera-tion until they have become habitual. Howev-er, many customs vary from culture to culture,and those who visit other countries may sud-denly discover that the simplest of customaryactions in their own society may be misinter-preted as improper in another. For example,whether they are being introduced to some-one for the first time or greeting an old friend,men and women in western nations are accus-tomed to shake hands. While the clasping ofhands is intended as a gesture of friendship byWesterners, the people of many Asian coun-tries may be alarmed by the boldness of astranger who extends a hand, for they prefer tobow as a sign of goodwill.

Some travelers to foreign countries havealso discovered much to their dismay that

even the most innocent of hand gestures intheir home culture may be considered offen-sive in another. It must soon become apparentto any fairly objective observer that the tradi-tional values and customs of one culture maybe considered very strange by another.

When an action or activity violates behav-ior considered appropriate by a social group, itis labeled a “taboo,” a word that we have bor-rowed from the Polynesian people of the SouthPacific. An act that is taboo is forbidden, pro-hibited, and those who transgress may be ostra-cized by others or, in extreme instances, killed.

While the marriage of near-blood relationsis prohibited in contemporary civilization, inearlier societies it was quite common. Theancient gods of Egypt, Isis and Osiris, brotherand sister, provided an example for royal cou-ples, as pharaohs commonly married their sis-ters. The Hebrew patriarch Abraham took as a



Some stories of alleged supernatural occur-rences cannot really be classified as eitherurban legends or hoaxes, but as accountsthat have been told so often that the truth of

the original report has become obscured over theyears. Perhaps a classic story of this type would bethe curse of King Tut.

The following individuals have been linked to Tut’scurse:

• Howard Carter’s canary

• Lord Carnarvon

• Sheik Abdul Haman

• Jay Gould

• Woolf Joel

• Sir Archibald Douglas Reid

• Lady Carnarvon

• Professor Cisanova

• Georges Benedite

• Albert M. Lythgoe

• Sir William Garstin

• A. Lucas

• Arthur E. P. Weigal

• The Honorable Mervyn Herbert

• Richard Bethel

Sources:

Curse of King Tut’s Tomb. [Online] http://www.mummytombs.com/

egypt/kingtut.htm.

“Howard Carter and the Mummy’s Curse.” The UnMuseum.

[online] http://www.unmuseum.org/mummy.htm.

Wilson, Colin, and Damon Wilson. The Mammoth Encyclopedia

of the Unsolved. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000.

The Curse

of King Tut

wife his half-sister, and Abraham’s nephewLot committed incest with his own daughters.

Polygamy, the marriage of one man and sev-eral women or one woman and several men, isprohibited in modern civilization, but there arestill religious groups in nearly every nation whojustify plural marriages as being ordained by thedeity they worship. The history of every modernculture is replete with accounts of kings, caliphs,emperors, and patriarchs who had numerouswives. The great Solomon, the prototype for thewise ruler and credited with writing some of theworld’s greatest love poetry, is said to have had700 wives and 300 concubines.

Adultery, an act of infidelity on the part ofa married individual, is one of the most univer-sal of the taboos. The code of Moses con-demned both parties involved in the act to bestoned to death. The Hindu religious doctrinesorder both man and woman, humiliated, muti-lated or killed, depending upon their caste. Inancient Egypt, the male offender was castrated,and the woman’s nose was cut off. In ancientGreece, the guilty pair might be killed by beingdragged behind horses or starved. As theGreek civilization matured, adulterers wereseldom killed, but they were deprived of allpublic privileges and sometimes covered fromhead to foot with wool to render their guilteasily visible by others. The laws in Old Scan-dinavia permitted the offended husband tocastrate his wife’s lover and to kill his spouse.

While adulterers may still be dealt withquite harshly in many societies around theworld, in most Western nations the act of infi-delity is regarded with great tolerance. Menand women who have been unfaithful to theirspouses are seldom ostracized by the public atlarge, and adultery by one of the marriagepartners is no longer considered necessary asgrounds for divorce.

There are few universal taboos, for soci-eties continue to evolve. Acts that were con-sidered forbidden at one time have developedinto an acceptable social activity. For exam-ple, seeing a couple kissing in public wouldseldom raise an eyebrow today, but in thePuritan New England of the 1690s, such aharmless act would have sent the man andwoman to the stocks and public humiliation.On the other hand, kissing a woman in publicmight still get a man jailed or fined in many ofthe Islamic nations in the Mid-East.

As the world grows smaller because of mod-ern transportation and its diverse inhabitantsencounter people from different cultures moreoften than ever before in the history of thehuman species, it becomes increasingly difficultto condemn one person’s custom as another’staboo. Within a nation, such as the UnitedStates, which has always endeavored to main-tain a democratic, pluralistic society, an influxof immigrants from Asia and Africa, whichbegan in the 1970s, has made the task of bal-ancing cultural variety with traditional Ameri-can mainstream values more and more difficult.

Barbara Crosette, writing in the March 8,1999 issue of The New York Times, tells of arefugee from Afghanistan who was arrested inMaine when he was seen kissing his baby boy’sgenitals. The father was exhibiting a tradi-tional expression of love that had long beenpracticed in his culture, but to his neighborsand the police, he was abusing his child. Inanother instance, Cambodian parents wereaccused of child abuse by teachers and socialworkers because of their traditional cures ofplacing hot objects on their children’s fore-heads during an illness.

In this section, the fascinating evolution ofthe customs and taboos surrounding courtshipand marriage, hospitality and etiquette, andburials and funerals is explored. While some ofthe customs of the past may seem amusing orquaint, primitive or savage, certain elements ofsuch barbaric acts as capturing one’s bride havebeen preserved in many traditions is still prac-ticed in the modern marriage ceremony.

M Delving Deeper

Armand, Denis. Taboo: Sex & Morality Around theWorld. London: W. H. Allen, 1996.



HINDU religious doctrines order both man andwoman involved in infidelity, humiliated, mutilated or

killed, depending upon their caste.

Crossette, Barbara. “When One’s Custom is Another’sTaboo,” The New York Times on the Web, March 6,1999. [Online] http://www.nytimes.com.

Fielding, William J. Strange Customs of Courtship andMarriage. London: Souvenir Press, 1961.

Gelber, Carol. Love and Marriage Around the World.Brookfield, Conn.: Millbrook Press, 1998.

Hunt, Morton M. The Natural History of Love. NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959.

Walker, Barbara G. The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Mythsand Secrets. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.

Courtship and Marriage

Many anthropologists and social historians haveexpressed their views that early humans prac-ticed polygamy (one man with several womenin the marriage union) or polyandry (severalmen with one woman). In either case, quitelikely the women involved in the union proba-bly had been captives before they were wives.

Although these marital circumstances mayhave existed for quite some time among earlyhumans, there are a number of reasons whyneither polygamy nor polyandry could havesurvived as universal or general practices. Forone thing, some societies practiced infanti-cide, killing primarily female infants, and cre-ating a scarcity of women. For another, amongthose tribes and nations who were constantlyat war with each other, there would inevitablybe a scarcity of men in proportion to thewomen. And even though the women of theconquered foe were usually considered amongthe spoils of war, more were killed in thebloody battles than were dragged off as unwill-ing mates of the victors. Regardless of the rea-sons for the disproportion between the sexes,they would lead to monogamy, the marriage ofone man to one woman—marriage as it mostcommonly exists in modern civilized societies.In communities where men were scarce, awoman would try to hold the affections of oneman to be assured of his protection and a con-stant supply of food. In those tribes or societieswhere women were in short supply, a manwould want to be assured of at least onewoman whom he would not have to share.

Some social historians argue that childrenpresented the greatest incentive towardmonogamy. Among many primitive tribal peo-

ples even today, a marriage is not solemnizeduntil the first child is born, and if no child isborn the man is at liberty to leave the woman.Biologists have long noted that among thelower animals the natural instinct is to protectthe young and supply food for their subsistence.

Before humankind began to gather inclans and tribes, what passed for courtshipwas likely a raid on a distant group of humansthat resulted in the capture of a woman whowas forced to participate against her will inan instant marriage. True courtship practicesbetween the sexes did not exist to any greatextent, and feelings of fondness or affection,if they entered into the equation at all,resulted from compatibility extended over aperiod of time. As the human species becamemore mannered and various religious ritesbegan to be observed, young men and womensought to make themselves attractive to non-family members of the opposite sex whoresided near them in the same village orseries of villages. Rules of exogamy, whichdenied marriage between persons of the samebloodline, and the laws of endogamy, whichprohibited marriage with any persons exceptthose of the same bloodline, arose to definethe pool of eligible mates from which youngpeople could choose.

Anthropologists and various scientists ofsocial behavior theorize that from the earliesttribal gatherings, young people have hoped toattract favorable attention to themselves aspotential marriage partners by spending agreat deal of time in ornamenting, mutilating,painting, and tattooing themselves, much asthey do in contemporary times.

In the early developmental stages ofcourtship, those tribal cultures that permitted



FROM the earliest tribal gatherings, youngpeople have hoped to attract favorable attention tothemselves as potential marriage partners by spendingtime in ornamenting, mutilating, painting, andtattooing themselves.

their young to have some role in the selectionof their mates might dictate that if there weretwo or more suitors for the hand of a woman,the men would have to wrestle and fight for theopportunity to become the victorious husband.These struggles were seldom to the death, butwere in keeping with the custom among vari-ous peoples of forcing young men to undergotests of endurance before granting them permis-sion to marry. The underlying principle wasthat no man should have a wife until he hasproved that he is able to protect her.

Capturing a Bride. Courtship by capturecontributed its share of customs to the ritualsof modern marriage. The screams, tears, andstruggles of the bride among various peoplesare known to be merely a part of the marriageroutine; yet they are considered absolutelyessential to show her bashfulness and modesty.The conscious or unconscious simulation ofcapture as retained in later systems of marriageappears to be due to a much earlier concept ofmodesty and delicacy. Even after the estab-lishment of Christianity had abolished mar-riage by capture throughout all of Europe, theAnglo-Saxons persisted in simulating the cap-ture of the bride.

Among the Arabs of the Sinai peninsula, agirl acquires a permanent reputation of chasti-ty and modesty in proportion to her tears andher struggles of resistance on her marriage day.In many Irish traditions, a marriage is consid-ered scarcely legal unless the bride attempts toescape and the bridegroom overtakes and“captures” her. A custom in Wales requires therelatives of the bride to grab her as she reachesthe church door and run off with her, forcingthe bridegroom and his party to follow in pur-suit. When the stolen bride is recaptured, sheis at once handed over to the groom. A popu-lar superstition arising from this tradition isthat whoever of the groom’s friends caught herwill be married within the year.

Buying a Bride. Marriage through purchasewas quite likely the next stage in the evolu-tion of courtship. The transition from mar-riage by capture was much more peaceful amanner to gain a bride for a young man. Inearlier times when a bride was stolen from avillage by men from another tribe, members ofthe captured woman’s clan would set out toavenge their loss. Perhaps after centuries ofsuch violent reprisals, some unidentified wiseman or woman suggested that instead of fight-ing and chancing people being killed, why nothave the bridegroom offer compensation tothe parents of the daughter that he had stolenfrom them? Perhaps after a few more centurieshad passed, another wise man or woman sug-gested that the potential bridegroom simplybuy the bride without going through all theeffort of kidnapping her. In the traditions of awide variety of peoples from the nomadic Jewsand Arabs to the Native American tribes, abeautiful daughter became a valuable asset. Inlater years, a variation on marriage by pur-chase united the feudal kingdoms of Europe.

Perhaps even more common than buying abride was the ancient custom of gaining a wifeby working for her father for a certain periodof time. Such an exchange of a prized daugh-ter for an agreed-upon term of labor was prac-ticed among many of the early societies andtribes of America, Africa, and Asia. Many arefamiliar with the Old Testament story of howJacob worked 20 years for his uncle Laban togain Leah, a bride whom he did not want, andRachel, whom he loved (Genesis: 29, 30).

Among many early peoples, valuable pre-sents were given to the parents by the bride-groom instead of a monetary payment. InJapan, it was the custom of a suitor to send cer-tain previously stipulated gifts to the parents ofthe young woman whom he wished to marry. Ifthe initial gifts were accepted, negotiationswould begin to discuss the marriage agreement.

The prospective groom in many NativeAmerican tribes exchanged horses for his bride.The fathers in African tribes considered itproper to exchange cattle for their daughters.

The word “wedding” hearkens back to thetime when men purchased their wives. The wedwas the money, horses, or cattle that the groom



THE screams, tears, and struggles of the brideshows her bashfulness and modesty.

gave as a pledge to acquire his bride from herfather. From wed is derived the later idea ofwedding or pledging the bride to the man whopromises to provide her future security.

The spread of Christianity throughoutEurope dealt a fatal blow to the custom ofmarriage by purchase and brought about amore wholesome attitude toward women, aswell. But it required several generations beforethe civilized world was largely freed from thedemeaning customs of wife purchase andwoman barter, although it is known that insome more primitive regions of the world,such practices continue today.

Infant Betrothals. Among early tribal cul-tures, betrothals were commonly arranged byparents between their infant daughters andtheir future husbands, sometimes even beforethe girls were born. Infant males also had theirbrides selected for them by their families, mostoften with a girl from a family with whom analliance would be profitable. Among thosesocieties in which people arranged the mar-riages of their children in infancy, thebetrothals were considered absolutely binding.

For most of the Polynesian people, thefather had absolute power of life and deathover his children, and he could promise hisinfant children in marriage to whomever hewished to suit his own ambitions. ManyAfrican tribes practiced infant betrothal.

The Fiji islanders arranged for their chil-dren to be married when they were three orfour years old. A ceremony was performed forthe children at that time that remained bindingupon the bride and groom when they becamemature. Such types of infant marriages werealso common in India and among the tribes ofNew Guinea, New Zealand, and Tahiti.

In the old traditions of certain Eskimotribes, as soon as a girl was born, a man whowanted her for a wife went to her father andmade an offer of marriage. If the husband-to-be was a child, his father acted on his behalfand made the offer of marriage to the infantgirl’s father. If the offer was accepted, abetrothal promise was given that was consid-ered as binding as the marriage ceremony, andthe girl would be delivered to her husbandwhen she had reached the proper age.

Mutual Love. Mutual love, wherein mem-bers of the opposite sex are able to determinetheir marriage partner based upon emotionalfeelings, could not develop until the timewhen humans began to establish themselvesin tribes and clans and attained a certainamount of stability in their social environ-ment. While the primary impetus of tribalhumans was still survival, periods of leisuretime developed by the process of bandingtogether and developing divisions of labor. Itwas at that level of civilization that men seek-ing a mate began to abandon courtship by kid-napping or conquest. It was no longer neces-sary to steal a bride from another tribe and riskretaliation and death. Villages were growinglarger, and there were eligible women avail-able from clans with which political or reli-gious alliances had been formed.

In those early days of building permanentsocial structures, men and women began todevise various ways of making themselvesattractive to the opposite sex by ornamenting,mutilating, painting, and tattooing them-selves. It is also likely this elementary level ofromance consisted of two people sneakingaway from their clans at night for some priva-cy; such forms primitive expressions of mutualattraction began to alter in dramatic ways theancient customs of courtship.

Since primitive times, the underlying prin-ciple of courtship has been that no man mayhave a wife until he can prove that he is able toprotect her. If two men were attracted to thesame woman, the one who won her hand mightfirst have to win a competition of physicalprowess. In many societies, the potential groomwas forced to undergo tests of endurance toprove his ability to guard his wife and theirfamily from danger. Such customs survived inmany cultures for centuries, and while few suit-ors today engage in feats of endurance to wintheir brides, it is not uncommon for contempo-



IT was an ancient custom of gaining a wife byworking for her father for a certain period of time.

rary women to select the stronger suitor, per-haps yielding on an unconscious level to theancient instinct of self-preservation.

In the early days of transition from mar-riage by abduction to relationships developedby individuals with a mutual attraction forone another, most marriages were arrangedand wives could be purchased. The evolutionof romance would create great conflicts withthese old traditions.

According to many social historians, theGreeks “invented” love in the Golden Age ofGreece (about 480 to 399 B.C.E.). The Greeksgave love two names: eros (physical love) andagape (spiritual love). Yet for all its familiaraspects, love in classic Greece was still quitedifferent from the concept of mutual attrac-tion between man and woman that serves asthe standard for marriage in the modern West-ern world. Marriages were still arranged byparents, and a solemn betrothal almost invari-ably preceded the actual marriage.

For centuries, marriages in Europe contin-ued to be arranged for monetary, religious, andpolitical advantages. Those couples whofound themselves attracted to individualsother than the mate chosen by their parentswere forced to take matters into their ownhands and defy family, society, and sometimestheir religious traditions.

Elopement. It was not until the ninth cen-tury that women in Europe began to gain theprivilege of choosing or refusing their husbandsaccording to their own judgment. Although itis known from biblical accounts, mythology,and legends that love between man andwoman existed long before this period, therehad been little chance of mutual love existingwhen marriage by capture and marriage by pur-chase were the prevailing methods ofcourtship. Once women began to accept theidea that they could have a say in the selection

of a spouse whether or not her parents, clan, orchurch approved, the practice of a couple run-ning off together (eloping) was born.

Quite likely, however, the tradition of ayoung woman eloping with the man of herchoice began when marriage by purchase wasstill a grim reality. To avoid marrying a manwho was able to pay the bride-price her parentsdemanded but who personally disgusted her, ayoung woman would run away from her par-ents and elope with the man she really loved.

Obviously elopement could never havethrived in primitive societies. Women wereguarded too closely, and their parentsarranged marriages to suit their own purposes,caring nothing about the wishes or happinessof the girl.

Hope Chest and Dowry. The “hope chest”that many modern young women still main-tain is largely a social relic that hearkens backto the old custom of the dowry. The dowryderived from the even older custom of mar-riage by purchase and was a way of compensat-ing the husband as the newlyweds began theirlife together.

In ancient Greece, once a betrothal hadbeen announced, the dowry amount of thebride was settled, and her social position as amarried woman depended largely upon thevalue of her dowry. On some occasions, thedaughters of poor parents in Athens weregranted dowries by the city-state or by wealthyprivate individuals.

Among many European cultures, it was tra-dition that a young woman should make everybit of household linen that went into her hopechest to ensure happiness for her marriage. Inold Romania, it was once customary for girls asyoung as five to begin working on their bridalfinery. As each article was completed, it wasplaced carefully away in the hope chest untilthe time when a proper suitor appeared.

In the Europe and Great Britain of only afew generations ago, wardrobes and closets inwhich to hang clothes were uncommon, sochests of various sizes were used to store awayhousehold linens and wearing apparel. In mosthomes there would be one chest set aside forthe daughter, and into this chest she would



THE dowry was a way of compensating thehusband as the newlyweds began their life together.

place the handmade linens and other items shewould use one day in “the home of her hopes.”

The Lovers’ Kiss. Some anthropologiststheorize that the origin of the kiss of affectionis to be found in a mother’s caresses and gentlenibbles on her child’s body. Out of thesematernal caresses grew the kiss of feeling andreverence as known today. However, the actof kissing one’s sweetheart on the mouth as aform of affection did not develop until com-paratively late in the evolution of love.

Among Semitic people, a kiss on thecheek has been considered a traditional formof blessing or greeting for centuries. Someancient Romans kissed a person’s eyes ormouth as a form of greeting, but it was done ina cursory manner. Roman husbands kissedtheir wives on the mouth at the end of theday, but their motive was not at all romantic.They were checking their spouses’ breath tosee if they had been sitting around drinkingwine all day.

Kissing the hand or the foot or even theground on which some royal personage wouldwalk was deemed a mark of respect andhomage in ancient times, but scholars of socialcustoms cannot trace the kiss on the lips as aform of affection between lovers ever occur-ring in antiquity.

One of the earliest definite instances ofkissing as a form of love and affection appearsto have developed in Tours, France, in thesixth century, when it became fashionable fora young man to give his betrothed a ring as asymbol that he was bound to her. In addition,he would gift her with a pair of shoes, to indi-cate his subjection to her, and a kiss on thelips as a seal of his affection.

In France, the kiss as a form of affectionbetween sweethearts developed rapidly andsoon found a permanent place in courtshipand love. When social dancing become popu-lar, almost every turn on the dance floorended with a kiss. From France the kiss spreadquickly all over Europe.

Until after World War II (c. 1945), kissingone’s sweetheart on the lips was largely aWestern habit, and most Asians werestrangers to the practice. In the years beforethe lovers’ kiss was demonstrated throughout

the world by means of Western motion pic-tures and military personnel, a kiss in Samoawas a sniff in the air beside a sweetheart’scheek. Polynesians showed affection by rub-bing noses together—as did the Laplandersand the Eskimo. Neither the Chinese nor theJapanese kissed on the lips. Until quite recent-ly in the evolution of the customs and taboosof love and marriage, it was only in NorthAmerica and Europe that the kiss was animportant element in courtship.

Exchanging of Gifts. Throughout all of thehistory of courtship, it is likely that the pre-sentation of gifts by the groom-to-be to theobject of his affections or to her father is oneof the surest methods of winning approval—and in earlier cultures the idea of a lavishbetrothal gift meant a great deal more than itdoes today. In times past, the suitor felt thatpart of himself was being given to his belovedand her family.

In Japan, the sending of presents to thebride by the groom is one of the most essentialaspects of the marriage ceremony. Once thegifts have been received by the bride andaccepted, the marriage contract is consideredcomplete and neither party can withdrawfrom the union.

Among many Native American tribes, thesuitor was expected to bring gifts of horses,hides, or any item that might be esteemed tothe woman’s father as an indication of hisprosperity and his ability to care for the man’sdaughter in a marital relationship.

A certain aura of romance has centeredaround flowers since early humans began tonotice the beauty of nature and developed theaesthetic sense necessary to draw correlationsbetween the appeal of a flower and the attrac-tive qualities of one’s beloved. It was a customamong the ancient Greeks for two lovers to



AMONG Semitic people, a kiss on the cheekhas been considered a traditional form of blessing orgreeting for centuries.

wear flowers in full bloom to indicate a lovenewly awakened. Once the lovers hadexchanged their engagement vows, they worethe same kind of flower in their hair as a pub-lic emblem of their betrothal.

In Indonesian Timor, a woman bestows thehighest mark of attachment upon her loverwhen she gives him the flower garland from herhair. Among the Polynesians, men and womenalike wear flowers behind their ears when theyare in love. The flower, it seems, has been thequintessential gift between lovers in many cul-tures for many centuries, and it is the consider-ate suitor of today who remembers to call uponhis sweetheart bearing a bouquet of flowers.

The Engagement Announcement. While it isstill considered good relations for a young manto obtain the formal consent of his sweet-heart’s parents before asking for her hand inmarriage, for most modern couples in theUnited States, Great Britain, and Europe thatparticular old custom is seldom observed.Today, once a man and woman have decidedto marry, there is usually the presentation ofan engagement ring to the woman, and as acouple they simply make an announcement oftheir intentions to family and friends.

While it is not uncommon in contempo-rary society to celebrate an engagement with adinner party, in many earlier societies theoccasion of a betrothal required a feast of greatfestivity and celebration. Among certain peo-ples, the betrothal was not considered bindinguntil a feast had been given and both familieshad eaten together.

Among many of the Afghan tribes, no manmay even see or speak to his promised wifefrom the time of betrothal until marriage. InGreece, the rings for betrothal are exchangedin the priest’s presence, and the engagementmay then not be broken without the consentof the priest. Following the betrothal, the

engaged couple may not see each other or talkto each other until the day of the wedding.

In old Russia, it was considered a great dis-grace for a man to propose directly to hissweetheart. Until the two sets of parents hadsettled the amount of the dowry and selectedthe exact day of marriage, the prospectivebridegroom was strictly forbidden to see hisbetrothed or even venture near her home.Some scholars have suggested that customssuch as these forbidding the interaction of theintended marriage partners before the day ofthe wedding hearkens back to even earliertimes when the bride’s parents might havefeared that they would be cheated of herbride-price if their daughter decided to elopewith her betrothed before the wedding day.

While most modern couples continue to seeone another until the day of the wedding, theold superstition persists that if the bride permitsherself to be seen by the groom before the actu-al time of ceremony on the day of the wedding,the marriage will be blighted with bad luck.

The Bridal Shower. Many consider the cus-tom of the bridal shower to be one of the morecharming of the old traditions handed down tomodern brides from centuries past. In contem-porary times, the bridal shower is essentially asocial occasion during which friends and rela-tives of the bride wish her well on her approach-ing marriage and present her with gifts.

The custom of the bridal shower grew out ofearlier times when a poor woman’s family mightnot have the money to provide an acceptabledowry for her, or, in some circumstances, whena stubborn father refused to give his daughterher dowry because he did not approve of themarriage. In such situations, friends of thewoman would gather together and bring hergifts that would compensate for the dowry andallow her to marry the man of her choice.

The Bridal Dress. The bride in the West-ern world traditionally wears a gown of white,as an emblem of purity. In many Asian coun-tries, however, the bride may wear a blackbridal dress.

Even before it denoted purity, white repre-sented the color of joy. The early Romansalways wore white on occasions of rejoicing,such as birth and feast days. The white rose



FLOWERS have been the quintessential giftbetween lovers in many cultures.

was an emblem of joy among the Greeks. Theaboriginal inhabitants of Patagonia in south-ern Argentina painted their bodies white onevery joyous occasion. The whole bodies ofthe bride and groom were covered with whitepaint on the eve of their wedding ceremony.

Some social historians believe that the tra-dition of the bridal veil originated in the cov-ering of the bride in ancient times to show hersubmission. Others believe that the veil origi-nated in sexual shyness in women and theattempt to hide from view. Among some earlypeoples, the bride was draped completely in ashroud that she wore during the marriage cer-emony. Once the wedding ritual ceremonywas completed, she was uncovered and theshroud was placed in a chest. It would betaken out again only when the woman wasready to be buried.

It is well known that among variousancient peoples it was customary to keep thebride hidden from her future husband untilthe day of the wedding. In Egypt, for instance,the groom was not permitted to see the face ofhis bride until the marriage ceremony whenhe engaged in the solemn ritual of uncoveringher visage. The same sort of custom wasobserved among the Arabs, the Indians, andamong other European and Asiatic peoples.

It has been a custom for brides to weargloves since the time of ancient Egypt. InEgyptian hieroglyphics, the glove is the sym-bol of the hand. The word itself signifies togive, to honor.

The “something blue” that brides are toldto wear during their wedding is a tradition bor-rowed from the ancient Israelites when youngwomen were advised to place upon the bordersof their fringed garments a ribbon of blue, thecolor of purity, love, and fidelity. According tothe old bridal saying, the bride is to wear:“Something old and something new, Some-thing borrowed and something blue.”

The Wedding Procession. Most of the tradi-tional wedding observances that are honoredtoday in North America originated in Europeand the United Kingdom during the MiddleAges. Then as now, the ushers enter first,escorting guests and relatives to appropriateseating before the altar.

The bridesmaids enter after the guests andfamily members have been seated, walkingdown the aisle most often one at a time,though some traditions favor them approach-ing the altar two by two. The bridesmaids maywear colorful gowns, often similar in design tothe bride’s, but they may never wear white, acolor reserved for that of the bride.

Flower girls may precede the bridesmaids,or they may walk just in front of the bride. Inmedieval times, it was customary to have twolittle girls, usually sisters, dressed exactly alike,carry garlands of wheat and walk in front ofthe bride. The bouquets of wheat symbolizedthe wish of family and friends that the unionbetween bride and groom would prove fruitful.Later, flowers carried in small ornamental bas-kets replaced the garlands of wheat, and petalswere often strewn from these baskets in thepath of the bride.

The maid or matron of honor, who is unat-tended, comes next, followed by the bride. Thebride is always the last to enter, and she walksdown the aisle leaning on the arm of her fatheror whoever is to give her away at the altar. Apage or pages, usually a young boy closely relat-ed to either bride or groom, may be added tothe group to bear the train of the bride’s gown.It has been suggested by some historians thatthe tradition of the bride carrying a bouquet offlowers began as a precaution against bodyodor. In the Middle Ages, according to thesescholars, most people planned to be married inJune because they took their yearly bath inMay and were still smelling good. Brides car-ried a bouquet of flowers to guard against anyoffensive odors that might have developedsince their annual bathing ritual.

The “best man” who attends the groom isquite likely a relic of marriage by capture.When a young man in those ancient times set



THE custom of the bridal shower grew out ofearlier times when a woman’s family might not havethe money for a dowry.

out to capture a bride, he was usually accom-panied by a strong-armed friend who helpeddefend the groom against the pursuing fatherand relatives of the stolen woman. Inmedieval times, the groomsmen were knownas bride knights, whose duty it was to guardand protect the bride on her way to thechurch, accompany her down the aisle to thealtar, and after the ceremony had been con-ducted, relinquish her to the groom.

The origin of the bridesmaids also hear-kens back to marriage by capture. As thatform of brutal courtship was fading intohumankind’s memories of ancient ways betterforgotten, it remained the custom for the brideto pretend that she was being carried awayagainst her will and wished to escape from thegroom’s clutches. During the transition timebetween courtship traditions, it was consid-ered modest and maidenly for the bride tofeign a struggle before being led down theaisle. To add to the fray, the bride’s friends andfamily would rush the groom and his party in amock attempt to rescue her. As the bride-groom’s defending clansmen developed intothe groomsmen, the bride’s attacking familyevolved into the bridesmaids, who remain ather side during the ceremony.

The question, “Who gives this woman tothis man?” asked by the officiating clergyper-son in contemporary wedding ceremonies is arelic of marriage by purchase. It is at this pointin the ceremony that the father of the brideresponds to the question by offering the arm ofhis daughter to the groom and telling the cler-gyperson, “I do.” In recent years, some cere-monies include both the mother and father ofthe bride responding “we do,” to the questionof who gives the bride to the groom.

Custom also dictates that the bride alwaysstands to the left of the groom during the cere-

mony. The position of the bride reflects a muchearlier period when the groom needed to havehis sword arm free in case he had to defendthem against an attack by a jealous rival or afamily member who violently objected to theunion. The best man is positioned on thegroom’s right, immediately behind him, hear-kening back to those same earlier times whenhe might have to help the groom fight off morethan one assailant while the couple wereattempting to declare their marriage vows.

The gift of a small item of personal jewelrythat the groom presents to his groomsmen is asurvival of primitive courtship when theprospective groom set out to capture a bridewith the help of his friends. If they were suc-cessful in catching a suitable wife for thegroom, he would reward them with gifts. Dur-ing a later time period, when the bride knightskept watch over the bride, it was she who pre-sented the gifts, rather than the groom.

The Wedding Ceremony. As the methods ofcourtship and the subsequent marriage ritesevolved in various ways, it was inevitable thatan element of religion should enter into theceremonies. As humankind progressed from theprimitive stalking of a bride, to the purchase ofa wife, to mutual love between bride andgroom, the linking together of two lives grew inimportance to the community at large. Even inthe early stages of civilization, the dissolutionof a marriage, especially one that had producedchildren, was troublesome and upsetting to theentire tribe or village. In order to help avoid acouple separating after marriage, a religious ele-ment entered the process and a divinity or adeity was invoked to help strengthen the tiesthat bound bride and groom.

There are many different individualdenominations under the general theologicalumbrella of Christian and under the two maindivisions of Roman Catholic and Protestant.There may be many distinctive elementsinvolved in what may be termed a Christianwedding, but most of the ceremonies are simi-lar. In most circumstances, the wedding takesplace within about three or four months of thecouple’s engagement announcement. AlthoughChristian weddings need not take place in achurch before an altar, most marriage cere-



IN the Middle Ages, most people married in Junebecause they took their yearly bath in May and were

still smelling good.

monies are performed in a church familiar toeither or both the bride and groom.

On the day of the wedding, the groomarrives at the church in the company of hisbest man. The bride awaits them in the com-pany of her attendants, her bridesmaids, and,on occasion, a matron of honor, perhaps anolder sister or some other relative. When theceremony begins, the groom, his best man,and his groomsmen enter at the front of thechurch and join the priest or pastor at thealtar. Once they are in position, the organist,orchestra, or other musical accompaniment,begins to play a piece of music that signals theentrance of the bridesmaids, who one by onewalk down the aisle to stand opposite thegroom and groomsmen. When their proces-sional is completed, the musicians play anoth-er selection that announces the arrival of thebride and her father.

After the bride and her father have walkeddown the aisle, the clergyperson asks whogives the woman to the man who awaits her atthe altar. Traditionally, it has been the fatherwho designates that he is the one who givesthe bride to the groom, but in recent years,the mother may also stand with her husbandand say that together they give the bride tothe groom.

The bride approaches the altar and standsbeside the groom. The clergyperson reads pas-sages from the Bible that speak of the harmo-ny of the marriage state and God’s pleasure inthe union of man and wife. The clergypersonmay also deliver a brief sermon that encour-ages the couple to remain true to one anotherand adhere to Christian teachings. The couplemay then offer pledges to one another thatthey have written themselves.

In most Christian ceremonies, the brideand groom place the wedding band on oneanother’s left hand ring finger and repeat thevows of marriage as the clergyperson readsthem aloud. The clergyperson asks God tobless them and help them remain with oneanother until death parts them, then pro-nounces them man and wife. In some denomi-nations, after the newlyweds have stated theirvows, they and the assembled guests will cele-brate mass or holy communion together.

After the wedding ceremony, the newly-weds leave the church as the guests throw riceor pieces of confetti over them. There is areception in the church basement or in a hallwhere dinner is served to the invited guestsand gifts are presented to the newlyweds.Depending upon the beliefs of the individualdenomination or congregation, a dance mayfollow the dinner and the gift-giving. Afterthe party, the couple leaves their family andfriends and departs on their honeymoon.

Jewish weddings are always events of greatcelebration and are usually performed on Sun-days. On the Sabbath before the wedding, thegroom must go to the synagogue and read fromthe Torah. As in other traditions, the bride isattired in a white gown, symbolizing purityand joy, and the groom stands beside her wear-ing a dark suit. The wedding couple is attend-ed by their parents, and the group standsbefore the rabbi under a canopy known as achuppah, which represents the future home ofthe bride and groom.

The rabbi hands the couple a glass of winethat has been blessed. After the bride andgroom share the wine, the rabbi and thegroom read the marriage contract. When thereading is completed, the groom places a plaingold ring on the first finger of his bride’s lefthand and announces to all assembled in thesynagogue that she is his wife. After makingsuch a declaration, he moves the wedding ringto the third finger.

A second glass of wine is offered to thecouple. The rabbi says the Seven Blessingsand praises God for marriages and asks for thenewlyweds to be happy. After both drink fromit, the glass is smashed under the heel of thegroom. The breaking of the glass is a reminderof the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.An old tradition adds that the glass is brokento symbolize that the bride and groom will bejoined in happiness and love until the glass is



JEWISH weddings are usually performed on Sundays.

made whole again, which is another way ofsaying forever.

Before a Buddhist wedding can occur, aBuddhist monk must check the horoscope ofthe prospective bride and groom to be certainthat they are compatible. If the stars indicatethat the couple will be able to adjust to oneanother’s personalities throughout their livestogether, the monk next determines the bestday for the wedding ceremony to occur.

Buddhist weddings are not conducted intemples or in religious sites, but in hotels orpublic halls and are generally regarded as civilceremonies. The bridal couple are clothed inrobes and sit side by side on silk cushions besideanother Buddhist couple, who serve as theirsponsors. The monk performing the weddingceremony wraps a silk scarf about the wrists ofthe bride and groom, and the two eat rice froma silver bowl to symbolize that they vow foreverto share everything between them. Theypromise to love and respect one another, to befrugal with their incomes, and to welcome theirfriends and family to their home. There may bea brief reading from Buddhist scriptures and aperiod of meditation, followed by a few wordsfrom the officiating priest. After the ceremonyis concluded, most Buddhist couples visit thenearest monastery to be blessed by the monksand to pay respect to Buddha.

Traditional Hindus continue the ancientpractice of arranged marriage and infantbetrothals. The primary concern of Hinduparents is that their child marry within his orher caste or social structure. For even less tra-ditional Hindus, the kind of dating andcourtship practices that exist among Ameri-cans and Europeans are discouraged. Whenfamilies have agreed upon a future marriagebetween their children, there follows a longperiod of betrothal, during which gifts areexchanged during chaperoned meetings of theengaged couple. The date of a Hindu wedding

is set by a priest who carefully examines thecouple’s horoscope for the most favorable day.

Before the marriage ceremony, the bridetakes a ritual bath and her female friends inattendance paint distinctive patterns on herhands and feet with henna. Once the ornatedesigns decorate the bride, she is attired in ared sari that has been adorned with goldthread, a symbol of good fortune. Often thebride also wears gold bracelets and anklets. Justbefore the formal ceremony begins, representa-tives of the groom’s family approach her andplace a small dab on red paint on her forehead.

When the bride and groom arrive at thetemple, hotel, or private home where the cer-emony will take place by mutual agreement oftheir respective families, both of them havetheir faces hidden by veils. The ceremonybegins with prayers to Lord Ganesha, the ele-phant-headed god, who is beseeched to blessthe couple with success in all their futureplans. The bride’s family officially gives her tothe groom, and the priest introduces them toassembled guests as man and wife. The couplethen sits before a sacred fire, facing eachother under a canopy. A cord is placed overtheir shoulders to signify that they are joinedtogether forever.

At this point in the ceremony, the couplerises, holds hands, and walks around thesacred fire seven times, promising to honorand respect one another and vowing torespect the gods. Prayers for happiness andgood fortune are said or chanted by the priest,and the assembled relatives of the couple andtheir guests join the newlyweds in a weddingdinner provided by the bride’s family.

Most traditional Muslim weddings arearranged by the parents, who indicate to theirchildren that they have been judged suitableto marry each other. Although (especially incontemporary times) the children have a rightto decline their parents’ choice of spouse,many Muslims still consider open courtship asundesirable and believe that the arrangedmarriage is much more morally acceptable.Most Muslim families prefer that their chil-dren marry within the faith of Islam, but insuch countries as the United States, unionswith non-Muslims have become more accept-



MOST traditional Muslim weddings arearranged by the parents.

able and common. The exchange of thedowry, the ancient custom of the bride-price,is observed in most Muslim families. Once theamount of the dowry, which the groom willpay to the bride’s parents, is agreed upon, thatsum becomes the property of the bride.

The nikah (marriage ceremony) is usuallyperformed in private homes or in the prayerhall of the mosque. Brides often wear a tradi-tional khameez(tunic) and shalwar(pants),decorated with a great deal of gold jewelry.The groom may also choose traditional cloth-ing or a dark suit.

On the day selected for the wedding, thecouple are kept apart, separated in differentrooms, the bride with the female guests, thegroom with the male guests, until the ceremonyis over. Either the imam, the officiating priest ofthe mosque, or a Muslim judge, called a qadi,presides over the ceremony and generally offersa brief series of reflections upon the sacrednessof the marriage contract. The bride says thatshe wishes to marry the groom, and he signs thecontract. Two witnesses attest to the marriageagreement, and the union is documented in therecords of the mosque and by whatever licenseis required by the civil authorities in the stateor nation in which the marriage has been sol-emnized. After the ceremony, a reception hon-oring the couple is held, and the bride’s familyhosts a large wedding feast.

The Wedding Ring. The origin of the wed-ding ring may have begun in primitivehumankind’s belief in the magic of a circle.Social historians inform that early suitorswove a cord with their fingers and bound itaround the waist of the woman they wanted.Such an action, both the man and the womanbelieved, allowed her spirit to enter his bodyand thus the two were bound together forever.

Other scholars have made the unpleasantsuggestion that the earliest form of weddingrings were the fetters bound around a woman’swrists and ankles to indicate that she hadbeen captured and become the property of aman in the tribe.

From what can be ascertained from histori-cal records available, it would appear that theancient Egyptians were the first to use the wed-ding ring in taking their marriage vows. In

hieroglyphics a circle represents eternity, andthe circular form became symbolic of a marriagethat would be binding throughout all time.

The early Anglo-Saxon groom gave apledge or wed to his intended at the betrothalceremony. At this time he also placed a metalring around her right hand, where it remaineduntil the marriage ceremony, at which time itwas transferred to her left hand.

The ring was used in Christian marriageceremonies as early as 860. When a marriagesettlement had been properly sealed, ringsbearing the names of the bride and groomwere handed around to the guests to beapproved by them.

In the past, wedding rings have been madeof every conceivable material. In addition tovarious metals, such as gold, silver, iron, steel,and brass, wedding rings have been made ofleather and wood.

Old traditions state that the wedding ringis worn on the fourth finger of the left handbecause a certain vein of blood, passing direct-ly from this finger, flows directly to the heart.Probably the true reason for wearing the ringon this finger is that it is the least used of allthe fingers, and therefore ornaments worn onit are not inconvenient.

The Wedding Dinner. The simplest andmost universal of all marriage ceremonies isthat of eating and drinking together. Eatingtogether, among many early people, constitut-ed marriage. There was little or no additionalceremony.

In the Fiji Islands the marriage ceremonywas considered complete as soon as the brideand groom had eaten out of the same dish. InMadagascar as well, all that was necessary tobecome man and wife was to eat out of thesame bowl. In ancient Rome, a marriage wasdignified and solemnized once the bride andgroom had eaten together. The Navajo mar-



ANCIENT Egyptians were the first to use thewedding ring.

riage couple ate maize pudding together. Tosome extent, eating and drinking together stillforms an essential part of the marriage cere-mony in Japan, Russia, and Scandinavia.Until recent times, a Serbian woman ate onlyonce in her life with a man, and that was onher marriage day, when she shared a meal withher husband.

The wedding cake is a direct descendant ofa particular kind of cake used in Roman timesamong the highest members of the patricianfamilies. During the wedding feast, the cakewas broken over the bride’s head as a symbolof abundance. All guests then partook of aportion of the cake to ensure plentifulness forthemselves. This custom survives in the beliefthat single women who take home a piece of awedding cake and place it under their pillowswill dream of the man whom they will marry.

According to legend, the many-tieredwedding cake with which most people arefamiliar today originated in Old Englandwhen it was the custom to pass a basket of bis-cuits to the guests during the wedding feast. AFrenchman who was in attendance at such afeast got the idea to pile a number of biscuitsinto a mound and pour icing over the top.

According to some sources, the name“bridegroom” was given to the new husbandbecause among various peoples it was custom-ary for him to serve his bride a meal on hiswedding day. “Groom” signified one whoserved in an inferior station, and the “bride-groom” was the one who served the bride.

Throwing Rice and Tossing the Bouquet.When wedding guests throw handfuls of riceafter the bride and groom, they are enactingan ancient ritual that expressed wishes for thecouple’s fruitfulness and abundance. However,rice was not always the grain used to throwafter departing newlyweds. Among some earlypeoples wheat symbolized productivity, sograins of wheat were used in the marriage ritesto symbolize fruitfulness and plenty for thecouple. The ancient Greeks poured flour andsweetmeats over the bride and groom to repre-sent a wish for an abundance of all that issweet and desirable. The Romans began thecustom of throwing, rather than pouring,sweet meats at the fleeing couple.

Some authorities state that people beganthrowing rice after newlyweds for the pur-pose of giving food to the evil spirits thatwere always present at any festive gatheringof humans. It was to appease these spirits andkeep them from doing injury to the bridalpair that the custom of rice-throwing wasoriginated.

Another old tradition states that unlesssomehow bribed, the soul of the bridegroom islikely to fly away at marriage and never return.To prevent this, rice is scattered over him toinduce the soul to remain.

The throwing of the bridal bouquet origi-nated with the old custom of scrambling forthe bride’s garter. In fourteenth-centuryFrance, it was considered good luck to win thebride’s garter, and everyone rushed for it at theconclusion of the marriage ceremony.

In the fifteenth century, the garter gaveway to the stocking, and brides began tossingtheir stockings to the wedding party. However,the removal of one’s stockings in public some-times proved to be awkward and embarrassing,so somewhere during the fifteenth century, amodest and wise bride conceived the idea ofthrowing her bridal bouquet. The custom hasendured, along with the tradition that the for-tunate maiden who catches the bouquet willbe the next to marry.

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Frazer, Sir James George. The Golden Bough. NewYork: Collier/Macmillan, 1950.

Gelber, Carol. Love and Marriage Around the World.Brookfield, Conn.: Millbrook Press, 1998.

Hunt, Morton M. The Natural History of Love. NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959.

Lewinsohn, Richard. A History of Sexual Custom.New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958.

Spencer, Linda. Knock on Wood. New York: GramercyBooks, 1995.

Taylor, G. Rattray. Sex in History. New York: Van-guard Press, 1954.

Turner, E. S. A History of Courting. London: MichaelJoseph, 1954.



Walker, Barbara G. The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Mythsand Secrets. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983.

Hospitality and Etiquette

In primitive times, hospitality most oftenfound expression in great feasts in honor ofsome momentous event or to pay homage toan important visitor. The Egyptians of 4,000years ago feasted in great halls, offering food totheir gods before they themselves touched amorsel. The Egyptians were fond of elaboratedinners as a form of entertainment, the serv-ing of food continuing for several hours. Bothmen and women were invited, and diningcouches and small tables were provided for theguests, who regaled themselves with dishes offowl, game, fish, bread, and wine.

In Homer’s Iliad, the Greeks are portrayedas hosts of magnificent banquets who cele-brated with sumptuous feasts all importantevents in their lives, such as births, marriages,holidays, and victories in warfare.

During the days when the Roman Empireflourished, the feasts in Rome surpassed anyothers, because the wealthy had the food prod-ucts that enabled them to dine in lavish style,and what delicacies they might have lacked,they sent for, sending their representativesthroughout the known world to obtain choicefruits and viands. The Romans were noted fortheir hospitality. Nothing was too rich or toocostly for the entertainment of their guests.

The ancient Israelites gave great feasts onspecial occasions, but their hospitality extend-ed to strangers and to the poor as well as toimportant guests and to friends who would belikely to reciprocate. “When the Holy Oneloves a man,” states the Zohar, Genesis 104a,“He sends him a present in the shape of a poorman, so that he might perform some gooddeed to him, through the merit of which hemay draw to himself a cord of grace.” InDeuteronomy 15:11, it is written that “Youshall open wide your hand to your brother, tothe needy, and to the poor in the land.”

Based on a cursory examination of hospi-tality from the historical perspective, it mayappear that for centuries there were only twostrata of society—the wealthy and the power-ful who entertained lavishly and the laboring

classes who could share their bread only whenthey had some to spare. The poorer peoplecould celebrate their marriages and births asbest they could within their own family struc-tures, but they were too vitally concernedwith the daily task of survival to develop theart of hospitality.

However, as the major world religionsdeveloped into powerful forces that shapedhuman society, hospitality and charity becamevirtues. In order to establish a more completerelationship with the Divine, according to theprophets and teachers of Judaism, Christiani-ty, Islam, Hinduism, Taoism, and other faiths,it is important to recognize all people asbrothers and sisters and to minister to theirneeds when the opportunity to do so presentsitself. The Forty Hadith of an-Nawawi 15(Islam) admonishes those who believe inAllah and in the Last Day to be generous totheir neighbors and to their guests. In theApastamba Dharma Sutra 8.2 (Hinduism) it iswritten that the husband and wife of thehouse should never turn away those who cometo their door asking for food. And Hebrews13:2 (Christianity) offers the provocative sug-gestion that people should not neglect toshow hospitality to strangers, “for therebysome have entertained angels unawares.”

Table manners, even those considered themost basic rules of etiquette, were a long timein coming to human forebears. When a mealwas simply an assortment of food set beforehungry individuals, men and women ate to sat-isfy themselves as quickly as possible—and letthe bones and bits of food fall where they may.

As food and the serving thereof becamemore elaborate and began to assume more of asocial significance, the eating manners of thediners changed also. When forks and knives andother eating utensils first made their appearanceon the dinner tables of the wealthy and thepowerful, the process of eating a meal entered



IN Homer’s Iliad, the Greeks are portrayed ashosts of magnificent banquets.

the early stages of becoming transformed intomore of a ceremony. Soon, arbiters of fashionwere instructing others how to use their eatingutensils and informing those men and womenwho were becoming conscious of the social sig-nificance of dining that some eating practiceswere correct and others were incorrect.

Later, when the use of knives and forksbecame more general, the common peoplebegan to pattern their behavior at the dinnertable after the wealthy and powerful who hadgrown accustomed to using the implements.Although it was much easier to eat with theirhands and a knife in the primitive manner oftheir ancestors, the lower social classes havealways wished to pattern themselves in asmany ways as possible with the wealthierclasses. The new ways of eating with knife andfork, dinner plates and cups, and a certain cer-emony in the dining process slowly left thecourts and the dining rooms of the wealthyand eventually established themselves in thehumblest of homes.

Food Kinship. From the earliest times, eat-ing and drinking together has provided an ele-mentary form of hospitality. Anthropologistshave recorded that even in the most primitiveof tribal cultures, once people have brokenbread with strangers or taken a drink withthem, they considered one another on peacefulterms. Once that relationship has been estab-lished, the people are under an obligation toprotect one another if they are in danger.

In many of the villages on the PhilippineIslands, hospitality and friendship areexpressed by eating together. On Sumatra, alarge island in western Indonesia, a guest ispresented with betel nut as a gesture of friend-liness. On Java, the main island of Indonesia,hosts of higher social rank pay their inferiors ahigh compliment if they offer them their half-chewed betel nut.

Throughout Tahiti, the standard formulafor hospitality is “Come and eat with us.”Among the tribespeople in Kenya, visitors tovillages are presented with a cup of water as aceremonial mark of hospitality, and the wel-coming salutation is, “Let us be friends.”

Among all cultures, in ancient or moderntimes, it has never been good form to refuse

the offer of food or drink. Around the world,to accept such an offer is considered an act ofcommon politeness, whether one wants it ornot. Among the nomadic Bedouins of thedesert, it has always been considered a seriousbreach of etiquette to ride up to the front of afamily’s tent without stopping and eating theirbread. According to the Bedouin code of man-ners, the man in the tent will consider himselfinsulted by such rudeness and will from thattime on regard the other man as an enemy.

Courtesy Toward Guests. Historical recordsindicate that all important guests at thepharaoh’s palace in Egypt had their names andsymbols engraved on the “guest wall,” just asmodern guests inscribe their names in theirhosts’ guest book. Among the wealthy ofEgypt, lunch was served at midday and dinnerat night. When invited to dine in ancientEgypt, people brought along their servants,and it wasn’t considered impolite for guests tobring with them whatever items of comfortthat they might need during their stay.

The Egyptian hosts anointed their guestswith oil upon their arrival. The host and host-ess, together with their guests, dined whileseated in long halls and were served by house-hold slaves. The Egyptian hosts supplied onewhole chair for each single guest, but a mar-ried couple had to share one between them.The highest in rank among the guests sat withthe host at the head of the table. Everyonedipped bread into a common dish of oil andhelped themselves to other food placed in thecenter of the table.

As soon as guests arrived in the home ofan ancient Greek host, servants brought invases of water so they might freshen them-selves. After the guests had washed theirhands and feet, they were given goblets ofwine and stood around gossiping until sum-moned to dinner.

The Greeks ate three meals daily. Theirtables were uncovered, and they ate whilereclining on couches, using their fingers inprimitive fashion. Water was provided severaltimes during the course of the meal for wash-ing the hands. The highest in rank had theirhands washed first; the lowest, last.



Among the Romans there was usually aplace of honor at the dining table. The high-est in rank sat at the head, the next in rank atthe upper end, and the third highest in socialposition sat at the lower end. All guestswashed their hands at the table before eating,a ceremonial washing that began with thehighest in rank and ended with the lowest.

Wealthy Romans rarely invited guests totheir homes for the midday meal, but they fre-quently had visitors over in the evening forthe most important meal of the day, consistingof from three to seven courses. The host andhostess gave each guest an exact list of thecourses and all the individual dishes of thefeast, and then they led their guests into thedining hall. As they were being seated, ser-vants draped the members of the dinner partywith a wreath of flowers and offered them agoblet of wine.

After a period of Roman history whenchairs or stools were used around a table, theRomans adopted the dining couch. Generally,three couches were at a table, with one sideleft open to receive the service. Four peoplecould dine comfortably from one couch. Theywere low, without backs, and covered withrich fabrics. The host and his wife sat at thehead table with the guest of honor. The rest ofthe guests took places at the other tablesaccording to rank.

In many of the old Arab nations, the hostand hostess welcomed their guests by pouringmelted butter on their heads. While the ideamight seem repugnant to modern guests arriv-ing at a home in a hot climate, the meltedbutter was deemed fashionable and refreshingin earlier times.

In Europe during the Middle Ages, favoredguests always sat at the right of the host andwere helped to the choicest cuts of meat, therarest fruits, the costliest wines. The custom of“coupling” guests, that is, placing them at thetable in pairs of men and women, was intro-duced about 1455 when it became fashionableto place a gentleman and a lady together toshare a single cup and plate.

Whom to serve first may be a problem ofsome concern for the modern hostess, butamong early people it was the custom for the

host to take the first bite to prove that thefood was safe or free from poison. Among theaboriginal people of New Guinea, it is a markof courtesy and hospitality to offer water to astranger, but before doing so, the hosts drink alittle of the water themselves to prove it is notdangerous in any way. Similar customs are tobe found in many tribes of Africa, where thewife of the host is assigned the position ofalways taking the first drink of any beverage toprove that it has no evil in it. In medievalEurope, it was also the courteous hostesseswho had the obligation to serve themselvesfirst to prove that the food and drink was safe.

The Dinner Table. Quite likely the first din-ner table was a fairly flat slab of rock on whichwhatever game or fish had been caught wasplaced by a primitive hunter to be shared withhis family. If such an early table did exist in acave occupied by early humans, they probablysat on the floor or, at best, smaller rocks forchairs. The development of the dinner tableand eating utensils grew along with the culi-nary arts when food was no longer eaten rawwithout preparation of any sort.

In ancient Rome, men and women reclinedon couches while eating from beautifully deco-rated tables. Most of these dinner tables weresquare with four legs or oval with three con-nected legs, much like modern tables, exceptpositioned lower for the convenience of dinerswho were reclining. The materials used for con-structing such elaborate tables were at firstwood, most commonly maple, and later bronzewith inlaid ivory designs. Often the carpenteror metalworker fashioning the table shaped itslegs to imitate those of various animals, com-plete with claws. Such a peculiarity remainspopular today, for tables and other items of fur-niture are frequently made with clawed legs,often gripping a ball.

By around 400 C.E., it was an establishedcustom among the people of the “civilized”



IT was the custom for the host to take the first biteto prove the food was free from poison.

European countries to eat from some kind oftable. The dinner table existed in variousforms, however, and often was simply a boardrunning around the side of the house. Themantelpiece is said to have originated withthis old dining board.

Even by the 1700s, the dinner table inmany of the poorer homes consisted only of along wide board that was folded down from thewall and used at meal time. Many homesowned only one decent chair, and the head ofthe household, the father, was the one who gotto sit in it while the rest of the family ate whilesitting on the floor. On special occasions whena male guest was invited to share the meal, thefather would relinquish his chair to him.

Although the chair reached a high degreeof development among most of the Europeannations, it failed to gain much of a footholdamong various other peoples.

Eating Utensils. Humankind’s first eatingutensil was some form of the spoon or theladle. Museums display spoons of wood, stone,and ivory that were found in ancient Egyptiantombs. Spoon-like implements belonging tothe Paleolithic Age have been found in cavesin France and other European countries,thereby indicating that early humans usedsuch eating utensils as far back as 100,000 ormore years.

The Greeks and Romans used spoons ofbronze and silver, some exquisitely wrought bythe hands of master craftspersons. During theMiddle Ages in Europe, the wealthy ate withelaborate spoons of beaten silver, but thematerials used for making spoons by the poor-er classes were bone, wood, and tin. The Chi-nese, in addition to their chopsticks, ate withlittle painted porcelain spoons.

The use of the knife and fork did notbecome widespread until about 300 years ago.Even at the magnificent French court of Louis

XIV (1638–1715), forks for eating purposeswere unknown.

Although both knives and forks have beenin existence since early times and were used aseffective tools for many different purposes, ittook centuries before anyone thought of usingthem at the dinner table. Some authoritiessuggest that the first “fork” early humans usedwas quite likely a long, two-pronged twig thatwas used to hold meat over the fire while it wascooking. Later, such prongs were made of ironor bone and were used for the same purpose.

The fork was not entirely unknown inmedieval France, but it was used only on occa-sion for bringing large chunks of hot meatfrom the fire to the table. In England, the forkhad been used through the Middle Ages as autensil for eating fruits and preserves, but notat the table to eat one’s dinner.

Based on the evidence of primitive cuttingimplements in archaeological digs dating backnearly a million years, even humankind’s ear-liest ancestors used some kind of cuttingimplement. Perhaps those elementary toolswere originally fragments of flint or otherstone, but it seems clear that the knife, orsome kind of cutting tool, was one of the firstimplements to be devised by early humans.

The knife took many forms and was madeof many materials during the course of itsdevelopment. The first knives were made offlint and bone and used for all cutting purpos-es. For centuries, whether the knife was madeof flint, bronze, or steel, both men and womencarried a knife in their belts or knapsacks.Whenever large portions of food were served,they sliced off a piece for themselves withtheir knives, and then returned the cuttingimplement to their belt or knapsack. But therewas no such thing as a special knife to be usedwhile eating dinner, whether seated at a tableor on the floor.

As with the development of the dinner fork,the greatest advance in the history of the tableknife took place after the seventeenth century.Silver knives for table use were introduced inEngland and became popular. Sheffield, Eng-land, became one of the greatest cutlery manu-facturing centers in the world and has retainedsuch a position with few challengers.



HUMANKIND’S first eating utensil wassome form of the spoon or the ladle.

The earliest dinner plates were undoubted-ly formed by nature, rather than humans. Per-haps primitive humans used a broad leaf, ahalved gourd, or a sea shell in the same man-ner that one uses a cup or bowl. However,even in early prehistory, humans discoveredthe vast uses of clay and made for themselvesjars, jugs, and drinking vessels.

Among the Greeks, Romans, Assyrians,and Egyptians, pottery developed into a fineart, and some of the examples still in existencetoday are in museums. The ancient people ofMexico and Peru, the Mayans and the Incans,also made beautiful pottery.

Although the human ancestors may haveboasted many pots, jugs, plates, and even cupsand saucers, the use of separate dishes for eachperson is comparatively recent. For many cen-turies, among rich and poor alike, food wouldbe brought to the table on large platters andplaced on the bare table. In wealthy homes, asteward or the host used a double-prongedfork and a large knife to carve the meat on theplatter, and then, whether in a banquet hall orin a home, the assembled diners used their fin-gers to pick up the pieces they wished. Fruitand bread loaves were placed in baskets on thefloor by the tables, and people helped them-selves as they liked.

Eventually, those families with money inEurope and England bought dinner platesmade of pewter. However, food with a highacid content caused some of the lead used inthe process of creating pewter to be absorbedinto the meal, causing lead poisoning andoften death. The more observant began tonotice that these terrible consequences aftereating from pewter plates occurred most oftenwith tomatoes, so for hundreds of years thetomato was considered poisonous.

The poorer families could not afford pewterplates, but they used trenchers, a piece of woodwith the center scooped out, as bowls to holdtheir food. Unfortunately, in those days hygienewas virtually unknown, so the trenchers wereseldom cleaned, and often worms and mold gotinto the wood and spread diseases called “trenchmouth” to unsuspecting diners.

Hand Washing and Bathing. It is knownthat among the early Greeks it was considered

ill-mannered to attempt to recline at the din-ner table before visiting with the other guestsand washing one’s hands. Servants brought invessels of water so that the custom of handwashing could be observed by all the guests,and not until they had done so were they per-mitted to dine.

The Romans washed their hands beforeand after dinner. Small basins were providedfor guests for this purpose, and it was a com-mon practice to drop a flower into the waterto make it fragrant. This custom has survivedtoday in many homes and restaurants inwhich a finger bowl with a flower petal in thewater is brought to guests between courses ofthe meal or after they have finished eating.

Egyptians were welcomed to a dinner partyby a special servant who anointed their headwith oil and washed their hands. Sometimesthe process was repeated during the course ofthe dinner; and before guests left the table,their hands were washed again.

The Hebrews made of a special ceremonyof hand washing, and it was strictly observedthat all people washed their hands before eat-ing a meal, after returning from a funeral, andbefore making a burnt offering or a sacrifice atthe temple.

A combination of superstition and misap-plied religious fervor concerning nudity, mod-esty, and the frequency of bathing mademedieval Europe a place where personalhygiene almost became a forgotten practice ofthe ancients. Even the more well-to-do fami-lies took “all-over” baths only twice a year, inMay and October.

The biannual bath would take place in alarge tub filled with hot water. The father, thehead of the household, would be the first tobathe, enjoying clean, warm water. The sonswould be next. After all of the men, includingany visiting male relatives or guests, had their



EGYPTIANS servants anointed the guest’shead with oil and washed their hands.

turn, the woman of the house, followed by anyfemale children, would get to splash in waterthat had become quite cool and dirty. Babiesof the household would be the very last to bedunked in the tub, and by then the water wasso dark that mothers were warned not tothrow their babies out with the bath water.

Women kept their hair covered at alltimes. Men shaved their heads and wore wigs,but only the wealthy could afford wigs of goodquality. Rather than washing the wigs, it wasfashionable to place the wig in a hollowed-outloaf of bread and bake it in the oven. The heatwould make the wig puff up and become fluffy,which gave birth to the expression of “BigWig” to describe a person of power or wealth.

Because they seldom washed their faces,many women and men had developed unsight-ly acne scars by the time they had reachedadulthood. It became customary to spread bee’swax over the facial skin to smooth out roughcomplexions.

Asking the Blessing. The custom of saying aprayer before eating did not originate as anexpression of thankfulness or gratitude to adeity. Early peoples offered a prayer that was akind of exorcism before eating in order to dis-tract any negative spirits that might haveinfested the food. Rather than thanking adeity for the blessing of giving them food tosatisfy their hunger, the diners exhorted anynegative entities to leave their food alone andto satisfy their hunger elsewhere.

Before a feast of celebration for a victoryover their foes or the rewards of a successfulhunt, primitive peoples often made sacrificesto their gods to be certain that the foods uponwhich they intended feasting would not poi-son them. From this custom of sacrifice andprayer before a feast, it seems likely that thepractice of offering a prayer or asking a bless-

ing before every meal became a custom thatwould eventually be practiced by the followersof all major world religions.

The Israelites appear to have been amongthe first to offer prayer before eating out ofgratitude for having food to eat. “Surely it is ofwhat belongs to God that you have eaten. Sopraise and bless Him by whose word the worldwas created,” Father Abraham admonished(Talmud, Sota 10b).

Born into the Jewish tradition before hisconversion to Christianity, Paul writes to thechurch in Ephesus that “God created foods tobe received with thanksgiving by those whobelieve and know the truth… nothing is to berejected if it is received with thanksgiving, forthen it is consecrated by the word of God andprayer” (I Timothy 4:3–5).

In the Koran, the holy book of Islam, it iswritten, “Eat of the good things that We haveprovided for you, and be grateful to God”(Koran 2:172).

The Toast. Most authorities agree that thecustom of drinking to the health of a personoriginated with the practice of the host orhostess drinking first to show that the drinkwas not harmful. As the tradition progressed,it came to indicate a gesture of friendship andgood will to the guest.

The Roman and the Greek hosts drank tothe health of their guests, and both customswere likely to have originated as a means ofproving that the wine was not poisoned. Nei-ther a Greek nor a Roman gentleman wouldpass a cup of wine to a friend without havingfirst tasted of it to prove its safety. It was such acustom that developed through the ages intothe tradition of men drinking together as apledge to friendship, fraternity, and good cheer.It was also a custom among the young men ofRome to drink as many glasses of wine as therewere letters in their sweethearts’ names.

Controversy exists over how the gesture oftaking the first drink to prove it was safe or tosalute one’s friendship to a guest became knownas a “toast.” Some believe that sometime duringthe reign of Charles II of England (1630–1685;reigned 1660–85), a piece of toasted bread wasaccidentally dropped in a large pitcher of winewhile guests were being served at a royal ban-



EARLY peoples offered a prayer as an exorcismbefore eating to distract any negative spirits that might

have infested the food.

quet, and a witty courtier remarked thatalthough he was unable to drink any morewine, he could at least have the toast.

Others believe that the word, in connec-tion with drinking to one’s health, originatedin eighteenth-century England in the customof gentlemen sitting around a fireside, drink-ing and toasting bread on the hearth. A sip ofdrink and a bite of warm toast combined tooffer a gesture of good will, friendship, andgood health to one’s companions.

Drinking toasts from a lady’s slipper datesback to the eighteenth century. In certainparts of Hungary it was the custom for a groomto drink a toast to his bride out of her slipperon the wedding night. The slipper wasremoved from the bride’s foot in front of all theassembled guests, filled with wine, and given tothe groom. He made a toast to his bride, drankthe wine, and threw the slipper to the guests.

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Baker, Margaret. Folklore and Customs of Rural Eng-land. Devon, UK: David & Charles, 1974.

Caldwell, Mark. A Short History of Rudeness, Manners,Morals and Misbehavior. London: Pan MacmillanPublishers, 2000.

Elias, Norbert. The History of Manners. Translated byEdmund Jephcott. New York: Random House,1982.



Grant, Michael. The World of Rome. Cleveland, Ohio:World Publishing, 1960.

Grimal, Nicolas. A History of Ancient Egypt. Cam-bridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994.

Hazlitt, W. C. Dictionary of Faiths and Folklore. Lon-don: Bracken Books, 1995.

Jones, Prudence, and Nigel Pennick. A History of PaganEurope. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.

Power, Eileen. Medieval People. Garden City, N.Y.:Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955.

Rees, Nigel. Best Behavior. London: Bloomsbury, 1992.

Walker, Barbara G. The Woman’s Encyclopedia ofMyths and Secrets. San Francisco: Harper & Row,1983.

Burials and Funerals

No one can possibly derive an exact datewhen early humans first began to bury theirdead. Controversy continues on the questionof whether or not certain skeletal remainsfound in the caves of Neanderthals indicatethat some kind of burial ceremony was con-ducted for the dead around 200,000 years ago.

Neither can anyone pinpoint for certainwhen the concept of an afterlife first occurredto primitive humans. It might be conjecturedthat when early humans had realistic dreams offriends or relatives who were dead, they mighthave awakened convinced that the departedsomehow still existed in some other world.Such an idea, whenever it first occurred, wasundoubtedly taken as reassuring and comfort-ing. The belief that there was something with-in them that survived physical death was anexciting promise that eventually spread tohumans everywhere throughout the planet.

Anthropologists and other scientists ofhuman evolution relate that the early humans’concept of the soul or the spirit was often thatof either a miniature or a full-sized reproduc-tion of the person who had died. The Huron, aNative American tribe, believed that the spirithad arms, legs, head, and torso just like theperson from whom it had been released bydeath. The Nootka, a tribe that occupied Van-couver Island, British Columbia, conceived ofthe soul as a tiny person who lived within aperson’s head and who was set free when itshost body succumbed to death.

Many native people in Peru, Brazil, andother South American countries think of thesoul as a birdlike entity that can fly from thebody at will and often does so during sleep.When the soul returns, the sleeper awakens.Should the soul neglect to return, the sleeperenters the long sleep of death.



THE Nootka conceived of the soul as a tinyperson who lived within a person’s head and was setfree when its host body succumbed to death.

As more members of the early humancommunities began to believe that the spiritwas to continue in another life and mightsome day return to the body it had once occu-pied, it began to occur to many cultures that itwas necessary to take every precaution to pro-tect their dead from being desecrated either byhumans or by animals. There have been manykinds of coffins, just as there have been manycustoms of burial. Clay, stone, wood, eveniron coffins have been used to protect thebody from predators and grave robbers.

One of the earliest types of coffin was atree that had been cut down and hollowed outto accommodate the body. Depending uponthe people and the environmental conditionsunder which they existed, tree coffins bearingthe dead were sometimes set adrift in a river,sometimes left upon the ground, sometimesburied in the ground. For many ancient peo-ples, the custom of placing the dead in a treetrunk was symbolical of being returned to theGreat Mother, the tree of life.

As the belief in a spirit and in an afterlifegrew, people began to develop fixed conceptsabout where it was exactly that spirits went todwell after their life on Earth was completed.In the ancient Greek afterlife beliefs, the deadwere ferried over the river Styx by Charon,who charged a fee for his services. If the deaddid not have the fee, they would be detainedfor a hundred years before being permitted toproceed. Therefore, when the Greeks buriedtheir dead, they placed a small coin in theirhands so they might be able to pay Charon. Asimilar idea of the dead needing some readycurrency for their advent to the other world isfound among the Chinese, who furnish thedead with paper money and passports.

The religious service associated with manymodern funerals quite likely originated in thebelief that death is but a journey to anotherworld and that certain ceremonies may be per-

formed by the living to expedite the spirit’stravels and to lessen the dangers of the jour-ney. Among the earliest type of structured bur-ial observances are people dancing for purposesof stamping upon the ground to frighten awayevil spirits and to keep them from harassingthe soul of the dearly departed. Great feastswere given to please the spirit of the deceased,who watched over the lavish dinner given inhis or her honor and who was able to absorbthe energy of the food. Large fires were builtaround the place of feasting in order to presentan additional barrier to evil spirits that mightwish to seize the soul of the dead.

The fear of evil spirits also gave rise to theuniversal dread of cemeteries and the beliefthat burial grounds are haunted. As shall beshown in this section, many early funeralobservances were transformed into aspects ofreligious ceremonies that still exist today.

Preserving the Body. As early religions beganto teach that there was a spirit within each per-son who died that might some day wish toreturn to its earthly abode, it became increas-ingly important that efforts be made to preservethe body. Burial ceremonies, which had at firstbeen intended solely as a means of disposing ofthe dead, came to be a method of preservingthe physical body as a home for the spirit whenit returned for a time of rebirth or judgment.

Today, in many countries such as the Unit-ed States, Canada, Great Britain, and the Euro-pean nations, bodies are embalmed and everyeffort is made to preserve the body as long aspossible. Coffins are sold to the bereaved fami-lies as dependable containers that will be ableto preserve and protect the body of theirbeloved for centuries. Crypts and vaults to con-tain family coffins are placed above ground andconstructed of concrete or granite.

Embalming the body of the deceased waspracticed in ancient Egypt where the warm,dry climate assured its success. The Egyptiansanointed, embalmed, and buried their dead,and made mummies of the men and women ofpower, rank, and importance.

To mummify, the Egyptians extracted thebrain and the intestines, cleaned out the bodythrough an incision in the side, and filled thebody cavities with spices. The body was then



IN Africa, many native people smoke their corpsesto preserve them.

sewn up and set aside to lie in salt for a periodof 70 days. Then it was placed in gummedmummy cloth and fastened into its ornamen-tal case. The poorer classes were not mummi-fied but merely salted.

In Africa, many native people smoke theircorpses to preserve them. In the Congo, tribesbuild fires above the graves of the dead andkeep the fires burning for a month. After thatperiod, the bodies are unearthed, smoked, andwound in great swaths of cloth. The smokedcorpse is placed upright in the hut where theperson died and remains there for years.

Laying the Body to Rest. The followers ofTao, a Chinese belief system, envision the soulof the deceased crossing a bridge to the nextlife. Ten courts of judgment await the newsoul, and if it passes this series of trials, it maycontinue on the path to heaven. If it failsbecause of bad deeds during the person’s life-time, the soul must be punished before it isallowed to go to a better place.

The family and friends of the deceasedplace the body in a wooden coffin and carry itto the graveyard. Well aware of the trialsawaiting the soul of their friend or relative inthe afterlife, they pound drums, clang cym-bals, and shoot off fireworks to frighten awayany evil spirits that might attempt to catchthe soul even before it reaches the 10 courts ofjudgment. Beside the grave as the coffin isbeing lowered into the ground, paper repre-sentations of houses, money, and other materi-al objects are burned, symbolically providingthe soul of the deceased with property withwhich to pay the judges.

After 10 years have passed, the coffin is dugup, and the remains are cleaned and placed inan urn, which is then sealed. A Taoist priestassesses the home of the person’s immediatefamily and decides the most harmonious spotfor the urn of bones to be placed. It is of utmostimportance that the priest find a place wherethe spirit of the deceased will be happy amongits surviving family members, or the spirit mayreturn to punish those it deems disrespectful ofits physical remains.

For Buddhists, funerals are happy occa-sions, for they believe in reincarnation. Deathin the present life frees the soul from Dukkha

(worldly existence) and returns it to the paththat leads to nirvana, where all misery andkarma cease. The coffin of one who has diedin the Buddhist belief system is taken to thefuneral hall in a brightly decorated carriage.The coffin is carried three times around theBuddhist temple or funeral hall and thenbrought in where it is set down in the midst ofthe flowers and gifts that friends and family ofthe deceased have placed around it.

A Buddhist monk leads the people in aprayer known as the Three Jewels that helpsthe soul find refuge in the Buddha, the dhar-ma (the true way of life that a devout Bud-dhist seeks to lead), and the sangha (the uni-fied faith of the Buddhist monks). Togetherwith the people in the funeral hall, the monkrecites the Five Precepts, the rules by whichBuddhists strive to live.

Throughout the ceremony, food is servedand music is played. There are few tears ofmourning, for the family and friends arereminded by the monk that the soul will bereborn many times in many bodies. After theservice, the body is cremated, and the ashesare buried or kept in the temple in a small urn.

Because Christians believe that Jesus (c. 6B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.) is the son of God who died ona cross on Good Friday and who rose from thedead on Easter Sunday, the followers of thisreligion believe that if they have faithfully fol-lowed the teachings of Jesus, they, too, will bephysically resurrected on a future day of judg-ment. Generally, the body of the deceased isembalmed in a funeral home, then taken in acoffin to a church for a religious service beforeburial or cremation. In many churches, thedeceased is displayed for mourners to pay theirlast respects until the formal service begins.

The minister or priest conducts a serviceduring which selections from the Bible thatspeak of the resurrection of the dead are read,



FOR Buddhists, funerals are happy occasions, forthey believe in reincarnation.

prayers are offered, and hymns are sung. If it isa Roman Catholic funeral, the priest will cele-brate the Mass in remembrance of the lastmeal that Jesus shared with his disciples beforehis crucifixion. After the service is concluded,pallbearers carry the closed coffin to a hearse,which carries it to the place of burial. Familyand friends follow on foot or in automobiles ina funeral procession to the cemetery wherethe coffin is lowered into the ground.

During an earlier period of Christianity,the priest used to place a pass to the nextworld on the chests of those who had died inthe faith as they lay in the coffin. Such a passalso provided the deceased person’s Christianname, the dates of birth and death, and a cer-tificate of baptism, piety of his or her life, anda testimonial that the person had taken thesacrament of communion before death.

There is an old legend that Jesus wasplaced in the tomb facing toward the west.While some Christian traditions bury theirdead facing west, many other churches withinChristianity place their dead looking towardthe east, because of the old custom of facingthe east when praying. Interestingly, the abo-riginal people of Australia believe that the sunwill rise late in the morning if the dead are notburied with their faces to the west. The peopleof the islands of Samoa and Fiji bury theirdead with their faces directed toward the west,where, according to custom, their souls havepreceded them.

Many scholars believe the Christian min-ister’s tradition of throwing handfuls of dirt onthe coffin lid while intoning “from ashes toashes, from dust to dust,” is a survival of a cus-tom in ancient Egypt in which relatives andfriends of deceased persons ceremonially castsand three times upon the body before it wasentombed or buried.

The coffin has taken many shapes andforms in its evolution as a final resting placefor the deceased. Many authorities attributethe presence of trees in the churchyard orcemetery to ancient notions concerning a hol-lowed-out tree as a dwelling place for the spir-its of the dead. In Babylonia, great boxes ofclay were baked to form a kind of coffin inwhich the dead were buried.

The first actual coffins, as they are knowntoday, probably originated in ancient Egyptwhere the people believed that the body ofthe deceased must be kept safe until a futuretime of resurrection. The Egyptian word for“coffin” is from kas, which means “to bury.”Another form of the word became kast, indi-cating the receptacle into which the body isplaced, the coffin.

In the Hindu faith, the deceased are givena ceremonial washing; then the body iswrapped in a burial cloth and placed in a cof-fin. If at all possible, within one day of death,the coffin is to be carried to a place of crema-tion by six male relatives. The coffin is placedon a stack of wood and covered with flowers.Melted butter is poured over the coffin to helpit to burn, and the eldest son or nearest malerelative of the deceased lights the funeral pyre.

Traditionally, the cremation takes placeoutdoors and the ashes are collected and scat-tered in the waters of a holy river, such as theGanges. In other countries, Hindu dead aretaken to a crematorium. Followers of theHindu religion believe that the soul, theatman of each individual, is reborn many timesin a cycle of spiritual evolution before it canbecome one with God.

Those who follow the path of Judaismbury their dead in a plain coffin after the bodyhas been washed and dressed. If possible, thefuneral takes place on the day after the deathhas occurred. The coffin containing thedeceased is taken first to the synagogue andthen to the place of burial. Mourners oftencut a portion of their outer clothes as a sign ofgrief; but no flowers are allowed, for it is tradi-tion that the service should be kept as simpleas possible.

At the grave site, the rabbi says a fewwords of remembrance about the deceased,and the coffin is placed in the grave. Theclosest male relative of the deceased says aprayer called the Kaddish to help the soultravel to the Olam Ha’ba, the world to come,and the family of the dead person fill in thegrave with earth.

Muslims prefer not to use coffins for theirdead unless they are residing in a country thatrequires such a containment for the deceased.



If it is possible to do so, the dead are buried onthe day following their death. The deceased iswashed, perfumed, and wrapped in three cot-ton burial cloths.

Those who follow the religion of Islambelieve that the soul of the deceased is guard-ed by the angel of death in a place calledBarzakh until the Day of Judgment. If at allpossible, friends and relatives gather around adying person and read verses from the Koran.With his or her last breath, the dying personalways tries to say the Shahadah: “There is noGod but Allah, and Muhammad is his mes-senger.”

Large graves and headstones are not per-mitted to mark a Muslim burial site, but thegrave itself is to be raised above ground level.As the body is being taken to the burialground, the Salatul Janazah, a prayer for thedeceased, is read. The body is buried facingMecca, the sacred city toward which all Mus-lims turn when they pray.

In times of death, the human tendencyseems to be to relieve in some way the tensioncaused by fear, superstition, and the dread ofthe unknown. Among the most well known ofsuch traditions of holding a celebration tohonor the deceased is the Irish wake. Accord-ing to an old legend, when St. Patrick (fifthcentury) was dying he requested his weepingand lamenting friends to set aside their griefand to rejoice at his comfortable exit from aworld of sadness, sin, and confusion. In orderto better shift the emotions from sorrow to joy,St. Patrick is said to have instructed each per-son gathered around his deathbed to take adrop of something to drink. This last requestof the saint is observed in deep reverence atevery Irish wake.

The charming story of St. Patrick aside,some authorities believe that the Irish wakewas intended originally to prevent the deadperson’s restless soul from prowling around thehomes of the surviving family members.Friends and relatives would gather in the fam-ily home as the body of the deceased lay in itscoffin awaiting burial. Once respects were saidand memories of the deceased were shared,the mourners would eat, drink, and dance torelieve the tensions and fears of the bereaved.

The party would last until dawn so therewould always be someone who was awake towatch the body and keep the soul from doingmischief.

Yet another theory of the origin of thewake has it that because lead cups were oftenused to drink ale or whiskey, the potent com-bination would sometimes literally knock aperson out for a couple of days. A friend walk-ing along the road from the tavern mightcome upon an unconscious person and assumethat he was dead. The apparently deceasedwould be carried home and laid out on thekitchen table for a day or so before being pre-pared for burial. Family and friends wouldgather around the body, eating, drinking, andtalking, as they waited to see if the corpse onthe table was going to “wake up.”

Marking the Burial Place. The marking ofgraves goes back into remote antiquity. Pale-olithic humans (c. 250,000 B.C.E.) placedstones and other markings on graves, but itcannot be determined for certain whetherthey did so to keep evil spirits from rising fromthe burial place or to be able to distinguishone grave from another for the purpose ofmourning. In the Neolithic time period (c. 8000–9000 B.C.E.,) humans set up greatstone megaliths above burial mounds; theseprotected the dead from desecration and quitelikely had certain religious significance.

The ancient Hebrews buried their deadand used stone pillars to mark the graves. TheGreeks often placed gravestones and variouskinds of ornate sculpture on their burial sites.

Not everyone who died in ancient Egyptwas buried in a tomb. Although the Egyptiansbelieved firmly in an afterlife, they were also ofthe opinion that only the powerful and impor-tant in the earthly life would have any notablestatus in the world to come. According to rankand wealth, those who were great in Egypt andtherefore likely to be important in the next life



A Muslim’s body is buried facing Mecca.

were laid to rest in magnificent tombs withtreasure, servants, food, and weapons toaccompany them and the ordinary people wereburied in rude stone compartments.

The rulers of the ancient city of Thebes,once capital of upper Egypt (1580–1085 B.C.E.),and their subjects never constructed massivepyramids to house their coffins, but cut theirtombs from rock. As soon as a pharaoh wouldascend the throne, his loyal subjects began thepreparation of his tomb. Excavation went onuninterruptedly, year by year, until death endedthe king’s reign and simultaneously the work onhis tomb—which also became a kind of anindex revealing the length of his reign. Thesetombs, cut from the rock in the mountains inUpper Egypt, are still to be seen.

The Assyrians (c. 750–612 B.C.E.) dughuge excavations that sometimes reached adepth of 60 feet into which they cast the bod-ies of their dead, one upon the other. Evenwhen they began to place their dead incoffins, the Assyrians continued to pile oneabove the other in great excavations.

The Iberians, the original people whoinhabited the peninsula where modern-dayPortugal and Spain exist, buried their leaderswith great pomp and ceremony in chambersmade of huge stones, covered over with earth.The bodies were placed in these megalithicchambers in a sitting posture. The Aryans, anIndo-European people, burned their dead andplaced the ashes in urns shaped like roundedhuts with thatched roofs.

Decorating graves with flowers and wreathsis an old custom that appears to date back to theearliest human burial observances. Wreathsmade of thin gold have been found in Atheniangraves during archaeological excavations. TheEgyptians adorned their mummies with flowers,and paintings on the walls of tombs depict themourners carrying flowers in their hands.

A custom in sixteenth-century Europe wasto make wreaths of flowers from ribbon andpaper and give them to the church in memoryof the deceased. These artificial wreaths oflong ago evolved into the contemporarymourning wreath of living flowers, usuallybrought by friends or relatives of the deceasedand placed upon the grave.

Cremation. Because early humankind sofeared the evil spirits that caused death andbelieved that they continued to dwell in thecorpse awaiting new victims, it is not surprisingthat cremation, the burning of the body,became one of the earliest methods of disposingof the dead. Cremation appears to have beenpracticed widely in the ancient world, exceptin Egypt, in China, and among the Hebrews.

In ancient Greece only suicides, infantswho had not yet grown teeth, and personswho had been struck by lightning were deniedthe privilege of cremation and were buried.When cremation was conducted, the cere-monies were elaborate and solemn and theashes of the deceased were placed in urns ofburned clay and buried. Later, when burialbecame the custom in Greece, the bodies wereenclosed in elaborate stone caskets, similar tothe Roman sarcophagi.

The Vikings of old Scandinavia sometimesburied their kings and queens in their ships,but the traditional Viking funeral was to setthe dragon-headed longboat afire and send itout to sea to burn. On the Danish colony ofGreenland, the Vikings who settled on itsshores believed that there was danger of pollu-tion from the evil spirits that lurked aroundthe corpse until the smell of death had passedaway. They burned the dead body almostbefore it became cold and tried to avoid inhal-ing any of the fumes from the fire. They alsoburned every object in the dead person’s house.

The Zulu tribe of Africa always burns theproperty of the dead to prevent evil spiritsfrom remaining in the person’s home. ManyNative American tribes followed the samecustom of burning the possessions of thedeceased, and it is not uncommon to hear ofcontemporary men and women who, after thefuneral of a relative, superstitiously burn theindividual’s clothes and other belongings.

Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs employ cre-mation as a standard method of disposing ofthe dead. In India the body is cremated on afuneral pyre whenever possible, and in ancienttimes widows were sacrificed alive on theburning pyres with their husbands.

For many centuries, the Christian doctrineof the resurrection of the body discouraged the



custom of cremation. The early followers ofChristianity feared that if the body were to beburned after death there would be nothing butashes to be resurrected on Judgment Day.Although cremation is not popular amongcontemporary Christians, many theologianshave argued that the same power of Christ thatcan resurrect the body that has decomposed inthe grave could also resurrect the body that hasbeen cremated and reduced to ashes.

Remembering the Dead. Among the originalpeople of Patagonia in South America, it wasthe custom to open the coffins of the dead andredress them each year on the anniversary ofthe person’s death. The same custom is foundamong the Eskimo, who annually take newclothes as a gift to the dead. Among manyNative American tribes in earlier times, thewidow was obligated to remain beside thetomb of her deceased husband for a year, whileother family members brought food daily forher and for the spirit of the dead man.

The ancient Egyptians shaved their heads intime of mourning, and for a certain periodabstained from mixing with any other than theirimmediate family. When it came to looking afterthe needs of their deceased in the afterlife, theEgyptians provided weapons, food, drink, furni-ture—all went into the tomb with the mummy.Wealthy Egyptians were buried with their slavesso they might be certain of good service in thenext life. Frequently, a child was buried alivewith a dead parent so the parent would not missthe child left behind on Earth.

In ancient Rome, those who had lost aloved one to death remained at home andavoided all feasts and amusements. The mencut neither their hair nor their beard. For sev-eral weeks, those who mourned did not social-ize with friends or relatives, remaining onlywith their immediate family.

Today, black is considered the universalcolor of mourning, because of the age-old tra-ditions of somberness associated with it. How-ever, in Japan and in China, pure white isworn when mourning. In some sections ofAfrica, red is the color of mourning, with redpaint applied to the naked body.

Among various tribes of equatorial Africa,tattooing and mutilating of the bodies of family

members are practiced for purposes of indicat-ing that one of their loved ones has been takenby death. The people of the Andaman Islands,in the eastern part of the Bay of Bengal, disinterthe body after it has been buried long enoughto decompose, then wear the bones of the deadto indicate mourning. While they wear thesebones, it is considered taboo to approach themand to interfere with their grief.

In earlier times, it was customary for theHindu widow to throw herself upon herdeceased husband’s funeral pyre. Today, shemay shave her head, give away her valuablepossessions, retire from social life, and spendthe rest of her life performing menial dutiesfor the family of her late husband. Amongsome Native American tribes of North Amer-ica it was customary to cut the hair of widowsand forbid them to remarry until the hair hadgrown again to its original length. The Chick-asaws decreed that the widow was obliged tolive a single life for three years. Navajo beliefsstated that a widow must live in retirement fora certain period before she could marry.

Although many early humans in varioussocieties around the world observed theresponsibility of providing the necessities oflife for their dead until they felt the soul hadbecome accustomed to its new spiritual envi-ronment, there are a number of religions andcultures today that continue to remembertheir dead by conducting certain rituals thatextend far beyond a few weeks of bringingfood and drink to the grave.

On the day after a follower of the Hindufaith has been cremated, friends bring variousgifts to his or her relatives. On the 11th or12th day after the cremation, all those whoattended the funeral service gather once againto offer a meal of rice balls and milk to thespirit of the deceased. This custom is a form ofreciprocity to the departed for all the acts ofkindness that he or she performed during life.



BLACK is considered the universal color of mourning.

For the next week after a member of theJewish faith has died, the family mourns, “sit-ting shiva,” conducting religious services inthe home. During this time, friends bringthem food and express their condolences. Thenext month, a period known as sheloshim, thefamily does not go out to any type of enter-tainment. For the next 11 months (shanah),they say the prayer of Kaddish every day. Eachyear on the anniversary of their loved one’sdeath, they pray the Kaddish and burn a can-dle for 24 hours in memory of the deceased.

Muslim people mourn for their dead forthree months after the burial service. It is cus-tomary for families to read aloud from theKoran and to pray for the deceased loved one.

Each year the Taoist Chinese hold the fes-tival of Ching-Ming to honor the memory ofthe dead. Many Christian Hispanic nationscelebrate an annual Day of the Dead, and inthe United States, All Hallow’s Eve, Hal-loween, rather than a night of trick-or-treat, istraditionally a time to pray for those lovedones who are deceased.

M Delving Deeper

Arnold, Caroline. What We Do When Someone Dies.New York: Watts, 1987.

Crim, Keith, gen. ed. The Perennial Dictionary ofWorld Religions. San Francisco: HarperSanFran-cisco, 1989.

Davies, Jon. Death, Burial and the Rebirth in the Reli-gions of Antiquity. London and New York: Rout-ledge, 1999.

Dickerson, Jr., Robert B. Final Placement. Algonac,Mich.: Reference Publications, 1982.

Elias, Norbert. The History of Manners. Translated byEdmund Jephcott. New York: Random House,1982.


Grant, Michael. The World of Rome. Cleveland, Ohio:World Publishing, 1960.

Grimal, Nicolas. A History of Ancient Egypt. Cam-bridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994.

Hazlitt, W. C. Dictionary of Faiths and Folklore. Lon-don: Bracken Books, 1995.

Jones, Prudence, and Nigel Pennick. A History of PaganEurope. London and New York: Routledge, 1995.

Opie, Iona, and Moira Tatem, eds. A Dictionary ofSuperstitions. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,1989; New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1999.

Quigley, Christine, and Christ Wuigley. The Corpse:A History. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996.

Walker, Barbara A. The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Mythsand Secrets. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.

Waring, Philippa. A Dictionary of Omens and Supersti-tions. London: Souvenir Press, 1978.

Urban Legends

and Beliefs

Urban legends are unverifiable storiesabout outlandish, humorous, frighten-ing, or supernatural events that have

achieved wide circulation. In some instances,the stories are based on actual occurrencesthat have in their telling and retelling beenexaggerated or distorted. Other urban legendshave their origins in people misinterpreting ormisunderstanding stories that they have heardor read in the media or heard from actual wit-nesses of an event. The one commonality thatall urban legends share is the claim that thestory always happened to someone else, mostoften “a friend of a friend.”

On March 30, 2002, the PennsylvaniaState Police issued a warning to citizens ofthat state, advising them to question unsub-stantiated allegations and accounts of variouscriminal acts, because a large number of hoax-es had achieved wide circulation due to e-mail, various websites, and faxes. The policeillustrated their point by showing how theurban legend of the “Knock-Out Perfume,”which originally told of several women whohad been rendered unconscious and robbed asa result of criminals giving them phony per-fume samples, became transformed after Sep-tember 11, 2001, into terrorists having killedwomen by sending poison perfume samplesthrough the mail. The poisonous perfumestory eventually became accounts of anthraxthat was supposedly being sent by terrorists toPennsylvania residents on a mass scale.

Folklorists and other experts who collecturban legends point out that such accounts ofallegedly true occurrences differ from actual



news stories or historical events in that theyhave a completely developed storyline—anactual beginning, middle, and end. Urbanbeliefs are most often accusations, claims, orfrightening assertions that are directed at indi-viduals, religious groups, corporations, orpolitical organizations.

To illustrate the difference between anurban legend and an urban belief, take theexample of the terrorists and the poisonousperfume. An urban legend would begin byaffirming that the story is true and that it hap-pened to a woman who was known by a friend.It would go on to give her name and describehow she innocently opened a package sent toher through the mail and how she sampled theperfume that she found inside. The storywould conclude with a recounting of the trag-ic demise of the victim. An urban belief,rather than providing an illustrative anecdote,would simply state that all women must besuspicious of any package sent to them by aperfume company, because it is known to betrue that terrorists are targeting Americanwomen with poisoned perfume.

The Pennsylvania State Police Bureau ofCriminal Investigation issued certain guidelinesto aid people in detecting an urban legend:

• If the story has a beginning, middle, end,and a punchline, it is likely to be an urbanlegend.

• If the story begins with the affirmation thatit is true and happened to a friend, it isprobably not an account of an actual event.

• If one has heard the same or similar storyfrom several different sources, but with dif-ferent names and details, it is probably anurban legend.

• If there is no real evidence to support thestory or its allegations, it is likely to befalse.

While most urban legends and Internetmyths are basically a nuisance to law enforce-ment officers who are often called to investi-gate the truth of such accounts, such false sto-ries and hoaxes do consume time, energy, andfinances. Although spokespersons for the Fed-eral Bureau of Investigation have stated thatno statistics are maintained on how many

hoaxes are investigated, in the wake of theterrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, nearlyevery story concerning poisons, anthrax, orother noxious substances sent through themail was taken seriously and checked.

Many urban legends are recycled storiesand continually updated. A story that was inwide circulation in the 1950s will achieve anew birth in the twenty-first century and foolpeople all over again. Barbara Mikkelson,who maintains the Urban Legends ResearchCentre, theorizes that such revisions of oldstories are done by people who heard themyears ago and were frightened or amused bythem and thereby wish to retell the old leg-ends in a way that puts their own imprintupon the stories. In other instances, she com-ments, many legends were originated by peo-ple who wished “to appear more knowledge-able or more informed on a subject thanmight truly be the case.”

Mentioned here are the more familiarurban legends and beliefs, all of which havebeen told and retold as true occurrences thathappened to real people.

Deadly Reptiles in the

Imported Carpets

The story: A woman went shopping in a newdepartment store that had recently openednear her home. As she was admiring the vastdisplay of imported carpets and running ahand over the fabric, she felt a sudden sharpprick in the hand that was holding thebunched material. Thinking the small woundon her hand to have been caused by the bris-tles of the new carpet, she continued toexamine the display. A few moments later,she felt dizzy and faint and collapsed in thecarpet department. Judging by her wan colorand her difficulty in breathing, the storecalled an ambulance, fearing that she suffereda heart attack.



MANY urban legends are recycled stories andcontinually updated.

Fortunately for the stricken woman, a doc-tor at the hospital had experience in Asia andrecognized her symptoms as having beencaused by a poisonous snake indigenous tothat part of the world. When employees of thedepartment store cautiously checked the newshipment of imported carpets, they discovereda number of the deadly snakes that had some-how unknowingly been shipped with the mer-chandise. The woman recovered from the biteand sued the department store for negligence.

A variation of this urban legend has thewoman handling some imported baskets thathave just arrived at the department store. Shescreams and drops to the floor. She is rushedto the hospital but is dead upon arrival. Thedoctors recognize the symptoms of snake bite,and when the employees of the store investi-gate, they find a deadly poisonous snake coiledat the bottom of the last basket the womanwas examining.

Yet a third version of the snakes at thedepartment store has a woman trying on someclothes that have just arrived from an Asiannation. She pulls on a coat and stands beforethe mirror, evaluating the fit. Deciding againstthe purchase, she places the coat back on thehanger and returns home. That night, sheexperiences a strange swelling on her shoulderand begins to feel ill. When her husband takesher to the emergency room, the wound is diag-nosed as a bite from an unknown kind ofsnake. The next day she returns to the store,picks up the same coat that she had tried onthe previous evening, and in the presence ofthe store manager finds a small snake nestledin a shoulder pad.

This urban legend was first circulated inthe early 1970s and has continued to berepeated in its several versions. Some believethat the myth was begun as a way of discour-aging shoppers from patronizing the large dis-count department stores that featured mer-chandise imported from overseas markets.

The Fabulous Cookie Recipe

The story: A woman and her daughter finishedtheir salad at a Neiman-Marcus cafe in Dallas,Texas, and because they were both such cook-ie lovers, they decided to try the “Neiman-

Marcus” cookie. The cookie was so excellentthat the woman asked if she might have therecipe. The waitress rather haughtily informedher that the recipe could not be given awayfreely, but it might be bought for two-fifty.

The woman was thrilled, considering “two-fifty” to be $2.50 and a great deal. However,when she received her credit card statement,she was shocked to see that the Neiman-Mar-cus charge was $285.00 with “Cookie Recipe:$250.00” clearly marked on the bill.

The woman called the Neiman-Marcusaccounting department to complain, and shewas soundly rebuffed. She was told that thewaitress had duly informed her that the recipecould be bought for “two-fifty” and she wasnaive to think that such a treasured list ofingredients could be purchased for $2.50. Shewas warned not to call the Better BusinessBureau or the Texas Attorney General’s office,and not even to think of trying to get even orto get her money back.

“All right,” the woman told them, hatch-ing a scheme to get revenge for such an exor-bitant bill, “you’ve got my $250.00, now I’mgoing to have $250.00 worth of fun. I’m goingto send your famous cookie recipe to everycookie lover in the United States who has ane-mail account.”

An alleged recipe for Neiman-Marcuscookies is then provided to the e-mail recipi-ent with the instructions that it should be senton to every person he or she knows who hasan e-mail address.

While many recipients of such an e-mailundoubtedly follow the recipe included andproduce a good-tasting cookie, the recipe doesnot come from Neiman-Marcus. There is no“Neiman-Marcus cafe” at any of the famousdepartment store’s three Dallas-area outlets.In its restaurants, named the Zodiac, Zodiac atNorth Park, and The Woods, the staffs do notsell recipes, but give them away free to anycustomer who may inquire about a particularitem on the menu.

There wasn’t even a “Neiman-Marcuscookie” until quite recently when, in a good-natured response to the widespread urban leg-end, the company developed a chocolate chipcookie and freely gives away its recipe.



This popular urban legend of an ordinarywoman getting revenge on a corporate gianthas been around in one form or another sincethe late 1940s. It began shortly after the end ofWorld War II (1945) with a woman beingcharged with an exorbitant bill after requestingthe recipe for fudge cake from a railroad dinercar. In the 1960s, the legend evolved to awoman customer receiving a bill for $350.00from New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for adessert known as “Red Velvet Cake.” In the1970s, Mrs. Fields became the villain for hav-ing sold the recipe for chocolate chip cookiesto a customer for $250.00. The story regardingMrs. Fields became so widely circulated that in1987 the company issued a public denial,insisting that all of their cookie recipesremained trade secrets. In each of the fictionalinstances, the urban legend had it that an ordi-nary person who had been taken advantage ofby a haughty big business had gleefully takenher revenge by distributing the once-sacro-sanct recipes to whomever wished to use them.

Sometime in the 1990s, the story shiftedfrom Mrs. Fields as the malefactor to a cafe in aDallas-area Neiman-Marcus store. The adventof the Internet caused the story of the vengefulwoman and her defiant distribution of thecookie recipe to become one of the most popu-lar of all the widely circulated urban legends.

Green M&Ms

The story: Mars, Inc., the makers of M&Ms,was brought into court and heavily finedwhen it was discovered that the candy coatingon the green-colored M&M chocolate candiescontained an aphrodisiac. The candy compa-ny was involved in an insidious plot to stimu-late innocent children sexually with the sub-stance in the green M&Ms and drive theminto the hands of pornographers. In additionto the aphrodisiac in the candy coating, Mars,Inc., had launched a series of television com-mercials featuring scantily clad models whoseposes were designed to arouse the childreneven further and suggest how they themselvesmight pose for the child pornographers. Con-scientious consumers were urged to cease sup-porting a candy company that was in leaguewith the manufacturers of child porn, and par-

ents were advised to write their congressper-sons and demand that the product be taken offthe market.

It is difficult to trace the origins of thisurban legend about the green candy with thebizarre erotic stimulant mixed into its coating,but it appears to have begun sometime early in1993 on the Internet with e-mails informingparents to insist upon legal action against Mars,Inc., for becoming participants in the insidiouschild porn business. Some researchers havetheorized that the rumor may have begun whenMars, Inc., actually did appear in court in 1992to obtain a cease and desist order against CoolChocolate, Inc., a competitor that had startedto manufacture a green-coated chocolate that itwas calling “The Green Ones.” The attorneysfor Mars, Inc., argued that the product was toosimilar to M&Ms, and the court ruled in favorof the long-established makers of the popularcolored-coated chocolate. Cool Chocolate,Inc., was ordered to cease producing its rivalline of candies. Since the urban legend beganshortly after the court case had concluded, it ispossible that the purpose of Mars, Inc.’s, day incourt became woefully distorted into an outra-geous accusation associating the candy compa-ny with child pornography.

The origin of the claim that Mars, Inc.,also created a series of erotic commercials topromote further the ingestion of the aphro-disiac-coated green M&Ms among childrenremains a mystery. True to the tradition ofurban legends, no one can actually recall see-ing any scantily clad models in the familiarcommercials promoting the candy that “meltsin your mouth, not in your hands,” except, ofcourse, for a “friend of a friend.”

The Hook on the Car Door

The story: A young couple were parked on alonely lovers’ lane by a river, listening todreamy, romantic music on the car radio. Sud-denly the mood was shattered by a news bul-letin. An escapee from a hospital for the crim-inally insane had escaped. People are told thatthey should be on the lookout for a tall, gauntman with a pronounced limp and a hookinstead of a left hand. The announcer con-cluded the bulletin by warning the radio audi-



ence that the man with the hook was a serialmurderer and was last seen making his way outof town.

The thought of a mass murderer with ahook for a hand coming upon them as they satthere in lovers’ lane completely destroyed theromantic interlude for the young woman, andshe asked to be taken home. Her boyfriendwas decidedly unpleased with her decision. Heargued that the murderer was undoubtedly faraway and would certainly never wander out toa lovers’ lane. Although he persisted and triedto dissuade his frightened sweetheart, sheonce again repeated her wish to leave the darkand lonely place at once.

Angered and frustrated, the young man start-ed the engine and roared out of the parkingplace by the river. Pouting and disappointed, herefused even to speak to his girlfriend as he drovedirectly to her home. Stubbornly, he remainedseated behind the wheel and silent while she gotout of the car to walk to her front door.

Just as she was about to slam the car door,she screamed in horror. Jolted from his pique,the young man got out to see what had causedhis girlfriend to go into hysterics.

As he walked to the passenger side of thecar, he, too, is startled to see a prosthetic fore-arm dangling from the door handle, a steelhook gleaming in the light from a street lamp.The murderer had been about to open thedoor on the passenger’s side of the car whenthe young man had given into his girlfriend’s

demands and peeled out of the parking place,tearing off the killer’s hook in the process.

This is a classic urban legend, dating backat least to the 1940s. The familiar tale is mostoften told as having happened to a friend’scollege roommate or high school classmate,and the story of the murderer’s hook on thecar door has long been a favorite at slumberparties and around campfires.

If Your College Roommate

Commits Suicide.…

The story: It is a standard regulation at all col-leges that a student whose roommate commitssuicide will automatically receive a 4.0 gradepoint for the current school term.

Although this myth has become popularenough to be the subject of two motion pic-tures (Dead Man on Campus and Dead Man’sCurve, both 1998), it is not true. Nor will anyof the variations of this legend—such as aroommate being murdered, killed accidentally,or dying from a terminal disease—earn thesurviving roommate a 4.0 grade point.

Persistence has led to other versions of thisstory becoming a bit more believable, with ver-sions stating the death of a parent, a close rela-tive, or a betrothed guaranteeing a straight “A”report card. While many academic institutionsdo offer some kind of bereavement considera-tions to those students who suffer the loss ofsomeone deemed especially important to their



M&M Candies.

(THE GALE GROUP)

lives, no college is known to award gradepoints for such tragic circumstances.

Jesus on the Freeway

The story: A couple was driving across the Unit-ed States on vacation when they spotted a long-haired, bearded hitchhiker standing at the sideof the road. Although he appeared somewhatdisheveled and his clothes were a bit ragged,they decided to take a chance that he was not aserial murderer and they picked him up.

After they had driven for a few miles, thehitcher, in answer to their inquiries regardinghis destination, began to speak of heaven. Hiswords touched their hearts and the relievedcouple realized that they had picked up a veryspiritual fellow.

The hitchhiker then shifted his commentsto issue a number of warnings concerning the

day of judgment that will soon be at hand forall of humankind and the entire world. Thebackseat became a makeshift pulpit as headvised the couple that the Second Coming ofJesus Christ was at hand.

At this point in the narrative, the storyhas two equally popular endings:

1. The couple looked around and discoveredto their astonishment that their passengerhad disappeared. Then they realized thatthe man was Jesus himself, warning themto prepare for Judgment Day.

2. Just before he disappeared before their aston-ished eyes, the hitchhiker revealed himselfto be Jesus, who left them with a blessing anda final warning to be prepared for his return.

The stories of Jesus on the freeway seem tobe a variation of the urban legend of the phan-tom hitchhiker combined with the gospel



Every Filipino family knows someone who hasbeen killed by the “bangungot.” In Filipinofolklore, bangungot is personified as a fatman who creeps into the bedroom of sleep-

ing men and sits on their faces to suffocate them.

It isn’t a fat man that kills them, but an unexplainedillness that kills young, healthy Asian men and was firstreported in the Philippines in 1917 and has since beenidentified in Thailand, Japan, India, and Singapore.

Known as Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal DeathSyndrome (SUNDS) by medical researchers, the vic-tims of the disease have been males in 99 percent ofthe cases, and 80 percent of those men were betweenthe ages of 22 to 45. The death usually occurs duringthe first third of the sleep cycle and results from amiocardial infraction in the lower left ventricle of theheart, thereby causing a heart attack. The victims arefound lying on their backs in bed, often with a frozenexpression of what appears to be terror on theirfaces, thus giving rise to the folktale of the fat manhaving smothered them.

Sources:

Chokroverty, Sudhansu, ed.; Robert B. Daroff, introduction. Sleep

Disorders Medicine: Basic Science, Technical

Considerations, and Clinical Aspects. Burlington, Mass.:

Butterworth-Heinemann Medical, 1999.

Lyall, Kimina. “Stranglers in the Night.” The Australian, May 2,

2002. [online] http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/

o,5942,4240606,00.html.

“Odd Syndrome Targets Asian Males.” Wired News, April 2,

2002. [Online] http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/),

1286,51473,00.html.

Asian Men Killed

by Fat Man

account of the risen Christ appearing toCleopas and another disciple as they walked onthe road to Emmaus, about seven miles north-west of Jerusalem. At first the two do not recog-nize Jesus—and when they do, he disappears.

The tale of the contemporary hitchhikingJesus is still repeated, but it was in very widecirculation in 1998–99, just before the year2000 and the period of time that many Christ-ian fundamentalists believed would be theadvent of the end times, Armageddon, thelast great battle between the forces of Goodand Evil. From their perspective, it seemed tobe in the order of things that Jesus couldreturn in disguise, then reveal himself to cer-tain individuals so that they might be pre-pared for the opportunity of the Rapture,which they believe will deliver all true believ-ers from the planet.

The Phantom Hitchhiker

The story: A college student was driving on alonely country road late one rainy night whenhe was startled to see a young woman walkingalong the shoulder. Immediately he pulled over,leaned across the front seat to open the passen-ger door, and asked her if she wanted a ride.

Without a word, she got inside. It wasobvious that she was cold and soaked to theskin. The college student reached behind him,grabbed his sweater from the backseat, andoffered it to the lovely hitchhiker.

She smiled her thanks and draped thewarm sweater over her shoulders, informinghim that she had to get home that night to seeher parents.

In the light from the dashboard, the stu-dent noticed for the first time that her faceand hands were scratched and bleeding.When she caught him looking at her injuries,she explained that her car had slid off the roadand into a ditch. She had stood there for whathad seemed like hours, hoping for help; thenshe decided to walk the rest of the way to herparents’ home.

The student told her that there was noproblem taking her right to her parents’ frontdoor. In spite of her bedraggled appearance, itwas becoming apparent to him that she was a

very beautiful young woman, probably abouthis own age. She gestured into the darknessahead and said that the house was only a fewmiles ahead.

As he was getting up his courage to ask herfor her name, she pointed to a house down avery short lane. She asked him to stop, and shegot out of the car. He protested that he wouldbe happy to drive her the rest of the way, butshe was already running away into the night.As he drove on, he berated himself for not ask-ing her name, but then he remembered thatshe still wore his sweater. That would be hisexcuse to drive back to her parents’ home andformally make her acquaintance.

Two days later, after his afternoon classeshad ended, the student drove to his mysterygirl’s home and knocked on the door. He wassurprised when an elderly woman opened thedoor and invited him to step inside. As helooked about the interior of the front parlor,he noticed a framed portrait of the beautifulyoung girl, and he asked the woman if hergranddaughter was home.

Following the student’s gaze to the por-trait, the woman began to weep. Her darlingdaughter, she said, was still trying to comehome. The student listened incredulously asthe woman told him that her daughter hadbeen killed in an automobile accident morethan 40 years before.

By the time he managed to leave the oldwoman, he had concluded that she must becrazy. The hitchhiker he had picked up thatnight was no more than 19 years old. And shewas very much alive.

As he passed a small rural cemetery, some-thing blowing in the wind caught his eye.When he entered the graveyard to investigate,he found his sweater draped over a tombstonethat marked the final resting place of a youngwoman who had died 40 years ago.

Some version of the above account of aphantom hitchhiker has been told and retoldwith variations for at least the past 70 years. Inmany areas, there are no shortages of witnesseswho say that they themselves have stopped topick up the ghost—nearly always a lovelyyoung woman—and they swear that theirencounter is true.



Chicago’s “Resurrection Mary” has beenhitching rides and spooking motorists sincethe 1930s. Said to be the spirit of a beautiful,blond Polish girl, Mary has been picked up bysmitten young men at dances and asked to betaken home. The problem is, “home” alwaysturns out to be Resurrection Cemetery onArcher Avenue on the South Side of Chicago.On occasion, Mary has been bold enough toopen car doors and get in, explaining to thestartled driver how she desperately needs aride into the city. Once again, as the carapproaches the cemetery on Archer, Marybolts from the car and vanishes at the gates.

For many years, taxi drivers in Naha, Oki-nawa, have claimed that an attractive womanin her 20s, with short-cropped hair anddressed in black slacks, often hails them for aride on the road to the U.S. Marine Camp.When the cab drivers turn to ask for a specificdestination, she disappears. The phantom hasbeen dubbed the “Nightwalker of Nago,”because she most often appears on the moun-tain road leading from the fishing village ofNago to the marine camp.

Since 1965, dozens of drivers haveslammed on their brakes to avoid hitting apretty young woman in a flowing white dressstanding in the road on Blue Bell Hill inMaidstone, England. The phantom is said tobe that of a woman who was to have been abridesmaid for her best friend when she diedin a car crash the night before the wedding.Her spirit appears still dressed in her flowingbridesmaid’s gown, still attempting to get tothe wedding on time.

Stories of phantom hitchhikers constitutea category of urban legends that have beenreported around the world and show no signsof ceasing. Motorists, truckers, and taxi driversby the hundreds have a “friend of a friend”who really did give a ghost a ride.

Proctor & Gamble Is a

Satanist Company

The story: Sometime in the 1960s, when manypeople were announcing that the Age ofAquarius was dawning and New Age beliefswere beginning to receive wide circulation, therumor started that the logo Proctor & Gamble

had applied to their products for generationswas a satanic symbol. The logo pictures themoon with a smiling face and 13 stars, repre-senting, according to the urban belief, thenumber of satanists in a coven, the negativityof the number 13, and the devilish activitiesthat evildoers commit in the moonlight.

Representatives of Proctor & Gamble hadissued disclaimer after disclaimer, assuring thepublic that none of its executives or employ-ees were satanists, but in 1994, a call to actionwas issued by alleged Christian fundamental-ists demanding that all good Christians boy-cott all P&G products. According to the man-ifesto that was widely circulated, the presidentof P&G had appeared on the Phil Donohuetelevision program on March 15, 1994, andannounced without hesitation that he was asatanist. What was even more upsetting to theauthor of the pronouncement was that thepresident of P&G had openly declared that hehad been using the products of his company toraise money to support his charity, TheChurch of Satan. Then, defiantly, the presi-dent stated that there weren’t enough Chris-tians in all 50 states combined that wouldmake any difference to him or to his compa-ny’s profits.



It was rumored that the

Proctor & Gamble logo of

the moon and stars was

a satanic symbol.


The anonymous author of the declarationthat went out over the Internet and in postalmailings titled his piece, “You Can Make aDifference,” and he challenged all Christiansto show the president of Proctor & Gamblethat he was wrong. They could make a differ-ence by ceasing to buy any P&G products.“Let him know what Christians think of hiskind,” the e-mail demanded. “Stop buying hisproducts! Now! Today!”

No president of Proctor & Gamble everappeared on the Donohue television talkshow. No one from the firm has ever claimedto be a satanist or commented on the numberof Christians residing in the United States.

The accusations of satanic allegiance andworship levied at Proctor & Gamble are com-pletely fabricated. Yet, in spite of P&G’s legalrepresentatives winning nearly a dozen courtdecisions declaring that the rumors had nobasis in truth, the urban legend about Satanprofiting from Proctor & Gamble’s manyproducts continues to rear its horned head.

The Scuba Diver in the Tree

The story: While assessing the damage done bya forest fire in California, authorities werestartled to discover the body of a man dressedin a wetsuit, complete with a dive tank, flip-pers, and face mask, in the branches of a tree.The strangely placed victim had sufferedsevere burns from the forest fire, but an autop-sy revealed that he had not died from theflames, but from massive internal injuries.Dental records provided the victim’s identifi-cation, and investigators contacted his familyin an attempt to learn how a man who wasdressed for scuba diving could possibly haveended up in the branches of a tree in the midstof hundreds of acres of charred forest.

According to the horrified family, thevictim had been diving in the ocean some 30miles away from the forest on the day thatthe fire had gotten out of control. As theinvestigators pieced together the grim detailsof the man’s death, it became apparent thathe had been accidentally scooped up alongwith thousands of gallons of water by one of afleet of helitankers that had been called in tohelp the firefighters. Caught up in one of the

huge buckets, the unfortunate scuba diverhad been dumped along with the sea water inan attempt to put out the forest fire as quick-ly as possible.

While this story has been told many timessince the late 1980s, there has never been arecord of a diver in a scuba outfit being acci-dentally dumped by helicopter tankers on aforest fire. Authorities point out that whilewater is sometimes taken from lakes and oceanareas in an effort to extinguish forest fires asrapidly as possible, the helitankers suck up thewater by means of a hose only a couple of inch-es in diameter. No one could be drawn intosuch a small opening and pulled into the tank.

Snakes in the Toilet

A fear of snakes is among the oldest of all ofhumankind’s basic fears, so it is likely that thisurban legend grew out of the ancient warningsof primitive people to be cautious about theplaces they selected to relieve themselveswhen obeying a call of nature. As civilizationprogressed, the outdoor toilet was a place thatoften harbored snakes that would scare or bitea person, which would possibly lead to death.With centuries of apprehension about snakesit seems a natural progression to bring suchprimitive fear into man’s modern plumbingand toilet facilities.

The story: Perhaps the most common ver-sion of this urban legend has someone with anenormous pet python moving into an apart-ment building. In order not to alarm his neigh-bors, the individual keeps the nature of his peta secret from everyone. (Sometimes the storystates that he or she is with a traveling circusand is only staying in the apartment for a fewnights.)

One day, the snake fancier carelesslyleaves the toilet lid up in his bathroom, andthe big serpent wiggles its way into the bowl,enters the drain pipe, and emerges in the toi-let of the next door apartment. The startledindividual is horrified to see a monstroussnake suddenly rear its head from the toiletbowl, and as he runs from the bathroom, themammoth python begins to slither its wayinto his apartment. This account usually endswith the frightened apartment dweller calling



the zoo or the animal control center and acrew of men arriving to wrestle the monsterpython of 15 to 20 feet out of the building.

Another popular version of the story has abig snake somehow making its way into theplumbing system of an apartment house andmoving through the pipes until it comes up forair in someone’s toilet just as the person isabout to use it. In some legends, the victimeither dies of a heart attack or is bitten todeath by the deadly reptile.

Spiders in the Hairdo

As man watches primates grooming oneanother in the zoo or in a nature film, one canclearly see that the process of checking one’shair for insects is a procedure that has beeninherited from the most primitive ancestors.Combine this instinctual grooming practicewith the fear of poisonous insects and there isthe likely origin of the urban legends aboutthe spiders in the hairdo.

Although tales of the unwanted presenceof bees, wasps, and other annoying insects insomeone’s long hair had been popular since atleast the late 1800s, the urban legend of thepoisonous spider in the hair continuedthrough the twentieth century. This legendstarted up again with the introduction of thepopular beehive hairdo in the early 1960s.Because women sprayed their hair to create arounded “beehive” appearance, it seemed pos-sible—and terrifying—to those wanting sucha fashionable style that a spider could take res-idence in the raised hair atop their heads.

The Story: As the legend goes, a woman,wearing a beehive hair style, walks into abeauty shop and asks for a trim. She tells thebeautician that she has not touched her hairfor days—other than to add spray—becauseshe felt she had achieved the perfect shape toher hairdo. As the beautician begins to sham-poo the woman’s hair, the customer screams inawful pain. She grimaces, gasps, and collapses.

The beautician, horrified and confused,calls an ambulance as the other customerslook on in disbelief. As the paramedics arelifting the woman onto a stretcher, a blackwidow spider crawls from the woman’s hair.The poisonous insect had been nesting in the

woman’s sprayed hair and had bitten her whenthe beautician began to shampoo her hair.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, male“hippies,” who wore their hair shoulder-lengthor longer, became the most oft-cited victims ofthe “spider in the hair” folktale. The long hairmade it possible by the suspicions of the gen-eral public that “hippies” seldom bathed, thusallowing a deadly spider to remain undetectedin their hair until somehow provoked.

The Internet continues to resurrect boththe female victim with her beehive hairstyleor the poisoned hippie with his uncombed,unwashed shoulder-length hair. However,sometime in the late 1970s and early 1980s,the urban legend was updated by substitutinga man or woman with dreadlocks as the unsus-pecting host for the poisonous spiders. In someversions, the victim is bitten when he or sheattends a barbershop or beauty parlor and thebarber or beautician uncovers the insect. Inother legends, both the wearer of the dread-locks and the hair-stylists are bitten by a nestof spiders.

M Delving Deeper

Bronner, Simon J. Piled Higher and Deeper. LittleRock, Ark.: August House, 1990.

Brunvand, Jan Harold. Curses! Broiled Again! NewYork: W. W. Norton, 1989.

———. Too Good to Be True. New York: W. W. Nor-ton, 1999.

Craughwell, Thomas J. Alligators in the Sewer and 222Other Urban Legends: Absolutely True Stories ThatHappened to a Friend of a Friend. New York: BlackDog & Leventhal Publishers, 1999.

———. Baby on the Car Roof & 222 Other Urban Leg-ends: Absolutely True Stories That Happened to aFriend of a Friend. New York: Black Dog & Lev-enthal Publishers, 2000.

Dickson, Paul, and Joseph Gouldon. Myth-Informed.New York: Perigee Books, 1993.

Genge, N. E. The As-Complete-As-One-Could-BeGuide to Modern Myths. New York: RandomHouse, 2000.

Glantz, George. “Cops Out to Quell Urban Legends.”Times Herald, March 30, 2002. [Online] http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=3705584&BRD=1672&PAG=461&dept-id=.



Holt, David, and Bill Mooney. Spiders in the Hairdo—Modern Urban Legends. Little Rock, Ark.: AugustHouse Publishers, 1999.

Urban Legends Research Centre. [Online] http://www.ulrc.com.au/html.


barter The exchange or the process of negoti-ating certain goods or services for othergoods or services.

Bedouin A nomadic person who is an Arabfrom the desert areas of North Africa andArabia. Via Old French beduin, ultimatelyfrom Arabic badw, or desert, nomadicdesert people.

betrothal The act of becoming or beingengaged to marry another person.

birthstone Each month of the year has a par-ticular precious gemstone or a semi-precious stone associated with it. It isbelieved that if a person wears the stoneassigned their birth month, good fortuneor luck will follow.

deity A divine being, god, or goddess or some-thing or someone that is treated like a god.From the ecclesiastical Latin deitas, mean-ing divine nature.

Deity When capitalized refers to God inmonotheistic belief or religions.

exorcism The act, religious ceremony, or ritu-al of casting out evil spirits from a personor a place.

omen A prophetic sign or occurrence or some-thing that gives an indication of the courseof future events.

oracle Either someone or something that isthe source of wisdom, knowledge orprophecy. Can also refer to the placewhere the prophetic word would be given.Via French from the Latin oraculum, fromorare to speak.

Passover The seven or eight days of a Jewishfestival that begins on the fourteenth dayof Nissan and commemorates the exodusof the Hebrews from their captivity in

Egypt. From the Hebrew word pesa, mean-ing to pass without affecting.

pharaoh An all-powerful person in a positionof authority and who expects unquestion-ing obedience, such as the ancient Egypt-ian rulers of Egypt. From the Hebrew parohand Egyptian pr-o, meaning great house.

predator Any organism or animal that hunts,kills, and eats other animals. Can refer to aruthless person who is extremely aggressivein harming another. From the Latinpraedator and praedari, meaning to seize asplunder.

Sabbath A day set apart as one of religiousworship and rest from work—observed onSunday for Christians, Saturday in Judaismand some Christian denominations. Fromthe Greek sabbaton, via the Latin sabba-tum, and Hebrew sabba, meaning rest.

spittle Something that looks like or is saliva,which is secreted from the mouth.

superstition The belief that certain actionsand rituals have a magical effect resultingin either good or bad. From the Latin stemsuperstition, and superstes, meaning stand-ing over or in awe.

taboo Something that is forbidden. In somecases can refer to something being sacred,therefore forbidden, such as in Polynesiansocieties. From the Tongan tabu, said tohave been introduced into the Englishlanguage by Captain James Cook in thelate eighteenth century.

talisman An object such as a gemstone orstone, believed to have magical powers orproperties. From the Greek telesma, mean-ing something consecrated, telein, to com-plete, and telos, result.

Valhalla In Norse mythology, when the soulsof heroes are killed in battle, they spendeternity in a great hall, which is calledValhalla. From the Old Norse valhall, liter-ally meaning hall of the slain.

Valkyrie One of the 12 handmaids of Odin inNorse mythology who ride their horsesover the battlefield as they escort the soulsof slain heroes to Valhalla. From the Old



Norse Valkyrja, meaning literally chooserof the slain.

Zoroaster A Persian prophet (c. 628 B.C.E.–c.551 B.C.E) and the founder of an ancient

religion called Zoroastrianism whose prin-cipal belief is in a supreme deity and of theexistence of a dualism between good andevil. Derived from the Greek word Zarat orZarathustra, meaning camel handler.



Chapter 14

Invaders from

Outer Space

Are humans alone in the universe?

Throughout history, humankind’s religions

have probed the unknown to provide an

answer to what occurs after death, and its

sciences have attempted to scan the cosmos

for clues to the possibility of intelligent life

elsewhere in the stars.

241

Chapter Exploration

UFOs in Ancient Times

Space Visitors in the Bible andOther Holy Books

The Modern UFO Era Begins

The Air Force and Project Blue BookThe Condon/University of Colorado Report

Hangar 18Roswell, New MexicoSocorro, New Mexico

UFO Contactees and Abductees

George AdamskiDaniel W. Fry

Betty and Barney HillThe Men in Black (MIB)

Whitley StrieberGeorge Van Tassel

The Influence of the Media

Close Encounters of the Third KindThe Day the Earth Stood Still

War of the WorldsThe X-Files

The UFO Mystery Grows

Area 51 and Reverse EngineeringCattle Mutilations

Crop CirclesMajestic-12

The Philadelphia Experiment

Introduction

On June 24, 1947, at 2 P.M., KennethArnold took off from the Chehalis,Washington, airport in his personal

plane and headed for Yakima, Washington. Hehadn’t been in the air for more than three min-utes when to the left and north of MountRainier he observed a chain of nine peculiar-looking objects flying from north to south atapproximately 9,500 feet. He estimated thesize of the objects to be approximately two-thirds that of a DC-4, and he timed the objectsbetween Mount Rainier and Mount Adamsand determined that they crossed this 47-milestretch in 1 minute and 42 seconds. This wasequivalent to 1656.71 miles per hour.

In an interview subsequent to the sighting,Arnold described the objects as appearing likesaucers skipping on water. This description wasshortened to “flying saucers” by newspapermenand resulted in the popular use of that term. Itwas the U. S. Air Force’s conclusion that theobjects of this sighting were due to a mirage,but for many individuals around the world, themysterious objects that Arnold sighted thatday were extraterrestrial spacecraft.

On the night of July 2, 1947, eight daysafter Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of mysteriousunidentified flying objects, another UFO wasreported to have crashed on ranchland about60 miles north of Roswell, New Mexico, andthe air force had recovered the wreckage. Thenext day, however, those startling media pro-nouncements were suddenly transformed intopuzzling accounts that the air force had beenmistaken. The supposed UFO was merely thescattered debris from a fallen weather balloon.

For many people reading the stories of theair force’s denial of having captured a flyingsaucer, the matter was ended with a wry smile

at the inefficiency of the military. Others,however, wondered how highly trained airforce personnel could possibly mistake a fewthin sticks and scraps of cloth for any kind ofaeronautical vehicle, to say nothing of anextraterrestrial craft capable of traversing theuniverse. Thus was born the seed of nearlyevery UFO government cover-up conspiracytheory that still thrives today. From themoment those initial startling headlines ofthe U.S. Air Force having discovered thedebris of a crashed flying saucer, millions ofpeople have remained convinced thathumankind is being visited and/or invaded byaliens from outer space.

In many ways, the year 1947 provided theideal time for such theories to grow. It hadbeen almost exactly two years since the Japan-ese had surrendered and the days of WorldWar II (1939–45) had at last come to a closeamid the fiery destruction of the nuclearbombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasa-ki. Atomic power frightened the great majorityof Americans, and many doomsayers werefrightening newly attentive audiences withtheir grim message that the world was about tocome to an end. Adding to the stress was thefact that the Soviet Union had erected the so-called Iron Curtain, and the free nations of theworld had to start worrying about the Commu-nist menace before they had really had time torecover from the Nazi’s Third Reich. In fact,some people said that the flying saucers were anew secret weapon launched against the Unit-ed States by diehard Nazis hiding in SouthAmerica. Other people in “the know” claimedthat the bizarre circular craft were newweapons that had been created by the Germanscientists who had been kidnapped by theSoviets during the last days of the war. Para-noia ran rampant and while some scientistslaughed at the notion of spaceships, otherswho seemed to be just as knowledgeable madeconvincing arguments for an invasion fromouter space. It wasn’t long before people wereseeing alien invaders on the silver screen insuch motion pictures as The Day the EarthStood Still (1951), The Thing from AnotherWorld (1951), Invaders from Mars (1953), andIt Came from Outer Space (1953)—and thenthey were seeing them in their own backyards.


Invaders from Outer Space242

KATHLEEN May described the alien beingthat she and seven other residents saw as looking more

frightening than the Frankenstein monster.

Kathleen May described the alien beingthat she and seven other Flatwoods, West Vir-ginia, residents saw on September 12, 1952, aslooking more frightening than the Franken-stein monster. May had her attention called tothe saucer by a group of excited boys, includ-ing her sons, who were at a nearby playgroundwhen they sighted a flying saucer emitting anexhaust that looked like red balls of fire.According to the boys, the UFO had landedon a hilltop in back of the May house.

May later told reporters that she kepttelling the boys that it was just their imagina-tion, but they continued to insist that theyhad seen a flying saucer land behind the hill.Finally, a husky teenaged boy found a flash-light and said that he was going to investigate.At the urging of her son, May agreed toaccompany him, and the other boys fell inbehind them. About halfway up the hill, shebegan to change her mind about whatever theboys had seen being in their imaginations, forshe could see a strange, reddish glow emanat-ing from somewhere near the top. After abouthalf an hour of tramping through the brush,their flashlight beam spotlighted an immense,humanlike figure with a blood-red face andgreenish eyes that blinked out from under apointed hood. Behind the monster was a“glowing ball of fire as big as a house” thatgrew dimmer and brighter at intervals. Theintrepid band of flying saucer-hunters fled inpanic from the sight.

Later, May described the monster as hav-ing “terrible claws.” Estimates of the monster’sheight ranged from seven to ten feet, buteveryone agreed about one characteristic ofthe alien—it had emitted a sickening odor,like sulphur.

On the evening of August 21, 1955, aUFO touched down in a rural area outside ofKelly-Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and set loosealien invaders on the eight adults and threechildren who had gathered for some Sundayevening fellowship. Representatives of the airforce, local police, and area newspapers con-ducted an extensive and well-documentedinvestigation of what has become a classicencounter in the annals of UFO research. Theadults involved in the incident were found to

be rather conservative, reserved individuals,the kind of people unlikely to have inventedsuch a wild and incredible adventure for thesake of sensational publicity.

According to the Sutton family, whentheir teenaged son, Billy Ray, left the farm-house that Sunday evening to get a drinkfrom the well he saw a bright object landabout a city block away from the farmhouse.Billy Ray’s report of the strange aerial phe-nomenon was met with a pronounced lack ofinterest by the others until they saw littlemen, less than four feet tall with long armsand large, round heads approaching the farm-house. The smallish invaders looked likemonsters with their nickel-plated jumpsuits,their glowing, yellow eyes, and their other-worldly appearance.

Fearing for their lives, the farmers pickedup the Suttons’ rifles and shotguns and beganto fire upon the alien creatures. But they toldinvestigators that such a counterattack on themonsters was to no avail. The bullets justseemed to bounce off the little beings’ nickel-plated armor. Although the Suttons and theirneighbors were positive that they had madedirect hits on the creatures, the little mon-


243Invaders from Outer Space

Kenneth Arnold with a

drawing of a UFO.


sters just jumped right up and ran off into thedarkness, only to regroup for another chargetoward the farmers in the house. Accordingto the farmers’ observations to various inves-tigators of the shootout, the alien beings’extremely large eyes appeared to be very sen-sitive to light. In retrospect, they all felt thatit had been the farmhouse’s outside lights,rather than the farmers’ bullets, that had trulyprevented the invaders from advancing intothe home.

The Suttons and their neighbors battledthe seemingly invulnerable little monsters fornearly four hours before they managed to getinto their motor vehicles and drive in panic tothe Hopkinsville police station to get rein-forcements. Chief Greenwell was convincedby the hysteria of the three children and theobvious fear of the eight adults that they haddefinitely been battling something verystrange out there in the country.

With Chief Greenwell in the lead, morethan a dozen state, country, and city lawenforcement officers arrived to investigatethe farmers’ claims and, if necessary, do battlewith the alien invaders. On the way to thefarm scene, the officers noticed whatappeared to be a peculiar shower of meteorscoming from the direction of the Suttonfarmhouse. One officer later said that themeteors had made a “swishing sound” as theypassed overhead.

Although the small army of law enforce-ment officers found no traces of extraterrestri-al aliens or their spaceship, they found several“peculiar signs and indications” that some-thing mighty strange had taken place thatevening on the Suttons’ farm. For one thing,the teetotaling, conservative Suttons andtheir neighbors had thought that whateverthey perceived to be real was threateningenough to cause them to put bullet holes inthe walls of every barn and outbuilding on theplace. Sutton claimed that he had blasted oneof the beings point-blank with his shotgun,only to have the creature simply do a somer-sault and roll off into the darkness. Taylor, oneof the other men at the Sutton place thatnight, told investigators that he had used upfour boxes of shells on the little men.

Stories such as these fueled the fears ofmen and women across the United States thatthey would be powerless in the face of an alieninvasion from outer space. In the late 1960s,Harold D. Lasswell, professor of law and polit-ical science at Yale University, offered hisspeculations on what would happen if humancivilization were to be confronted by extrater-restrial aliens. If that alien culture were tech-nologically superior to human culture—whichit would be if it had successfully conqueredspace to land on Earth—Lasswell stated thatthe human race would be in the same rela-tionship to another planet that folk societiesin human history had often occupied whenfaced by an industrialized nation of westernEurope or an empire that possessed advancedweaponry. He went on to say that human reli-gions, arts, and sciences would be judged infe-rior to whatever doctrines and formulas wereheld by the invaders, and in such an event asan extraterrestrial invasion, there would bethe grim possibility that the superior culturemight select the brightest, healthiest, andmost promising Earth children and separatethem from their families so they might bereared in the aliens’ greater intellectual andtechnological environment. However, such aculture might also be somewhat benign andpaternal and force humans to abandon allaggressive pursuits and devote their time toaesthetic endeavors.

If the invading extraterrestrial cultureshould be generally comparable to human cul-ture in scientific advancement and technolog-ical development, perhaps superior only in thearea of space flight, for example, then Lasswellsaw earthlings in a situation similar to theCold War rivalry, as various Earth nationswould strive to win the favor of the new domi-nant civilization on the scene. If the extrater-restrial invaders arrived on Earth as unifiedand powerful, Lasswell concluded, then earth-lings would be at a great disadvantage.

Millions of fearful men and women aroundthe world feel that humans are at a great disad-vantage when it comes to dealing with thestrangers in the skies. Although there is noproof that any of the mysterious craft seen bythese concerned people originate from anextraterrestrial source, a large percentage of the



population believe that alien invaders circlethe planet Earth.

In June 1998, a CNN/Time poll found that27 percent of all Americans believe thataliens have already visited Earth, and 80 per-cent maintain that the government is con-ducting a cover-up to keep the truth ofextraterrestrial visitation from the generalpopulation. On June 8, 1999, a National Insti-tute of Science/Roper Poll surveyed a nation-wide sampling of men and women and foundthat 25 percent believed UFOs to be alienspacecraft and another 12 percent thoughtthem to be vehicles of a secret governmentagency. When the pollsters asked the respon-dents how they felt the general public woulddeal with the matter if it were proved thatUFOs were extraterrestrial craft, 25 percentfelt that the majority of people would panic;10 percent feared their fellow citizens wouldbehave irrationally; 14 percent guessed thegeneral public would act in strange ways; 36percent believed that vast numbers of citizenswould be concerned about the prospects of animminent alien invasion; and only 13 percentestimated that most U.S. citizens could dealwith the confirmation of alien visitation in acalm and rational manner.

Thousands of men and women are handlingthe prospect of alien visitation by insisting thatthey have been abducted and physically exam-ined by extraterrestrial beings. In the opinion ofmany UFO researchers who believe that suchabductions are truly occurring, the aliens areattempting to use their advanced technology toaccomplish an intergalactic experiment inspecies crossbreeding. The beings responsiblefor such physical examinations are referred to asthe “Grays,” and are smallish beings somewhatreptilian in appearance. The abductees andcontactees who have encountered these UFO-nauts stated that they stood between four and ahalf to five feet tall and their skin color was grayor greenish-gray. Their heads were round, large,disproportionately oversized by human stan-dards, and their facial features were dominatedby large, lidless, staring eyes, often with reptil-ianlike pupils. They had no discernible lips, andwhere one might expect to see a nose, the wit-nesses cited only nostrils, nearly flush againstthe smooth texture of the face.

In addition to the fear of invasion orabduction by extraterrestrials, many individu-als fear the terror on the ground, the infamousMen in Black (MIB), threatening strangerswho appear to have a great deal to do with theUFO mystery—but nothing to do with thehumorous motion picture series starring WillSmith and Tommy Lee Jones. In manyinstances, those individuals who have beenwitnesses of UFO activity have claimed tohave suffered a peculiar kind of personalharassment. At first, there are often sinistervoices that whisper threats on the telephoneand warn researchers and witnesses of unusualphenomena to terminate specific investiga-tions or to forget entirely what they have seen.Those who have taken photographs or videosof UFOs or obtained any kind of physical evi-dence of paranormal phenomena have beencalled upon by rather mysterious men dressedin black—often claiming government affilia-tion—who confiscate the pictures, the nega-tives, the videotape, or whatever proof thewitnesses may have had of their sighting.

In the majority of such instances, thosewho received an “unwelcome” from the MIBdescribed their inquisitors as rather short men,often five foot six or less, with dark complex-ions and somewhat Asian features. Whenpressed for more complete descriptions anddetails, the witnesses have stated that the MIBusually wore dark glasses, but if the glasseswere ever removed, they had large eyes thatwere noticeably slanted, but slanted in a man-ner somehow different from Asians.

Beginning in 1947, shortly after thealleged UFO crash outside of Roswell, NewMexico, and continuing into the twenty-firstcentury, thousands of UFO witnesses, investi-gators, abductees, and contactees claim tohave been visited by ominous strangers



A CNN/Time poll found that 27 percent of all Americans believe that aliens have already visited Earth.

dressed in black who made it frighteninglyclear that they represented a powerful andeverywhere-present “someone” who wouldviolently enforce their orders to discontinueresearch or to surrender all artifacts, video-tapes, and photographs. Often such threatshave been punctuated with the allegation thatsuch cooperation was essential for “the goodof your family, your country, and your world.”

While some investigators of the UFO mys-tery and a good number of skeptics believesuch accounts of alien invaders, extraterrestri-al abductors, and Men in Black to be fancifulfolklore made fearful by human paranoia, thequestion of invaders from outer space verymuch belongs in the examination of theunknown and the unexplained.

M Delving Deeper

Bowen, Charles, ed. The Humanoids. Chicago: HenryRegnery, 1969.

Edwards, Frank. Flying Saucers—Serious Business. NewYork: Lyle Stuart, 1967.

Fawcett, Lawrence, and Barry J. Greenwood. ClearIntent: The Government Coverup of the UFO Expe-rience. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall,1984.

Good, Timothy. Above Top Secret—The WorldwideUFO Coverup. New York: William Morrow, 1988.

Story, Ronald D., ed. The Encyclopedia of Extraterres-trial Encounters. New York: New AmericanLibrary, 2001.

UFOs in Ancient Times

Since primitive humans first crawled outof their caves and gazed up in awe at thestar-filled night, humankind has been

intrigued by the unexplained mysteries of theuniverse. Early myths and legends tell of mys-terious objects roaring across the heavens.Scraps of ancient documents reveal phenome-nal, unexplained manifestations in the skies.Virtually every religion relates visitations fromangels, demons, devils, and gods who descend-ed to Earth in ancient times.

With the highly publicized arrival of the“flying saucers” in the earth’s atmosphere in1947, modern humans were confronted with

what they thought was a new celestial mys-tery. However, in their efforts to interpret thisphenomenon, a band of scholarly individualsdug through old documents and musty recordsand discovered that the UFO phenomenonhad appeared periodically throughout history.Gradually, some UFOlogists believedhumankind’s gods, angels, devils, and demonswere nothing more than alien visitors fromsome superior civilization on some far planetin a dark corner of the universe.

The hypothesis of ancient astronautsreceived its most popular expression in Erichvon Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? (1970),which led to the formation of an internationalAncient Astronaut Society in 1973. Whilemany find the premise that “gods” from outerspace may have guided developing humankindin its evolutionary ascent, critics find fault inthe propensity of such theorists to attribute anyancient, unexplained mystery to extraterrestri-als who supposedly seeded, propagated, and stillmaintain watch over the planet. Despite theseshortcomings, certain researchers have amassedan impressive stack of evidence to support theirbeliefs that ancient astronauts visited Earth inprehistory, and old historical accounts, ancientlegends, and myths are brought forth and givenfresh interpretations.

The possibility of ancient space visitationswas explored by Dr. Carl Sagan (1934–1996)as early as the 1966 convention of the Ameri-can Astronautical Society. “Our tiny corner ofthe universe may have been visited thousandsof times in the past few billions of years,”Sagan stated in Intelligent Life in the Universe(1966), coauthored with I. S. Shklovski. “Atleast one of these visits may have occurred inhistorical times.” Sagan, both an exobiologistand an astronomer, theorized that Earth mayhave been visited by various galactic civiliza-tions many times during prehistoric times andthat it is not out of the question that artifactsof such extraterrestrial visits might still exist,or even that some kind of alien base is main-tained within our solar system to provide con-tinuity for successive expeditions.

Such a hypothesis coming from a respectedscientist encouraged many UFO researchers totheorize that Homo sapiens may have been



seeded on Earth, for despite the many theoriesput forth by conventional scientists, it is stillnot known how humans originated on thisplanet. The Darwinian theory of evolutionremains a fascinating, yet unproved, hypothe-sis, simply because the elusive “missing link”remains undiscovered. The alleged linkbetween humans and their anthropoid cousinsmay have been provided by visitors fromanother world.

Some believe that not only did the ancientastronauts carefully guide the evolution ofhumankind, they also assisted early builders inerecting great monuments as testimony totheir presence. For instance, there is theCheops Pyramid, the tallest structure in antiq-uity, which, discounting a number of skyscrap-ers in the United States, still ranks as theninth tallest architectural marvel in the worldtoday. It has been estimated that more than2,300,000 stone blocks of an average weight oftwo and one-half tons went into the construc-

tion of this last resting place for the pharoahCheops, c. 2800 B.C.E. The Pyramid of Khafre,near Cheops, stands 442 feet high and covers12 acres. The third pyramid in the massive tri-umvirate, Mycerinus, is 215 feet tall and 346feet wide on each side. Those researchers whofavor the ancient astronaut hypothesis protestthat the classic picture of teams of men ropedtogether and tugging away at moving the mas-sive stone blocks up the ramps, tier by tier,may be feasible, but such a method of con-struction would call for such unlikely figuresas 100,000 slaves struggling in torment for 20years to shape one pyramid. It seems illogicalto such theorists that any governing agency,no matter how tyrannical and all-powerful,could ever conscript that many workers overthat long a period of time without causing arevolt or draining off too much manpowerfrom other tasks, such as raising food. In addi-tion, it seems unlikely that the governmentwould be able to convince the populace thatthe pyramid was necessary in the first place.



Alien footprint.

(ARCHIVES OF

BRAD STEIGER)

Would supplying tombs for dead pharoahs beconsidered a worthy task on which to expendso much time and manpower? Would ancientEgypt, with a population of only a few million,stand such a drain of numbers for long periodsof 10 or 20 years?

To those who espouse the ancient astro-naut theory, such massive works as the pyra-mids of Egypt were built by interveningextraterrestrials, who used the power plants oftheir flying saucers to hoist such tonnage intoplace. Spaceships of vast proportions mayhave brought extraterrestrial colonists to vari-ous parts of Earth and may also have suppliedthe heavy lift power for erecting great stoneworks before returning to the home planet.

The earliest civilization of which contem-porary science has any records flowered amongthe Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia. Formany years the reason for this sudden onset ofculture in Sumer had remained a mystery. Itwasn’t until the 1980s that science determinedjust how such a miracle of seemingly instantprogress had occurred. Now it is known that

this quantum leap in humankind’s intellectualdevelopment occurred in Sumer 6,000 yearsago when cuneiform writing was developed torecord a dramatic starburst. Literally overnightin evolutionary terms, the Sumerians gave theworld the first love song, the first school sys-tem, the first directory of pharmaceutical con-coctions, a law code, and the first parliament.The roots of the Judeo-Christian religiousbeliefs grew from the “tree of knowledge,” theGarden of Eden, which tradition places in thatsame area. The origins of Western culture werenursed in Sumer, and it has come to beacknowledged as the cradle of civilization—allbecause of a starburst.

Astronomers recognize that the nearest andbrightest supernova that has ever been wit-nessed by humankind was Vela X, now a faintlyflashing pulsar about 1,300 light-years from oursolar system. George Michanowsky, a specialistin Mesopotamian astronomy, saw how the firstand most fundamental symbol of Sumerianscript was one which represented “star.” Hewent on to show how the very first word everwritten by a human hand soon became linkedwith the symbol for “deity,” thus communicat-ing “star god.” Michanowsky saw the death-blaze of Vela X to have been such a dramaticsky show that it became a profound culturalorganizing principle that forced human knowl-edge to take a giant leap forward. But was theresomething more that took place at that time?

The Babylonian priest-historian Berossuschronicled the coming of Oannes, an entitydescribed as being half-man, half-fish, who sur-faced from the Persian Gulf to instruct the earlyinhabitants of Mesopotamia in the arts of civi-lization. Before the advent of Oannes, Berossusstated, the Sumerians lived like beasts in thefield, with no order or rule. The Sumerianslived exactly as their primitive forefathers hadexisted until Oannes, the bizarre “beast withreason” appeared in their midst. The giftedalien entity was endowed with superior intelli-gence, it is written, but its appearance wasfrightening to behold. Oannes had the body ofa fish with humanlike feet—and a head thatcombined the features of fish and human.

Berossus explained that the Fishmanwalked about on land during the day, counsel-



Petroglyph allegedly

identified as an

“astronaut.” (KLAUS

AARSLEFF/FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

SOME UFOlogists believed humankind’s gods,angels, devils, and demons were nothing more than

alien visitors.

ing the Sumerians, but returned to the oceaneach evening. Oannes gave the Sumeriansinsight into letters and sciences and everykind of art. He taught them to construct hous-es, to found temples, to compile laws, andexplained to them the principles of geometri-cal knowledge. He made them distinguish theseeds of the earth, and showed them how tocollect fruits. In short, he instructed them ineverything that could tend to soften theirmanners and humanize them.

Sumerian astronomers became so accuratein their science that their measurements onthe rotation of the Moon is off only 0.4 frommodern, computerized figures. One pictographdepicts the planets revolving around theSun—something that Copernicus and Keplerpostulated only 500 years ago. At the heightof the Greek civilization, the highest knownnumber was 10,000. After that sum, the Greekmathematicians could only fall back on“infinity.” A tablet found in the hills nearancient Sumer some years back contained a15-digit number:195,955,200,000,000.

Many ancient cultures have legends ofamphibians or serpent people who, likeOannes, the half-human, half-fish, instructedthe early inhabitants of Mesopotamia in thearts of civilization. There was Quetzalcoatl,the feathered serpent of the Aztecs, whodescended from heaven in a silver egg, andthere are the Nagas, the handsome, semidi-vine Serpent People with supernatural powerswho figure in the Hindu and Buddhist tradi-tions. Throughout the dim corridors of history,there are frequent mentions of legendary “skypeople,” who were considered to have beenemissaries of the “flying serpent.” The snake-worshiping Aztecs and Mayans are not farremoved from the Chinese, who worshiped acelestial dragon. Both cultures may have beencontacted by emissaries from another world, ahighly advanced extraterrestrial reptilianspecies that has been observing the evolutionof Earth for millions of years and has returnedin the “Grays,” the UFOnauts of moderntimes, who are described by contactees andabductees as reptilian in appearance.

If, as those researchers who champion theancient astronaut hypothesis believe, extrater-

restrials constructed so many of the architec-tural wonders of the ancient world and mayeven have guided the evolutionary path ofhumankind, the great question remainswhether the “gods” of old have returned intheir chariots as our benefactors or our owners.

M Delving Deeper

Drake, W. Raymond. Gods and Spacemen in theAncient West. New York: New American Library,1974.

Shklovski, I. S., and Carl Sagan. Intelligent Life in theUniverse. New York: Dell Books, 1968.

Sitchin, Zecharia. The 12th Planet. New York: Avon,1978.

Von Daniken, Erich. Chariots of the Gods? New York:G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970.

———. Gods from Outer Space. New York: G. P. Put-nam’s Sons, 1971.

Space Visitors in the Bible and Other

Holy Books

One of the most beloved stories in the Christ-ian tradition concerns the Star of Bethlehemthat hovered over the stable where lay theinfant Jesus (c. 6 B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.). In recentyears, some UFO researchers have suggestedthat the “star” was actually a spaceship fromanother world, thus raising the controversialquestion of whether the Holy Bible, the mostrevered book in the Western world, containsreferences to UFOs and alien visitors. Provok-ing even greater controversy are thoseresearchers who make reference to the Christ-ian Apocrypha, books banned by church cen-sorship from services and religious reading,and the claim that Jesus was brought to Earthin the Star of Bethlehem, which is describedin the ancient texts as being winged, with var-ious colored rays shooting out from behind it.

According to those UFO researchers whoscour the Scriptures for descriptions ofextraterrestrial visitations, the writers of bibli-



MANY ancient cultures have legends ofamphibians or serpent people.

cal times were at a disadvantage in describingsophisticated spacecraft. For lack of a betterterm, they resorted to their own known wordfor a vehicle of transporation—“chariot.”Those UFO researchers who have conducted acareful analysis of biblical texts have foundthree types of cosmic conveyances employed asvehicles of transportation for celestial beings:

1. The wheel, or disc-shaped object describedby Ezekiel;

2. the chariot of fire mentioned in the secondbook of Kings;

3. the cloudy chariot found in the writings ofMoses, Daniel, David, Matthew, Paul, andJohn.

In II Kings 2:11–12, 6:17; Psalms 68:17;and Habakkuk 3:8, the Old Testament writersdescribe cosmic craft identified as a “chariot offire” powered by engines called “horses of fire”with “charioteers” (pilots). The chariot’s lift-off is described as a “whirlwind.” In II Kings iswritten: “And it came to pass, when the Lordwould take up Elijah into heaven by a whirl-wind, that Elijah went with Elisha from Gil-gal…and…behold, there appeared a chariot offire, and horses of fire, and parted them bothasunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwindinto heaven…”

In Zachariah 6:1–7, four cosmic pilots aredispatched in as many chariots (spacecraft),which come out from between two mountains.The prophet Zachariah is informed that eachcharioteer had flight orders to go to a differentpart of the country. According to the Scrip-ture, the four UFOnauts had been ordered to“walk to and fro through the earth.” The Con-fraternity Version of the Bible reports that theorders were to “Go patrol the Earth.”

Moses frequently mentioned the presenceof the cloud chariots: “The Lord descended inthe cloud”; “The Lord came down in a cloud”;“The Lord went before them by day in a pillar

of cloud to lead them the way and by night ina pillar of fire.” The prophet Daniel wasanother who described the use of a cloudychariot for cosmic transportation.

Other UFO researchers say that if onewere to read the creation story in Genesisfrom the historical perspective of our currentawareness of genetic engineering, the interac-tion between the Sons of God and the fairdaughters of men assumes a rather differentinterpretation: “And it came to pass, whenmen began to multiply on the face of the earthand daughters were born to them, that thesons of God saw the daughters of men werefair; so they took them wives of all whom theychose.…There were giants on the earth inthose days; and also after that, for the sons ofGod came in unto the daughters of men, andthey bore children to them, and they becamegiants who in the olden days were men ofrenown” (Genesis 6:1–4).

If those fallen angels of Genesis should actu-ally have been extraterrestrial scientists con-ducting experiments on female members of thedeveloping strain of Homo sapiens, they werecarrying out a directive of the Star Gods to pro-vide early humankind with a genetic boost. TheHebrew word to describe demigods—or men ofgreat renown, those who were said to be the off-spring of the Sons of God and the daughters ofmen—is Nephilim. Interestingly, the word usedto denote true giants, as far as great stature wasconcerned, was rephaim. The Israelites foundsuch giants among the Canaanite inhabitants ofPalestine. Among these were the Anakims ofPhilisa and the Emims of Moab. Goliath was aGittite, a man of great stature and bulk, but hewas not a Nephilim.

In the apocryphal Book of Enoch (7:12),one learns more of the nonterrestrial entitieswho desire the daughters of men for their owninterests: “It happened after the sons of men hadmultiplied in those days, that elegant, beautifuldaughters were born to them. And when theangels, the sons of heaven, beheld them, theybecame enamored of them, saying to each other:Come, let us select for ourselves wives from theprogeny of men, and let us beget children.”

Those researchers who believe that theBible contains many passages relating to



THE Hebrew word to describe demigods, ormen of great renown, is Nephilim.

extraterrestrial visitations often state that“gods” from other worlds may have promptedthe destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, sug-gesting that the two cities were devastated byan ancient nuclear blast. They also mentionother ancient texts that describe flyingmachines, advanced technology, and awesomeweapons wielded by the gods.

The sacred Hindu hymns, the Rig-Veda,constitute some of the oldest known religiousdocuments. The splendid poetry tells of theachievements of the Hindu pantheon of gods,and one passage tells of Indra, a god-being,who was honored when his name was turnedinto “India.” Indra, who became known as the“fort destroyer” because of his exploits in war,was said to travel through the skies in a flyingmachine, the Vimana. This craft was equippedwith awesome weapons capable of destroyinga city. The effect of these weapons seems tohave been like that of laser beams or somekind of nuclear device.

Another ancient Indian text, the Mahab-harata, tells of an attack on an enemy army:“It was as if the elements had been unfurled.The sun spun around in the heavens. Theworld shuddered in fever, scorched by the ter-rible heat of this weapon. Elephants burst intoflames.…The rivers boiled. Animals crumpledto the ground and died. The armies of theenemy were mowed down when the ragingelements reached them. Forests collapsed insplintered rows. Horses and chariots wereburned up.…The corpses of the fallen weremutilated by the terrible heat so that theylooked other than human.…”

Many old traditions speak of a war betweenthe forces of light and darkness that raged inhumankind’s prehistory. Perhaps there wererival extraterrestrial forces that fought fordominance over prehistoric Earth. Accordingto some traditions, the Sons of Light van-quished certain Dark Magicians who sought toenslave developing humankind. Whatevermay have caused such a violent conflict, physi-cal evidence exists on Earth indicating thatsomeone was exercising power of formidableenergy. There are accounts of sand melted intoglass in certain desert areas, of hill forts withvitrified portions of stone walls, of the remains

of ancient cities that had been destroyed bywhat appears to have been extreme heat—farbeyond that which could have been scorchedby the torches of primitive human armies.Even conventionally trained archaeologistswho have encountered such anomalous findshave admitted that none of these catastropheshave been caused by volcanoes, by lightning,by crashing comets, or by conflagrations set byhumankind.

M Delving Deeper

Downing, Barry. The Bible and Flying Saucers. NewYork: Lippincott, 1968; Avon, 1970; Marlowe,1997.

Drake, W. Raymond. Gods and Spacemen in theAncient West. New York: New American Library,1974.

Ginsburg, Irwin. First Man, Then Adam! New York:Pocket Books, 1978.

Jessup, M. K. UFO and the Bible. New York: CitadelPress, 1956.

Von Daniken, Erich. Chariots of the Gods? New York:G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970.

The Modern UFO

Era Begins

After takeoff from the Chehalis, Wash-ington, airport in his personal plane onJune 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold head-

ed for Yakima, Washington. As he flew direct-ly toward Mount Rainier at an altitude ofapproximately 9,500 feet, a bright flashreflected on his airplane. To the left and northof Mount Rainier he observed a chain of ninepeculiar-looking objects flying from north tosouth. They were approaching Mount Rainierrapidly, and he assumed that they were jet air-craft. Every few seconds two or three of theobjects would dip or change course slightly,just enough for the sun to reflect brightly off



THE Rig-Veda constitutes some of the oldestknown religious documents.

them. As they approached Mount Rainier heobserved their outline quite clearly. Arnoldstated that he found it peculiar that he could-n’t find their tails, but nonetheless assumedthey were some type of jet aircraft.

After numerous sightings of unidentifiedflying objects had been reported by commer-cial and military pilots and an alleged flyingsaucer had crashed outside of Roswell, NewMexico, in early July 1947, army air forcepilots were reminded of the weird “foo fight-ers” that several Allied personnel had seen inWorld War II (1939–45). Often while onbombing missions, crews noticed strangelights that followed their bombers. Sometimesthe “foos” darted about. Other times they wereseen to fly in formation. Barracks and locker-

room rumors had classified the “foo fighters”as another of the Nazis’ secret weapons, butnot a single one of the glowing craft was evershot down or captured. Neither is there anyrecord of a “foo” ever damaging any aircraft orharming any personnel—outside of startlingthe wits out of pilots and crew members.

The “foos” were spotted in both the Euro-pean and Far Eastern theaters, and it came as nosurprise to these pilots when waves of “foos”were sighted over Sweden in July 1946. A kindof hysteria gripped Sweden, however, and themysterious “invasion” was reported at greatlength in the major European newspapers. Someauthorities feared that some new kind of Ger-man “V” weapon had been discovered andunleashed on the nation that had remained neu-tral throughout World War II. Others tried toexplain the unidentified flying objects away asmeteors, but witnesses said that the “ghost rock-ets” could maneuver in circles, stop and start,and appeared to be shaped like metal cigars.

It may have been an air force officer whoremembered the “foo fighters” who gave the



Picture of a UFO sighting

in 1964. (DEZSO

STERNOCZKY/FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

AN alleged flying saucer had crashed outside ofRoswell, New Mexico, in early July 1947.

order on July 26, 1952, to “Shoot them down!”when dozens of UFOs suddenly converged overWashington, D.C. Several prominent scien-tists, including Albert Einstein (1879–1955),protested the order to the White House andurged that the command be rescinded, not onlyin the interest of future intergalactic peace, butalso in the interest of self-preservation:Extraterrestrials would certainly look upon anattack by primitive jet firepower as a breach ofthe universal laws of hospitality.

The hostile order was withdrawn onWhite House orders by five o’clock that after-noon. That night, official observers puzzledover the objects, visible on radar screens andto the naked eye, as the UFOs easily outdis-tanced air force jets, whose pilots were orderedto pursue the objects but to keep their fingersoff the trigger. Although the air force wasdenying the Washington flap within another24 hours and attributing civilian saucer sight-ings to the usual causes (hallucinations, seeingplanets and stars), the national wire services

had already sent out word that for a time theair force officials had been jittery enough togive a “fire at will” order.

On May 15, 1954, air force chief of staffgeneral Nathan Twining told reporters that the“best brains in the Air Force” were trying tosolve the problem of the flying saucers. “If theycome from Mars,” Twining said, “they are so farahead of us we have nothing to be afraid of.”However, the general’s assurances that a tech-nologically advanced culture would automati-cally be benign did little to calm an increasing-ly bewildered and alarmed American public.And on December 24, 1959, after importantpeople and politicians had begun to demand



“Star Trek: The Motion

Picture.” (THE KOBAL

COLLECTION)

OTHERS tried to explain the unidentifiedflying objects as being meteors.

that the air force end its policy of secrecy, themuch-discussed Air Force Regulation 200-2was issued to all air force personnel.

Briefly, AFR 200-2 made a flat and directstatement that the air force was definitely con-cerned with the reporting of all UFOs “as a pos-sible threat to the security of the United Statesand its forces, and secondly, to determine tech-nical aspects involved.” In the controversialparagraph 9, the secretary of the air force gavespecific instructions that air force personnelwere not to release reports of unidentifiedobjects, “only reports…where the object hasbeen definitely identified as a familiar object.”

On February 27, 1960, Vice AdmiralRosco H. Hillenkoetter, USN, Ret., formerhead of the Central Intelligence Agency, star-tled air force personnel when he released tothe press photostatic copies of an air forcedirective that warned air force commands toregard the UFOs as “serious business.” The airforce admitted that it had issued the order, butadded that the photostatic copy that Hil-lenkoetter had released to the press was onlypart of a seven-page regulation, which hadbeen issued to update similar past orders, andmade no substantive changes in policy.

The official air force directive indicatedthe remarkable dual role the air force appearedto play in the unfolding UFO drama. Fromthen on, the unidentified flying objects—sometimes treated lightly by the press andreferred to as “flying saucers”—had to be rapid-ly and accurately identified as serious USAFbusiness. As AFR 200-2 pointed out, the airforce concern with these sightings was three-fold: “To determine if the object was a threatto the defense of the United States; to assesswhether continued research in the matter offlying saucers would contribute to technical orscientific knowledge; to explain to the Ameri-can people what was going on in their skies.”

AFR 200-2 stated that the responsibilityfor handling UFOs should rest with eitherintelligence, operations, the Provost Marshal,or the Information Officer—in that order ofpreference, dictated by limits of the base orga-nization. In addition, it was required thatevery UFO sighting be investigated andreported to the Air Technical IntelligenceCenter at Wright-Patterson AFB and thatexplanation to the public be realistic andknowledgeable. Obviously, in spite of officialdismissals, the air force was much aware of theUFOs and was actively investigating.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, retiredMarine Corps Major Donald E. Keyhoecharged the U.S. Air Force with deliberatelycensoring information concerning UFOs. As adirector of the National Investigations Com-mittee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), Key-hoe regularly repeated his accusations that,while the air force was seriously analyzing UFOdata in secret, it maintained a policy of official-ly debunking saucer stories for the press andridiculing all citizens who reported sightings.

The official air force response was that thereason for the top secret and classified designa-tions on UFO investigations was solely to pro-tect the identities of those individuals whomade reports of mysterious, unidentified “some-things” in the skies. The essence of all research,air force spokesmen insisted, was alwaysreleased to the communications media. Noth-ing of national interest was being withheld.

But men like Major Keyhoe and the mem-berships of numerous additional civilian UFO



Donald Keyhoe.


THE U.S. Air Force maintained a policy ofofficially debunking saucer stories for the press.

research groups (of which there were once asmany as 50) never accepted the air force’sclaims of serving the greater public interest byreleasing all pertinent details of their studiesand investigations. On March 28, 1966, aftera saucer “flap” in Michigan, Keyhoe was onceagain repeating his charges that the Pentagonhad a top-level policy of discounting all UFOreports and over the past several years hadused ridicule to discredit sightings.

On March 30, 1966, spokesmen for the airforce called a press conference to tell the Amer-ican public that they kept an open mind aboutUFOs and they categorically denied any “hush-ing” of saucer reports. In the case of recentMichigan sightings, a spokesman said, “marshgas” had been pinpointed as the source of col-ored lights observed by a number of people.

But by 1966, public-opinion surveys indi-cated that more than 50 million Americansbelieved in the existence of UFOs. Perhaps in1947 the majority of men and women hadbeen willing to laugh along with official dis-claimers and professional flying saucerdebunkers, but 20 years later the UFO climatehad become considerably warmer.

M Delving Deeper

Edwards, Frank. Flying Saucers—Serious Business. NewYork: Lyle Stuart, 1967.

Fawcett, Lawrence, and Barry J. Greenwood. ClearIntent: The Government Coverup of the UFO Experi-ence. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1984.

Good, Timothy. Above Top Secret—The WordwideUFO Coverup. New York: William Morrow, 1988.

Hynek, J. Allen, and Jacques Vallee. The Edge of Real-ity. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1975.


The Air Force and Project Blue Book

On June 24, 1947, when civilian pilot Ken-neth Arnold sighted nine discs near MountRainier in the state of Washington anddescribed the motion of the unidentified flyingobjects as looking like “a saucer skipping acrossthe water,” the Boise, Idaho, businessmaninadvertently coined a term that wouldbecome known in most languages of the world,

“flying saucers.” The U.S. Air Force immedi-ately denied that they had any such craft, andat the same time officially debunked Arnold’sclaim of having spotted unidentified flyingobjects. Donald H. Menzel, Professor of Astro-physics at Harvard, who became an unyieldingsaucer-skeptic and debunker, said that Arnoldhad been fooled by the tilting snow clouds ordust haze reflected by the sun. Arnold, howev-er, stuck fast to his story, and the item madethe front page of newspapers across the nation.For UFOlogists, it was the birth of an era.

During the period June through December1947 there was no specific organizationresponsible for investigating and evaluatingUFO reports. At this time everyone had anexpert opinion. Even within the militarystructure, there were those who expressedtheir own feelings and beliefs as to what UFOsactually represented.

The wide news coverage of public reportsof “flying discs or saucers” created sufficientconcern at high military echelons to authorizethe Air Material Command (AMC) to con-duct a preliminary investigation into these



Staff of Project Blue

Book. (FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

PROJECT Grudge completed its evaluations of244 UFO reports in August 1949.

reports. Early belief was that the objectsreported were of aircraft more advanced thanthose possessed by the U.S. Armed Forces.

A letter (September 23, 1947) from Lt.General Twining of AMC to the commandinggeneral of the Army Air Forces expressed theopinion that there was sufficient substance inthe reports to warrant a detailed study. OnDecember 30, 1947, a letter from the chief ofstaff directed AMC to establish a projectwhose purpose was to collect, collate, evaluate,and disseminate all information concerningUFO sightings and phenomena in the atmos-phere to those interested agencies. The projectwas assigned the code name “Sign.” Theresponsibility for “Project Sign” was delegatedto the Air Technical Intelligence Center,which was then part of the AMC. In Februaryof 1949 “Project Sign” completed its evalua-tions of the 243 UFO reports that had beensubmitted to the project. The report concludedthat: “No definite and conclusive evidence isyet available that would prove or disprove the

existence of these UFOs as real aircraft ofunknown and unconventional configuration.”

“Project Sign” was changed to “ProjectGrudge” on December 16, 1948, at the requestof the director of Research and Development.Project Grudge completed its evaluations of244 reports in August 1949. The conclusions ofthe Grudge reports were that the evaluations ofreports of UFOs to date had demonstrated that“these flying objects constitute no threat to thesecurity of the United States.” Grudge alsoconcluded that reports of UFOs were the resultof misinterpretations of conventional objects, amild form of mass hysteria or war nerves, andindividuals who sought to perpetrate a hoax orseek publicity. Project Grudge also recom-mended that the investigation and study ofreports of UFOs be reduced in scope.

Air force investigation of UFOs continuedon a reduced scale, and in December 1951 theAir Force entered into a contract with a pri-vate industrial organization for anotherdetailed study of the UFO cases on file. Thereport, which was completed March 17, 1954,is commonly referred to as Special ReportNumber 14. Reports one through 13 wereprogress reports dealing with administration.Special Report Number 14 reduced and evalu-ated all UFO data held in air force files. Basi-cally, the same conclusions were reached thathad been noted in both the preceding Signand Grudge reports.

It was during the early 1950s that thenational interest in reported sightings increasedtremendously. With the growing volume ofreports, a Scientific Advisory Panel on UFOswas established in late 1952. At a meeting heldduring January 14–18, 1953, all available datawas examined. Conclusions and recommen-dations of this panel were published in areport and made public. The panel concludedthat UFOs did not threaten the nationalsecurity of the United States and recom-mended that the aura of mystery attached tothe project be removed.

In March of 1952 Project Grudge becameknown as Project Blue Book. From this timeto its conclusion in 1969, the project con-cerned itself with investigation of sightings,evaluation of the data, and release of informa-



UFO photographed over

Mt. Rainier. (FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

DURING the early 1950s that the nationalinterest in reported sightings increased tremendously.

tion to proper news media through the Secre-tary of the Air Force, Office of Information(SAFOI). The staff of Project Blue Book wasassigned to carry out three main functions: totry to find an explanation for all reportedsightings of UFOs; to determine whether theUFOs posed any security threat to the UnitedStates; and to determine if UFOs exhibitedany advanced technology that the UnitedStates could utilize.

Blue Book officers were stationed at everyair force base in the nation. They were respon-sible for investigating all reported sightingsand for getting the reports into Blue Bookheadquarters at Wright-Patterson Air ForceBase. The bulk of the investigations, as inter-preted by field officers, led Blue Book officialsto decide that most people did not see extrater-restrial spacecraft, but bright stars, balloons,satellites, comets, fireballs, conventional air-craft, moving clouds, vapor trails, missiles,reflections, mirages, searchlights, birds, kites,spurious radar indications, fireworks, or flares.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who for more than twodecades served as an astronomical consultant toProject Sign and Project Blue Book, had beenteaching astronomy at Ohio State Universityin Columbus, which is not far from Dayton,where Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, thehome of Project Blue Book, was located. Whenhe entered the project, the government wastrying desperately to determine whether it wasthe Martians or the Russians who were respon-sible for the elusive discs being tracked in theatmosphere over North America. The air forceappealed to Hynek that they needed a compe-tent astronomer to tell them which cases aroseout of the misidentification of planets, stars,meteors, and so forth. Hynek admitted laterthat he was certain that the UFO phenomenonwas a result of postwar nerves, and he was cer-tain that in a few years the whole strange busi-ness would be forgotten. He also prematurelyconcluded that the flying saucers were strictlyan American fad. He never suspected that itwould turn out to be a global phenomenon. Butthe famous sightings in Michigan in March andApril 1967, the ones that got Dr. Hynekdubbed “Dr. Swamp Gas,” demonstrated to“Blue Book’s tame professor” that there was a“backlash of public sentiment.” For the first

time, Hynek said, he became aware that “thetide was slowly turning.”

Hynek said that two factions definitelyexisted in Project Blue Book. There werethose individuals who were extremely con-cerned over the radar trackings and the closeapproaches made by UFOs to civilian and mil-itary aircraft. These investigators assumed thatthe pilots were being truthful and were notconcocting weird tales. These open-mindedBlue Book personnel wanted to check all thepossibilities. But most of the top brass, Hynekcommented, couldn’t understand for a splitsecond why any of their colleagues wouldbother to take seriously the subject of UFOs.In what would become an often-quoted obser-vation, Hynek said, “Scientists in the year2066 may think us very naive in our denials.”

Project Blue Book, begun as Project Signin 1947, produced what the air force consid-ered a satisfactory explanation for most of the



J. Allen Hynek. (J. ALLAN

HYNEK CENTER FOR

UFO STUDIES)

DR. J. Allen Hynek had been teachingastronomy at Ohio State University.

nearly 13,000 sightings reported through1969. Of the unexplained UFO incidents, theofficial statement is: “The description of theobject or its motion cannot be correlated withany known object or phenomenon.”

On the basis of Blue Book reports, there-fore, the air force concluded:

1. No UFO has ever given any indication ofthreat to the national security.

2. There is no evidence that UFOs representtechnological developments or principlesbeyond present-day scientific knowledge.

3. There is no evidence that any UFOs are“extraterrestrial vehicles.”

The transfer of the responsibility of UFOresearch to the University of Colorado in1969 served to terminate the air force’s officialinvolvement in the UFO mystery, but theresidue of suspicions and outright accusationsof government cover-up and censorship hasnever been dissipated.

M Delving Deeper

Randle, Kevin D. Project Blue Book—Exposed. NewYork: Marlowe, 1997.

Ruppelt, Edward J. The Report on Unidentified FlyingObjects. New York: Doubleday, 1956.

Steiger, Brad, ed. Project Blue Book: The Top SecretUFO Findings Revealed. New York: ConFucianPress/Ballantine, 1976.


The Condon/University of

Colorado Report

Critics of the University of Colorado report,Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects(1969), complain that it is neither scientificnor objective and that Edward Condon, headof the project, used the report for personalvindictiveness. Commissioned by the U.S. AirForce at a cost exceeding $600,000, more than50 percent of the Condon Report consists ofreprints of old U.S. Air Force releases andirrelevant papers and essays on astronomical,meteorological, and other mundane phenom-ena. Many of the charts and graphs includeddate back to the early 1950s.

It would appear that little or no effort wasmade to collect, correlate, and present accu-rate data on the thousands of UFO reportsreceived and allegedly studied by the projectduring the 1966–68 period. The various con-tributors were unfamiliar with UFO researchand the report is poorly organized and appearsto have been assembled by a group neitherinformed nor interested in the subject.

Although the Colorado Project clearlyrepresented a conscious effort to satisfy theneeds of the air force contract, in the eyes ofits critics it did not indicate a sincere effort tocollect and examine the basic UFO data. Itsmain theme appeared to be the criticism ofthe extraterrestrial thesis. A genuinely scien-tific study would have collected sufficient datato determine whether or not a phenomenonexisted at all. Then all the various theorieswould have been studied and compared withthe available data. Sighting factors of time,geography, terrestrial features, the correlativeaspects in the witnesses’ backgrounds and fea-tures in their reports, must all be sifted andweighed before any theory can be considered.This type of systematic study was not under-



The cover of the US

paperback edition of

“The Condon Report.”


taken. Instead, the project treated the reportsindividually.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s review of the ScientificStudy of Unidentified Flying Objects, whichappeared in the April 1969 Bulletin of the AtomicScientists, stated that while the Condon com-mittee avowedly was devoted in large part toexposing hoaxes or the revealing of many UFOsas misidentifications of common occurrences,the report contains the same inexplicableresidue of unknowns that plagued the U.S. AirForce investigation for 20 years. In fact, Hynekobserved, the percentage of unknowns in theCondon Report appeared to be even higherthan in the air force investigation that led tothe Condon investigation in the first place.

Two former Condon committee members,David Saunders and Roger Harkins, laterwrote the book UFOS, Yes! Where the CondonCommittee Went Wrong (1968), which depict-ed a group of investigators at the University ofColorado who had little confidence in thechief scientist, Condon, and who were preoc-cupied with strenuously avoiding any conclu-sion that suggested the actual existence of theflying objects sighted by so many peoplethrough the years. Saunders and Harkins alsoshowed Condon, the principal investigator,giving statements to the press and to variouslecture audiences while the project was stillunderway, indicating that he had little or noexpectation of the investigation ever reachinganything but a completely negative conclu-sion as to the reality of UFOs.

M Delving Deeper

Condon, Edward U. The Scientific Study of UnidentifiedFlying Objects. New York: Bantam Books, 1969.

Randle, Kevin D. Project Blue Book—Exposed. NewYork: Marlowe, 1997.

Saunders, David R., and R. Roger Harkins. UFOs?Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong.New York: New American Library, 1968.


Hangar 18

For many years after the alleged event in July1947 in which a flying saucer was said to have

crashed on a ranch located about 60 milesnorth of Roswell, New Mexico, rumors ofdiminutive alien corpses found nearby werelargely dismissed by all but the more stubborntrue believers in extraterrestrial invaders.Every so often, though, stories would surfaceabout Hangar 18 on Wright-Patterson AirForce Base, which was said to hold theremains of the crashed Roswell flying saucerand the refrigerated corpses of the alien bodiesthat had been found alongside the spaceship.

As UFO research enters the twenty-firstcentury, controversy still rages over the truthof whether or not Major Jesse Marcel and hismen collected pieces of debris from a flyingsaucer along with the bodies of two to fiveextraterrestrial crew members. Many accountsfrom both civilians and military personnelwho claim to have been eyewitnesses to theevents at Roswell speak of five alien bodiesfound at the impact site north of Roswell andstate that four corpses were transported toHangar 18 at Wright Field, with the fifthgoing to the USAF mortuary service at LowryField. Two years before his death in the late1990s, pilot Oliver “Pappy” Henderson sworeat a reunion of his World War II bomber crewthat he had flown the remains of four alienbodies out of Roswell Army Field in a C-54cargo plane in July 1947.

Don Schmitt and Kevin Randle, in theirbook UFO Crash at Roswell (1991), include aninterview with Brig. Gen. Arthur Exon inwhich he states that, in addition to debrisfrom the wreckage, four tiny alien cadaverswere flown to Wright Field: “They [the alienbodies] were all found, apparently, outside thecraft itself.…The metal and material from thespaceship was unknown to anyone I talked to.[The event at] Roswell was the recovery of acraft from space.”

In his subsequent research, Randle hasdetermined that most accounts of eyewitnesses



FIVE alien bodies were allegedly found at theimpact site north of Roswell.

speak of five alien bodies found at the impactsite north of Roswell. His investigations con-firm the claims made previously by otherresearchers that four corpses were transportedto Wright Field and the fifth to Lowry Field tothe USAF mortuary service. There are, how-ever, numerous secondary accounts that main-tain that one of the aliens survived the crashand was still alive when Major Marcel and hisretrieval unit arrived on the scene. Some UFOresearchers believe that as late as 1986 thealien entity was still alive and well treated as aguest of the air force at Wright-Patterson.

M Delving Deeper

Beckley, Timothy Green. MJ-12 and the Riddle ofHangar 18. New Brunswick, N.J.: Inner LightPublications, 1989.

Berlitz, Charles, and William L. Moore. The RoswellIncident. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1980.

Friedman, Staton T., and Don Berliner. Crash atCorona. New York: Paragon Books, 1992.

Randle, Kevin D., and Donald R. Schmitt. UFOCrash at Roswell. New York: Avon Books, 1991

Scully, Frank. Behind the Flying Saucers. New York:Henry Holt, 1950.

Roswell, New Mexico

Although differences of opinion exist on thespecifics, there is a tentative consensus amongresearchers that an extraterrestrial space vehi-cle crashed on a ranch located about 60 milesnorth of Roswell, New Mexico, during thetime period July 2–4, 1947.

Major Jesse Marcel, recipient of five aircombat medals awarded in World War II(1939–45), intelligence officer for the 509thBomb Group, was ordered to handpick a top-security team and go to the ranch to salvage the



Hangar 18 was where

the US Air Force kept the

alleged wreckage of the

UFO crash. (PETER

BROOKSMITH/FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

debris of the unknown aircraft that rancherMac Brazel had discovered on his spread. Thestrange, weightless material discovered by the509th Bomber team was difficult to describe.The pieces varied in length from four or fiveinches to three or four feet. Some fragmentshad markings that resembled hieroglyphics.Although the material seemed to be unbreak-able, the military investigators thought that itlooked more like wood than metal. Marcel puthis cigarette lighter to one of the rectangularfragments, but it would not burn. Major Marceland his crew brought as many pieces of thecrashed UFO back to Roswell Army Air FieldBase as they could gather.

One of the first civilians who claimed toarrive on the scene following the crash wasBarney Barnett, a civil engineer from Socorro,New Mexico, who was employed by the feder-al government. Barnett later told friends thathe had seen alien bodies on the ground andinside the spaceship. He described them assmall, hairless beings with large heads andround, oddly spaced eyes. According to Bar-nett, a military unit arrived on the scene andan officer had ordered him off the site withthe stern admonition that it was his patrioticduty to remain silent about what he had seen.Although reports of retrieved alien bodiesnever made it into any military release in Julyof 1947, accounts of civilian eyewitnesses hav-ing seen between two and five nonhumancorpses soon entered the UFO literature.

On July 8, 1947, Walter Haut, publicaffairs officer at Roswell, issued the famouspress release stating that the army had discov-ered the debris of a crashed flying saucer. Thenews that the army had a downed saucer in itspossession created a sensation around theworld. However, after the flying saucer frag-ments were shipped to Brigadier GeneralRoger Ramey at the 8th Air Force at FortWorth, Texas, the story of the discovery of thebits and pieces of an extraterrestrial craft wasofficially transformed into the scraps of a col-lapsed high-altitude weather balloon.

While General Ramey is said to have beenthe one who decided to silence the story ofthe air force collecting flying saucer frag-ments, retired general Thomas DuBose, who

at the time of the Roswell incident was acolonel and a chief of staff to Ramey, later toldquite a different story. According to DuBose,the military investigators had no idea whatMajor Marcel had sent them, but then theorder came down from air force headquartersthat the story was to be “contained.”

DuBose said that the men came up withthe weather balloon story. A balloon such asthe one commonly in use at the time wasdropped from a couple of hundred feet andthey used its pieces for the official debunkingphotograph.

Lewis Rickert, who in 1947 was a mastersergeant and counterintelligence agent sta-tioned at Roswell air field, was among thosemilitary personnel who had actually been pre-sent at the crash site, and he agreed with Gen-eral DuBose in 1994 that the fragments col-lected from the air force had not come fromany weather balloon. He recalled that thejagged, flexible fragments were no more thansix or seven inches long and up to eight to teninches wide, and they could not be broken.

In the 1980s, Kevin Randle, a former cap-tain in U.S. Air Force intelligence, togetherwith Don Schmitt, director of the J. AllenHynek Center for UFO Studies, decided torenew an investigation of the Roswell crash.In their opinion, the Roswell incident, withits much-maligned and hashed-over stories ofan alleged flying saucer and alien bodies, stillbore many elements of truth. “If all this fusswas simply about a bunch of ranchers andtownspeople finding the debris from a bal-loon, why did the military seek out those wit-nesses and threaten to silence them?” Randleasked pointedly. “There is no question thatmembers of the Army were ordered never totalk about what they had seen. And thereseems to be substantial evidence to supportthe claims that military representatives visit-



ONE of the first civilian who claimed to arriveon the crash scene was Barney Barnett.

ed the homes of civilian witnesses andsilenced them as well.”

Randle believes that he and Schmitt havefound new evidence indicating that the crashoccurred on July 4, 1947, rather than July 2, asis commonly stated. It was on July 5, accord-ing to Schmitt and Randle, that Mac Brazelvisited Sheriff George Wilcox and informedhim of the peculiar discovery he had madenear his ranch the day before. The militaryunit under the command of Major Jesse Mar-cel retrieved the crash debris and alien bodieson July 5. On July 8, Walter Haut, the publicaffairs officer at Roswell, issued the pressrelease that the army had captured a flyingsaucer. Almost immediately thereafter, theofficial cover story of a collapsed weather bal-loon falling to Earth in the desert was heavilypromoted by the military.

During an interview with a granddaughterof Sheriff George Wilcox in March 1991,Schmitt and Randle were told that not onlydid the sheriff see the debris of a UFO, he alsosaw “little space beings.” According to thewoman, her grandfather had described theentities as having gray complexions and largeheads. They were dressed in suits of a silklikematerial. Later, military men visited the sher-iff and his wife and warned them that theywould be killed if they ever told anyone whatWilcox saw at the crash site. And not onlywould they be killed, but their children andgrandchildren would also be eliminated.

The persistent investigations of Randleand Schmitt located a Ms. Frankie Rowe, whohad been 12 years old at the time of the mys-terious occurrences outside of Roswell. Herfather, a lieutenant with the fire department,



Site of the Roswell, New

Mexico UFO crash.

(ARCHIVE PHOTOS, INC.)

had been called to extinguish an early morn-ing fire out north of town. He told his familyat dinner that night that he had seen theremains of what he had at first believed to bean airplane, but soon saw was “some kind ofship.” According to Rowe’s father, he also sawtwo alien corpses in body bags and a thirdalien entity walking around in a daze. Hedescribed the beings as about the size of a 10-year-old.

Schmitt and Randle also located GlennDennis, who had been the Roswell morticianin 1947. Dennis told them that he, too, hadbeen threatened by representatives of the mil-itary concerning his knowledge of the pres-ence of alien bodies. Dennis said that he had“blundered” into the Roswell Army Air Fieldhospital on the evening that the alien bodies

had been recovered. According to Dennis, a“nasty red-haired officer” confronted him andwarned him that if he ever told anyone aboutthe crash or the alien bodies, “they will bepicking your bones from the sand.”

In Randle’s opinion, the results of theirresearch prove beyond the shadow of a doubtthat aliens exist. And while he and Schmittdo not know conclusively whether or not oneof the alien crew survived the crash outside ofRoswell, “there is no doubt that somethingcrashed and that it held a crew.” Randle alsoinsists that “there is no doubt that the crewwas not human.”

Nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman firmlybelieves that a UFO exploded in the area inearly July 1947 and that the retrieved pieces



Alleged alien autopsy

performed in Roswell,

New Mexico. (FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

were shipped off to Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Dayton, Ohio.He denies the official pronouncement thatMajor Marcel and his crew found only adowned weather balloon at the crash site. Healso dismisses the theory that the debris wasthat of a crashed Japanese Fugo balloon bomb.It is Friedman’s contention that Walter Haut,on direct orders from base commander ColonelWilliam Blanchard, prepared the official pressrelease that initiated the military conspiracy toconceal the truth of a crashed UFO from thepublic. Friedman argues that an experiencedofficer such as Major Marcel would have beenvery familiar with all kinds of weather or mili-tary balloons and that he would not have mis-taken such ordinary debris for that of a downedalien spaceship. Nor would any of the militarypersonnel have mistaken alien bodies for thoseof diminutive human remains.

After the wreckage was properly identifiedas extraterrestrial in nature, Friedman con-tends, the official cover-up was instigated atboth the Roswell base and at the headquartersof the Eighth Air Force in Fort Worth, Texas,by Eighth Air Force Commander RogerRamey on direct orders from GeneralClements McMullen at SAC headquarters inWashington, D.C. Friedman has said that heand author-researcher William Moore inter-viewed at least 130 individuals who have first-hand knowledge of the UFO crash at Roswell.

Veteran UFO researcher John A. Keelcompletely discounts the allegations that analien craft crashed near Roswell in July 1947.In his opinion rancher Mac Brazel found theremains of a Japanese Fugo balloon. Thestrange “metal fragments,” Keel asserts, werebits of polished rice paper. The strange alien“hieroglyphics” were simple Japanese instruc-tions, such as “insert in slot B.” Remains of themore than 9,000 Fugo balloons launched by

the Japanese during the closing days of WorldWar II were found in more than 300 sitesthroughout the western states from 1945onward through the next 20 years. Accordingto Keel, Major Jesse Marcel would have had notrouble identifying the debris as anything otherthan the pieces of a Japanese balloon bomb.

The United States Air Force chose June24, 1997—the 50th anniversary of KennethArnold’s sighting in Washington State—toconduct a special Pentagon briefing toannounce the release of its answer to theRoswell disturbance, The Roswell Report—Case Closed. In its explanation of the mystery,the air force claimed that the alleged flyingsaucer fragments were pieces of a balloon thatwas used in Project Mogul, a highly classifiedintelligence-gathering operation that hadbeen instituted immediately after the end ofWorld War II to spy on the Soviets and tomonitor their efforts to build nuclear weapons.According to the air force report, the allegedalien bodies seen near the Roswell crash sitewere actually artifacts from an air force projectbegun in 1953 during which dummies weredropped from high altitudes in order to testparachute effectiveness. Civilian witnessessaw air force personnel collecting the dum-mies and mistakenly believed that they wereseeing military units retrieving alien corpses.The six-year discrepancy between the Roswellevent and the dummy dropping was officiallyexplained as “time compression”; that is, thewitnesses became confused about the actualtime reference and compressed their memoryof the Roswell UFO crash in 1947 and theirrecollection of the smashed dummies in 1953into the same scenario.

In his memoirs, Leap of Faith: An Astro-naut’s Journey into the Unknown, United StatesAir Force Colonel L. Gordon Cooper (Ret.;1927– ) provides his readers with the aston-ishing revelation that he once chased UFOsover Germany in his F-86. Cooper also claimsthat when he was a captain stationed atEdwards Air Force Base on May 3, 1957, helearned of a metallic saucer-shaped object thathad landed and was filmed by a technical filmcrew that had been on assignment some 50yards away. Although the UFO had zoomedout of sight when the startled photographers



ACCORDING to the air force report, thealleged alien bodies were artifacts from a project

begun in 1953.

attempted to move closer for a better cameraangle, Cooper was ordered by Pentagon offi-cials to have all the film developed—but notprinted—and to ship it off to the appropriateofficials at once. Cooper writes that he obeyedorders, but he also admits that he peeked atsome of the negatives and confirmed that thefilm crew had most certainly captured a flyingsaucer on celluloid.

Cooper goes on to tell of an air force mas-ter sergeant friend of his who was assigned to arecovery team to retrieve a crashed UFO in acanyon in the Pacific Southwest. Accordingto his friend, they found two human-lookingbeings sitting atop a metallic, disk-shapedwreckage, smiling at them. The alien pilotswere hustled away, and Cooper’s friend toldhim that he never found out what had hap-pened to them.

On October 25, 1998, Cooper’s fellowastronaut, Dr. Edgar Mitchell, astonished bothUFO believers and skeptics alike when heproclaimed, “Make no mistake, Roswell [thealleged crash site of an alien craft in July 1947]happened. I’ve seen secret files which showthe government knew about it, but decidednot to tell the public” (The People, London).

M Delving Deeper

Berlitz, Charles, and William L. Moore. The RoswellIncident. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1980.

Friedman, Staton T., and Don Berliner. Crash atCorona. New York: Paragon Books, 1992.

Korff, Kal K. The Roswell UFO Crash. New York:Prometheus Books, 1997.

Randle, Kevin D. Conspiracy of Silence. New York:Avon Books, 1997.

———. Roswell UFO Crash Update. New Brunswick,N.J.: Inner Light Publications, 1995.

Randle, Kevin D., and Donald R. Schmitt. UFOCrash at Roswell. New York: Avon Books, 1991.

U.S. Air Force. The Roswell Report: Case Closed. June1997.

Socorro, New Mexico

On April 24, 1964, in Socorro, New Mexico,policeman Lonnie Zamora was pursuing aspeeding car north on US-85 when he heard aroar and saw flames in an isolated area where adynamite shack was located. He decided to

abandon the chase and drive to the spotwhere he believed an explosion had occurred.

After he had traveled a little-used roadthrough an unpopulated area full of hills andgullies and arrived at the site, Zamora sawwhat he at first thought was an overturnedautomobile standing on its end. At this pointhe was about 800 feet away from the scene ofthe supposed accident. He saw two figures incoveralls, whom he assumed to be the occu-pants of the upended car.

Later, Zamora would state in his report:“Thought some kids might have turned over.Saw two people in white coveralls very closeto the object. One of these persons seemed toturn and look straight at my car and seemedstartled—seemed to quickly jump. At thistime I started moving my car towards themquickly, with an idea to help. The only time Isaw these two persons was when I hadstopped…to glance at the object. I don’t recallany particular shape…or headgear. These per-sons appeared normal in shape—but possiblythey were small adults or large kids.”

Zamora radioed headquarters to report theaccident, then proceeded to drive closer to theautomobile and its occupants. When he wasabout 150 feet from the gully, he stopped hispatrol car to continue on foot. By now hecould clearly see that he had found somethingfar more bizarre than an upended automobile.He saw a white egg-shaped object supportedon girderlike legs that had smoke and flameissuing from its underside. He heard a loudroar and feared the object was about toexplode. He turned and ran to shield himselfbehind the patrol car, bumping his leg and los-ing his glasses on the way.

In his report, he wrote: “It was a very loudroar.…Not like a jet.…It started at a low fre-quency quickly, then the roar rose in frequen-cy and in loudness—from loud to veryloud.…Object was starting to go straight up—slowly up. Flame was light blue and at bottomwas sort of orange color.”

Crouching behind the patrol car andshielding his eyes with his arm, he watchedthe object rise to a point about 15 to 20 feetabove the ground. The flame and the smokehad ceased swirling around the object, and



Zamora could see a design on its side. Themarkings were red and shaped like a crescentwith a vertical arrow and horizontal lineunderneath. The UFO remained stationary forseveral seconds, then flew off in a southerlydirection following the contour of the gulley.

Within minutes, Sergeant Chavez of theNew Mexico State Police arrived in responseto Zamora’s earlier radio call. He saw noobject, but he did take notice of some slightdepressions in the ground and some burnedbrush in the area where Zamora had sightedthe object.

The U.S. Air Force sent investigators fromtheir project office at Wright-Patterson AirForce Base in Ohio. The investigation dis-closed the following facts:

There were no unidentified heli-copters or aircraft in the area.Observers at radar installations hadobserved 770 unusual or unidentifiedblips.…There was no evidence ofmarkings of any sort in the area otherthan the shallow depressions at thelocation.…Laboratory analysis of soilsamples disclosed no foreign materialor radiation above normal.…Laborato-ry analysis of the burned brush showedno chemicals which would indicate atype of propellent.…

In his report of the Socorro case to archUFO skeptic Dr. Donald H. Menzel, Dr. J.Allen Hynek, scientific consultant for ProjectBlue Book, the U.S. Air Force’s official inves-tigation of UFOs, wrote: “I wish I could sub-stantiate the idea that it was a hoax or halluci-nation. Unfortunately, I cannot. I have talkedat length with the principals in the sighting,and unless my knowledge of human nature isutterly out of phase, I would feel that [LonnieZamora] is incapable of perpetrating a hoax.He is simply a good cop…he resented thewhole thing because it prevented him fromgetting his quota of speeders that day. He isnot imaginative, sticks solidly to business, andis far from talkative.…

“Major [Hector] Quintanilla [Air Forceofficer in charge of Project Blue Book at thattime] is convinced that the Socorro sighting isneither a hoax nor a hallucination, but he

feels that perhaps some sort of test object (wargames, etc.) might have been going on. How-ever, there is no record of such an eventthough he has tried to track this downthrough White Sands, Holloman Air ForceBase, and a few others. I would like to goalong with the hallucination idea if it weren’tfor the marks and burned patches.”

The once-skeptical Hynek was not theonly one convinced of the authenticity of theSocorro, New Mexico, sighting by Zamora.The case remains one of the most solid in Pro-ject Blue Book files and in the annals of UFOresearch.

M Delving Deeper


———. A History of UFO Crashes. New York: AvonBooks, 1995.

Steiger, Brad, ed. Project Blue Book: The Top SecretUFO Findings Revealed. New York: ConFucianPress/Ballantine, 1978.

UFO Contactees

and Abductees

The UFO contactees are men and womenwho are convinced that they encoun-tered alien “space intelligences” and

that they remain in direct communication withthem through telepathic thought transference.In many cases, UFO researchers have observedthat there does seem to be a heightening ofwhat one would normally consider manifesta-tions of extrasensory perception after the con-tact experience with an alleged benevolentspace being. Along with psychic abilities, thecontactee is often left with a timetable of cer-tain predictions of future events.

In spite of such setbacks as unfulfilledprophecies, a good many of the contacteescontinue to be instilled with an almost reli-gious fervor to spread the message that hasbeen given to them by the space beings. A dis-tillation of such messages would reveal con-cepts such as the following:

1. Humankind is not alone in the solar sys-tem and now brothers and sisters from



outer space have come to Earth to helpthose humans who will listen to theirpromise of a larger universe.

2. The space beings want humankind tobecome eligible to join an intergalacticspiritual federation.

3. The space beings are to assist the people ofEarth to lift their spiritual vibratory rate sothey may enter new dimensions. (Accord-ing to the space beings, Jesus, Krishna,Confucius, and many of the other leadersof the great religions came to Earth toteach humanity these same abilities.)

4. The citizens of Earth stand now in the tran-sitional period before the dawn of a NewAge of peace, love, and understanding.

5. If the earthlings should not raise their vibrato-ry rate within a set period of time, severe Earthchanges and major cataclysms will take place.

How do the flying-saucer contacteesencounter the space beings? A synthesis ofsuch experiences reveals the following.

They first saw a UFO on the ground, hov-ering low overhead, or heard a slight hum-ming sound above them that drew their atten-tion to a mysterious craft.

Next, a warm ray of “light” emanated fromthe craft and touched the contactees on theneck, the crown of the head, or the middle ofthe forehead. They may have lost conscious-ness at this point and, upon awakening, mayhave discovered that they could not accountfor anywhere from a minute or two to an houror two of their time. Those contactees wholater claim direct communication with spacebeings generally state that they have no recol-lection of any period of unconsciousness, butthey maintain that they “heard” a voicespeaking to them from inside their own heads.



China entered the twenty-first century witha rash of more than 3,000 UFO sightingsacross the nation, and according to SunShili, head of the Beijing UFO Research

Organization.

In the summer months of 2002, it was announcedthat a group of nine Chinese scientists would visit thewestern region of Qinghai Province to examine relicsallegedly left there by extraterrestrial beings. The site,known to local inhabitants as the “ET relics,” is onMount Baigong, about 28 miles to the southwest ofDelingha City.

Yang Ji, a research fellow at the Purple MountainObservatory of the Chinese Academy, stated that thearea is high in altitude with thin and transparent air,an ideal place to practice astronomy. While conced-ing that the extraterrestrial hypothesis as an explana-tion for the mysterious relics is worth examining, Yangstressed that scientific analysis is necessary to provewhether or not it is true.

Sources:

“Chinese Scientists to Head for Suspected ET Relics.” People’s

Daily Online, June 20, 2002. [Online] http://english. people

daily.com.cn/20020619_98177.html.

Heng, Li. “Mysterious Pipes Left by ‘ET’ Reported from Qinghai.”

People’s Daily Online, June 25, 2002. [Online] http://english.

peopledaily.com.cn/200206/25_98530.html.

Lin, Rosanne. “Orange, Red Starmen over China.” Shanghai Star,

July 18, 2002. [Online] http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/star/

2002/07/18/vo2-2.html.

China and

UFO Research

Many contactees are told that they wereselected because they really are aliens, whowere planted on Earth as very small children.

After the initial contact experience, near-ly all contactees seem to suffer through severaldays of restlessness, irritability, sleeplessness,and unusual dreams or nightmares.

After a period of a week to several months,the contactee who has received a messagefrom the space beings feels prepared to goforth and share it with others.

None of the flying-saucer contactees seemto feel any fear of their solar brothers and sis-ters and most of them look forward to a returnvisit from the space beings.

Family and friends of the contactees reportthat they are different and changed personsafter their alleged experience with the spacebeings.

Most UFO contactees agree that the spacebeings’ most prominent characteristic is wis-dom, and they seem to take their scientificknowledge for granted. After all, contacteesreason, if they have traveled through spacefrom other worlds to Earth, then they must beextremely intelligent.

Hard-nosed Earth scientists, however,remain singularly unimpressed with the specif-ic technical information that has been relayedby the contactees. Those sympathetic to thecontactees might argue that the UFO crewsdeem their science to be incomprehensible tohumankind at this point; other theorists sug-gest that the contactees are not communicat-ing with alien entities at all, but rather, with ahigher aspect of their own psyches.

Some researchers have observed that thespace beings appear to function as do the angelsof more conventional theologies. Both beingsare concerned about Earth; they seem to be

actively trying to protect it and the people in it.Both the space beings and the angels are pow-erful entities who appear to have control overthe physical limitations of time and space—yetthey are benevolent in their actions towardbumbling, ineffectual humankind. It seems thatspace beings have deliberately placed them-selves in the role of messengers of God, or thathumans hope that there exist such beings whocan extricate humankind from the disasters ofits own making.

Although most of the contactees claim aninitial physical contact with a space being, theoperable mechanics of the experience seemreminiscent of what can be seen in Spiritual-ism as the medium works with a spirit guideor a control from the “other side.” In Spiritu-alistic or mediumistic channeling, the sensi-tive individual enters the trance state andrelays information through the guide, whocontacts various spirits of deceased humanpersonalities. The mechanism in the FlyingSaucer Movement is often that of the con-tactee going into some state of trance andchanneling information from space beings.George King, George Van Tassel, Gloria Lee,George Hunt Williamson, and several othercontactees have been members of psychicdevelopment groups.

It is impossible to estimate how many menand women claim to receive messages fromspace beings. Groups continue to rise fromdynamic contactees, each with their varia-tions of previous revelations and their ownoccasional individual input. There is also thecategory of revelators that UFO researchersterm the “silent contactees”—men andwomen who have not gathered groups aboutthem, but who have established contact withwhat they feel to be entities from other worldsand who have directed their lives according tothe dictates of those space beings. Many ofthese men and women continue to work inconventional jobs, confiding their experiencesonly to close associates and family members.

While the number of UFO contacteesremains nebulous at best, estimates presentedat a conference on the alien-abduction phe-nomenon at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology in June 1992 suggested that as



UFO contactees are instilled with an almostreligious fervor to spread messages given to them by

space beings.

many as several hundred thousand to morethan three million adults in the United Statesalone have had abduction experiences withUFO beings. While such a figure seems mind-boggling to say the least, some UFO researcherssay that the true figure would be much higher.

Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle, formerly on staff atthe University of Wyoming in Laramie andnow in private practice, has speculated thatthere may be hundreds of thousands of peoplewho have had a UFO encounter but who werenot even aware of it at the time. Sprinkle listsseveral characteristics common among peoplewho have had such experiences:

1. An episode of missing time. Under hypno-sis many people remember driving downthe road and then being back in their car.They know that “something” happenedbetween the two points of consciousness,but they can’t fill in the missing time.

2. Disturbing dreams. The abductee willdream about flying saucers, about beingpursued and captured, and being examinedby doctors in white coats.

3. Daytime flashbacks of UFO experiences.While they are doing tasks in their normaldaytime activities, abductees will flash backto some kind of UFO image or UFO entity.

4. Strange compulsions. Sprinkle told of oneman who for seven years felt compelled todig a well at a particular spot. Under hypno-sis he revealed that a UFO being had toldhim they would contact him if he dug a well.

5. A sudden interest in UFOs. The abducteemay suddenly give evidence of a compul-sion to read about UFOs, ancient history,or pyramids and crystals, without knowingwhy.

In 1976 Carl Higdon, a 41-year-oldWyoming oil-field worker, claimed to havebeen kidnapped by alien beings while he washunting elk in a remote wilderness area. Hig-don said that he was lifted aboard a spacecraftand taken millions of miles to another planetwhere he saw other earthlings living withalien beings. It was Higdon’s impression thatthe aliens had been taking people from Earthfor many years—as well as a sizable stock ofvarious animals and fish. Higdon was given a

physical examination by the extraterrestrials,told that he was unsuitable for their needs,and returned to Earth.

Sprinkle hypnotized Higdon a number oftimes and gained remarkable details of theexperience. Higdon had gone to the north edgeof the Medicine Bow National Forest to huntwild game. About mid-afternoon, he walkedonto a rise and spotted five elk grazing in aclearing a few hundred yards away. He pickedout the largest buck, lined it up in his telescopicsights, and pulled the trigger. He could notbelieve his eyes when the powerful bullet fromhis magnum rifle left the barrel noiselessly and,in slow motion, floated like a butterfly for about50 feet, then fell to the ground.

Higdon heard a twig snap, and he turned toface a strange-looking entity more than six feettall, about 180 pounds, with yellowish skincolor. The being possessed a head and face thatseemed to extend directly into its shoulders,with no visible chin or neck. The humanoidhad no detectable ears, small eyes with nobrows, and only a slit of a mouth. Two anten-na-like appendages protruded from its skull.

The alien being raised its hand in greetingto Higdon and floated a package of pills in hisdirection. Higdon remembers that he swal-lowed one of the pills upon the direction of theentity, and the next thing he knew, he wasinside a cube-shaped object with the being, atleast one other alien, and the five elk. Higdonwas strapped to a seat with a football-like hel-met on his head. Then he underwent a bizarretrip through space in a small, transparent craft.

Most of the details of Higdon’s fantasticjourney were gleaned during the hypnosis ses-sions with Sprinkle. Higdon told the doctorthat he witnessed portions of what appearedto be a futuristic city of tall spires and towers



A conference on alien-abduction suggested as manyas several hundred thousand to more than threemillion adults have had abduction experiences withUFO beings.

and revolving multicolored lights. After aphysical examination, he was returned to thespace vehicle. When he looked out of thetransparent sides, he observed five otherbeings who appeared to be humans.

The UFO set down again in Medicine BowNational Forest. Higdon was placed back in histruck, his rifle was returned, and he wasrelieved of the pills that the being had givenhim. Dazed by the strange experience, Higdonmanaged to radio for help. Then he apparentlyblacked out until he was found several hourslater. Higdon spent three days in the CarbonCounty Memorial Hospital at Rawlins, under-going extensive tests and rambling and shout-ing about four-day pills and men in black suits.

Higdon apparently experienced a miracu-lous healing of a tubercular-type scar on hislung. A problem with kidney stones also dis-appeared after his trip to outer space. Dr.Sprinkle has observed that such unexplain-able recoveries from ailments often occuramong people who claim to have been exam-ined by alien beings.

David Webb, an Arlington, Massachusetts,solar physicist, cochair of the Mutual UFONetwork (MUFON), a top UFO researchorganization, believes that space aliens haveabducted one out of every eight people whohave reported seeing UFOs. In Webb’sresearch, in many cases the victims undergosome kind of examination, but they usuallyremember nothing of the onboard experience.

In the course of the numerous hypnoticregressions that he conducted with UFOabductees, Dr. James Harder said that he hadfound much evidence to support the theorythat alien abductors return to find and toreexamine abductees at various intervals,sometimes throughout a person’s lifetime andsometimes without his or her being aware of

it. Harder observed that it is as if some sort ofextraterrestrial group of psychologists is mak-ing a study of humans.

Harder and other researchers have discov-ered that a high percentage of people whohave been abducted have undergone multipleexperiences with UFO entities. Mostabductees who have had more than one expe-rience with UFO aliens usually undergo thefirst encounter between the ages of five andnine. These abductees remember the alien asfriendly and quite human in appearance. Uponfurther hypnotic regression and careful prob-ing, however, the investigators have learnedthat the entity did not look human at all.

In most cases, the entity usually tells thechildren that it will be back to see themthroughout the course of their life. It alsoadmonishes the children not to tell their par-ents about the encounter.

Harder has also discovered that during theadult abductee experience, those men andwomen undergoing the encounter will oftenreport having a vague memory of their abduc-tor, and they will later say that they feel asthough they have seen the entity before. InHarder’s opinion, the multiple UFO abduc-tion is not a random occurrence.

The abductees speaking at the MutualUFO Network’s Washington, D.C., confer-ence in June of 1987 reported frightening anddisorienting aspects of their UFO experiences.They said that they often remembered theevents only in fragments and flashes until theyunderwent hypnotic regression. For theabductees speaking on the panel, the interac-tion with the UFO entities had seemed pri-marily to be negative. They told of the frustra-tion of being partially paralyzed and takenwithout their consent to undergo medicalexaminations.

Whitley Strieber, author of the best-sell-ing book Communion (1987), said that he hadattempted to deal with his tension and anxi-ety over having undergone an abductionexperience by writing about his encounter.Strieber told the group assembled for theabductee panel at the Washington, D.C., con-ference that when he first realized what hadhappened to him, he was suicidal. Then he



UNEXPLAINABLE recoveries fromailments often occur among people who claim to have

been examined by alien beings.

began to investigate some UFO literature anddiscovered that others had had similar experi-ences. He sought out the services of a hypno-tist, thinking that perhaps that would be thelast of the ordeal. It wasn’t, of course, and hewrote the book hoping that the memories andthe feelings would go away. Regretfully, thememories returned.

Strieber went on to say that he hadreceived thousands of letters from otherabductees—people who do not welcome pub-licity, including entertainers, political leaders,and members of the armed forces in high posi-tions. According to Strieber, all of theseabductees had reported a basic progression ofemotions, moving from uneasy, fragmentedrecollections to a clear memory accompaniedby fear. If the abductees consented to undergohypnotic regression, they usually became evenmore terrified. Instead of attempting to gleanmore and more information about theabductee through hypnotic regression, Striebersuggested that concerned researchers should betrying to help these individuals with theirfright and helping them gain more understand-ing about what had happened to them.

M Delving Deeper

Bryan, C. D. B. Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind:Alien Abductions, UFOs, and the Conference atM.I.T. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

Evans, Hilary. Gods, Spirits, Cosmic Guardians: AComparative Study of the Encounter Experience.Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England:Aquarian Press, 1987.

Hopkins, Budd. The Intruders. New York: RandomHouse, 1987.

Lewis, James, ed. The Gods Have Landed: New Reli-gions from Other Worlds. Albany: State Universityof New York Press, 1995.

Mack, John E. Abducted. New York: Charles Scribn-er’s Sons, 1994.

Randle, Kevin D., Russ Estes, and William P. Cone. TheAbduction Engima. New York: Forge Books, 1999.

George Adamski (1891–1965)

George Adamski was the first of the New AgeUFO prophets, and just as the prophets of oldwent out into the desert to receive their revela-tions directly from God or the angels, Adamskiwent out into the night near Desert Center,

California, on November 20, 1952, andreceived his first revelatory encounter withOrthon, a Venusian space brother. Throughtelepathic transfer, Adamski learned that thespace traveler was benign and greatly con-cerned with the spiritual growth of humankind.Adamski’s desert encounter with a Venusianand Robert Wise’s motion picture The Day theEarth Stood Still (1951), with its warning thatEarth had better clean up its act delivered by analien messenger, were probably the two mostcontributive factors in birthing the UFO con-tactee movement in the United States.

After Adamski published Flying SaucersHave Landed (1953), coauthored withDesmond Leslie, he became popular as a lec-turer and had little difficulty establishing him-self as the best known of all the contactees,who were now springing up around the world.Flying saucer mania was rampant in the early1950s with a cautious public wanting to knowwho was piloting the mysterious craft in thesky, where they were from, and what theylooked like. Adamski had the answers.Orthon, the Venusian, was smooth-skinned,beardless, with shoulder-length blond hair,stood about five feet six inches tall, and worewhat appeared to be some kind of jumpsuitlikeapparel. Orthon had come in peace, eager towarn earthlings about radiation from thenuclear tests that were being conducted. Therewere universal laws and principles establishedby the Creator of All, and the people of Earthwould do well to begin to practice those lawsat once. All these messages were transmittedtelepathically to Adamski to relay to his fellowearthlings, but later, after he had been takenfor a trip into outer space, Adamski was able tocommunicate verbally with such entities asFirkon, the Martian, and Ramu, from Saturn.

The death of George Adamski on April12, 1965, by no means terminated the heatedcontroversy that had never stopped swirling



GEORGE Adamski was the first of the NewAge UFO prophets.

around the prolific and articulate contactee.Throughout his career as a contactee, Adams-ki’s believers steadfastly declared him to beone of the most saintly of men, completelydevoted to the teachings of universal laws. Itappears that after his death, certain of his fol-lowers found it necessary to provide their dis-ciple of intergalactic peace with a kind ofinstant resurrection. In the book The ScoritonMystery (1967) by Eileen Buckle, a contacteenamed Ernest Bryant claims to have met threespacemen on April 24, 1965, one of whomwas a youth named Yamski, whose bodyalready housed the reincarnated spirit ofGeorge Adamski.

According to Desmond Leslie, GeorgeAdamski had an audience with Pope JohnXXIII (1881–1963) just a few days before thepope passed away. Leslie said that he metAdamski at the airport in London just after hehad flown in from Rome. He drove Adamskistraight to his little river cruiser at Staines,where several people interested in UFOs hadbeen spending the weekend.

Sometime during the next few days,Adamski showed Leslie a memento that hesaid no one would ever take from him, and heproduced an exquisite gold medal with Pope

John’s effigy on it. Later Leslie checked andfound it was a medal that had not yet beenreleased to anyone.

When Adamski was asked how he hadreceived it, he answered that Pope John hadgiven it to him the day before. Adamski wenton to say how he had arrived at the Vaticanaccording to the space people’s instructionsand had been taken straight in, given a cas-sock, and led to the pope’s bedside. It was herethat Adamski had handed Pope John a sealedpackage from the space brothers. It was saidthat Pope John’s face had beamed when hereceived the package, and he said, “This iswhat I have been waiting for!” The pope thenpresented Adamski with a special medal, andthe papal audience ended.

Leslie said that he later checked with LouZinsstag, who had allegedly taken Adamski tothe Vatican. Zinsstag reported that when theyhad approached the Vatican and neared theprivate entrance, a man with “purple at histhroat” (apparently a monsignor or a bishop)appeared.

Adamski had cried out, “That’s my man!”,greeted the papal official, and was led in for anaudience with the pope. Zinsstag said thatwhen he reappeared about 20 minutes later,Adamski appeared to be in the same state ofexcitement and rapture as witnesses haddescribed him being in after his desert contactwith the space brothers in 1952.

When Leslie later asked an abbot what heknew about the medal, the clergyman wasamazed and said that such a medal would onlyhave been given to someone in the mostexceptional circumstances, and that no one,so far as he knew, had yet received this partic-ular medal.

Leslie admitted that he had initially disbe-lieved that Adamski had received such anaudience with the pope, but this confirmationfrom the abbot with regard to the medal hadovercome his former disbelief. When Leslieasked Adamski what the space brothers’ pack-age had contained, the contactee said that hedid not know. He related that the package hadbeen given to him by the space brothersbefore he left for Europe and that he had beengiven instructions to present it to the pope.



George Adamski.


He was also told that all arrangements hadbeen made inside the Vatican for such anaudience to take place. This suggested toLeslie that the space brothers have a “fifthcolumn” in St. Peter’s seat as well as every-where else.

Later, Adamski told Leslie that he thoughtthe package had contained instructions andadvice for the Second Ecumenical Council. Itis possible that the package also contained amessage to St. Peter’s successors that chidedthem about certain lax measures and encour-aged them to get on with the serious workrequired on Earth.

M Delving Deeper

Adamski, George. Behind the Flying Saucer Mystery(Flying Saucer Farewell). New York: PaperbackLibrary, 1967.

Adamski, George, and Desmond Leslie. Flying SaucersHave Landed. New York: The British Book Cen-tre, 1953.

Edwards, Frank. Flying Saucers—Here and Now! NewYork: Lyle Stuart, 1967.

Story, Ronald D. The Encyclopedia of ExtraterrestrialEncounters. New York: New American Library,2001.

Zinsstag, Lou, and Timothy Good. George Adamski—The Untold Story. Beckenham, Kent, England:Ceti Publications, 1983.

Daniel W. Fry (1908–1992)

Daniel Fry’s initial contact with beings that heclaimed were space people took place on July 4,1950, near the White Sands Proving Grounds(now Missile Range) near Las Cruces, NewMexico. Fry described himself as “an interna-tionally known scientist, researcher, and elec-tronic engineer” and as one who was “recog-nized by many as the best-informed scientist inthe world on the subject of space and spacetravel.” While he may have been the mosttechnically sophisticated of the early UFO con-tactees, skeptical researcher Philip J. Klass(1919– ) claimed in UFOs Explained (1974)that Fry’s doctoral degree from “St. AndrewsCollege of London, England” was issued by asmall religious organization that awarded doc-torates to whomever submitted a 10,000-wordthesis and paid a fee. While the validity of hisPh.D. may be in doubt, Fry was employed as an

engineer with Aerojet General at the time thathe claimed to have met the space people.

According to Fry, he missed the bus thatwould have taken him into town to observethe traditional July Fourth fireworks, so hedecided to take a walk in the desert. What hehad at first believed to be a strangely behavingstar landed about 70 feet away from him andrevealed itself to be a flying saucer. A friendly,but invisible, space traveler named A-lan(Alan) invited Fry on board and, whileexplaining some of the technical aspects ofthe spacecraft, whisked him to New York Cityand back to White Sands in 30 minutes. Fryestimated the speed of the UFO to be at least8,000 miles per hour.

Although Fry later changed the date of hisinitial contact to 1949, he claimed to have beencontacted by Alan three more times between1950 and 1954. The space people, according toinformation received by Fry, were descendentsof the lost continent of Lemuria, which haddestroyed itself in an atomic war with Atlantisabout 30,000 years ago. Because Lemurians hadachieved space flight, a few survivors managedto escape in four vehicles before the finaldestruction occurred. One ship was lost on theflight to Mars, but three of the Lemurian craftlanded safely and began to fashion a new societyon that planet. Eventually, the descendents ofLemuria, the immigrant Martians, had trulybecome space people, traveling independent ofany planet in self-sustaining ships, movingthrough space wherever they chose.

Fry established Understanding Incorporat-ed in 1955 as a means of better spreading theteachings of Alan, who had told him that hehad been chosen to act as the liaison betweenEarth and the planetary members of the Galac-tic Confederation. The space people warnedthat humans must learn to live in peace, orthey were likely to destroy themselves withnuclear power, thereby replicating the disaster



THE space people, according to Fry, weredescendents of the lost continent of Lemuria.

that had occurred in prehistoric times toLemuria and Atlantis. Alan urged Earth peo-ple to build a firmer spiritual relationship withone another and with the Infinite Intelligencethat pervades and controls the universe. Fryremained active as a lecturer in the FlyingSaucer Movement until his death in 1992 anddirected one of the largest of the UFO groups,comprising more than 60 units.

M Delving Deeper

Fry, Daniel W. To Men of Earth. Elsinore, Calif.: ElCariso, 1973.

———. The White Sands Incident. Madison, Wis.:Horus House, 1992.

Gibbons, Gavin. They Rode in Space Ships. New York:Citadel Press, 1957.

Klass, Philip J. UFOs Explained. New York: RandomHouse, 1974.

Sachs, Margaret. The UFO Encyclopedia. New York:Perigee Books, 1980.


Betty (1920– ) and

Barney Hill (1922–1969)

The case of Betty and Barney Hill has becomethe prototype for the “interrupted journey,”the classic case of humans abducted andexamined by aliens from another world. Theirstory was covered extensively by John G.Fuller in the book Interrupted Journey (1966),and there was even a made-for-televisionmovie (1975) with James Earl Jones andEstelle Parsons playing Barney and Betty.

On September 19, 1961, Betty, a socialworker, and Barney, a mail carrier, then intheir 40s, were returning to their home inNew Hampshire from a short Canadian vaca-tion when they noticed a bright object in thenight sky. Barney stopped the car and used apair of binoculars to get a better look at it. Ashe studied the object, its own illuminationshowed a well-defined disklike shape, movingin an irregular pattern across the moonlit sky.

Fascinated, Barney walked into a nearbyfield where from that perspective he couldperceive what appeared to be windows—and,



Frank Scully and Daniel

Fry in the May/June 1995

issue of International

UFO Reporter. (J. ALLEN

HYNEK CENTER FOR

UFO STUDIES)

in the windows, beings—looking back at him.The feeling that he was being watched fright-ened Barney, and he ran back to the car, gotin, and began to race down the road. Then, asif obeying some internal directive, he drovedown a side road—where the Hills found fivehumanoid aliens standing in their path. Sud-denly unable to control their movements,Betty and Barney were taken from their carand, in a trancelike condition, led to the UFOby the humanoids.

The sensational details of the Hills’ storywere recalled later while under hypnosis, forthe couple had a complete loss of memoryconcerning the nearly two hours that theywere abducted by the UFOnauts. Accordingto information later retrieved under hypnosis,Betty and Barney were returned unharmed totheir car with the mental command that theywould forget all about their abduction experi-ence. The UFO then rose into the air and dis-appeared from sight, leaving the Hills to con-tinue their journey home, oblivious to thewhole event.

Perhaps the remarkable encounter wouldnever have been brought to light except fortwo factors: they began to experience strangeand disconcerting dreams that they could notunderstand, and they could not explain theunaccountable two missing hours in theirjourney home from Canada.

Betty decided to seek the help of a psychi-atrist friend, who suggested that the memoryof those lost hours would return in time, per-haps in only a few months. But the details ofthat unexplained “interruption” remained in atroubled limbo of fragmented memories untilthe Hills began weekly hypnosis sessions withDr. Benjamin Simon, a Boston psychiatrist.

Under Simon’s guidance, the couplerevealed an astonishing pastiche of bizarrephysical and mental examinations at thehands of an extraordinary group of extraterres-trial medical technicians. The individualaccounts of Betty and Barney agreed in mostrespects, although neither was made aware ofwhat the other had disclosed until later. Inessence, both told of being treated by aliensfrom space in much the same manner ashuman scientists might examine laboratory

animals. Although the couple had been givenhypnotic suggestions by the aliens that theywould forget their experience, their inducedamnesia was apparently penetrated when theywere rehypnotized by Simon.

Much has been made of the Hills alienmedical examinations, and their much-publi-cized experience may have provided the pro-totype for thousands of other individuals whohave claimed alien abductions with their req-uisite physical and sexual exams. However,the single aspect that may be most essential ingiving the Hills’ story credibility is the starmap that Betty said she was shown by theextraterrestrials while on board the UFO.

Under hypnosis in 1964, three years aftertheir alleged alien abduction, Betty, with littleor no understanding of astronomy, drew herimpressions of the map with a remarkableexpertise that concurred with other, profession-ally drawn, star maps. As an important bonus,Betty’s map showed the location of two starscalled Zeta I and Zeta II Reticuli, allegedly thehome base of the space travelers who abducted



Betty and Barney Hill

claimed they were

abducted by UFOs.


THE existence of two stars, Zeta I and Zeta IIReticuli, were not confirmed by astronomers until1969—eight years after the Hills’ abduction experience.

them. Interestingly, the existence of the twostars was not confirmed by astronomers until1969—eight years after the Hills’ abductionexperience and five years after Betty remem-bered seeing the star map aboard an alienspaceship. As an added bit of data to supportBetty Hill’s claim that her recollection of themap was an actual memory of having beenshown an artifact created by an extraterrestrialintelligence, the two fifth-magnitude stars, ZetaI and Zeta II Reticuli, are invisible to observersnorth of the latitude of Mexico City.

M Delving Deeper

Bryant Alice, and Linda Seebach. Healing ShatteredReality: Understanding Contactee Trauma. Tigard,Ore.: Wild Flower Press, 1991.

Fuller, John G. The Interrupted Journey: Two LostHours ‘Aboard a Flying Saucer.’ New York: DialPress, 1966.

Jacobs, David M. Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFOAbductions. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Klass, Philip J. UFO Abductions: A Dangerous Game.Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1988.

Randle, Kevin D., Russ Estes, and William P. Cone.The Abduction Enigma. New York: Forge, 1999.



The Men in Black (MIB)

Ever since organized flying saucer researchbegan in the early 1950s, a number of UFOinvestigators have claimed that they have suf-fered personal harassment, unusual accidents,and even mysterious deaths due to the visita-tions of three mysterious men in black. Insome cases, according to UFO researchers,sinister voices whispered threats over the tele-phone and warned them to terminate specificinvestigations. By the mid-1960s, percipientsof alleged UFO activity continued to protestthat they had been visited by ominousstrangers who made it clear that their ordersto remain silent about what they had seenwould be violently enforced.

Official disclaimers by the U.S. Air Force,the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and

the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)have served only to intensify the mystery ofthe bizarre incidents that have instilled fearamong those who witnessed flying saucer phe-nomena and have prompted accusations ofgovernment cover-ups by members of civilianresearch groups for over 50 years.

The legend of the three Men in Black, theMIB, began in September 1953 when AlbertK. Bender, who had organized the Interna-tional Flying Saucer Bureau, received certaindata that he felt provided the missing piecesconcerning the origin of flying saucers. Benderwrote down his theory and sent it off to afriend he felt he could trust. When the threemen appeared at Bender’s door, one of themheld that letter in his hand.

The three Men in Black told Bender thatamong the many researchers he had been theone to stumble upon the correct answer to theflying-saucer enigma. Then they filled him inon the details. Bender became ill. He wasunable to eat for three days.

Bender went on to say that when peoplefound out the truth about flying saucers therewould be dramatic changes in all things. Sci-ence, especially, would suffer a major blow.Political structures would topple. Mass confu-sion would reign.

In 1962, Bender decided that he would atlast tell his story to the world in Flying Saucersand the Three Men. This perplexing volumeserved only to confuse serious researchers, as ittold of Bender’s astral projection to a secretunderground saucer base in Antarctica thatwas manned by male, female, and bisexualcreatures. Many questions remained to plagueUFO investigators. Were Bender’s experiencesreally of a psychic nature? Was his book delib-erately contrived to hide the true nature of hissilencing? Had the whole experience beenclothed in an extended metaphor that mightyield certain dues to the perceptive researcher?

In the opinion of many UFO investigators,the Men in Black are representatives of anorganization on the planet Earth, but they arenot from any known bureau in the U.S. gov-ernment. According to some researchers, boththese men and the UFOs come from some civ-ilization that has flourished in a remote area of



Earth, such as the Amazon, the North GobiDesert, or the Himalaya Mountains.

Within a few months after Bender hadbeen silenced, Edgar R. Jarrold, organizer ofthe Australian Flying Saucer Bureau, andHarold H. Fulton, head of Civilian SaucerInvestigation of New Zealand, received visitsfrom mysterious strangers and subsequentlydisbanded their organizations.

John H. Stuart, a New Zealander, pickedup a piece of metal that had fallen from aUFO during a close sighting in February 1955.The next night he received a visit from a mandressed in black who announced that he hadmore right than Stuart did to the piece ofgrey-white metal. The man in black told Stu-art a lot about flying saucers and left him feel-ing frightened.

“I have a feeling that some day there willcome a slow knocking at my own door,” GrayBarker (1925– ) wrote in They Knew Too

Much About Flying Saucers (1956). “They willbe at your door, too, unless we all get wise andfind out who the three men really are.”

UFO and paranormal investigator John A.Keel’s (1930– ) pursuit of the flying saucersilencers in the late 1960s led him to uncoversome extreme cases of personal abuse in whichcertain contactees or investigators had beenkidnapped by three men in a black car. Keelnoted that it was nearly always three men whosubjected the victims to some sort of brain-washing technique that left them in a state ofnausea, mental confusion, or even amnesialasting for several days. The investigation ofmany of these cases never get beyond localpolice departments, Keel found. Neither theFBI nor any other central government agencywas engaged in collecting information on suchstories of mistreatment by the mysteriousthree Men in Black.

Responding to accusations from civilianresearchers who demanded an investigation



Actors Will Smith and

Tommy Lee Jones in the

sci-fi movie “Men in

Black.” (THE KOBAL

COLLECTION)

and who suggested that the air force wassomehow behind such silencings, ColonelGeorge P. Freeman, Pentagon spokesman forProject Blue Book, was quoted as saying thatthe three Men in Black were not connectedwith the air force in any way. Nor would anyother United States security group claimthem. It has never been within the line ofduty of any government agency to threatenprivate citizens or to enter their home withouta search warrant. No government agent isempowered to demand surrender of privateproperty by any law-abiding citizen. Freemanwent on to say that by posing as air force offi-cers and government agents, the silencerswere committing a federal offense.

Broadcaster Frank Edwards (1908–1967),who became well known for his best-sellingFlying Saucers—Serious Business (1966), mademuch of what he believed to be an official plotthat had been set to silence him. Beforebecoming interested in UFOs, Edwards hadbeen conducting a highly successful radio showsponsored by the American Federation ofLabor (AFL). He was warned to abandon thesubject of flying saucers, and when Edwardspersisted, he was given his walking papers.

In spite of thousands of letters protestingthe firing of Edwards and the silencing of hisUFO reports, his ex-sponsor stood firm. Whenreporters asked George Meany, president ofthe AFL, why Edwards had been dropped,Meany answered that it was because he hadtalked too much about flying saucers. Edwardsclaimed that he later learned that his constantmention of UFOs had been irritating to theDefense Department and that the departmenthad brought pressure to bear on the AFL.

Edwards was only temporarily silenced,and he soon had in syndication a radio showthat dealt almost exclusively with flyingsaucers and other strange phenomena. But hissudden death on June 24, 1967, the 20-year

anniversary of Kenneth Arnold’s sighting ofthe flying saucers near Mt. Rainier, Washing-ton, sparked immediate concern among UFOresearchers that Edwards had been silenced forgood. And it certainly added to the paranoiathat he had died on the day before he wasscheduled to address the Congress of Scientif-ic Ufologists assembled at the Hotel Com-modore in New York City.

Stories of the Men in Black have contin-ued unabated since their origin in the early1950s. In 1997, the motion picture Men inBlack starring Tommy Lee Jones and WillSmith became a smash box office hit by por-traying the sinister “three men” as two menwho worked for a secret government agencythat patrolled the action of aliens livingsecretly on Earth. The concept that originatedin fear and distrust of the government or ofsome nefarious secret organization of aliens oragents was played for laughs, and the motionpicture used state-of-the-art special effects tocreate astonishing outer space creatures. Asequel to the successful film was released in2002, and the legend of the frightening Menin Black knocking at the doors of those whohad witnessed UFO activity to threaten andto silence them continued to be seen as avehicle for comedy.

If the UFO silencers are a hoax, no onehas yet answered who is perpetrating it andwhy. Whoever comprises this persistentsilence group either knows, or gives theimpression of knowing, a great deal moreabout the universe than the current scientificcommunity does.

Many researchers of UFO phenomena con-tinue to believe that the Men in Black areagents from another world who labor to spreadconfusion and fear among Earth’s serious UFOinvestigators and those witnesses of UFOactivity. Others maintain that in spite of offi-cial denials, the Men in Black are agents froma top-secret U.S. government agency, whichknows the answer to the flying saucer enigmaand has been commissioned to keep the truthfrom the American public. Still others claimthat they are agents from another terrestrialpolitical system that endeavors to guard itssecret of advanced technology just a bit longer.



THE legend of the three Men in Black, theMIB, began in September 1953.

M Delving Deeper

Barker, Gray. They Knew Too Much About FlyingSaucers. New York: University Books, 1956.

Beckley, Timothy Green. The UFO Silencers. NewBrunswick, N.J.: Inner Light Publications, 1990.

Bender, Albert K. Flying Saucers and the Three Men.Clarksburg, W.Va.: Saucerian Press, 1962.

Keel, John A. The Mothman Prophecies. New York:New American Library, 1976; New York: TorBooks, 2002.

———. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1970.



Whitley Strieber (1945– )

When he published Communion in 1987,Whitley Strieber transformed himself from awell-established horror writer into the world’smost famous UFO contactee/abductee. Theauthor of such popular novels as The Wolfen(1978) and The Hunger (1981), both of whichwere made into successful motion pictures,Strieber startled readers and researchers alikewhen he wrote a first-person account of hisencounters with the “visitors” and detailed hisabduction experiences.

According to Strieber, on December 26,1985, he underwent the first of a series of closeencounter experiences with alien beings thathe would go on to describe in his books Com-munion, Transformation (1988), and Confirma-tion (1998). As millions of readers followed hisaccounts of extraordinary occurrences,Strieber went on to tell of being abducted inhis childhood, undergoing physical examina-tions at the hands of the “visitors,” and sug-gesting mind control and governmentinvolvement in the UFO mystery.

Reflecting upon his encounters in his“journal” on his website (Whitley Strieber’sUnknown Country, 12/15/2001), he wrote thathe had struggled through his ordeal with “gen-uine knowledge and good questions” and hadseen “an absolute terror” change within a fewyears to a “sublime journey” on which he wasstill embarked. The visitors, Strieber observed

from this perspective, were “a very complicat-ed presence among us” and that not all ofthem were to be “trusted or accepted.”

Strieber has stated that he believes theevidence of the UFO, if properly examined byscience, may provide humankind with “won-derful new discoveries and information.” But,he adds in his position statement in TheExtraterrestrial Encyclopedia (2001), to acceptsuch evidence also means that it is necessaryto face the facts that “there may really bealiens here—aliens who are creating an extra-ordinary theater in the sky while at the sametime entering the personal lives of many peo-ple in extremely bizarre ways.”

M Delving Deeper




Whitley Strieber. (DENNIS

STACY/FORTEAN

PICTURE LIBRARY)

ACCORDING to Strieber, on December26, 1985, he underwent the first of a series of closeencounter experiences with alien beings.

Strieber, Whitley. Communion. New York: BeachTree/William Morrow, 1987.

———. Confirmation. New York: Beech TreeBooks/William Morrow, 1998.

———. Transformation. New York: Avon, 1988.

“Whitley’s Journal.” Whitley Strieber’s Unknown Coun-try, December 15, 2001. [Online] http://www.unknowncountry.com/journal/.

George Van Tassel (1910–1978)

George Van Tassel established a reputation asan accomplished flight test engineer for bothLockheed International and Douglas Aircraftin the 1930s, and spent World War II(1939–45) flying for business magnate/aviatorHoward Hughes (1905–1976.) In 1947, VanTassel moved with his wife and three daugh-ters to the land around Giant Rock, Califor-nia, and reopened the airfield near what hadbeen declared by many as the largest boulderin the world.

After the family had lived near GiantRock for a time, Van Tassel became intriguedby stories of UFO contactees, and he theorizedthat the huge boulder’s piezo-electric compo-sition could intensify meditation and thepower of the human mind to establish com-munication with alien intelligences. When hebegan holding weekly meditations under therock, others who felt drawn to the rock andthe desert soon joined him. In 1951, Van Tas-sel went into trance and said later that he hadbeen taken out of his body to meet with agroup of discarnate beings who inhabited aspaceship orbiting Earth.

In August of 1952, Van Tassel stated thataliens from Venus had landed near Giant Rockand invited him to enter their spacecraft.When word spread of his dramatic encounter,the first Space Convention was held at GiantRock in the spring of 1953. In the years tocome, thousands would attend these conven-tions, drawn to the rock, the desert, Van Tas-sel, and the promise of experiencing personalalien contact. In 1959, over 11,000 followersof the charismatic contactee came from allover the world to hear him channel messagesfrom the space brothers and to take advantageof the opportunity to share stories of their ownalien encounters with the media.

Van Tassel introduced the world to Ashtar,commandant of station Schare. “Schare” wasone of several space stations in “Blaau,” thefourth sector of “Bela,” in which our solar sys-tem is moving. “Shan” was the name thatAshtar gave for Earth, and he said that theuniverse was ruled by the Council of SevenLights, which had divided the cosmos intoseven sectors and systems. Ashtar proclaimedthat the space intelligence’s main purpose wasto save humankind from itself. Once thatgreat obstacle had been met, then the minorproblem of how to deal with nuclear fissionwould right itself through the harmony thatwould then be extant on Earth.

Ashtar and his fellow space intelligencesalso gave Van Tassel instructions for the con-struction of the “Integratron,” a four-story-high, 16-sided dome of wood and concrete,which was supposed to rejuvenate human cellsby utilizing the natural energy found in the drydesert atmosphere of Giant Rock. Thousands ofbelievers came to pass through the Integratronand to receive antiaging electrostatic charges.

Van Tassel founded the Ministry of Uni-versal Wisdom in 1953, basing its precepts onrevelations from the space brothers. The min-istry taught the universal law that operates onhumankind in seven states: gender (male andfemale); the Creator as Cause; polarity of neg-ative and positive; vibration; rhythm; relativi-ty; and mentality.

Van Tassel maintained his headquarters atGiant Rock, California, for many years, mak-ing it a gathering place for both the curiousand the true believers. He was the author of IRode a Flying Saucer (1952) and The Council ofSeven Lights (1958).

M Delving Deeper

Gibbons, Gavin. They Rode in Space Ships. New York:Citadel Press, 1957.



Van Tassel, George. The Council of Seven Lights. LosAngeles: De Vorss, 1958.

———. I Rode a Flying Saucer. Los Angeles: New AgePublishing, 1952.



The Influence of

the Media

Since many Americans learn their historythrough the dramatic presentations provid-ed by motion pictures and television, it is

rapidly becoming generally accepted “history”that a secret branch of the U.S. government hasconducted a massive cover-up since the Roswellincident of 1947 so scientists could work unhin-dered to employ knowledge gained through alientechnology to accelerate the pace of human sci-entific accomplishments. The fact that a pollconducted in 1998 by CNN/Time, a majornews-gathering agency, found that as much as 80percent of the U.S. public believed that an orga-nized government conspiracy has attempted tocover up the truth about UFOs demonstratesthat such long-held and oft-repeated accusationsby thousands of researchers and witnesses of aeri-al phenomena have grown deep roots in themass consciousness.

While numerous science-fiction films andtelevision series have used the theme of alieninvaders, certain motion pictures and seriesseem to have impressed the mass psyche oftheir audiences far more than those with sim-ple plots dealing with bug-eyed monsters ter-rifying the inhabitants of Earth. In 1951,Howard Hawks’s The Thing from AnotherWorld told the story of a small group of U.S.Air Force personnel and scientists stationedat an isolated outpost near the North Polewho must deal with an alien that needs theirblood in order to survive. The film was athriller that steadily built tension and fright-eningly portrayed how helpless humansmight be at the hands of a single powerfulalien life-form.

In that same year, Robert Wise releasedthe classic The Day the Earth Stood Still(1951), which presented a wise and peacefulalien who came to warn Earth’s politicians



Steven Spielberg and ET.


and scientists that they must cease theirexperiments with nuclear power or risk anni-hilation from extraterrestrials who will nottolerate unbridled human aggressiveness.Actor Michael Rennie’s portrayal of the soft-spoken alien “Klaatu” provided a modelextraterrestrial emissary for generations ofUFO contactees.

Close Encounters of the Third

Kind (1977)

In the character of Roy Neary (Richard Drey-fuss), director Steven Spielberg expresses thedilemma faced by an ordinary man who expe-riences a close encounter with a UFO and isgiven a mental summons to meet with thealiens at a future time. The film explores therange of emotions and inner stresses faced by aUFO contactee, including the confusion ofhis family, the reluctance of the authorities to

recognize his experience as genuine, and theobsession of the contactee to respond to the“invitation” that the aliens have somehowimpressed in his psyche.

Forced by an inner compulsion to seekreunion with the aliens atop Devil’s Tower,Wyoming, Neary must leave his tearful anddistressed wife (Teri Garr) and childrenbehind as he continues his rendezvous withspace intelligences. He is soon joined by anally (Melinda Dillon), whose son was abduct-ed from their farm home, who also is receivingtelepathic messages about where he will bereturned to her.

Spielberg claimed that he had adaptedmany actual stories of UFO contact for thescreenplay, including accounts from the filesof Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer whohad been employed by the U.S. Air Force inits official research of the UFO mystery, Pro-



Sigourney Weaver and

Winona Rider in the film

Alien Resurrection.


ject Blue Book. Hynek was even given acameo in the film, and he can be seen amongthe scientists gathered to welcome the alienswhen the massive mothership sets down onDevil’s Tower. In numerous interviews, Spiel-berg said that he had always been fascinatedby the subject of flying saucers and alien con-tact, and he liked to remind interviewers thathe was born in 1947, the first year of the mod-ern era of UFOs.

The alien beings, when they are at lastrevealed on screen, appear to be childlike,benevolent entities, seemingly so innocent asto be incapable of interstellar travel. Andwhen Neary is selected to return with them totheir world, many moviegoers were touchedvicariously and felt their spirit prepare to liftoff with them.

Such a positive portrayal of alien life-forms as that depicted in Close Encounters ofthe Third Kind was in sharp contrast to themonsters and the invaders that had populat-ed so many science fiction motion pictures,and the way was paved for the arrival ofSpielberg’s E.T.—The Extraterrestrial (1982).

In this film, an amphibian/reptilian entity solived on the love vibration that audiencescould not resist its charm. The evil alienappeared banished from the screen and tele-vision sets, and talk of government cover-upswas forgotten by all but a small number ofdiehard UFO investigators. Even those alienswho looked human, such as Robin Williamson the series Mork and Mindy (1978–82),were not at all threatening.

Sinister aliens didn’t return to the generalpublic consciousness until stories began circu-lating of humans claiming to have beenabducted by extraterrestrial crews for purposesof undergoing bizarre medical examinations.In 1986 Whitley Strieber (1945– ) told of



UFO hovering over a

group of people in the

film ”Close Encounters of

the Third Kind.” (ARCHIVE

PHOTOS, INC.)

“CLOSE Encounters” explores the range of emotions and inner stresses faced by a UFO contactee.

his abduction in the best-selling book Com-munion and later translated the work into amotion picture in 1989, with ChristopherWalken portraying the author. UFO investiga-tor Budd Hopkins (1931– ), who earlier hadauthored Missing Time (1981), producedIntruders (1987), expanding upon the theorythat aliens were abducting Earth men andwomen for the purpose of creating a hybridmix of ET and human DNA. In 1992 Intrudersbecame a television miniseries starringRichard Crenna, Mare Willingham, andSusan Blakely. The television version of Hop-kins’s book chillingly portrayed military andpolitical figures covering up the truth aboutalien abductions while issuing official denialsthat such events were taking place. Onceagain, aliens and the entire UFO mystery werethings to be feared, and thousands of peoplearound the world began to recall abductionscenarios that allegedly had been represseduntil such scenarios as those presented inIntruders and Communion caused terriblememories to surface.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Regardless of whether or not this film was everacknowledged as the source of numerous UFOcontactees’ messages from outer space, itseems likely that at least on the subconsciouslevel, the stately, silver-suited figure of Klaatu(Michael Rennie) and his warning to earth-lings to cease their aggressive behavior andlive in peace was echoed in countless sermonsfrom alleged space intelligences. As the filmopens, a flying saucer does, indeed, land nearthe White House lawn, in a baseball field inWashington, D.C. Within minutes, the craftis surrounded by armed military personnel andarmored tanks. Klaatu emerges, and as heholds up a gift he has brought for the presi-dent, he is shot and wounded by a soldier whomisinterprets the alien’s gesture as a hostilemovement. At this point, Gort, Klaatu’seight-foot robot, leaves the spaceship and firesa kind of laser beam at the assembled militaryand instantly melts all weapons and arma-ments. Klaatu halts Gort before it destroysanything—or anyone—else, and the alien’s



“Close Encounters of the

Third Kind.” (THE

KOBAL COLLECTION)

peaceful intentions convince the officers thathe has come in peace. Klaatu is taken to a mil-itary hospital where his wound can be treatedand he can be placed under guard.

Klaatu makes it clear that he has come asan ambassador from an intergalactic federa-tion of planets that has been keeping Earthunder surveillance for centuries. Now thatEarth’s science has advanced to the nuclearage and the planet’s influence may soon beextended beyond its own atmosphere, he hasbeen sent to deliver a message of utmostimportance to all the heads of state. WhenKlaatu perceives that his request will berefused, he escapes from the hospital andmoves anonymously into a rooming house,posing as a man named Carpenter.

The alien emissary becomes friends withBobby (Billy Gray) and his mother, Helen(Patricia Neal), and the boy leads him to Pro-fessor Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe), a physicist, whois impressed, rather than frightened, byKlaatu’s superior knowledge. The scientists inthe film are depicted as dedicated individualswho are trying their best to live outside thepolitical bickering and backstabbing of theCold War era and who are willing to arrangefor Klaatu to address an international assem-blage of the leaders of world science. Realizingthat Earth’s heads of state are too chauvinisticto set aside their petty differences and listen tohis message, Klaatu arranges a demonstrationthat no one on the planet will be able toignore: He shuts off all power and machineryon Earth for one hour.

Considered a threat to national security,Klaatu is killed by the military and his bodyplaced in a cell. Before he was shot, howev-er, he advised Helen what to do if anythingshould happen to him. She approaches themassive Gort and speaks the order, “KlaatuBarado Nikto,” a command that enables therobot to restore life to Klaatu and brings thefilm to its conclusion and the alien ambas-sador’s final message to all of Earth: “It isyour choice. Join us and live in peace or faceobliteration.” The unsettling implicationmade by Klaatu before he leaves in hisspacecraft is that it really doesn’t matter thatmuch to the aliens what earthlings decide.

His mission is completed. Earth has beenwarned.

The admonitions of Klaatu were subse-quently repeated in the channelings of theUFO contactees for decades to come. Somecritics have made comparisons betweenKlaatu’s mission to Earth and the messagesand ministry of Jesus (c. 6 B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.).Both came from “above”; Jesus was a carpen-ter, Klaatu chose the alias of Carpenter; bothwere killed and resurrected by a power beyondEarth’s knowledge; both returned to the“heavens” when their message that humansmust repent and change their ways had beendelivered.

War of the Worlds (1953)

In War of the Worlds, George Pal adapted H.G. Wells’s novel of alien invasion and trans-formed it into a cinema classic. The film fol-lows the struggle of two scientists (Gene Barryand Ann Robinson) as they attempt to helpEarth survive a devastating attack by Mar-tians. The suspense is intensified by their ownnarrow escapes, and the reality for motion pic-ture audiences lay in seeing the major cities of



Scene from the movie

“The Day the Earth Stood

Still.” (THE KOBAL

COLLECTION)

Earth lying strewn about in heaps of rubble.Although the horror of seemingly unstoppablealiens was a frightening theme, the film wonan Academy Award for its special effects.While Earth is saved by the motion picture’send, the devastation rendered by the extrater-restrial invaders left unforgettable images inthe minds of the audience.

While the film version of Wells’s novel ishighly regarded by science-fiction and cinemabuffs and was successful upon its release, theimpact it had on mass consciousness cannotbe compared to the effect of the radio broad-cast of War of the Worlds on the day beforeHalloween in 1938. At that time, CBS’s“Mercury Theatre” presented Orson Welles



Orson Wells acting out

his famous “War of the

Worlds” radio broadcast.


and a talented cast simulating a live newsbroadcast of an invasion of Earth by mecha-nized Martian war machines. Because theaccount of unstoppable alien beings landingin the New Jersey farmlands was depicted sorealistically—and because many listenerstuned in after the Mercury Theatre produc-tion was already in progress—the greater partof the nation was in panic over the invadersfrom Mars.

Invading aliens continued to be a populartheme in a number of motion picturesthroughout the 1950s. Invaders from Mars(1953) remains in many moviegoers’ memoryas the single most frightening film of theirchildhood. Perhaps what made the film soterrifying to young people was the premisethat one’s parents, teachers, and friends couldbe taken over by alien life forms and worktoward a nationwide conspiracy. Invasion ofthe Body Snatchers (1956) developed thetheme of aliens possessing family and friendsto a high degree of paranoia. While inInvaders from Mars the extraterrestrialsattached themselves to their victims’ body, inInvasion of the Body Snatchers they broughtstrange pods with them from their worldwhich grew into likenesses of those humanswhom they replaced.

Critics analyzing the lasting effects ofthese two films often point out that they werereleased during the paranoia of the Commu-nist hysteria provoked by Senator JosephMcCarthy (1908–1957) and the House Com-mittee on Un-American Activities during the1950s. Other social historians argue that theUFO craze began when the threat of nuclearwar with the Soviet Union hung like a blackcloud over the world and many people weredesperate to believe that some force from theskies could appear and deliver Earth fromnuclear annihilation. Still other scholars sug-gest that it may have been the U.S. govern-ment itself that began the rumors of flyingsaucers in order to divert public attentionfrom the development of its own secretweapons. Perhaps such a prevailing atmos-phere of national distrust contributed to thehorror of films about UFO invaders, but theunsettling concept of aliens slowly takingover Earth through the possession of human

bodies became firmly implanted in the psy-ches of millions of men and women who nowlooked even more suspiciously at the skiesabove them.

Such television series as The Twilight Zone(1959–64) and The Outer Limits(1963–65)occasionally featured episodes concerningalien invaders, but My Favorite Martian(1963–66) portrayed extraterrestrial visitorsas friendly and funny—especially if one over-looked the antenna that sometimes sproutedfrom the top of the Martian’s (Ray Walston)head. It was a series aptly named The Invaders(1967–69), starring Roy Thinnes, thatfocused on the paranoid concept that evilaliens might be living undetected amonghumans and conspiring to conquer them.Thinnes was David Vincent, an architect,who happened to be the only human witnessof a UFO landing. No one believed hisaccount, so once he discovered that theextraterrestrials had arrived with the soleintent of taking over the planet, it became hismission to stop them, alerting and enlistingwhomever he could to assist him. Vincent’stask became all the more difficult becausewhenever he managed to kill one of theinvaders, their physical body disintegrated,leaving no evidence to convince the authori-ties that aliens were walking and plottingamong them. When the series ended in 1969,Vincent had not been able to stem the tide ofalien invasion, and the stories of extraterres-trials posing as humans had received moresubstantiation from a television series thatmany insisted was telling the truth disguisedas a fictional presentation.

The X-Files (1993–2002)

In 1993 Chris Carter, creator of the televisionseries The X-Files for Fox, fashioned a blend ofUFO mythology, increasing public distrust of



WAR of the Worlds was broadcasted live byCBS’s “Mercury Theatre”on October 30, 1938.

the U.S. government, and a growing interest inthe paranormal that over its nine-year run usu-ally finished as the second-most popular dramaamong young adults. During its peak season in1997, The X-Files attracted an estimated 20million viewers per episode. In 2002, shortlybefore the last episode of the series, SandyGrushow, the chairperson of Fox Entertain-ment, said that The X-Files had made in excessof $1 billion for the company.

At the 1996 Golden Globe Awards, thecategories for Best Television Drama, BestActor in a Television Drama, and Best Actressin a Television Drama were all won by Foxnetwork’s The X-Files, in which FBI agentsFox Mulder (David Duchovny) and DanaScully (Gillian Anderson) regularly pursuedUFOs and declared to their audience that “thetruth is out there.” However, because thetruth was being covered up by an ultra-secret

and exceedingly ruthless government agency,they must “trust no one.”

According to the mythos developed byCarter, the alien invasion had begun in pre-historic times and had been rediscovered bythe U.S. military and a secret branch of thegovernment in 1947 after the crash of a flyingsaucer at Roswell. Although Mulder and Scul-ly made side excursions to investigate vam-pires, ghosts, and a wide variety of monsters,the UFO scenarios comprised the glue thatheld the series together and kept the fansreturning week after week to chart the agents’progress in cracking the ultimate case thatwould force the secret government to admitthe truth about aliens.

Mulder and Scully investigated the entiregamut of UFO phenomena—Men in Black,government cover-ups, alien assassins, abduc-tions, contactees, missing time, and telepathiccommunication with extraterrestrials. Beforethe series ended in May 2002, both Scully andMulder had themselves been abducted andScully, earlier declared unable to have chil-dren, had borne a child under mysterious cir-cumstances.

On June 19, 1998, the X-Files motion pic-ture, Fight the Future, was released, allowing itssmall-screen paranoia about the governmentconspiracy to hide the truth about UFOs tospread to big-screen multiplexes across thenation. The film became number one the firstweek of its release, grossing $31 million. It hassince brought in more than $100 million.

Often hailed as a cultural phenomenonand generally acclaimed as the most successfulscience-fiction series in the history of televi-sion, the influence of The X-Files on the massaudience’s beliefs concerning such subjects asUFOs, abductions, and government conspira-cies is incalculable.

The theme of Dark Skies, the lead televi-sion series in NBC’s 1996 Saturday night“thrillogy,” was that history as the viewerslearned it in school was a lie. One of the“truths” that the series revealed was that in1947 President Harry S Truman ordered anextraterrestrial spacecraft shot down overRoswell, after an alien ambassador haddemanded the unconditional surrender of the



David Duchovny and

Gillian Anderson from

the television program

“The X-Files.” (THE

KOBAL COLLECTION)

X-Files attracted an estimated 20 million viewers per episode.

United States. Subsequently, whateverresources could be recovered from the scrapsof the demolished alien craft were doled out tovarious giants of American industry to befreely incorporated into the current technolo-gy—and a sinister and ubiquitous super-secretgovernment agency known as Majestic-12was created to monitor any undue alien inter-ference in U.S. political and social structures.

Before the series was cancelled, viewerslearned that the aliens had the ability to pos-sess human bodies with their larvae, thusallowing them to pass undetected and toaccomplish an incredible number of negativehistorical events—from the assassination ofJohn F. Kennedy to the conflict in Vietnam,from the murder of certain celebrities to popu-larizing the use of recreational drugs amongyoung people.

The summer blockbuster Independence Day(1996) followed a War of the Worlds (1953)plot line in which aliens blow up half thenation, including the U.S. capital, and areabout to destroy the world. A tough U.S. pres-ident (Bill Pullman) and two heroes (WillSmith, Jeff Goldblum) manage to pilot thespaceship that a clandestine branch of thegovernment has been hiding in a secret under-ground base since the Roswell crash in 1947and save the day. The Rock (1996) is astraightforward Hollywood action thriller thatsurprises audiences at the end of the filmwhen the character played by Sean Conneryreveals that forbidden knowledge about theRoswell UFO crash was among the reasonswhy he had been unjustly imprisoned for solong without a trial.

In 1997 the motion picture Men in Blacktook one of the most sinister aspects of UFOresearch—the alleged strong-arm tactics per-formed on witnesses of aerial phenomena bymysterious men dressed in black—and trans-formed it into a special-effects comedy withTommy Lee Jones and Will Smith portrayingagents of a secret government branch thatkeeps the aliens who walk among earthlingsunder surveillance. In the film—as inspired byreal-life alleged victims of the Men in Black—any ordinary citizen who happened to stumbleon the truth about the government cover-up

has all memory of the experience wiped out bya special brainwashing device.

It has been suggested that one reason whyso many U.S. citizens are easily convincedthat their government is hiding the truthabout extraterrestrial contact is that so fewpeople continue to trust the government afterdecades of cover-ups and scandals that wereeventually exposed. According to a surveyconducted by Princeton Survey ResearchAssociates for Pew Research and published inUSA Today on September 12, 1997, only 6percent of adults in the United Statesexpressed trust in the federal government.The mantra of The X-Files has truly been putinto practice: “Trust no one!”

M Delving Deeper

Carter, Bill. “Truth Is Out: This Season Will Be Lastfor ‘X-Files.’” New York Times, January 18, 2002.[Online] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/18/business/media/18TUBE.html.

Clarens, Carlos. An Illustrated History of the HorrorFilm. New York: Capricorn Books, 1968.

Douglas, Drake. Horror! New York: Collier Books,1969.

Maltin, Leonard. Leonard Maltins’ 1999 Movie andVideo Guide. New York: Signet, 1998.



Roy Thinnes was in the

”Invaders“ television

series, as well as the

“The X-Files.” (ARCHIVES

OF BRAD STEIGER)

Pazsaz Entertainment Network. [Online] http://www.pazsaz.com/roswell. html.

Rovin, Jeff. The Great Television Series. New York: A.S. Barnes, 1967.


The UFO Mystery Grows

In July 1997, in honor of the 50th anniver-sary of the alleged UFO crash at Roswell,New Mexico, CNN/Time magazine took a

poll that indicated that 80 percent of Ameri-cans thought the government was hidingknowledge about the UFO mystery. Otherinteresting data included the assertion that 64percent believed that alien life-forms havemade contact with humans. Of that 64 per-cent, 37 percent said the ETs have abductedhumans, and 37 percent are certain that thealiens have contacted representatives of theU.S. government.

On June 10, 1998, a follow-up CNN/Timepoll revealed that 27 percent of all Americansbelieved that space aliens have visited Earthand 80 percent believed that the U.S. govern-ment is conducting a cover-up of the alienpresence.

The most prevalent conspiracy theorycontends that the government learned thetruth about UFOs at the site of the Roswell,New Mexico, crash in 1947 when the militaryrecovered alien corpses. A secret group knownas Majestic-12 keeps the U.S. president andother world leaders briefed on the progress ofalien activity on Earth. While the govern-ments of Earth officially deny the existence ofUFOs to prevent panic among the masses, the

chief executives are well aware of the exis-tence of extraterrestrial involvement in worldaffairs. An arm of the U.S. “shadow” govern-ment, in association with the Illuminati, analleged worldwide secret society, made a dealwith the alien invaders to trade advancedextraterrestrial technology for such Earthresources as water, minerals, cattle—and cer-tain of its citizenry. UFO abductions are con-ducted by aliens as a species-monitoring pro-gram. Physical examinations of humans andcrossbreeding attempts involving preselectedmen and women are allowed by the govern-ment as a treaty concession.

As the year 2000 grew nearer, many funda-mentalist religious sects became obsessed withfears concerning the millennium andArmageddon, the great final battle betweenGood and Evil. Such an obsession created amind-set of suspicion that had many membersof these religious groups identifying Satan’sminions gathering to fight the forces of Goodas aliens arriving on UFOs. A number of fun-damentalist Christian evangelists began toblend accounts of UFOs with the old fears ofsecret societies composed of top U.S. govern-ment officials, politicians, corporate chair-men, and international bankers who wereseeking to bring into being a dreaded “NewWorld Order.” Rumors spread that extraterres-trials and powerful members of secret societieshad agreed that shortly before the year 2000 acarefully staged false alien invasion wouldconvince the masses of the world that anattack from outer space was about to begin.People of all nations would believe the leaderswho advised that unconditional surrender tothe aliens was for everyone’s own good. Imme-diately following their betrayal of Earth to thealiens, the united leaders would form a OneWorld Government, a New World Order, thusfulfilling biblical prophecies about a return tothe days of Babylon. The aliens would revealthemselves as demonic entities, and the plan-et would be in torment until Jesus returned todeal the final blow to the armies of evil.

During that same period of paranoia in themid-to-late 1990s, UFO believers and investi-gators began seeing treacherous agents of thesecret government everywhere. Men in Blackwere joined by Black Helicopters, and hun-



EIGHTY percent of Americans believed thatthe U.S. government is conducting a cover-up of the

alien presence.

dreds of men and women who claimed to havewitnessed UFO phenomena protested thatthey had subsequently been harassed and spiedupon by mysterious unmarked black heli-copters. And the once-benign space brotherswere largely replaced by nasty alien abductorswho wanted to perform painful physical exam-inations aboard motherships and steal humanova and sperm for their genetic experiments increating a new hybrid species.

On June 24, 1997—the 50th anniversaryof Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of the flyingsaucers in Washington State—the UnitedStates Air Force conducted a special Pentagonbriefing and announced its answer to thecharges of a conspiracy at Roswell in the doc-ument The Roswell Report: Case Closed. Thispublication, stated Colonel John Haynes,

would be the Air Force’s final word concern-ing 50 years of accusations that the govern-ment was hiding evidence of extraterrestrialvisitation. The debris found at the crash siteoutside of Roswell were fragments from a bal-loon from Project Mogul, a top-secret intelli-gence gathering operation, that had com-menced immediately after the end of WorldWar II (1945). Its mission had been to spy onthe Soviets and to monitor their nuclear pro-gram; therefore, the cover-up had been neces-sary for purposes of national security.

The air force report went on to state thatthe alleged bodies seen around the crash sitewere not those of extraterrestrial beings, butwere dummies, roughly the size of humans,that had been used in experiments with high-altitude parachutes. After each of the experi-



UFO Enigma Museum in

Roswell, New Mexico.


mental drops, which had begun in 1953, airforce personnel would retrieve the simulatedhuman forms. Apparently, folks aroundRoswell had observed some of these recoverymissions and thought that they had witnessedmilitary personnel picking up alien bodies.

UFO researchers scorned such an explana-tion of the alleged crash debris having been aballoon and the true nature of the aliencorpses having been parachute dummies. Andthen there was the question of how those wit-nesses who claimed to have seen wreckage of aflying saucer and the bodies of its extraterres-trial crew in 1947 could have confused theevent with the discovery of dummies droppedover the desert near Roswell in 1953.

Colonel Haynes explained the six-year dis-crepancy between the events as a manifesta-tion of the mental phenomenon of “time com-pression” on the part of the witnesses. Timecompression, he stated, occurs when one’smemory melds events separated by many yearsinto “compressed” segments of time. Civilianswho witnessed the crash site of a weather bal-loon in 1947 and, six years later, saw air forcepersonnel retrieving crash dummies droppedfrom the skies, recalled the two events as onein their compressed memories.

The official explanation issued by the airforce in its publication The Roswell Report: CaseClosed accomplished little in quelling the accu-sations of a government conspiracy regardingthe mystery of what really occurred in July1947. Roswell has become a Mecca for UFObelievers from all over the world, and the cityhosts an annual celebration to honor thealleged crash of the flying saucer in the desert.

In March 2002, a survey conducted in theUnited States by the National Science Founda-tion yielded the results that 30 percent of thoseindividuals polled believed that space vehiclesfrom alien civilizations regularly visit the skies

of Earth. An extensive survey of paranormalbeliefs in the United Kingdom taken in June2002 found that 47 percent of its citizensbelieved in visitations from extraterrestrials.

As UFO investigations enter the twenty-first century, the mystery grows unabated. OnJuly 26, 1952, UFOs made national headlineswhen they were sighted over Washington,D.C. The mysterious objects were detected oncivilian and military radar screens and fighterplanes were dispatched to investigate. Exactly50 years later to the day, July 26, 2002, theNorth American Aerospace Defense Com-mand (NORAD) scrambled two D.C. AirNational Guard F-16 jets out of Andrews AirForce Base to investigate unknown aerial craftover the nation’s capital.

Accusations of government cover-ups andconspiracies continue, and the old stories ofsecret agencies and aliens conspiring to deceivehumankind circulate freely. The media reportstrange occurrences such as crop circles andcattle mutilations. Late-night radio talk showsfeature bizarre accounts of the air force’s Area51 and of scientists working in undergroundlaboratories to back-engineer the wreckage ofalien space vehicles. And some individualsargue that the alien interference in the eventsof planet Earth may go back even to the days ofWorld War II (1939–45) and such controver-sial endeavors as the Philadelphia Experiment.

M Delving Deeper

Fawcett, Lawrence, and Barry J. Greenwood. ClearIntent: The Government Coverup of the UFO Expe-rience.Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,1984.

Friedman, Stanton T. Top Secret/Majic. New York:Marlowe, 1996.

Klass, Philip J. UFOs Explained. New York: RandomHouse, 1974.

Randle, Kevin D. The Randle Report: UFOs in the’90s. New York: M. Evans, 1997.

Randle, Kevin D., and Donald R. Schmitt. The TruthAbout the UFO Crash at Roswell. New York: M.Evans, 1994.





IN the United Kingdom 47 percent of its citizensbelieved in visitations from extraterrestrials.

Area 51 and Reverse Engineering

While the government officially denies theexistence of the base known as Area 51, UFOinvestigators are convinced that the militarybase near Groom Lake in Nevada is the sitewhere the UFO that crashed near Roswell, NewMexico, in 1947 was reversed engineered to cre-ate such aerial craft as the Stealth Bomber.

Area 51, also known as Dreamland, hasnot really been secret since the March 1993issue of Popular Science brought the reconnais-sance aircraft Aurora out of the dark andrevealed that the Mach 6 spy plane was devel-oped at the closely guarded U.S. Air Forcefacility at Groom Lake, Nevada.

In his book, The Day After Roswell (1997),Colonel Philip J. Corso (U.S. Army, retired)claims that he was given “personal steward-ship” of various extraterrestrial artifacts recov-ered from the crash of a spacecraft outside ofRoswell, New Mexico, in July 1947. Corsogoes on to state that he distributed the objectsof alien technology to select government con-tractors and that while the U.S. governmenthas officially denied doing so, it has had largenumbers of scientists secretly and ambitiouslyachieving reverse engineering from advancedalien technology. Among the results of suchback engineering have been fiber optics, lightamplification devices, Kevlar (lightweight,heavily resistant material for use in bodyarmor), and a large number of advances inlaser weaponry.

Corso served his country for many years. Hewas on General Douglas MacArthur’s intelli-gence staff following the Korean War in the1950s, and he was later assigned to PresidentDwight Eisenhower’s Security Council, then tothe Army Research and Development’s ForeignTechnology Desk at the Pentagon. According toCorso, when he moved into the Foreign Tech-nology Division, he was given a file cabinet ofartifacts from the Roswell crash and instructedto begin working on a plan of action and recom-mendations for their use. His superiors wereenthusiastic about the artifacts’ use in buildingspaceships that would not be able to be penetrat-ed by radiation, cosmic activity, or gunfire.

One of Corso’s first file cabinet discoverieswas a piece of metal about the size of a post-

card that was paper thin. Somehow the atomswere aligned in the metal in such a way thatgovernment scientists all failed to back engi-neer it. Next, according to Corso, the scien-tists moved on to an integrated circuit, thesize of a chip, that gave rise to the transistor.

In a government program called “AppliedEngineering,” Corso and his staff would findpeople in industry who were working in a par-ticular area of scientific research and supple-ment their work with the alien technologythrough their Research and Development pro-jects. In some instances, the governmentagency would even fund it.

Although the claims made by ColonelCorso in The Day After Roswell remainextremely controversial and unverified, theycontinue to keep alive the accusations thatthe government has kept the truth about thealleged alien crash at Roswell from the public.

M Delving Deeper

Corso, Philip J., with William J. Birnes. The Day AfterRoswell. New York: Pocket Books, 1997.

Darlington, David. Area 51: The Dreamland Chroni-cles. New York: Henry Holt, 1997.


———. Roswell Crash Update: Exposing the MilitaryCoverup of the Century. New Brunswick, N.J.:Global Communications, 1995.


Cattle Mutilations

On October 9, 1967, the Associated Press car-ried an item that told of the possible role ofUFOs in the killing of Snippy, a three-year-oldgelding. The carcass was discovered about aquarter of a mile from the ranch house of HarryKing in the desolate mountain country nearAlamosa, Colorado. King notified the horse’sowners, Mr. and Mrs. Burl Lewis, who were dis-turbed by the condition of the carcass, whichsuggested that something out of the ordinaryhad been responsible for their horse’s demise.

A pathologist admitted bewildermentwhen he found the horse’s abdominal, brain,and spinal cavities to be empty. All flesh had



been stripped from the horse’s head and neck,but the rest of the animal was untouchedexcept for the openings left by the mysterioussurgery. Although the carcass had lain exposedfor several days, it was not unduly decomposed,nor had it begun to smell. Even more unusualis the fact that no predators, vultures, or buz-zards had approached the carcass.

UFO investigators stated that they hadnoted a high radiation count around Snippy’sremains and reported finding areas where thechico brush had been squashed to within 10inches of the ground. Fifteen circular exhaustmarks were found 100 yards from the carcassof the horse. Six identical holes, each twoinches wide and four inches deep, were foundin a nearby area. In addition, the investigatorssaid that they found the imprint of a circle 75feet in diameter, and a number of smaller areaswhere the chico brush had been flattened incircles 15 feet in diameter.

Reports of Snippy’s supposed death at thehands of alien specimen collectors receivedelaborate play and bold headlines across thenation. The official word was that Snippy hadbeen killed by lightning, but UFO investiga-tors quickly denounced such an analysis andthe enigma of animal mutilations has contin-ued into the twenty-first century.

Cattle are the most frequent victims ofthese mysterious mutilations, and according toforensic pathologists who have examinedmany of these animals, traditional surgicalinstruments were not used—but the incisionsappear to be the result of an advanced lasertechnology. Most investigators have eliminat-ed the possibility that predators or scavengerscould so neatly incise and remove select organsfrom their victims. And the obvious problemwith blaming predators and scavengers is thefact that all the rest of the animal remains

intact. A number of veterinarians and forensicscientists who have investigated the mysteri-ous mutilations have described the blood asappearing to have been drained with no resul-tant vascular collapse. The known technologythat could process such an accomplishmentdoes not exist, and if it did, it would seem tohave to be big and heavy to manipulate someanimals weighing well over 1,500 pounds.

According to most accounts, tracks ormarkings of a conventional nature, such astire imprints or human or animal tracks, havenever been found near a mutilated carcass, butmany farmers and ranchers have reported theindentations of a tripod nearby. And therehave been numerous reports of UFOs seen inthe area and in the immediate vicinity of acattle mutilation.

Many investigators are openly skepticalabout blaming cattle mutilations on aliens. Inthe opinion of many veterinarians, livestockassociation officials, forensic pathologists,chemists, and a host of county, state, and fed-eral officers and agents, such alleged mutila-tions are simply the result of Mother Naturefulfilling one of her primary responsibilities ofkeeping the countryside clean. The true per-petrators of the mystery of animal mutilations,according to these investigators, are predatorsand scavengers. All the tales of bloodless car-casses, organs removed with surgical precision,and so forth, are the work of sensationalistjournalists, excitable ranchers, and paranoidUFO conspiracy theorists.

Regardless of a great deal of official skepti-cism toward the subject of cattle mutilations,it does appear to comprise a genuine mystery.And every time that a mutilated cow is foundwith its tongue, eyes, ears, anus, udder, andgenitalia removed without apparently shed-ding a drop of blood and without the culpritsleaving any tracks whatsoever, aliens, sataniccultists, and crews of unmarked black heli-copters are named as the suspects. One of thefavorite theories of the alien/government con-spiracy buffs is that a branch of the secret gov-ernment made a deal with the aliens thatwould enable them to sustain themselves onEarth by ingesting a particular enzyme, or hor-monal secretion, most readily obtained from



ALIENS, satanic cultists, and crews ofunmarked black helicopters are named as the suspects

in cattle mutilations.

the tongues and throats of cattle. Further, itseems that this same type of animal mutilationoccurs worldwide with the same kinds of ani-mals every time.

Reports from Argentina in July 2002 statedthat beginning with the first detected mutila-tion in April, more than 200 cattle had beenfound with their blood drained, their tongues,organs, flesh, and skin removed by angular,nearly curved, cuts. Although the officialexplanation centered on a carnivorous mouse,no one, from ranchers and veterinarians tobiologists specializing in rodents have everseen mice feed upon cow carcasses. Crews fromUFOs were most often named by ranchers asthe most likely mutilators of their cattle herds.

The most prominent researcher in thebizarre field of animal mutilations is Linda Moul-ton Howe, author of Glimpses of Other Realities(1998). Howe has documented hundreds ofabnormal, inexplicable deaths of animals, mostlycattle and horses on the open range—all ofwhich died because of bloodless excisions andthe removal of eyes, organs, and genitals.

When she began her intensive research inthe fall of 1979, Howe suspected that therewas some sort of contamination in the envi-ronment, and that some government agencywas secretly harvesting tissue and fluids forexamination. But she could not fathom whyany government agency working in secrecywould be so careless as to leave the carcassesof the cattle lying in the fields or ranges,thereby creating alarm and anger among theowners of the animals. Howe’s early interviewswere with ranchers and law enforcement offi-cers, who reluctantly informed her of thesightings of glowing disks in the vicinity of thecattle mutilations. Some witnesses even toldher of having seen nonhuman entities at thescene. Her continuing research has convincedher that something very strange is going on,which may, indeed, involve alien experimen-tation with Earth’s animals.

M Delving Deeper

Howe, Linda Moulton. Alien Harvest: Further Evi-dence Linking Animal Mutilations and HumanAbductions to Alien Life Forms. The Author, 1993.

———. Glimpses of Other Realities. Vol. 2, High Strange-ness. New Orleans: Paper Chase Press, 1998.

Lindsay, Reed. “Eerie X-File of the Pampas.” Sun Jour-nal, July 23, 2002. [Online] http://www.sunspot.net/templates/misc.

Oyan, Katie. “Cattle Mutilations Back.” Great FallsTribune, January 3, 2002. [Online] http://www.greatfallstribune.com/news/stories/20020103/topstories/1410092. html.



Crop Circles

Strange circles or unusual geometric designshave been discovered in cereal crops aroundthe world, even in the rice paddies of Japan.The designs are often hundreds of feet indiameter and length and may cover manyacres. While many people believe that cropcircles are a comparatively recent UFO-relat-ed phenomenon that began in the late 1970sor early 1980s, the mystery of the crop circle ishardly new. Unexplained geometric designsoccurred in the fields of wheat and corn inScotland in 1678, and rural residents of Eng-land speak of the “corn fairies” that made sim-ilar designs in the fields in the late 1800s.Researchers have discovered accounts of thediscovery of so-called fairy circles in fields andmeadows dating back to medieval timesthroughout the British Isles, Germany, Scan-dinavia, and France. Recent evidence indi-cates that Chinese farmers found crop circlesin their fields as many as 3,000 years ago.

In those cases of crop circles that haveappeared since the 1980s, investigators havedetermined that the crops were biochemicallyor biophysically altered. Controversy ragesover how these circles appear, as they are usu-ally formed overnight and are not cut.



UNEXPLAINED geometric designsoccurred in the fields of wheat and corn in Scotland in 1678.

In 1991, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley,two retired artists in England, confessed thatthey were responsible for making the crop cir-cles that had baffled the world for so long andthat they accomplished the most intricate ofdesigns with a simple board and a piece ofstring. While the confession of Bower andChorley satisfied a good many skeptics andjournalists, serious crop circle researchers,called “cerealogists,” asked how these twoelderly gentlemen could have accomplishedtheir hoaxes throughout the world in suchgreat numbers. While admitting that therehave been hoaxes, cerealogists pointed outthat pranksters have been unable to createcrop circles with the same precision andundisturbed nature as those circles thought tobe of alien or unknown origin.

Regardless of general dismissal of the cropcircle phenomenon by conventional scientistswho remain skeptical because human beingscould be perpetrating hoaxes, it would appearthat there is a genuine mystery in the forma-tion of many of the incredible designs thatsuddenly appear in fields around the world.Four of the principal theories regarding theorigins of crop circles are the following:

1. extraterrestrial entities offering clues totheir identity and intentions toward earth-lings;

2. natural phenomena, ranging from insects tolightning, from plasma vortices (a kind ofball lightning) to electromagnetic anom-alies;

3. hoaxsters;

4. an ancient nonhuman intelligence indige-nous to Earth that is utilizing archetypaldesigns in order to warn contemporaryhumankind to be more responsible to andmore respectful of the planet.

English researcher Lucy Pringle believesthat many crop circle formations are due tonatural causes, such as the discharge of someelectromagnetic energy, but she also notedthat a particular design formed around April21, 1998, appeared close to the prehistoricmound of Silbury Hill. She likened the double-ringed circle with 33 scroll-like bands betweenthe rings to a Beltane wheel, an ancient sym-bol used at Celtic fire festivals on May Day.

Pringle has not been alone in suggestingthat a nonhuman intelligence is perpetratingthese mysterious manifestations, perhaps afamiliar nonhuman intelligence, such as thatgroup of beings commonly called fairies, elvesor devas, which has played a significant role inthe myths and legends of every planetary cul-ture for centuries.

On July 19–21, 2002, a three-day confer-ence of leading crop circle investigators washeld in Somerset, England. Andy Thomas, anorganizer of the meeting, commented that his11 years of experience in investigating theenigma had convinced him of only onething—that not all the circles were made bypranksters. Other than that, he stated, it washard to say whether the phenomenon wascaused by extraterrestrials, some kind of super-consciousness, collective psychokinesis (mindover matter), natural forces, or somethingpresently beyond human awareness. Most cere-alogists in attendance insisted that it is rela-tively easy to tell the difference between cir-cles made by hoaxers and those made by whatappears to be some kind of superior intelli-gence, imprinting geometric designs presentlybeyond the capacity of human beings.

On August 2, 2002, Touchstone Picturesreleased M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, starringMel Gibson as a Pennsylvania farmer who dis-covers a crop circle in his field. The motionpicture re-ignited controversy regarding cropcircles and quite likely inspired numerous imi-tators who created mysterious designs of theirown in fields throughout the United Statesand Canada.

M Delving Deeper

Andrews, Colin, and Pat Delgado. Circular Evidence.London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1990.

“Experts ‘Amazed’ by Crop Circle Designs.” BBCNews, July 19, 2002. [Online] http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/england/newsid_2138000/2138424.stm.

Howe, Linda Moulton. Mysterious Lights and Crop Cir-cles. Penn.: Linda Moulton Howe Productions,2002.

Lin, Rosanne. “China Says Crop Circles AppearedThere 3,000 Years Ago.” The Shanghai Star,August 2, 2002. [Online] http://www.rense.com/general27/crops.htm.



Manistre, Hugh. Crop Circles, a Beginner’s Guide.London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999.

Pringle, Lucy. Crop Circles—The Greatest Mystery ofModern Times. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.

Silva, Freddy. Secrets in the Fields: The Science andMysticism of Crop Circles. Charlottesville, Va.:Hampton Roads, 2002.

Majestic-12

According to UFO researcher and documentaryfilmmaker Jamie Shandera, in December 1984he received an anonymous packet in the mailcontaining two rolls of undeveloped 35mm film.The film, once developed, revealed whatappeared to be a briefing report to President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969; presi-dent 1953–61), which had been prepared by agroup of 12 prestigious and top-secret investiga-tors who worked under the code name of “Oper-ation Majestic-12” (MJ-12). The document,which appeared to be authentic, describeddetails of the recovery, analysis, and officialcover-up of the 1947 UFO crash outside ofRoswell, New Mexico. The report also describedthe recovery of the bodies of four humanlikebeings that had been found near the wreckage ofthe downed extraterrestrial spacecraft.

According to these documents, all four ofthe entities were dead, and their corpses hadbeen mutilated by desert scavengers and werebadly decomposed due to exposure to the ele-ments. Although the creatures were humanlikein appearance, the secret report stated that thebiological and evolutionary processes responsi-ble for their development had apparently beenquite different from those of humankind.

On June 14, 1987, at the 24th AnnualNational UFO Conference in Burbank, Cali-fornia, Shandera, together with StantonFriedman and William Moore—the twoprominent UFO researchers Shandera hadenlisted to help him test the truth of the MJ-12 documents—made public their investiga-tions into what purported to be documentaryproof of a government cover-up of UFOs thatbegan in 1947. According to the documentsleaked to Shandera, the members of Majestic-12 consisted of the following individuals:

Lloyd V. Berkner, known for scientificachievements in the fields of physics and elec-

tronics, special assistant to the secretary ofstate in charge of the Military Assistance Pro-gram, executive secretary of what is nowknown as the Research and DevelopmentBoard of the National Military Establishment.

Detley W. Bronk, a physiologist and bio-physicist of international repute, chairman ofthe National Research Council, and a mem-ber of the Medical Advisory Board of theAtomic Energy Commission.

Vannevar Bush, a brilliant scientist whowas, from 1947 to 1948, chairman of Researchand Development for the National MilitaryEstablishment.

Gordon Gray, three times elected to theNorth Carolina Senate, succeeded KennethRoyall as secretary of the Army in June 1949.

Dr. Jerome C. Hunsaker, an innovativeaeronautical scientist and design engineer,who served as chairman of the National Advi-sory Committee for Aeronautics.

Robert M. Montague, Sandia base com-mander, Albuquerque, New Mexico, from July1947 to February 1951.

General Nathan F. Twining, commanderof the B-29 superfortresses that dropped theatom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. InDecember 1945 he was named commandinggeneral of the Air Material Command head-quartered at Wright Field. In October 1947 hewas appointed commander in chief of theAlaskan Command, remaining in that posi-tion until May 1950, when he became actingdeputy chief of staff for personnel at U.S. AirForce headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Donald H. Menzel, director of the Har-vard Observatory at Cambridge, Massachu-setts, a leading authority on the solar chro-mosphere, formulated (with Dr. Winfield W.Salisbury) the initial calculations that led tothe first radio contact with the Moon in 1946.

James V. Forrestal served first as undersec-retary, then secretary of the U.S. Navy forseven years. In September 1947 he becamesecretary of defense, responsible for coordinat-ing the activities of all U.S. Armed Forces.

Sidney W. Souers, a rear admiral, whobecame deputy chief of Naval Intelligence



before organizing the Central IntelligenceOffice in January 1946.

Hoyt S. Vandenberg, a much-decoratedU.S. Air Force officer, rose to the rank of com-manding general of the Ninth U.S. Air Forcein France before he was named assistant chiefof staff of G-2 (Intelligence) in 1946. In June1946 he was appointed the director of CentralIntelligence.

Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetterwas summoned from the post of naval attacheat the American Embassy in Paris to becomethe first director of the Central IntelligenceAgency (CIA), serving from May 1947 toSeptember 1950.

Many UFO researchers agreed upon seeingthe list of MJ-12’s alleged personnel that if aUFO had crashed and been recovered inRoswell in 1947, this would have been thekind of panel that could have accomplished athorough investigation of the craft. Each ofthese individuals had been at the top in theirrespective areas of expertise during the late1940s and had the added benefit of govern-ment experience behind them.

The more skeptical investigators agreedthat “Document A,” which purported to be aletter dated September 24, 1947, from Presi-dent Harry S Truman to Secretary of DefenseForrestal, appeared to be genuine; but eventhough Truman did refer to “Operation Majes-tic Twelve” in the letter, there was nothingclearly stated that linked the group to UFOinvestigations.

Others questioned why Hillenkoetter,head of the CIA, listed as the briefing officeron the MJ-12 document, would remain quietabout the crashed flying saucer and the alienbodies when he became active in civilianUFO research in 1957.

The biggest shocker to longtime UFOresearchers was the discovery of the name of

Donald Menzel, the Harvard astronomer, onthe MJ-12 list. Menzel was well known as apassionate debunker of flying saucers and theauthor of three anti-UFO books.

In spite of its defenders in the UFOresearch field, the authenticity of the MJ-12documents remains highly controversial. Skep-tical researchers have labeled the documents asclearly false and fraudulent, pointing out that athorough search of the records of the Trumanadministration reveals no executive order forsuch a UFO investigative group as MJ-12.Researchers who have served in the militaryhave stated that the clearest indication of ahoax lies in the many incorrect military termsand language used in these alleged “official”documents, suggesting that the creators of thehoax have never served in the military.

M Delving Deeper

Beckley, Timothy Green. MJ-12 and the Riddle ofHangar 18. New Brunswick, N.J.: Inner LightPublications, 1989.

Friedman, Stanton T. Top Secret/Majic. New York:Marlowe, 1996.

Friedman, Stanton T., and Don Berliner. Crash atCorona: The U.S. Military Retrieval and Cover-Upof a UFO. New York: Marlowe, 1994.

Randle, Kevin D. Case MJ-12: The True Story Behindthe Government’s UFO Conspiracies. New York:Avon, 2002.

Strieber, Whitley. Majestic. New York: Berkley Pub-lishing, 1990.


The Philadelphia Experiment

According to one of the most pervasive mythsin UFO research, in October 1943, the U.S.Navy secretly accomplished the teleportationof a warship from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,to its dock near Norfolk, Virginia, by success-fully applying Einstein’s Unified Field Theory.While the experiment succeeded in causingthe Eldridge to become invisible, a number ofthe crew burst into flames in spontaneoushuman combustion, and several others laterlapsed into invisibility in front of their fami-lies—and, in one case, before the patrons of acrowded bar. Over half the officers and crew



THEauthenticity of the MJ-12 documentsremains highly controversial.

members had to be committed to psychiatricwards for the rest of their lives as a result ofthe fantastic experiment.

The legend of the Philadelphia Experimentbegan on January 13, 1956, when Morris K.Jessup received the first of a series of strangeletters signed by Carlos Miguel Allende—or ashe sometimes signed his name, Carl Allen.The initial letter was in response to Jessup’sbook The Case for the UFO (1955). Jessupapproached the UFO mystery from the view-point of an astronomer, a mathematician, aphysicist, and an archeologist and called uponhis readers to place pressure upon their politi-cal representatives to demand research intoEinstein’s Unified Field Theory so thathumankind might discover the nature of gravi-ty and thereby apply that knowledge to theconquest of outer space. Allende began his ini-tial letter by taking Jessup to task for invokingthe public to request research into Einstein’sUnified Field Theory. Such research hadalready been conducted by the U.S. Navy,Allende stated, and the results were disastrous.

In October 1943, according to Allende, sci-entists working for the navy accomplished thecomplete invisibility of a destroyer-type shipand all of its crew while at sea. Allende wasblunt in his assessment of the effect of the forcefield upon the crew members. The mysteriousletter writer explained to Jessup that seamenwho had been within the force field of theexperiment too long went “blank,” suddenlyfinding themselves fading into invisibility. To“get stuck,” Allende explained, was a side effectthat suddenly prevented a sailor from beingable to move of his own volition. If two or moreof his fellow crew members did not come to hisaid at once and lay their hands upon him, theunfortunate sailor would “freeze.” Those whohad entered into this condition were like semi-comatose persons who are able to live, breathe,look, and feel, but are not aware of time andexist in a kind of netherworld. Fully as horrify-ing as the deep-freeze effect on the sailorsinvolved in the experiment were the incidentsof men who went “into the flame,” sponta-neously becoming combustive.

As cross-references for his fantastic story,Allende listed a number of personnel on

observer ships’ crews and the crew of a MatsonLines Liberty ship out of Norfolk. Allendeimplied that he himself witnessed the experi-ment from aboard the S.S. Andrew Furnseth.Allende affixed a lengthy postscript that statedhis reconsidered opinion that the navy wasprobably quite blameless in the incident andreally did not envision the ghastly effect theexperiment would have upon the crew mem-bers. Before he closed, Allende tossed one morebombshell: The experimental ship had disap-peared from its Philadelphia dock and, only afew minutes later, appeared at its other dock inthe Norfolk/Newport News/Portsmouth area.The ship had been clearly identified as beingat that place; then the ship again disappearedand returned to its Philadelphia dock in only afew minutes.

Jessup was puzzled by the letter. It hadbeen sent from Texas, but its author gave ahome address in Pennsylvania. Jessup hadbrought an abundance of academic distinctionto his study of the UFO. After having servedas an instructor in astronomy and mathemat-ics at the University of Michigan and at DrakeUniversity, he was awarded a Ph.D. in astro-physics and was sent to South Africa by theUniversity of Michigan. Here he was assignedto erect and operate the largest refracting tele-scope in the Southern Hemisphere. The Jes-sup-directed research produced the discoveryof several double-stars, which were cataloguedby the Royal Astronomical Society.

Jessup sent Allende a letter requestingmore information. It was four months beforehe received a reply. In his second letter, CarlosMiguel Allende had Americanized his nameto Carl M. Allen. He had also tempered thetone of his correspondence and seemed lesspiqued at Jessup. Allende offered to subjecthimself to hypnosis or sodium pentathol inorder to dredge names of personnel involvedin the experiments out of his subconscious. He



THE legend of the Philadelphia Experimentbegan on January 13, 1956.

stated that under narcohypnosis he would per-haps be able to remember names, addresses,and service numbers of his shipmates.

At that point, Jessup was invited to theOffice of Naval Research in Washington. Theastrophysicist was surprised when an officerhanded him a paperback copy of his own book,The Case for the UFOS. Jessup was informedthat the book had been addressed to AdmiralN. Furth, Chief, Office of Naval Research(ONR). The manilla envelope in which it hadarrived had been postmarked Seminole, Texas.A cheery “Happy Easter” had been writtenacross the face of the envelope.

When Jessup opened the book, he observedthat someone had taken the time and effort tocompletely annotate his study of the UFO andthat it appeared to have been passed back andforth among at least three persons. The ONRasked that Jessup examine the notations andsee if he might have any idea who had beenresponsible for making the comments.

Each man wrote in a different color of ink,and they were designated as Mr. A. (assumed tobe Carlos Miguel Allende), Mr. B., and Jemi.The three individuals referred to “LMs,” whoseemed to be extraterrestrials who were friendlyor indifferent to earthlings; and to the “SMs,” agroup of hostile aliens. Throughout the text,the three used terms such as mothership, home-ship, dead-ship, Great ark, great bombardment,great return, great war, little-men, force-fields,deep freezes, undersea building, measure mark-ers, scout ships, magnetic and gravity fields,sheets of diamond, cosmic rays, force cutters,undersea explorers, inlay work, clear-talk,telepathing, and vortices. Such terms certainlyhave encouraged UFO researchers to speculatethat the mysterious Carl Allen and his twofriends were representatives of an extraterrestri-al power that took root on Earth centuries agoand has long since established an advancedunderground subculture.

Dr. Morris K. Jessup was found in his stationwagon in Dade County Park, Florida, on theevening of April 20, 1959. Police officers recon-structed the death as a suicide. A hose had beenattached to the exhaust pipe of the stationwagon and looped into the dosed interior. Someassociates mentioned despondency over an

approaching divorce as the principal reason.Most of his colleagues, however, were shockedand surprised that Jessup would seek the ulti-mate escape of a dosed car and carbon monox-ide. And ever since Jessup’s death UFOresearchers have argued that the alleged suicidewas the price the astrophysicist had paid for get-ting too close to the truth about flying saucers.

There really was a destroyer named theEldridge, and it remained on active duty until1946. After it had been removed from militaryservice, it was mothballed until it was trans-ferred to the Greek Navy.

Many UFO researchers maintain thatsome kind of secret experiment took placewith a Navy warship in 1943, thus plantingthe seed for the legend of the PhiladelphiaExperiment. Most speculate that it was proba-bly an experiment in attempting to makeships invisible to enemy submarines and thatit very well could have involved incrediblyhigh voltages of electricity—which couldhave burned and scorched seamen and evendelivered a kind of shock that drove some ofthe crewmen insane.

Other researchers have insisted that a gov-ernment conspiracy is at work and that thesecret experiment ripped a hole in the space-time continuum that permitted alien intelli-gences to begin their invasion of the planet.

Numerous UFO investigators havesearched without success for that tantalizingproof of the Philadelphia Experiment in invis-ibility which Allende claimed could be foundin the Philadelphia newspapers. “Check for atiny one-paragraph (upper half of sheet, insidethe paper near the rear third of the paper,1944) story describing the sailors’ actions aftertheir initial voyage,” he had teased Jessup.“The invisible sailors raided a beer joint andcaused such shock and paralysis of the wait-resses that little of a comprehensible naturecould be gotten them.”

Although the newspaper clipping or anyother proofs of the Philadelphia Experimenthave never been located, in 1980 writerRobert A. Goerman managed to find thehome and the surviving family of Carl M.Allen, alias Carlos Miguel Allende. Althoughthere will probably always be those who swear



that they or their kin participated in theremarkable secret navy experiment in invisi-bility and teleportation in 1943, Goerman’sresearch has quite likely provided a reasonableexplanation. It was all a hoax, a fantasy, mold-ed by a former sailor who loved to read aboutUFOs and strange, unsolved mysteries somuch, that he created one that may never die.

M Delving Deeper

Berlitz, Charles, and William Moore. The PhiladelphiaExperiment: Project Invisibility. New York: Fawcett,1981.

Commander X. Philadelphia Experiment Chronicles. NewBrunswick, N.J.: Inner Light Publications, 1994.

Deary, Terry. The Philadelphia Experiment. London:Kingfisher, 1996.

Goerman, Robert A. “Alias Carlos Allende: The Mys-tery Man Behind the Philadelphia Experiment.”Fate magazine, October 1980. [Online] http://www.parascope.com/en/articles/allende.htm.

Wells, Jr., K. B. The Montauk Files: Unearthing thePhoenix Conspiracy. Tempe, Ariz.: New Falcon,1998.


abductee Someone who believes that he orshe has been taken away by deception orforce against his/her will.

alien A being or living creature from anotherplanet or world.

anomalous Something strange and unusualthat deviates from what is considered nor-mal. From the Greek anomalos, meaninguneven.

archaeologist A person who scientificallyexamines old ruins or artifacts such as theremains of buildings, pottery, graves, tools,and all other relevant material in order tostudy ancient cultures.

astronomy The scientific study of the of theworkings of the universe—of stars, planets,their positions, sizes, composition, move-ment behavior. Via the Old French andLatin from Greek astronomia, meaning lit-erally star-arranging.

conspiracy An agreement or plot betweentwo or more people to commit an illegal orsubversive action.

contactee Someone who believes to havebeen or is in contact with an alien fromanother planet.

extraterrestrial Something or someone origi-nating or coming from beyond Earth, out-side of Earth’s atmosphere.

foo fighter A term coined by pilots whoreported sightings of unconventional air-craft that appeared as nocturnal lights dur-ing World War II. A popular cartoon char-acter of the time, Smokey Stover, oftensaid “Where there’s foo there’s fire” and itbecame the saying to describe the strangephenomena.

hieroglyphics The writing system of ancientEgypt that uses symbols or pictures to sig-nify sounds, objects, or concepts. Can alsorefer to any writing or symbols that are dif-ficult to decipher.

Homo sapiens Mankind or humankind, thespecies of modern human beings.

hypothesis A theory or assumption that needsfurther exploration, but which is used as atentative explanation until further dataconfirms or denies it.

intergalactic Something that is located, or ismoving, between two or more galaxies.

mortician An undertaker or one who preparesdead bodies for burial and funerals. Formedfrom the Latin stem mors, death and theEnglish ician.

phenomena (plural of phenomenon) Strange,extraordinary, unusual or even miraculousevents, happenings or persons or things.From the Greek phainomenon, that whichappears, from the past participle ofphainein, to bring to light.

pulsar A star generally believed to be a neu-tron star and that appears to pulse as itbriefly emits bursts of visible radiationsuch as radio waves and x-rays.

semidivine Possessing similar or some of thecharacteristics, abilities, or powers normal-ly attributed to a deity and/or existing on ahigher spiritual level or plane than com-mon mortals yet not completely divine.



telepathic transfer The transferring ofthoughts from one person to another.

theory of evolution The biological theory of thecomplex process of living organisms, howthey change and evolve from one generationto another or over many generations.

UFO Literally an unidentified flying object,although the term is often used by some torefer to an alien spacecraft.

UFOlogist Someone who investigates thereports and sightings of unidentified flyingobjects.



Glossary

303

abductee Someone who believes that he orshe has been taken away by deception orforce against his/her will.

aboriginal Refers to a people that has lived orexisted in a particular area or region fromthe earliest known times or from thebeginning.

abyss From late Latin abyssus and Greek abus-sos, which literally means “bottomless,”stemming from bussos, meaning “bottom.”A gorge or chasm that is inconceivablydeep, vast or infinite, such as the bottom-less pit of hell or a dwelling place of evilspirits.

alchemy From Greek, khemeia to Arabic,alkimiya via medieval Latin alchimia andOld French, fourteenth century alquemie,meaning “the chemistry.” A predecessor ofchemistry practiced in the Middle Agesand Renaissance principally concernedwith seeking methods of transforming basemetals into gold and the “elixir of life.”

alien A being or living creature from anotherplanet or world.

amnesia The loss of memory which can betemporary or long term and usuallybrought on by shock, an injury, or psycho-logical disturbance. Originally from theGreek word amnestos, literally meaningnot remembered and from a later alter-ation of the word amnesia forgetfulness.

anomalous Something strange and unusualthat deviates from what is considered nor-mal. From the Greek anomalos, meaninguneven.

anthropology The scientific study of the ori-gins, behavior, physical, social, and cultur-al aspects of humankind.

Antichrist The antagonist or opponent ofJesus Christ (c. 6 B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.), who isanticipated by many early as well as con-temporary Christians to lead the worldinto evil before Christ returns to Earth toredeem and rescue the faithful. Can alsorefer to any person who is in opposition toor an enemy of Jesus Christ or his teach-ings, as well as to those who claim to beChrist, but in fact are false and misleading.

anthroposophy A spiritual or religious philos-ophy that Rudolph Steiner (1861–1925),an Austrian philosopher and scientist,developed, with the core belief centeringaround the human accessibility of the spir-itual world to properly developed humanintellect. Steiner founded the Anthropo-sophical Society in 1912 to promote hisideas that spiritual development should behumanity’s foremost concern.

apocalypse From the Greek apokalupsis,meaning “revelation.” In the Bible, theBook of Revelation is often referred to asthe Apocalypse. Comes from many anony-mous, second-century B.C.E. and later Jew-ish and Christian texts that containprophetic messages pertaining to a greattotal devastation or destruction of theworld and the salvation of the righteous.

apothacary From the Greek apotheke meaning“storehouse.” A pharmacist or druggist whois licensed to prescribe, prepare and selldrugs and other medicines, or a pharma-cy—where drugs and medicines are sold.

apparition The unexpected or sudden appear-ance of something strange, such as a ghost.From the Latin apparitus, past participle ofapparere, meaning to appear.

archaeologist A person who scientificallyexamines old ruins or artifacts such as theremains of buildings, pottery, graves, tools,and all other relevant material in order tostudy ancient cultures.

archipelago From the Greek arkhi, meaning“chief or main” and pelagos meaning “sea.”Any large body of water that contains alarge number of scattered islands.

Armageddon From late Latin Armagedon,Greek and Hebrew, har megiddo, megiddon,which is the mountain region of Megiddo.Megiddo is the site where the great finalbattle between good and evil will befought as prophesied and will be a decisivecatastrophic event that many believe willbe the end of the world.

astral self Theosophical belief that humanspossess a second body that cannot be per-

ceived with normal senses, yet it coexistswith the human body and survives death.

astronomy The scientific study of the of theworkings of the universe—of stars, planets,their positions, sizes, composition, move-ment behavior. Via the Old French andLatin from Greek astronomia, meaning lit-erally star-arranging.

automatic writing Writing that occurs througheither an involuntary, or unconscious,trance-like state with the source being thewriter’s own unconscious self, from a tele-pathic link with another, or from adeceased spirit wishing to communicate amessage.

banal Boring, very ordinary and common-place. From the French word ban, original-ly used in the context of a mandatory mili-tary service for all or common to all.

barter The exchange or the process of negoti-ating certain goods or services for othergoods or services.

Bedouin A nomadic Arabic person from thedesert areas of North Africa and Arabia.Via Old French beduin, ultimately fromArabic badw, or desert, nomadic desertpeople.

betrothal The act of becoming or beingengaged to marry another person.

Bhagavad Gita From Sanskrit Bhagavadgi ta,meaning “song of the blessed one.” AHindu religious text, consisting of 700verses, in which the Hindu god, Krishna,teaches the importance of unattachmentfrom personal aims to the fulfillment ofreligious duties and devotion to God.

bipedal Any animal that has two legs or feet.From the Latin stem biped, meaning two-footed.

birthstone Each month of the year has a par-ticular precious gemstone or a semi-precious stone associated with it. It isbelieved that if a person wears the stoneassigned their birth month, good fortuneor luck will follow.

bitumen Any of a variety of natural substances,such as tar or asphalt, containing hydrocar-


Glossary304

bons derived from petroleum and used as acement or mortar for surfacing roads.

black magick The use of magic for evil pur-poses, calling upon the devil or evil spirits.

blasphemy Something said or done whichshows a disrespect for God or things thatare sacred. An irreverent utterance oraction showing a disrespect for sacredthings or for God.

cadaver A dead body that is usually intendedfor dissection. From the Latin cadere,meaning to fall or to die.

charlatan From the Italian ciarlatano, via sev-enteenth-century French ciarlare, meaning“to babble or patter” or “empty talk.” Some-one who makes elaborate claims or whopretends to have more skill or knowledgethan is factual, such as a fraud or quack.

chieftain The leader of a clan, tribe, or group.

clairvoyance The ability to visualize or sensethings beyond the normal range of the fivehuman senses. From the French word clair-voyant, meaning clear-sighted and voyant,the present participle of voir to see.

conjurations The act of reciting a name,words or particular phrases with the intentof summoning or invoking a supernaturalforce or occurrence.

conquistadores From the Latin conquireremeaning “to conquer.” Spanish soldiers oradventurers, especially of the sixteenthcentury who conquered Peru, Mexico, orCentral America.

consciousness Someone’s mind, thoughts orfeelings, or can be referring to the part ofthe mind which is aware of same. Thestate of being aware of what is going onaround you, either individually or theshared feelings of group awareness, feelingsor thoughts.

conspiracy A plan formulated in secretbetween two or more people to commit asubversive act.

contactee Someone who believes to havebeen or is in contact with an alien fromanother planet.

cosmic consciousness The sense or specialinsight of one’s personal or collectiveawareness in relation to the universe or auniversal scheme.

cosmic sense The awareness of one’s identityand actions in relationship to the universeor universal scheme of things.

cosmology The philosophical study andexplanation of the nature of the universeor the scientific study of the origin andstructure of the universe.

cosmos From the Greek kosmos meaning“order, universe, ornament.” The entireuniverse as regarded in an orderly, harmo-nious and integrated whole.

coven From the Anglo-Norman, mid-seven-teenth century “assembly” and from con-venire meaning convene. An assembly ofor a meeting of a group of witches, often13 in number.

cryptomensia A state of consciousness inwhich the true source or origin of a partic-ular memory is forgotten or is attributed toa wrongful source or origin.

cryptozoology The study of so-called mythicalcreatures such as the Yeti or Bigfoot,whose existence has not yet been scientifi-cally substantiated.

cubit From the Latin cubitum, meaning fore-arm or elbow. An ancient unit of length,based on the distance from the tip of themiddle finger to the elbow which approxi-mated 17 to 22 inches.

deity From late Latin deitas “divine nature,”and deus “god.” A divine being or some-body or something with the essentialnature of a divinity, such as a god, goddess.When the term is capitalized, it refers toGod in monotheistic belief or religions.

demarcation The process of setting borders,limits or marking boundaries. From theSpanish demarcacion, literally meaning,marking off.

demon possession When low-level disincar-nate spirits invade and take over a humanbody.


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desecration When something sacred is treatedin a profane or damaging manner.

discarnate The lack of a physical body.Coined from dis- and the Latin stem carn,meaning flesh.

The Dispersion From the Greek diasporameaning to scatter or disperse. Refers to theperiod in history when the Jewish peoplewere forced to scatter in countries outside ofPalestine after the Babylonian captivity.

dogma From Greek stem word dogmat, mean-ing “opinion” or “tenet,” and from dokein,“to seem good.” A belief or set of beliefs,either political, religious, philosophical, ormoral and considered to be absolutely true.

druid Someone who worships the forces ofnature as in the ancient Celtic religion.Can also refer to a priest in the Celtic reli-gion.

ecclesiasticism Principles, practices, activi-ties, or body of thought that is all-encom-passing and adhered to in an organizedchurch or institution.

ecstatic Intense emotion of pleasure, happi-ness, joy or elation.

electrodes Two conductors through whichelectricity flows in batteries or other elec-trical equipment.

electroencephalograph A device or machinethat through the use of electrodes placedon a person’s scalp, monitors the electricalactivity in various parts of the brain. Theseare recorded and used as a diagnostic toolin tracing a variety of anything from braindisorders, tumors or other irregularities todream research.

electroencephalographic dream researchResearching dreams using a electroen-cephalograph to aid the researcher in thebrain activity of the one being studied.

electromagnetic Of or pertaining to the char-acteristics of an electromagnet, which is adevice having a steel or iron core and ismagnetized by an electric current thatflows through a surrounding coil.

elemental spirits A lower order of spiritbeings, said to be usually benevolent and

dwell in the nature kingdom as the lifeforce of all things in nature, such as miner-als, plants, animals, and the four elementsof earth, air, fire and water; the planets,stars, and signs of the zodiac; and hours ofthe day and night. Elves, brownies, gob-lins, gnomes, and fairies are said to beamong these spirits.

elixir Something that is a mysterious, magicalsubstance with curative powers believed toheal all ills or to prolong life and preserveyouthfulness. From the Arabic al-iksir andthe Greek xerion, meaning dry powder fortreating wounds.

enchantments Things or conditions whichpossess a charming or bewitching qualitysuch as a magical spell.

encode To convert a message from plain textinto a code. In computer language, to con-vert from analog to digital form, and ingenetics to convert appropriate geneticdata.

enigma From Greek ainigma “to speak in rid-dles” and ainos, meaning “fables.” Some-body or something that is ambiguous, puz-zling or not easily understood and mighthave a hidden meaning or riddle.

ephemerality Refers to the state of somethingliving or lasting for a markedly short orbrief time. The nature of existing or lastingfor only a day, such as certain plants orinsects.

eschatology Comes from the Greek wordeskhatos meaning “last” and -logy literallymeaning “discourse about the last things.”Refers to the body of religious doctrinesconcerning the human soul in relation todeath, judgment, heaven or hell, or in gen-eral, life after death and of the final stageor end of the world.

evocation The act of calling forth, drawingout or summoning an event or memoryfrom the past, as in recreating.

exorcism The act, religious ceremony, or ritu-al of casting out evil spirits from a personor a place.


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extraterrestrial Something or someone origi-nating or coming from beyond Earth, out-side of Earth’s atmosphere.

false memory Refers to situations where sometherapies and hypnosis may actually beplanting memories through certain sugges-tions or leading questions and comments;thereby creating memories that the patientor client believes to be true, but in realitythey are not.

fanatical Extreme enthusiasm, frenzy, or zealabout a particular belief, as in politics orreligion.

Five Pillars of Islam In Arabic, also called thearkan, and consists of the five sacred ritualduties believed to be central to main-stream Muslims’ faith. The five duties arethe confession of faith, performing the fivedaily prayers, fasting during the month ofRamadan, paying alms tax, and performingat least one sacred pilgrimage to Mecca,the holy land.

foo fighter A term coined by pilots whoreported sightings of unconventional air-craft that appeared as nocturnal lights dur-ing World War II. A popular cartoon char-acter of the time, Smokey Stover, oftensaid “Where there’s foo there’s fire” and itbecame the saying to describe the strangephenomena.

frieze From the Latin phrygium (opus), mean-ing work or craftmanship. A decorativearchitectural band, usually running along awall, just below the ceiling, often sculptedwith figurines or ornaments.

fulcrum From the Latin fulcire, meaning “toprop up or support.” The part of somethingthat acts as its support.

Geiger counter An instrument named after itsinventor, German physicist Hans Geiger(1882–1945), that is used to measure anddetect such things as particles fromradioactive materials.

geoglyphics Lines, designs, or symbols left inthe earth, such as those in Egypt, Malta,Chile, Bolivia, and Peru with a mysterious,ancient, and puzzling origin.

Gestalt therapy A type of psychotherapy thatputs a emphasis on a person’s feelings asrevealing desired or undesired personalitytraits and how they came to be, by exam-ining unresolved issues from the past.

Gnostic From the Greek, gnostikos, meaning“concerning knowledge.” A believer inGnosticism, or relating to or possessing spir-itual or intellectual knowledge or wisdom.

guardian angel A holy, divine being thatwatches over, guides, and protects humans.

hallucinations A false or distorted perceptionof events during which one vividly imag-ines seeing, hearing or sensing objects orother people to be present, when in factthey are not witnessed by others.

haruspicy A method of divining or telling thefuture by examining the entrails of ani-mals.

heresy The willful, persistent act of adheringto an opinion or belief that rejects or con-tradicts established teachings or theoriesthat are traditional in philosophy, religion,science, or politics.

heretic From the Greek hairetikos, meaning“able to choose.” Someone who does notconform or whose opinions, theories, orbeliefs contradict the conventional estab-lished teaching, doctrines, or principles,especially that of religion.

hieroglyphics A writing system of ancient Egyptthat uses symbols or pictures to signifysounds, objects, or concepts. Can also referto any writing or symbols that are difficult todecipher. The word comes from an ancientGreek term meaning “sacred carving.”

hierophant From the Latin hierophanta andGreek hierophantes, meaning literally a“sacred person who reveals something.”An ancient Greek priest who revealed orinterpreted the sacred mysteries, or holydoctrines, at the annual festival of Eleusis.

hoax An act of deception that is intended tomake people think or believe something isreal when it is not.

Homo sapiens Mankind or humankind, thespecies of modern human beings.


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horoscope From Greek horoskopos, literallymeaning “time observer” and from horameaning “time, or hour,” referring to thetime of birth. A diagram or astrologicalforecast based on the relative position inthe heavens of the stars and planets in thesigns of the zodiac, at any given moment,but especially at the moment of one’sbirth.

hypnagogic Relating to or being in the statebetween wakefulness and sleep where oneis drowsy. From the French hypnagogiquemeaning literally leading to sleep.

hypnopompic Typical of or involving the statebetween sleeping and waking. Coinedfrom hypno and Greek pompe, meaning asending away.

hypnosis The process of putting or being in asleeplike state, although the person is notsleeping. It can be induced by suggestionsor methods of a hypnotist.

hypothesis A theory or assumption that needsfurther exploration, but which is used as atentative explanation until further dataconfirms or denies it. From the Greekhupothesis meaning foundation or base.

Ice Age Any of the periods of extreme cold orglacial epochs in the history of Earth whentemperatures fell, resulting in large areas ofEarth’s surface covered with glaciers; themost recent one occurring during thePleistocene epoch.

incantation From fourteenth-century French,cantare, meaning “to sing” via Latin—incantare—“to chant.” The chanting,recitation or uttering of words supposed toproduce a magical effect or power.

incarnation A period of time in which a spiritor soul dwells in a bodily form or condi-tion. One of a series of lives spent in aphysical form.

indigenous From a mid-seventeenth centuryword indigena, literally meaning “born-in,”and from gignere, meaning “to beget.”Inborn, intrinsic, or belonging to a place,such as originating, growing, or living inan area, environment, region, or country.

Inquisition Fourteenth century, from Latininquirere via Old French inquisicion, mean-ing “to inquire.” In the thirteenth century,Roman Catholicism appointed a specialtribunal or committee whose chief func-tion was to combat, suppress and punishheresy against the church. Remainingactive until the modern era, the officialinvestigations were often harsh and unfair.

insurrectionist Someone who is in rebellionor revolt against an established authority,ruler, or government.

intergalactic Something that is located, or ismoving, between two or more galaxies.

Invocation The act of calling upon or appeal-ing to a higher power such as a deity, spirit,or God for assistance. A form of prayer,that invites God’s presence, at the begin-ning of a ceremony or meeting. In blackmagick, can be the casting of a spell or for-mula to invite an evil spirit to appear.

ions An atom or group of atoms that are elec-trically charged through the process ofgaining or losing one or more electrons.From the Greek ion meaning movingthing; and from the present participle ofienai meaning to go —from the movementof any ion toward the electrode of theopposite charge.

jinni In Islamic or Muslim legend, a spirit thatis capable of taking on the shape ofhumans or animals in order to performmischievous acts or to exercise supernatur-al power and influence over humans. Fromthe Arabic jinn, which is the plural of jinni.

Kabbalah body of mystical Jewish teachingsbased on an interpretation of hidden mean-ings contained in the Hebrew scriptures.Kabbalah is Hebrew for “that which isreceived,” and also refers to a secret oral tra-dition handed down from teacher to pupil.The term Kabbalah is generally used now toapply to all Jewish mystical practice.

karmic law Karma is the Sanskrit word for“deed.” In the Eastern religions of Bud-dhism and Hinduism all deeds of a personin this life dictate an equal punishment orreward to be met in the next life or series


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of lives. In this philosophy, it is a naturalmoral law rather than a divine judgmentwhich provides the process of develop-ment, enabling the soul into higher orlower states, according to the laws of causeand effect to be met.

knockings/rappings Tapping sounds said to becoming from deceased spirits in an attemptto communicate with or frighten the living.

left-hand path In occult tradition, a practi-tioner who practices black magic.

leprous From the Greek, lepros, meaning“scale.” Something resembling the symp-toms of or relating to the disease of leprosy,which covers a person’s skin with scales orulcerations.

loa A spirit that is thought to enter the devo-tee of the Haitian voodoo, during a trancestate, and believed to be a protector andguide that could be a local deity, a deifiedancestor or even a saint of the RomanCatholic Church.

lupinomanis Having the excessive character-istics of a wolf, such as being greedy or rav-enously hungry.

lycanthropy The magical ability in legendsand horror stories of a person who is ableto transform into a wolf, and take on all ofits characteristics.

magus A priest, wizard, or someone who isskilled or learned, especially in astrology,magic, sorcery, or the like.

manitou A supernatural force, or spirit thatsuffuses various living things, as well asinanimate objects, according to the Algo-nquian peoples. In the mythology of theOjibwa of the eastern United States, Man-itou is the name of the supreme deity, orGod, and means “Great Spirit.”

manna The food miraculously supplied to theIsraelites by God, according to the Old Tes-tament, as they wandered in the wildernessduring their flight from Egypt. Spiritualnourishment or something of valuereceived of divine origin or unexpectedly.

materialization Something that appears sud-denly, as if out of nowhere. In the paranor-

mal it might be a ghost or spirit that sud-denly appears to take on a physical form.

medium In the paranormal, someone who isable to convey messages between the spiritsof the deceased and the spirits of the living.

megalith A very large stone that is usually apart of a monument or prehistoric archi-tecture.

Mesopotamia Greek word, meaning “betweentwo rivers.” An ancient region that waslocated between the Tigris and Euphratesrivers in what is today, modern Iraq andSyria. Some of the world’s earliest andgreatest ancient civilizations such as Ur,Sumer, Assyria, and Babylonia were devel-oped in that region.

messiah A leader who is regarded as a libera-tor or savior. In Christianity, the Messiahis Jesus Christ (c. 6 B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.), inJudaism, it is the king who will lead theJews back to the Holy Land of Israel andestablish world peace.

metaphysical Relating to abstract thought orthe philosophical study of the nature ofexistence and truth.

metrology The scientific system or study ofmeasurements. From the Greek metrologie,meaning theory of ratios and metron, ormeasure.

mortician An undertaker or one who preparesdead bodies for burial and funerals.

narcolepsy A condition where a personuncontrollably falls asleep at odd timesduring daily activities and/or for longextended periods of time. Hallucinationsand even paralysis might also accompanythis condition.

near-death experience A mystical-like occur-rence or sensation that individuals on thebrink of death or who were dead, butbrought back to life, have described whichincludes leaving their physical body andhovering over it as though they were abystander.

neo-paganism Someone who believes in acontemporary or modernized version ofthe religions which existed before Chris-


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tianity, especially those with a reverencefor nature over the worship of a divine orsupreme being.

neophyte From the Latin neophytus and Greekneophutos or phuein, “to plant” or “cause togrow”—literally meaning “newly planted.”A beginner or novice at a particular task orendeavor. Somebody who is a recent con-vert to a belief. A newly ordained priest, orsomeone who is new to a religious order,but who has not yet taken their vows, so isnot yet a part of the order.

neuron The basic functional unit of the ner-vous system a cell body that consists of anaxon and dendrites and transmit nerveimpulses. A neuron is also called a nervecell. Via German from Greek neuron,meaning sinew, cord, or nerve.

Novena of Masses In the Roman CatholicChurch, the recitation of prayers or devo-tions for a particular purpose, for nine con-secutive days. From the Latin nus, meaningnine each and from novern, meaning nine.

Old Testament The first of the two main divi-sions of the Christian Bible that corre-sponds to the Hebrew scriptures.

omen A prophetic sign, phenomenon, or hap-pening supposed to foreshadow good orevil or indicate how someone or some-thing will fare in the future—an indicationof the course of future events.

oracle Either someone or something that isthe source of wisdom, knowledge orprophecy. Can also refer to the placewhere the prophetic word would be given.Via French from the Latin oraculum, fromorare to speak.

paleoanthropology The study of humanlikecreatures or early human beings moreprimitive that Homo Sapiens, usually donethrough fossil evidence.

paleontology The study of ancient forms oflife in geologic or prehistoric times, usingsuch evidence as fossils, plants, animals,and other organisms.

Pan In Greek mythology the god of nature orof the woods, fields, pastures, forests, andflocks. Is described as having the torso and

head of a human, but the legs, ears, andhorns of a goat.

paranormal Events or phenomena that arebeyond the range of normal experienceand not understood or explained in termsof current scientific knowledge.

parapsychologist One who studies mentalphenomena, such as telepathy or extrasen-sory perception, the mind/body connec-tion, and other psi or paranormal factorsthat cannot be explained by known scien-tific principles.

parapsychology The study or exploration ofmental phenomena that does not have ascientific explanation in the known psy-chological principles.

Passover The seven or eight days of a Jewishfestival that begins on the fourteenth dayof Nissan and commemorates the exodusof the Hebrews from their captivity inEgypt. From the Hebrew word pesa, mean-ing to pass without affecting.

pharaoh From the Hebrew par’oh, Egyptianpr-’o, and Latin and Greek Pharao, mean-ing literally “great house.” An ancientEgyptian title for the ruler or king ofEgypt, often considered a tyrant and onewho expected unquestioning obedience.

pharmacologist The study of or science ofdrugs in all their aspects, includingsources, chemistry, production, their use intreating ailments and disease, as well asany known side effects.

phenomena Strange, extraordinary, unusual,even miraculous events, or happenings topersons or things. From the Greek phain-omenon, that which appears, from the pastparticiple of phainein, to bring to light.

philanthropist Someone who is benevolent orgenerous in his or her desire or activities toimprove the social, spiritual or materialwelfare of humankind. From the lateLatin, ultimately, Greek philanthropos,humane; philos; loving and anthropos,human being.

philanthropy From the Greek philanthropos,meaning “humane,” and from philos,meaning “loving.” An affection or desire


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to help improve the spiritual, social, ormaterial welfare of humanity through actsof charity or benevolence.

physiognomy From phusis meaning “nature,character” and gnomon, “to judge.” The artof judging a person’s character or tempera-ment by their physical features, especiallyfacial features.

physiology The study of the functioning andinternal workings of living things, such asmetabolism, respiration, reproduction andthe like. From the Latin word physiologiaand the Greek phusiologia, and phusismeaning nature.

precognition The ability to foresee what isgoing to happen in the future, especially ifthis perception is gained through otherthan the normal human senses orextrasensory.

predator Any organism or animal that hunts,kills, and eats other animals. Can refer to aruthless person who is extremely aggressivein harming another. From the Latinpraedator and praedari, meaning to seize asplunder.

psi The factor or factors responsible for para-psychological phenomena. Derived fromthe Greek letter psi which is used to denotethe unknown factor in an equation.

psyche The soul or human spirit or can referto the mental characteristics of a person orgroup or nation. Via Latin from Greekpsukhe meaning breath, soul, mind andfrom psukhein to breathe.

psychiatrist A doctor who is trained to treatpeople with psychiatric disorders.

psychoanalysis The system of analysis regard-ing the relationship of conscious andunconscious psychological aspects and theirtreatment in mental or psycho neurosis.

psychoanalyst One who uses the therapeuticmethods of psychiatric analysis, such asdream analysis and free association, asdeveloped by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)to treat patients in order to gain awarenessof suppressed subconscious experiences ormemories that might be causing psycho-logical blocks.

psychokinesis The ability to make objectsmove or to in some way affect them with-out using anything but mental powers.

pulsar A star generally believed to be a neu-tron star and that appears to pulse as itbriefly emits bursts of visible radiationsuch as radio waves and x-rays.

putrefy Causing something to decay, usuallyindicating a foul odor. From the Latinstem, putr, meaning rotten, plus facere, tomake.

Qur’an The sacred text, or holy book, of Islam.For Muslims, it is the very word of Allah,the absolute God of the Islamic faith, asrevealed to the prophet Muhammad (c.570 C.E.–632 C.E.) by the archangel Gabriel.

rectory The house or dwelling that a rector(clergyman) lives in.

reincarnation The reappearance or rebirth ofsomething in a new form. Some religionsor belief systems state that the soul returnsto live another life in a new physical formand does so in a cyclical manner.

resurrection The act of rising from the dead orreturning to life. In Christian belief, the Res-urrection was the rising of Jesus Christ fromthe dead after he was crucified andentombed. Resurrection also refers to the ris-ing of the dead on Judgment Day, as antici-pated by Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

retrocognition The mental process or facultyof knowing, seeing, or perceiving things,events, or occurrences of things in thepast, especially through other than thenormal human senses as in extrasensory.

right-hand path In occult tradition, a practi-tioner who practices white magic.

rite Originally from an Indo-European basemeaning “to fit together” and was theancestor of the English words arithmeticand rhyme via, the Latin ritus. A formal actor observance as a community custom,such as the rite of courtship. Often has asolemn, religious or ceremonial meaning,such as the rite of baptism.

Sabbath From the Greek sabbaton, and theHebrew sabba, both meaning “to rest.” A


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day of rest from work and for religious wor-ship. In Christianity, Sunday is theobserved day of worship while Saturday isobserved in Judaism and some Christiandenominations.

Sanskrit Sanskrit is an ancient Indo-Euro-pean language and the language of tradi-tional Hinduism in India. Spoken betweenthe fourteenth and fifth centuries B.C.E., ithas been considered and maintained as apriestly and literary language of the sacredVeda scriptures and other classical texts.

Santeria From Spanish santeria meaning “holi-ness.” A religion which originated in Cubaby enslaved West African laborers thatcombines the West African Yoruba religionwith Roman Catholicism and recognizes asupreme God as well as other spirits.

sarcophagus From the Greek sarx meaning“flesh,” and Greek sarkophogos, literallymeaning “flesh-eater.” Originally a kind oflimestone that had properties to aid in therapid decomposition of the deceased bod-ies and was used in the making of coffins.Eventually came to mean any stone coffin,especially one with inscriptions or decorat-ed with sculpture and used as a monument.

sauropod Any of various large semi-aquaticplant-eating dinosaurs that had a longneck and tail and a small head. From thesuborder Sauropoda, a Latin word meaninglizard foot.

schizophrenia A severe psychiatric disorderwhich can include symptoms of withdrawalor detachment from reality, delusions, hallu-cinations, emotional instability, and intel-lectual disturbances or illogical patterns ofthinking to various degrees. The term comesfrom Greek words meaning “split mind.”

seance A meeting or gathering of people inwhich a spiritualist makes attempts tocommunicate with the spirits of deceasedpersons, or a gathering to receive spiritual-istic messages.

semidivine Possessing similar or some of thecharacteristics, abilities, or powers normal-ly attributed to a deity and/or existing on a

higher spiritual level or plane than com-mon mortals yet not completely divine.

shaman A religious or spiritual leader, usuallypossessing special powers, such as that ofprophecy, and healing, and acts as anintermediary between the physical andspiritual realms.

shamanic exorcism When a shaman, or tribalmedicine-holy person, performs a ceremo-nial ritual to expel the disincarnate spiritsfrom a person.

shapeshifter A supposed fictional being, spiritor something that is able to change itsappearance or shape.

shofar A trumpet made of a ram’s horn, blownby the ancient and modern Hebrews dur-ing religious ceremonies and as a signal inbattle.

soothsayer From Middle English, literallymeaning “somebody who speaks thetruth.” Someone who claims to have theability to foretell future events.

soul The animating and vital principal inhuman beings, credited with the facultiesof will, emotion, thought and action andoften conceived as an immaterial entity,separate from the physical body. The spiri-tual nature of human beings, regarded asimmortal, separable from the body atdeath, and susceptible to happiness or mis-ery in a future state. The disembodied spir-it of a dead human being.

spell A formula or word believed to have mag-ical power. A trance or a bewitched state.

spirit control The guide that mediums con-tact to receive messages from deceasedspirits, or another name for spirit guide asused in mediumship.

spirit guide A nonphysical being or entitywhich possibly can be an angel, the higherself, the spirit of a deceased person, a high-er group mind, or a highly evolved beingwhose purpose is to help, guide, direct, andprotect the individual.

spittle Something that looks like or is saliva,which is secreted from the mouth.


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stigmata Marks on a person’s body resemblingthe wounds inflicted on Jesus Christ (c. 6B.C.E.–c. 30 C.E.) during his Crucifixion onthe cross.

subversive To cause the ruin or downfall ofsomething or to undermine or overthrowprinciples, an institution, or a govern-ment.

supernatural Relating to or pertaining to Godor the characteristics of God; a deity ormagic of something that is above andbeyond what is normally explained by nat-ural laws.

superstition The belief that certain actionsand rituals have a magical effect resultingin either good or bad. From the Latin stemsuperstition, and superstes, meaning stand-ing over or in awe.

taboo Something that is forbidden. In somecases can refer to something being sacred,therefore forbidden, such as in Polynesiansocieties. From the Tongan tabu, said tohave been introduced into the Englishlanguage by Captain James Cook in thelate eighteenth century.

talisman An object such as a gemstone orstone, believed to have magical powers orproperties. From the Greek telesma, mean-ing something consecrated, telein, to com-plete, and telos, result.

Tanakh From the Hebrew tenak, an acronymformed from torah. It is the sacred book ofJudaism, consisting of the Torah—the fivebooks of Moses, The Nevi’im—the wordsof the prophets, and the Kethuvim—thewritings.

telepathy Communication of thoughts, mentalimages, ideas, feelings, or sensations fromone person’s mind to another’s without theuse of speech, writing, signs, or symbols.

theory of evolution The biological theory ofthe complex process of living organisms,how they change and evolve from onegeneration to another or over many gener-ations.

therianthropic Used to describe a mythologi-cal creature that is half human and halfanimal. Coined from the Greek therion,

meaning small wild animal, and anthropo,meaning human being.

totem An animal, bird, plant, or any othernatural object that is revered as a personalor tribal symbol.

transference The process of change that hap-pens when one person or place is trans-ferred to another.

transience A state of impermanence, or last-ing for only a brief time. Remaining in aplace only for a short time, or the briefappearance of someone or something.

transmutation The act of transforming orchanging from one nature, form, or stateinto another.

tribulation Great affliction, trial, or distress.In Christianity, the tribulation refers tothe prophesied period of time which pre-cedes the return of Jesus Christ to Earth, inwhich there will be tremendous sufferingthat will test humanity’s endurance,patience, or faith.

UFO Literally an unidentified flying object,although the term is often used by some torefer to an alien spacecraft.

UFOlogist Someone who investigates thereports and sightings of unidentified flyingobjects.

Valhalla In Norse mythology, when the soulsof heroes are killed in battle, they spendeternity in a great hall, which is calledValhalla. From the Old Norse valhall, liter-ally meaning hall of the slain.

Valkyrie One of the 12 handmaids of Odin inNorse mythology who ride their horsesover the battlefield as they escort the soulsof slain heroes to Valhalla. From the OldNorse Valkyrja, meaning literally chooserof the slain.

vision From the Latin vis, to see. Faculty ofsight or a mental image produced by imag-ination. Can refer to a mystical experienceof seeing as if with the eyes, only through asupernatural means such as in a dream,trance, or through a supernatural being,and one which often has religious, revela-tory, or prophetic significance.


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voodoo From Louisiana French, voudou orvodu, meaning “fetish.” A religion mainlypracticed in the Caribbean countries,especially Haiti, that is comprised of acombination of Roman Catholic ritualsand animistic beliefs involving fetishes,magic, charms, spells, curses, and commu-nication with ancestral spirits.

white magick The use of magic for supposedgood purposes such as to counteract evil.

Wiccan Someone who is a witch, a believer orfollower of the religion of Wicca.

wizard A variant of the fifteenth century wordwisard, meaning “wise.” Someone professing

to have magical powers as a magician, sor-cerer, or a male witch. In general, someonewho is extremely knowledgeable and clever.

zoology The scientific branch of biology thatstudies animals in all their characteristicsand aspects. From the Greek zoologia, liter-ally the study of life and from zolion, or lifeform.

Zoroaster A Persian prophet (c. 628 B.C.E.–c. 551 B.C.E.) and the founder of an ancientreligion called Zoroastrianism whose prin-cipal belief is in a supreme deity and of theexistence of a dualism between good andevil. Derived from the Greek word Zarat orZarathustra, meaning camel handler.


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Cumulative Index

315

The Cumulative Index, found in eachvolume, is an alphabetic arrangement ofall people, places, images, and conceptsfound in the text. Names of publications,movies, ships, television programs, radiobroadcasts, foreign words, and cross-references are indicated by italics.

The page references to the subjects includethe Arabic volume number as well as thepage number. Main entries are designatedby bold page numbers while images aredenoted by italics.

AAbgar (King of Edessa), 1:237“Abominable snowman.” See YetiAbramelin magick, 2:49–51Abyssinia, alleged location of Ark of the

Covenant, 2:203Ace (One). See One, symbolism ofAcrophobia, 3:137–138Actors, in horror films, 3:109–112Adam (Biblical figure), 1:12, 3:76, 79Adamic Theology. See “Star Gospel” (Katter)Adams, John Quincy, 2:240Adamski, George, 1:304–305, 306, 3:271–273,

272Adelson, Joseph, 3:124Adler, Margot, 2:77–78, 97Adultery, 3:202Aegeus of Athens, 2:154Aetherius (alien being), 1:307Aetherius Society, 1:305, 307–309Afghanistan, engagement announcements,

3:208Africa, beliefs and customs

bells, 2:171bride buying, 3:204corpse smoking, 3:223guests, courtesy to, 3:217love knots, 2:180mourning, 3:227See also specific countries

African Theological Archministry, 1:287Afterlife, in ancient Egypt, 1:15–22Afterlife, in major religions, 1:4–15

See also specific religionsAfterlife, in tribal religions, 1:36–41Afterlife, individual human experiences with,

1:22–31

Agate, 2:186Agathon, Dan, 3:80Agoraphobia, 3:136Agri Dagi (Turkey). See Mt. Ararat (Turkey)Agrippa (German philosopher), 2:59, 59–61,

145Ailurophobia, 3:136Air Force Regulation 3:200–2, 254Air Material Command investigations,

3:255–256Aircraft disappearances, Bermuda Triangle,

2:228Aiwass (spirit entity), 2:62Akashic Records, 1:51Akhenaten (Pharaoh of Egypt), 1:259,

259–260Alan (alien being), 3:273, 274Alaska thunderbird sightings, 3:99Albacete, Lorenzo, 1:191, 248Albert le Grand. See Albertus MagnusAlbertus Magnus, 2:43, 47, 47Albigensians. See CatharsAlchemy, 2:41, 42–43

gnomes and, 3:103Rosicrucians and, 2:30, 31Satanism and, 1:298–299See also Philosopher’s stone

Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond (TV program),3:51

Aldrete, Sara Maria, 1:286Alexander, Hartley Burr, 1:81Alexander VI, Pope, 2:70Alford, Alan F., 2:222Algonquin people, souls of, 1:40Alien abductions. See UFO contactees and

abducteesAlien autopsies (Roswell, NM), 3:263Alien (film), 3:282Alien footprints, 3:247Alien technology, reverse engineering from,

3:293Alien visitors, in Holy Scripture, 3:249–251Alkahest, 2:48Allahabad (India), 2:217Allen, Carl M. See Allende, Carlos MiguelAllen, John L., Jr., 1:206Allende, Carlos Miguel, 3:299–300Allison, Ralph, 1:223–224Allman, John, 3:193“Almasti.” See YetiAlper, Frank, 2:175

Alper, Matthew, 1:190–191, 247Alpert, Richard, 3:154Altered states of consciousness, 3:140–157

See also TrancesAlthotas (Asian mystic), 2:61“Amazing Randi.” See Randi, JamesAmber, 2:187, 3:195Amenhotep IV. See Akhenaten (Pharaoh of

Egypt)American Society for Psychical Research, Inc.,

1:156, 173Amethysts, 2:186Amon-Ra (Egyptian deity), 2:245–246Amorth, Gabriele, 1:204, 206Amulets, 2:168, 169–190, 194, 3:188, 193–194,

195See also Fetishes; Good luck charms;

TalismansAmun-Ra (Egyptian deity), 1:259The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous

System in General and the Brain in Particular(Gall), 2:151

Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of theMystic Shrine. See Shriners

Andaman Islands, mourning practices, 3:227Anderson, Gillian, 3:288Anderson, Michael, 3:134Andreae, Valentine, 2:43–44Andresen, Theodore, 3:178Andrews, Dana, 3:109–110Angels

angelic hierarchy, 2:58in dream symbolism, 3:129mating with women, 3:250necromancy and, 2:144Seven Angels, 2:42, 57–58space beings, comparison with, 3:268symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:165Watchers, 2:52wee folk, relation to, 3:100, 102See also Apparitions, of holy figures;

Guardian angelsAngkor Wat (Cambodia), 2:216, 216Anguttara Nikaya (Buddhist text), 1:42“Animal magnetism” theory, 3:146Animal sacrifice, in voodoo, 2:55Animal spirits, 3:5–8Animal symbolism

astrology, 2:121–123, 124dreams, 3:129, 130fetishes, 2:193


Cumulative Index316

ichthys, 2:170Middle Eastern amulets, 2:169Nazca Lines, 2:263saints, 2:95tea leaf reading, 2:165, 166See also specific animals

Animism, 2:40Annunchiarico, Ciro, 2:6–7Ansel (angel), 2:42Ant symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:165Anthroposophy, 1:51–53Anti-Mason Party, 2:12The Antichrist, 1:180–182, 183–184, 231, 238Anubis (Egyptian deity), 3:193Apelike monsters, 3:59–68Apocalypse, 1:182–186Apocalyptic cults, 1:256–257, 313

See also specific cultsApollinario (8th c. Spanish hermit), 2:13Apparitions, 1:24–25, 3:3–4, 8–9, 11

See also Ghosts and ghostly beings;Phantoms

Apparitions, of holy figures, 1:186–192, 203Applewhite, Marshall Herff, Jr., 1:309, 309–311“Applied Engineering” government program,

3:293Apports, 1:88Aquarian Anti-Defamation League, 2:78Aquarius, the Water Bearer, 2:123, 186Aquino, Michael, 1:303–304Arachne (mythical figure), 3:138Arachnophobia, 3:138Aradia: The Gospel of Witches (Leland), 2:75Arapaho Ghost Dance (Wright), 1:284Arasteh, Reza, 1:146The Arcane School, 1:281Archaeoastronomy, 2:195Archangels. See Seven Angels“Archetypes” (mental forces), 3:119, 129Area 51 (NV), 3:293

See also Roswell (NM) UFO crash (1947)Argentina, cattle mutilations, 3:295Aries, the Ram, 2:121, 186Aristotle (Greek philosopher), 2:147, 220Ark of the Covenant, 2:200, 201–203, 202Arkadev, V., 3:183Armageddon, 1:192–193

Dome of the Rock, as site of, 2:245Nostradamus’ prophecies of, 2:160Red Heifer legend and, 2:143UFOs and, 3:290

Armstrong, P. A., 3:98–99Arness, James, 3:110Arnold, Kenneth, 3:242, 243, 251–252, 255Arran Island (Scotland), 2:226Arthur (King of Britain). See Arthurian legendsArthurian legends, 2:50, 200, 204–206, 238–239Aryans, cremation by, 3:226Aserinsky, Eugene, 3:120Ashtar (alien being), 1:305, 3:280Assassins (secret society), 2:4–5Association for Research and Enlightenment

(Virginia Beach, VA), 1:53–55, 2:153Assyrians, graves and grave markers, 3:226Astaire, Fred, 3:110Astral body, 3:171–172Astral projection. See Autoscopy; Out-of-body

experiencesAstrology, 2:44, 2:119–127Astronomical events, parallels with Earth

events, 2:124Astronomical tools, ancient

Great Pyramid, 2:264–266Mayan calendar, 2:254, 256Medicine Wheel, 2:259megaliths, 2:195Nazca Lines, 2:261–262Stonehenge, 2:273–274Tiahuanaco temples, 2:277, 278, 279

Aten (Egyptian deity), 1:259Athletes (Garduna), 2:14Atlantic Ocean land bridge, 2:222Atlantis (mythical continent), 2:215, 219–225

Atlanteans, alleged qualities of, 2:220Atlanteans as Sphinx builders, 2:271Atlanteans’ evolution, 1:52, 151Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, on, 2:248Cayce, Edgar, on, 2:153crystals and destruction of, 2:175floorbed of, 2:222Freemasons’ belief in, 2:919th century map, 2:221nuclear destruction of, 3:273, 274

Atman (self), 1:11Atwater, P. M. H., 1:30Augustine, St., 1:41, 226Australian aboriginals

fear of the dead, 1:37mistletoe custom, 2:183telepathy of, 3:180–181

Austria, mistletoe custom, 2:183Auto-da-fe, 1:218, 2:107


317Cumulative Index

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Auto-hypnosis, telepathy and, 3:183Automatic writing, 1:86, 118–119, 2:127–128Autoscopy, 3:11–12Autosuggestion, mediums and, 1:92–93Avalon (mythical land), 2:215, 225–226Avebury (England) phantoms, 3:17Aveni, Anthony, 2:263Aviophobia, 3:136The Awakening (film), 3:111Axe symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:165Ayers Rock (Australia). See Uluru monolith

(Australia)Aymara people, 2:277, 279Aztecs, crystal skulls and, 2:191

BBa and ka, 1:15–16, 20–21Bacon, Francis, 2:31Bacon, Roger, 2:44, 44–45Bahram I (Emperor of Persia), 1:282Bailey, Alice, 1:281

See also New Age MovementBailly, Marie, 2:250Bakongo people, fetishes of, 2:194Ball lightening, 3:54“Bangungot” urban legend, 3:233Banneaux (Belgium) holy apparitions, 1:188Baphomet (pagan deity), 2:51Barbanell, Maurice, 1:84, 88, 89Barkasy, David, 3:66Barker, Gray, 3:277Barker, William, 1:65, 66Barnett, Barney, 3:261Barrett, Deirdre, 3:126Barrett, Sir William, 3:146, 162Barry, Gene, 3:110Barton, Blanche, 1:303Basilosaurus, 3:87, 96Basinger, Kim, 3:136Bast (Egyptian deity), 3:190Bathing. See Hand washing and bathingBathing, dream symbolism, 3:129Bati Yeli, 2:25Batons (tarot), 2:132, 134Batson, Daniel, 1:191, 247Battle of Edge Hill phantoms (Keinton,

England), 3:15Bauval, Robert, 2:266Bayanov, Dmitri, 3:62Bayside (NY) holy apparitions, 1:190

Bear symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:165Beard, S. H., 3:12–13Beauraling (Belgium) holy apparitions, 1:188Bed-wetting, 3:125Bedouins, food kinship and, 3:216The Beginning of the End (film), 3:110Bekhterev, Vladimir M., 3:182The Believers (film), 1:287Bell, Charles Bailey, 3:29Bell, Drewry, 3:26, 28Bell, Elizabeth “Betsy,” 3:26–29Bell, Joel, 3:26, 29Bell, John, Jr., 3:26, 27, 28, 29Bell, John, Sr., 3:26, 27, 28, 29Bell, Luce, 3:26, 28, 29Bell, Richard, 3:26, 28, 29Bell symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:165Bell Witch haunting (Clarksville, TN), 3:26–29Bellamy, Arthur, 1:171–172“Bellows” (Garduna), 2:14Bells, 2:170–171Bender, Albert K., 3:276Beneath the Planet of the Apes (film), 3:111Beneficial previsions, 3:176Benio, Mike, 3:39Benson, Herbert, 1:211, 3:151Bequet, Celina. See Japhet, CelinaBereshit, Maaseh, 2:141–142Berkeley Psychic Institute (CA), 1:94Berkner, Lloyd V., 3:297Bermuda Triangle, 2:215, 226–230, 229Bernard, Eugene E., 3:170Bernard of Clairvaux, St., 2:20, 22Bernstein, Morey, 1:62, 64–66Berossus (Babylonian priest-historian), 3:248–249Bertrand, Rev., 3:171Beryl, 2:187Besant, Annie, 1:275Best man, 3:209–210Bethsames, 2:201–202Beware the Cat (anonymous), 3:190Beyond the Ashes: Cases of Reincarnation from the

Holocaust (Gershom), 1:58Beyond with James Van Praagh (TV program),

3:51Bhagavad Gita (Hindu text), 1:46–47Bhakti Hinduism, 1:12Biannual baths, 3:219–220Bible

alleged hidden code, 1:242blood, sacredness of, 3:69


Cumulative Index318

celestial body veneration, 2:119commoners’ use of, 1:45dreams, 3:118exorcism accounts, 1:205–206hospitality, 3:215Noah’s Ark and the deluge, 2:218prayer, 1:225, 227, 228–229space visitor accounts, 3:249–251tribal legends, parallels to, 1:283

The Bible Code (Drosnin), 1:242Big Foot (Sioux chief), 1:285Bigfoot (apelike monster), 3:60–63, 61Bilderbergers, 2:17Bimini Road, 2:223Binder, Bettye B., 1:68–69Bindernagel, John, 3:63Bingham, Hiram, 2:251–252Biochip implant conspiracy theory, 2:8Biodiversity Project Spirituality Working

Group, 2:89Bird, J. Malcolm, 1:102, 103Bird symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:165Birth stones, 2:185–186, 3:195Bishop, Bridget, 2:106Black cats, 3:190, 190Black (color), symbolism of, 1:40, 3:227Black Death, 2:99Black Elk (Oglala Sioux shaman), 1:77–78, 2:190Black Helicopters, 3:290–291“Black House” (San Francisco, CA), 1:302–303“Black-letter days,” 3:191Black Madonna, 1:272–274, 273Black magick, 2:51–52, 3:188Black Mass, 1:293–296

See also SabbatsBlackmore, Susan, 1:30–31, 214Blair, Linda, 1:207, 208Blanchard, William, 3:264Blankley, Andrew, 1:224Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, 1:147, 147–149

Besant, Annie, and, 1:275on Lemuria, 2:248on reincarnation, 1:50theosophy and, 1:55–56

Bless the Child (film), 1:239Blessing, before meals, 3:220Block, Carl, 1:107Blombos Cave (Cape Town, South Africa), 3:200Blood

fear of, 3:138liquefied blood of saints, 1:221

sacredness of, 3:69Shroud of Turin stains, 1:236–237from weeping statutes, 1:250

Bloodstone, 2:171, 186, 187See also Carnelian

Bloom, Clair, 3:14“Blue Bell Hill Phantom” urban legend, 3:235Blue Lake (NM), 2:276“Blue Monday,” 3:191Bluff Creek (CA) Bigfoot sightings, 3:60–61, 61“Bo.” See Applewhite, Marshall Herff, Jr.Bodily feelings (nonreflective consciousness),

3:140Bodin, Jean, 1:219, 2:110Body preservation. See EmbalmingBoer, Jelle de, 1:266, 2:155Boguet, Henri, 2:110–111Bohr, Niels, 3:124, 189Boisselier, Brigitte, 1:312Bonaparte, Joseph, 3:190–191Bonaparte, Napoleon, 3:190, 198Bone pendants, 2:198Bonewits, Philip Emmons (Isaac), 2:78–79The Book of Belial. See The Satanic Bible (LaVey)Book of Changes. See I ChingThe Book of Formation (Rokeach), 3:74The Book of Leviathan. See The Satanic Bible

(LaVey)The Book of Lucifer. See The Satanic Bible (LaVey)The Book of Satan. See The Satanic Bible (LaVey)The Book of Shadows (Gardner), 2:90Book of the Dead, Egyptian, 1:16–18Book of the Dead, Tibetan, 1:7The Book of the Law (Crowley), 2:62Borley Rectory (England), 3:29–33, 31Bouker, John, 3:99Boundary Institute (Los Altos, CA), 1:95“Boundary Questionnaire” (Hartmann), 3:125Bouquet tossing, 3:214Bourtsev, Igor, 3:62Bousfield, Edward L., 3:93Bower, David, 3:133Bower, Doug, 3:296Boxer Tong, 2:36–37Bradford, David, 3:42Bradlaugh, Charles, 1:275Bradley, Richard, 2:233Brahe, Tycho, 2:125Brain activity

brain-wave patterns of ESP senders andreceivers, 3:164


319Cumulative Index

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hydrocephalus and, 3:133during illumination, 1:217during REM sleep, 3:120unused brain capacity, 3:123during visions, 1:247See also Altered states of consciousness;

Memory; TrancesBrain chemistry, paranormal beliefs and, 3:159The Brain Eaters (film), 3:112Brain surgery, Tiahuananco civilization, 2:278Brainerd, C. J., 3:135Branch Davidians, 1:315–316Brandon, Sydney, 3:135Brasseur de Bourbourg, Charles-Etienne, 2:247Brazel, Mac, 3:261, 262, 264Brazil

Chupacabra activity, 3:70–71Macumba activity, 1:285–286witchcraft-related violence (21st c.), 2:101

Brethren of the Rosy Cross. See RosicruciansBridal dress, 3:208–209Bridal garters, 3:214Bridal showers, 3:208Bridal veils, 3:209Bride buying, 3:204–205Bride capture, 3:204Bride knights, 3:210Bride of the Gorilla (film), 3:110Bridegrooms, 3:214Bridesmaids, 3:209, 210British Isles, beliefs and customs

engagement announcements, 3:208fairy tales, 2:176horseshoes, 2:178maypoles, 2:181See also specific countries

British Society for Psychical Research, 1:172Bronk, Detley W., 3:297Broughton, R. J., 3:125Brown, Ron, 3:63Brown, William Moseley, 2:152Brown Mountain (NC) spooklights, 3:22Browne, Sylvia, 1:97–98, 98Brugger, Peter, 3:159Brujeria and brujas, 2:53Brunner, Hans, 3:64Bubastis (Egypt), 3:190Bubonic plague. See Black DeathBucke, Richard Maurice, 1:144, 193–194Buckland, Raymond, 2:77, 79–82, 80, 92,

94–95

Buckland, Stanley Thomas, 2:79–80Buddhism

afterlife, 1:5–8bells, 2:171burials and funerals, 3:223cremation, 3:226demons, 1:197meditation, 3:149–150reincarnation, 1:43soul, 1:4–5wedding ceremonies, 3:212

Bueno, Javier Torroella, 1:245Buffy the Vampire Slayer (film), 3:112Buhram (Thuggee member), 2:33Bulganin, Nikolai, 2:156–157Bull, Henry, 3:30–31Bulwer-Lytton, Sir Edward, 1:112Burial mounds, 1:38–40Burials and funerals, 1:3, 4, 16, 3:221–228, 225Burr, Raymond, 3:110Burstyn, Ellen, 1:208Burundi, Mambu-mutu activity, 3:107Bush, Vannevar, 3:297Butler, Jon, 1:220Butts, Robert F., 1:126, 127, 128Byrd, Richard E., 2:242Byrne, Gabriel, 1:243Byrne, Peter and Bryan, 3:67Byron, George Gordon, 3:75

CCabala. See KabbalahCadavers, grave robbing for, 3:72“Cadborosaurus,” 3:93Caget, Virginia, 3:52Cagliostro, Count Allesandro, 2:61–62, 72Cahauchi (Peru), 2:261Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site (IL), 2:231Caledonia (IL) monster, 3:97Caleuche (ship), 3:10Calvados Castle (France), 3:33–36Cambyses II (King of Persia), 3:190Campbell, Gary, 3:92Canael (angel), 2:58Cancer, the Crab, 2:121, 186Candles, 2:171–172Candomble. See MacumbaCannon, Alexander, 3:171–172Canon, Walter, 2:56Canon Episcopi (Regino of Prum), 1:217, 2:41


Cumulative Index320

Cape Ann (MA) sea serpent, 3:93–94Capitani, Caterina, 1:220, 222Capricorn, the Goat, 2:123, 186Carafa, Gian Pietro. See Paul IV, PopeCarbon dating. See Radiocarbon datingCarcassonne (France), 1:276Caribbean Sea land bridge, 2:225Carl Theodore (Bavarian monarch), 2:19Carlisle, Al, 1:224Carlyon, Kevin, 2:195Carnac (France) megaliths, 2:195, 196Carnelian, 2:171

See also BloodstoneCarpocrates (Gnostic teacher), 1:278Carrel, Alexis, 2:250Carrington, Hereward, 1:158–161, 159

Crandon, Mina, and, 1:103–104Garrett, Eileen, and, 1:91–92, 109on out-of-body experiences, 3:172Palladino, Eusapia, and, 1:121Piper, Leonora E., and, 1:123on psychical researchers’ qualities, 1:158

Carrington, Patricia, 3:121Cartheuser, William, 1:158–159Cartomancy and tarot, 2:128–136, 130The Case for Psychic Survival (Carrington), 1:159“The Case of the Derailed Engine” (1860),

3:174–175“The Case of the Scratch on the Cheek” (1876),

1:170–171Cassiel (angel), 2:42Castro, Carlos de, 1:118Cathars, 1:218, 274, 276–277, 2:41, 102, 113Catherine of Siena, St., 1:186, 241Catholicism. See Roman CatholicismCatoptomancy, 2:183

See also ScryingCats and cat superstitions, 3:189–190

dream symbolism, 3:129as familiars, 2:95fear of, 3:136tea leaf reading symbolism, 2:165

Cattle mutilations, 3:293–295Cauldrons, 2:172–173, 173Cavalier (tarot). See Knight (tarot)Cayce, Charles Thomas, 2:153Cayce, Edgar, 1:54, 2:152–154

Association for Research andEnlightenment and, 1:53–55

on Atlantis, 2:223on crystals, 2:175

on the Great Pyramid, 2:268on reincarnation, 1:30

Cayce, Hugh Lynn, 1:54–55, 2:152–153Cazzamalli, F., 3:182Ceasg, 3:107Celebrities, phobias of, 3:136, 138The Cellular Cosmogony, or The Earth, A

Concave Sphere (Teed), 2:242Celts

cauldron use, 2:172–173cursuses and ley lines and, 2:233myths as basis for Arthurian legends,

2:205–206, 225–226Stonehenge and, 2:273, 274

Cerminara, Gina, 1:55Chaffin, James, 3:20–22Chaffin, James Pinkney, 3:20, 21, 22Chaffin, John, 3:20Chaffin, Marshall, 3:20, 21Chaldeans, astrology and, 2:118, 119–120Chambers, John, 3:62Chaney, James, 3:166Chaney, Lon, Jr., 3:109Chang Cheuh, 2:36Channelers. See Mediums and channelersChariot (tarot), 2:130Chariots, used to describe UFOs, 3:250Chariots of the Gods? (Daniken), 3:246“Charles B. Rosna” (spirit control). See Fox

sistersCharles I (King of England), 3:15Charon (mythical figure), 3:222Chartres Cathedral (France), 2:232Chartres (France), 2:230, 232Chase, Judith, 1:293Chastity, medieval view of, 1:292Cheiromancy, 2:148Chemical discoveries, from alchemy, 2:43The Chemical Wedding. See The Hermetic

Romance (Andreae)Chepren Pyramid (Giza, Egypt), 1:22Cher (entertainer), 3:136Cheshire, Leonard, 1:234Chevalier, Ulysee, 1:237Chibcha people, 2:234“Chicago Seeress.” See Hughes, IreneChichen Itza (Mexico), 2:254, 255Chickasaw people, mourning custom, 3:227Chile, Chupacabra activity, 3:71China, beliefs and customs

astrology, 2:124


321Cumulative Index

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evil eye, 3:194fairy tales, 2:176kissing, 3:207mourning, 3:227number superstitions, 3:198silver, 2:185

China, UFO research, 3:267“Chinese Mafia.” See Triad TongChippewa people, souls of, 1:40Chippindale, Christopher, 3:58Chiron (mythical figure), 2:123Chirosophy, 2:148Chivalrous Order of the Holy Vehm. See Holy

VehmChloe (18th c. slave), 3:42–43Chorley, Dave, 3:296The Chosen (film), 1:239, 3:110Chretien de Troyes, 2:204“Christ consciousness,” 1:150–152Christianity

afterlife, 1:8–10Apocalypse, 1:182–183bells, 2:171burials and funerals, 3:223–224, 226–227cremation, 3:226–227Dead Sea Scrolls and link with Judaism,

1:46demons, 1:196–197exorcism, 1:206holy days and pagan festivals, coinciding of,

1:270holy objects, 2:150, 152hospitality and charity, 3:215Jerusalem, importance of, 2:242, 244occult arts, early suppression of, 2:40–41,

118–119paganism and Satanism, driving of people

to, 1:289–290, 291–293Pueblo adoption of, 2:275–276The Rapture, 1:231–232reincarnation, 1:43–44, 46Satanists’ view of, 1:301slave adoption of, 1:282–283, 285–286soul, 1:4, 5wedding ceremonies, 3:210–211, 213See also Jesus Christ; Mystery religions and

heresies, Christian; Protestantism;Roman Catholicism; specific Christiansects

A Christmas Carol (film), 3:21Chrysocolla, 2:187

Chupacabra, 3:70–72, 71Church, General, 2:7Church of God, snake handling and, 1:239–240Church of Satan, 1:299–303Church of Scientology. See ScientologyChurch of Seven African Powers, 1:287Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Jerusalem),

2:242, 244Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, 1:287Church of Wicca (U.S.), 2:82, 84Churches, dream symbolism, 3:129Churchward, James, 2:248Cicero (Roman orator), 1:41Cieza de Leon, Pedro de, 2:277Clairvoyance, 3:158, 164Clairvoyance, researchers of, 3:166–170Clar, Lydia, 1:104Clark, Walter Houston, 1:178, 215–216Claustrophobia, 3:138Clement of Alexandria, St., 1:41Clement V, Pope, 1:218, 2:23–24, 102Cleveland, Grover, 2:125Clift, Montgomery, 3:25Clonaid, 1:312Clones, alleged human, 1:312Close Encounters of the Third Kind (film),

3:282–283, 283, 284Cloud symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:165Clubs (playing cards), 2:135Cochran, Tara, 2:81Cocke, J. R., 1:122–123Coelacanths, 3:58–59, 87Coffins, 3:224Cohen, Sidney, 3:153Coins (tarot), 2:132, 133Colburn, Nettie, 1:134Cold readings, 1:105Cold War hysteria, 3:242, 287Coleman, Loren, 3:66“College roommate suicide” urban legend,

3:232–233Collier, John, 1:79Collina-Girard, Jacques, 2:222Collins, Joan, 3:110Collins, John, 1:183Colossus of Rhodes, 2:243Columbus, Christopher, 1:313, 2:226Coma, 3:140The Coming Race (Bulwer-Lytton), 2:242Communion (Strieber), 3:270–271, 284Compass variation, 2:229


Cumulative Index322

Concave Earth theory, 2:242Condon, Edward, 3:258Condon/University of Colorado Report (1969),

3:258, 258–259Congregation of the Inquisition. See Holy OfficeConnally, John and Nellie, 2:35Connecticut thunderbird sightings, 3:97Consciousness, altered states of, 3:140–157

See also Memory; TrancesConspiracy theories

Bilderbergers’ New World Order, 2:17biochip implants, 2:8cattle mutilations, 3:294–295Diana (Princess of Wales), death of, 2:3Illuminati, 2:16Kennedy assassination, 2:35Majestic-12, 3:289, 290, 297–298Men in Black, 3:245–246, 276–279NASA cover-up of life on Mars, 2:27secret societies, theorists’ preoccupation

with, 2:2staged alien invasion and Armageddon,

3:290Constant, Alphonse Louis. See Levi, EliphasConstantine I (Roman Emperor), 1:271, 2:40,

244Constantine’s Lance. See Spear of DestinyConstanzo, Adolfo de Jesus, 1:286–287Construction theories

Carnac megaliths, 2:196Easter Island statues, 2:236–237Great Pyramid, 2:266–267, 3:247–248Sacsahuaman, 2:274Sphinx, 2:270, 271Stonehenge, 2:272–273, 274–275

Controlled Substances Act (U.S., 1970), 3:155Conyers (GA) holy apparitions, 1:190Cook, Florence, 1:98–101, 162–163Cooper, L. Gordon, 3:264–265Copernicus, Nicolaus, 2:124Coral, 2:187, 3:195Cords, as amulets, 2:170Corillaut, Etienne, 1:299Corporeal visions, 1:190, 246Corpse smoking, 3:223Corrector (Burchard), 2:41Corregidor (Philippines) phantoms, 3:16Corso, Philip J., 3:293Corwin, Jonathan, 2:105Cory, Giles, 2:105Cory, Martha, 2:105

Cosmic consciousness, 1:193–196Cosmon Research Foundation, 1:306Costa, E., 1:117–118Cottingley (England) fairy photograph hoax,

1:138–139, 3:103Council of Constantinople (625), 2:40Council of Laodicea (364), 2:40Council of Nicaea (325), 1:44Council of Oxia (525), 2:40Council of Tours (613), 2:40Count Dracula theme park plans (Romania),

3:80Coupchiak, Moses, 3:99“Coupling” guests, 3:217Courtship and marriage customs, 3:203–215Covenant of the Goddess, 2:88–89Covens, 1:294Covers (Garduna), 2:14Crabtree, Adam, 1:224Cragg, Rev., 3:45–46Crainoscopy. See PhrenologyCrandon, Le Roi Goddard, 1:101, 102Crandon, Mina Stinson, 1:101, 101–104, 166Crawford, Joan, 3:25, 138Creative and lucid dreaming, 3:122–125Creatures of the night, 3:68–85Cremation, 3:224, 226–227Crenshaw, James, 3:17Crete, as possible site of Atlantis, 2:223–224“Crisis apparitions,” 3:8Critch, Gerard, 1:243Critias (Plato), 2:221Croesus (King of Lydia), 1:266Croiset, Gerard, 3:166Crookall, Robert, 1:27–28, 3:171Crookes, Sir William, 1:156, 161–163, 162

Cooke, Florence, and, 1:98, 99–100, 101Fox sisters and, 1:142Home, Daniel Dunglas, and, 1:113–114

Crop circles, 3:295–297Crosette, Barbara, 3:202Crosses, 2:203–204Crosses, inverted, 1:290, 301Crossing Over with John Edward (TV program),

1:104, 105, 3:51Crowley, Aleister, 1:181, 181, 304, 2:62–64,

63, 76Crowley, Edward Alexander. See Crowley,

AleisterThe Crucible (Miller), 2:104


323Cumulative Index

CU

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The Crucifixion. See Crosses; Jesus Christ,Crucifixion of; Stigmata

Crusades, 2:19, 40–41Cryptozoologists, 3:58Crystal gazing. See ScryingCrystal skulls, 2:191–193Crystalomancy. See ScryingCrystals, 2:169, 173–174, 175, 195

See also ScryingCuauhtlatoatzin. See Juan Diego (16th c. Aztec)Cuba, Santeria in, 1:287Cults, 1:270, 272

See also specific cultsCuneo, Michael W., 1:208–209Cups (tarot), 2:132–133, 133Curandero, 2:91Curie, Pierre, 1:156Curran, Pearl Leonore, 2:127Cursuses and leys, 2:232–234, 261

See also Holy lines; Nazca Lines (Peru)Curtis, Tony, 3:136Customs and taboos, 3:200–228Cyrus the Great (King of Persia), 1:266

DDakota people, souls of, 1:40Dalai Lama, 1:7Daniel (Hebrew prophet), 1:180, 181D’Arcis, Pierre, 1:237Dark, fear of. See ScotophobiaDark Skies (TV program), 3:288–289“Darrell” (drowning victim), 1:68Davidian Seventh-Day Adventist Association.

See Branch DavidiansDavies, Joseph, 2:156Davis, Andrew Jackson, 1:135–137Davis, Nancy. See Reagan, NancyDavis, Russell C., 1:69The Dawn of Astronomy (Lockyer), 2:265The Day After Roswell (Corso), 3:293Day of Judgment. See Final JudgmentThe Day the Earth Stood Still (film), 3:281–282,

284–285, 285Daydreaming, 3:141Days of the week superstitions, 3:191, 199De la demonomanie des sorciers (Bodin), 1:219,

2:96, 110De Leon, Moses, 2:142De praestigus daemonum (Weyer), 2:96, 109De Wohl, Louis, 2:125–126

Dead creatures, fear of. See NecrophobiaDead Sea Scrolls, 1:46Death, the Final Stages of Growth (Kubler-Ross),

1:28Death knells, 2:170–171Death (tarot), 2:131Deathbed visions, 1:23–26Decided Ones of Jupiter, 2:5–7Dee, John, 2:64–65, 65Deikman, Arthur J., 1:215Deja vu, 3:177Delphic Oracles, 1:265–266, 2:154, 154–155The Deluge, 2:218, 222Dement, William C., 3:120–121Demeter (Greek deity), 1:268, 269Demonolgie (James VI of Scotland), 2:106Demons, 1:196–199

See also Goblins; Imps; Possession, bydemons

Dennis, Glenn, 3:263Denominations, 1:272Depression, placebos and, 3:139Descartes, René, 2:31–32Deserts, dream symbolism, 3:129Desgrez (17th c. French police official), 1:297Dessoir, Max, 3:162Detrimental previsions, 3:176Devereaux, Paul, 2:233Devil, dream symbolism, 3:129The Devil and Miss Sarah (film), 3:110Devil (tarot), 2:131–132The Devil Within Her (film), 3:110Devil worship. See Satanic cults; SatanismDevil’s Mark, 1:199–200“Devil’s Sea.” See Dragon’s TriangleDevil’s Triangle. See Bermuda TriangleDhammapada (Buddha), 1:6Di Mambro, Joseph, 1:318Diamonds (gems), 2:184, 186, 3:195Diamonds (playing cards), 2:134Diana (Greek deity), 2:123Diana (Princess of Wales), death of, 2:3Dianetics, 1:320Dickason, C. Fred, 1:225Dickinson, G. Lowes, 1:43Dieppe (France) phantoms, 3:16Dingwall, E. J., 1:129Dinner plates, 3:219Dinner tables, 3:217–218Dinsdale, Tim, 3:90Dionysian Mysteries, 1:33, 265, 266–268


Cumulative Index324

Dionysus (Greek deity), 1:33, 266Dionysus Zagreus (mythic figure), 1:267“Direct-voice” communication, 1:89Dirt, fear of. See MysophobiaDiscours des Sorciers (Boguet), 2:110, 111The Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful

Empire of Guyana with a Relation to the Greatand Golden City of Manoa (Raleigh), 2:235

The Discovery of Witchcraft (Scot), 2:106, 109The Discovery of Witches (Hopkins), 2:112Discrimination, against Wiccans, 2:74Divination, 2:118Divinity, horns as symbols of, 2:92, 94Dixon, Jeane, 2:155, 155–157“Do.” See Applewhite, Marshall Herff, Jr.Do Dogs Go to Heaven? (Holmes), 3:7D’Octavio, General, 2:7Doctrine of Correspondence, 1:153Doerr, Vince, 3:65Dog superstitions, 3:191–193Dome of the Rock (Jerusalem), 2:242, 245Donnelly, Ignatius, 2:219Donovan’s Brain (film), 3:110Doomsday clock, 1:185Dopamine, 3:159Dorland, Frank, 2:193Dornheim, Fuchs George II, Johann von, 2:103Dorset Cursuses (England), 2:233Dossey, Larry, 1:229Douglas, Janet, 2:106Douglas, Kirk, 3:110Dowries, 3:206, 213Dowsing, 2:136–137Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 1:137–139, 165,

3:102–103Doyle, Lady Jean, 1:138, 139, 165Doyle, Kingsley, 1:138Doze, Grace, 1:61–62Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (film), 3:112“The Dragon and the Unicorn” (Cherry), 3:88Dragonheart (film), 3:89Dragons, 3:87–89Dragon’s Triangle, 2:227Dream diaries, 3:132Dream incubation temples, 3:117Dream symbology, 3:128–130Dreamland. See Area 51 (NV)Dreams, 3:117–130Drosnin, Michael, 1:242Drug use

by Assassins, 2:4

sleep interference and, 3:121in voodoo, 2:56See also Psychedelics

Druidsin Chartres (France), 2:230, 232Stonehenge and, 2:273tree superstitions, 2:187–188, 3:196

Drury (English drummer). See TedworthDrummer (Tedworth, England)

D’Souza, Henry, 1:205DuBose, Thomas, 3:261Duchovny, David, 3:288Duke University psychical research lab

(Durham, NC), 3:162, 163Dunne, J. W., 3:176–177

EEa (Babylonian deity), 2:123Earthquakes, dream symbolism, 3:129Easter Island, 2:235–238, 236Easter symbolism, 3:198–199Eastre (Norse deity), 3:199Eastwood, Clint, 3:110Eating utensils, 3:215–216, 218–219Eaton, Sally, 2:79Ebertin, Elsbeth, 2:125Eby, Hester, 3:43The ECK, 1:316Eckankar, 1:316–317Ecstasy, 1:200, 202–204Ectoplasm, 1:88–89, 159, 3:78Eddington, A. S., 3:176Eddy, John A., 2:259Edelman, Gerald M., 3:116Edgar Cayce Foundation (Virginia Beach, VA),

2:153Edison, Thomas Alva, 3:13, 15, 123–124Edward, John, 1:104–105Edward VI (King of England), 2:64Edwards, Frank, 3:278Edwards, Susanna, 2:101Ego, 3:119Egypt, beliefs and customs

adultery, 3:202afterlife, 1:15–22amulets, 2:169cat worship, 3:190dog superstitions, 3:193evil eye, 3:194fetishes, 2:194


325Cumulative Index

CU

MU

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gods and goddesses, 1:257, 3:58graves and grave markers, 3:225–226guests, courtesy to, 3:216hand washing and bathing, 3:219hospitality, 3:215hypnosis, 3:144, 146ladder superstitions, 3:197mourning, 3:227mummies and mummification, 1:18, 20,

3:222–223mystery religions, 1:257–264silver use, 2:185sneezing superstitions, 3:199wedding rings, 3:213

Egyptian Masonic rite, 2:61, 62Egyptian temples, Tiahuananco similarities to,

2:278Ehrenwald, Jan, 3:175–176, 181Eight, symbolism of

numerology, 2:146playing cards, 2:134, 135Pythagoras on, 2:145tarot, 2:131, 133, 134

Eighteen, tarot symbolism of, 2:132Einstein, Albert, 1:195El Cid (Spanish hero), 2:12–13El Dorado (mythical city), 2:215, 234–235Elders of Lemuria. See Thirteenth SchoolElectromagnetivity, telepathy and, 3:182, 183Eleusinian Mysteries, 1:33–34, 268–269Eleven, symbolism of

numerology, 2:147tarot, 2:131

Elfman, Jenna, 1:320Elijah (Hebrew prophet), 3:250Elizabeth I (Queen of England), 2:64, 65, 235Elizabeth (13th c. Cistercian nun), 1:241Elkin, A. P., 3:180–181Elliot, Rusty, 2:78Ellison, Robert, 3:23Elohim, 1:311–312, 313Elopement, 3:206Elves, 3:100–101Embalming, 3:222–223Emerald Tablet, 2:46Emeralds, 2:186Emperor (tarot), 2:130Empire of the Ants (film), 3:110Employers, use of graphology, 2:138Empress (tarot), 2:130Enclosed spaces, fear of. See Claustrophobia

End of Days (film), 1:239End times. See ApocalypseEndogamy, 3:203Energy alignments. See Cursuses and leysEngagement announcements, 3:208England, beliefs and customs

dinner plates, 3:219drinking toasts, 3:220–221eating utensils, 3:218elves, 3:100fairy tales, 2:176rings, 2:184sneezing superstitions, 3:199See also British Isles, beliefs and customs

England, witchcraft trials, 2:100–101English, Philip, 2:105Enochian magick, 2:52Ensley, Eddie, 1:248Environment, affect on dreams, 3:121–122Episodic memory, 3:132Epworth Rectory (England), 3:36–38, 37Ergot, 3:153Erosion, of the Sphinx, 2:270Erotomania, Inquisition and, 3:76, 78Eskimo beliefs and customs

kissing, 3:207marriage, 3:205

ESP. SeeExtrasensory perceptionE.T. (fictional character), 3:281E.T.—The Extraterrestrial (film), 3:283Etheric body, 3:171–172Ethylene, 1:266, 2:155Etiquette. See Hospitality and etiquette; specific

countries and culturesEuler, Leonhard, 2:240Europe, beliefs and customs

bathing, 3:219–220burials and funerals, 3:226cat superstitions, 3:189–190dinner plates, 3:219dinner tables, 3:217engagement announcements, 3:208guests, courtesy to, 3:217hope chests, 3:206–207ladder superstitions, 3:197See also specific countries

Evans, Linda, 1:116Evans, Sir Arthur, 2:223Everest Expedition (1921), 3:66Evil Eye, 3:193–195, 200Exogamy, 3:203


Cumulative Index326

Exon, Arthur, 3:259Exorcism, 1:179, 204–209

at Calvados Castle (France), 3:36John Paul II, Pope, performed by, 1:204of Mother Teresa, 1:205recent demand for, 1:223See also Possession, by demons

The Exorcist (film), 1:207, 208, 208–209Expanded consciousness, 3:141–142Exploring Atlantis (Alper), 2:175Extersteine megaliths (Germany), 2:257Extrasensory perception (ESP), 3:146,

157–160, 179, 266researchers of, 3:161–184

Extraterrestrials. See Alien visitors, in HolyScripture; UFO contactees and abductees;UFOs, in ancient times; UFOs, in film andTV; UFOs, in modern times; UFOs, recentmysteries

FFahler, Jarl, 3:167Fairies, 3:101, 101–103, 102, 296Fairy circles, 2:176–177, 177, 3:295Fairy photograph hoax (England), 1:138–139,

3:103Fairy Tale: A True Story (film), 3:102, 103Faith, afterlife belief and, 1:2Faith healing, 1:209–211“Fall of the Angels” (tarot). See Tower of

Destruction (tarot)Falling, dream symbolism, 3:129False memories, 3:131, 134–135Falun Gong, 1:315, 317–318Familiars, 2:95, 111–112

See also ImpsFang people, souls of, 1:37A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway), 1:27Faria, King, 2:137“Fat man suffocator” urban legend, 3:233Fate line, 2:149Fate Magazine, 2:220, 3:145Father of Greatness, 1:280Fatima (Portugal) holy apparitions, 1:188Faust, Dr., 2:65–67, 66Faust, Georg. See Faust, Dr.Favazza, John, 3:94, 95Al Fayed, Dodi, 2:3Feather, Sally, 3:165Fedayeen, 2:4, 5

Fehm. See Holy VehmFeliciani, Lorenza, 2:61, 62Female symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:166Fenwick, Peter, 1:31Ferdinand II (King of Aragon), 1:219, 2:13–14Ferdinand V (King of Castile). See Ferdinand II

(King of Aragon)Fetishes, 2:193–195

See also Amulets; TalismansFeudal system, 2:94Field memory, 3:132Fifteen, tarot symbolism of, 2:132Fight the Future (film), 3:288Fiji Islands, beliefs and customs

infant betrothals, 3:205wedding dinners, 3:213

Fillmore, Charles, 1:50Film monster favorites, 3:77

See also specific filmsFinal Judgment, 1:185–186

in Christianity, 1:9–10in Islam, 1:13in Judaism, 1:15

“Fire ship” of New Brunswick (Canada), 3:10First Church of Satan. See Church of SatanFischer, Charles, 3:120Fish, LeRoy, 3:62Fish symbol (Ichthys), 2:170Fisher King (mythical figure), 2:205, 206Five, symbolism of


“Five Companies” (Tong), 2:37Five elements (Chinese astrology), 2:124Flatwoods (WV) UFO sightings (1952), 3:243Fleau des demons et des Sorciers. See De la

demonomanie des sorciers (Bodin)“Fletcher” (spirit guide). See Ford, Arthur

Augustus“Florida Sandman.” See Skunk ApeFlower girls, 3:209Flowers

bouquet tossing, 3:214courtship and, 3:207–208in funerals, 3:226in prehistoric burials, 1:3symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:165in weddings, 3:209

Floyran, Esquire de, 2:23


327Cumulative Index

CU

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Flying, fear of. See AviophobiaFlying Dutchman (ship), 3:10“Flying ointment,” 2:98, 3:153Flying Saucers and the Three Men (Bender), 3:276Fodor, Nandor, 3:24Food and Drug Administration, LSD and, 3:154,

155Food kinship, 3:216The Fool (tarot), 2:132“Foos” and “foo fighters,” 3:252The Force (tarot), 2:131Ford, Arthur Augustus, 1:105–108, 1:166Ford, Gerald, 2:35Foreigners, fear of. See XenophobiaForrestal, James V., 3:297, 298Fossils, mistaken for dragon remains, 3:88–89Foundation for Research of the Nature of Man

(Durham, NC), 3:164See also Rhine Research Center (Durham,

NC)Four, symbolism of

Chinese and Japanese superstitions, 3:198numerology, 2:146playing cards, 2:134, 135Pythagoras on, 2:145tarot, 2:130, 133, 134

Four elements, 2:119–120Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1:183, 184Four-leaf clovers, 3:195Fourteen, tarot symbolism of, 2:131Fowler, Nancy, 1:190Fox, Catherine “Katie.” See Fox sistersFox, John, 1:133, 140, 141Fox, Margaret, 1:140, 141Fox, Margaretta “Maggie.” See Fox sistersFox sisters, 1:133, 139–143Foyster, Lionel Algernon, 3:31–32Foyster, Marianne, 3:31–32, 33Fragmented consciousness, 3:141France

Knights Templar activity, 2:22–24Satanism popularity (16th–17th c.),

1:295–296werewolf burnings, 3:84

France, beliefs and customsbridal garters, 3:214eating utensils, 3:218kissing, 3:207quartrozieme, 3:198

France, witchcraft trials, 2:101–102“Francine” (spirit guide). See Browne, Sylvia

Francis of Assisi, St., 1:186, 241, 2:95Franco-Cantabrian cave art, 2:199“Frank Withers” (spirit guide). See Roberts, JaneFrankenstein: A Modern Prometheus (Shelley),

3:75Frankenstein (film), 3:74Franklin, Aretha, 3:136Franklin, Benjamin, 1:59, 2:11Frazer, Sir James George, 2:92Frederick the Great (King of Prussia), 2:71, 72,

209Free and Accepted Order of Freemasons. See

FreemasonsFree will, astrology and, 2:127Freeman, George P., 3:278Freemasons, 2:2, 9–12, 10, 11, 18Freud, Sigmund, 3:129

agoraphobia of, 3:136on dreams, 3:118as member of psychical research societies,

1:156on memory repression, 3:132, 134on telepathy, 3:178

Friday superstitions, 3:191Friedman, Michael, 3:126Friedman, Stanton, 3:263–264, 297Frog symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:165Frost, Gavin and Yvonne, 2:77, 82–85, 83, 84The Fruits of Philosophy (Besant, Bradlaugh),

1:275Fry, Daniel W., 1:305, 3:273–274Fuld, William, 1:85–86Fulton, Harold H., 3:277The Fury (film), 3:110

GGabriel (angel), 2:42, 58Gaddis, Vincent H., 2:227“Galahad and the Holy Grail” (Abbey), 2:205Galahad (mythic figure), 2:205Gall, Franz Joseph, 2:151Gandhi, Indira, 2:126Gandillon family, 2:110, 111Garabandal (Spain) holy apparitions, 1:190Gardner, Gerald Brosseau, 2:85, 85–86

Buckland, Raymond, and, 2:80revival of Wicca and, 2:75, 77Valiente, Doreen, and, 2:90–91

Gardner, Joshua, 3:28Gardner, Marshall, 2:241


Cumulative Index328

Garduna, 2:2, 12–15Garlaschelli, Luigi, 1:221Garlic, 2:177–178, 178Garnets, 2:186Garnier, Gilles, 3:84Garrett, Eileen, 1:91–92, 108–110, 109, 159Gateway Program, 3:13Gauquelin, Michael, 2:125Gavitt, Captain, 3:96Gee, D. J., 3:53Gelanpoulous, Angelo, 2:224Gelb, Lester, 3:118Gem superstitions, 3:195Gemini, the Twins, 2:121, 186General Wayne Inn (Merion, PA), 3:38–40Geoffrey of Monmouth, 2:225–226Geoffrey of Saint-Omer, 2:19–20Geoglyphs, 2:260Germany, beliefs and customs

elves, 3:100fairy tales, 2:176salt, 2:185

Germany, Holy Vehm activity, 2:15–16Germany, Illuminati activity, 2:18–19Germany, witchcraft trials, 2:102–103Germs, fear of. See MysophobiaGershom, Yonassan, 1:48, 58–59Gestalt therapy, dreams and, 3:128Ghose, Sisirkumar, 1:146, 195The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (TV program), 3:51Ghost Ceremony, 1:38Ghost Dance, 1:283–285Ghost (film), 3:50“Ghost junk” (ship), 3:10Ghost land. See Spirit landGhost ships, 3:10Ghost Shirts, 1:285Ghost Story (film), 3:50, 110Ghostbusters (film), 3:9, 50Ghosts, in film and TV, 3:49–52Ghosts and ghostly beings, 3:2, 3–24, 4, 20, 24

See also Apparitions; PhantomsGhosts of the dead, 3:4, 20–22Ghosts of the living, 3:12–14Ghouls, 3:72Giant squids, 3:95Giants’ Dance. See Stonehenge (England)Gibbons, Bill, 3:86Gibbons, Jenny, 2:97Gift exchange, during courtship, 3:207–208Gilbert, Adrian, 2:266

Gilmore, Peter H., 1:302Gimlin, Bob, 3:61Girdle of Venus, 2:149“Giving away” the bride, 3:210, 211Gladstone, William E., 1:156Glanvil, Joseph, 1:46, 3:46, 47Glass writing, 1:86Glastonbury Abbey (England), 2:238–239, 239Glastonbury (England), 2:238–239Glastonbury Thorn (England), 2:238Glastonbury Tor (England), 2:238Glossolalia, 1:226Glossophobia, 3:138Gloucester (MA) sea serpent. See Cape Ann

(MA) sea serpentGloves, for brides, 3:209Gnomes, 3:103–104Gnosticism, 1:277–280

reincarnation and, 1:49Simon Magus and, 2:69–70tarot and, 2:128

“Goats” (Garduna), 2:14Goat’s head, symbol of Satanism, 1:290Goblins, 3:104

See also DemonsGod, belief in, 1:210God of the Hunt. See Horned GodThe“God” Part of the Brain (Alper), 1:247Goddess worship, 1:273–274, 2:93, 94

See also Demeter (Greek deity); Diana(Greek deity)

Godzilla (film), 3:110Goebbels, Joseph, 2:126Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 3:11Goetheanum (Dornach, Switzerland),

1:151–152Gog and Magog, 1:180, 185Goldberg, Bruce, 1:61–62Goldberg, Whoopi, 3:136“The Golden Legend” (Longfellow), 1:213Golem, 3:72–74, 73, 76The Golem of Prague (film), 3:73Golem of Prague (“Yossele”), 3:76Good, Dorcas, 2:105Good, Sarah, 2:105Good luck charms, 2:168, 3:188

See also Amulets; Fetishes; TalismansGoodavage, Joseph, 2:124Goodman, Andrew, 3:166Gore-Booth, Eva, 1:50Gospel of Light (Mani), 1:280, 282


329Cumulative Index

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Gosse, Philip, 3:87Gothic movement, vampire subculture and,

3:81–82Goulding, Chris, 3:75Gramolazzo, Giancarlo, 1:204Grand Master of Knights Templar, 2:21Grangecon (Ireland), weeping statue of, 1:251Grannis, Appleton, 3:6Grant, Joan, 1:58Graphology, 2:137–140Graphotherapeutics, 2:139Grave robbing, 3:72Graves, Peter, 3:110Graves and grave markers, 3:225–226Gray, Gordon, 3:297Gray man of Hinton Ampner (England), 3:40–42Great Flood. See The DelugeGreat Grimoires, 2:51Great Pyramid (Giza, Egypt), 2:214, 243,

264–268, 3:247–248Great Seal of the United States, Masonic

imagery of, 2:9Great Serpent Mound (Adams County, OH),

1:39Great White Brotherhood, 1:308, 2:248Greece, beliefs and customs

adultery, 3:202afterlife, 3:222cremation, 3:226crystals, 2:173days of the week superstitions, 3:191divination, 2:118, 150, 182dog superstitions, 3:193dowries, 3:206drinking toasts, 3:220eating utensils, 3:218, 219engagement announcements, 3:208evil eye, 3:194gem superstitions, 3:195guests, courtesy to, 3:216hand washing and bathing, 3:219horseshoe superstitions, 3:196hospitality, 3:215love and marriage, 3:206mushrooms, sacredness of, 3:152salt, 2:184sneezing superstitions, 3:199spitting superstitions, 3:200state religion, 1:32, 264, 2:40sweetmeats for newlyweds, 3:214white, symbolism of, 3:208–209

Greeley, Andrew, 1:23Green, John, 3:63“Green M&Ms” urban legend, 3:231Greenwell, Chief, 3:244Greenwell, J. Richard, 3:86Gregori, Fabio, 1:250Gregory, Anita, 1:131Gregory IX, Pope, 1:218, 2:95Gregory the Great, Pope, 3:199Gregson, W. H., 3:32Gremlins, 3:104–105, 105Grey, Joel, 3:21Griffiths, Frances, 1:138, 139, 3:103Grillo, Girolamo, 1:250Grimoires, 2:107Gris-gris, 2:198Gross, Maurice, 3:19Grygiel, Monika, 1:248–249Guadalupe (Mexico) holy apparitions, 1:188Guardian angels, 1:211–214

See also Spirit guidesGuests, courtesy to, 3:216–217Guilborg, Abbe, 1:296, 297Gundestrup Cauldron, 2:173Guoxing, Zhou, 3:68Gurney, Edmund, 3:12, 13, 24, 146Gypsies, stereotypes of, 2:128

HHa-Farchi, Estori, 1:192Haeckel, Heinrich, 2:248Hair, dream symbolism, 3:129Hair and wig grooming, 3:220Haiti

slave revolt (1791), 2:54voodoo, 2:52, 54–56

Hajj, 2:257–258, 260Hall, Prince, 2:11Halley, Edmund, 2:239–240Halley’s comet, 2:239Hallucinations, 3:143–144

autoscopy and, 3:11demon possession and, 1:198–199hypnosis and, 3:147LSD and, 3:154

Hallucinogens. See PsychedelicsHamachis. See The Sphinx (Giza, Egypt)Hamilton, George, 3:110–111Hammer for Witches (Malleus Maleficarum)

(Kramer, Sprenger), 1:219, 2:103, 108


Cumulative Index330

Hancock, John, 2:11Hand of Glory, 2:178, 179Hand washing and bathing, 3:219–220Handwriting analysis. See GraphologyHangar 18, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base

(Dayton, OH), 3:259–260, 260See also Roswell (NM) UFO crash (1947)

Hanged Man (tarot), 2:131Hanging Gardens of Babylon, 2:243Haniel (angel), 2:58Harder, James, 3:270Hardy, Sir Alister, 1:145, 216Harkins, Roger, 3:259Harner, Michael, 1:76Hart, Hornell, 3:170Hartmann, Ernest, 3:125Hashashin. See Assassins (secret society)Hashish, Assassin use of, 2:4Hasidism, on reincarnation, 1:42–43, 48Hathorne, John, 2:105Haunted hotels, U.S., 3:25, 35Haunted houses and places, 3:24–49Haunted (TV program), 3:51The Haunting (film), 3:14, 49–50Haut, Walter, 3:261, 262, 264Hawass, Zahi, 2:267Hawkins, Gerald, 2:273, 274Hawley, William, 2:272Haynes, John, 3:291, 292Hazel wood, 2:187Head, Richard, 2:162Head line, 2:148Health benefits of meditation, 3:151

See also Prayer, power ofHealy, Henry A., 3:6Heart line, 2:148Heart symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:165Hearts (playing cards), 2:135Heathcote, Emma, 1:213–214Heaven, 1:14, 38Heaven’s Gate cult, 1:256–257, 309–311Hebrew beliefs and customs

graves and grave markers, 3:225hand washing and bathing, 3:219See also Judaism

Hecate (Greek deity), 3:193Hefner, Philip, 1:222Heights, fear of. See AcrophobiaHeilige linien. See Holy linesHeimliches Gericht, 2:15Hekau, 2:58

Helena, St., 1:272, 2:244Heliotrope. See BloodstoneHell, 1:10, 14Helvetius (Dutch alchemist), 2:45–46Hemaphobia, 3:138Hemingway, Ernest, 1:27Henderson, Oliver “Pappy,” 3:259Hennepin, Louis, 3:98Henry III (King of England), 3:190Hensley, George Went, 1:239–240Herbert, Bennison, 2:86, 87Heresy

Cathars and, 1:218, 274, 276–277in early Christianity, 1:270Gnosticism and, 1:277–280under Innocent III, 2:113Inquisition and, 1:217–219Knights Templar and, 2:22–23See also Mystery religions and heresies,

ChristianHermes (Greek deity), 3:119Hermes-Toth (Greek deity), 1:34, 258, 2:46Hermes Trismegistus (mythical alchemist),

1:258, 2:42, 46–47, 58, 118Hermetic Mysteries, 1:34, 2:42Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 2:76The Hermetic Romance (Andreae), 2:43Hermit (tarot), 2:131Herodotus (Greek historian), 2:264, 266Heston, Charlton, 3:111Heyerdahl, Thor, 2:237Hierophant (tarot), 2:130Higdon, Carl, 3:269–270High Magick’s Aid (Gardner), 2:85High Priestess (tarot), 2:130Higher Self, 2:175“Highway hypnosis,” 3:143Hilgard, Ernest R., 3:146, 147Hill, Barney and Betty, 3:274–276, 275Hill, Osman, 3:62Hillary, Sir Edmund, 3:59, 67Hillenkoetter, Roscoe H., 3:254, 298HIM. See Human Individual MetamorphosisHimmler, Heinrich, 2:125Hindley, Charles, 2:162Hinduism

adultery, 3:202afterlife, 1:10–12alien visitations, 3:251burials and funerals, 3:224cremation, 3:226


331Cumulative Index

CU

MU

LA

TI

VE

I

ND

EX

demons, 1:196, 288dreams, 3:117hospitality and charity, 3:215mourning, 3:227reincarnation, 1:46–47sadhu, 1:12soul, 1:4, 11–12wedding ceremonies, 3:212

Hinton Ampner (England) haunting, 3:40–42Hippocrates (Greek physician), 2:121Hiram Abiff, 2:10The History of Dr. Johann Faust (Speiss), 2:65History of the Kings of Britain (Geoffrey of

Monmouth), 2:204, 225–226, 272Hitler, Adolf

astrology and, 2:125cat phobia of, 3:190Nostradamus’ alleged prophecies of, 2:160Spear of Destiny and, 2:209swastika and, 2:210

HMS Eurydice (ship), 3:10Hoaxes

Borley Rectory (England) haunting,3:32–33

Cottingley (England) fairy photographs,1:138–139, 3:103

crop circles (England), 3:296Houdini’s exposure of, 1:102–103, 163,

165–166resulting from September 11 (2001)

terrorist attacks, 3:228, 229See also Urban legends and beliefs

Hobgoblins, 3:104Hodgson, Richard, 1:123, 149Hofman, Albert, 3:153–154Hohenheim, Theophrastus Bombast von. See

Paracelsus (German physician)Hollow Earth theory, 2:239–242Hollywood (CA) hauntings, 3:25Hollywood (FL) holy apparitions, 1:190Holmes, Irene Hume, 3:7Holmes, M. Jean, 3:7Holy Grail, 1:274, 2:168, 200, 204–206Holy Lance. See Spear of DestinyHoly lines, 2:257

See also Cursuses and leysHoly objects. See Sacred objects, power ofHoly Office, 1:219, 220, 2:62, 96–97Holy Vehm, 2:2, 15–16Holzer, Hans, 2:87Home, Daniel Dunglas, 1:110–115, 161–162

Homo Noeticus, 1:194–195Hongshan Pyramid (Mongolia), 1:21Hongzhi, Li, 1:315, 317Honorius II, Pope, 2:20“Hook on the car door” urban legend,

3:231–232Hoover, Herbert, 3:198Hope chests, 3:206–207Hopkins, Matthew, 2:111–112, 112Hor-em-Akhet. See The Sphinx (Giza, Egypt)Horn, Jenny, 2:106Horned God, 2:92, 94, 98Horns, as symbols of divinity, 2:92, 94Horrocks, Stella, 2:128Horror films and TV programs

actors in, 3:109–112film monster favorites, 3:77ghosts in, 3:49–52parallels to 20th century traumas, 3:77about UFOs and space aliens, 3:281–289See also specific films and TV programs

Horseshoe symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:166Horseshoes, 2:178–179, 3:195–196Horus (Egyptian deity), 1:303Hospitality and etiquette, 3:215–221Houdini, Beatrice “Bess,” 1:106–107, 165, 166Houdini, Harry, 1:163–166, 164

claustrophobia of, 3:138Crandon, Mina, and, 1:102–103Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, and, 1:139Ford, Arthur Augustus, and, 1:106–107

Houdini Exposes the Tricks Used by the BostonMedium Margery (Houdini), 1:103

Houngans. See HungansHour glass symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:166Houston, Jean, 3:169Houteff, Florence, 1:315Houteff, Victor, 1:315How to Make a Monster (film), 3:111Howard-Bury, C. K., 3:66Howe, Elias, 3:124Howe, Linda Moulton, 3:295Howell, Vernon. See Koresh, DavidHubbard, L. Ron, 1:315, 320, 321Hughes, Howard, 3:136, 138Hughes, Irene, 1:92, 2:157, 157–158“Huldre folk,” 3:101, 108Human Individual Metamorphosis (HIM). See

Heaven’s Gate cultHuman sacrifice and ritual murder

Gundestrup Cauldron and, 2:173


Cumulative Index332

Leopard Men and, 2:2, 24–25lion men and, 2:26Mau-Mau and, 2:27satanic cults and, 1:224, 288–289Thuggee and, 2:2, 32–33

Humility, of Knights Templar, 2:21Humperdinck, Englebert, 3:25“Hunches,” 3:176Hungans, 2:55, 56Hungary, drinking toasts, 3:221Hunsaker, Jerome C., 3:297Hurkos, Peter, 3:166Hurley, James, 3:178Huron people, souls of, 3:221Hussein, Saddam, 1:182Huxley, Aldous, 3:152Huxley, Julian, 1:156Hybrid beings. See TherianthropesHydrocephalus, 3:133Hyksos, 1:260Hynek, J. Allen, 3:257, 257, 259, 266, 282–283Hyperalert consciousness, 3:141Hypnopompic episodes, 3:143Hypnosis, 3:144–149

ESP and, 3:160, 166–168long-distance hypnosis, 3:182–183trances, comparison with, 1:92–93

Hypnotic regression, 1:59–62, 3:270, 271See also Past-life therapy

“A Hypothesis of Extrasensory Perception”(Osis), 3:164

Hyslop, James Hervey, 1:123–124Hysterical consciousness, 3:141

II Ching, 2:140, 140–141I Ho Chuan. See Boxer TongI Was a Teenage Werewolf (film), 3:111Iannusco, Angelo and Antionetta, 1:249Iberians, graves and grave markers, 3:226Iceland, sneezing superstitions, 3:199Ichthys (Fish symbol), 2:170Id, 3:119Ignatius, St., 1:202–203Illuminati, 2:2, 16, 18–19, 3:290Illumination, 1:145, 214–217Imaginative visions, 1:190, 246Imps, 3:76

See also Demons; FamiliarsIn Search Of (TV program), 3:51

Incas, 2:185, 234See also Machu Picchu (Peru)

Incubi, 3:76, 78, 143Independence Day (film), 3:289Indian Ocean land bridge, 2:247–248Individuation, 3:119Indonesia, witch hunts (1990s), 2:101Indra (Hindu being), 3:251Ineffability, in consciousness, 1:144Infant betrothals, 3:205Infants, dreams of, 3:120Ingenio Valley (Peru), 2:261Inherited fears, 3:136–137Innocent II, Pope, 2:21Innocent III, Pope, 1:274, 2:41, 113Innocent IV, Pope, 1:218, 2:102Innocent VIII, Pope, 1:219, 2:70, 109The Innocents (film), 3:49Inquisition, 1:200, 217–220, 2:14, 95–97, 3:76,

78Insects symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:165Insomnia, 3:121Integrative level of expanded consciousness, 3:142“Integratron” (Giant Rock, CA), 3:280Internet myths. See Urban legends and beliefsThe Interpretation of Dreams (Freud), 3:118Intihuantana Shrine (Peru), 2:253Intruders (film), 3:284Invaders from Mars (film), 3:287The Invaders (TV program), 3:287Invasion of the Body Snatchers (film), 3:112, 287Ireland, beliefs and customs

bride capturing, 3:204evil eye, 3:194fairies and fairy tales, 2:176, 3:101hair rings, 2:184horseshoes, 2:178leprechauns, 3:105–106, 106wakes, 3:225

Ireland, witch hunts, 2:100Iroquois people, souls of, 1:40Irvine, Malcolm, 3:89, 91Irwin, James, 2:219Irwin, R. I., 3:181–182Isabella I (Queen of Spain), 1:219, 2:13Isis cult, 1:260–262Isis (Egyptian deity), 1:18, 19, 261Isis Unveiled (Blavatsky), 1:56–57Isla de Pascua. See Easter IslandIslam

afterlife, 1:12–14


333Cumulative Index

CU

MU

LA

TI

VE

I

ND

EX

amulets, 2:170Assassins’ view of, 2:4burials and funerals, 3:224–225demons, 1:196–197guardian angels, 1:213hospitality and charity, 3:215Jerusalem, importance of, 2:242, 244–245mourning, 3:228prayer, 1:227, 227–228reincarnation, 1:47–48soul, 1:4, 5wedding ceremonies, 3:212–213See also Middle Eastern and Arab beliefs and

customsIslands, dream symbolism, 3:129It Conquered the World (film), 3:110Italy, beliefs and customs

evil eye, 3:194horseshoes, 2:179

Italy, witchcraft trials, 2:107–108Ito, Kei, 1:83

JJack (playing cards), 2:134, 135“Jacko” (alleged man-beast), 3:61Jackson, Andrew, 2:240, 3:28Jackson, Michael, 3:138Jacob (Hebrew patriarch), 3:199, 204

See also Jacob’s ladderJacobs, Doris Lee, 3:52Jacob’s ladder, 3:118, 197Jacobson, Edward, 3:63Jade, 2:187James, David, 3:90James, William, 1:166–167, 3:162

on consciousness, 1:144–145, 195, 3:142on mystical traditions, 1:49on personal religion, 1:180Piper, Leonora E., and, 1:123

James VI (King of Scotland), 2:106Januarius, St., 1:221Japan, beliefs and customs

bride buying, 3:204fairy tales, 2:176kissing, 3:207mistletoe, 2:183mourning, 3:227number superstitions, 3:198wedding dinners, 3:214wedding gifts, 3:207

Japanese Fugo balloons, 3:264Japhet, Celina, 1:143Jarrold, Edgar R., 3:277Java, food kinship, 3:216Javan rhinoceros, 3:86“Jeane Dixon effect,” 2:157Jeans, Sir James, 1:156Jelly, Frederick, 1:222Jersey Devil, 3:78–79, 79“Jerusalem Fever,” 1:201Jerusalem (Israel), 2:242, 244–245Jervis, John, Earl of St. Vincent. See St. Vincent,

John Jervis, Earl ofJessup, Morris K., 3:299–300Jesus Christ

on the Antichrist, 1:181apparitions of, 1:186, 188Crucifixion of, 1:232, 2:209exorcisms performed, 1:205–206in Gnostic texts, 1:279Manichaean view of, 1:279prayer of, 1:225, 227preexistence of, 1:46The Rapture and, 1:231reincarnation, alleged belief in, 1:49–50Resurrection of, 1:8Second Coming, 1:9–10, 182–183, 184–185UFO cult view of, 1:306–307, 315

“Jesus on the freeway” urban legend, 3:233–234Jet (stone), 2:187Jewish revolts (1st–2nd c.), 2:244Jews, persecution of, 2:13–14, 16, 113–114Jezreel Valley (Israel), 1:192Ji, Yang, 3:267Joan of Arc, St., 1:298John, St., 1:184“John King” (spirit control). See Palladino,

EusapiaJohn of Chrysostom, St., 1:226John Paul II, Pope

Black Madonna, reverence of, 1:272, 273exorcisms performed by, 1:204Shroud of Turin exhibits, authorization of,

1:237–238on Soviet Union’s end of communism, 1:186at the Western Wall (Israel), 1:41

John XXIII, Pope, 1:220, 222, 3:272Johnson, Barton, 3:39Johnson, James, 3:26Johnson, Raynor C., 1:145, 195, 315Johnson, Richard, 3:14


Cumulative Index334

Johnson, Richard M., 2:240Johnston, Roy, 3:91Jones, Ernest, 3:179Jones, Jim, 1:313, 315, 319Jones, Tommy Lee, 3:277Jonsson, Olof, 2:158, 3:178–179Joseph of Arimathea, 2:204, 238Josephson, Brian, 3:162Josselyn, John, 3:93Jourdemaine, Margaret, 2:100Jouret, Luc, 1:318Journey to the Center of the Earth (Verne), 2:242Juan Diego (16th c. Aztec), 1:188, 244Judaism

afterlife, 1:14–15amulets, 2:169–170Apocalypse, 1:182blessing meals, 3:220burials and funerals, 3:224Dead Sea Scrolls and link with Christianity,

1:46demons, 1:196–197divination of Hebrews, 2:150dreams, 3:117exorcism, 1:206hospitality and charity, 3:215Jerusalem, importance of, 2:242, 244, 245mourning, 3:228prayer, 1:228–229reincarnation, 1:48–49soul, 1:4, 5, 14wedding ceremonies, 3:211–212See also Hebrew beliefs and customs;

KabbalahJudas Iscariot, 3:197–198Judges, dream symbolism, 3:129Judgment Day. See Final JudgmentJudgment (tarot), 2:132Juggler (tarot), 2:130Julius II, Pope, 2:125Jung, Carl G., 3:128

astrology and, 2:125on dreams, 3:119, 128–129ghostly encounter of, 3:3on Gnosticism, 1:280Kabbalah and, 2:142near-death experience of, 1:27on reincarnation, 1:59

Juno Lucina (Roman deity), 2:172Justice (tarot), 2:131“JW” (alien being), 1:305–306

KKa. See Ba and kaKa’aba (Mecca, Saudi Arabia), 2:256, 257–258,

260Kabbala Dnudata Seu Dotrina Hebraeorum

Transcendentalis et Metaphysica AtoveTheologica (Rosenroth), 2:142

Kabbalah, 2:141–142, 144Golem and, 3:74magic squares and, 2:198on meditation, 3:150Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, and, 2:70on reincarnation, 1:48tarot and, 2:129

Kaio Maru No. 5 disappearance (1952), 2:227Kali (Hindu deity), 2:32, 33Kamau, Johnstone. See Kenyatta, JomoKampman, Reima, 1:67–68Kane, Margaretta. See Fox sistersKaplan, Aryeh, 3:74Kaplan, Stephen, 3:81“Kaptar.” See YetiKardec, Allen, 1:143–144Karloff, Boris, 3:74, 109, 112Karma, 1:6, 11, 55Karnak (Egypt), 2:245–247“Katie King” (spirit control). See Cook, FlorenceKatter, Reuben Luther, 2:124Keel, John A., 3:264, 277Kelly-Hopkinsville (KY) UFO sightings (1955),

3:243–244Kelsey, Denys, 1:58Kelsey, Morton, 1:197–198, 223Kennedy, John F., assassination of, 2:35, 156Kenya, food kinship, 3:216Kenya, Mau-Mau activity, 2:27–30Kenyatta, Jomo, 2:30Kepler, Johannes, 2:125Key, dream symbolism, 3:129Key of Solomon (ceremonial text), 2:107Keyhoe, Donald E., 3:254, 254–255Khafre (Pharaoh of Egypt), 2:268–269al-Khattab, Omar Ibn, 2:244–245Khomeini, Ayatollah, 1:182Khul, Djwhal, 1:281Kibwetere, Joseph, 1:314Kikuyu Central Association, 2:30Kikuyu people, 2:27, 29Kilnapp, John W., 3:148Kim, Young Sik, 3:52Kimathi, Dedan, 2:29–30


335Cumulative Index

CU

MU

LA

TI

VE

I

ND

EX

King, George, 1:305, 307, 308King, Perry, 1:206King of the Holy Cities (Titharaja). See

Allahabad (India)King (playing cards), 2:134, 135King (tarot), 2:133, 134King Tut’s Curse, 3:201Kissing, 2:183, 3:202, 207Kissinger, Henry, 1:182Kjellen, Stig Arne, 3:178–179Klaatu (fictional character), 3:284–285Klagenfurt (Austria) dragon, 3:89Kleitman, Nathaniel, 3:119–120, 132Klemp, Harold, 1:317Knave (tarot), 2:133, 134Knight, J. Z., 1:96, 115–117, 116Knight (tarot), 2:133, 134Knights Hospitallers, 2:19, 20Knights of Malta. See Knights HospitallersKnights of Rhodes. See Knights HospitallersKnights of Saint John of Jerusalem. See Knights

HospitallersKnights of the Red Cross. See Knights TemplarKnights of the Temple of Solomon. See Knights

TemplarKnights Templar, 2:2, 19–24, 21, 102

Ark of the Covenant and, 2:203heresy of, 1:2181930 parade, 2:20Shroud of Turin and, 1:234

Knives, power of, 2:179–180Knives, table use, 3:218Knives, tea leaf reading symbols, 2:166Knock (Ireland) holy apparitions, 1:188, 190“Knock-out perfume” urban legend, 3:228–229Knocking on wood, 3:196Knossos (Crete), 2:223–224Koestler, Arthur, 1:157Koffman, Jeanne-Marie-Therese, 3:60Kolb, Janice Gray, 3:7Komesky, Amos, 1:212Komodo dragons, 3:88Koot, Hoomi, 1:281Koran. See Qur’anKoresh, David (Branch Davidian leader),

1:315–316, 316Koresh (Koreshanity leader). See Teed, Cyrus

ReadKosok, Paul, 2:261Krafft, Karl Ernst, 2:125Kraken, 3:95

Kramer, Heinrich, 1:199–200, 219, 2:108Krantz, Grover, 3:63Kripke, Daniel, 3:121Krippner, Stanley, 3:163

on dreams, 3:118, 120, 121, 128–129, 164on nightmares, 3:125on reality and altered states, 3:174–175

Krishna (Hindu deity), 1:47Krogman, Wilton, 3:54, 55Krohn, Friedrich, 2:210Kubler-Ross, Elisabeth, 1:25, 28Kumsong (Korea) phantom village, 3:16–17Kurtz, Paul, 1:155Kusche, Larry, 2:229

LL-dopa, 3:159La Estaqueria (Peru), 2:261La Salette (France) holy apparitions, 1:188Ladder superstitions, 3:197Ladislaus, St., 1:272Lake Saloe (Turkey), 2:225Lakes, dream symbolism, 3:129LaMarca, Angelo John, 2:139Lamassus, 1:212Lancre, Pierre de, 2:113–114Land, sea, and air monsters, 3:85–99Land bridges

Atlantic Ocean, 2:222Caribbean Sea, 2:225Indian Ocean, 2:247–248

Land of the Grandparents, 1:40–41Landon, Michael, 3:111Lapis lazuli, 2:187Larson, Bob, 1:208Larson, David, 1:211Larsson, Sven Erik, 3:178Laski, Marghanita, 1:203–204Lasswell, Harold D., 3:244Last Judgment. See Final JudgmentLast Supper, 2:185, 204, 3:197Laveau, Marie, 2:67–68LaVey, Anton Szandor, 1:291, 293, 299–304, 300LaVey, Karla, 1:303LaVey, Xerxes, 1:303LaVey, Zeena, 1:303Lavoie, Gilbert R., 1:237Lavoignet, Rafael Torrija, 1:245Law enforcement and psychic crime solving

Browne, Sylvia, and, 1:98


Cumulative Index336

Croiset, Gerard, and, 3:166forensic hypnosis, 3:148graphology, 2:139–140Hughes, Irene, and, 2:158Hurkos, Peter, 3:166psychedelics and, 3:154–156

Lawrence, Amos, 3:93–94Lawrence, T. E., 3:33Laying bodies to rest, 3:223–224“Lazaris” (spirit guide). See Pursel, JachLe Bar, James, 1:204Leary, Timothy, 3:154, 155Leblond, Paul H., 3:93Lee, Gloria, 1:305–306Leek, Sybil, 2:73, 2:86–87“Left Behind” books (LaHaye, Jenkins), 1:232Left-hand path. See Black magickLehner, Mark, 2:267–268Leland, Charles Godfrey, 2:75Lemuria and Mu (mythical continents), 2:237,

247–248, 3:273Leo, the Lion, 2:121–122, 186Leo X, Pope, 2:125Leopard Men, 2:24–27Leprechauns, 3:105–106, 106Lerner, Alan Jay, 1:58Leslie, Desmond, 3:272–273Leslie, John, 2:240Lethargic consciousness, 3:141Levi, Eliphas, 2:57, 68–69Levin, Jeffrey, 1:211Levitation, 1:87, 113Lewis, C. S., 3:100Lewis, Mercy, 2:104, 105The Ley Hunter’s Companion, 2:233Ley hunting, 2:232, 233Liber samekh rite, 2:62Libra, the Scales, 2:122, 186Life After Life (Moody), 1:28Life at Death (Ring), 1:28–29Life line, 2:148Light manifestations

in illumination, 1:215–216Shroud of Turin and, 1:232spooklights, 3:22–24during UFO contact, 3:267

Lighthouse of Alexandria (Egypt). See Pharos ofAlexandria (Egypt)

Lilith (mythical figure), 3:76, 79Limestone, use in Egyptian monuments,

2:266–267, 268

Lincoln, Abraham, 1:134Lind, James, 3:75Line of Intuition, 2:149Line of Mercury, 2:149Line of Saturn. See Fate lineLine of the Sun, 2:149Lines of Marriage, 2:149Lipp, Deborah, 2:79Liquefied blood of saints, 1:221Lissner, Ivar, 1:76, 80, 2:199Living altars, 1:295Le Livre des Esprits (The Spirits’ Book) (Kardec),

1:143Lloyd, Temperance, 2:101Loa, 2:55Loch Ness monster and other lake monsters,

3:89–93, 90Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau,

3:90Lockyer, Sir J. Norman, 2:265, 273Lodge, Lady, 1:168–169Lodge, Sir Oliver, 1:167–169, 168Loewi, Otto, 3:123Loftus, Elizabeth F., 3:134–135Loki (Norse deity), 3:197London Crystal Skull, 2:192Long-term memory, 3:131Lopez, Rosa, 1:190Lorber, John, 3:133Lord’s Prayer, 1:225Lorenzo, St., 1:221Lost City of Willkapanpa the Old. See Machu

Picchu (Peru)Lost Souls (film), 1:239Lost Tribes of Israel, 1:283Louis XIV (King of France), 1:297–298Louise (Duchess of Savoy), 2:60Lourdes (France) holy apparitions and miracles,

1:188, 189, 209–210, 2:248–251, 249, 250Lourdes Medical Commission, 2:249, 250–251L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 2:54Love, Charlie, 2:237Love at First Bite (film), 3:110–111Love knots, 2:180–181Lovers (tarot), 2:130Lowe, George, 3:67LSD, 3:153–155Lucid dreaming. See Creative and lucid

dreamingThe Lucis Trust, 1:281“Ludwig” (spirit entity), 3:39


337Cumulative Index

CU

MU

LA

TI

VE

I

ND

EX

Lueken, Veronica, 1:190Lugosi, Bela, 3:109Luke, St., 1:272Lully, Raymond, 2:43Lumbee people, 2:269Lupinomanis. See LycanthropyLuther, Martin, 2:31Luttrell, Captain, 3:41Lycanthropy, 3:58, 85Lydia (ancient country), 2:224Lyons, S. Silas, 1:136Lyserg-Saeure-Diaethylamid. See LSDLysergic acid. See LSD

M

Machu Picchu (Peru), 2:215, 251–253, 252Mackal, Roy P., 3:87, 90MacLaine, Shirley, 1:95, 115, 215Macumba, 1:285–286Madagascar, beliefs and customs

days of the week superstitions, 3:191wedding dinners, 3:213

Maeonia. See Lydia (ancient country)MaGee, John, Jr. See Edward, JohnMagi, 2:57–59“Magic bullet” of Kennedy assassination, 2:35Magic circles, 2:144, 179–180Magic (sleight-of-hand), 2:48Magic squares, 2:50–51, 60, 198Magic triangles, 2:198Magician (tarot). See Juggler (tarot)Magick (sorcery), 2:48–49

See also Black magick; White magickMagnetic healing theory, 3:146Magog and Gog, 1:180, 185Mahoney, Joseph, 1:207Maid of honor, 3:209Maillat, Louise, 2:110Majestic-12, 3:289, 290, 297–298Major Arcana, 2:128–132Malenkov, Georgy, 2:156Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer for Witches)

(Kramer, Sprenger), 1:219, 2:103, 108Mambu-mutu, 3:107Al Mamun, Abdullah, 2:266Mandan people, 1:283Mandragora officinarum. See Mandrake rootMandrake root, 2:181, 181Mani. See Prayer wheels

Mani (Persian religious leader). SeeManichaeism

Manichaeism, 1:280, 282Manitous, 1:37Manoa (mythical city), 2:234–235Mansfield, Jayne, 3:25Maori people, souls of, 1:36–37Marcel, Jesse, 3:259, 260–261, 262Marcion (Gnostic writer), 1:278Marcue, Alfonso, 1:244–245Marfa (TX) spooklights, 3:23Margaret Mary, St., 1:186Margaret of Austria (Duchess of Savoy), 2:59, 60“Margery” (medium). See Crandon, Mina

StinsonMarie Antoinette (Queen of France), 2:72Marinatos, Sypridon, 2:224Mark-Age Metacenter (Miami, FL), 1:306Marquette, Jacques, 3:97–98Marriage. See Courtship and marriage customsMars, NASA cover-up of life on, 2:27Mars Attacks! (film), 3:112Mars Face, 2:27Martin, Dean, 3:138Martin, Malachi, 1:207Martin, Rose, 2:249–250Martin, Susannah, 2:106Martinez, Juan, 2:235Marty, Martin, 1:209Martyr, Debbie, 3:63Mary, Blessed Virgin

apparitions of, 1:186–188, 188, 189, 190,2:13, 248–249

as representation of ancient goddesses,1:274–275, 2:93

weeping statues of, 1:249–252, 251, 252See also Virgin of Guadalupe

Mary Celeste mystery (1872), 2:228Mary Magdalene, St., 1:274Masonic Temple (Alexandria, VA), 2:9Masons. See FreemasonsMass suicides, of cults, 1:315, 318

See also Human sacrifice and ritual murderMasters, R. E. L., 3:78, 169Matamoros (Mexico) massacre (1989), 1:286–287Materialization of objects. See ApportsMaterialization of spirits, 1:88–89Mathematics

Bacon, Roger, on, 2:44Great Pyramid and, 2:265Pythagoras on, 2:71, 145


Cumulative Index338

Mather, Cotton, 2:105Mathers, MacGregor, 2:49, 51Mathew, Roy, 1:217Matron of honor, 3:209Matter, Ann, 1:186, 188Matthews, Louise, 3:54Mau-Mau, 2:27–30, 28Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (Asia Minor),

2:243May, Kathleen, 3:243Mayan temples, 2:253–256, 255Mayans

calendar, 2:254, 256crystal skulls, 2:191, 192Mu and, 2:247mushrooms, sacredness of, 3:152

Mayberg, Helen, 3:139Mayerling, Louis, 3:32–33Maypoles, 2:181–182, 182McBain, Janet, 3:91McBride, James, 2:240McCall, Rob, 3:68McConnell, Robert A., 3:161–162, 164McDougall, William, 3:162, 182McFadden, Johnjoe, 3:116McGarey, Gladys, 1:50McLuckie, John, 2:203McMullen, Clements, 3:264McVeigh, Timothy, 2:8Meade-Waldo, E. G. B., 3:93Meaningful precognition, 3:176Meany, George, 3:278Meath, Petronilla de, 2:100Mecca (Saudi Arabia), 2:256–258, 258, 260Mecca stone. See BloodstoneMedia influence, UFOs and, 3:281–290Medici, Catherine de, 2:159–160Medicine Wheel of the Big Horn Mountains

(WY), 2:259Meditation, 3:149–151Medium trances, 1:92–93Mediums and channelers, 1:93–133, 154, 156

See also Seances; specific mediumsMediumship, researchers of, 1:74, 84, 90, 154–173

See also specific mediumsMedjugorje (Yugoslavia) holy apparitions, 1:190Megaliths, 2:195–197, 214

See also Cursuses and leys; Easter Island;Stonehenge

Meggido (Israel), 1:192“Mehteh kangmi.” See Yeti

Melchizdek (Hebrew priest), 2:244Meldrum, Jeff, 3:62–63Melton, Gordon, 1:307Memory, 3:130–135

autoscopy and, 3:12phobias and, 3:137repression of, 3:132, 134“time compression,” 3:292

Men in Black conspiracy theory, 3:245–246,276–279

Men in Black (film), 3:277, 278, 289Menehune, 3:106–107Mensa Isaica (Pignoria), 1:279Mental illness, sleep and, 3:121Menzel, August, 3:23Menzel, Donald H., 3:255, 297, 298Mephistopheles (literary character), 2:66Merkavah, Maaseh, 2:141–142Merlin (mythical figure), 2:50, 226, 272Mermaids, 3:107“Mesheadam.” See YetiMesmer, Franz Anton, 1:136, 3:146Mesmerism. See HypnosisMessiah, 1:182Mestchegamie people, 3:98Mexico, beliefs and customs

garlic, 2:177horseshoes, 2:179Santeria, 1:286

Mezuzah, 2:170Miami people, 3:98Michael (angel), 2:42, 58Michanowsky, George, 3:248Michigan UFO sightings (1966), 3:255, 257Middle Eastern and Arab beliefs and customs

amulets, 2:169bridal veils, 3:209bride buying, 3:204bride capturing, 3:204evil eye, 3:194–195food kinship, 3:216gem superstitions, 3:195guests, courtesy to, 3:217See also Islam

“Middle folk.” See Wee folkMigraine headaches, 3:143Mikkelson, Barbara, 3:229Miles, Frank, 3:28Militi Templi Scotia, 2:24Millennium (Apocalypse), 1:184–185, 231Mind-altering drugs. See Psychedelics


339Cumulative Index

CU

MU

LA

TI

VE

I

ND

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Ministry of Universal Wisdom, 1:305, 3:280Minoan culture, 2:223–224Minor Arcana, 2:128–129, 132–134“Minus function,” 3:181Mirabelli, Carlos, 1:117–120, 118Miracles, 1:220–223, 234, 272Mirrors, dream symbolism, 3:130Mirrors, power of, 2:182–183

See also ScryingMissionaries, Christian, 1:283Mississippian culture, 2:231Mistletoe, 2:183, 183–184Mitchell, Edgar, 2:158, 3:265Mitchell-Hedges, Anna, 2:192–193Mitchell-Hedges, F. A., 2:192–193Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull, 2:192–193Mithraism, 1:271Mixtec people, 3:152, 153Mnesarchus (father of Pythagoras), 2:71Moai figures. See Easter IslandMokele-mbembe, 3:86“Mokey.” See Mokele-mbembeMolay, Jacques de, 1:218, 2:23, 24Mompesson, John, 3:44, 45, 46, 47Monks Mound (IL), 2:231Monogamy, 3:203Monoliths, 2:196Monongahela sea serpent, 3:96Monroe, Marilyn, 3:25Monroe, Robert, 3:13Monsieur (dog), 2:60Monsters. See Apelike monsters; Creatures of

the night; Land, sea, and air monsters;Monsters, in film; specific creatures

Monsters, in film, 3:77Montague, Robert M., 3:297Montfort, Simon de, 1:274Montolesi, Giovanni, 2:6Montvoison, Catherine, 1:296–298Montvoison, Marguerite, 1:297Monty Python and the Holy Grail (film), 2:206Moo (mythical queen), 2:247Moody, Raymond, 1:28Moon symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:166Moon (tarot), 2:132Moore, William, 3:297Moors, persecution of, 2:13–14Morgan, Augustus de, 3:167Morgan, William, 2:12Morris, Robert, 3:165Morrow, Lance, 1:256

Morrow, Virginia Tighe, 1:63See also Murphy, Bridey

Morse, Melvin, 1:29–30Morte d’Arthur (Malory), 2:205Moses (Hebrew prophet), 3:250Moss, John and Teeta, 3:43Moss, Leonard, 1:272Mother Mary. See Mary, Blessed VirginMother Shipton, 2:161, 161–162Mother Teresa, 1:205Mound builders, 1:38–40Mt. Ararat (Turkey), 2:216–219, 218Mount of Jupiter, 2:148Mount of Mercury, 2:148Mount of the Moon, 2:148Mount of Saturn, 2:148Mount of the Sun, 2:148Mount of Venus, 2:148Mount Rainier (WA) UFO sightings (1947),

3:242, 251–252, 255, 256Mt. Sipylus (Lydia), 2:224–225Mourning and remembrance, 3:227–228Movies. See Horror films and TV programs;

specific films“Mrs. Fields cookie recipe” urban legend, 3:231MS Tricouleur (ship), 3:10Mu (mythical continent). See Lemuria and Mu

(mythical continents)Mugabe, Robert, 2:101Muhammad (Muslim prophet), 1:13, 2:256–257Muldoon, Sylvan J., 3:13, 171, 172Multiple personalities, past-lives therapy and,

1:67–68Mummies and mummification, 1:18, 20,

3:222–223Munsterberg, Hugo, 2:152Murphy, Bridey, 1:62–67Murphy, Chris, 3:62Murphy, Gardner, 1:173, 3:162Murray, Margaret Alice, 2:75, 87–88Mushrooms, sacredness of, 3:152Mutual love, courtship and, 3:205–206Mwerinde, Credonia, 1:314, 315My Favorite Martian (TV program), 3:287Mycenae civilization, 2:272–273Mycerinus Pyramid (Giza, Egypt), 3:247Myers, Fredric W. H., 1:169–172, 171, 202,

3:162, 170Myrrdin (6th c. Seer), 2:50Myrtles Plantation (St. Francisville, LA), 3:42–44Mysophobia, 3:138


Cumulative Index340

Mystery religionsancient, 1:31–36contemporary, 1:49–57Egyptian, 1:257–264Greek, 1:264–269tribal, 1:282–288

Mystery religions and heresies, Christian,1:269–282

Mystical experiences, common denominators of,1:146

Mystical experiences, validity test of, 1:195Mysticism, 1:144Mystics, 1:144–154

See also specific mystics

NNader, Karim, 3:131Nag Hammadi scrolls, 1:46, 278–279Nagas (mythical serpent people), 3:249Nagogo (Nigerian chief), 2:25Nakh, 3:107Napier, John R., 3:61–62Natchez people, 2:231National Aeronautics and Space

Administration (NASA), alleged conspiracytheories, 2:27, 3:71

National Spiritualist Association beliefs, 1:135Native American beliefs and customs

bride buying, 3:204burial mounds, 1:38–40burning possessions of the dead, 3:226cross symbolism, 2:203–204fetishes, 2:193mourning, 3:227“pukwudjinis,” 2:177shamanism, 1:76–79soul, 1:36spirit land, 1:38swastika symbolism, 2:210therianthropes, 3:83totem animals, 1:80–81, 2:198–199tribal mystery religions, 1:282–285vision quests, 1:81–82wedding gifts, 3:207wolves, significance of, 3:193See also Spirit guides; specific native people

Navajo people, beliefs and customsmourning, 3:227wedding dinners, 3:213–214

Navigation, comparison to astrology, 2:136

Nazca Lines (Peru), 2:215, 260–264, 262, 263Nazis

astrology and, 2:125Holy Vehm and, 2:16swastika and, 2:210

Neanderthal man, burial sites, 1:3, 4Near-death experiences, 1:26–31

desire for afterlife and, 1:4living ghosts and, 3:13–14physiological and psychological changes

after, 1:30scientific controversy on, 1:23See also Out-of-body experiences

Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife website, 1:24

Necromancy, 2:144–145Necrophobia, 3:138Needles, dream symbolism, 3:130Nefertiti (Queen of Egypt), 1:260Neihardt, John G., 2:190“Neiman Marcus cookie recipe” urban legend,

3:230–231Neo-druids, 2:79Neocortex, 3:123Nephesh (living soul), 1:14Nephilim, 3:250“Nessie.” See Loch Ness monster and other lake

monstersNetherlands, police use of clairvoyants, 3:166Nettles, Bonnie Lu Trousdale, 1:309–311Neumann, Therese, 1:241New Age Movement

crystal use, 2:175Kabbalah and, 2:142, 143relaxation techniques and, 3:156–157Sedona (AZ) center, 2:271UFO cults and, 1:306, 307

The New Atlantis (Bacon), 2:31New Guinea, courtesy to guests, 3:217New World Order, 2:17, 3:290New York (NY) vampire subculture, 3:82Newberg, Andrew, 1:190, 247Newton, Sir Isaac, 2:125Nicholas II (Tsar of Russia), 2:218Nicholson, Jack, 3:111–112Nicoll, Michael J., 3:93Nigerian Leopard Men, 2:24–26“Night Stalker.” See Ramirez, RichardNight visions. See DreamsNightMare, M. Macha, 2:88–89“The Nightmare” (Fuseli), 3:126


341Cumulative Index

CU

MU

LA

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Nightmares, 3:125–127“Nightwalker of Nago” urban legend, 3:235Nimoy, Leonard, 3:112Nine, symbolism of

numerology, 2:146playing cards, 2:134, 135tarot, 2:131, 133, 134

Nirvana, 1:7Nisse, 3:107–108Nix, 3:107Nkosi, 2:194Noah’s Ark, 2:200, 216–219The Nobility of the Female Sex (Agrippa), 2:59Noble Truth of Suffering (Buddha), 1:6Nocerino, F. R.“Nick,” 2:193Noetic quality, in consciousness, 1:144Noll, Richard, 3:62Non-beneficial previsions, 3:176Non-rapid eye movement sleep. See Non-REM

sleepNon-REM sleep, 3:140Nonreflective consciousness, 3:140–141Nootka people, souls of, 3:221Norbu, Gyaltsen. See Panchen LamaNorman, Sir Montagu, 3:33Nosferatu (film), 3:80–81, 81Nostradamus (French Seer), 2:125–126, 152,

158–161, 160Nostredame, Michel de. See Nostradamus

(French Seer)Number of the Beast (666), 1:181, 183,

238–239, 290, 3:198See also The Antichrist

Number superstitions, 3:197–198Number symbolism

in playing cards, 2:134–135Pythagoras on, 2:145in tarot, 2:130–132, 133–134in tea leaf reading, 2:164See also Numerology; specific numbers

Numerology, 2:145–147Nurse, Rebecca, 2:105

O“O Bicho.” See ChupacabraOannes (mythical fish-man), 3:248–249Oberlin, John Frederick, 3:9, 11OBEs. See Out-of-body experiencesObjects of sacred power, 2:199–210

See also specific objects

O’Brien, Aline. See NightMare, M. MachaObserver memory, 3:132The Occult Philosophy (Agrippa), 2:59, 60Oceans, dream symbolism, 3:130O’Connor, John, 3:52Ogallala Sioux people, afterlife beliefs, 1:37Oh-Mah. See Bigfoot (apelike monster)Ojibway people, souls of, 1:38Olcott, Henry, 1:148“Old Jeffrey” (spirit entity), 3:38“Old Religion.” See Wicca; Witchcraft“Olga” (spirit control). See Schneider, RudiOlivier, Edith, 3:17Omega (Greek letter), 3:196The Omega Man (film), 3:111The Omen (film), 1:238–239On the Vanity of Arts and Sciences (Agrippa),

2:60One, symbolism of

numerology, 2:145, 146playing cards, 2:134, 135Pythagoras on, 2:145tarot, 2:130, 133, 134

O’Neill, John J., 2:125Oneirocritica (Artemidorous of Ephesus), 3:117Opals, 2:186, 3:195Open poles theory, 2:240, 241Open spaces, fear of. See AgoraphobiaOpening of the Mouth ritual, 1:17–18Operation Majestic-12. See Majestic-12Opus Magus (Bacon), 2:45Orang pendek, 3:63–65Order of the Illuminati. See IlluminatiOrder of the Solar Temple, 1:315, 1:318–319Origen (Alexandrian writer), 1:9, 43–44, 46Origin of the Species (Darwin), 2:247Orion constellation, 2:266Orion (mythical figure), 2:123Orisha, 1:287Orpheus (mythic figure), 1:267–268Orphic Mysteries, 1:34–35Orthon (alien being), 3:271Osburne, Sarah, 2:105Osiris cult, 1:262–264Osiris (Egyptian deity), 1:18–19, 1:19,

257–258, 261, 263, 303Osis, Karlis, 1:23–24, 25–26, 3:164Osment, Haley Joel, 3:158Osmond, Humphrey, 3:152Osty, Eugen, 1:130Oswald, Lee Harvey, 2:35


Cumulative Index342

The Others (film), 3:50The Others (TV program), 3:51Ouija boards, 1:85, 1:85–86Our Lady of Czestochowa. See Black MadonnaOur Lady of Jasna Gora. See Black MadonnaOut-of-body experiences, 3:12, 158, 170–171

See also AutoscopyOut-of-body experiences, research in,

3:170–174Out on a Limb (film), 1:96Owen, Robert Dale, 3:11

PPaganism, popularity of, 2:94Page (tarot). See Knave (tarot)Paiens, Hugues des, 2:19–20Pain relief, 3:139, 147–148Paiute Messiah. See Wilson, JackThe Palantine (ship), 3:10Palladino, Eusapia, 1:120–122, 121, 168Palm reading. See PalmistryPalmistry, 2:147–150, 148, 149Pan (Greek deity), 2:123Panatleone, St., 1:221Panchen Lama, 1:44Panic disorders, 3:137Paracelsus (German physician), 2:41, 43,

47–48, 48, 57, 3:146Paranormal photography. See Psychic

photographyThe Parapsychological Association, Inc., 1:145Parapsychologists, 3:157–158

See also Researchers of clairvoyance;Researchers of ESP (Extrasensoryperception); Researchers ofpsychokinesis; Researchers of spiritcontact; Researchers of telepathy

Parini, Giuseppi, 1:118Paris (France) holy apparitions, 1:188Parker, Alice, 2:106Parker, Walter E., Sr., 3:9Parks, Carl, 2:193Parks, Jo Ann, 2:193Parris, Betty, 2:104, 105Parris, Samuel, 2:104Parzeval (Eschenbach), 2:205, 206Pasierb, Janusz, 1:272Passivity, in consciousness, 1:145Past-life therapy, 1:67–69Past lives, 1:57–70

Patience (tarot). See Temperance (tarot)“Patience Worth” (spirit control). See Curran,

Pearl LeonorePatrick, St., 3:225Patterson, Roger, 3:61, 62Paul, St.

on afterlife, 1:8on the Antichrist, 1:180on fight against forces of evil, 1:288on glossolalia, 1:226possible stigmata of, 1:241on The Rapture, 1:231on soul, 1:8–9

Paul III, Pope, 1:219, 2:96–97, 125Paul IV, Pope, 1:219, 2:97Paul VI, Pope, 1:220, 2:97Peace symbols, 1:290Pearls, 3:195“Peep.” See Nettles, Bonnie Lu TrousdalePennsylvania State Police, hoax warnings from,

3:228, 229Pennsylvania thunderbird sightings, 3:97, 99Pentagrams, 1:290Pentecostalism, glossolalia and, 1:226People’s Temple, 1:313, 315, 319–320Peretti, Felice. See Sixtus V, PopePerkins, Thomas H., 3:94Perls, Fritz, 3:128Perntz, Anders, 3:178Persephone (mythic figure), 1:34, 268, 269Persia, dog superstitions, 3:193Persinger, Michael, 1:190, 247Peter, St., 2:69Peter of Abano, 2:144Petroglyphs, 3:97–98, 248Peuckert, Erick-Will, 3:153Peyramale, Father, 2:249Phantasms. See Apparitions“Phantom hitchhiker” urban legend,

3:234–235Phantoms, 3:2, 4, 14–18

See also Apparitions; Ghosts and ghostlybeings

Pharaohs, role in religion, 1:258Pharos of Alexandria (Egypt), 2:243The Phenomena of Astral Projection (Carrington,

Muldoon), 3:172Philadelphia Experiment (1943), 3:298–301Philbin, Regis, 3:48Philip IV (King of France), 2:22–23, 24Philippines, food kinship custom, 3:216


343Cumulative Index

CU

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Philistines, 2:201Phillips, David, 3:198Phillips, Mary, 2:111Philosopher’s stone, 2:206, 208, 208

Albertus Magnus and, 2:47Cagliostro, Allesandro, and, 2:61Helvetius and, 2:45–46Rosencreutz, Christian, and, 2:30

“Phinuit” (spirit guide). See Piper, Leonora E.Phips, William, 2:105Phobias, 3:135–138, 140Photographing Fairies (film), 3:103Phrenology, 2:151Pi (number), Egyptian use of, 2:265Piasa, 3:98–99Pickrell, Jacquie E., 3:134Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 2:70Piczek, Isabel H., 1:237Piezoelectricity, 2:173Pigs, dream symbolism, 3:130Pike, James A., Jr., 1:107Pike, James A., Sr., 1:107Pillars of Hercules, 2:221, 222Pio, Padre, 1:241, 244Piper, Leonora E., 1:122–124, 167Pisces, the Fish, 2:123, 186Pius XII, Pope, 1:186Piusa. See PiasaPizarro, Francisco, 2:234, 251PK. See PsychokinesisPlace of Serpents (Guatemala), 2:255Placebos, 3:139The Plague. See Black DeathPlanchettes, 1:86Planet of the Apes (film), 3:111Planets, association with palmistry, 2:148Plato (Greek philosopher)

on Atlantis, 2:220–221, 222, 224on dreams, 3:117on reincarnation, 1:41on soul, 1:8

Playing cards, fortune telling with, 2:134–135Pleiosaurs, 3:96Plongeon, Augustus, 2:247Plotinus (Roman philosopher), 1:41Plutarch (Greek historian), 1:265–266Podmore, Frank, 3:146Podolsky, Edward, 3:11Poe, Edgar Allen, 3:138Poitieres, Henri de, 1:237Polidori, John, 3:75

Pollack, Robert, 1:191, 247Polo, Marco, 2:217, 218Poltergeist (film), 3:2, 18, 50Poltergeists, 3:4, 18–20, 52, 158Polyandry, 3:203Polygamy, 3:202, 203Polynesian and Pacific beliefs and customs

flower giving, 3:208food kinship, 3:216infant betrothals, 3:205kissing, 3:207Menehune, 3:106–107

“Poor Soldiers of the Holy City.” See KnightsTemplar

Pope, Alexander, 3:102Pope (tarot). See Hierophant (tarot)Popes, viewed as the Antichrist, 1:181, 238Poppets, 2:190Porphyria, 3:58Poseidon (Greek deity), 2:221, 222Posnansky, Arthur, 2:278, 279Possession, 1:70, 2:55

See also Spirit controls; TrancesPossession, by demons, 1:196, 197, 198–199,

223–225See also Exorcism

The Possession of Joel Delaney (film), 1:206Pottery, 3:219“Poughkeepsie Seer.” See Davis, Andrew

JacksonThe Power (film), 3:110Power of suggestion, 1:83, 90Practica (Gui), 1:219Pragmatic consciousness, 3:141Prairie du Chien mounds (WI), 1:39Prayag (India). See Allahabad (India)Prayer, power of, 1:225, 227–230Prayer wheels, 2:207Precognition, 3:158Precognition, researchers of, 3:174–178Prelati, Antonio Francisco, 1:299Premonition. See Precognition“Present moment,” 3:175Presleep experiences, 3:122Prestidigitation. See Magic (sleight-of-hand)Preston, Kelly, 1:320Price, Harry, 1:130–131, 3:24, 26, 30, 31–32Primordial Man, in Manichaeism, 1:280Prince, Walter Franklin, 1:166Prince of Darkness, in Manichaeism, 1:280


Cumulative Index344

The Principles of Nature: Her Divine Revelationsand a Voice to Mankind (Davis), 1:136

Pringle, Lucy, 3:296Pringsheim, Peter, 2:174Procedural memory, 3:132Proctor, John, 2:105“Proctor & Gamble sponsors Satanism” urban

legend, 3:235–236Project Blue Book, 3:255–258Project Grudge, 3:256Project Mogul, 3:264, 291Project Sign, 3:256The Propheceyes of Mother Shipton…Foretelling

the Death of Cardinall Wolsey, the Lord of Percy,and others, As Also What Should Happen inInsuing Times (Anonymous), 2:161–162

Prophets and diviners, 2:150, 152–162Protestantism

exorcism, 1:179hell, 1:10Holy Office and, 1:219Reformation and witch hunts, 2:99–100,

103See also specific sects

Psamtik III (King of Egypt), 3:190Psychagogues, 2:150Psychedelics, 3:151–156, 169Psychic crime solving. See Law enforcement and

psychic crime solving“Psychic ether” theory, 3:24, 26Psychic photography, 1:88, 3:49Psychical research. See Public opinion and

research statistics; specific institutions; specificphenomena; specific researchers

Psychical Research Bureau (U.K.), 2:125“Psychoanalysis and Telepathy” (Freud), 3:179Psychokinesis, 3:18, 158Psychokinesis, researchers of, 3:178–179Psychology of alleged vampires, 3:82Puberty, poltergeists and, 3:18–19Public opinion and research statistics

angels, belief in, 1:212apparitions of holy figures, 1:190deathbed apparitions, 1:24–25demon possession, belief in, 1:197, 209, 223ESP, belief in, 3:159, 161faith healing or power of prayer, belief in,

1:209, 211, 230film monster favorites, 3:77flying, fear of, 3:136ghosts, belief in, 3:2, 3, 20

God, belief in, 1:210haunted houses, belief in, 3:24insomnia complaints, 3:121life after death, belief in, 1:23memory storage, 3:130miracles, belief in, 1:220near-death experiences, 1:26–27, 28–29past life memories, 1:46pets in heaven, belief in, 3:7phobia sufferers, 3:137prayer, practicing of, 1:225, 228religious phenomena, belief in, 1:178Society for Psychical Research census

(1882), 1:172, 3:5UFO cover-up conspiracies, belief in, 3:281,

290UFOs and alien visitation, belief in, 3:245,

290, 292U.S. government, public trust in, 3:289visions and religious experiences, 1:246–247Wicca practitioners, 2:72–73witch executions, 2:97

Public speaking, fear of. See GlossophobiaPudeator, Ann, 2:105Pueblo people, 2:275–277“Pukwudjinis,” 2:177Puma Punka temple (Tiahuanaco, Bolivia),

2:278Punna (Insight), 3:149–150Purgatory, 1:10Pursel, Jach, 1:125–126Pursel, Peny, 1:125–126Puthoff, Harold, 3:164Putnam, Ann, 2:104–105Pyle, Robert, 3:59Pymander (angelic being), 2:58Pyramid of Khafre (Giza, Egypt), 3:247Pyramid of Khufu. See Great Pyramid (Giza,

Egypt)Pyramid Texts, 1:16, 20–22, 258Pyramids

Chepren Pyramid (Giza, Egypt), 1:22Hongshan Pyramid (Mongolia), 1:21Mayan structures, 2:255Mycerinus Pyramid (Giza, Egypt), 3:247Pyramid of Khafre (Giza, Egypt), 3:247similarities among cultures, 2:220See also Great Pyramid (Giza, Egypt)

Pyroelectricity, 2:173Pythagoras (Greek philosopher), 1:35–36, 258,

2:70–71, 145


345Cumulative Index

CU

MU

LA

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Pythias. See Delphic OraclesPythonesses. See Delphic Oracles

Q

Quaid, Dennis, 3:89Quarter moon and star, as Satanic symbols,

1:290Quartrozieme custom, 3:198Queen (playing cards), 2:134, 135Queen (tarot), 2:133, 134Quetzalcoatl (mythical being), 3:249Quigley, Joan, 2:126Qur’an

blessing meals, 3:220creation of Adam, 1:12miracle accounts, 1:220warning against Satanism, 1:288

R

Rabbit’s foot, 2:169, 3:198–199Radar Magazine, 3:67Radiocarbon dating, 2:270–271

Bimini Road, 2:223Carnac (France) megaliths, 2:196Easter Island statues, 2:237Nazca Lines, 2:261Shroud of Turin, 1:235Stonehenge, 2:274Tiahuanaco, 2:279

Radioesthesia. See Dowsing“Rael.” See Vorilhon, ClaudeRaelians, 1:311–313Raemond, Florin de, 1:295Raiders of the Lost Ark (film), 2:203Rais, Gilles de, 1:298–299Raleigh, Sir Walter, 2:234, 235Ramey, Roger, 3:261, 264Ramirez, Richard, 1:289Ramphorhyneus, 3:99Ramses II (Pharaoh of Egypt), 2:246“Ramtha” (spirit guide). See Knight, J. Z.Randi, James, 1:105Randle, Kevin, 3:259–260, 261–262, 263Randles, Derek, 3:62Rapa Nui. See Easter IslandRaphael (angel), 2:42, 58Rapid eye movement sleep. See REM sleepThe Rapture, 1:231–232

Rapturous consciousness, 3:141The Raven (film), 3:111–112Rawicz, Slavomir, 3:67Raymond, John, 1:293Reading, June, 3:48Reagan, Nancy, 2:126, 3:110Reagan, Ronald, 1:181, 2:126Real Magic (Bonewits), 2:78Reclaiming Collective, 2:88Recollective-analytic level of expanded

consciousness, 3:141–142Red (color), symbolism of, 3:227Red Heifer legend, 2:143Red Planet Mars (film), 3:110Redd, Wilmot, 2:106Reed, William, 2:241Reeser, Mary H., 3:54–55Reeves, George, 3:25Reflective consciousness, 3:141Regardie, Israel, 2:76Regino of Prum, 2:41Regla de Ocha (The Rule of the Orisha). See

SanteriaRegression therapy. See Past-life therapyRegusters, Herman and Kia, 3:86Reiche, Maria, 2:261–262Reincarnation

hypotheses, 1:70Orphic concept of, 1:268tarot and, 2:128–129Wiccan view of, 2:74

Reincarnation, in major religions, 1:41–44,46–49

Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to theEtiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects(Stevenson), 1:69

Relatives, dream symbolism, 3:130Relatives, marriage between, 3:201–202Relaxation, 3:156–157The Relaxation Response (Benson), 3:151Relaxed consciousness, 3:141Religious ecstasy. See EcstasyREM sleep, 3:120, 122

deprivation of, 3:121as nonreflective consciousness, 3:141out-of-body experience and, 3:173sleep paralysis and, 3:127

Remembrance, of the dead. See Mourning andremembrance

Remote viewing. See ClairvoyanceRenier, Noreen, 1:155


Cumulative Index346

“Reptiles in imported carpets” urban legend,3:229–230

Research, out-of-body experiences, 3:170–174Research statistics. See Public opinion and

research statisticsResearchers of clairvoyance, 3:166–170Researchers of ESP (Extrasensory perception),

3:161–184Researchers of precognition, 3:174–178Researchers of psychokinesis, 3:178–179Researchers of spirit contact, 1:74, 84, 90,

154–173Researchers of telepathy, 3:179–184Restoration of the Ten Commandments cult,

1:314The Resurrection. See Jesus Christ, Resurrection

of“Resurrection Mary” urban legend, 3:235Retrocognition, reincarnation and, 1:70Revelation, Book of, 1:183Revenge of the Creature (film), 3:110Revere, Paul, 2:11Reverse engineering at Area 51 (NV), 3:293Rex (dog), 3:6Reyna, V. F., 3:135Reynolds, Jeremiah, 2:240Rhine, J. B., 1:84, 3:161, 162–164, 178, 179Rhine, Louisa, 3:161, 162–163, 164Rhine Research Center (Durham, NC), 3:165Rice, Anne, 3:82Rice throwing, at weddings, 3:214Ricke, Herbert, 2:269–270Rickert, Lewis, 3:261Ricketts, Mary, 3:40–41, 42Ricketts, William Henry, 3:40Rig-Veda (Sanskrit hymn collection), 1:11Right-hand path. See White magickRines, Bob, 3:92Ring, Kenneth, 1:28–29Ring symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:166Rings (jewelry), 2:184, 3:213Rips, Eliyahu, 1:242Ritual murder. See Human sacrifice and ritual

murderRivers, Olivia, 3:180Roanoke Island (NC) mystery (1587), 2:269Robert the Bruce (King of Scotland), 2:24Roberts, Jane, 1:94, 126–129Roberts, Kenneth, 2:136Robinson, Edwin, 1:192Robinson, John A. T., 1:237

Robinson, Yankee Jim, 3:48The Rock (film), 3:289Roden, Benjamin, 1:315Roden, Lois, 1:315Rogers, Ray, 1:233Roggeveen, Jacob, 2:236Role-playing, vampire subculture and, 3:82Roll, W. G., 1:215Rolling Thunder (Native American shaman),

1:75Roman Catholicism

Blessed Virgin depictions, 1:273–274exorcism, 1:179, 207Freemasons, condemnation of, 2:11hell, 1:10miracle authentication, 1:222stigmata authentication, 1:241, 243torture sanctioning, 1:218voodoo, condemnation of, 2:54–55See also Inquisition

Roman Empire, beliefs and customsdays of the week superstitions, 3:191dinner tables, 3:217divination, 2:118, 150drinking toasts, 3:220eating utensils, 3:218, 219garlic, 2:177gem superstitions, 3:195guests, courtesy to, 3:217hand washing and bathing, 3:219horseshoe superstitions, 3:196hospitality, 3:215kissing, 3:207mirror superstitions, 2:183mourning, 3:227Roman Army, religion of, 1:271salt, 2:184, 185silver, 2:185sneezing superstitions, 3:199state religion, 2:40sweetmeats for newlyweds, 3:214wedding dinners, 3:213white, symbolism of, 3:208

Roman Inquisition. See Holy OfficeRoman Nose (Native American warrior), 1:77Romania, hope chest custom, 3:206Romania, regulation of witches (21st c.), 2:101Roosevelt, Franklin D., 1:181, 2:155, 3:198Roosevelt Hotel (Hollywood, CA), 3:25Rooty Hill (Australia), weeping statue of, 1:251Rose, Zia, 2:75


347Cumulative Index

CU

MU

LA

TI

VE

I

ND

EX

Rosemary’s Baby (film), 1:238Rosenberg, Yoav, 1:242Rosencreutz, Christian, 2:30–31Rosenstock, Harvey, 3:85Roshi, Shodo Harada, 1:214Rosicrucians, 2:2, 4, 30–32, 43Roswell (NM) UFO crash (1947), 3:242, 252,

260–265, 297See also Area 51 (NV); Hangar 18, Wright-

Patterson Air Force Base (Dayton, OH)The Roswell Report—Case Closed (USAF),

3:264, 291–292Roulet, Jacques, 3:84Rowe, Frankie, 3:262–263Rowland, Dan, 3:65–66Royal Air Force gremlin tales, 3:104–105Rubies, 2:186Ruck family, 2:28–29The Rule of the Orisha (Regla de Ocha). See

SanteriaRunes, 2:197Russell, Gerald, 3:67Russell, John, 3:98Russia, beliefs and customs

engagement announcements, 3:208wedding dinners, 3:214

Russia Will be Converted (Haffert), 1:186Ryan, Leo, 1:319Ryerson, Kevin, 1:96, 97Ryzl, Milan, 3:167–168, 169

SSabbah, Hasan ibn, 2:4, 5Sabbat Dance. See Witches’ RoundSabbats, 1:290, 293–294, 2:97–99

See also Black MassSachiel (angel), 2:42Sacred Abbey of Thelema (Sicily), 2:62Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the

Faith (Rome), 1:222Sacred Dying Foundation, 2:89The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage, 2:49–50Sacred objects, power of, 2:199–210

See also specific objectsSacsahuaman (Peru), 2:274, 275Saducismus Triumphaus (Glanvil), 3:47Sagan, Carl, 3:246Sagittarius, the Archer, 2:123, 186Saint-Germain, Count, 2:71–72St. Germain de Pres Church (Paris), 1:274

St. Katherine’s Church (Nuremberg, Germany),2:209

St. Mary’s Church holy apparitions (Zeitoun,Egypt), 1:187, 190

St. Vincent, John Jervis, Earl of, 3:40, 41Saints, liquefied blood of, 1:221Saints, symbols of, 2:95Salem (MA) witchcraft trials (1692), 2:100,

103–106Salinas, José Carlos, 1:245Salt, 2:168, 184–185, 185Saltmarsh, H. F., 3:174, 175Samadhi (Concentration), 3:149Samuel (angel), 2:42Samuel (Hebrew prophet), 1:131–132Sanderson, Ivan T., 3:19, 60Sands, George X., 2:227Santa Lucia feast, 2:172Santeria, 1:286–288Sapphires, 2:186, 3:195Saracens, 2:19Sardonyx, 2:186Saskehavis. See Bigfoot (apelike monster)Sasquatch. See Bigfoot (apelike monster)Satan

Apocalypse and, 1:183, 185as black magick deity, 2:51–52Cathars’ view of, 1:277Satanists’ view of, 1:290, 291

Satanas (pagan deity), 2:51–52The Satanic Bible (LaVey), 1:300–301Satanic cults, 1:288–291The Satanic Rituals (LaVey), 1:302Satanism, in the Middle Ages, 1:291–299Satanism, modern

Christianity, view of, 1:301Church of Satan, 1:299–303Proctor & Gamble sponsorship urban

legend, 3:235–236witchcraft, confusion with, 2:74

Satan’s Satellites (film), 3:112Sathan (spirit entity), 1:290Saul (King of Israel), 1:131–133, 2:150Saunders, David, 3:259Saxon witchcraft. See Seax-WicaScandinavia, beliefs and customs

adultery, 3:202elves, 3:100, 101fairy tales, 2:176maypoles, 2:181nisse, 3:107–108


Cumulative Index348

number superstitions, 3:197runes, 2:197trolls, 3:109Viking funerals, 3:226wedding dinners, 3:214

Scarabs, 2:169Schacter, Daniel, 3:130, 131Schismatic Druids of North America, 2:78Schlater, Phillip L., 2:247–248Schliemann, Heinrich, 2:210Schmeidler, Gertrude R., 3:164Schmitt, Don, 3:259, 261–262, 263Schneider, Rudi, 1:129–131, 130Schneider, Willy, 1:129Schoch, Robert M., 2:270School of Wicca (U.S.), 2:82Schopenhauer, Arthur, 1:156Schrek, Max, 3:80–81, 81Schrenck-Notzing, Albert von, 1:89, 129, 130Schwartz, Gary, 1:84, 155Schweitzer, John Frederick. See Helvetius

(Dutch alchemist)Schwerner, Michael, 3:166Science, religious phenomena and, 1:190–191Science, spirituality and, 1:22–23Scientific Advisory Panel on UFOs, 3:256Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects

(Condon). See Condon/University ofColorado Report (1969)

Scientology, 1:315, 320–321The Scoriton Mystery (Buckle), 1:306, 3:272Scorpio, the Scorpion, 2:123, 186Scotland, beliefs and customs

ceasg, 3:107elves, 3:100–101fairies and fairy tales, 2:176–177, 3:101

Scotland, witchcraft trials, 2:106Scotophobia, 3:138, 140Scott, Margaret, 2:106Scott, Sir Walter, 3:102Scottish Knights Templar. See Militi Templi

ScotiaScrying, 2:162, 162–164, 163“Scuba diver in tree” urban legend, 3:236Sea monsters. See Sea serpentsSea serpents, 3:93–97, 3:94Seabury, Captain, 3:96Seances, 1:85, 86–90

See also Mediums and channelersSearch for Grace (film), 1:61Seax-Wica, 2:81

Second Coming, 1:9–10, 182–183, 184–185See also Apocalypse; Armageddon; Final

JudgmentThe Secret Doctrine (Blavatsky), 1:57Secret societies. See Conspiracy theories; specific

societiesSects, 1:270, 272Sedona (AZ), 2:271“Seelie court.” See ElvesSelf, 3:119Self-consciousness. See Reflective consciousnessSeligmann, Kurt, 1:292–293, 2:96Selkies, 3:109Semantic memory, 3:132Semjaza (angel), 2:52Sensory level of expanded consciousness, 3:141“Sensory translation” hypothesis, 1:216September 11 terrorist attacks (2001, U.S.)

hoaxes resulting from, 3:228, 229rise in nightmares since, 3:126

Serbia, wedding dinners, 3:214Serial killers, interest in Satanism, 1:289“Serialism,” 3:176–177Sermo generalis. See Auto-da-feServant (tarot). See Knave (tarot)Set (Egyptian deity), 1:303“Seth” (spirit guide). See Roberts, JaneSeven, symbolism of

luckiness of, 3:198numerology, 2:146playing cards, 2:134, 135tarot, 2:130, 133, 134

Seven Angels, 2:42, 57–58Seven Devas. See Seven Angels“Seven-knot-love-garter,” 2:180–181Seven Seals, 1:183“Seven Secrets for Successful Prayer”

(Sherman), 1:230Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, 2:243Seventeen, tarot symbolism of, 2:132Sexual abuse, memory and, 3:134, 135Sexual intercourse

incubi and, 3:76, 78, 143Inquisition and erotomania, 3:76, 78medieval Church view of, 1:291–292ritual intercourse, Crowley, Aleister, and,

2:62succubi and, 3:76, 79–80, 143witchhunters’ fixation on, 2:110–111

Shadow Ceremony. See Ghost CeremonyShadow of the Vampire (film), 3:81


349Cumulative Index

CU

MU

LA

TI

VE

I

ND

EX

Shafe, Glenn, 3:131Shakespeare, William, 3:102Shaking hands, 3:201Shamanism, 1:74, 76–82, 286, 2:190Shandera, Jamie, 3:297Shapeshifting

Nakh, 3:107Nix, 3:107selkies, 3:109werewolves, 3:83

Shapur I (Emperor of Persia), 1:282Shaw, George Bernard, 3:33SHC. See Spontaneous Human CombustionSheldon, Susanna, 2:104, 105Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, 3:75Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 3:75Sheol, 1:14Shepherds Rod, Branch Seventh-Day

Adventist. See Branch DavidiansSherman, Harold, 1:230, 230, 3:162Shermer, Michael, 3:59, 161Shevrin, Howard, 3:124The Shining (film), 3:112Ship disappearances, Bermuda Triangle, 2:228Shipton, Eric E., 3:66, 67Shipton, Mother. See Mother ShiptonShriners, 2:12Shroud of Turin, 1:232–238, 233, 236, 2:200Shroud of Turin Research Project, 1:233–234“Sidhe.” See FairiesSiegel, Alan, 3:126Siegel, Jerome, 3:131Sierra Leone, Leopard Men activity, 2:24–25Signs (film), 3:296Sikhs, cremation, 3:226Sila (Purification), 3:149“Silent contactees,” 3:268Silver, 2:185Silver Cliff (CO) spooklights, 3:22–23Silver cord (Soul Body connection), 1:27–28,

3:13, 171Silverman, Helaine, 2:262Simmons, Ruth. See Murphy, BrideySimon, Benjamin, 3:275Simon, Carly, 3:138Simon Magus (early Gnostic), 1:278, 2:69–70Simony, 2:69Simos, Miriam. See Starhawk (Wiccan leader)Sinclair, Mrs. Upton, 3:181–182Sinetar, Marsha, 1:195Sirens (Garduna), 2:14

Sitting Bull (Sioux holy man), 1:285“Sitting” shiva, 3:228Sitwell, Sacheverell, 3:19Six, symbolism of


The Six Books of the Republic (Bodin), 2:110666 (Number of the Beast), 1:181, 183,

238–239, 290, 3:198See also The Antichrist

Sixteen, tarot symbolism of, 2:132“Sixth Sense.” See Extrasensory perception

(ESP)The Sixth Sense (film), 3:50, 158Sixtus V, Pope, 2:159Skull candles, 2:172Skulls, crystal, 2:191–193Skunk Ape, 3:65–66Slaughter Stone (England), 2:273Slave adoption of Christianity, 1:282–283,

285–286, 2:52, 54Sleeman, William, 2:33Sleep disorders, 3:121Sleep paralysis, 3:127“Sleeping on a problem.” See Creative and lucid

dreaming“The Sleepless Ones.” See Watchers (angels)Sleepwalking, 3:125Slick, Tom, 3:67Smith, Benjamin, 1:59Smith, G. E., 3:29, 30Smith, Huston, 1:178, 248Smith, Marie Sweet, 1:160Smith, Will, 3:277Smyth, Charles Piazzi, 2:265Smythe, Frank, 3:66Snake handling, 1:239–241, 240Snake symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:166Snakes, mistaken for dragons, 3:88“Snakes in imported carpets” urban legend,

3:229–230“Snakes in the toilet” urban legend, 3:236–237Sneezing superstitions, 3:199Snowden, Wendy, 1:83Soal, S. G., 3:181Social phobias, 3:137Society for Psychical Research (SPR), 1:157,

172–173Society of Novus Spiritus, 1:97–98


Cumulative Index350

Socorro (NM) UFO sighting (1964),3:265–266

Socrates (Greek philosopher), 1:90Soldaro, Antonio Aldo, 1:29Solomon’s seal, 2:144Solon (Greek politician), 2:221Sontheil, Ursula. See Mother ShiptonSoubrious, Bernadette, 1:188, 189, 209–210,

2:248Souers, Sidney W., 3:297–298Soul Body, 1:27–28, 3:171Soul journeys, 1:76Souls

of animals, 3:7in Buddhism, 1:4–5in Christianity, 1:4, 5in Hinduism, 1:4, 11–12immortality of, in traditional religions, 1:2in Islam, 1:4, 5, 13in Judaism, 1:4, 5, 14, 48Origen on, 1:9Orphic concept, 1:35, 268Paul, St. on, 1:8–9Pythagoras on, 1:35Taoist concept, 1:42tribal concepts, 1:36–37, 40, 3:221–222See also Ba and ka; Reincarnation

Source amnesia, 3:131–132Soviet Union, end of communism, 1:186, 2:153,

160Space visitors, in Holy Scripture, 3:249–251Spades (playing cards), 2:135Spain, Garduna activity, 2:13–15Spain, witchcraft trials, 2:106–108

See also Spanish InquisitionSpanish Inquisition, 1:219, 2:13–14, 106–107Spanos, Nicholas, 3:148Speaking in tongues. See GlossolaliaSpear of Destiny, 2:200, 209, 209–210Spear of Longinus. See Spear of DestinySpecial Report Number 14 (1954), 3:256“Specious present,” 3:175The Sphinx (Giza, Egypt), 2:150, 268, 268–272Sphinx (mythological creature), 2:269Spiders, fear of. See Arachnophobia“Spiders in the hairdo” urban legend,

3:237–238Spielberg, Steven, 3:281, 282–283Spilsbury, Bernard, 3:33The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient

Religion of the Great Goddess (Starhawk), 2:89

Spirit cabinets, 1:88Spirit contact, researchers of, 1:74, 84, 90,

1:154–173Spirit controls, 1:90–92

See also Spirit guides; TotemsSpirit guides, 1:79–80, 90–92, 94

guardian angels as, 1:212as intermediaries, 1:159tribal empowerment and, 2:190See also Spirit controls; Totems

Spirit land, 1:38Spirit mediumship, 1:82–93Spirit photography. See Psychic photographySpiritism, 1:143, 144

See also Macumba; SpiritualismThe Spirits’ Book (Le Livre des Esprits) (Kardec),

1:143Spiritual expression, 20th century, 1:313–321Spiritualism, 1:133–134, 133–144

See also SpiritismSpitting superstitions, 3:199–200Spontaneous human combustion (SHC),

3:52–55, 298, 299Spooklights, 3:22–24“Spooksville,” 3:23Spoons, 3:218SPR. See Society for Psychical ResearchSprenger, Jakob, 1:199–200, 219, 2:108Sprinkle, R. Leo, 3:269, 270Spunkies, 3:104Spying, psychics used in, 1:155Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scales,

3:146–147Star and quarter moon, as Satanic symbols,

1:290“Star Gospel” (Katter), 2:124Star of Bethlehem, explanation for, 3:249Star Trek: The Motion Picture (film), 3:253Starhawk (Wiccan leader), 2:89–90Starkey, Marion L., 2:104Stars (tarot), 2:132Stawell, Lord and Lady, 3:42Steiner, Rudolf, 1:149–152, 150

as Anthroposophy founder, 1:51–53on cosmic consciousness, 1:194critics of, 1:148on reincarnation, 1:50

Steller’s sea eagles, 3:99Stepanek, Pavel, 3:167–168Sterne, John, 2:111Stevenson, Ian, 1:69–70


351Cumulative Index

CU

MU

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ND

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Steward, Patrick, 3:21Stigmata, 1:241, 243–244Stigmata (film), 1:239Stockholm (Sweden) fire (1759), 1:152–153“Stone-dropping,” 3:19Stonehenge Decoded (Hawkins), 2:273–274Stonehenge (England), 2:79, 232–233,

272–275Stones, 2:185–187

See also Gem superstitions; MegalithsStored memories, 3:140Stregeria, 2:93Strict Observance (Masonic group), 2:18Strieber, Whitley, 3:270–271, 279, 279–280,

283–284Stromberg, Gustaf, 2:125Stuart, John H., 3:277Stubbe, Peter, 3:84Stukeley, William, 2:232, 273Stupor, 3:140Sturridge, Charles, 3:103Subconscience, precognition and, 3:175Succubi, 3:76, 79–80, 143Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death

Syndrome (SUNDS), 3:233Sufism, reincarnation and, 1:42, 47–48Suggestion, power of, 1:83, 90Suitcases, dream symbolism, 3:130Sumatra, food kinship custom, 3:216“Sumatran Yeti.” See Orang pendekSumerians

amulets, 2:169astronomers, accuracy of, 3:249cultural evolution, 3:248

Summers, Montague, 3:78Summis Desiderantes Affectibus (Innocent VIII),

2:103, 108Sun, dream symbolism, 3:130Sun Lord Pacal (Mayan figure), 2:253–254Sun (tarot), 2:132SUNDS. See Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal

Death SyndromeThe Superiority of Women (Agrippa), 2:59Superstitions, 3:189–200Supreme Military Order of Temple of Jerusalem

of England, Wales, and Scotland, 2:24Sutherland, Donald, 3:112Sutphen, Richard, 1:59–61Sutton, Billy Ray, 3:243–244Suzuki, D. T., 1:215Swastikas, 2:210

Swastikas, inverted, 1:290Sweden, mistletoe custom, 2:183Sweden, UFO sightings (1946), 3:252Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1:136, 148, 152–154,

153Swift, Jane, 2:106“Swimming” a witch, 2:112Switzerland, werewolf burnings, 3:83–84Switzerland, witch hunts, 2:99Swords (tarot), 2:133–134Swordsmen (Garduna), 2:14Sykes, Brian, 3:64, 68Sylvester, Pope, 1:186Symbolic level of expanded consciousness,

3:142Symbols and symbolism

astrology, 2:121–123, 124black (color), 1:40dreams, 3:128–130horns (head), 2:92, 94Luther, Martin, 2:31saints, 2:95Satanism, 1:290, 301tea leaf reading, 2:165–166See also Amulets; Animal symbolism;

Number symbolismSymmes, John Cleves, 2:240–241

TTable manners, 3:215–216Taboos. See Customs and taboos; specific

countries and culturesTahiti, food kinship, 3:216Talavera, Jorge Luis, 3:71Talismans, 2:168, 194, 197–198, 3:188

See also Amulets; Fetishes; Good luckcharms

Tamblyn, Russ, 3:14Tanganyika, lion men activity, 2:26Tanner, John, 1:283Tantalis (King of Lydia), 2:224–225Tao Teh Ching (Taoist work), 3:150Taoism

burials and funerals, 3:223hospitality and charity, 3:215meditation, 3:150mourning, 3:228soul, 1:42

Taos Pueblo (NM), 2:275–279, 276Tarantula (film), 3:110


Cumulative Index352

Targ, Russell, 3:164Tarot. See Cartomancy and tarotTart, Charles T., 3:121, 122, 164–165, 172–173Tasseography. See Tea leaf readingTatsl, Igor, 3:67Taurus, the Bull, 2:121, 186Taylor, Dan, 3:90, 92Taylor, G. Rattray, 1:291Taylor, John, 2:265Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilyich, 3:142Te Pito O Te Henua. See Easter IslandTea leaf reading, 2:164–166, 165Tedworth Drummer (Tedworth, England),

3:44–47, 45Teed, Cyrus Read, 2:242Teenagers’ interest in the occult, 1:289Teeth, dream symbolism, 3:130Telekinesis. See PsychokinesisTelepathy, 3:24, 25, 158, 160Telepathy, researchers of, 3:179–184Teleportation, 1:119

See also Philadelphia Experiment (1943)Television programs. See Horror films and TV

programsTemperament, 2:120–121Temperance (tarot), 2:131Temple of Artemis (Ephesus), 2:243Temple of Inscriptons (Mexico), 2:253Temple of Karnak (Egypt), 2:246Temple of Set, 1:303–304Temple of Solomon (Jerusalem), 2:10, 202–203,

210Ten, symbolism of

playing cards, 2:134, 135tarot, 2:133, 134

Teresa, Mother. See Mother TeresaTeresa of Avila, St., 1:190, 203Terhune, Albert Payson, 3:6The Terror (film), 3:112Teudt, Wilhelm, 2:257Them! (film), 3:110Theosophical Society, 1:52, 55–56, 148, 275Theosophy, 1:55–57, 148Thera volcano, 2:224Therianthropes, 3:58, 69, 83The Thing (film), 3:110The Thing from Another World (film), 3:281Thinnes, Roy, 3:289Thirteen, symbolism of

tarot, 2:131unluckiness of, 3:197–198

Thirteenth School, 2:248Thixotropy, 1:221Thomas, Andy, 3:296Thomas Aquinas, St., 2:47Thornton, Billy Bob, 3:136Thoth-Hermes. See Hermes-Toth (Greek deity)Three, symbolism of

numerology, 2:146playing cards, 2:134–135tarot, 2:130, 133, 134

The Thuggee, 2:2, 32–34Thunderbirds, 3:97–99Thurston, Gavin, 3:53Thurston, Herbert, 1:237“Ti.” See Nettles, Bonnie Lu TrousdaleTiahuanaco (Bolivia), 2:277–279Tibetan prayer wheels. See Prayer wheelsTighe, Virginia. See Morrow, Virginia TigheTikal (Guatemala), 2:253, 255, 256Timaeus (Plato), 2:221“Time compression,” 3:292Timor, flower giving, 3:208Titharaja (King of the Holy Cities). See

Allahabad (India)Tituba (17th c. slave), 2:104, 105“Tkys-katsi.” See YetiToasting with drinks, 3:220–221Tolstoy, Leo, 1:112–113Tongs, 2:2, 34, 36–37Tonsmann, José Aste, 1:245–246Topaz, 2:186Topper (film), 3:49Topper (TV program), 3:51Topsell, Edward, 3:88Torquemada, Tomas de, 1:219, 2:107Torture

in England, 2:100–101of Knights Templar, 2:22sanctioning by Roman Catholic Church,

1:218in Scotland, 2:106of witches, 1:199–200, 2:96

Total Overcomers. See Heaven’s Gate cultTotem animals, 1:80–81Totem poles, 2:199Totems, 1:39, 2:198–199

See also Spirit controls; Spirit guidesTower of Destruction (tarot), 2:132Toyanbee, Arnold, 1:156Trances, 1:92–93

consciousness and, 3:141


353Cumulative Index

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MU

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Extrasensory Perception and, 3:160of Macumba shamen, 1:286during possession, 1:224during UFO contact, 3:268

Transiency, in consciousness, 1:145Transmigration of souls. See Reincarnation, in

major religionsTravolta, John, 1:320Tree coffins, 3:222Trees, 2:187–188, 3:196Trembles, Mary, 2:101Trenchers, 3:219Triad Tong, 2:34, 36, 37Tribal empowerment, 2:190–199Trivial precognition, 3:176Trolls, 3:109True Church of God. See CatharsTrumpet seances, 1:87–88Tsien, Joe, 3:131Tucker, D. Gordon, 3:92Turck, Sven, 3:178Turkey, alleged Noah’s Ark sightings, 2:219Turkey, horseshoe custom, 2:179Turquoise, 2:186–187Twelve, symbolism of

Pythagoras on, 2:145significance of, 3:198tarot, 2:131

Twenty-two, symbolism of, 2:147“Twilight” communication, 1:89Twining, Nathan, 3:253, 256, 297Twins, telepathic ability of, 3:180Twitchell, Paul, 1:51, 316–317, 317Two, symbolism of

numerology, 2:146playing cards, 2:135Pythagoras on, 2:145tarot, 2:130, 133, 134

Tyrrell, G. N. M., 3:160

UUbasti (Egyptian deity). See Bast (Egyptian

deity)UFO contactees and abductees, 3:245,

3:266–280UFO cults, 1:304–313UFO Enigma Museum (Roswell, NM), 3:291UFOs

in ancient times, 3:246–251in film and TV, 3:281–290

in modern times, 3:251–266recent mysteries, 3:290–301

Ullman, Montague, 3:124, 160, 164Uluru monolith (Australia), 2:196Umbanda. See MacumbaUmberto II (King of Portugal), 1:234Umm al-Qura. See Mecca (Saudi Arabia)Underhill, Evelyn, 1:202Underhill, Leah Fox. See Fox sistersUnderstanding Incorporated, 1:305, 3:273Unidentified flying objects. See UFOsThe Uninvited (film), 3:49United States, beliefs and customs

engagement announcements, 3:208horseshoes, 2:178multiculturalism and, 3:202Santeria, 1:287vampire subculture, 3:81–82

United States, Freemason activity, 2:9–12The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin (Houdini),

1:165“Unseelie court.” See ElvesUpanishads (Hindu text), 1:42, 3:150Urban legends and beliefs, 3:228–238

See also HoaxesU.S. Air Force, UFOs and. See UFOs, in

modern timesU.S. Air Force gremlin tales, 3:105U.S. Navy Flight 19 disappearance (1945),

2:228USS Cyclops disappearance (1918), 2:228USS Eldridge. See Philadelphia Experiment

(1943)“Uvani” (spirit control). See Garrett, EileenUxmal (Mexico), 2:254, 255

VValentino, Rudolph, 3:25Valentinus (Gnostic teacher), 1:278Valhalla sea monster, 3:93–94Valiente, Doreen, 2:90–91“Vampire Chronicles” books (Rice), 3:82Vampires, 3:80–83Van Dusen, Wilson, 1:198, 224Van Praagh, James, 1:124–125Van Tassel, George, 1:305, 3:280Vandenberg, Hoyt S., 3:298Vanished civilizations, 2:214–215Varieties of Anomalous Experiences (Cardena, et

al), 1:216–217


Cumulative Index354

Vasiliev, Leonid L., 3:162, 182–183Vegetarianism, Manichaeans and, 1:282Vela X supernova, 3:248Verity, L. S., 3:12–13La Vie Execrable de Guillemette Babin (Carron),

3:192Vigenere, Blaise, 2:43Viking funerals, 3:226Vincent, Kenneth, 3:85Violence, of poltergeists, 3:19Virgin of Guadalupe, 1:244–246, 245Virgins, as brides of Christ, 1:292Virgo, the Virgin, 2:122, 186Vishnu (Hindu deity), 1:11Vision quests, 1:81–82Visions, 1:246–249

See also Deathbed visionsVivien (fairy queen), 2:226Vodun. See VoodooVogel, Marcel, 2:174Vogel Luminescence, 2:174“La Voisin.” See Montvoison, CatherineVolsungr (Norse deities), 2:197Von Fram, M. L., 3:119Von Knigge, Baron Adolf Francis, 2:18Von Nettesheim, Henry Cornelius Agrippa. See

Agrippa (German philosopher)Von Spee, Friedrich, 2:96Von Tilburg, Jo Ann, 2:127Voodoo, 2:52, 54–56

fetishes, 2:194gris-gris, 2:198religious articles, 2:54See also Laveau, Marie

“Voodoo death,” 2:56Voodoo dolls, 2:188, 188–190, 189, 194Vorilhon, Claude, 1:311, 312Vu Quang oxen, 3:86

WWaco (TX) standoff (1993). See Branch

Davidians“Wailing Wall” (Jerusalem), 2:242, 245Wakes, 3:225Walcott, Mary, 2:104, 105Wales, beliefs and customs

bride capturing, 3:204fairy tales, 2:176

Walker, Grace, 3:53–54Wall, Patrick, 3:133

Wallace, Alfred Russell, 1:134“Walter” (spirit control). See Crandon, Mina

StinsonWandervogel, 2:210War of the Worlds (film and radio broadcast),

3:285–287Warren Commission, 2:35Washington, George, 2:11Washington (DC) UFO sightings (1952), 3:253,

292Wasson, Peter, 3:152–153Wasson, R. Gordon and Mrs., 3:152–153Watchers (angels), 2:52“Watching” a witch, 2:112Water, dream symbolism, 3:129, 130Water acquisition, Nazca Lines and, 2:260–261,

262–263Water divining. See DowsingWaterhouse, Agnes, 2:100Watkins, Alfred, 2:232, 233, 261Watson, Gladys, 3:8–9Wauk-Wauk. See Bigfoot (apelike monster)We Faked the Ghosts of Borley Rectory

(Mayerling), 3:32–33Weaver, Sigourney, 3:282Webb, Clifton, 3:25Webb, David, 3:270Webb, Jim, 3:39Webster, Christopher, 1:84Wedding cakes, 3:214Wedding ceremonies, 3:210–213Wedding dinners, 3:213–214Wedding gowns. See Bridal dressWedding processions, western, 3:209–210Wedding rings, 3:213Wednesday superstitions, 3:191Wee folk, 3:99–109Weeping statues and icons, 1:249–252Weil, Andrew, 3:151Weinberger kidnapping (1956), 2:139Weishaupt, Adam, 2:16, 18Weiss, Brian, 1:67Weiss, Erich. See Houdini, HarryWeiss, Frederick, 3:124Weiss, Theodore, 1:163, 165Weitzenhoffer, Andre M., 3:146, 147Welles, Orson, 3:286, 286–287Were-creatures. See Therianthropes;

WerewolvesWerewolves, 3:83–85Wesley, Samuel, 3:36–38


355Cumulative Index

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West, John Anthony, 2:270, 271West, Mae, 3:25Wester, William C., 3:148Weston, Jesie, 2:205–206Wexford (Ireland) leprechauns, 3:105–106Weyer, Johann, 1:219, 2:109, 110Whaley, Thomas and Anna, 3:47, 48–49Whaley House (San Diego, CA), 3:47–49Wheel of Fortune (tarot), 2:131Wheel symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:166White, John, 2:269White, John W., 1:26, 194White, Rhea, 3:164White, Richard, 3:92White (color), symbolism of, 3:208–209, 227White magick, 2:51, 56–57, 3:188Whitehead, Alfred North, 1:22, 156Whitford, Dorothy, 2:82, 83Wicca, 1:289–290, 291–293, 2:72–74Wiccan leaders, 2:75, 77–91Wiccan Rede, 2:73Wigs. See Hair and wig groomingWilcox, George, 3:262“Wilhelm” (spirit entity), 3:39Wilkes expedition (1838–42), 2:240–241Williams, Abigail, 2:104, 105Williams, Charles, 2:108Willis, Archie, 3:93Willis, Bruce, 3:158Wilson, Ian, 1:234Wilson, Jack, 1:78–79, 283–285Wilson, Terry, 2:25–26Winchester, Simon, 1:45Winged Pharaoh (Grant), 1:58Wings of Deliverance. See People’s TempleWinter, William, 3:43–44Wiseman, James, 1:220Wiseman, Richard, 1:83Wishbones, 2:169The Witch Cult in Western Europe (Murray),

2:75, 87–88Witch of Endor, 1:131–133Witchcraft, 2:91–99

Inquisition and, 1:199–200, 217–218, 219related violence (20th–21st c.), 2:101Satanism and, 1:289, 2:74Seax-Wica, 2:81See also Wicca

Witchcraft Today (Gardner), 2:77, 85Witchcraft trials, 2:99–108The Witches of Eastwick (film), 3:112

Witches’ Round, 1:294–295, 2:98–99Witches’ salve. See “Flying ointment”Witchhunters, 2:108–114Witzman, Doron, 1:242Wolf (film), 3:112The Wolf Man (film), 3:85Wollam, Josie, 1:234Wolves, Native Americans and, 3:193Woman symbols, in tea leaf reading, 2:166Women, status of

Agrippa on, 2:59bride capturing and bride buying, 3:204–205elopement, 3:206Garduna and, 2:14Gnosticism and, 1:279in Middle Ages, 1:292polygamy and polyandry, 3:203

“Woodhenge” (IL), 2:231Woodruffe, Clark, 3:42–43Woodruffe, Sara Matilda, 3:42–43Wordsworth, William, 3:124The World Goodwill Centers, 1:281World leaders, viewed as the Antichrist,

1:181–182World (tarot), 2:132Worrall, Olga, 1:58Wounded Knee (SD) massacre (1890), 1:285Wovoka (Paiute shaman). See Wilson, JackWreaths, for funerals, 3:226Wright, Elsie, 1:138, 139, 3:103Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Hangar 18

(Dayton, OH), 3:259–260, 260Wulff, David M., 1:217Wulff, Wilhelm, 2:125

X

The X-Files (TV program), 3:51, 3:287–288,288

Xenophobia, 3:140

Y

Yama (Hindu deity), 1:5, 7–8Year of the Dragon (film), 2:34Yeats, William Butler, 3:102Yellow Turbans Tong, 2:36“Yeren.” See YetiYeti, 3:66–68, 67Yoga, 3:157


Cumulative Index356

Yogananda, Paramahansa, 1:47“Yossele” (Golem of Prague), 3:76You Were Born Again to Be Together (Sutphen),

1:59Young, Sherry and Terry, 3:180Yule candle, 2:172

ZZachariah (Hebrew prophet), 3:250Zadikel (angel), 2:58Zamora, Lonnie, 3:265–266Zaphkiel (angel), 2:58Zeitoun (Egypt) holy apparitions, 1:187, 190Zell, Oberon, 2:73, 74Zell, Tim. See Zell, OberonZener cards, 3:163, 169Zeta I and II Reticuli, 3:275–276

Zeuglodon, 3:87, 96Zeus, statue of, 2:243Zeus (Greek deity), 1:267Zhengxin, Yuan, 3:68Zinsstag, Lou, 3:272Zodiac, 2:120, 121–123, 124Zohar, 2:142

See also KabbalahZolar (astrologer), 2:123–124Zombi, 2:55–56Zombies of the Stratosphere (film). See Satan’s

Satellites (film)Zoroaster (Persian religious leader), 1:288, 2:70–71Zosimus of Panapolis, 2:42Zulley, Jurgen, 3:121Zulu people, burial customs, 3:226Zuni people, fetishes, 2:193Zuoguian, Feng, 3:68


357Cumulative Index

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