by Joe Nickell
Some people have thought the freestanding structure should have collapsed long ago, we are told, and builders and architects supposedly “never fail to marvel how it manages to stay in place,” considering that it is “without a center support” (Albach 1965). In fact, though, as one wood technologist observes, “the staircase does have a central support.” He observes that of the two wood stringers (or spiral structural members), the inner one is of such small radius that it “functions as an almost solid pole” (Easley 1997).
There is also another support—one that goes unmentioned, but which I observed when I visited the now privately owned chapel in 1993. This is an iron brace or bracket that stabilizes the staircase by rigidly connecting the outer stringer to one of the columns that support the loft (see figure 51.2).
There is reason to suspect that the staircase may be more unstable and, potentially, unsafe than some realize. It has been closed to public travel since at least the mid-1970s (when the reason was given as lack of other egress from the loft in case of fire). When I visited in 1993 my understanding was that it was suffering from the constant traffic. Barbara Hershey implied the same when she stated, “It still functions, though people aren't allowed to go up it very often” (Bobbin 1998). It would thus appear that the Loretto staircase is subject to the laws of physics, just like any other staircase.
Another mystery that is emphasized in relation to the stair is the identity of the carpenter and the type of wood used. That it has not been identified precisely means little. The piece given to a forester for possible identification was exceedingly small (only about 3/4 inch square by 1/8 inch thick) whereas much larger (six inch) pieces are preferred. The wood has reportedly been identified as to family, Pinaceae, and genus, Picea—which is to say, spruce (Easley 1997), a type of “light, strong, elastic wood” often used in construction (“Spruce” 1960). But there are no fewer than thirty-nine species—ten in North America—so that comparison of the tiny Loretto sample with only two varieties (Easley 1997) can scarcely be definitive.
CRAFTSMAN IDENTIFIED
As to the identity of an obviously itinerant workman, it seems merely mystery mongering to suggest that there is anything strange—least of all evidence of the supernatural—in the failure to record his name. As it happens, however, the identity of the enigmatic craftsman has finally been revealed. Credit for the discovery goes to an “intrepid and highly respected amateur historian” named Mary Jean Cook. She learned of a “hermit rancher,” François-Jean “Frenchy” Rochas, who lived in “godforsaken” Dog Canyon, nine miles from Alamogordo. Learning that he had left behind a collection of “sophisticated carpentry tools,” Cook searched for his death notice, which she found in the January 6, 1896, issue of the Santa Fe New Mexican. It described him as “favorably known in Santa Fe as an expert worker in wood.” He had built, the brief obituary noted, “the handsome staircase in the Loretto Chapel and at St. Vincent sanitarium.”
Cook suspects that the legend of St. Joseph began with the sisters at the Loretto Academy, “probably in response to questions from their students.” However, she observes that “it wasn't until the late 1930s—when the story appeared in Ripley's…Believe It or Not!—that the story became an icon of popular culture.” Although some rued the debunking of the pious legend, Archbishop Michael Sheehan promised, “It will always be referred to as a miraculous staircase. It was an extraordinary piece to have been done in its time” (Stieber 2000).
Belief in demonic possession is getting a new propaganda boost. Not only has the 1973 horror movie The Exorcist been rereleased, but the “true story” that inspired it is chronicled in a reissued book and a made-for-TV movie, both titled Possessed (Allen 2000) (figure 52.1). However, a yearlong investigation by a Maryland writer (Opsasnik 2000), together with my own analysis of events chronicled in the exorcising priest's diary, belie the claim that a teenage boy was possessed by Satan in 1949.
PSYCHOLOGY VERSUS POSSESSION
Belief in spirit possession flourishes in times and places where there is ignorance about mental states. Citing biblical examples, the medieval church taught that demons were able to take control of an individual, and by the sixteenth century demonic behavior had become relatively stereotypical. It manifested itself by convulsions, prodigious strength, insensitivity to pain, temporary blindness or deafness, clairvoyance, and other abnormal characteristics. Some early notions of possession may have been fomented by three brain disorders: epilepsy, migraine, and Tourette's syndrome (Beyerstein 1988). Psychiatric historians have long attributed demonic manifestations to such aberrant mental conditions as schizophrenia and hysteria, noting that—as mental illness began to be recognized as such after the seventeenth century—there was a consequent decline in demonic superstitions (Baker 1992, 192). In 1999 the Vatican did update its 1614 guidelines for expelling demons, urging exorcists to avoid mistaking psychiatric illness for possession (“Vatican Updates Its Rules on Exorcism of Demons” 1999).
In many cases, however, supposed demonic possession can be a learned role that fulfills certain important functions for those claiming it. In his book Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions from Within, psychologist Robert A. Baker (1992) notes that possession was sometimes feigned by nuns to act out sexual frustrations, protest restrictions, escape unpleasant duties, attract attention and sympathy, and fulfill other useful functions.
Many devout claimants of stigmata, inedia, and other powers have also exhibited alleged demonic possession. For example, at Loudon, France, a prioress, Sister Jeanne des Anges (1602–1665), was part of a contagious outbreak of writhing, convulsing nuns. Jeanne herself exhibited stigmatic designs and lettering on her skin. A bloody cross “appeared” on her forehead, and the names of Jesus, Mary, and others were found on her hand—always clustered on her left hand, just as would be expected if a right-handed person were marking them. She went on tour as a “walking relic” and was exhibited in Paris to credulous thousands. There were a few skeptics, but Cardinal Richelieu rejected having Jeanne tested by having her hand enclosed in a sealed glove. He felt that would amount to testing God (Nickell 1998, 230–31). Interestingly enough, while I was researching and writing this chapter I was called to Southern Ontario on a case of dubious possession that also involved stigmata.
Possession can be childishly simple to fake. For example, an exorcism broadcast by ABC's 20/20 in 1991 featured a sixteen-year-old girl who, her family claimed, was possessed by ten separate demonic entities. However, to skeptics her alleged possession seemed to be indistinguishable from poor acting. She even stole glances at the camera before affecting convulsions and other “demonic” behaviors (Nickell 1998).
Of course, a person with a strong impulse to feign diabolic possession may indeed be mentally disturbed. Although the teenager in the 20/20 episode reportedly improved after the exorcism, it was also pointed out that she continued “on medication” (“Exorcism” 1991). To add to the complexity, the revised Vatican guidelines also urge, appropriately, against believing a person who is merely “the victim of one's own imagination” is actually possessed (“Vatican Updates Its Rules on Exorcism of Demons” 1999).
With less modern enlightenment, however, the guidelines also reflect Pope John Paul II's efforts to convince doubters that the devil actually exists. In various homilies John Paul has denounced Satan as a “cosmic liar and murderer.” A Vatican official who presented the revised rite stated, “The existence of the devil isn't an opinion, something to take or leave as you wish. Anyone who says he doesn't exist wouldn't have the fullness of the Catholic faith” (“Vatican Updates Its Rules on Exorcism of Demons” 1999).
Unchallenged by the new exorcism guidelines is the acceptance of such alleged signs of possession as demonstrating supernormal physical force and speaking in unknown tongues. In the case broadcast by 20/20, the teenage girl did exhibit “tongues” (known as glossolalia [Nickell 1998, 103–109]), but it was unimpressive; she merely chanted: “Sanka dali. Booga, booga.” She did struggle ag
ainst the restraining clerics, one of whom claimed that, had she not been held down, she would have been levitating! At that point a group of magicians, psychologists, and other skeptics with whom I was watching the video gleefully encouraged, “Let her go! Let her go!” (Nickell 1995).
“TRUE STORY”
Demonstrating prodigious strength, speaking in an unknown language, and exhibiting other allegedly diabolical feats supposedly characterizes the “true story” behind The Exorcist. The 1973 horror movie—starring Linda Blair as the devil-plagued victim—was based on the 1971 bestselling novel of that title by William Peter Blatty. The movie, reports one writer, “somehow reached deep into the subconscious and stirred up nameless fears.” Some moviegoers vomited or fainted, while others left trembling, and there were “so many outbreaks of hysteria that, at some theaters, nurses and ambulances were on call.” Indeed, “Many sought therapy to rid themselves of fears they could not explain. Psychiatrists were writing about cases of ‘cinematic neurosis’” (Allen 2000, viii–ix).
Blatty had heard about the exorcism performed in 1949 and, almost two decades later, had written to the exorcist to inquire about it. However, the priest, Father William S. Bowdern, declined to assist Blatty because he had been directed by the archbishop to keep it secret. He did tell Blatty—then a student at Washington's Georgetown University, a Jesuit institution—about the diary an assisting priest had kept of the disturbing events (Allen 2000, ix–x).
The diary—written by Father Raymond J. Bishop—consisted of an original twenty-six-page, single-spaced typescript and three carbon copies, one of which was eventually provided to Thomas B. Allen, author of Possessed, and included as an appendix to the 2000 edition of the book. The copy came from Father Walter Halloran, who had also assisted with the exorcism. Halloran verified the authenticity of the diary and stated that it had been read and approved by Bowdern (Allen 2000, 243, 301).
The diary opens with a “Background of the Case.” The boy, an only child identified as “R,” was born in 1935 and raised an Evangelical Lutheran, like his mother; his father was baptized a Catholic but had had “no instruction or practice” in the faith. The family's Cottage City, Maryland, home included the maternal grandmother, who had been a “practicing Catholic until the age of fourteen years” (Bishop 1949, 245).
On January 15, 1949, R and his grandmother heard odd “dripping” and scratching noises in her bedroom, where a picture of Jesus shook “as if the wall back of it had been bumped.” The effects lasted ten days but were attributed to a rodent. Then R began to say he could hear the scratching when others could not. Soon a noise, as of “squeaking shoes”—or, one wonders, could it have been bedsprings?—became audible and “was heard only at night when the boy went to bed.” On the sixth evening the scratching noise resumed, and R's mother and grandmother lay with him on his bed, whereupon they “heard something coming toward them similar to the rhythm of marching feet and the beat of drums.” The sound seemed to “travel the length of the mattress and back again” repeatedly (Bishop 1949, 246). Was R tapping his toes against the bed's footboard?
POLTERGEISTS AND OUIJA SPIRITS
At this point the case was exhibiting features often attributed to a poltergeist (or “noisy spirit”). Poltergeist phenomena typically involve disturbances—noises, movement of objects, or, rarely, serious effects like outbreaks of fire—typically centering on a disturbed person, usually a child. Believers often attribute the occurrences to “psychokinetic energy” or other mystical forces imagined to be produced from the repressed hostilities of the pubescent child. Skeptics can agree with all but the mystical part, observing that one does not explain an unknown by invoking another. Skeptics have a simpler explanation, attributing the effects to the cunning tricks of a naughty youth or occasionally a disturbed adult. When such cases have been properly investigated—by magicians and detectives using hidden cameras, lie detectors, tracer powders (dusted on objects likely to be involved), and other techniques—they usually turn out to be the pranks of young or immature mischief makers.
Consider some of the “other manifestations” associated with R in the early part of the case, as recorded in the diary:
An orange and a pear flew across the entire room where R was standing. The kitchen table was upset without any movement on the part of R. Milk and food were thrown off the table and stove. The bread-board was thrown on to the floor. Outside the kitchen a coat on its hanger flew across the room; a comb flew violently through the air and extinguished blessed candles; a Bible was thrown directly at the feet of R, but did not injure him in any way. While the family was visiting a friend in Boonsboro, Maryland, the rocker in which R was seated spun completely around through no effort on the part of the boy. R's desk at school moved about on the floor similar to the plate on a Ouija board. R did not continue his attendance out of embarrassment [Bishop 1949, 248].
It is well to consider here the sage advice of the late investigator and magician Milbourne Christopher not to accept statements of what actually happened from the suspected “poltergeist.” Regarding one such case, Christopher (1970, 149–60) pointed out that all that was necessary to see the events not as paranormal occurrences but as deliberate deceptions was to “suppose that what the boy said was not true, that he was in one room when he said he was in another in some instances. Also let us suppose that what people thought they saw and what actually happened were not precisely the same.” Experience shows that even “reliable witnesses” are capable of being deceived. As one confessed “poltergeist”—an eleven-year-old girl—observed: “I didn't throw all those things. People just imagined some of them” (Christopher 1970, 149). In the case of R, we must realize that the previously described events (such as the flying fruit) were not witnessed by Father Bishop, who reported them in his diary as background to the case, and so were necessarily second-hand or worse.
It was indeed trickery that was behind the poltergeist-like disturbances of 1848 that launched modern Spiritualism. As the Fox sisters confessed decades later, their pretended spirit contact began as the pranks of “very mischievous children” who, Margaret Fox explained, began their shenanigans “to terrify our dear mother, who was a very good woman and very easily frightened” and who “did not suspect us of being capable of a trick because we were so young.” The schoolgirls threw slippers at a disliked brother-in-law, shook the dinner table, and produced noises by bumping the floor with an apple on a string and by knocking on the bedstead (Nickell 1995).
The Fox sisters were followed in 1854 by the Davenport brothers, schoolboys Ira and William, who were the focus of cutlery that danced about the family's kitchen table as well as other odd events. Ira sometimes claimed that, when alone, spirits had whisked him to distant spots. Soon the boys advanced to spirit-rapped messages, “trance” writing and speaking, and other “spirit manifestations.” In his old age, Ira confessed to magician/paranormal investigator Harry Houdini that the brothers’ spirit communication—which launched and maintained their careers as two of the world's best-known Spiritualistic mediums—had all been produced by trickery. Indeed, they had been caught in deceptions many times (Nickell 1999).
The Foxes and Davenports are not isolated examples. It should therefore not be surprising to learn that the case of R, which began as a seeming poltergeist outbreak, soon advanced to one of alleged spirit communication, before finally escalating to one of supposed diabolic possession.
R had been close to an aunt, who often visited from St. Louis. A devoted Spiritualist, she introduced R to the Ouija board. With their fingers on the planchette, they saw it move about the board's array of printed letters, numbers, and the words yes and no to spell out messages—she told him—from spirits of the dead. (Actually, as skeptics know, the planchette is moved not by spirits but by the sitters’ involuntary—or voluntary!—muscular control [Nickell 1995, 58].) She also told R and his mother how, “lacking a Ouija board, spirits could try to get through to this world by rapping on walls” (Allen 2000
, 2).
R had played with the Ouija board by himself. Then began the outbreak of noises, and eleven days later he was devastated by his aunt's death in St. Louis. He returned to the Ouija board, spending hours at the practice and “almost certainly” used it to try to reach his beloved aunt (Allen 2000, 2–6). As R, his mother, and grandmother lay in R's bed and listened to the drumming sound, his mother asked aloud whether this was the aunt's spirit. If so, she added, “Knock three times” (thus adopting a practice of the Fox sisters). The diary records that the three thereupon felt “waves of air” striking them and heard distinct knocks followed by “claw scratchings on the mattress.”
POSSESSION?
Then, for approximately four continuous nights, markings appeared on the teenager's body, after which the claw-like scratches took the form of printed words. Whenever the scratching noise was ignored the mattress began to shake, at times violently, and at one time the coverlet was pulled loose (Bishop 1949, 246–47).
R's parents were becoming frantic. They had watched their son become unruly, even threatening to run away, and he seemed to be “on the verge of violence” (Allen 2000, 57). They sought help from a physician, who merely found the boy “somewhat high-strung,” then from a psychologist, whose opinions went unrecorded. A psychiatrist found R to be “normal,” but “declared that he did not believe the phenomena.” A Spiritualist and two Lutheran ministers were consulted (Bishop 1949, 248). One of the latter eventually advised the parents, “You have to see a Catholic priest. The Catholics know about things like this” (Allen 2000, 24).
A young priest was called in, but the boy's condition was worsening, and R was admitted to a Jesuit hospital some time between February 27 and March 6. The priest, Father E. Albert Hughes, prepared for an exorcism as seeming poltergeist and demonic outbreaks intensified. Reportedly, the nuns “couldn't keep the bed still,” scratches appeared on R's chest, and he began to curse in “a strange language.” A later source said it was Aramaic, but a still later “well-documented record” failed to mention “any such language competence” (Allen 2000, 36). The attempted exorcism reportedly ended abruptly when the boy, who had slipped a hand free and worked loose a piece of bedspring, slashed Hughes's arm from the shoulder to the wrist, a wound requiring over a hundred stitches (Allen 2000, 37).