The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries

by Colin Wilson

  What seems to have happened, in the case of Nelson Nelson, the rapist described at the beginning of this chapter, is that his suggestions made his patients totally unaware of their bodies and that he committed the sexual assaults while the patients were virtually asleep, as if under anesthesia.

  But it would be a mistake to assume that this supports the view that a hypnotist could not persuade an unwilling subject to submit to sexual intercourse. In his book Open to Suggestion (1989), a study of the abuse of hypnosis, Robert Temple devotes a whole chapter to rape under hypnosis. One assault victim describes how the hypnotist raised her bra and caressed her breasts, yet she still made a further appointment. The next time, after placing her in a light trance,

  he caressed my breast again and after a while pulled down my pants and panties, and he even put his hand in my vagina . . . He wanted me to take his genitals in my hand. I said no . . . After a while I held his penis . . . I would have liked to have knocked him away, but in one way or another I couldn’t do it. [When] he started to get closer with his genitals, I started to panic and cried.

  Here it seems clear that she had no more desire to be raped than the victim of the two Portuguese criminals had to hand over her life savings. This is clearly a case in which – as with Thimotheus Castellan and Franz Walter – the will of the hypnotist prevailed over the will of the victim. Temple also cites a case of a homosexual assault on a soldier by a hypnotist – his colonel – in which the soldier felt immobilized and unable to get up from the bed, although he objected to the colonel’s advances.

  Temple himself describes a personal episode that throws an interesting light on hypnosis. He was undergoing a course of hypnotic treatment and one day failed to “wake up”. But because he was aware that his doctor was in a hurry to get away, he pretended to be fully conscious. Outside, he told his wife – who was waiting in the car – that he was still hypnotized and asked her to blow on his face; she thought it funny and screamed with laughter. On the way home, he saw a tree and ordered her to stop. Then he went and embraced the tree and burst into tears, telling it how beautiful it was. After that he lay on his back, staring at the night sky and uttering maudlin remarks. In fact, he behaved exactly as if drunk. Back at home, he drank down half a glass of neat gin – a drink he disliked – and finally “came to”. It is clear that he knew that a part of his mind was still under hypnosis but was unable to awaken it.

  This raises another important point. William James has pointed out that there are certain days on which we feel that our vital powers are simply not at their best; “our fires are damped; our draughts are checked”. We feel curiously dull, like a car whose engine is still cold and that keeps “cutting out”. In fact, the remarkable teacher Gurdjieff asserted that our ordinary consciousness is literally a state of sleep and that we have to make superhuman efforts if we are to wake up. (Hypnosis comes from the Greek hypnos – “sleep”.)

  Clearly, then, hypnosis is not some abnormal, freak condition that we can ignore. It offers clues to what is wrong with human beings and to why it is the easiest thing in the world to waste one’s life. Our basic problem is to “shake the mind awake”.

  Notice that when we are dull and bored, we feel “alienated” from reality. We feel trapped in the physical world and in the present moment; “reality” is a prison. This is the opposite of what happens when we are happy and excited – for example, when looking forward to some eagerly anticipated event – or when we are deeply relaxed. In these states, the world seems infinitely fascinating; reality seems to stretch around us in endless vistas, like a view from a mountaintop.

  It is obvious that in such states, the right and left brains are in close communication. When you are bored, you are trapped – not only in the physical world, but in your left brain. You are, in essence, a split-brain patient. The same thing happens if you are absorbed in a daydream, except that in this case you are trapped in your inner world – your right brain. If you spend too much time in such states – what is sometimes called “escapism” – you begin to find the real world unbearable, and you alternate between being trapped inside yourself and feeling trapped in the physical world.

  On the other hand, in moods of happiness or relaxation, you become, for a short time, a “whole-brain” patient. Your right brain – your intuitive self – now feels awake, and you realize that this “whole” state is far closer to what human consciousness was intended to be. One of the oddest things about these states is that, when we look back on our miseries and misfortunes, most of them seem laughably trivial, the result of the lopsided half-consciousness that we regard as “normal”.

  The French philosopher Sartre had a word for these states in which we feel trapped in the present moment: “nausea”. And, oddly enough, he regarded “nausea” as the fundamental reality of human existence – what you might call the basic state of human consciousness – rather like seeing an attractive woman with her hair in curlers and cold cream smeared all over her face. It follows, of course, that Sartre felt that human life is meaningless and that – as he put it in a famous phrase – “man is a useless passion”. His close associate Simone de Beauvoir captured the spirit of “nausea” when she wrote: “I look at myself in vain in a mirror, tell myself my own story. I can never grasp myself as an entire object. I experience in myself the emptiness that is myself. I feel that I am not”. But obviously, she was simply talking about the experience of being trapped in left-brain consciousness. Yet it is quite clear that she was mistaken when she said that she could never grasp herself as an entire object and that she felt “she is not”. In “whole-brain” states, we have a curious sense of our own reality and that of the world. We suddenly know that “we are”.

  What is so interesting here is that Sartre’s whole philosophy of human existence – he is known as one of the founding figures of existentialism – is based on his mistaken notion that “nausea” is some fundamental truth about human reality – the beautiful woman in hair curlers. Moreover, it is a philosophy that is echoed by some of the most respectable figures in modern literature, from Ernest Hemingway and Albert Camus to Graham Greene and Samuel Beckett. It could be said to dominate modern philosophy and modern literature. Yet we can see that it is simply a misunderstanding. “Nausea” is not some glimpse of reality; it is as unimportant as a headache, and in some ways curiously similar. If Sartre had known about the right and left hemispheres, he would have recognized that he was greatly exaggerating the importance of “nausea”. And if we could grasp, once and for all, that “alienation” in left-brain consciousness is not a glimpse of the reality of the human condition, we would experience an enormous and immediate rise in our level of optimism and vitality.

  There is another important inference to be drawn from all this. Hypnosis, as we have seen, is basically suggestion. The hypnotist’s suggestion (“your eyelids are feeling heavy . . .”) has the effect of trapping us in left-brain consciousness. Boredom and pessimism have the same effect. But if you believe – like Sartre – that life is meaningless and “man is a useless passion”, then you are in a permanent condition of negative self-suggestion, and entrapment in left-brain consciousness becomes your normal mode of awareness. So “nausea” becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Entrapment in left-brain consciousness is bad enough, but it becomes ten times worse if you accept it as a norm. On the other hand, if you are aware that whole-brain consciousness is the norm, then states of “trapped” left-brain consciousness would be accepted as casually as a headache.

  This, then, is the real importance of Puységur’s discovery of hypnosis. It was the recognition of a curious anomaly that raised enormous questions about the human mind. The total eclipse of hypnosis during the nineteenth century reveals that these questions were too uncomfortable to be faced; it was easier to dismiss them and to stick to the old commonsense view of human awareness. Now we find ourselves at an interesting crossroads when we accept the reality of hypnosis (although there are still a few academics who dism
iss it as a delusion) yet fail to grasp its implications. When these are finally grasped and taken for granted by every high school student – as we now take for granted the notion of the unconscious mind or of childhood eroticism – man will be prepared to begin a voyage of discovery into his own unexplored potentialities.

  26

  The Enigma of Identical Twins

  One Mind in Two Bodies

  When Jim Lewis was six years old, he learned that he had an identical twin brother. Their unmarried mother had put them up for adoption soon after they were born in August 1939. Jim had been adopted by a couple named Lewis in Lima, Ohio; his brother was adopted by a family named Springer in Dayton, Ohio. Oddly enough, both boys were christened “Jim” by their new parents.

  In 1979, when he was thirty-nine, Jim Lewis decided to try to find his twin brother. The court that had arranged the adoption was exceptionally helpful. Six weeks later, Jim Lewis knocked on the door of Jim Springer in Dayton. The moment they shook hands they felt close, as if they had been together all their lives. But when they began to compare notes they became aware of a staggering series of coincidences. To begin with, they had the same health problems. Both were compulsive nail-biters and suffered from insomnia. Both had started to experience migraines at the age of eighteen, and stopped having them at the same age. Both had heart problems. Both had developed haemorrhoids. They were exactly the same weight, but had both put on ten pounds at exactly the same period of their lives, and then lost it again at the same time.

  All this might seem to indicate that genetic programming is far more precise and complex than anyone had suspected. But their coincidences went much further than genetics. Both had married girls named Linda, divorced, then married girls called Betty. Both had named their sons James Allan. Both had owned a dog named Toy. Both had worked as deputy sheriff, petrol-station attendant, and at McDonald’s Hamburger restaurants. Both spent their holidays on the same Florida beach. Both chain-smoked the same make of cigarette. Both had basement workshops in which they made furniture . . .

  The twins were fascinated, not only by these similarities in experience but by their mental similarities – one would start to say something and the other would finish it.

  Their reunion received wide press coverage, and they appeared on the Johnny Carson chat show. And in Minnesota a psychologist named Tom Bouchard was so intrigued that he persuaded the University to give him a grant to study the “Jim twins” scientifically. Then he went on to look for other similar pairs: that is, twins who were separated at a very early age, and who had not seen each other since. In their first few years of research they discovered thirty-four sets of such twins. And again and again they discovered the same extraordinary coincidences – coincidences that cannot be scientifically explained. Two British twins, Margaret Richardson and Terry Connolly, who did not even know they were twins until they were in their mid-thirties, had married on the same day within an hour of each other. Two others, Dorothy Lowe and Bridget Harrison, had decided to keep a diary for just one year, 1962, and had both filled in exactly the same days. The diaries looked identical because they were of the same make and colour. Both played the piano as children but gave it up in the same year. Both like eye-catching jewellery.

  Since then work on twins has continued to show that in many cases – particularly of identical twins – there are incredible coincidences. Identical twins are those who are formed by a splitting of the same ovum. They have identical genes, which means they have identical eyes, ears, limbs, even fingerprints. The scientific term for such twins is monozygotic, or MZ for short. Dizygotic twins (DZ) are formed from two different eggs. The astonishing level of “coincidence” applies mainly to MZ twins. In fact, the similarities in many cases become almost monotonous. For example, the twins last mentioned, Bridget Harrison and Dorothy Lowe, had sons called respectively Richard Andrew and Andrew Richard. Their daughters were called Katherine Louise and Karen Louise, but Dorothy Lowe had originally intended to call her daughter Katherine, and changed it to Karen to please a relative. Both wear the same perfume. Both leave their bedroom doors ajar. Both had had meningitis. Both collect soft toys and had cats called Tiger. Bouchard’s intelligence tests showed they had identical IQs.

  Barbara Herbert and Daphne Goodship were the twins of an unmarried Finnish student, and were adopted by different families at birth. Both their adoptive mothers died when they were children. Both had fallen downstairs when they were fifteen and broken an ankle. Both met their future husbands at town-hall dances when they were sixteen, and married in their early twenties. Both had early miscarriages, then each had two boys followed by a girl. Both have a heart murmur and a slightly enlarged thyroid. Both read the same popular novelists and take the same women’s magazine. And when they met for the first time both had tinted their hair the same shade of auburn, and were wearing beige dresses, brown velvet jackets and identical white petticoats.

  In 1979 Jeanette Hamilton and Irene Read each discovered they had twin sisters, and hastened to get together. They discovered that both suffered from claustrophobia and dislike of water, both sit with their backs to the sea on beaches, both hated heights, both got a pain in the same spot in the right leg in wet weather, and both are compulsive calculators. As children they had led scout packs, and they had both worked at one time for the same cosmetics firm.

  Two male twins studied by Bouchard had been brought up in backgrounds that could scarcely have been more different. Oscar Stohr and Jack Yufe were born in Trinidad in 1933, then their parents went off in opposite directions, each taking a twin. Oscar went to Germany and became a member of the Nazi youth movement, while Jack was brought up as an orthodox Jew. They met for the first time at the airport in 1979, and found they were both wearing square, wire-rimmed glasses and blue shirts with epaulettes; they had identical moustaches. Closer study showed remarkable similarities in their habits. Both flushed the lavatory before and after using it, stored rubber bands on their wrists, and liked to eat alone in restaurants so they can read. Their speech rhythms were identical, although one spoke only German and the other only English. Both had the same gait and the same way of sitting. Both had the same sense of humour – for example, a tendency to sneeze loudly in lifts to startle the other passengers.

  It is obviously very difficult, if not impossible, to explain such a series of “coincidences” without positing some form of telepathy – that is, some form of hidden connection between the twins – that persisted even when they were separated by long distances. In fact Jung, who invented the word “synchronicity” (see Chapter 54) for “meaningful coincidences”, would have accepted the telepathic explanation: there are many anecdotes in his work that are designed to illustrate the reality of telepathy. But even telepathy cannot explain how two sisters met their husbands under similar circumstances or worked for the same cosmetic firm; it must be either dismissed as coincidence or explained in terms of some peculiar theory about “individual destinies”, or even what Professor Joad once called “the undoubted strangeness of time”. If people can have glimpses of the future, or dream of events before they happen, it suggests that, in some odd way these events are already “programmed”, like a film that has already been made. If individual lives are to some extent “pre-programmed”, then perhaps the lives of MZ twins have the same basic programming . . .

  Other cases certainly seem to demonstrate the reality of telepathy. In 1980 two female twins appeared in court in York, and attracted the attention of reporters because they made the same gestures at the same time, smiling simultaneously, raising their hands to their mouths at the same moment, and so on. The Chaplin twins, Freda and Greta, were in court for a peculiar reason: they had both apparently developed a powerful “crush” on a lorry-driver, Mr Ken Iveson, who used to live next door, and had been pursuing him for fifteen years. They seem to have had rather a curious way of showing affection, shouting abuse and hitting him with their handbags. When this had been going on for fifteen years Mr Iveson de
cided to ask the court for protection.

  The publicity surrounding the court case led to various medical studies of the twins. Their obsession with Mr Iveson was defined medically as erotomania, a condition in which a patient sinks into melancholy or mental disturbance due to romantic love. The twins proved to be mentally subnormal, although this seems to have been a later development. At school they had been slow, but not backward, and teachers described them as neat, clean and quiet. The deputy headmaster placed the blame on their mother. “It was quite clear that they had a doting mother who never allowed them a seperate identity”. They were apparently dressed identically and allowed no friends.

  The twins showed a tendency to the “mirror imaging” which is often typical of MZ twins. (That is to say, if one is left-handed, the other is right-handed; if the whorls of the hair grow clockwise in one, they grow anti-clockwise in the other, and so on.) One twin wears a bracelet on the left wrist, the other on the right. When one broke a shoelace the other removed her own shoelace on the opposite side.

  At some point the twins had been forced to leave home – neither they nor their mother would disclose why. At thirty-seven they were unmarried and jobless; they lived in a local service hostel. They cooked breakfast in their room together, both holding the frying-pan, then went out in identical clothes. When they both had identical grey coats with different-coloured buttons they simply swapped half the buttons so each had both colours. When given different pairs of gloves, they took one of each pair. When given two different bars of soap, they cut both in half and shared them. They told a woman journalist that they had one brain, and were really one person, claiming to know exactly what the other is thinking. Their “simultaneous behaviour” suggests that some form of telepathy exists between them. They occasionally quarrel, hitting one another lightly with identical handbags, then sulking for hours. But in spite of these disagreements, it seems clear that their common aim is to exclude the external world and to live in their own small private universe.