by Colin Wilson
He was restless, smoked incessantly, talked too much, and seemed too intent on making a good impression. Halfway through the evening our attitude completely changed. We recognised that he was not only an unusually gifted man, but that he had the indefinable something that marks the man who has seriously worked upon himself.
Shah, he says, did not claim to be a teacher, but he claimed to have been sent by his own teacher, and that “he had the support of the ‘Guardians of the Tradition’”. He goes on to quote a document Shah gave him, “Declaration of the People of the Tradition”, which stated that a “secret, special, superior form of knowledge” really exists, and could be transmitted
to the people to whom this material is addressed . . . This knowledge is concentrated, administered and presided over by three forms of individual . . . They have been called an “Invisible Hierarchy” because normally they are not in communication or contact with ordinary human beings: certainly not in two-way communication with them.
Bennett then goes on to tell how he was persuaded by Shah to hand over Coombe Springs, with no strings attached, and a note of bitterness creeps in when he describes how Shah sold the house for £100,000 only a year later. Yet it remains clear that in spite of a certain personal animosity towards Shah, Bennett still does not discount the possibility that he is precisely what he says he is.
In any case, Campbell’s thesis does not stand or fall by whether the reader is willing to accept Idries Shah as a representative of “the secret people”. It was Bennett himself who invented the phrase “the Hidden Directorate” in The Dramatic Universe. Campbell summarizes the thesis of his book:
The script for the long human story was written by intelligences much greater than man’s own . . . Responsibility for this process on Earth lies with an Intelligence which has been called The Hidden Directorate. This may correspond to the level symbolised in occult legend as an Individual (eg “The Regent” or “The Ancient of Days”, etc). It is to be equated either with the Demiurgic level or with the level immediately below.
Side by side with action on humanity-in-the-mass, the Executive and its subordinates are concerned with local attempts to raise the conscious level of individual men exceptionally.
Such specially selected ordinary individuals may aspire to qualify for participation in the work of the Executive. The process by which they may so qualify is the Magnum Opus – the “Great Work”. This is equivalent to a vertical ascent to a higher level as opposed to a gradual rise with the evolutionary tide.
In 1857 an American schoolmistress and authoress, Delia Bacon, produced her controversial work Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded (see chapter 51) in which she suggested that “Shakespeare” was actually a group of Elizabethan scholars, probably led by Francis Bacon, whose aim was to express new ideas that would otherwise have led to torture and imprisonment. The book was received with derision, and Delia Bacon went insane and died soon after. Campbell expresses the same theory at two points in The People of the Secret, and skeptics will undoubtedly feel that his whole thesis deserves the same reception as Delia Bacon’s. The commonsense objection is that men who represented turning-points in human history – Mohammed, Cosimo de’ Medici, Darwin, Einstein – were obviously not members of some “Hidden Directorate”. And if no “hidden directorate” is needed to explain their existence or their impact on history, then why bother to entertain such an unnecessary hypothesis?
On the other hand, cultural historians have often observed how certain ideas seem to be “in the air” at certain times, and the Germans coined a word to express this phenomenon, the Zeitgeist. Every major discovery and invention seems to have been made by at least two people at the same time (evolution, photography, relativity, sound-recording, television). The biologist Rupert Sheldrake has even produced a theory (“morphic resonance”) arguing that once any difficult process has been achieved, from crystallization of a new substance to the creation of a new idea, it “spreads” like a wave on the surface of a pond, facilitating the process wherever it occurs. Again, Jung’s idea of synchronicity (see chapter 54) suggests some connection between the mind and the world of physical matter which finds no support in the western philosophy of science. Such ideas indicate a movement away from the “dead” universe of nineteenth-century science and towards the ”intelligent universe” posited by Dr David Foster. It could be argued that a “hidden directorate”, responsible for evolution, is only a logical extension of this idea.
Campbell mentions Yeats’s book A Vision as an example of a work inspired by “the Tradition”. This work is a “system” of human types, expressed in terms of the phases of the moon, and was produced by Yeats’s wife Georgie through automatic writing. Yeats’s “communicators” also sketched out their own vision of history, which has much in common with that advanced in People of the Secret. But when Yeats offered to “spend what remained of life explaining and piecing together” this complex system, he received the reply: “No, we have come to give you metaphors for poetry”. Even if the “Hidden Directorate” is accepted only on this level, it remains a fascinating and fruitful hypothesis.
41
Poltergeists
The poltergeist or “noisy ghost” is one of the most baffling phenomena in the whole realm of the paranormal. There are thousands of people who do not believe in ghosts, but who will reluctantly admit that the evidence for the poltergeist is too strong to ignore. The favourite theory of such skeptics is that the poltergeist is some unexplained freak of the human mind.
If the poltergeist is a “ghost” or spirit, as its name implies, then its chief characteristic is as a spirit of mischief. Poltergeists cause objects to fly through the air, doors to open and close, pools of water to appear from nowhere. And they are by no means a rarity; at this very moment some case of poltergeist activity is probably going on within a dozen miles of the reader of this book. (I know of a case that is going on within a dozen miles of me as I write this.)
One of the earliest known cases was recorded in a chronicle called the Annales Fuldenses and dates back to AD 858. It took place in a farmhouse at Bingen, on the Rhine; the chronicle describes an “evil spirit” that threw stones, and made the walls shake as if men were striking them with hammers. Stone-throwing is one of the most typical of poltergeist activities. The poltergeist also caused fires – another of their favourite activities (although, for some reason, they seldom do serious damage) – in this case burning the farmer’s crops soon after they were gathered in. It also developed a voice – a much rarer feature in poltergeist cases – and denounced the man for various sins, including fornication and adultery. Priests sent by the Bishop of Mainz apparently failed to exorcise it; in fact, it is virtually impossible to get rid of a poltergeist by exorcism ceremonies.
It was only after the formation of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882 that the poltergeist was carefully studied. Then it was observed that in the majority of cases there were adolescent children present in the houses where such occurrences took place; it seemed a reasonable assumption that the children were somehow the “cause” of the outbreak. And in the age of Freud the most widely held theory was that the poltergeist is some kind of “unconscious” manifestation of adolescent sexual energies; but no one has so far offered a theory as to exactly how this can occur.
In England one of the most spectacular cases is also one of the earliest to be thoroughly recorded: the so-called “phantom drummer of Tedworth”. It took place in the home of a magistrate called John Mompesson in March 1661. The whole household was kept awake all night by loud drumming noises. The magistrate had been responsible for the arrest of a vagrant named William Drury, who attracted attention in the street by beating a drum. Mompesson had the drum confiscated, in spite of Drury’s appeals. Drury escaped from custody – he was being held for possessing forged papers – without his drum. It was after this that the disturbances in Mompesson’s household began, and continued for two years. The “spirit” also slammed doo
rs, made panting noises like a dog, and scratching noises like huge rats, as well as purring noises like a cat. It also developed a voice and shouted, “A witch, a witch”! It emptied ashes and chamberpots into the children’s beds, and caused various objects to fly through the air. In 1663 Drury, who was in prison for stealing a pig, admitted to a visitor that he was somehow responsible for the disturbances, and said they would continue until Mompesson gave him satisfaction for taking away his drum. But the phenomena finally seem to have faded away.
A famous poltergeist haunting took place in the home of the Rev. Samuel Wesley – grandfather of the founder of Methodism – at his rectory at Epworth in Lincolnshire. “Old Jeffrey”, as the family came to call it, kept the family awake on the night of 1 December 1716 with appalling groans, and – a few nights later – with loud knocking noises. It also produced sounds of footsteps walking along the corridors and in empty rooms. The “focus” of the disturbances seemed to be nineteen-year-old Hetty Wesley, who was usually asleep when the disturbances began, and who trembled in her sleep. As usual, the disturbances gradually faded away.
The famous case of the “Cock Lane” ghost ended with an innocent man going to prison for two years. The “focus” of the disturbances was ten-year-old Elizabeth Parsons, daughter of a clerk called Richard Parsons. The Parsons family had two lodgers: a retired innkeeper named William Kent and his common-law wife Fanny Lynes, whose sister Elizabeth had been Kent’s previous wife. (This was why they could not marry, the law preventing a man from marrying his deceased wife’s sister.) One night when Kent was away Fanny Lynes asked the ten-year-old girl to sleep with her to keep her company; they were kept awake by scratching and rapping noises from behind the wainscot. Soon after this Fanny Lynes died of smallpox, and Kent moved elsewhere. The strange rappings continued, and a clergyman named Moore tried to communicate with the “spirit”, using a code of one rap for yes, two for no. By this means the “spirit” identified itself as Fanny Lynes, and accused her ex-“husband” of poisoning her with arsenic.
Parsons was unfortunately unaware that poltergeists tell lies more often than not. And he was not displeased to hear that Kent was a murderer, for he was nursing a grudge against him. Kent had lent him money which he had failed to repay, and was now suing him. So Parsons overlooked the fact that the knockings began before the death of Fanny Lynes, and made no attempt to keep the revelations secret.
In due course, Kent heard that he was being accused of murder by a “spirit”, and came to the house in Cock Lane, to hear for himself. When the raps accused him of murder he shouted angrily, “Thou art a lying spirit”.
The “ghost” became famous. But when a committee – including Dr Johnson – came to investigate, it preferred to remain silent, convincing Johnson that it was a fraud. Then Kent decided to prosecute for libel. The burden of proof lay on Elizabeth’s father who was for legal purposes the accuser. There was another test, and Elizabeth was told that if the ghost did not manifest itself this time, her mother and father would be thrown into prison; naturally, she made sure something happened. But servants peering through a crack saw that she was making the raps with a wooden board. She was denounced as a fake. At the trial Parsons was sentenced to two years in prison, as well as to stand three times in the pillory. His wife received a year; a woman who had often “communicated” with the spirit received six months. Even the parson was fined £588 – a huge sum for those days. But when Parsons was standing in the pillory the crowd was distinctly sympathetic and took up a collection for him – an unusual gesture in that age of cruelty, when crowds enjoyed pelting the malefactor in the pillory, sometimes even killing him. Regrettably, we know nothing of what happened to any of the protagonists after the trial. But it is very clear that the unfortunate Parsons family suffered a great injustice. Many witnesses testified earlier that it would have been impossible for Elizabeth to have faked the rapping noises.
One of America’s most famous cases occurred on the farm of a Tennessee farmer named John Bell; the case of the “Bell witch” is also unusual – in fact, virtually unique – in that the poltergeist ended by causing the death of its victim, Bell himself. Bell had nine children, one of whom, Betsy, was a girl of twelve; she was almost certainly the “focus”. The disturbances began in 1817 with scratching noises from the walls, and occasional knocks. Then invisible hands pulled bedclothes off the beds, and there were choking noises that seemed to come from a human throat. Then stones were thrown and furniture moved. The “spirit” frequently slapped Betsy, and her cheek would redden after the sounds of the blow; it also pulled her hair. After about a year the poltergeist developed a voice – a strange asthmatic croak. (Poltergeist voices seldom sound like human voices – it is as if the “entity” is having to master an unfamiliar medium). It made remarks like “I can’t stand the smell of a nigger”. After its manifestations Betsy was usually exhausted – she was obviously the source of its energy.
Then John Bell began to be attacked; his jaw became stiff and his tongue swelled. The poltergeist, which had now developed a normal voice, identified itself as an Indian, then as a witch called Old Kate Batts. (It used several voices.) It also declared that it would torment John Bell until he died, which it then proceeded to do. It pulled off his shoes, hit him in the face, and caused him to have violent physical convulsions. All this continued until one day in 1820 he was found in a deep stupor. The “witch” claimed that she had given “old Jack” a dose of a medicine that would kill him. And when Bell did in fact die the witch filled the house with shrieks of triumph. Then the disturbances abated. One day in 1821, as the family was eating supper, there was a loud noise in the chimney, and an object like a cannonball rolled out from the fireplace and turned into smoke. The witch’s voice cried: “I am going and will be gone for seven years”. But she stayed away for good.
One expert on poltergeists, Nandor Fodor, has suggested that the explanation of the Bell witch lies in an incestuous attack made on Betsy by her father, and that the poltergeist is a “personality fragment” that has somehow broken free of the rest of the personality. There is no real evidence for either of these claims.
Another famous American case took place in the home of the Rev. Eliakim Phelps in 1850. This poltergeist began by scattering furniture around and making curious dummies out of stuffed clothes. They were extremely lifelike and were constructed in a few minutes. Then the poltergeist entered the stone-throwing stage (most disturbances seem to go through a number of definite phases), breaking seventy-one windowpanes. Paper burst into flames and all kinds of objects were smashed. The twelve-year-old boy, Harry, was snatched up into the air, and on one occasion tied to a tree. His elder sister Anna, sixteen, was pinched and slapped. But when mother and children went off to Pennsylvania for the winter the disturbances ceased.
It was in fact a series of poltergeist disturbances that started the extraordinary nineteenth-century craze known as Spiritualism, which began with typical knocking noises in the home of the Fox family in Hydesville, New York State, in 1848; two daughters – Margaret, fifteen, and Kate, twelve – were obviously the “focuses”. A neighbour who questioned the “spirit” (with the usual code one knock for yes, two for no) was told that it was a peddler who had been murdered in the house. (Many years later, human bones and a peddler’s box were found buried in the cellar.) The notoriety of the case caused many other Americans to take up “spiritualism”, sitting around a table in the dark with clasped hands, and asking for spirits to “manifest” themselves. The Hydesville “spirit” finally delivered a message announcing a new era in spirit communication. And in fact spiritualism swept across the United States, then across Europe.
In the early 1850s a French educator named Léon-Denizard-Hyppolyte Rivail became interested in the new spiritualist craze; when two daughters of a friend proved to be proficient in “automatic writing” Rivail asked the “spirits” all kinds of questions, and received unusually constructive and serious answers. In due course these were publi
shed in The Spirits’ Book, which Rivail published under the pseudonym of Allan Kardec. It became for a while a kind of Bible of Spiritualism, although there was later a split within the movement, many influential Spiritualists rejecting Kardec’s belief in reincarnation.
In Paris in 1860 there had been a series of violent disturbances in a house in the Rue des Noyers – the usual window-smashing and furniture-throwing. Rivail requested to speak to the “spirit” responsible, and an entity that claimed to be a long-dead rag and bone man declared that it had used the “electrical energy” of a servant girl in the house to cause the disturbances. The girl, it said, was quite unaware of this – in fact, she was the most terrified of them all. He had been doing these things merely to amuse himself.
“Kardec” was convinced that poltergeists are “earth-bound spirits” – that is, dead people who for various reasons have been unable to advance beyond the purely material plane.
One of the most remarkable American cases of the nineteenth century was recorded in a book called The Great Amherst Mystery by Walter Hubbell, a stage magician who moved into the house of the Teed family in Amherst, Nova Scotia, in 1869 to investigate a poltergeist that concentrated its attention on an eighteen-year-old girl named Esther Cox. The disturbances had begun in the previous year, when Esther’s boy-friend, Bob MacNeal, had tried to order her into the woods at gunpoint, presumably to rape her; when interrupted he fled and never returned. Soon after this Esther and her sister Jane were kept awake by mouse-like rustling noises, and a cardboard box leapt into the air. Two nights later, Esther’s body seemed to swell like a balloon, but returned to normal after a sound like a thunder-clap. Bedclothes were thrown around the room. Esther’s pillow inflated like a balloon. In front of many witnesses, writing appeared on the wall saying, “Esther, you are mine to kill”. Esther often complained of an “electric feeling” running through her body. When the poltergeist got into its stride small fires broke out, objects flew around the room, furniture moved, and Esther turned into a kind of human magnet, to which knives and other metal objects stuck firmly. Hubbell succeeded in communicating with the “spirits”, who were able to prove their authenticity by telling him the number inside his watch and the date of coins in his pockets. When a barn burned down Esther was accused of arson and sentenced to four months in prison. When she came out again the manifestations stopped.