The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries

by Colin Wilson

  Yet Allison continued to reject the notion of “spirit possession” until he encountered a girl named Elise, who revealed several personalities under hypnosis. Most of these were able to describe their history – what traumas had caused them to be “born”. But one of them claimed to be a man named Dennis, who explained that he had entered Elise’s body when she was experimenting with black magic as a teenager and that he enjoyed remaining there because he enjoyed having sex with another of Elise’s personalities, a girl named Shannon. The sex was not, as might be supposed, a bodiless intercourse between two “spirits”; when Shannon took over Elise’s body and had sex with a man, Dennis would enter the man’s body. And although Elise and Shannon shared the same body, Dennis was not interested in having sex with Elise, only with Shannon. Eventually, with the help of another “inner self-helper”, Elise was cured. It was this case that finally convinced Allison that multiple personality may sometimes be a case of spirit possession.

  Another case confirmed this. In curing a girl named Sophia (by “integrating” her various personalities), Allison discovered that two personalities remained “left over”. Under hypnosis, Sophia was regressed to birth and described how the doctor who had been her mother’s lover had suffocated two triplets at birth but had been interrupted before he could dispose of the third – Sophia. The other two children had then moved into Sophia’s body. Armed with this knowledge, Allison was able to rid Sophia of her two sisters and cure her.

  Allison concluded that there were many possible causes of multiple personality, such as compulsive neurosis and violent traumas. But he also listed “possession” by another living person – as in the case of “Art” and his mother – possession by a dead person – as in Dr Bull’s case of the painter Gifford – and possession by a “nonhuman spirit”. By this he was referring to what would once have been called “demoniacal possession”. In a paper on multiple personality, the parapsychologist Stanley Krippner reveals that an increasing number of psychiatrists accept the “spirit hypothesis”.

  What, then, is to be made of this bewildering mass of evidence about “possession”, which most doctors would dismiss as childish fantasy? Belief in possession depends, clearly, on the prior assumption that “spirits” actually exist and that what happens at séances, for example, is genuine “possession” by the dead. This is doubted by many eminent parapsychologists and even by some mediums themselves; they prefer to believe that all that is involved in such cases is telepathy and some form of extrasensory perception (ESP). But, as we have seen, William James himself was finally convinced by Mrs Piper. So was Richard Hodgson, who had her shadowed by private detectives to see how she acquired her information – and who learned nothing whatever. But he was staggered when Mrs Piper told him about a girl named Jessie, to whom he had been engaged in Australia and who had subsequently died; Mrs Piper’s “control”, Phinuit, was able to report to Hodgson a conversation with Jessie about which no one else knew.

  Hyslop himself was inclined to believe that that mediumship was a matter of “super ESP” until he was finally convinced by William James – many years after James’s death. Hyslop received a letter from an Irish medium, telling him that a spirit who called himself William James (and of whom the medium had never heard) had asked him to contact Hyslop and remind him of the “red pajamas”. James had once agreed with Hyslop that whichever of them died first should try to communicate with the other. At first, the message about red pajamas meant nothing to Hyslop. Then he suddenly remembered. When he and James had visited Paris as young men, their luggage had failed to arrive, and Hyslop had been forced to go out and buy some pajamas. All he had been able to find at short notice was a bright red pair, and James had teased him for days about his poor taste in pajamas. It was this message that finally convinced Hyslop of the survival of the dead.

  If, like Hyslop, we can accept the notion of “survival”, and if, like Kardec, we can accept that spirits can, under certain conditions, share the human brain, then it is hard to see why we should not also accept that they can influence people’s actions – that is, “possess” them. It is important to note that “spiritualists” are in general agreement that such “possession” is rare, since it is impossible for a spirit actually to dislodge the incumbent, or even to share the body, unless there is a close affinity between “possessor” and “possessed”.

  The Loudun case seems to provide support for this view. Kardec states that poltergeists can only manifest themselves by stealing human energy, particularly sexual energy. Sister Jeanne’s autobiography makes it clear that her own sexual frustrations alone could have provided a host of “entities” with the necessary energy. And by the time a dozen or so nuns were writhing on the floor and making suggestions that caused even hardened roués to blush, the convent must have been awash with sexual energy. Most cases of possession in nunneries seem to involve the same feverish sexuality. Two decades before the Loudun case, fourteen-year-old Madeleine de Demandolx de la Palud was seduced by Brother Louis Gaufridi, twenty years her senior; the liaison was broken up and she was sent to a nunnery at Aix-en-Provence. Two years later Madeleine began to see devils and smashed a crucifix. Her hysteria soon spread to the other nuns; Madeleine accused Gaufridi not only of seducing her but of introducing her to various diabolic practices. Gaufridi was asked to try and exorcise the demons, and when he failed, was put in prison.

  At his trial, Madeleine declared that her allegations were all imaginings, after which she began to move her hips back and forth in a lascivious manner. The judge chose to disbelieve her; Gaufridi was tortured until he “confessed”, then was burned at the stake.

  It is important to realize that fornication among the clergy was a commonplace occurrence in the seventeenth century and that seduction of nuns by their confessors was far from rare. In 1625 a French orphan named Madeleine Bavent was seduced by a Franciscan priest, appropriately named Bonnetemps. In the following year she entered a convent run by Brother Pierre David, who secretly belonged to the Illuminati – a sect that believed that the Holy Spirit could do no harm and that therefore, sex was perfectly acceptable among priests. David apparently insisted that Madeleine should strip to the waist as he administered communion; other nuns, she later claimed, strolled around naked. She claimed that she and David never engaged in actual intercourse – only mutual masturbation – and that when David died in 1628, his successor, Brother Mathurin Picard, continued to caress her genitals during confession.

  It was after Picard’s death in 1642 (when Madeleine was thirty-five) that the nuns began to manifest the usual signs of possession: writhing on the ground, contorting their bodies, and making howling noises like animals, as they alleged they were being ravished by demons. Fourteen of the fifty-two nuns exhibited these symptoms, and all put the blame on Madeleine.

  Madeleine then told the full story of David, Picard, and the latter’s assistant, Brother Boulle. She claimed that Picard and Boulle had indulged in various “magical” acts involving communion wafers and menstrual blood and eventually in “sabbats”, in which a Black Mass was recited. The priests had draped their erections with consecrated wafers with a hole cut in the middle and “thus arrayed gave themselves to the women present” – Madeleine being favoured five or six times.

  Madeleine was accused of being a witch and was discharged from the order; Picard’s corpse was dug up, excommunicated, and tossed onto a refuse heap. This led the priest’s brother to create a scandal, and the result was a trial that ended with Boulle being tortured and burned alive, together with another priest named Duval. Madeleine, confined in a convent and brutally treated, made several suicide attempts and finally died at the age of forty. The nuns were all dispersed to other convents.

  Madeleine’s descriptions of sabbats and Black Masses sound like pure invention. But half a century later the notorious chambre ardente (“lighted chamber”) affair revealed that many priests did, in fact, take part in such practices. When Louis XIV was informed by his chief of
police that many women were asking for absolution for murdering their husbands, he ordered an investigation. It revealed that an international poisoning ring, organized by men of influence, existed. A number of fortune-tellers provided their clients with poisons and love philters, while priests performed Black Masses involving the sacrifice of babies and magical ceremonies in which they copulated with women on altars. These facts duly emerged in secret sessions of the “lighted chamber”, and were recorded in detail. (The king later ordered all records to be destroyed, but the official transcript was overlooked.) One hundred and four of the accused were sentenced, thirty-six of them to death, while two of the fortune-tellers were burned alive. It is difficult for us to understand why the Church was involved in this wave of demonology – the likeliest explanation is that seventeenth-century rationalism was undermining its authority and that the protest against this authority took the form of licentiousness and black magic. Whatever the explanation, the chambre ardente transcripts leave no doubt that it really happened.

  One interesting question remains: whether, as Ralph Allison believes, there is such a thing as possession by “nonhuman” entities – i.e., whether some form of “demoniacal possession” is a reality. Of all these cases involving “possession”, the Loudun affair remains the most puzzling. Even if we can accept Wickland’s belief that human beings can be influenced by “earthbound spirits”, it is difficult to understand how five of the exorcists became victims of the demonic possession and four actually died of it. None of the patients described by Wickland, Crabtree, or Allison was driven to this extreme.

  One possible clue is provided by a curious little book that appeared in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1972. It is entitled Who Are the Dead?, and the author is listed as Helen Quartermaine – which is not, apparently, her real name.

  The author’s view, briefly, is that in addition to the physical body, all human beings possess a “personality body” – also known as the psyche – which is made of a finer matter than the physical body. This personality body permeates the physical body – the author uses the image of a ball of wool soaked in water to illustrate how the personality body “imbues” the physical body. The points of contact between the two bodies, she says, are the seven endocrine glands, also known as the seven chakras of Hinduism.

  So far, Helen Quartermaine is simply echoing the “occult tradition”, in which the personality body is sometimes called the astral body. (Occult tradition also recognizes the human “aura”, or etheric body, which might be regarded as its “life field” – the equivalent of a magnet’s magnetic field.) But she goes on to make some far more startling assertions. Our problem, she says, is to keep these three “bodies” in alignment. In most people the two “higher bodies” tend to jut out of the right side. This lopsidedness means that the left side is unprotected and can easily be “invaded” by other disembodied personalities. When people get angry or upset, she explains, the personality receives a shock and is displaced sideways. And it may remain this way for a long time. Life force drains away into the physical body, and the result is serious depletion. She goes on to say: “Considering the endless list of trifling incidences which can cause a person to be malpositioned within his three bodies . . . it follows that all of us play host to our dead, by leaving the door of our physical bodies open to admit them. Worse follows, however, for we must also leave ourselves open to their mental, physical and emotional sicknesses”.

  She goes on to describe how the dead may attach themselves to those they love. Thus far she is in basic agreement with Wickland. But she then states: “Sometimes, of course, the motivating force is quite the opposite, and hate becomes the destroying power. There are many well-known cases of revenge striking from beyond the grave”.

  Ms Quartermaine next cites the case of Barbara Graham, executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin in June 1953 for her part in the murder of an elderly widow, Mabel Monahan, in the course of robbery. By 1953 Barbara, then thirty, had become a gangster’s moll as well as an alcoholic and drug addict. On 9 March she agreed to help the gang enter Mrs Monahan’s house in Burbank, California, by knocking on the door and asking to use the phone to contact a garage. Her four accomplices, Jack Santo, Baxter Shorter, Emmett Perkins, and John L. True, rushed into the house behind her and tied up the sixty-three-year-old widow while they searched the house for the fortune she was supposed to be guarding for the owner of a gambling casino. What actually happened is uncertain; the body of the woman, strangled with a strip of bedsheet, was found three days later by the gardener; her head, wrapped in a pillowcase, had been battered by a heavy blunt instrument.

  The case was puzzling, since the victim’s purse contained $500, and $10,000 worth of jewelry was untouched. But after questioning various underworld figures, the police called on Baxter Shorter, who – under a promise of complete immunity – told them that Santo, Perkins, True, and Barbara Graham had been involved. (A man named William Upshaw had also agreed to take part but had backed out.) Barbara, he said, had rung the doorbell, and when the old lady opened the door, True and Perkins had rushed in. When Shorter finally went in to see what was taking them so long, he saw Barbara pistol-whipping Mrs Monahan. Santo had tied the pillowcase around her head and Perkins had strangled her. A search of the house failed to reveal the gambler’s hoard, and they left empty-handed.

  Shorter’s story was accepted and he was released. But he was soon kidnapped by Perkins – who was still free – and murdered. Later, Perkins, Santo, and Barbara Graham were arrested in a motel. Barbara denied that she was present in the Monahan home; whether or not this was true, it is certain that many people in court did not believe that she had done the beating, as True alleged. But the main evidence against her was that she had attempted to bribe a fellow prisoner – in fact, a police officer – to provide her with an alibi for $2,500. She had also told the policeman that Shorter had been “well taken care of”.

  Barbara Graham was tried, together with Santo and Perkins (her lover). Mainly on True’s evidence, she was found guilty. She died in the gas chamber on the same day as Santo and Perkins (who had been sentenced to death for a second time for the murder of a whole family committed during the course of robbery).

  Helen Quartermaine states:

  [Barbara Graham] swore she was innocent, but when the verdict found her guilty she pledged herself to see that all the men concerned with her conviction would also, like herself, die prematurely. This list included the three men who were said to be her accomplices.

  The first to die after her execution was the one who had turned prosecution witness and whose evidence damned her; he was involved in the collision of two boats on the Mississippi and killed outright. The other two men were retried at a later date and found guilty; they were also executed. This was only the beginning. The District Attorney in charge of her prosecution died very suddenly and unexpectedly from cancer. The fear grew when the warden of San Quentin prison . . . was struck dead by heart failure. Next came the abrupt death, again from cancer, of the Superior Court Judge who sentenced her. In February 1958, the man who informed the police against Mrs Graham was crushed to death on a journey by cars piling up. Another informer on the lady’s catalogue of revenge has since disappeared, and police have strong reason to suspect he may have been murdered.

  This account has several minor inaccuracies. Santo and Perkins died the same day, not “at a later date”. John True died in January, not February, 1958, when a Dutch freighter rammed a small craft in a fog. William Upshaw was not the man who informed the police on Barbara Graham – but he certainly died when he drove into a road obstruction in California. The “other informer” – Shorter – had died long before Barbara Graham.

  Helen Quartermaine is convinced that these deaths were actually caused by Barbara Graham’s “personality body”, out for revenge. Wickland, as we have seen, believed that such influence is possible and that Harry Thaw killed Stanford White under the influence of an entity – or entities – seeking reven
ge. Helen Quartermaine argues that the kind of lapse of attention that caused William Upshaw to drive his car into an obstruction, or that caused the Dutch freighter in the fog to run down the boat carrying divers (including John True), could easily be induced by a “vengeful spirit”.

  John True and William Upshaw were responsible for the death sentence that sent Barbara Graham to the gas chamber. The Loudun inquisitors were responsible for the torture of Urbain Grandier and for his agonizing death at the stake. Helen Quartermaine would undoubtedly regard the possession of the Loudun inquisitors as the revenge of Urbain Grandier on his tormentors.

  Whether plausible or not, the suggestion may be regarded as a disturbing footnote to Wickland’s Thirty Years Among the Dead.

  43

  Psychometry

  “Telescope into the Past”

  In the winter of 1921 members of the Metapsychic Institute in Paris met together to test a clairvoyant. Someone produced a letter and asked someone to pass it to her; before it could reach her it was grabbed by a novelist called Pascal Forthunny, who said scathingly: “It can’t be difficult to invent something that applies to anybody”. He then closed his eyes and pronounced solemnly: “Ah yes, I see a crime, a murder . . .” When he had finished the man who had brought the letter said: “That was written by Henri Landru”. Landru was the “Bluebeard” who was then on trial for the murders of eleven women. The sceptic Forthunny had discovered that he possessed the curious ability known as psychometry – the ability to “sense” the history of an object by holding it in the hand.