by David Hajdu
We walked around the building to the front door, and Madame Camille opened the door for us before we even knocked. “I was expecting you . . .”—very dramatic, low, solemn voice. I thought, Oh boy, here we go. Showtime! We looked at each other, and Madame Camille burst into a grin, and she said, “I always say that! I just heard your car pulling in. Sit down, please, both of you—sit down.”
She put us right at ease. Offered us tea. I don’t remember much about the environment. I couldn’t see very well. The atmosphere was what you’d have to call moody. The main light, and I think it might have been the only light, came from a couple of candlesticks, which, I noticed, had tiny oval light bulbs instead of wicks. That impressed me. I appreciated that here was somebody who was keeping up with the times.
She was very methodical and helpful. She carefully explained her rates to us and how much each hour would cost and whether we would be paying by cash or check. By now, Adrianne was beginning to get antsy, and she started to make some sounds. I couldn’t repeat for you what it sounded like, but it was nervous-like. [Schanbaker hums.] In my house growing up, when there was a thunderstorm, my mother always turned the radio on in the kitchen and kept it playing softly in the background. The signal would crackle and drop off and burst back on. That’s the closest thing I can think of to tell you how Adrianne sounded to me.
Madame Camille concentrated all her attention on Adrianne. They sat facing each other at a small round table. Crocheted tablecloth in that pineapple pattern—red. I was there with them, but it was like I wasn’t there. Camille reached across to Adrianne and held her two hands. She said, “Let’s close our eyes and be totally still and have a moment of silence.” Adrianne followed her instructions and sat there without making a sound.
Camille said, “Very good, child.” This is all going by my memory, mind you. But this is exactly the same way I told it to the police, so it’s official.
Everything was quiet, and Camille said, “Now, let’s meditate on the silence. When I say ‘meditate,’ I mean . . .”—and Adrianne interrupted her.
“I don’t hear any silence,” she said.
Camille said, “I understand, child—no one can hear silence. Silence is that which we experience when we hear nothing. It cannot be heard. Now . . .”
“I’m not a baby, Miss Camille,” Adrianne said, pulling her hands out of Camille’s grip. “I’m nine years old. I understand what you’re telling me. I’m just telling you that I don’t hear any silence.” Camille started to say something, and Adrianne interrupted her again. “Not now,” she said. “Not now. Not ever.”
Camille said, “Oh, well . . . Tell me all about that.”
And Adrianne proceeded to tell her everything we all know about her now. She had tried explaining it to her parents and her teachers, she said, but they didn’t want to know about it. They were afraid or they didn’t believe what they were hearing. The thing is, she heard music in her brain, she said—all the time, she said, or almost all the time—and it changed with her moods. She was feeling pretty nervous at that very moment, she said, and the music was nervous-sounding. She kept talking. She said she didn’t mind the music most of the time. She enjoyed being alone, listening to the music playing in her head. But sometimes it was hard to take, like when somebody was playing music at the same time or she got upset and the music became upsetting. She looked at Madame Camille. She said, Can you help me?
Camille leaned back in her chair. Adrianne leaned forward. She asked again, this time singing the words in a nursery-rhymey tune, Can you help me?
Camille froze. Adrianne asked her again, singing now in a tune that was slightly different—Can you help me?
Camille just sat there. Adry asked her one more time, this time singing loud and weird, Can . . . you . . . help . . . me?
Camille turned to me and asked me if I would mind leaving the two of them alone. I wasn’t sure that was a great idea, but I didn’t think it was the worst idea in the world, so I grabbed my purse and got up to go outside. Camille followed me to the front door, and she whispered to me, “Don’t you worry. I can cure this girl.”
From the outside, I couldn’t hear much of what was going on inside. There was talking and talking and more talking. Every now and then, one of their voices got a little louder, and I could make out a few words. Adry was doing some of the talking but was mainly kind of singing—oohing and aahing a strange sort of tune. This got louder and louder. I heard Camille muttering things, and then I heard her clearly say something about “a spirit” or “the spirit.” I thought maybe I should go back in, or maybe that would ruin everything. So I stayed outside and paced back and forth.
Adrianne was singing pretty loudly by now, and then I heard some music playing. Camille put a record on. I hadn’t seen a record player in there, but evidently there was one, maybe on a shelf I hadn’t noticed or a portable. It was classical. Adrianne was still singing. The record was playing, and Adrianne got louder, and her singing got weirder. Camille turned the volume of the record up—ba bum! Ba bum, ba da bum!! [Schanbaker simulates the sound.] Adry got louder. Then I heard Camille’s voice—“Release this spirit, child! Release this spirit!” Everything got more intense and louder. Camille started to scream, “Release this spirit! Free yourself! Lift this spirit from your soul!”
I turned the doorknob to go in, but the door was locked from the inside. So I ran around to the back, and went in the rear entrance. By the time I entered the room, Adrianne was gone. Camille was standing at the doorway watching as Adrianne was running away, calling for her to come back. “She went wild!” Camille said. “She jumped up and unlatched the door and ran off.”
I ran out to catch her, but she was too far ahead of me, and she was awfully fast. Let’s face it—she was nine years old, and I was over thirty. I didn’t have a chance of catching up with a nine-year-old girl.
I lost sight of her and couldn’t tell if she crossed the road and was hiding behind a dumpster or ran into the brush or what. I headed back toward Madame Camille’s building and told her, “I’m calling the State Police.”
Camille said, “There’s no telephone in my salon. Electrical signals disrupt the psychic wavelength.”
I said to her, “‘Salon’?! Is that what you call it? Why don’t you just call it a Den of Scary Nastiness to Little Girls and be done with it?” I gave her a piece of my mind. I got in my car and hightailed it out of there to get to a phone booth, and I called the police.
Francis DeAngelese (Pennsylvania State Police officer)
I remember the Geffel case well. I was a young trooper, I was on patrol, and I got a call regarding a possible missing person. I arrived at the location where she was last seen, and I spoke to the proprietor, an individual in the business of psychology or spirituality, that field. She was very concerned about the whereabouts of the Geffel girl and provided a good description of her to me. Another lady met us there shortly thereafter. She was a family member, whose care under which the Geffel girl had been under. She was in an agitated state. I did my best to calm her down but was not very successful. The proprietor of the business stepped in to help, but that only made the family member more agitated. In consideration of the nature of the situation, with a young person possibly missing, I told the ladies I would send out an APB, All Points Bulletin, immediately. The lady who operated the spiritual business offered me the use of her office telephone, and I put out the call.
I inquired about the girl’s parents and learned from the family member that they were out of town on business. The dispatcher on duty sent out a message to their location, and they arrived at headquarters within a few hours. They were in a state of acute distress typical of parents of a child potentially missing from a psychology or spirituality business in proximity to the county line. I inquired if anything like this had ever happened before, specifically with the girl. I asked if there were medical issues or medications that the girl might need while she was missing. The parents were cooperative but confused. The mother
appeared hesitant to answer on the matter of medical issues. However, the father assured me that the girl was normal and healthy.
We called for support from the local police and canvassed the area where the girl was last seen. When she failed to be located by nightfall, we assigned two officers to patrol the area overnight.
Early the following morning, we received a call from an employee of a paving company in the vicinity. A driver was driving to a job in Happsburg and heard music coming from the back of his truck. He mistook the sound for a faulty radio and drove all the way to Happsburg until he turned off the vehicle and determined that the Geffel girl was in the back of his truck, singing to herself. The girl had found the truck door open, entered the vehicle, and fell asleep on some bags of gravel. I drove out there at high speed and brought the girl to headquarters.
As a result of this incident, county social workers were brought in to look into the home situation with the family, and some years later, after the Geffel girl had grown up and moved out of the area, she sent me a record that she made. She wrote a personal inscription to me on the front, under her picture. I haven’t had a chance to listen to the music, but I would presume it has to be enjoyable.
CHAPTER 2
Junior Jam
(1969–1976)
Laurie Emmerich Liebman (social worker):
I was the county agent for youth services in Venango County at the time in question, yes. The majority of the cases I handled were referred to my office by the county and municipal courts, individual administrators in the schools in the district, or law enforcement, as in the case you’re asking about. Our office was still fairly new at that time. It was instituted just a couple of years earlier, through an initiative of the federal government under President Johnson that made its way to Pennsylvania. You should study up on this, if you don’t know about it already. It was part of the Great Society. We didn’t use the term in our office, but Johnson did.
I was right out of school—I went to Haverford College, and everybody hated Lyndon Johnson there, because of Vietnam. I had two cousins in the service, and our family was never ultraliberal, so I didn’t have a big grudge against Johnson for the war or anything else. If you look into it, you’ll see that the Johnson Administration was behind a number of social programs like ours that were created for the benefit of under-privileged and troubled youth—like Adrianne Geffel, not that she was under-privileged. Troubled, yes. Under-privileged, not exactly—especially if you think of musical talent as a privilege. If you do, you could only call her over-privileged.
When I was referred to Adrianne, I knew a good amount of psychology, from college. I had a dual major in business administration and psychology at Haverford. I would pick up more information and tricks of the trade a few years later, when I went for my certification in counselling, which I received in 1974.
The State Police contacted our office after Adrianne had gone missing, was found, and returned to her home. The parents were advised to bring Adrianne to see me for a consultation, and the mother brought her in a few days later. We walked down to the cafeteria in the lower level of the building and spent a couple of hours there. It was an excellent place to hold a meeting, because you could get a soda and a donut or Jell-O if you wanted a treat, and other people couldn’t overhear your conversation, because of the buzz from the fluorescent lighting. The three of us sat down, Mrs. Geffel offered me a cigarette, which I accepted, not to be rude on our first meeting, and we talked for about an hour. We both smoked Kents. Adrianne was very respectful and hummed quietly to herself while she wasn’t talking. I was prepared for this, having read the police report, and I found the sound so interesting that I wished the lighting weren’t quite so loud that day, so I could hear her better.
We had an extremely productive meeting. I learned a great deal about Adrianne and her mother. Mrs. Geffel explained to me how Adrianne heard music in her mind, and she hummed along to what she heard sometimes. Mrs. Geffel told me how she allowed Adrianne to sit by herself, listening to the music she imagined, singing along, while she went about her work. Her mother did the bookkeeping for the family business, she said. I found all this interesting and, it goes without saying, awfully hard to believe.
After an hour together, all three of us, I asked Mrs. Geffel to move down to another table, so Adrianne and I could talk one-onone. She was utterly cooperative and answered all my questions, sometimes singing her answers in funny little tunes. Making sure not to rush things or cut the session off prematurely, I filled her in on some facts about my own childhood and my musical interests when I ran out of questions for her. In a little while, I called Mrs. Geffel back to join us, I thanked them sincerely for their time, and told them I would phone them in a few days and provide them with my recommendations.
The following day, I went to the library and spent a good hour or two researching psychological disorders. I found several things that related to Adrianne and her mother in certain ways. To be thorough, I sought to corroborate the research material I had gathered with clinical testimony, so I put in a call to my brother’s girlfriend, who was a nurse, and got some firsthand input from her. Through this work, I was able to reach a few conclusions about Adrianne Geffel’s case. First of all, I had come to feel strongly that Adrianne was not possessed by spirits, evil or otherwise, as the woman in the police report had claimed. There was hardly any question in my mind about that.
I telephoned Mrs. Geffel the next day to share my insights with her. Mrs. Geffel asked if she and Adrianne should come to see me again, and I said, as diplomatically as I could, that the two of them were always free to visit me—they didn’t need an engraved invitation—but, in all candor, I thought they would be much better off spending time with each other. Adrianne’s very problem, I explained, appeared to be a projection of her loneliness. She no doubt felt abandoned by her mother, who was clearly spending too much time on the father’s fuel business and not enough time with her children.
I encouraged Mrs. Geffel to organize activities and family outings with Adrianne and her brother. The father could be included, as well, if he was free. Go to the library together. Go to the playground. Go to both places! There was a playground behind the library in those days, before the Seventies and the pedophile scare. Go to church, if you’re a churchgoing family. I should clarify, a person’s religious affiliation is never my concern as an employee of a government agency. I’m just pointing out, impartially speaking, that unless they weren’t religious and Geffel is a Jewish name, church was an option to consider as a family activity.
Carolyn Geffel:
Have you talked to my cousin Marilyn? You probably should. We never really talked again after . . . Madame Camille. I see her now and then—we run into each other at the Dollar and Up store, that can’t be helped, but we don’t talk more than we have to. What is there to say? Why, thank you so much for bringing my daughter to an exorcist and frightening her so horribly that she slept in a truck! I’m so grateful to you! My mother, before we lost her, tried to tell me I should be glad for the way things worked out because of that. She had a point, you don’t have to tell me. But it pains me to give Marilyn any credit she might possibly deserve.
So you know, we were never a religious household. Greg and I had both our children baptized, at St. John’s Lutheran, where I went as a girl, because that was the thing to do—and why take a chance? If there really is a heaven and a hell, and your child dies, heaven forbid—I can’t believe I just said “heaven,” so look, right there—your child dies, of cancer, let’s say—face it, no parent would want the kid going through eternal damnation just because they didn’t believe in baptism. So, both Donny and Adry were baptized. Adry’s godparents, if you want this for the record, were Greg’s old friend Jipper Thallen and—and this is funny, her godmother happened to be my cousin Marilyn. Think about that for a moment. She’s Adry’s godmother, and she doesn’t even call me on Adry’s birthday.
We hadn’t been back to St. John’s ever, excep
t for weddings and funerals. But we wanted to give the state person the benefit of the doubt, as an expert in these matters, so we looked up the church schedule in the paper, and we brought Adry to a family social on a Saturday. I thought: It’s on a Saturday, it can’t be too-too religious. The big day for religious activities in the Christian religion is Sunday, which never really made much sense to me. If the Bible says God made Sunday the day of rest, then why would that be the busiest day of the week for God? It shows you that religious teachings don’t hold up very well, if you take them seriously.
We arrived at the church at three o’clock in the afternoon, as the paper said, but there was no social. We didn’t realize it, but the events of this type were held in the basement of the church, and you had to go through the back entrance to get there. All the regulars were indoctrinated in this, but we were the newbies. Greg and I started walking around inside the church, in hopes of finding someone to help us. He headed toward the front, walking up the aisle on the left, and I poked around the back. There were several little rooms around there. I knocked on the doors—no luck. I opened one or two of them and looked in, if they weren’t locked—nobody home. I let Adry stay in the vestibule there, humming to herself.
After a few minutes, I heard someone tinkling around on a piano. I thought, Oh, good—there’s someone here. I’ll go back and get Adry, and maybe the person playing piano can help us. I went back to the vestibule, but no sign of Adry. I looked all around—no Adry. I called out to Greg, and he turned around and came back to me. The two of us looked around together, and I noticed a stairway to the side of the pews, and I headed up the steps. Greg was right behind me. When we got to the top, we found a balcony area with about a dozen folding chairs. There was a piano along the back wall, and Adry was sitting at it, plunking away on the keys. I went to get her, but Greg grabbed the back of my blouse. I stopped and just stood there with Greg.