The President's Vampire: Strange-But-True Tales of the United States of America

by Robert Schneck

  Definitions vary, but a thought-form is essentially a ”non-physical entity created by thought,”(64) while an artificial elemental is similar, but infused with strong emotion. Individuals and groups can create these beings deliberately or accidentally, but “The phenomena produced consciously, with a view of bringing about a prescribed result… are generally—but not always—the work of a single person.”(65) Thought-forms normally exist on the mental or astral sphere where they are invisible to all but the psychic or unusually sensitive, though other less finely tuned individuals may sense their presence. The French scholar, traveler, and writer, Madame Alexandra David-Neel, describes a number of different kinds of thought-forms in her 1929 book, Magic and Mystery in Tibet.

  The durable David-Neel (1868-1969) was a Buddhist who spent 14 years in Tibet and surrounding countries studying mysticism with swamis, hermits, and lamas. She describes a number of magical phenomena including “messages carried on the wind” (telepathy), enchanting a knife so that a selected victim will use it to commit suicide, tumo (the ability to generate high temperatures in the body), and the creation of the thought-form or tulpa. David-Neel experimented with the latter. She spent months in solitary meditation, carried out certain rituals, and successfully created “a monk, short and fat, of an innocent and jolly type.”(66)

  At first, it required concentration for David-Neel to see her tulpa, but it soon appeared without effort, while remaining invisible to others. The mind-monk traveled with her party and obeyed commands, but over time it grew less cherubic and more independent: “The fat, chubby-cheeked fellow grew leaner, his face assumed a vaguely mocking, sly, malignant look. He became more troublesome and bold. In brief, he escaped my control.”(67)

  David-Neel believed this process was inevitable. “Once the tulpa is endowed with enough vitality to be playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker’s control. This, say Tibetan occultists, happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother’s womb.”(68) She accepted the possibility that the monk was the result of auto-suggestion (i.e., it was all in her imagination), except “a herdsman who brought me a present of butter saw the tulpa in my tent and took it for a live lama.”(69) (Was the herdsman clairvoyant? Was the figure materializing in this world? The author does not offer an opinion.)

  Over time, the monk’s presence became so disturbing that David-Neel was forced to dissolve it, a task that required ”six months of hard struggle. My mind-creature was tenacious of life.”(70)

  A tulpa can also appear spontaneously. It might happen to a traveler “passing through some sinister tract of country,”(71) and Western mountain-climbers have reported experiences that could be related to tulpa-lore. When, for example, Reinhold Messner made a solo ascent of Mt. Everest in 1980 he “imagined that an invisible companion was climbing beside him.”(72) (Alpinists see and hear many strange things, but they also suffer from fatigue and lack of oxygen.) In cases where the tulpa is created unconsciously, and “the author or authors…does not aim at a fixed result,” the outcome may be something like the phenomena described by John and Katherine, with bits and pieces of the thought-form’s persona realized in paranormal form.

  Had the séances continued, these “scraps” of Bye-Bye Man might have coalesced into something more formidable and the results might have been fatal. David-Neel describes instances of magicians being killed by the thought-forms they created. Perhaps “the more you think about him, the more dangerous he becomes” aspect of the story was a warning, not an invocation. Another possibility is that the group, or members of it, created a similar being called an artificial elemental.

  The British occultist Dion Fortune described her encounter with this phenomenon in Psychic Self-Defense (1930). Fortune had been betrayed by a friend and was lying in bed, sleepily contemplating revenge, when “I felt a curious drawing out sensation from my solar plexus, and there materialised beside me on the bed a large wolf. It was a well materialised ectoplasmic form…grey and colourless, and…had weight. I could distinctly feel its back pressing against me as it lay beside me on the bed as a large dog might.”(73)

  The apparition was distinctly evil, and unlike David Neel’s monk, did not obey commands. Its nature was fixed by the emotions that caused it to appear in the first place, and had Fortune not reabsorbed it, the “were-wolf” would have gone on to create more evil. The experience was exhausting, but Fortune believed it had taught her a method for creating artificial elementals.

  1. The actor needs to be in “the condition between sleeping and waking…”

  2. Their mood has to be one of “brooding highly charged with emotion…”

  3. They have to make an “invocation of the appropriate natural force…”(74)

  Did John, like Fortune, unknowingly carry out these steps? He had not been sleeping well and was spending the night on the floor; perhaps, he was half-awake. There’s no way of knowing his mental state, but he was no longer seeing Eli and Katherine regularly and earlier that evening had been unable to reach any friends. John may have been bored, lonely, or even “brooding.” It seems unlikely that anything so dramatic as invoking a natural force was involved (Fortune claims to have been thinking about the mythical wolf Fenris right before the figure materialized), but the séances had just ended and the Bye-Bye Man was a recent memory.

  Did John experience frustration, desire, resentment, and guilt that night? Did this formless but potent mixture of thoughts and feelings cast into the shape of the Bye-Bye Man? If so, it was unlike Fortune’s were-wolf in that it seems to have embodied not revenge, but emotional conflict.

  Ambivalence seems to be at the heart of John’s story. Picture the scene. It is the middle of the night and a young man is asleep. He hears a knock on the door and a voice calling to him. It is the woman he is attracted to and she’s asking to be let into his bedroom. Does John bang into furniture and overturn lamps in his race to the door? No, he goes limp with fear and lies on the floor in a state of terror till morning. Whatever happened, whether this was a thought-form, artificial elemental, bad dream, or other phenomenon, Katherine seems to have excited strong emotions in John, but he was either unwilling or afraid to act on them. Perhaps the castration symbols in the Bye-Bye Man’s story express guilt over contemplated sexual misconduct. Violating sexual taboos and patricide drove King Oedipus to put out his eyes.

  It may be that the Wisconsin group’s haphazard approach resulted in an undefined, loosely constructed being that tried to fulfill its creators’ expectations by killing anyone thinking about Gloomsinger or the Bye-Bye Man. Its appearance outside John’s room and attempt to enlist his cooperation, however, suggests that it operated under certain restrictions. Perhaps these were incorporated into its make-up from the ragbag of sources presumed to have gone into creating the story. Like the consent needed by demons, there is a tradition that evil spirits cannot cross the threshold without being invited. The invitation can be obtained through threats, coaxing, or deceptions (like imitating Katherine’s voice), but without it they are powerless. “The concept… probably evolved out of the Christian tradition that the devil cannot go where he is not welcome.”(75)

  If the Wisconsin group did create a monster, what happened to it? With the end of the séances and the breaking up of the collective mind, did it fade away? Or is the Bye-Bye Man lying dormant but potentially dangerous, like a hibernating rattlesnake? Fortune wrote that the artificial elemental’s existence is “akin to that of an electric battery, it slowly leaks out by means of radiation, and unless recharged periodically, will finally weaken and die out.”(76) Does “die out” mean total extinction, or is the Bye-Bye Man (or the potential for it) floating aimlessly in whatever ether these things inhabit, waiting to be revived through the power of thought? Perhaps it will only be gone when it is entirely forgotten.

  Dion Fortune and David-Neel, however, were playing by occult game rules. Our culture is generally dubious ab
out “Fiends who materialize out of nothing and nowhere, like winged pigweed and Russian thistle.”(77) This may be just as well, as David-Neel mentions another possibility that is not pleasant to contemplate. “Tibetan magicians… relate cases in which the tulpa is sent to fulfil a mission, but does not come back and pursues its peregrinations as a half-conscious, dangerously mischievous puppet.”(78)

  Fortunately, there is no evidence to suggest the Bye-Bye Man actually exists – nothing except an occasional, disturbing news story.

  Odd Hat, Dark Suit

  On November 6, 2001, in the small town of Florence, Montana, three grandmothers had their throats cut in the middle of the day in a beauty salon next to a five-lane highway and less than 500 feet from railroad tracks. The killer has not been caught but witnesses were able to describe him.

  “Ravalli County Sheriff Perry Johnson said the sketches were the result of several interviews with people in the area who got a good look at the man who wore an odd hat and was dressed either in a dark suit or a duster-type coat.”

  The Headwater News of the Rockies reported that “The man had no facial hair, and is in his 20s, around 6 feet tall, with a slender build.

  “He was wearing a white shirt with no tie and could have been carrying something when he was seen south of town.

  “Authorities also released a photo of a pair of black-rimmed sunglasses that they have determined did not belong to any of the women at the salon. It’s not known if they were left there by another customer or the killer.”(79)

  The odd, neat face staring out from under the brim of the black hat on the wanted poster was not the Bye-Bye Man. If the suspect suffered from albinism, the witnesses could hardly have missed it, and there was no hint that he was blind. The victims did not have the signature mutilations, and no mention is made of the Sack of Gore or paint on the sunglasses. There’s just the crime, an odd costume, the killer’s unexplained get-away, and train tracks nearby.

  Like our less cautious, bug-eating ancestors, we may have ventured too far out onto some very slender limbs here; let’s restore perspective by closing this story where it began, in America’s dairy-land.

  A Walk Across the Bridge

  Before writing this book I visited Wisconsin and saw some of the places and things mentioned in the story.

  The Ouija board that led the sitters to “The Spirit of the Board” has not been used since the last séance and is kept locked inside a closet in a rural cabin. It is one of several vaguely supernatural objects owned by Eli, including a bar of soap from a haunted sink, a book of black magic, and a cursed monkey spear (the curse was aimed at a local anthropologist, and its effectiveness insured by poisoning his dinner).

  The boarding house where John stayed in Madison is now a private residence. It’s a handsome building overlooking Lake Mendota, and the window of his former attic room can be seen on the left side of the roof.

  I also walked across the railroad bridge connecting the west bank of the Wisconsin River to Barker-Stewart, “Body” Island. This is where Katherine had her experience, and while Eli described it as a pretty spot, that was in the summer. The attractions are less obvious in the tired light of a January afternoon, with scrubby trees poking out of snowdrifts along the banks and the river frozen into blue-green pavement.

  The bridge itself is made up of three parts. Two open-work rectangular boxes separated by a middle section with solid metal walls that follow each other across the river on squat pontoon-shaped concrete piers. It’s not the kind of local landmark that’s likely to appear on a postcard with “Welcome Home to Wausau!” printed across the top, but the scene isn’t sinister, just gray and wintry. Maybe the place has a different feeling at night, when thoughts of murdered women and drowned lumberjacks begin asserting themselves.

  I stepped from the shelter of the trees onto the bridge’s wooden walkway and immediately heard whistling, but this was the wind; there was a breeze coming off the river that caressed your face like the business end of a belt-sander. Wisconsin doesn’t let you forget it’s winter, and after fighting the temptation to experiment (what would really happen if I touched a girder with my tongue?), I continued across to the island.

  There was little there. Just train tracks that disappeared into the snow and stands of tall yellow prairie grass waving in the wind. Nothing that looked like the animated contents of a butcher’s case came flopping through the snow, and no dark figures were lurking in the brush, apart from Eli who accompanied me on my visit.

  Katherine, of course, never made it to Body Island. After breaking up with Eli, she had a relationship with John but it did not last. Today Katherine is married and living in another state while John is an interstate truck driver.

  Not long after their experience with the Bye-Bye Man, Eli left Wisconsin. He spent several years studying the Romany people in England and Eastern Europe, met the woman who would become his wife in Bulgaria, and today they live in New York City where he works with the mentally ill. While Eli still hasn’t had a paranormal experience, he remains interested in strange phenomena and wrote out the account used here. He also showed me the bridge, boarding house, and other sites related to the story.

  Visiting these places was interesting but did not provide any new insights. Was the Bye-Bye Man real, in the sense that other people are real? Was he imaginary? Or does he belong to some other category that’s difficult to define? Like most researchers, I set out to answer these questions with the confidence of Harry Angel, the doomed detective in Falling Angel, who tells his client, Louis Cyphre, that ”Nothing’s going to stop me from getting to the truth.”

  It didn’t take long. however, before I appreciated Cyphre’s reply: “The truth, Mr. Angel, is an elusive quarry.”

  EPILOGUE

  Authors, especially those who write horror and science fiction, are often asked where they get their ideas. A book like this inspires similar questions, like “where do you find these things?” or “how did you come to write about such-and-such a haunting, or this-or-that ghoul?” and even “why do you spend your time on this stuff?” The first is easy to answer because weird stories are everywhere.

  Books, magazines, and newspaper columns are devoted to the subject, along with radio programs, television series, countless websites, chat-rooms, and online bulletin boards. These sources collect reports from all over the world and, taken together, create the impression that the unusual is not especially uncommon. Even then, it’s reasonable to assume that there’s a lot more iceberg down there, with media accounts representing a fraction of the odd, seemingly paranormal, incidents that are actually experienced.

  I have no proof, of course. Pollsters rarely ask, and anomalies don’t come up in the course of ordinary conversation. Have you ever heard a tired co-worker say that he woke up at 3 AM with a monster sitting on his chest? I do know, however, that when people meet someone like me, with a more than casual interest in strange things, they start telling stories.

  • A man sitting at a lunch counter described a light bulb in the attic of his parent’s house that answered questions. It hung from the ceiling and flickered a certain number of times for “yes” and for “no.”

  • While standing on line at the corner grocery, another customer told me about a town in Rumania that was overrun by vampires. He said that the dictator, Nicolai Ceaucescu, sent in troops to restore order.

  • A waiter at a coffee shop was hunting with some friends in Texas, when they saw a gigantic hairy bigfoot-type head and shoulders rise up out of the tall weeds and start towards them. The three of them ran back to the truck, and almost turned it over getting away.

  • While getting my hair cut, the barber mentioned seeing a hoofed and horned devil in the Egyptian desert. It stood on a spot where army deserters had been executed.

  I’ve heard more of these than I can remember; interesting, but unremarkable, accounts of ghosts, psychic phenomena, and flying saucers, along with numerous urban legends of the “and his sweater was draped a
cross the hitchhiker’s tombstone” variety. There have also been occasional hard-to-classify oddities, including my personal favorite, something that sucked the ink out of every ballpoint pen brought into the witness’s house (and may have also been responsible for tiny puddles of ink that subsequently appeared on the floor). With the exception of the Bye-Bye Man, however, the stories in this book came from published sources.

  The history of Ransford Rogers, for example, turned up accidentally while I was looking for a work from 1807 called Authentic account of the appearance of a ghost in Queen-Ann’s County, Maryland (“… proved in said County court in the remarkable trial – state o [sic] Maryland, use of James, Fanny, Robert and Thomas Harris, versus Mary Harris, administratix of James Harris. From attested notes, taken in court at the time by one of the council”), which I still want to read.

  I learned about Newark’s missing boys from a small newspaper item that appeared on the anniversary of their disappearance in 1988. I cut it out and saved it for 16 years before using it. The clipping spent the time stored in a filing cabinet filled with articles about lizard-men, squid-things seen living in toxic waste, demonic possession as a legal defense, and the discovery of the world’s first poisonous bird in New Guinea. Clearly, there’s no shortage of wonders, but how do you decide which ones to write about?

  I began by laying out a few basic guidelines. Each incident had to take place in the United States or what would become the U.S. (Gloucester’s raiders), or under the American flag (James Brown), with examples ranging from colonial times to today. As a collection of strange-but-true stories, The President’s Vampire could include almost any bizarre incident or episode I chose, but my objective was to find material that was unfamiliar to even the most dedicated readers of quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore. With that in mind, I collected what was unpublished, distorted, fragmented, incomplete, overshadowed, or buried in obscure books and silverfish-nibbled pamphlets.