Samutchoso’s experience when trying to pray sounds like what happened to Lethbridge on Skellig Michael when something threw him on his face. And this in turn suggests that what Lethbridge encountered was not, strictly speaking, a poltergeist, but some kind of “elemental.” (This does not, of course, preclude the possibility that poltergeists are some kind of elemental.)
In Africa, the reality of spirits is taken for granted, and many white men who have had experience of Africa have also learned to accept their reality. In Ju-ju in My Life, James H. Neal, former chief investigation officer for the Government of Ghana, tells of his own first acquaintance with spirits. A port was being built at Tema, and a small tree defied all efforts to move it—even bulldozers were unable to tear it out of the ground. The African foreman explained that it was a fetich—was inhabited by a spirit, and that a fetich priest would have to be called. The priest asked for three sheep, three bottles of gin, and a hundred pounds if he succeeded. The blood of the sheep was sprinkled around the tree, then the gin; then the priest went into a trance and begged the spirit to vacate it for a more suitable home. After various rituals, the priest announced that the spirit had agreed to leave. A small team of men then pulled the tree out with a rope.
Another psychical researcher, Leonard Boucher (whom we shall meet again in chapter Seven), has a similar story about a tree in Tema, near Accra, Ghana. When plans were drawn up for the construction of a new hotel, it was decided that an old tree would have to be cut down—otherwise, it would impede the view from the lounge window. The tree had been a meeting place of ju-ju men over centuries, and the local ju-ju man informed the builders that it would be impossible to cut it down—it was the dwelling place of the spirit of an ancient chief. The management ignored him, and told the builders to go ahead and remove it. But this proved to be more difficult than expected. Saws broke, men manning the bulldozer became ill, the ground hardened like concrete and, after all their efforts, the tree still remained intact. Finally, African workers on the site refused to make any further attempt to destroy the tree—it is still to be seen today outside the middle of the lounge picture window.
In the appendix of my book Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs, I have printed a story told to me by a friend, Martin Delany, who was managing director of a company in Nigeria. A hen flew into the saw of a Brenta band-saw and was cut to pieces, and the Nigerian workers were alarmed, declaring that the god was angry, and would have to be appeased with blood. Martin refused, because it involved the sacrifice of a puppy dog. Two days later, another hen flew into the blade. When the saw began to cut unevenly, it was stopped and the electricity turned off at the main. As soon as the manager began to examine it, the blade turned and almost severed his hand. Engineers who examined the saw said it was an impossibility. Finally, the saw blade began to “strip” when in use, and the ball of tangled metal killed the operator. At this point, Martin Delany allowed the witch doctor to make the sacrifice; and all trouble immediately ceased. From the point of view of the present chapter, the main interest of the story is the way that the saw began to turn even when switched off at the main. We have already noted that poltergeists seem to have the power to create electric currents.
But stories of curses are as common to England as to Africa. I know of a village in Cornwall where no one dares to touch a rather dangerous yew in a churchyard because there is a belief that anyone who does so will die, and this is what happened to the last man who tried to cut it down. Usually, in such cases, there is a story of a curse laid by a witch. In The Folklore of Cornwall, Tony Deane and Tony Shaw mention that there are two fields in Cornwall that are never tilled because they are cursed. One is at Mullion, the other at Padstow. The latter is at Lower Harlyn Farm, now farmed by a Mr. Bennett. The “curse” was laid in the nineteenth century when a cargo of pilchards was dumped in the field; the Italian buyers refused to purchase them because they were too expensive. The villagers were starving, but were refused permission to touch the pilchards. A witch named Mother Ivey cursed the field (presumably to discomfort the farmer), saying that if anyone tried to plough it, the eldest son would die. When an eldest son was thrown from his horse and killed in the field, there were no further attempts at ploughing. But during the Second World War, the Home Guard dug trenches in it. The eldest son—the present owner’s father—was killed shortly afterwards. The owner, a Mr. Hellyar, has said in an article that he would need a very good reason for trying to cultivate the field. Mrs. Mary Rees, the joint owner of the field, has attempted to break the curse by burying rags in a tin—obtained from a witch—in the field; but Mr. Bennett, the tenant farmer, refuses to be convinced.
chapter V of Conan Doyle’s Coming of the Fairies is called “Observations of a Clairvoyant in the Cottingley Glen, August 1921.” The clairvoyant was a man named Geoffrey Hodson, a member of the Theosophical Society. In their Yorkshire Television interview, Elsie and Frances indicate that they regarded him as a “phoney”; yet this is hardly borne out by his books. Still, both Elsie and Frances insist they did see fairies with Hodson, even though they exaggerated what they saw to pull his leg. (They add, interestingly, that they never saw fairies again after this.) In 1952, Hodson published a small book called Fairies at Work and Play, introduced by Edward Gardner, the man who “discovered” Elsie and Frances. Gardner explains the traditional “occult”’ belief that man possesses an “astral body,” which can leave the physical body under certain circumstances—a matter we shall discuss in a later chapter. The astral body is said to be made of matter at a higher rate of vibration than physical matter. The human aura—a kind of energy that interpenetrates the human body—also seems to belong to this realm. According to Gardner, fairies and other such elementals belong on this level. Clairvoyants are able to see or sense this realm of vibrations which, according to Gardner, explains how Elsie and Frances could see fairies. One of the purposes of fairies, or nature spirits (sometimes called devas, a Hindu word) is to aid the growth of plants and seeds, hence their association with the woodland and open countryside and their absence in built-up areas. According to Gardner:
None of the fairies, gnomes nor higher devas, can be said to have a fixed “solid” body, as we understand the term. They may occasionally materialize, often using as the basis of this “materialization” the thoughtforms that peasants and children have built of them. [my italics]
The latter comment seems to explain why Marc Alexander’s friend saw an English pixie in New Zealand. “The elemental life rejoices to jump into a ready-made thought-form as much as an active child delights in dressing up.” He adds that the natural form of elementals seems to be a “pulsing globe of light.”
Hodson’s book certainly provides the skeptic with plenty of material for satirical comment: brownies who affect a medieval style of attire, gnomes of “grotesque appearance, cadaverous and lantern-jawed,” and black or peat brown in color; undines—water sprites—who are beautiful nude females, about six inches long, and Manx fairies with “soft and dreamy eyes.” Yet his descriptions correspond closely to dozens of others on record. His description of a “crimson nature deva” is impressive:
After a scramble of several hundred feet up a rocky glen we turned out to one side, on to the open fell where it faces a huge crag. Immediately on reaching the open we became aware, with startling suddenness, of the presence of a great nature-deva, who appeared to be partly within the hillside.
My first impression was of a huge, brilliant crimson, bat-like thing, which fixed a pair of burning eyes upon me. The form was not concentrated into a true human shape, but was somehow spread out like a bat with a human face and eyes, and with wings outstretched over the mountainside. As soon as it felt itself to be observed, it flashed into its proper shape, as if to confront us, fixed its piercing eyes upon us, and then sank into the hillside and disappeared.
He describes “tree devas” among a group of old firs and comments: “The nature spirits do not appear to be individualized as yet, working und
er a group consciousness,” a point that may be worth bearing in mind when considering the more traditional poltergeist. When human beings lack a sense of identity, they often do apparently pointless things, simply to give themselves a sense of existence-through-action; this could explain the apparently aimless mischief of the poltergeist.
It is to the “earth devas” that the community at Findhorn, in Scotland, attributes its astonishing success in horticulture. In 1978, after a visit to the Edinburgh Festival, I spent a few days there to gain some first-hand impressions of this unusual community. It is situated on a bare spit of land sticking out into the Moray Firth, close to the town of Forres, and at first sight looks like any holiday site, with chalets and caravans. It had been founded in the early 1960s by Peter and Eileen Caddy, after Peter Caddy had lost his job as a hotel manager. Ever since a day in Glastonbury many years earlier, Eileen Caddy had been receiving “guidance” through some kind of inner voice. This voice now led them to live in a caravan on the bleak, sandy wastes of the Forres peninsula. They had no money, and Peter Caddy decided that they ought to grow their own food. But the sandy ground seemed completely unsuitable. They used seaweed and manure from local horses as fertilizer, while Eileen’s voices assured them that all would be well. And the vegetables, when they began to grow, were extraordinary—giant cabbages and marrows and lettuces.
When I was at Findhorn, there were no longer giant vegetables—they explained that the purpose of these vegetables had been to demonstrate conclusively what could be done with love and “guidance.” But the gardens were certainly an astonishing sight on that windy peninsula, with their magnificent beds of flowers.
I am not “community-minded.” On the few occasions in my life when I have spent some time in communities—whether monastic or just vaguely “spiritual”—I have usually felt awkward and out-of-place, totally unable to share the group-spirit. Findhorn was an interesting exception. There was a great deal of talk about love and cooperation and guidance, yet the atmosphere seemed so friendly and normal that I felt perfectly at home there. It was strange to talk to people who claimed to have had contact with—and even seen—nature devas and fairies; yet at no point did I feel that I was among cranks, or even mystics.
A book, The Magic of Findhorn, by Paul Hawken, speaks at length about these nature spirits. In 1966, a scholar named Robert Ogilvie Crombie—known as Roc—came to help at Findhorn. Crombie describes to Hawken how, in March 1966, he was walking in the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Gardens when he experienced a state of heightened perception, then became aware “out of the corner of his eye,” of a nature spirit in the form of the god Pan. “I could see shaggy legs and cloven hooves, pointed chin and ears, and two little horns on his forehead . . . He was naked, but his legs were covered with fine hair.” When Ogilvie said “Hello,” the creature looked startled and asked: “Can you see me?” “Yes.” “I don’t believe it. Humans can’t see us.”
“He told me,” said Crombie, “that he lived in the Garden, and that his work was to help the growth of the trees. He went on to say that the Nature Spirits had lost interest in humans, since they have been made to feel that they are neither believed in nor wanted. He thought that men were foolish to think that they could do without the Nature spirits.”
Crombie’s account sounds like a piece of whimsy by Sir James Barrie; yet his descriptions of his encounters with nature spirits are precise and circumstantial. He speaks of an encounter with a faun, and with some kind of nature deva. “He stepped behind me and then walked into me so that we became one and I saw the surroundings through his eyes . . . The moment he stepped into me, the woods became alive with myriads of beings—elementals, nymphs, dryads, fauns, elves, gnomes, fairies . . . The Nature Spirits love and delight in the work they do and have to express this in movement.”
Crombie and Peter Caddy met in 1965, and, according to Hawken, Crombie became Caddy’s “ambassador” to the world of Nature Spirits. They were together at the Faery Glen, at Rosemarkie, when Crombie claimed to have encountered elves—which were invisible to Caddy; they were highly hostile because of the damage that has been done by man to the Glen. Crombie returned to Findhorn with Caddy, and “brought with him this intimate contact with the Nature Kingdom and Pan. He sought their help and cooperation in making the gardens an example of what could be accomplished among Man, the Devas and the Nature Spirits. He was told by Pan that a ‘wild area’ should be established in the garden to serve as a sanctuary for the Nature Spirits . . .” All this was to be done in close cooperation with nature. When Peter Caddy cut down some gorse bushes in blossom, Crombie encountered some furious elves, and had to explain to them that man may be ignorant and tactless, but is not fundamentally wicked.
Hawken describes a conversation with two of the chief gardeners.
I asked Mathew and Leonard about Nature Spirits, and whether in “working” with them they actually perceived them. Both said that they did not perceive them directly, but both felt that they were intuitively guided by the Nature Spirits. Leonard told the story of how he went to several deeply-rooted bushes a few days before they had to be removed and quietly told them why they had to be moved. When the day came to remove them they could easily be pulled out of the ground with one hand as if they had completely released their “hold” on life. For comparison, Leonard went to one of the bushes that was not to be taken out and pulled on it. It wouldn’t budge.
While at Findhorn, I mentioned that I have endless trouble with moles in my garden, and was told that they had also had the same problem, briefly; all that had been necessary was to explain to the moles that this was now a garden, and to ask them politely if they would mind moving elsewhere. The next day, the moles had moved out to more distant fields.
All this sounds preposterous only if we happen to be unaware that reports of these elementals and nature spirits have come from all parts of the earth and all ages. It is, of course, quite possible that it is all imagination and wishful thinking. But this is largely a matter of our “common sense” prejudices. The annals of the Society for Psychical Research are full of so many thousands of well-authenticated stories of poltergeists, apparitions and “specters of the living” that we can accept that they may have some basis in fact. It seems quite conceivable that “mediums” may be able to see things that are not visible to non-mediums. But when mediums claim to have seen fairies or elves, we become skeptical. The two-volume Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology contains an interesting entry under “Fairy Investigation Society.”
Formed in Britain to collate information on fairy sightings in modern times, with membership from various countries. The Society used to publish an occasional Newsletter, but this has been suspended in recent years. It was found that although reports of Unidentified Flying Objects received tolerant public notice, reports of fairy sightings encouraged press ridicule. The Society is at present quiescent, but is planning to reorganize on a basis which will protect members from undesirable notice.
In fact, fairy sightings are just as commonplace as UFO sightings, and just as circumstantial. Joe Cooper devotes a chapter of his book to sightings that he has personally noted down—for example, the group of Bradford students who saw fairies “who were circling and dancing” and were invisible to a direct gaze but discernible “at the corners of the eye.” (This is a phrase that occurs repeatedly in fairy sightings.) Cooper goes on to mention the investigations carried out in Ireland by W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, which they recorded in a book, Visions and Beliefs, in 1920. A typical example is of a Mr. and Mrs. Kelleher of Wicklow, who told Yeats: “We had one of them in the house for a while . . . It was in winter and there was snow on the ground, and I saw one of them outside, and I brought him in and put him on the dresser and he stopped in the house for a while, for about a week.” His wife interrupted him to say: “It was more than that, it was two or three weeks.” Mr. Kelleher goes on: “He was about fifteen inches high. He was very friendly . . . When the boys at the public house wer
e full of porter, they used to come into the house to look at him, and they would laugh to see him but I never let them hurt him.”
When Chesterton met Yeats, he was struck by his down-to-earth attitude to fairies.
“Imagination!” he would say with withering contempt; “There wasn’t much imagination when Farmer Hogan was dragged out of bed and thrashed like a sack of potatoes—that they did, they had ’um out and thumped ’um, and that’s not the sort of thing a man wants to imagine.” But the concrete examples were not only a comedy; he used one argument which was sound, and I have never forgotten it. It is the fact that it is not abnormal men like artists but normal men like peasants, who have borne witness a thousand times to such things; “it is the farmers who see the fairies.”
It was a meeting with Yeats, and with his friend George Russell—the mystic “AE”—that led Evans-Wentz to begin the studies that led to his book The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries. In this book he explains what he calls the “psychological theory” of fairy sightings—which is not, as might be supposed, an attempt to dismiss them as figments of the imagination. His theory is that it is the experience of nature in such countries as Ireland and Scotland that “impress man and awaken in him some unfamiliar part of himself—call it the Subconscious Self, the Subliminal Self, the Ego, or what you will—which gives him the unusual power to know and to feel invisible or psychical influences. What is there, for example, in London, or Paris, or Berlin, or New York to awaken the intuitive power of man, that subconsciousness deep-hidden in him?”
One of the most fascinating parts of his book is an interview with “AE,” under the title “An Irish Mystic’s Testimony.” George Russell began to have “visions” at the time of puberty, when he was torn by sexual conflicts. He had his first mystical vision lying on the hill of Kilmasheogue, when “the heart of the hills opened to me, and I knew there was no hill for those who were there, and they were unconscious of the ponderous mountains piled above the palaces of light.”