But then, Nina Kulagina’s most spectacular feat was to make an apple fall off a table. Ingo Swann, an American, is able to deflect compass needles by PK; Felicia Parise, who was inspired to try “mind over matter” after seeing a film about Kulagina, can move small objects like matchsticks and pieces of paper. Uri Geller, the world’s best-known “psychic,” can bend spoons by gently rubbing them with his finger, and snap metal rings by simply holding his hand above them.
Now Geller has, in fact, produced certain “poltergeist effects.” In 1976, I spent some time with Geller in Barcelona, interviewing him for a book I subsequently wrote about him. A number of objects fell out of the air when I was with him, and these seemed to be typical examples of “teleportation.” Another friend, Jesse Lasky, has described to me how, when Uri was having dinner at their flat, there was a pinging noise like a bullet, and a silver button flew across the kitchen; it had come out of the bedroom drawer of Jesse’s wife, Pat: Geller was standing by the refrigerator with a bottle of milk in one hand and a tin of Coca-Cola in the other when it happened. Another odd feature of this incident is that the button—if it came from the bedroom drawer—must have somehow traveled through three walls to reach the kitchen. “Interpenetration of matter” is another curious feature in many poltergeist cases.
But then, Geller was not trying to make this happen. As I discovered when getting to know him, odd events seem to happen when he is around. On the morning I went to meet him, at an office in the West End of London, he asked me, “Do you have any connection with Spain?” I said that I didn’t. A moment before I walked into the office, a Spanish coin had risen out of the ashtray on the desk, and floated across to the other side of the room, where Geller and a public relations officer were standing. I subsequently came to know the PRO well enough to accept her word that this really took place. When Geller left the Lasky’s flat in central London, he buzzed them from the intercom at the front door and explained with embarrassment that he had damaged the door. A wrought-iron dragon which decorated the center of the door had been twisted—fortunately they were able to force it back without breaking it. Geller explained that he is never sure when such things will happen, or even whether the razor with which he shaves is likely to buckle in
his hand.
In short, it seems that even the most talented practitioners of psychokinesis cannot produce real “poltergeist effects” at will. But this is not necessarily a proof that they themselves are not responsible. For we now come to the oddest part of this story: the recent discovery that human beings appear to have two different people living inside their heads.
In a sense, of course, this discovery was made by Freud, who called it the unconscious. Jung went further, and accepted that the unconscious is a kind of great psychic ocean, to which all living creatures are somehow connected. Yet it was not until the early 1960s that scientists began to suspect that the two different “selves” live in different parts of the brain.
If you could lift off the top of the skull and look at the brain, you would see something resembling a walnut, with two wrinkled halves. Joining the halves is a bridge of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. In the 1930s, scientists wondered whether they could prevent epilepsy by severing this bridge—to prevent the “electrical storm” from spreading from one half of the brain to the other. In fact, it seemed to work. And, oddly enough, the severing of the “bridge” seemed to make no real difference to the patient.
In the 1950s Roger Sperry of the University of Chicago (and later Cal Tech[2]) began studying these “split-brain” patients, and made the interesting discovery that they had, in effect, turned into two people. For example, one split-brain patient tried to button up his flies with one hand, while the other hand tried to undo them. Another tried to embrace his wife with one arm, while his other hand pushed her violently away. In fact, it looked rather as if his conscious love for his wife was being opposed by an unconscious dislike. The split-brain experiment had given its unconscious mind the power to control one of his arms.
Now this upper part of the brain—the cerebrum or cerebral hemispheres—is our specifically human part. It has developed at an incredible pace over the past half million years—so swiftly (in evolutionary terms) that some scientists talk about the “brain explosion.” And, like the rest of the brain, it seems to consist of two identical parts, which are a mirror-
image of one another. (No one has yet discovered why the brain has these two halves—the obvious theory is that we have two of everything in case one is damaged.)
In the middle of the nineteenth century, doctors noticed that the two halves of the brain seem to have two different functions. A man whose left hemisphere is damaged finds it hard to express himself in words; yet he can still recognize faces, appreciate art or enjoy music. A man whose right hemisphere is damaged can speak perfectly clearly and logically; yet he cannot draw the simplest patterns or whistle a tune. The left cerebral hemisphere deals with language and logic; the right deals with recognition and intuition. You could say that the left is a scientist and the right is an artist.
Oddly enough, the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body—the left arm and leg—and vice versa. The same applies to our eyes, though in a slightly more complicated fashion. Each of our eyes is connected to both halves of the brain, the left side of each eye to the right brain, the right side of each eye to the left brain. (We say that the left visual field is connected to the right brain and vice versa.) If a scientist wishes to investigate the eyes of a split-brain patient, he has to make the patient look to the right or left, or hold the gaze fixed in front, so that different objects can be “shown” to the right or left visual fields. It will simplify matters if we say that the left eye is connected to the right brain and vice versa.
Sperry made his most interesting discovery about the eyes of split-brain patients. If the patient was shown an apple with his left eye and an orange with his right, and asked what he had just seen, he would reply “Orange.” Asked to write with his left hand what he had just seen, he would write “Apple.” Asked what he had just written, he would
reply “Orange.”
A patient who was shown a “dirty” picture with the left eye blushed; asked why she was blushing she replied, “I don’t know.”
It seems, then, that we have two different people living in the two halves of the brain, and that the person you call “you” lives in the left. A few centimeters away there is another person who is virtually a stranger—yet who also believes he is the rightful occupant of the head.
Now, at least, we can begin to see a possible reason why the “medium” in poltergeist cases is quite unaware that he or she is causing the effects. We have only to assume that the effects are caused by the person living in the right half of the brain, and we can see that the “you” in the left would be unconscious of what was happening.
But this would still leave the question: how does the right brain do it? In fact, is there any evidence whatsoever that the right brain possesses paranormal powers?
And the answer to this is a qualified yes. We can begin with one of the simplest and best authenticated of all “paranormal powers,” water divining. The water diviner, or dowser, holds a forked hazel twig (or even a forked rod made from two strips out of a whalebone corset, tied at the end) in both hands, so there is a certain tension—a certain “springiness”—in the rod. And when they walk over an underground stream or spring, the rod twists either upwards or downwards in their hands.
In fact, dowsers can dowse for almost anything, from oil and minerals to a coin hidden under the carpet. It seems that they merely have to decide what they’re looking for, and the unconscious mind—or the “other self”—does the rest.
I have described elsewhere[3] how I discovered, to my own astonishment, that I could dowse. I was visiting a circle of standing stones called the Merry Maidens, in Cornwall—a circle that probably dates back to the same period as Stonehenge. When I held the rod—made
of two strips of plastic tied at the end—so as to give it a certain tension, it responded powerfully when I approached the stones. It would twist upward as I came close to the stone, and then dip again as I stepped back or walked past it. What surprised me was that I felt nothing, no tingling in the hands, no sense of expectancy. It seemed to happen as automatically as the response of a voltmeter in an electric circuit. Since then I have shown dozens of people how to dowse. It is my own experience that nine out of ten people can dowse, and that all young children can do it. Some adults have to “tune in”—to learn to allow the mind and muscles to relax—but this can usually be done in a few minutes.
Scientific tests have shown that what happens in dowsing is that the muscles convulse—or tighten—of their own accord. And if the dowser holds a pendulum—made of a wooden bob on a short length of string—then the pendulum goes into a circular swing over standing stones or underground water—once again, through some unconscious action of the muscles.
Another experiment performed by Roger Sperry throws an interesting light on dowsing. He tried flashing green or red lights at random into the “blind” eye of split-brain patients (into the left visual field, connected to the right cerebral hemisphere). The patients were then asked what color had just been seen. Naturally, they had no idea, and the guesses showed a random score. But if they were allowed a second guess, they would always get it right. They might say: “Red—oh no, green . . .” The right side of the brain had overheard the wrong guess, and communicated by causing the patient’s muscles to twitch. It was the equivalent of a kick under the table.
Unable to communicate in any other way, the right brain did it by contracting the muscles.
It seems, therefore a reasonable guess that this is also what happens in dowsing. The right brain knows there is water down there, or some peculiar magnetic force in the standing stones; it communicates this knowledge by causing the muscles to tense, which makes the rod jerk upwards.
Most “psychics” observe that deliberate effort inhibits their powers. One psychic, Lois Bourne, has written:
One of the greatest barriers to mediumship is the intellect, and the most serious problem I had to learn in my early psychic career was the suspension of my intellect. If, during the practice of extra-sensory perception, I allowed logic to prevail, and permitted myself to rationalize the impressions I received, and the things I said, I would be hopelessly lost within a conflict. It is necessary that I totally by-pass my conscious mind . . .
Similarly, Felicia Parise found that she was at first totally unable to cause “PK effects,” no matter how hard she tried. But one day, when she had received an emotional shock—the news that her grandmother was dying—she reached out for a small plastic bottle and it moved away from her hand. From then on, she had the “trick” of causing PK.
All this underlines something that should be quite clear in any case: that in a sense, we are all “split-brain patients.” The logical self interferes with the natural operations of the right brain. This is why the artist has to wait for “inspiration”—for the left brain to relax and allow the right to take over. Mozart was an example of an artist who was born with an unusual harmony between the two halves of his brain, and he commented once that tunes were always “walking into his head”—meaning into his left brain. In most of us, a certain self-mistrust, a tendency to ask questions, sits like a bad-tempered door-keeper between the two halves of the brain. When we become subject to increasing tension and worry, this has the effect of increasing the door-keeper’s mistrustfulness. He thinks he is performing a useful service in keeping out the impulses from the “other half.” In fact, he is simply isolating the left-brain self and making it more tense and miserable. Nervous breakdown is due to the increasingly desperate attempts of this door-keeper to cope with problems in what he considers to be the right way, and which is, in fact, the worst possible way.
What Lois Bourne has said about suspending the rational intellect seems to apply to most forms of “extra-sensory perception” and paranormal abilities. Most people have had the experience of reaching out to pick up the telephone and knowing who is on the other end. Everyone has had the experience of thinking about someone they haven’t heard from in years, and receiving a letter from them the same day. “Extra-sensory perception” (ESP) seems to operate when we are relaxed, and thinking about something else.
All this, then, seems to offer a basis for an explanation of the poltergeist. It is true that human powers of psychokinesis seem rather feeble—it would be far more convincing if we could point to some medium or psychic who could cause objects to fly around the room at will. But then, perhaps the explanation is that the “door-keeper” inhibits the natural powers of the right brain. Even good “mediums” cannot put themselves into a “sensitive” state at will; some of them need to go into a trance; others need to be in the right frame of mind. Trance mediums who try to “work normally” (i.e., when wide awake) often find it exhausting and frustrating, because the “censor” keeps getting in the way. So if the poltergeist is some peculiar power or force residing in the right brain, perhaps this explains why it cannot be called upon at will, even by gifted psychics such as Uri Geller.
Dowsing also provides us with a possible explanation of the origin of that force. In some dowsers, the presence of underground water produces such a powerful effect that they go into violent convulsions. One of the most famous of French dowsers, Barthelemy Bléton, discovered his powers accidentally at the age of seven; he was taking his father’s meal out to the fields when he sat down on a certain spot, and felt sick and faint. Digging at this spot revealed a powerful underground stream. Again, an old lady who is a member of the British Society of Dowsers described at a conference a few years ago how she could pick up a large branch from the ground, and it would swing around in her hand like a pointer until it indicated water.
If the dowsing rod is responding to some magnetic force, either in water or standing stones, it seems possible that this same force, channeled through the right brain, could provide the energy for poltergeist effects.
It looks, then, as if the modern psychical investigator is in a far better position than his predecessor of a century ago when it comes to constructing theories about the paranormal. The recognition of the “two people” inside our heads may be the most important step ever taken in this direction.
Having said this, it is necessary to admit that most of the mystery remains unexplained. Lodge’s “psychometric hypothesis” and Lethbridge’s theory of “ghouls” may provide an explanation for the majority of ghosts—but what about all those cases in which the witnesses insist that the ghost behaved as if it saw them? Again, it would certainly be convenient if we could explain the poltergeist in terms of “unconscious psychokinesis.” But why has no psychic been able to duplicate poltergeist effects? It is not really an answer to say that they have not learned to switch the power on and off. Many psychics can switch other powers on and off—
telepathy, psychokinesis, second sight. So why not poltergeist effects?
These awkward questions remind us that there are others we have failed to answer. In the case of Lombroso’s bottle-smashing poltergeist in the Via Bava, why did it stop smashing bottles when the wife went away for the first time? If Lombroso is correct, and the poltergeist was a “spirit” that drew its energy from people, then we have our explanation. The spirit needed energy from both the wife and the young waiter to smash bottles and crockery. When the wife went away for the first time, it lost half its energy supply and decided to take a rest. But the second time she went away, she cursed it, and it made a special effort to be disagreeable. In order to do this, it had to make use of the “vestigial energy” she had left on dishes and other objects she had touched. When the young waiter was eventually dismissed, the wife alone could not provide sufficient energy for its needs and it went elsewhere . . .
Modern psychical research has a way of ignoring such questions. It prefers straightforward distinct
ions. If there is a “medium” present (or, as we now say, a “focus”), then it is a poltergeist; if not, then it is a ghost.
But even this pleasantly simple distinction proves to be less useful than it looks. The “spirits” themselves seem to dislike being type-cast, and often decline to stick to their proper role. A case that starts as an ordinary haunting may develop into a poltergeist haunting, and vice versa. And then, just to confuse the issue, the spirits occasionally identify themselves as devils and demons, and manifest themselves in the highly disturbing form known as “possession.” This subject is so complex that it deserves a chapter to itself.
[1]. Encyclopedia of the Unexplained, p. 197.
[2]. California Institute of Technology.
[3]. In Mysteries, p. 116.
two
Possession is Nine Points of the Law
Paris has always led the rest of the world in new fads and crazes—from the can-can in the 1830s, to existentialism in the 1940s. In 1850, the newest and most exciting craze was “table turning.” The rules were simple. A group of people sat around a table, resting their fingertips lightly on the surface, their fingers spread wide so that everyone’s hands touched those of the neighbor on either side. When conditions were favorable, the table would begin to vibrate, then to move of its own accord. It might twist around at an angle of ninety degrees, or rise up into the air, or simply balance on two legs.
This entertainment had, of course, originated in America, the home of modern “Spiritualism.” In March 1848 the Fox family, who lived in a farmhouse in the village of Hydesville, New York, were kept awake at night by loud rapping noises, which defied all attempts to track them down. One of the two younger Fox sisters—Margaret was fifteen and Kate twelve—started snapping her fingers, and the raps imitated the sounds she made. A neighbor who came in to hear the raps tried asking questions, with one rap for “yes” and two for “no.” The obliging spirit was able to give the age of various people who were present and to answer various other