The Goblin Universe - PDFCOFFEE.COM (2024)

Are paranormal events real, or are they only a figment of our imagination?

Colin Wilson and Ted Holiday address this issue with some startling revelations. In The Goblin Universe is found the World of the Mind, the Greater Universe. This is the place of psychic phenomena, ghosts and poltergeists, UFOs and the Men in Black, Dragons and Yetis and the Loch Ness Monster, of prophecy and retrogression and other paranormal mysteries.

This amazing world is explored through Ted Holiday’s personal experiences and his search for a unified theory to open our perceptions to the full universe. In his very fine introduction, Colin Wilson sees the problem in terms of the built-in nature of the human brain and our lack of training in its use. The left brain deals with logic and rational thought, and the right brain with feelings and intuitions. To understand and “see into” the ‘goblin universe’—that realm of unexplained illusions—we must use our intuition, our right brain.

I n The Goblin Universe, Wilson and Holiday examine a wide range of fascinating “occult” phenomena, and explore the technologies by which we may expand our world. Wilson speculates that some people are able to tap actual earth energies with the right brain and direct them to bring about change and movement in the physical world—as in the case of poltergeist and psi phenomena.

Throughout history, we have been confronted with things that fail to fit into our self-conceived reality. Many times we find them frightening. Even modern science is fearful and rejects those things for which it presently does not have an explanation . . . like monsters and UFOs and other things that go bump in the night.

Colin Wilson’s introduction shows just how unscientific the traditional rejection of alternative views is, and how the “leading edge” of modern science is really impinging on the “occult.” Scientists R. W. Sheldon and S. R. Kerr state: “Fear of ridicule is the main reason why many observers do not make their observations known to science. But it is the skeptics who are at fault. Monster observers should be encouraged. The occurrence of monsters is quite reasonable and is by no means fantastic.”

About the Author

TED HOLIDAY was born in Stockport, Cheshire. In 1921 after leaving school he worked for an engineering firm until he joined the Air Force at the beginning of the war. He remained in the Air Force for 10 years.

Writing was his real interest, but he was also a keen angler, and in 1946 developed a passionate interest in the Loch Ness Monster and spent many months each year at Loch Ness in research and observation. He was the angling correspondent of the Western Mail for 15 years. His considerable experience in the study of wildlife was gained from field work in Africa, India and Iraq.

In his later years until his tragically early death in 1979 Ted Holiday lived in West Wales with his parents in an isolated and beautiful country cottage.

COLIN WILSON is one of the most well-respected and important Renaissance philosophers of the 20th century. He is a worldfamous author who has made a new understanding of the Greater Universe intellectually acceptable and believable. He makes his home in Cornwall.

THE GOBLIN UNIVERSE

by

F. W. Holiday

Xanadu

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Holiday, Ted 1921–1979 The goblin universe. -2nd ed. 1. Mysteries I. Title 001.94

Copyright © 1986 F. W. Holiday

First published in the United States of America by Llewellyn Publications 1986

First British edition published by Xanadu Publications Limited, 19 Cornwall Road, London N4 4PH

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Contents

Introduction by Colin Wilson Preface Three Personal Cases Do They Come Back? What Were You Doing Next Month? Elohim—The Trooping Fairies The Mystery Big Cats The Phantom Menagerie The Exorcism of Loch Ness The Science of Wishful Thinking The Hall of Mirrors

Appendix A: Scientific Controversy Regarding Monsters Appendix B: The Loch Ness Exorcism Bibliography

Introduction by Colin Wilson

About two years before his death, Ted Holiday sent me the typescript of his book The Goblin Universe and asked me for comments. I read it straight through in one sitting, and told him I thought it was excellent, and that I would be happy to recommend it to my publisher. Several months went by, and I had no reply. Then, to my surprise, he wrote saying that he was dissatisfied with the book and had decided to scrap it and write another. He never explained exactly why he came to dislike it. After his death, I contacted his mother, and asked her whether Ted had left another typescript behind, and if so, whether I could see it. When a parcel arrived from her a few days later, I tore it open eagerly—and discovered, to my disappointment, that it was the typescript of a book about lake monsters. It contained much important and fascinating material, but simply lacked the daring range and sweep of The Goblin Universe. And that is why I am now delighted to be able—with the permission of Mrs. Florence Holiday—to offer The Goblin Universe to the American reading public. As this book demonstrates, Frederick William Holiday (he acquired the nickname Ted in the RAF) was a highly original mind. He was also a countryman with a passion for fly fishing. And it was this passion, rather than a rather vague interest in the ‘supernatural’, that launched him on his career as investigator of the unknown. In August 1962, he drove in a light van to the shores of Loch Ness, equipped with fishing rods, a sleeping bag and a camera. Ted had been twelve years old in 1933, when the new road was completed along the shores of Loch Ness, and the first sightings of the ‘monster’ were reported. He had always been fascinated by the mystery, so the trip to Scotland had a dual purpose. That first evening, as darkness settled over the Great Glen, Holiday experienced an odd kind of nervousness. This was not the subjective reaction of a highly strung temperament, for this particular countryman had spent many a night in the open. He says: “After sunset, Loch Ness is not a water by which to linger. The feeling is hard to define and impossible to explain . . . Our genes have come down over a million years, from hutments and lake-dwellings, from dark gorges and cold caves. The seed of man’s deepest instincts was planted sometimes before the Pleistocene; our subconscious has accumulated many strange impressions and none of these can be gainsaid. After dark I felt that Loch Ness was better left alone.” That night was peaceful, but the next night, he woke up at midnight, when the Glen was totally silent, and was puzzled to hear the sound of waves crashing on the nearby beach. There was no sound of a boat out on the Loch—in any case, navigation is forbidden at night. But whatever was causing the continuous sound of waves must have been fairly large. Two days later, he was up at dawn, standing on a hillside with his binoculars in his hand; about 6 am he had his first sighting of the monster. Something black and glistening and rounded appeared above the surface, projecting about three feet. Then it dived, producing an upsurge of water like a diving hippopotamus. Through his binoculars he could make out the shape below the surface—thick in the middle and tapering towards its extremities. It was blackish-grey in colour. Holiday guessed it to be between forty and forty-five feet long. He stood watching it for several minutes. Then, on a nearby pier, a workman began hammering on metal, and the monster vanished instantly. That was the last time Holiday sighted the monster in 1962—and, in spite of hundreds of hours of watching, the last time he sighted it until 1965, when he saw it on two more occasions, on the first of which he watched it—looking like an upturned boat—from three different positions, racing his car along the shores of the loch to get a better view. But after that first sighting, he felt relatively sure that what he had been watching was simply a giant version of the common garden slug, an ancestor of the squid and the octopus. Like the octopus, he thought, the monster could probably change colour. He embodied these ideas in a paper, and sent out forty copies to zoologists all over the country; most of them did not even acknowledge it. One ‘expert’ who allowed himself to be drawn into correspondence insisted that what most people have mistaken for the monster is a mat of gas-filled vegetation. But Ted Holiday had seen it, and he knew it was nothing of the sort. He studied every record he could find about ‘worms’ (a name that used to be applied to dragons; another variant is ‘orm’), and discovered that there had been hundreds of sightings over the centuries, many of them on land. And finally, he set down all his theories in his first book, The Great Orm of Loch Ness, which appeared in 1968. His main argument is that the monster is a variety of giant slug, Tullimonstrum gregarium, a creature looking a little like a submarine with a broad tail, and that these monsters were once altogether more plentiful in England—hence the legends of the dragon. But the last chapter of his book offers a hint of another theory that was striving to surface from his subconscious mind. He speaks about the dragon-like fourth beast in the Book of Revelation, and points out how often the dragon is regarded as a symbol of evil.... But this is merely a hint, and I may even be allowing my knowledge of his later work to influence my reading of the text. Even at this stage, when he was convinced that the monster was merely a prehistoric survival, like the coelocanth, he was intrigued by one aspect of this elusive creature’s behaviour: its apparent camera-shyness. Holiday himself had failed

consistently to get a photograph—on one occasion his finger was on the button when the hump submerged. And other ‘watchers’ had experienced the same thing. They always seemed to get their best views of the monster when they had left the camera behind. It was possible, of course, that the creature was telepathic—as I believe many animals are—and could somehow sense the excitement of photographers. But Holiday found himself toying with Jung’s idea of synchronicity, a suspicion that deepened after an odd little coincidence in 1971. In 1899, the tenant of Boleskine House, facing Loch Ness, had been the notorious ‘magician’ Aleister Crowley, who was then in his early twenties. Crowley believed that he was a reincarnation of Edward Kelley, the ‘magical assistant’ of the Elizabethan alchemist John Dee. Crowley had found Dee’s own copy of a famous magical ritual by a certain Abramelin the Mage, and he set out to perform it at Boleskine. But the complete ritual takes about eighteen months to perform, and for some reason, he never completed it. He was apparently successful to the extent of conjuring up a number of shadowy figures—’demons’ or spirits—and these seem to have caused a great deal of trouble—such as driving the coachman to drink and causing a clairvoyant to become a prostitute. According to Holiday: ‘From this point, misfortune stalked him everywhere’—although readers of John Symonds’ biography of Crowley, The Great Beast, may feel this is a pardonable exaggeration, since Crowley spent the next few years wandering around the world and staying in the best hotels. In 1969, American students exploring the cemetery near Boleskine House found a tapestry below a grave-slab. The tapestry was embroidered with humped, worm-like creatures; it was wrapped around a large conch shell, which gave forth a braying sound when blown. They were fairly obviously ritual objects, of the kind used in magical ceremonies, and the dryness of the tapestry, and its freedom from mildew, suggested that it had only been hidden below the graveslab for a day or two. The evidence suggested that someone had been engaged in a magical ceremony in the churchyard when they had been interrupted, and had thrust the ritual objects under the grave-slab, where they were found accidentally before the owner could return for them. Soon afterwards, Ted was invited to dinner by a friend who lived close to the Loch; his fellow guest was an American named Dr. Dee. Dr. Dee, it turned out, was in England checking on his family tree, and he had discovered that he was a descendant of the Elizabethan magician. He was in Scotland by pure chance—Ted’s friend had written to the Chicago Adventurer’s Club about testing sonar equipment on Lake Michigan, and had been put in touch with Dr. Dee. In 1971, there was another coincidence. As Ted was staring across the Loch, he found himself looking at the word DEE in large yellow letters. Bulldozers engaged in widening the road had scraped at the slope running down to the loch. But the letters—formed by the yellow subsoil—were only half complete. Reflected in the mirror-like calm of the water, they formed the word DEE. By this time, Holiday’s investigations had already taken a new turn. In 1968, he had had his last sighting of the Loch Ness monster, ploughing across the lake; several people who were with him also saw it, but while he was running for his camera, it vanished under the surface. Later the same year, he heard of a report of a monster in a small lough (the Irish version of a loch) near Claddaghduff, in Galway. But when Ted went to Lough Fadda, he was puzzled that it seemed too small to house a monster; a fifteen foot ‘pieste’ (as the Irish call them) would soon eat all the fish and die of starvation. Yet when he spoke to witnesses, and studied accounts of other sightings in Ireland, it seemed clear that the sightings were genuine; on one occasion, the witnesses were two priests, on another, a middle aged librarian. Such people would hardly be likely to invent a monstersighting to gain notoriety. Besides, there are simply too many stories about lake monsters for them all to be invention. In the early 19th century, Thomas Croker collected many of them, which he published in a book of Irish legends. He sent this to Sir Walter Scott, who replied that many people near Abbotsford—where he lived—swore to having seen a ‘water-bull’ emerge from a lake hardly large enough to have held him. An Irish woman who saw one described it as having a head like a horse and a tail like an eel, and called it a horseeel. But dozens of descriptions make it clear that the Irish lake monsters belong to the same family as the Loch Ness monster. Holiday decided to set up nets in a small lake called Lough Nahooin where a ‘water horse’ had been sighted. Something disturbed the nets; but there was no evidence that it was a lake monster. But Ted encountered another odd coincidence. While he was near the lough, he had neuralgic pains in his jaws which made sleep impossible, and they came and went over many days; his companion also suffered from them. Later, reading the Egyptian Book of the Dead, he came across a description of a ‘Worm’ of the marshes, and the worm is made to ask the goddess Ea (which signifies ‘antelope of the deep’) if he can ‘drink among the teeth, and .. devour the blood of the teeth and of their gums...’ Although he does not say so, I think we may infer—from the number of times he mentions him—that Ted was reading a great deal of Jung at this time. Now as we know, Jung wrote a book on the ‘Flying Saucer’ phenomenon, in which he advanced the theory that Unidentified Flying Objects are not objectively real, but are ‘projections’ of the human mind. Jung did not mean they were illusions—like the pink elephants seen by a dipsomaniac—but that they were, in effect, ‘monsters from the unconscious’ which had somehow managed to clamber out into the real world. Jung thought that they were modern man’s religious symbols, or rather, his substitute for religious symbols. ‘The soul has a religious function’, says Jung, meaning that man has an appetite for religious meaning which is exactly like his body’s needs for vitamins. If he lives a life without real purpose, this function becomes starved, and he begins to experience a sense of boredom and futility. Then, Jung thought, he may

begin to see certain ‘archetypal’ religious symbols floating around in the sky—his soul’s attempt to remind him that something is missing. (But towards the end of his life, Jung apparently abandoned this belief—according to his niece—and came to admit that Flying Saucers may be as ‘objectively real’ as meteors.) Ted had himself seen a number of Unidentified Flying Objects—as described in the present book—and was apparently much taken with Jung’s theory. But if a Flying Saucer can be a ‘projection’ of man’s basic craving for ‘goodness’, then was it not just as conceivable that lake monsters are a projection of man’s religious sense of evil? After all, the dragon was an ancient symbol of wickedness—hence the legend of St. George. And if Holiday was correct in his original assumption that dragons, ‘worms’ and lake monsters are the same thing, then the Loch Ness monster might be as unreal—objectively speaking—as the Jungian Flying Saucer.... Now the most interesting thing about Ted Holiday—and the most admirable—was his intellectual courage. When he encountered a mystery, he was perfectly capable of diving straight into it, and trying to swim down to the bottom. After ten years or so of investigating lake monsters, he was coming to the conclusion that they may be far more than prehistoric survivals. His encounters with ‘ghosts’—also described in this book—had convinced him that ‘there are more things in heaven and earth...’ Now he began to toy with the idea that there may be some ‘Jungian’ connection between the deep realities of the human psyche and the elusive mystery of lake monsters and Flying Saucers. So he embarked on a wide-ranging study of the literature of the past, in an attempt to trace a connection between UFOs, lake monsters and ancient religious symbols. He turned his attention to archaeology, and was intrigued by the mystery of the barrows. There seem to be two types of barrows—or burial mounds: long barrows and round barrows, (or disc barrows.) Most of them date from the bronze age. Many barrows contain ritual objects in the shape of discs—presumably sun-discs. Holiday looked at serial photographs of disc barrows—for example, at Winterbourne Stoke, near Stonehenge—and was struck by their resemblance to certain well-known Flying Saucer photographs. And in The Dragon and the Disc (1973), he boldly proposed the theory that the ‘barrow culture’ was, in effect, a Flying Saucer culture: that the builders of these great mounds were imitating objects they had seen in the sky. Holiday noted that many UFO sightings include ‘cigar-shaped’ objects, and that some people claim to have seen the smaller ‘Flying Saucers’ emerging from the cigar-shaped objects. The long barrows, he suggested, were based on the cigar-shaped UFOs. There is, of course, a certain danger in constructing theories like these—a danger that can be seen very clearly in the work of Erich von Daniken. Daniken, as everyone knows, took up the extraordinary theories about UFOs suggested by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier in their bestselling book The Morning of the Magicians, which appeared in 1960, and expanded them into an exciting theory about ‘ancient astronauts’, propounded in his immensely popular Chariots of the Gods? in 1967. But as soon as serious scholars began to examine Daniken’s book, they became aware that he had an unfortunate tendency to distort the facts to fit his theories. One particularly notorious example is the photograph of something which Daniken alleges to be a ‘parking bay’ for an ancient space ship—part of the famous Nazca lines in Peru. In fact, the ‘parking bay’ is the leg joint of a vast bird drawn on the surface of the desert, and is not more than a dozen feet in diameter—hardly large enough to park a car, still less a space ship. Daniken hastened to explain that he was not responsible for photographs or the caption—they had been inserted by an editor. Yet the photograph can still be seen in edition after edition of Chariots of the Gods?; Daniken is apparently happy to allow the error to stand. Dozens of similar ‘errors’ could be cited. But the deathblow to Daniken’s credibility was struck by the affair of the underground caves, described at the beginning of Gold of the Gods. Daniken alleged that he had visited these caves in South America and had seen amazing underground libraries engraved on sheets of metal; later he was compelled to admit that he had not actually been inside the caves, and that his account should be regarded as a kind of fiction. The ‘library’, of course, was pure invention. This is the kind of problem that can easily arise when a writer becomes obsessed by a theory, and determines to prove it at any cost. Holiday, fortunately, was not prone to that kind of ‘enthusiasm.’ His books exude an air of pragmatism and common sense. His temperament was altogether closer to that of another British student of the paranormal, the late Tom Lethbridge (of whom I have written at length in my book Mysteries). Lethbridge was an archaeologist and a Cambridge don who realised, at an early age, that he was an exceptionally good dowser; that is to say, he could detect underground water— and other substances—by means of a ‘divining rod.’ (On one occasion, he allowed a friend to blindfold him and then lead him over an area where there were volcanic dykes; his dowsing rod responded accurately to every one.) When he retired, he began experimenting with a pendulum, and found that the instrument could apparently detect any substance, according to the length of its string. Over the next ten years or so, Lethbridge carried out a series of experiments, and described his results in eight remarkable books, whose most impressive feature is the pragmatic, down-to-earth nature of their reasoning. Ted Holiday was not quite so consistent a thinker as Tom Lethbridge, but he possessed many of the same qualities, and his books impress for the same reason: because the reader feels he is speaking from personal experience. Because he died in 1979, eight years after Lethbridge, Holiday was able to become acquainted with a theory that would have helped Lethbridge to unify many of his observations: the notion of lines of ‘earth force’ known as ‘leys.’ In fact, ley lines had been ‘discovered’ as long ago as 1921 by the Herefordshire businessman Alfred Watkins, when he noticed that the English countryside is criss-crossed with ‘old straight tracks’ that seem to connect hilltops and ‘sacred sites’, such as churches, stone circles and ancient mounds and barrows. But Watkins died in 1935, and his ley lines were virtually forgotten

during the second World War. In the mid-1960s, they came to the attention of an English scholar named John Michell, who was fascinated by the religious observances of the ancient world, as well as by the UFO phenomenon. And in his first book, The Flying Saucer Vision, (1967), Michell observed that ‘it is remarkable to what extent the flying saucer legend has incorporated former beliefs and superstitions, some of which were apparently moribund and others embedded for centuries in Christian mythology.’ He also observed that ‘the evidence .. is that throughout its postwar history the flying saucer phenomenon and its literature have been associated with a change in prevailing modes of thought so radical that it amounts to a change in the popular cosmology; that is, the way people understand the universe and their place in it.’ Michell pointed out that this supports Jung’s view that UFOs are a portent of ‘long-lasting transformations of the collective psyche.’ Now Watkins had assumed that his ‘old straight tracks’ were merely ancient trade routes—although towards the end of his life he voiced the suspicion that they might have some religious significance. Michell pointed out that the Chinese have a magical ‘science’ called feng shui, whose basis is the belief that the earth is a living, breathing entity, and that feng shui also has its equivalent of ‘ley lines’, called lung mei, or dragon paths. These also connect sacred sites, and are regarded as lines of living earth force. Tradition has it that they are the routes of dragons flying between their nests. But they are also known as ‘dragon veins’, and it would probably be more accurate to regard them as lines of force on the great dragon, the earth itself. There seems to be one major—indeed, crucial—difference between ley lines and ‘dragon paths.’ Leys are supposed to be straight; but the Chinese believe that all the virtue of a dragon path resides in its crookedness; a straight path—or a straight river or line of hills—is regarded as unlucky, because the ‘earth breath’ can easily flow away into the surrounding countryside. Yet this difference is not as important as it seems. If ley lines really exist, and if they are lines of earth force, perhaps akin to earth magnetism, then no one would expect them to be as straight as Roman roads; they would be bound to ‘wander’ to some extent. Once we rid ourselves of the notion—derived from Watkins—that a ley should be a straight line, we can see that dragon paths and ley lines are two names for the same thing. In his posthumously published book Legend of the Sons of God (1972), Lethbridge speculated that the mysterious circles of standing stones that can be found all over the British Isles (indeed, all over the world) may be ‘accumulators’ whose purpose was to store a kind of energy which he calls ‘bio-electricity.’ Lethbridge thought that the stones could be ‘charged’ by ritual dancing. (Stonehenge was once known as ‘the Giants’ Dance’, while most stone circles are associated with legends of dancing.) He then threw off an altogether stranger speculation: that perhaps the stone circles were intended as some kind of ‘beacon’ to allow ancient space craft to ‘home in.’ He also speculates that the biblical legends about ‘giants in the earth’, and ‘sons of God who cohabited with the daughters of men and made them pregnant, may be memories of the visits of ancient astronauts. Lethbridge is not dogmatic about his theory—as Daniken is; in fact, he subtitles his book: A Fantasy? But it led him to study the patterns of various ancient stone monuments, and lines of standing stones (like those at Carnac, in Britanny), and to speculate that the lines may connect—or simply point to—various ‘sacred sites.’ Lethbridge had, in effect, rediscovered ley lines. Ted Holiday came upon ley lines as a result of his study of bronze age archaeology. Lake monsters and UFOs had become connected in his mind as two mysteries of which he had some personal experience. In studying the ancient history of ‘worms’ and dragons, he came across many ‘serpent carvings’ in Christian churches, and on Celtic and Norse artifacts. But he also noticed carvings that bore a remarkable resemblance to Flying Saucers. So, like Daniken and Michell and Lethbridge, he found himself speculating whether our remote ancestors may have been acquainted with ‘spacemen.’ In The Flying Saucer Vision, John Michell had stated flatly that ‘since (dragons) appear to be identical with the western concept of flying saucers .. the discovery that dragons move over the earth’s surface on certain straight lines will encourage those who are working to compare leys with the routes of flying saucers.’ (Michell was unaware at this early date that Chinese ‘dragon paths’ are crooked.) Holiday was more cautious; he simply felt that ancient symbolism seems to indicate some connection between dragons (or worms) and ‘discs.’ And in The Dragon and the Disc, he went a step further and suggested that Egyptian and Sumerian pyramids were, like Bronze Age disc mounds, ‘a response to the phenomena today called UFOs.’ What he seems to mean is that the pyramids embodied a knowledge of the universe—for example, the exact size of the earth—that was far beyond the science of their time. In The Flying Saucer Vision, John Michell had already outlined his own controversial theory of the nature of UFOs.’ Hitherto all the theories of modern scholarship have, as Lenin observed, been based on the assumption that we are alone in the universe. The possibility that our whole development has been influenced by extra-terrestrial forces, with which we may again have to reckon some time in the future, is hardly considered. Yet, as we have seen, this idea lay behind all the study and religious observances of antiquity. Our disregard for life outside the earth is something new, an attitude which we may not be able for much longer to maintain . . ‘ This leaves us with an interesting question. Have the ‘extra-terrestrials’ set out to remind us of their existence with this new wave of Flying Saucers? Or do Flying Saucers originate in the ‘collective unconscious’ of the human race—in which case, we must suppose that the collective unconscious is trying to remind us of certain truths we have forgotten? Michell leaves the question open; he is far more concerned to remind his readers of ‘the Flying Saucer vision’, the vision of man as a part of a far wider universe. And in his second book, The View Over Atlantis (1969) the ‘Flying Saucer vision’ has become the ‘ancient

knowledge system’ that lies behind the Chinese science of feng shui—the recognition of the earth as a living body—while Atlantis has become the symbol of a remote Golden Age in which science was based on this recognition. Holiday was also moving towards the view that both ‘dragons’ and Flying Saucers may be symbols—or perhaps a better word would be ‘signals’—that is to say, that their purpose may be to ‘remind’ human beings that reality is altogether stranger and more complex than they think. The question of precisely who is making the signals is left open. But in the twelfth chapter of The Dragon and the Disc, he admits that ‘by 1970 I had rejected the superficial view of monster phenomena—that they are just unknown animals that have somehow escaped the science net—as inadequate.’ And he goes on to cite references in Celtic literature to the idea that the ‘Serpent’ is an apparition or phantom. And he goes on to suggest that in the ancient world, the ‘Disc’ may have been worshipped in many places, while the dragon was worshipped by other groups. Such groups would today be called Satanists. He points out that Irish churches seem to lack the serpent designs found in so many English churches, and suggests that perhaps this is what is meant by the legend that St. Patrick banished the serpents from Ireland—that he destroyed the ancient religion of dragon-worship. And it is at this late point in The Dragon and the Disc that he goes on to speak about Aleister Crowley, and his Abramelin ritual at Boleskine House. He is already beginning to speculate that the phenomena he has been discussing may have something in common with what is traditionally called magic. In a final chapter, An Exercise in Speculation, he makes a heroic effort to pull together the various threads of the book, but it is well-nigh an impossibility. He speaks about ‘other dimensions’ and parallel universes, and points out that in many reports of UFOs, the object seemed to come and go, materialising and dematerialising moment by moment. Then he goes on to mention some of the odd phenomena observed in the Warminster area —a centre for ley lines as well as Flying Saucers—for example, the case of a couple who were driving home late at night when they saw a corpse lying with its feet in the road; when they stopped the car, it had vanished. But he is obviously not sure how this kind of oddity fits into the general pattern about ley lines and Flying Saucers. The book seems to fade out on a question mark which, like the smile of the Cheshire cat, hangs in the air after the rest of it has vanished. Lethbridge could have provided him with one intriguing theory about the nature of apparitions like the one encountered by the young couple. Lethbridge’s view is that they are a kind of ‘tape recording.’ Around the turn of the 20th century, Sir Oliver Lodge had speculated that certain types of apparition may be ‘recorded’ in the walls of a room in which some tragedy has taken place. And half a century before that, a remarkable American professor of medicine, Joseph Rodes Buchanan, had discovered that his students could detect various chemicals by merely handling the brown-paper parcels in which they were wrapped; he went on to describe a faculty—which he called ‘psychometry’ (or soul-measurement)—which could enable sensitives to somehow ‘read’ the history of an object they held in their hands. His contemporary William Denton discovered that psychometrists could ‘read’ the history of geological specimens with astonishing accuracy—for example, receiving, a mental picture of an exploding volcano when they handled a chunk of volcanic lava (wrapped in thick paper) or of prehistoric forests when they held a fragment of dinosaur bone. The ‘psychometric hypothesisis’ involved the belief that every object has somehow recorded the history of everything that has happened to it, and that man possesses a faculty for ‘decoding’ this history, exactly as a tape recorder can decode the signals on a piece of magnetic tape. So in suggesting that ‘ghosts’ may be a kind of tape-recording, Lethbridge was reviving a theory that was more than a century old. We can see that the tape recording theory would have provided Holiday with a plausible explanation of the corpse-inthe-road. But would it have thrown any light upon his speculations about ley lines and Flying Saucers? The answer is probably yes. Many ley enthusiasts have suggested that the earth-force may be associated with ‘supernatural’ occurrences. Lethbridge himself was inclined to believe that ‘ghosts’ (and another type of manifestation which he called ‘ghouls’—meaning an unpleasant feeling associated with some spot) were ‘recorded’ on the electrical field of water, so that a ghost is more likely to be seen in a damp than in a dry place. He also thought that there were similar fields associated with mountains, woodlands and wide open spaces such as deserts. All this seems to suggest the Chinese ‘dragon’ force and John Michell’s leys. So what is being suggested is that places in which the earth force is unusually strong—for example, crossing points of ley lines—may ‘record’ tragic events (or events associated with some strong emotion) far more efficiently than places where the force is weak. And if Holiday is right in believing that UFOs may originate in some ‘other dimension’ or parallel universe, then these places of high earth-energy would be the places where we would expect to hear of manifestations of Flying Saucers. And, according to Holiday, of lake monsters ... So in the final pages of The Dragon and the Disc, Holiday had taken a bold step into the unknown, but was still a long way from formulating any general theory that might explain the mystery. He was fortunate that he had no reputation to lose. He mentions an American academic who told him that doors had been slammed in his face ever since it was known that he was investigating the Loch Ness Monster. Many respectable journals had praised The Great Orm of Loch Ness as a balanced, clear-headed attempt to summarise the evidence. With The Dragon and the Disc, he had crossed the line that divides serious monster-hunters from the lunatic fringe. Yet he had no doubt whatever that his conclusions were as sane and balanced as those of the earlier book. What he urgently needed was some general theory that would embrace all the strange phenomena he had encountered. And, as The Goblin Universe shows, the last six years of his life were a continual struggle to formulate such a theory. His decision to leave the book unpublished—or at least, to rewrite it—seems to indicate that he felt that his attempt had

been a failure. Holiday was experiencing a problem that is familiar to students of the paranormal. They begin as more or less openminded sceptics, prepared to give serious consideration to any evidence that presents itself, but determined not to indulge in any self-deceptions. Finally, the sheer weight of evidence convinces them that something odd is going on, and they try to create what Aldous Huxley called a ‘minimum working hypothesis’, an explanation that covers the basic facts. This may be, for example, telepathy. Lethbridge saw a ‘ghost’—a man dressed in riding gear—in the rooms of a university friend, and theorised that someone else may have been thinking about the man, and that his own mind somehow ‘picked up’ the image—like ‘a television picture without the sound.’ But he was forced to drop this explanation as he encountered other examples of the paranormal. And this tends to be the experience of most serious investigators. Whenever they have formulated a watertight ‘general theory’, they stumble upon some new fact that simply refuses to fit in. And they have to extend the theory. Then they find still more awkward facts and extend it still further. And in no time at all, their original neat, symmetrical theory looks like an old sack stuffed with rubbish. This was Ted Holiday’s experience, and it explains why The Goblin Universe begins with a sentence that sounds like a confession of failure: ‘We inhabit a strange cosmos where nothing is absolute, final or conclusive. Truth is an actor who dons one mask after another and then vanishes through a secret door in the stage scenery . . . ‘ In fact, he is merely expressing a conviction that strikes every paranormal investigator sooner or later: that the universe probably contains other intelligences besides our own. When the Society for Psychical Research was formed in 1882, a group of distinguished philosophers and scientists hoped to study ‘the paranormal’ with the same scientific methods they used for studying meteorites or bacteria. They were, in fact, successful to a remarkable degree, establishing the reality of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis beyond all possible doubt. But their investigations into the problem of life after death were far less successful because their results were so contradictory. If ghosts and poltergeists really existed, then they seemed determined to confuse the investigators with false information. G.K. Chesterton, who devoted some time to experiments with the ouija board, agreed that the seances produced unexplainable results, but added: ‘The only thing I will say with complete confidence about that mystic and invisible power is that it tells lies.’ This has also been the experience of many investigators of the UFO phenomenon. The experiences of the American journalist John Keel—which fascinated Holiday—seem to be typical. He became interested in the phenomenon as early as 1945, two years before the pilot Kenneth Arnold started the Flying Saucer craze with his sighting of a number of Unidentified Flying Objects against the background of Mount Rainier, in Washington state. He started off as a sceptical investigator, but in 1954, saw his first UFO at Aswan, in Egypt. In 1966, he became sufficiently interested in UFOs to subscribe to a press cutting agency. The results astounded him; sometimes he received as many as 150 clippings a day. It seemed that there were far more ‘sightings’ than was generally realised. Many witnesses spoke of being pursued by Flying Saucers as they tried to escape in their cars, and of seeing them later over their homes. Keel’s first response was that most of this was probably hysteria or lies; but he decided to interview as many witnesses as possible, and was soon convinced that the majority were not liars or publicity seekers (these, he said, were fairly easy to spot), but ordinary, honest people, who were often reluctant to discuss their experiences. Then, in October 1967, as he was driving along the Long Island Expressway, he noticed a sphere of light that was running parallel to his car in the sky. When he arrived at his destination, the ‘UFO’ was still there, and it had been joined by four others; crowds of people were staring up at them. Keel described the results of his investigation in a book called Operation Trojan Horse (1970), and he admits that he has come to accept the ‘paraphysical’ explanation of UFOs—that they are, in some sense, nonphysical objects, who have something in common with the angels and demons of mediaeval tradition, and something in common with such ‘paranormal’ phenomena as poltergeists and apparitions. Keel also speaks of the mysterious ‘men in black’ who often plague UFO investigators; in Operation Trojan Horse he reports that he interviewed many people who had been contacted by ‘men in black’ and warned to keep silent about their experiences; sometimes the mystery men were dressed as Air Force officers. ‘I quickly discovered, to my amazement, that these ‘Air Force officers’ all looked alike. They were slight, olive-skinned men with Oriental eyes and high cheekbones. Some witnesses said they looked like Italians; others thought they were Burmese or Indian . . ‘ Five years later, in a book called The Mothman Prophecies (1975), Keel revealed that he himself had become the object of attention of some of these mysterious entities. He began to investigate sightings of a seven foot figure with red eyes and folded wings, whom he calls Mothman. This had been seen at an old explosives dump in West Virginia. When Keel and three other people went there at night, they had a typically confusing experience. In a deserted building, a girl named Connie— who had previously seen the ‘Mothman’ figure—suddenly became hysterical, claiming she had seen red eyes looking at her from the darkness. She was taken outside and Keel rushed back into the building with his electric torch; it was, of course, empty. When he got outside again, the others thought they had seen someone running away into the darkness. They had also heard a loud noise like a heavy piece of metal falling from a height; Keel had heard nothing. Another girl’s ear began to bleed. When the others had left, Keel decided to return to the dump for another look. At a certain point on the road, he was suddenly engulfed with fear. A few yards further on, the fear vanished as quickly as it had come. He returned to the same spot; the fear began again. He found that he could walk into it and out of the other side, and that the moment he stepped into it, he experienced

a sense of panic. Keel decided that it was due to some ‘ultrasonic waves’, and when he returned the next day, the ‘fear’ had gone. Tom Lethbridge had made a similar observation about the entity he called a ‘ghoul’; it seemed to be a highly unpleasant feeling—of danger or foreboding—that surrounded places where something ‘nasty’ had happened. And it was possible to step into it and out of it again as if it had a sharply-drawn boundary.... Keel goes on to describe how he was subjected to a peculiar persecution by the ‘space men’—mysterious phone calls, warning messages, absurd hoaxes. On one occasion, he chose a motel at random for the night, and found a sheaf of incomprehensible messages waiting for him at the desk. And finally, he began receiving phone calls from a man who called himself Apol, who made a number of curious prophecies. Some were accurate, some were not. Apol mentioned that Robert Kennedy was in great danger, and that the pope would be knifed to death in the Middle East; shortly before this assassination, there would be a great earthquake. Kennedy was, of course, assassinated. The Vatican announced that the pope would visit Turkey, and an earthquake there killed a thousand people. But he was not assassinated; what happened was that a madman tried to stab the pope to death at Manila airport two years later, but was overpowered. Investigators who have studied precognition—for example, Alan Vaughan* —have concluded that entities who claim to be spirits of the dead do seem to have a certain power of prophecy. But it seems to lack accuracy, as if the future events had been glimpsed in some bewildering kaleidoscope that jumbled up past and future. Psychical investigators are also familiar with the phenomenon of ‘earth-bound spirits’, who seem to exhibit a malicious sense of humour and—as Chesterton observed —to tell lies. Keel’s general conclusion seems to be that Apol—and his fellow ‘men in black’—are such entities. I have devoted a chapter of my book Mysteries to examining some of these confusing phenomena. Andrija Puharich’s book about Uri Geller is full of them: ‘mechanical’ voices speak from the air, recording cassettes appear and disappear, car engines stop suddenly and start just as unexpectedly, mysterious spacecraft appear in the middle of nowhere, strange coincidences occur, objects are ‘teleported’ from one place to another ... It all leaves the reader with a sense of irritated bewilderment. There are moments when he suspects that if these ‘extra-terrestrials’ are real, then they are determined to cover their trail by producing a series of ‘miracles’ that are so absurd and meaningless that no normal reader can take them seriously. In fact, after Puharich and Geller went their separate ways, Puharich continued to be contacted by ‘spirits’ who claimed to be extra-terrestrials, and who claimed that their immediate aim was to prepare mankind for a mass landing of spacecraft on ‘planet earth.’ My friend Stuart Holroyd became involved in the group of investigators who surrounded Puharich, and told me of some of his own extraordinary ‘paranormal experiences’ in Tel Aviv—’apports’ and similar phenomena. But although the ‘extra-terrestrials’ gave a highly convincing account of themselves, and of the history of the human race, the great landing on planet earth failed to materialise, and Holroyd’s Prelude to a Landing on Planet Earth seems to be just another example of the kind of confusing phenomena that surround UFOs and ‘earthbound spirits.’ In Operation Trojan Horse, Keel mentions that at the beginning of his career, he was hired by a woman to type a book describing her conversations with an ancient Roman called Lucretius. He materialised in front of her—in his toga—as she was strolling along Riverside Drive one afternoon, and talked to her at length about religion and philosophy. He may, of course, have been merely a hallucination. Or he may have belonged to that class of ‘communicators’ who have been recorded since the early days of spiritualism, and who claim that their aim is to ‘bring wisdom to mankind.’ In the 1850’s, a French savant who was intrigued by the phenomena of spiritualism studied the automatic writings of two sisters who seemed to be excellent mediums, and asked ‘the spirits’ a whole series of questions about the meaning of the universe; the result, The Spirits’ Book, by Allan Kardec, is still regarded as a classic of its kind. So are the communications recorded in the 1890’s by the Rev. Stainton Moses, and published under the title Spirit Teachings after his death. More recently, the teaching of ‘Seth’, as recorded by Jane Roberts, have gained an audience of dedicated admirers. In England, a group who call themselves The Atlanteans devote themselves to propagating the teachings of a ‘spirit’ who calls himself Helio-Arcanophus, who speaks through a man called Tony Neate and who claims to be an inhabitant of ancient Atlantis. In America, a twelve hundred page work called A Course in Miracles has become something of a best-seller; it was taken down in automatic writing by a professor of psychology named Helen Schucman. None of these ‘teachings’ can be dismissed as nonsense; yet I personally find it equally difficult to regard them as the inspired outpourings of beings who have achieved a higher level of wisdom than the rest of us. And when Jane Roberts produced a book that claimed to be the ‘afterdeath journal’ of the philosopher William James, I had no hesitation in dismissing the ‘communicator’ as another of G. K. Chesterton’s liars. The study of such communications leads to the conclusion that they vary from brilliantly perceptive moral insights to feeble-minded gibberish. If we give the ‘mediums’ the benefit of the doubt, and assume that all the communications are genuine—that is, are not simply concocted by frauds—then we are left with the conclusion that some denizens of the spirit world are near-geniuses and others are imbeciles. (The same applies, of course, if the source of the communications is some alter-ego in the unconscious mind.) The conclusion would seem to be that, where communications from the ‘other world’ are concerned, it is always sensible to look a gift horse in the mouth. It would seem that Ted Holiday was unfortunate enough to excite the attention of some of these peculiar entities after getting himself involved in the exorcism of Loch Ness; at least, this is his own theory. It came about, as he explains in the seventh chapter of this book, when he read a letter in a newspaper from the Rev. Donald Omand, who is an exorcist. What Ted

does not explain is how Donald Omand came to become convinced that lake monsters are ‘evil.’ Donald Omand is also a friend of mine, and his story is as follows. In 1967, walking beside Loch Long, in Ross-shire, Donald saw the water churning, then saw two black humps rise above the surface. He was intrigued, and assumed that this was some curious unknown mammal. But in the following year, he met a Norwegian sailor, Captain Jan Andersen, who—like Holiday—thought the lake monsters were evil. Anderson also told Omand that he was convinced that there are patches of water that possess ‘magnetic’ properties which can overcome a man’s reason and cause him to jump overboard—he thought that the Bermuda Triangle contains a number of these evil ‘vortexes.’ That June—1968—Omand accepted Andersen’s invitation to go and look at the ‘eeriest waterway in Norway’, known as the Fjord of the Trolls. As the small boat entered the fjord, Omand began to experience a strange feeling of apprehension, and as the boat reached the end of the fjord, it became an atmosphere of menace. The boat then turned and made its way back. Suddenly, the water ahead of them ‘boiled’, exactly as it had in Loch Long, and two humps rose above the surface. At close quarters, the monster seemed far larger than the one in Loch Long, and Donald was terrified that it would overturn the small boat. The monster came straight towards them, but Andersen told him not to worry ‘It will not hurt us —they never do.’ The creature veered just before it reached the boat, and dived. When Donald suggested following it, Andersen shook his head. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. And I mean evil.’ It was the third time Andersen had seen it. ‘Why evil?’ asked Donald, ‘It did us no harm.’ ‘They don’t do physical harm. They want to convince anyone who sees them that they are harmless. The evil they do is to men’s characters.’ And he told Donald he thought they were somehow connected with the biblical serpent. In 1972, Omand attended a psychiatric conference in Sweden, and was intrigued when an eminent psychiatrist read a paper on the monster of Lake Storsjon, in which he said that he was convinced that such monsters had a malevolent effect on human beings—on those who hunted it and those who saw it regularly. He thought their influence could produce domestic tragedies and moral degeneration. He had investigated cases in Scotland and Ireland, and claimed that ‘the same pattern of domestic tragedy had emerged.’ It was now that Donald began to formulate this theory that the lake monsters were not solid entities, but ‘a projection into our day and age’ of something from the prehistoric past. His newspaper controversy about the monster led Ted Holiday to write to him. The result was the exorcism of Loch Ness, as described in this book—an exorcism that left them both oddly exhausted. Two days later, Ted went to visit some friends, the Carys, and mentioned that he meant to go and examine the place in the woods where a Swedish journalist had seen a grounded UFO. Mrs. Cary and her husband had also seen an orange coloured ball of light over Loch Ness, and Mrs Cary warned Ted against going to the place where the grounded UFO had been seen. The journalist, Jan-Ove Sundberg, claimed to have been harassed by ‘men in black’ after he had returned to Sweden, and had suffered a nervous breakdown. Holiday tells how, as Mrs Cary was giving him this advice, there was a rushing sound like a tornado outside the window and a series of violent thuds; Ted saw a pyramid of blackish smoke whirling outside. Mrs. Cary saw a beam of white light which focused on Ted’s forehead. Basil Cary, who was standing with his back to the window pouring a drink, heard nothing and saw nothing. The garden proved to be empty and perfectly normal. The next morning, as he walked out of the house, Ted saw a ‘man in black’ who appeared to be waiting for him—the man was dressed in black leather, with goggles and a helmet. Ted walked up to him, and turned his eyes away for about ten seconds; in that time, the man vanished. One year later, near the same spot, Ted had his first heart attack—he describes looking over the side of the stretcher and seeing that they had just passed over the spot where he had seen the man in black. Five years later, Ted died of another heart attack . . . All this, of course, proves nothing whatever. The man in black may have been an ordinary motorcyclist who simply walked out of Ted’s range of vision. The crashes in the garden may have been an ordinary burst of wind, and Basil Cary may not have heard it because he was slightly deaf. I know that Ted himself was shaken by some of the underwater photographs taken in the ‘70s, and began to wonder whether the monster might, after all, turn out to be simply an unknown animal. (This, I suspect, was the reason that he decided to suppress the present book.) Yet when we have looked at all the natural explanations, there is still a great deal that is unexplained—for example, Sundberg’s sighting of a UFO and ‘men in black.’ The thuds that were unheard by Basil Cary remind us of the crash of falling metal heard by everyone but John Keel at the old ammunition dump, while Donald Omand’s feeling of menace in the fjord bears an obvious resemblance to Keel’s experience on the lonely road. It seems to be ‘the Pan effect’ described in the sixth chapter of this book—the inexplicable terror which can cause climbers to run for their lives—or sailors to jump overboard. In my book The Psychic Detectives I have quoted the philosopher and psychical researcher William James, who at the end of his life confessed that, after twenty five years of investigation, he still felt that he had made no real advance. He added: ‘I confess that at times I have been tempted to believe that the Creator has eternally intended this department of nature to remain baffling ....’, pointing out that although the evidence for ghosts and clairvoyance cannot be explained away, it also seems to remain tantalisingly beyond the bounds of actual proof. This, I have suggested, might be christened ‘James’s Law’—the mandate that seems to assert that the evidence for life after death (or any other mystery of the paranormal) shall always be strong enough to reassure the converted, but never conclusive enough to have the slightest influence on unbelievers. This seems to be roughly what Ted Holiday meant when he talked about ‘the goblin universe.’

Yet it seems a pity to take this rather defeatist attitude. It is perfectly true that, more than a century after it was founded, the Society for Psychical Research has failed to do what it set out to do: to prove once and for all whether there is life after death. Yet the achievements of the Society have been very real indeed. Before 1882, any sceptic could argue that the evidence for clairvoyance, telepathy, apparitions, ‘doppelgangers’ and precognition was virtually non-existent: that it all amounted to a compendium of old wives’ tales. Within twenty years, the Society had collected thousands of well-authenticated accounts of all these phenomena. And although sceptics continued to dismiss the whole subject as beneath contempt, serious students of the paranormal knew that they were merely displaying stupidity and ignorance. Professor James Hyslop—a close friend of William James—wrote with understandable exasperation: ‘I regard the existence of discarnate spirits as scientifically proved, and I no longer refer to the sceptic as having any right to speak on the subject. Any man who does not accept the existence of discarnate spirits and the proof of it is either ignorant or a moral coward. I give him short shrift, and do not propose to argue with him on the supposition that he knows nothing about the subject.’ The real problem, I would suggest, is not lack of evidence, but lack of an overall theory to explain the evidence. This is what Ted Holiday was searching for all his life, and this is what he unfortunately failed to achieve. The present book is full of interesting testimony to his own experience of the paranormal. But he was trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle when half the pieces were missing. The second chapter of this book—on Gilles de Rais and Edward Paisnel—seems to me to display the weakness of his method. There is a great deal of interesting evidence suggesting the reality of reincarnation (and I have discussed this in the relevant chapter of my book Afterlife.) But it seems to me to serve no purpose to sketch the career of Gilles de Rais, then to outline the crimes of the Jersey rapist, and to suggest that Paisnel may have been a reincarnation of Gilles de Rais because of a number of odd coincidences. It convinces no one—even the ‘believers.’ The truth is that Holiday’s viewpoint changed completely between the mid-1960’s and the mid-1970’s, and The Goblin Universe is an attempt to sketch the ‘new look’ universe in which he found himself in the mid-1970’s. Tom Lethbridge once described how he had been walking on the arctic ice when it collapsed, and he found himself floundering in freezing water; he compared this to his sensations when be began to turn his attention to pendulums, and found himself floundering in a universe of strange ‘facts’ whose existence he had never suspected. Holiday felt the same, and The Goblin Universe is an attempt to make the reader share the sensation. The problem is that the reader needs to start out with a certain sympathy for these ideas. The Goblin Universe would never convert a single sceptic; in fact, it would probably make him more certain than ever that ‘the occult’ is a farrago of self-deception and muddled thinking. I have spent the past eighteen years looking into the subject, and I must admit that my own general conclusions are very close to those of Ted Holiday and Tom Lethbridge. But it now seems to me that the prospects for a ‘general theory of the paranormal’ are a great deal healthier than they were ten years ago. The simplest way to explain this is to speak about the development of my own views on the paranormal over the past two decades. When, in the mid-1960s, I was asked by an American publisher to write a book on ‘the occult’, my own attitude was basically sceptical. I had read the book that had started the new fashion in ‘occultism’—The Morning of the Magicians by Pauwels and Bergier—and thought that it was mostly amusing nonsense (a view I have not changed.) I had been interested in spiritualism as a child, and had devoured all the books in the ‘occult’ section of our local library, on every subject from poltergeists to fire-walking. But in my early teens I had determined to become a scientist—I was hoping to work on the atomic bomb, which had not then been invented—and I became increasingly convinced that the Spiritualists were indulging in wishful thinking. In fact, my interest moved slowly from science to philosophy—particularly the philosophy known an existentialism— and I became a writer. I remained mildly interested in ‘occult’ subjects—such as witchcraft and precognition—but paid them no special attention. When I began to research The Occult, I began to realise how many ordinary people have had curious encounters with the paranormal. Sir Osbert Sitwell tells how, when he was in the army, several of his brother officers went to see a celebrated palmist. Again and again, the palmist shook her head in bewilderment, saying: ‘I don’t understand it—the lifeline stops short and I can read nothing.’ Then the first World War started, and the officers were all killed in the first few months. Stories like this intrigued me because the writer was obviously not particularly interested in ‘the occult.’ In the same way, I was fascinated when I paid a visit to the Scottish poet Hugh M’Diarmid, and his wife told me that she always knew when he was about to return from a journey because their dog always went and sat at the end of their lane a few days before he came home. As I came across dozens of similar stories, I was reminded of Andrew Lang’s remark that most people who have seen ghosts or encountered ‘the occult’ are ‘steady unimaginative, unexcitable people with just one odd experience.’ I concluded that so-called ‘paranormal faculties’ are probably an ancient part of our human inheritance. Our remote ancestors needed to be able to detect underground water, and to feel a sense of foreboding when a wild animal was lying in wait. A modern city dweller has no need for such faculties, and so has allowed them to fall into disuse. These faculties, I came to believe, included clairvoyance, (knowledge of what is going on in other places), telepathy and ‘mind over matter’ (demonstrated, for example, in fire-walking.) This explanation struck me as satisfyingly ‘scientific’; paranormal faculties were simply the result of a hyper-active unconscious mind. Yet I had to admit that one thing baffled me: the evidence for precognition, or knowledge of the future. Since the future has not taken place, then there should be no possible way in which it

could be ‘known.’ Yet Sitwell’s palmist had apparently known about it. In writing about witchcraft, I had taken the sensible view that it is basically a superstition. Witches were simply old ladies with paranormal powers—for example, of healing—and ignorant neighbours assumed they were in league with the devil. The Rev. Montague Summers had written a famous history of witchcraft in which he took it all perfectly seriously; it seemed to me that he must be either a liar or a fraud. What did surprise me was how many ‘normal’ people had had some experience of the paranormal. Thomas Mann had written an essay describing a seance at which he had seen objects floating around the room. Bernard Shaw was convinced that he had been bewitched by the playwright Granville Barker’s wife, who had turned his spine into ‘a bar of rusty iron’ out of sheer spiteful malevolence. My old friend Negley Farson had described to me how an African witch doctor had assured a European lady that the torrential rain would stop in time for her garden party that afternoon; it had stopped—a few minutes before the party began—and started again a few minutes after it ended. Sir Arthur Grimble had described how a witch doctor had gone into a trance and ‘summoned’ a shoal of porpoises, which swam into the beach by the hundred, and were slaughtered by natives with clubs. It seemed astonishing that so many non-spiritualists and non-occultists could vouch for the everyday reality of the paranormal. It was some time after publishing The Occult (1972) that it struck me that my ‘sceptical’ attitude towards witches was illogical. I was studying the strange case of the North Berwick witches, who were accused of causing the storm that almost wrecked the ship carrying King James and his bride. In The Occult I had taken the view that their confessions had been wrung out of them by torture. Yet the evidence does not support this view. When the king was about to dismiss the whole affair as a tissue of nonsense, one of the accused drew him aside and whispered in his ear certain words that he had whispered to his bride on their wedding night; this convinced the king that he was dealing with the supernatural. If I could accept stories about African witch-doctors as true, then why should I assume that all European witches were innocent old ladies? Some of them might well have had ‘magical powers.’ And what precisely are magical powers? My answer was basically this: that such powers as psychokinesis originate in the unconscious mind—like ‘second sight’ or water-divining—and that certain people are born with a far higher degree of these powers than the rest of us. I had no idea how such powers could cause a storm, but then, I had no idea how a witch doctor could make it stop raining just before a garden party, yet I accepted it as true. In 1977, when I was planning a sequel to The Occult (called Mysteries) I presented for BBC television the odd case of the Rosenheim poltergeist. In a lawyer’s office near Munich, electric light tubes began exploding and all the electrical equipment went wrong. Investigations showed that the effects centered around a young girl called Anne-Marie Schaberl; when she was sacked, the effects stopped, but they followed Anne-Marie to her next job ... What interested me was that it was quite obvious that Anne-Marie had no idea that she was causing the effects; the investigator Hans Bender told me that she seemed rather pleased when he assured her that she was responsible. At this time I was fascinated by the mystery of ‘multiple personality’—people like Christine Sizemore, about whom two psychiatrists wrote The Three Faces of Eve, who can apparently turn into several different people. Could not Anne-Marie have been a dual personality—a perfectly normal teenager, and a kind of juvenile delinquent with paranormal powers? In most of these cases of multiple personality, the ‘secondary personality’ has a powerful streak of mischief. So I formulated my theory of a ‘hierarchy of personalities’ or ‘ladder of selves’—the notion that we are all—potentially—multiple personalities, but that most of are lucky enough to avoid the literally ‘shattering’ experiences that cause the ‘split.’ It was when I was about halfway through Mysteries that I came across accounts of ‘split brain physiology’—my friend Idries Shah was kind enough to send me Robert Ornstein’s book The Psychology of Consciousness, while another friend, Ira Einhorn, drew my attention to The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. Both proved a revelation. I learned that the human brain is divided into two identical halves, and that these halves are joined by a bridge of nerves called the corpus callosum. When this is split—as it is sometimes to cure epilepsy—the patient turns into two different people. One split brain patient tried to hit his wife with one hand while the other held it back, while another tried to unzip his flies with one hand and zip them up with the other. One hand does not know what the other is doing . . . One eye does not know what the other is seeing ... Of course, Anne-Marie was not a split-brain patient. Then it struck me that we are all split-brain patients. The left side of the brain—where the ‘I’ lives—deals with logic and language, the right with feelings and intuitions. So as I write this page, the right half of my brain—the ‘stranger’ in my head—produces the insights, while the left turns them into words and puts them on paper. When I am ‘inspired’, the two seem to move very close together. In so-called mystical experience, they actually seem to blend. When I am tired and depressed, I seem to lose all contact with my intuitive half, and I feel somehow ‘stranded’ in the world of matter, as if that is ‘all there is.’ So it seems obvious that we are all ‘split brain patients’ for 99% of our time. People drink and take drugs to try to heal the split. But the best way, the right way, is to know that the ‘other self exists, and try to draw him into active cooperation . . . I had not abandoned my theory of a whole ‘ladder of selves’, and I still feel that it has a basic validity. But it seemed obvious that the split brain theory can explain ‘paranormal’ experience far better than the ladder of selves theory. For example, there is evidence that it is the right brain that is involved in dowsing, and which tells us when we are standing above an

underground stream by making the muscles convulse, so that the divining rod twists upward or downward. (There is no space to go into all this at length, but I have described it in my short book Frankenstein’s Castle, as well as in Afterlife, The Psychic Detectives and Poltergeist.) So at last I seemed to have a theory that ‘explained’ most paranormal powers. Of course, it still failed to explain how Anne-Marie made neon tubes explode and moved heavy filing cabinets without touching them; but I was convinced that the answer lay in ‘earth energies’, which can somehow be ‘tapped’ by the right brain. In 1981 I was asked to write a book on the poltergeist—the ‘banging ghost’ which has been recorded down the ages. I had no doubt whatsoever that the ‘poltergeist’ was really the ‘stranger’ in the right brain of disturbed teenagers. But when I drove up to Yorkshire to investigate a particularly strange case of poltergeist ‘haunting’—the ‘Black Monk of Pontefract’—I suddenly began to experience doubts. My friend Guy Playfair—the author of some of the most brilliant modern books on the paranormal—had told me that he was personally convinced that most poltergeists are the spirits of the dead—or, occasionally, other kinds of spirits called ‘elementals.’ He had spent some years in Brazil, investigating ‘umbanda’, the Brazilian forms of voodoo—and believed that Brazilian ‘witch doctors’ know how to persuade the spirits of the dead to cause disturbances. I must admit that it all sounded too far-fetched for words. But as I studied the case of the Black Monk—who had manifested himself twice in the house, when each of the children reached adolescence—I began to feel increasingly that he could not be explained as a ‘right brain delinquent.’ And as I then studied case after case, dating from medieval Germany to modern London, I gradually became convinced that Guy was right. The poltergeist is a spirit. I hate to admit it, and greatly prefer my ‘double brain’ theory. But if I am to be totally honest, I must admit that all the evidence indicates that the poltergeist is a spirit. Fortunately, where psychical research is concerned, I have no reputation to lose; otherwise I might have been tempted—as I suspect some eminent investigators have—to keep my conclusions to myself to retain the respect of my ‘academic peers.’ But the advantage of being an ‘outsider’ is that you can say what you like and ignore the consequences. Oddly enough, I still felt that the evidence for life after death is highly dubious. It seemed so obvious that most spiritualists want to believe that their deceased relatives are sitting up in the sky and watching over them. And the sheer triviality of most of the ‘spirit messages’ made me feel that they probably originate in the unconscious mind of the medium, or are due to telepathy between the medium and the ‘sitter.’ And, once again, a long and careful study of the subject convinced me otherwise. If, before I wrote Afterlife, I had been challenged to defend my ‘scepticism’, I would have replied that although much of the evidence is impressive, it still fails to add up to what a scientist would call incontrovertible proof. But although I ‘knew’ most of the evidence, I had never settled down to study it consecutively or in detail. Anyone who has ever devoted a great deal of time to any subject will know how easy it is to feel that you ‘know’ it—and how, when you look back on it later, you realise that your knowledge was little more than conceited ignorance. For there is a certain point, in any serious study, when some inner transformation seems to occur, and some curious inner force of gravity seems to pull together all your knowledge into a kind of unity. In my own experience, there is no better way of causing this transformation than writing a book about the subject. Writing Afterlife did not turn me into an enthusiastic spiritualist—or indeed, into any kind of spiritualist. Since finishing the book, I have turned my mind to other things, and my collection of books on the subject has remained unopened. The fact remains that I now accept the notion of life after death in much the same way that I accept the existence of quasars or sub-atomic particles. This means, of course, that I accept the existence of ‘spirits’—no matter how reluctantly—and that I believe that ‘witches’ and shamans throughout the ages have performed their peculiar feats of magic with the aid of spirits. I have no doubt whatever that human beings also possess certain paranormal powers. But I no longer believe that it is possible to construct a complete theory of the paranormal on the basis of such powers. It will be seen why I now thoroughly sympathise with Ted Holiday, and the predicament he found himself in after writing The Goblin Universe. He had started off with a perfectly sensible and scientific curiosity about the Loch Ness monster —and, to a lesser extent, with UFOs. And, little by little, he was forced to admit that his commonsense explanations failed to fit the facts. For a man of his pragmatic temperament, it must have cost a great deal of mental struggle to associate himself with dear old Donald Omand in exorcising Loch Ness. (Nothing would have persuaded me to get involved with the project.) And then, at this point, it began to look as if new investigations of the Loch would show that the monster was, after all, a creature of flesh and blood . . . In the event, of course, nothing of the sort has happened, and the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau seems as far away as ever from actually proving the existence of some large, warm blooded creature in the Loch. Yet I cannot help feeling that this is also slightly beside the point. For what we are really talking about here is not the existence or nonexistence of some prehistoric survival, but about two radically different views of the world. When he wrote The Great Orm of Loch Ness, Ted was inclined to believe that we shall one day be able to explain the universe in terms that would have satisfied Isaac Newton or August Comte. What began to dawn on him as he struggled to understand the strange phenomena he encountered was that this ‘scientific’ view of the universe may be as naive as the mediaeval belief that the earth is flat and stands in the centre of the universe. He was not really becoming an ‘occultist’. He was becoming a wider, less limited sort of scientist—closer, let us

say, to Werner Heisenberg or Arthur Young or Fritjoff Capra than to Newton and Comte. Basically, it would not have mattered if the Loch Ness monster had been conclusively proved to be a plesiosaurus or giant slug; his view of the universe would have remained as valid as ever. What Holiday and I are both suggesting is that our whole view of the universe is undergoing a change as radical as the change from mediaeval cosmology to that of quantum physics, and that when this change is complete, we shall see that the new cosmology is not less, but more ‘scientific’ than the old one. No one is trying to revive old wives’ tales and mediaeval superstitions; this new cosmology only amounts to a recognition that the mind plays a far more active place in the universe than the scholastic philosophers supposed. This view was expressed, with admirable clarity, as long ago as 1969 by Dr. Lawrence LeShan in a little book called Towards a General Theory of the Paranormal, and the central point it makes seems to me to be the foundation of the ‘new cosmology’ whose outline we can sense in The Goblin Universe. LeShan points out that every human being has his own ‘individual reality’ (he shortens it to IR), and that the individual reality of a man who is born blind and deaf is quite different from that of the rest of us. And anthropologists are now beginning to realise that the ’individual reality’ of many ‘primitives’— for example, the Hopi Indians—is radically different from that which Western man feels to be natural and logical. And he goes on to point out that the individual reality of a mystic seems to be quite different from that of non-mystics—particularly scientists. The mystic seems to feel that time is unreal, that there is a better way of gaining information than through the senses, that there is an underlying unity in all things—so my sense of my ‘I-hood’ is somehow false—and that evil is merely an appearance. The rest of us are inclined to dismiss such statements as merely ‘symbolic’, which is another way for saying we think the mystic is stretching the truth. G. E. Moore countered the statement that time is unreal by pulling out his watch, while Dr. Johnson ‘refuted’ Bishop Berkeley’s arguments about the unreality of matter by kicking a stone. But where the paranormal is concerned, there is one very powerful argument against ‘common sense’ and in favour of the mystic: the evidence for precognition. The annals of the Society for Psychical Research are full of thousands of examples of people who have literally foreseen the future. One of my own favourites is a story that concerned a musician friend, Mark Bredin. After playing in a concert, Mark was sitting in a taxi, tired and relaxed, going along the Bayswater Road late at night. Suddenly he knew that at the next traffic light—Queensway—a taxi would try to shoot the lights, and would hit them sideways. He wondered if he ought to tell the taxi driver, and decided that the man would think he was mad. But at the next lights, a taxi tried to shoot across the road at the last minute, and hit them sideways . . . . If we assume that Mark was telling the truth—which I do—there seems to be no possible explanation of how he could have come by this piece of knowledge by normal means. And it would be possible to go on citing hundreds of wellauthenticated examples of foreknowledge of the future. Yet precognition simply defies all our attempts at a scientific theory. No presupposition about telepathy, clairvoyance, or the paranormal powers of the right brain can explain how anyone could anticipate something that has not yet happened. It is simply impossible. We cannot even begin to imagine how it might be possible to foretell the future with any accuracy, any more than we can imagine a fifth dimension of space, or the concept of nothingness. It seems simply absurd and illogical. If genuine precognition exists, it proves that there is something radically wrong with our notion of time, and that in this respect at least, the mystic’s reality is closer to the truth than the scientist’s. The same point was made by the philosopher Bergson—in fact, it constitutes the central recognition of his philosophy. Bergson argued that when we grasp something with the intellect, we cannot help distorting it, like a strong man trying to pick up some tiny, fragile object. The chief problem with the intellect is that it maps out its object in space, and tries to grasp reality in terms of numbers. But you have not explained the beauty of a sunset by talking about the wavelength of its light rays, just as you have not defined the greatness of a symphony by talking about the wavelength of its sounds. A mathematician tells us that a straight line consists of an infinite number of points, and our intellect tells us this is true; but our eyes see a continuous line. Our intellect tells us that a minute consists of an infinite number of moments; but we experience time as a continuous flow. This curious limitation of the intellect leads to paradoxes like Zeno’s arrow. Consider an arrow in motion. At any given moment it is either where it is or where it isn’t. But it can’t be where it isn’t. And if it’s where it is, then it can’t be moving . . . . The old paradox of Apollo and the tortoise also makes use of the intellect’s failure to grasp the nature of motion, and proves beyond all doubt that Apollo can never overtake the tortoise.... To try to grasp reality with the intellect is like trying to eat soup with a knife and fork, or like trying to pick up a jelly with the claw of a mechanical digger. The intellect simply isn’t made for the job—we have to use the intuition. Lawrence LeShan rests a great deal of his argument on the writings of the medium Mrs. Eileen Garrett. Mrs. Garrett says that when she goes into a mediumistic trance, she turns her senses away from the physical world, towards the world of the ‘superconscious mind’, which she describes as ‘the timeless, spaceless field of the as-yet-unknown . . . ‘ It seems fairly clear that Mrs. Garrett had the power to put herself into a state of ‘right brain consciousness.’ (The study of the right brain has shown that it seems indifferent to time.) She had simply withdrawn behind the left-brain intellect, with its tendency to impose ‘spatial’ reality on the world, into a world of direct, intuitive perception. And then, apparently, information arrives from some source outside the five senses, and she ‘knows’ the answers to certain questions. She explains that ‘I .. consciously shift my breathing .. and by doing so I can constantly change my activity from one phase to another.’ By ‘one phase to another’, she seems to mean

from intellectual to intuitive consciousness, or from left brain to right brain awareness. This concept is certainly rather difficult to grasp, because it seems to fly in the face of our basic experience of life. Bergson and Mrs. Garrett are telling us that our physical senses do not tell us the truth about the world—that when we open our eyes in the morning, what we see is not ‘reality’, but some absurdly distorted and jumbled version of reality, as if we were looking at the world through some trick spectacles that made straight lines curved and turned everything upside down. It looks real and logical enough. But I can see there is something wrong if I ask myself a question like ‘How long does midnight last?’ or ‘Where does space end?’ The answers contradict our apparent logic by telling us that midnight does not ‘last’ any length of time at all, and that space goes on for infinity. The world is not logical; the moment we examine anything closely, it vanishes into mystery—’omnia exeunt in mysterium’, as the old Latin tag has it. But this does not mean that the world is a confidence trick or an illusion. It only means that the left-brain intellect only shows us a half of reality; it has to be completed by the other half revealed by intuition. If we can once make this bold intellectual leap, and grasp that what our senses tell us is only limitedly true, we can begin to grasp why the rigidly sceptical view of the paranormal is pathetically inadequate. A few years ago, a group of scientists and stage magicians (including ‘the Amazing Randi’) formed a society whose chief job was to debunk the paranormal —it called itself CSICOP—Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal; one of its founders was the eminent physicist Professor John Wheeler, who had been cheered at the 1979 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science when he demanded that ‘parapsychologists’ should be thrown out of ‘the workshop of science.’ The aim of CSICOP—its members soon became known as Psi-cops—was to reduce the universe to a strictly materialistic model, in which there is no telepathy, no clairvoyance, no precognition, no psychokinesis—and, most emphatically, no life after death. This is, of course, a fairly easy assignment: all you have to do is to firmly refuse to look at any of the overwhelming body of evidence that has been accumulated over the past century, and to insist that anyone who can accept such evidence is childishly gullible. The problem with this attitude is that it also entails a narrow and rigid ‘reductionism’ about science itself. Life was an accident produced by the action of sunlight on carbon, and every step in its evolution can be explained in terms of Darwin’s survival of the fittest. And any suggestion that the universe revealed by quantum physics is not unlike the universe as described by the mystics is rejected with fury. But as science itself shows an increasing tendency to abandon the old mechanical models —speculating, for example, about an eleven-dimensional universe—this attitude becomes increasingly hard to defend, and its advocates look and sound increasingly like members of the Flat Earth Society. It begins to look highly probable that the CSICOP mentality will eventually collapse as a result of its own innate contradictions. I suspect that Ted Holiday decided not to publish this book because he felt he had failed to achieve his objective— that is, to present an unanswerable case for ‘the Goblin Universe.’ Most readers will agree that he was being overcritical; his intuitive, ‘impressionistic’ method of sketching out his case is in many ways more effective than a watertight but slow-moving argument. Since his death, the emergence of new evidence and new attitudes has continued to strengthen his case, and it now seems probable that, in a decade or so, his views will seem balanced and rather cautious. In the meantime, because Ted Holiday was an intransigeant individualist who will always appeal to other individualists, I have no doubt that his delightfully idiosynchratic way of expressing them will give a great deal of pleasure to an audience of discerning readers. * See Vaughan’s Patterns of Prophecy.

Preface

We inhabit a strange cosmos where nothing is absolute, final or conclusive. Truth is an actor who dons one mask after another, and then vanishes through a secret door in the stage scenery when we reach out to grab him. All he leaves behind is a sardonic chuckle which we record, take away, analyze and debate. But we never see his face. Human beings have thought crookedly since history began. Such thinking afflicts us because we relate cause to effect falsely or inaccurately. We imagine that a man, a rainbow or a piece of quartz is a thing; but these are not things—they are really ideas manifesting in space and time. Moreover, they are immensely complex ideas, far surpassing any scientific description we care to advance. Each idea is related to all other ideas in an infinite progression of subtle links which leave the mind spellbound with awe at the sheer majesty of creation. If we were not petty and provincial in our dealing with phenomena, we would go insane. A professional biologist in Chicago publishes satirical mock-scientific papers on a private press for circulation to his friends. These are his relief from the serious technical papers he also publishes throughout the world through normal scientific channels. Some scientists gleefully play ingenious hoaxes on their colleagues. Such activities are essential to preserve mental stability in a cosmos which slopes away rapidly into the Goblin Universe. The Goblin Universe is the place in the play where the actor switches one mask for another. Suddenly you have the weird sensation of falling through the floor. The lights change colour. The clocks all go wrong. And the villain who died in Act 1 is alive and well again in Act 3. Now is the time to smile and order ice-cream, to murmur a dirty joke to your partner and wonder what won the 2.30. Otherwise you will end up being escorted firmly from the theater by hospital attendants towards a padded ambulance. I am grateful to Professor John Napier for indirectly suggesting the title of this book. As Director of the Primate Biology Programme at the Smithstonian Institute in Washington, D.C., he was in an authoratitive position to pass judgement on Bigfoot and Sasquatch, those famous North American members of the Phantom Menagerie. Observing his line of thought, I deferentially consulted him about the Loch Ness monster. He replied thus: “The way I see it at the moment is this. Reason tells us these things do not exist; yet the only apparent alternative is that the whole affair is a Great conspiracy. I am not prepared to entirely ignore eyewitnesses or accuse them of being part of the Great Conspiracy; in fact I am sure they are truthful and that there is no such thing as a G.C. There must be a third explanation which is neither (a) a matter of reason, nor (b) fakery. This must be unreasonable (in our terms) but probably makes sense in the Goblin Universe. Essentially the third explanation must concern the minds of men.” And that of course is what we are talking about, have always talked about, because we can talk about nothing else— the content of people’s minds. No one has seen the real world. All we have seen are the signals our sensory organs have picked up. When these are supplemented by instruments the world instantly becomes more complex, more subtle. It is impossible to visualize a world in which x-rays, cosmic rays and magnetic fields are both audible and visible; neither can we visualize a world in which phantom animals appear both to exist and not to exist, to be solid and yet not solid. Yet there is a certain consistency. After many doubts and heart-searchings, physicists have reluctantly acknowledged that light possesses both the properties of particles (photons) and waves (frequency). And it possesses them simultaneously. Such ambiguity is the very essence of the Goblin Universe. So it is not that the actor wears different masks successively; he wears all the masks at the same time. In this book I have analysed, as much as I can, those aspects of the Goblin Universe that have affected me personally. People who doubt ghosts have merely never encountered a ghost. Those who look askance at monsters and flying saucers simply have never been in the right place at the right time. Such things have never been explained scientifically because we are still awaiting the new Einstein with his bridging formulae to show that the seemingly impossible is just a further aspect of the familiar. What the actor looks like when all his masks are laid aside is the paramount enigma at the end of the ages. The reader may well find that it is himself.

Chapter One THREE PERSONAL CASES

Thus the physicist was able to discard, one by one, all commonsense ideas of what the world is like—without suffering any traumatic shock. One by one, matter, energy and causality were dethroned; but the physicist was richly compensated by being able to play around with such enticing Gretchens as the neutrino, and with such exhilarating notions as time flowing backwards, ghost particles of negative mass, and atoms of radium spontaneously emitting beta radiation without physical cause. Arthur Koestler The Roots Of Coincidence (1972)

Hauntings take many forms. Showers of small stones which fall onto a house, apparently from nowhere, are one form of haunting, and they appear to be the same in principle to the spontaneous arrival of concrete objects (“apports”) in the seance room. Such effects are hard to accept unless you have personally witnessed them under good observational conditions. Borley Rectory in East Anglia, which I visited in 1949, seemed to specialize in producing empty bottles. Dom Richard Whitehouse, nephew of Lady Whitehouse of Arthur Hall, Sudbury, saw bottles materialize in Borley Rectory and so did Lady Whitehouse, Captain V. M. Deane and Mr. Guy P. J. L’Estrange, J. P. These paranormally-produced bottles were sometimes smashed in full view of the witnesses. At other times they disappeared. Sometimes they poised in midair. An interesting case concerning the paranormal movement of objects occurred in 1972 at Audley, near Newcastleunder-Lyme. The house originally belonged to a very house-proud woman called Mrs. Ethel Joynson. After her death it became the home of the Heath family consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Health, a 20-year-old son, daughters aged 14 and 9, and a baby together with another son and his wife. Inevitably, the original extreme tidiness of the premises must have suffered. The Heath family were reminded of this in a startling fashion. “Not long after we arrived,” Mrs. Heath reported, “I was in bed when I heard a strange sound. I looked up and saw the shape of a woman standing by the bed. Then the shape vanished.” Subsequently, one of her sons and her daughter-in-law saw a similar figure. But stranger things happened. Said Mrs. Heath, “We found the grate tidied up, the poker moved and a drawer which had been left open was closed.” A local vicar blessed the house but without much effect, and the Heath family sought more normal accommodation. Some ghosts simply make noises. When Mr. and Mrs. James Dennis moved into a council-house in 1972 with their children, they were soon joined by an invisible stranger who tramped about the house apparently in hobnailed boots and wheezed heavily as he climbed the stairs. The children became so scared that they moved into their parents’ room. Mrs. Dennis then began to see the apparition as a dark shape accompanied by currents of cold air. Her small daughter, eight year old Beverley, could see the figure much more clearly, however, and even drew pictures of it. “He’s a fat little man with a red face,” Beverley declared “He’s old and he has a walking-stick. He keeps waking me up by standing beside my bed.” The family nicknamed the ghost “Alfred” after they heard that a man of that name had died in the house 13 years previously. The dead man’s stepdaughter Mrs. Elsie Harvey said, “Beverley’s description fits my stepfather perfectly.” The old man, who had died at 70, once said that if anything happened to him he would come back and haunt the house. He had been a moneylender and was always hiding cash in odd corners. But the Dennis family were less interested in searching for a possible hoard than in seeing to it that their house was rid of the unwelcome tenant. They asked the Rt. Rev. Mark Green, Bishop of Aston, to perform an exorcism rite. When this failed, the family sought another home. Exorcism, in fact, is a highly specialised process—quite as specialised as spiritual healing. A rare gift, it is difficult for most would-be practitioner’s to perform it successfully. It is both mentally and physically exhausting, and can often be highly dangerous. An exorcism which proved these points to me personally is described in a later chapter. My own first unambiguous encounter with the paranormal took place during the war when I was serving with the Regal Air Force in Egypt. The camp in question, on the open desert near Heliopolis, had a perimeter fence extending for several miles. In fact, it was such a large camp that an internal bus service operated by the RAF took personnel from one end to the other. Toward the end of the war thieving by local Egyptians became a major problem, even though the fence was guarded by searchlights and armed guards. It was decided to form a system of mobile patrols using RAF police dogs, the patrols being free to wander at will at irregular intervals. Having a fondness for dogs, I soon managed to enroll in this force and was assigned a huge black Alsatian called Teddy. Armed only with a .38 Webley and carte blanche as regards times and routes, I

found that I enjoyed wandering alone in the Egyptian nights. Most alarms were quickly traceable to lizards and Fenec foxes. But then one night something extraordinary happened. I was patrolling an area of desert about 9:00 in the evening. It was a moonlight night near a desolate place known as “The Valley,” a long hollow between sand-dunes where scrapped aircraft were stockpiled for possible salvage. Suddenly I saw a man running. It turned out to be a member of the fire-picquet crew which did duty out here in a remote tent to guard against possible incendiaries falling on the combustible junk. This chap had an odd tale to relate: The rest of the crew had trudged to the canteen while he guarded the post and scribbled a letter home. The tent was equipped with two storm-lamps, and when these were first lighted they refused to burn properly, although later on, even though no one had touched them, they began to burn quite normally. Left on his own, he settled down to write his letter when footsteps approached. He paid little attention to them, assuming that the rest of the picquet were back from the canteen. Then the footsteps came right into the tent—but whatever made them was invisible. Dropping his pen, he dashed from the place only to encounter me and Teddy. We went back and carefully examined the tent, but there was nothing to explain the phenomenon. Teddy, however, reacted oddly. At first he refused even to enter the tent, and when I finally got him in he refused to stay there. I hung around outside until the missing picquet crew got back. After alerting another roving dog-handler to the situation, we agreed to keep a special eye on the picquet tent. Apart from a couple of hectic chases after Egyptians who had climbed the fence on thieving forays, nothing much happened until five nights later. By arrangement I met Frankie, the other dog-handler, near the picquet-tent for a 10-minute smoke and a chance to compare notes since he patrolled one half of the camp while I took the other. About 11:00 p.m., after we had talked quietly for a while, Teddy became uneasy and began to growl. There was nothing visible for at least a hundred yards over the flat sand. The dog’s hair was now standing on end, and suddenly he lunged forward to attack. Since we used quite short leashes, this movement almost pulled me on my face. The other animal, a bitch, was doing something I have never seen a trained police dog do before; it flattened on its belly and was crawling behind Frankie’s legs, presumably for protection. After pointing our guns at nothing for some minutes we finally moved away from the area, completely baffled. The picquet-tent was not occupied when this happened. There was a sequel to this incident. Four years later I happened to be guard-commander on a station in Lancashire. After checking the guard-posts I spent half an hour having a mug of tea with the guard-sergeant; inevitably the subject of the recent war came up. I learned that he had served in Egypt at Heliopolis. During the course of the war the enemy tried to bomb the Suez canal out of action. The sergeant recalled that one plane completely missed the target area and dropped a stick of bombs which landed on the Heliopolis camp. When the attack began, the crew of a R/T truck sprang from their vehicle and dived underneath it. Unluckily, an antipersonnel bomb fell right alongside and the blast killed every last man. Without giving away my side of the story I obtained an exact bearing on where this truck had stood. It was within a few yards of where the picquet-tent was erected later.

That there are haunted houses is really beyond all reasonable doubt. There are also haunted ships. Perhaps even more curious, however, is the existence of haunted areas. The biggest area of this sort I have ever encountered was around Glandovan Mansion near Cardigan in Wales. The area covered something like 40 to 50 acres. Glandovan Mansion or manor is one of the oldest country houses in Pembrokeshire with parts dating back to the 16th Century. It is approached by a rather long drive flanked by a dense wood, and this wood screens the house from the outer world. A lodge or gatehouse stands at the end of the drive. This building has been extended and modernised and rented to a succession of private tenants over the years. When it came on the market, some friends of mine leased it for a three-year period. The family consisted of Francis and Charles Mason and Chris, the 15 year old son of Mrs. Mason’s former marriage. Paranormal events started happening almost immediately. From time to time a figure walked past a glass partition on one side of the kitchen. Since this partition was made of frosted glass, the figure appeared merely as a dark shape without detail. On other occasions an unknown figure appeared briefly in the garden, and it produced a fund of household jokes about how various individuals could be in two places at once. No one took the haunting seriously—in fact the reverse. One morning Mrs. Mason, who was expecting an important letter, heard the postman arrive and the flap of the letterbox rise and fall with its usual clap. She hurried out of the kitchen to collect the mail, but found that nothing had been delivered. The expected letter arrived the following day. During this period Captain Gower was residing at Glandovan Mansion, and shortly afterwards he died there. Since Mr. Mason was a connoisseur of books and before his retirement had been a departmental head of the British Museum Library, he was asked by the executors of the Gower estate to catalogue Glandovan Library. The masons were supplied with a key to the house for this purpose. A stray dog had attached itself to the lodge, attracted by the scraps it received. One day it followed the Masons down the drive to Glandovan where they were going to spend the afternoon on books. On reaching the bridge over a small stream at

the edge of the mansion grounds, the dog stopped, turned and fled, never to be seen again. Chris was the next to have an unusual experience at this spot. One summer moonlight night he couldn’t sleep, so he dressed and took a walk. While strolling down the mansion drive, he saw an arresting sight. Seated on a black horse near the bridge was a man dressed in fox-hunting gear. The figure, although perfectly clear, was just a little too far away to make out his features. The moonlight glinted off the black horse as if it were a normal animal, but neither man nor animal moved. Chris slipped behind a tree wondering what on earth a huntsman would be doing at one in the morning only to discover, seconds later, that the figture had silently vanished. One afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Mason went to resume cataloguing the books. Near the house is a high terraced garden hundreds of years old. As they passed the wall of his garden they heard what sounded like a children’s choir. After they had taken a few steps past the spot, the singing stopped instantly; but resumed when the Masons returned to the original spot. There was no obvious explanation for this phenomenon. The property was deserted and the nearest village is over two miles away. Subsequent investigation revealed that the property had been used during the war as a children’s hospital. All of us were now becoming curious about the Glandovan ghosts and wondering what to expect next. In September 1959, Mr. and Mrs. Mason spent a few days in London on business. Chris was an apprentice engineer and couldn’t get away so I agreed to stay at the lodge and—in view of the weird happenings—keep him company. Mrs. Mason set a bed up for me in a corner of his room. The spooks wasted little time. On the very first evening Chris and I were drinking coffee in the kitchen when an indescribable sound came from the outer wall of the kitchen facing the back garden. It sounded as if something very large, sprawling and rubbery were trying to paw its way up the vertical brickwork. We instantly rushed out with torches and searched every inch of the wall, garden and even the roof of the house, but found nothing. About half an hour later Chris was sitting on the kitchen table swinging his feet and discussing something while I sat in a chair with my feet on the floor. Suddenly, a most peculiar quiver ran across the floor, and for a few seconds it seemed to shake like jelly. Chris, who was not in contact with the floor, didn’t feel this effect. Short of postulating a very localized earthquake, I could not account for this experience. That night Chris turned in at 10 o’clock while I sat on for a while over a pot of coffee to listen to the news. Eventually I followed, and was soon asleep. At 2:30 a.m. I awoke to find the bedroom light switched on, and was surprised to discover that Chris was in his bed and obviously fast asleep. The head of my bed lay directly under the light-switch and I was just about to get up and switch it off, thinking one of us had forgotten it, when—quite audibly—it switched itself off. It was a still sultry night with drought throughout the countryside. The bedroom door—within inches of my head—remained closed. Unable to sleep, I waited until dawn and then examined the switch and surrounds closely. They appeared perfectly normal. The Masons returned home a couple of days later. Things were quiet until September 25, when the whole family was having afternoon tea in broad daylight. Suddenly the kitchen light switched itself on. Charles got up, confirmed that the switch was in the “on” position and switched it off. This phenomenon never repeated itself. The weather continued fine and very dry. The following day Chris came out with me while I took some photographs I wanted for an article. When we returned to the lodge in the late afternoon, we headed for the kitchen to make some tea, with Chris leading the way. Other footsteps followed us in and I paused in the kitchen doorway, glancing over my shoulder to see who had arrived. There was no one visible. Meantime, the footsteps continued past me down the corridor to the old part of the house, where they seemed to fade away. An hour or so later Mr. and Mrs. Mason returned home and retired into the library to watch television. I was sitting in the kitchen with Chris and a friend of his who had come to pay him a visit. Suddenly, immediately outside the door, came the shrill and vigorous ringing of what sounded like a small handbell. We assumed this was a normal sound. Chris suggested his mother was jokingly ringing for tea to be served. With a few grumbles about being the “servant” of the family, he made the tea and took it in on a tray, only to discover that his parents had never left the TV and knew nothing of any bell. Weeks later a small handbell turned up mysteriously in a corner of one of the bedrooms. Apparently it was an ornament that had vanished from a mantlepiece some time earlier. On another occasion, Francis and Charles were in the library when there was a sound, and they saw the handle of the library door turning. Charles immediately opened the door, and found the passage empty. With the onset of winter the disturbances practically ceased. Even so, I often had an uncanny feeling at the lodge without seeing or hearing anything. It is often argued that poltergeist phenomena are produced by teenagers acting unconsciously due to an excess of nervous energy. Many researchers have gladly seized this conveniently painless “explanation.” After watching the Glandovan haunting, I think the idea is too facile. True, Chris was present at the lodge when many of the phenomena took place. This is hardly remarkable since he lived there! Several paranormal incidents took place when he was at work and 10 miles from the spot. It is too much to believe that teenagers can move things around without effort when adults with known capabilities for psychokenesis, such as the Russian woman Nelya Mikhailova, have to strain and sweat to move small objects such as a box of matches. More likely I think, teenagers are used as biological batteries to supply the raw energy. Of course, that leaves unanswered the uneasy question of what it is that uses them. In the case of Glandovan I am logically forced to conclude that it

was the figure we occasionally glimpsed and whose footsteps I heard. Hauntings have always been associated in my mind with September when I have had several experiences. Peter Underwood, one of Britain’s foremost experts on ghosts, gives various cases of hauntings in this month. A typical example was the haunting of The Grenadier Inn, a London pub near Hyde Park Corner. Underwood quotes a previous licensee as telling him that the place was haunted most during September. The Heliopolis haunting just described was also in September. Is there anything unusual about September? The earth doesn’t follow a linear path through space, but follows the sun which itself is hurtling around the Milky Way about 12 miles a second. The earth thus takes a spiral path in which it intersects fields of cosmic rays that it cuts at various angles. In March it meets these lines of rays at right angles, whereas in September it is running parallel to them. Although ghosts are seen all the year round, many sightings do seem to take place in the early autumn. To prove a correlation, however, a large amount of statistical work would need to be done. My most convincing ghost—the one that spoke to me—occurred in June.

A number of perceptive scientists have realized that there is much more to coincidence than meets the eye. The biologist Kammerer thought so, and so did Jung the psychologist. Kammerer not only collected coincidences systematically, but even attempted to classify them. It seems to be a fact that those who engage in psychical studies are often inundated with coincidental events. A coincidence is defined by the Oxford dictionary as a “notable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.” C.G. Jung merely called it “an acausal connecting principle.” Dr. Arthur Guirdham, who wrote The Cathars and Reincarnation, encountered a large number of “impossible coincidences” when he was researching his material in Britain and France. Likewise, Dr. Andrija Puharich, who wrote a biography of Uri Geller, experienced coincidences almost beyond belief. An interesting example cropped up when I met Captain Lionel Leslie and discussed water-monsters in Scottish and Irish lakes. Both of us tried for several years to clarify the mystery. During this period I had a very good view of a UFO through binoculars. Later I discovered that Captain Leslie was in fact the uncle of Desmond Leslie—co-author ofFlying Saucers Have landed, one of the best selling books ever written on the subject. Experience forces me to agree with Jung, Guirdham, Puharich and others; the synchronicity of events or “coincidence” is not a chance effect. Somehow it operates by law. This brings me to my last personal ghost story—the haunting of Grasspoint, Captain Leslie’s home at The Old Ferry Inn on the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides. Grasspointand its 250 year old inn used to be the main port for Mull with a ferry taking cattle and passengers to Oban on the mainland. When the ferry was discontinued in the 19th Century, the inn fell into decay. Captain Leslie, late of the Cameron Highlanders, and Mrs. Leslie went to see the property in August 1945, and found it derelict. But they felt that it had possibilities. The following spring they returned with a couple of workmen, their two year old daughter Leonie and plenty of camping equipment. It took four years to rebuild and furnish the house. Mrs. Leslie herself made the carpets by weaving together a large quantity of war-surplus machine-gun belts some two inches wide. When these unusual carpets become soiled, they are laid on the beach where the tide washes them like new. Numbers of tourists now visit Grasspoint in the summer months to view Captain Leslie’s sculptures, a nearby archaeological site and other items of interest. The Old Ferry Inn has no bar and is certainly not advertised as a haunted house. I sailed from Oban on June 19, 1969, to discuss the possible investigation of Irish monsters with the Leslies. The Leslies are warmly regarded in Eire. During the Irish Potato Famine a cauldron of stew was always kept bubbling in the courtyard of Castle Leslie from which the population helped themselves; these things are still remembered. After looking over the house and admiring Lionel’s sculptures, we spent the evening discussing the Irish project. It should be mentioned that the Old Ferry Inn is quite isolated, the next dwelling being some three or four miles away across rough country. Visitors overland are few, apart from the postman in a Landrover. It had been a long day, and I was glad to turn in about 10:30 p.m. in a front bedroom with a ceiling of black oak beams furnished with a half-tester bed. In a short time I was asleep. About 1:30 a.m. I was awakened by footsteps. In someway they sounded peculiar, much as did the footsteps I had heard 10 years earlier at Glandovan lodge. It is hard to define how these sounds differed from ordinary footsteps, except to say that they had a peculiar timbre, almost like a double echo. Once heard it is hard to mistake. The time-hallowed description of a ghost walking with “hollow” footsteps is by no means a bad description. These footsteps sounded like heavy boots mounting the stone stairs leading to the landing. The interesting thing is that they were clumping on bare stone, whereas the stairs today are well-carpeted. Presumably they had mounted all the way up from the bottom, but I became awake and conscious enough to hear only the last four or five steps. They then turned left in the direction of my room. By this time I was half sat up in bed feeling some apprehension. We are often assured by pundits who have never been in a haunted house that ghosts are a product of expectation and imagination. I can assure these people that this is bunk. The thing that was happening was real and it confounded my natural expectation that the apparition, if it came into the room, would enter

by the door. The room was gloomy but not entirely dark, thanks to the night-long Scottish gloaming, and my gaze was fixed on the door. In fact, it never went near the door. The steps had now ceased, and suddenly I became aware that the ghost had taken a short cut by coming in a straight line from the stairhead, had passed through several feet of masonry and was now by the bed. I was now lying back hard against the headboard of the bed on one elbow, trying to see the intruder. Two things then happened. A man’s voice, speaking in a strong Belfast accent, suddenly demanded, “And who the hell are ye?” Simultaneously a heavy blow crashed on the headboard above my head, exactly as if delivered by a hard fist. I not only heard the blow, but felt it, since my back was pressed hard against the board. For several minutes I remained frozen in position, expecting an even more unpleasant manifestation. Gradually, however, I realized that the power which had produced the effects was depleted. I could sense the atmosphere returning to normal. Even so I didn’t care to sleep until dawn began to lighten the window, when I turned over and slumbered for several hours. It is not easy to inform your host that his bedrooms are haunted, since it seems almost a criticism of hospitality. Nonetheless, next morning I did mention the matter to Lionel, and the Leslies told me of other odd incidents. One day Captain Leslie saw a small dog trot in at the open front door, and enter what used to be one of the inn’s smoking-rooms. This is now a lounge. He followed the dog in only to find that it had vanished. This room has only one door. On another occasion Mrs. Leslie had cycled into the village of Craignure to do some shopping. As she returned and approached Grasspoint, she heard angry voices raised in argument. Feeling some apprehension about her husband, who was alone in the house, she hurried indoors only to find him calmly reading a newspaper. He had heard nothing, and no one was on the premises. The Grasspoint ghosts appear to have remained active. In 1975 Captain Leslie wrote me to report that, as he and his wife lay in bed, they both quite clearly heard a conversation taking place in one of the lower rooms. Perhaps the voices were discussing Bonnie Prince Charlie or 18th Century cattle prices.

It might be a good idea to review these three personal cases, and demolish the views of some of the critics of the paranormal. In the case of the Heliopolis haunting, the reaction of the dogs convinced me that something very odd was around. These dogs had all “graduated” at the RAF police dog school and were therefore professionally trained. They were used to tackling armed men when ordered to do so, and were regularly put through a combat course designed to eliminate nervous or uncertain animals. Their reactions were typical of the alleged behaviour of other dogs confronted by ghosts. The haunting at Glandovan did nothing for the theory of G. W. Lambert, Secretary of the Society of Psychical Research, that such effects are caused by underground water. In fact, a severe drought was in progress, as I pointed out to him when he made the suggestion. This drought was so severe that many small streams had dried up, and even the River Teifi was reduced to a trickle. Another favourite hobbyhorse often trotted from its stable is hallucination. Perhaps Mrs. Mason did hallucinate the arrival of the postman, but where does one draw the line? The Oxford dictionary defines hallucination as “Illusion; apparent perception of an external object not actually present.” In fact, we now know that the whole material world has the quality of illusion; that solids are not really solid at all, and that time depends on where you happen to be when you measure it. The subatomic world is even more surrealistic with particles vanishing and appearing like doves from a magician’s hat, and with others having no properties that can be measured unless they happen to hit another particle. Until they do so, they don’t exist, materially speaking. Where do hallucinations start and leave off? Critics who use the word had better start by defining what is real. Grasspoint convinced me, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that ghosts exist. It was very much as if a one-time owner of the inn who had come to tolerate the Leslies (Captain Leslie of course is Irish) had found to his intense annoyance that a further interloper—and an Englishman to boot—was occupying the best bedroom. Although I accept that the boots-on-stone effect may well have been an auditory idea somehow inserted into my mind from the fact that heavy boots did once traverse these steps, I cannot believe that the voice and the blow on the headboard were also so contrived. The phantom fist produced a bang and a heavy jar that I felt. I was glad that it had not been aimed at my head. But perhaps even ghosts have their ethics. The most impressive single point was that the ghost was as aware of me as I was of him. Those who think that ghosts are merely shadows without substance or energy had better research some more. Genuine psychical researchers, of whom there are many, will no doubt turn away in horror at such inept observations. The tools of ghost-hunting now include thread, French chalk, wax, barographs, tape recorders, infrared cameras and much besides. I know nothing of this approach and merely make notes at the time of the incident. Personally, I doubt if the gadgetry will produce much in the way of results. It has been shown that telepathy, for example, is not affected by material objects or even by magnetic fields. Telepathy functions even in a field of 1200 gauss, in a Faraday Cage and even behind the five-inchthick steel walls of a radiation-counting chamber. It is even said to work from space capsules in orbit. The universe, in fact, seems to be based on mind-stuff and the material world we see around us is no more than a by-product, perhaps one of many. The ghosts I have encountered seemed to emerge from a mind-stuff world which, in terms of relativity, is every bit as real and valid to them as ours is to us.

Since it is pertinent to the next chapter, I should mention the one other time that I heard a paranormal voice. I happened to be riding up a rough track in the country at night on a motorcycle and was approaching a steep bend. Quite clearly, a voice said: “Mind the cows!” I throttled back and took the bend cautiously. Sure enough, the lane was filled with lively young bullocks which had broken out of a field. Since these sportive creatures each weighed about half a ton, a nasty accident could easily have occurred. Therefore perhaps the personal guardian angel of traditions is not entirely fictional. Nor, as we will see in the next chapter, is the waiting devil.

Chapter Two DO THEY COME BACK?

Go, and catch a falling star Get with child a mandrake root, Tell me, where all times past are, Or who cleft the Devil’s foot. John Donne (1573-1631)

If we are to suppose that the human personality does indeed live on after death in some quite different space/time set of dimensions, then we must ask the logical corollary: does it ever return to earth in a new body? Reincarnation has been debated at great length, and plenty of curious cases have been cited in support. As in subatomic physics, however, a principle of indeterminancy seems to be at work. For every collection of evidence you manage to assemble, another collection accumulates mitigating against the first. Proof and disproof dodge the investigator with all the shy evasion of a rare butterfly. Scientific evidence for and against human survival is in the same position. It is as if a cosmic law veils the truth from profane gaze. Of course it is one thing to suppose that the kindly old lady next door may perhaps return one day as a child in the future of civilization. But it is another thing to imagine the return of sadists, mass murderers and rapists. But if there is indeed a law governing a return to earth, then it is unlikely to be selective in this respect. Good and bad alike hit the ground at the same velocity when an aircraft crashes. Instead of investigating the lives of saintly people who if they return will—we hope—continue their virtuous work, we will look instead at what seems to be an evil reincarnation. The first part of the case is an historical one, and the three personalities we will consider are Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais and Edward John Louis Paynel. Bernard Shaw’s assessment of de Rais in his play Saint Joan is not to be trusted except so far as it concerns the first part of his life. At this period of French history, legend, folklore and patriotic myth badly distort events of the late Middle Ages. The country was torn with strife and the aftermath of the Black Death. The Papacy was split; at one period there were no fewer than three Popes. Inflation ran riot. Murder, torture and vice were commonplace. Magic and witchcraft were replacing organized religion. Lying, cheating and conniving were acceptable forms of behavior. In those times castles and their vast estates were petty kingdoms. The knightly lord of the manor was as far removed from the wretched peasants who drudged on his behalf and over whom he had the power of life and death as Syria is from Sirius. It was at the peak of this society that Gilles de Rais, arch-criminal, was born in 1404. As the cream of the nobility, he was carefully trained for his appointed station. Every day he studied warfare under selected tutors. This training proved of great worth, years later, when he fought beside Joan of Arc. When the boy was 11 years old, the flower of French chivalry were being massacred at Agincourt by clouds of English clothyard arrows falling so thickly they resembled black rain. Among the heaps of dead were certain of his relatives, whose estates he inherited. The boy was now under the guardianship of his grandfather, Jean de Craon. To further consolidate the fortunes of the de Rais family, de Craon saw to it that the boy, now 12, was married to a Jeanne Paynel, one of the richest heiresses in the whole of Normandy. The fact that the little girl was not yet four years old didn’t matter. The main idea was to get as much loot as possible under one roof. A marriage contract was signed on her behalf in 1417. This deal proved a bit too much even by medieval standards, however, and the authorities protested. Little Jeanne eventually became a nun and she died as the respected Abbess of Notre Dame de Lisieux. Even so, we should note the name Paynel because it will occur again later. Eventually Gilles and his grandfather forgot little Jeanne and returned to their castles to resume normal life—i.e., hunting, over-eating and heavy drinking. The boy had now started dipping into such Latin authors as Suetonius whose book The Twelve Caesars paints a nauseating picture of the vicious excesses to which the pathological actions of Tiberius, Caligula and Nero were reduced in their insane search for amusement. Young Gilles presumably wallowed in this muck if his future career is any guide. The question of Gilles’ marriage remained. His aging grandfather now hit on the choice of a lady called Catherine de Thouars whose estates, by happy chance, bordered those of de Rais on the easterly side. Catherine was a desirable little property in more ways than one. The question of love, of course, didn’t arise and the youth resolved the matter of maidenly doubt in 1420 by the simple process of taking a party of men and abducting the girl. A week later they were married in a

remote chapel without the benefit of banns by an unknown monk who was probably beaten into performing the ceremony. The girl’s mother was not present and the church knew nothing about it. When it found out, however, it was most annoyed. Only after two years’ litigation and substantial payments to the Vatican coffers by de Craon did the Pope deign to recognize the marriage. The only child of this union was a daughter born in 1429. De Craon, now a widower, improved the family fortunes still further by marrying Catherine’s grandmother, thus securing the Thouars’ estates beyond a peradventure. Thereafter, through threats, subterfuge and selective violence, the old man added further castles and estates to the expanding de Rais kingdom. He could have rubbed shoulders with Al Capone as an equal, although as with Capone, it turned to ashes. Old de Craon had been raising a viper of a very peculiar sort. When Gilles became 20 and of age, he simply took over the whole of his inheritance and the old man faded into his dotage. Gilles de Rais, now probably the richest noble in Europe, claimed lands and castles stretching from St. Aubin in the north to as far south as the River Seure. He owned estates in Brittany, Anjon, Poitou and Maine. Some of these castles eventually acquired a gruesome significance.

In 1425 the French prepared for a resumption of the Hundred Years War. Against a background of cross, double-cross and court intrigues, Gilles de Rais prepared for battle with the five companies he had raised. With these he did well enough in the campaigns of 1427. He usually took to the field magnificently attired, leading his well-paid troops who were supported by an army of intelligence agents. There were several easy victories, but the English stronghold at Lude, commanded by a veteran diehard called Blackburn, proved tougher. But de Rais rose to the occasion, proving himself a brave, intelligent soldier. He was one of the first to arrive at the top of the castle wall where Captain Blackburn met him face to face. Within minutes the Englishman was dead and the defenses crumbled. In victory de Rais showed himself to be magnanimous, and many of the English captives were spared. By this time, Gilles de Rais was becoming a national hero, and when he made his way to court it was in a blaze of glory. Gilles’ cousin La Tremoille had somehow insinuated himself into the position of Chamberlain—a sort of medieval President—and then was beset by court intrigue to force him out of the job. La Tremoille badly needed to regroup the military under someone he could trust, and his eye soon fell on the wealthy, glittering young Gilles. The national situation was getting desperate. While the French were squabbling over who should run the country, the English invaders were grimly preparing to end the damned nonsense once and for all. Methodically they laid siege to Orleans while Charles and his court were fooling away the time at Chinon, not caring whether France stood or fell. Only a miracle could save the situation—and, obligingly, a miracle occurred. In an age when most court ladies had the morals of alley-cats, the idea of a virgin girl leading armies was not only ludicrous—it was out of this world. When Joan emerged from her pastoral landscapes and donned armour, the initial obscene jokes died on the lips of the jokers. The whole thing was odd to the point of fantasy. Rumours about the wench who claimed to have heard the voice of God were being galloped all over the countryside. At this time Joan the Maid was riding quietly up from Vaucouleurs escorted by a minor noble called Robert de Baudricourt, who wasn’t sure whether she was a witch or whether he had gone crazy to be thus taking her to court as she demanded. There is no doubt that Joan had immense charisma, and medieval Europe instinctively rose to the occasion. The court was at Chinon, and the girl, dressed as a man, was shown into a hall lit by half a hundred torches. According to tradition, the king, the Dauphin, hid among his courtiers to make the Maid look foolish. Joan provided a minor wonder by spotting the monarch instantly and addressed him directly. The version chosen by Bernard Shaw has the king hiding in the crowd with Gilles de Rais on the throne pretending to be the Dauphin. Joan spent a couple of hours in secret conversation with the king, and whatever she told him, it earned her an immediate apartment in the palace. Many people, of course, expressed doubts. Yolande d’ Aragon, for instance, checked up on the claim that Joan was a virgin and decided it was genuine. The clerics then took over and grilled her in theology for three weeks at Poitiers, but failed to find any fault. It was now up to the Dauphin to decide. Apparently Joan the Maid and Gilles de Rais first came face to face under the rows of guttering torches at Chinon. Thereafter, until her death, she influenced his life immensely. In fact, the historian Jean Benedetti says, “The fact remains that for the rest of the year 1429, Joan’s life and Gilles’ life are the same, and it was through his association with her that he achieved fame and glory.” That Joan exercised an overwhelming effect on Gilles is beyond a doubt; but it lasted only while she was alive. When she was burned at the stake in May 1431, Gilles de Rais seemed to come apart at the hinges. Joan of Arc is still a mystery. That she heard voices “in her head” I readily accept, having had this curious experience twice myself. That my voices concerned relatively minor things is beside the point; the phenomenon was demonstrated. I ask myself how I or any other person would react if such voices spoke regularly and gave specific instructions. I believe they would be irresistible, especially if the recipient had a religious background and believed they came from God or the saints. There is a good deal of evidence that Joan was a Cathar. Catharism, a Christian form of dualism, held that good and evil are primary but opposed forces—moral light and darkness, so to speak. Cathars taught that the spirit is imprisoned in

matter for its own evolution. Although they studied the life and words of Christ even more assiduously than even the Catholics, they formed different conclusions in believing Christ was a spirit, not a man. They thought that, in the battle between good and evil, evil usually won in the world. Dualism, an ancient doctrine, shares many beliefs with Buddhism. Zoroastrianism in Persia and the Roman cult of Mithras held somewhat kindred views, as do some modern spiritualists. Basically, it is all an attempt to avoid the impossible dilemma: if God, the creative force, is omniscient, all-powerful and good, why does He permit atrocities against innocent people? Colin Wilson says: “The Blakein view says that the discord is necessary, but it can never be resolved until one army has completely exterminated the other. This is the Existentialist view ... the Outsider’s view and, incidentally, the religious view.” A fundamental belief of Catharism was reincarnation. Symbolically, they used a cross with arms of equal length to indicate the dual nature of the universe. These were surrounded by a circle representing the tail of the dragon—evil. This symbol was used throughout the Celtic world. There is some evidence—in the Bible and elsewhere—that early Christians also believed in reincarnation and that this belief was eradicated by later church dogmas. At her trial it was claimed, falsely, that Joan was a witch, but there is no evidence of this. The truth is that she was framed because her death was politically expedient. Despite his close association with the Maid, evidence suggests that de Rais remained an orthodox Catholic right up to his death.

La Tremoille disliked Joan the Maid and her “mission” to save France, apparently because he suspected that she was a Cathar who might and if successful would open wide the doors to Cathar influence throughout the land. The fact was that Joan, after further talks with the Dauphin, was about to be given control of the armies of France. The move had to be countered without offending the king. La Tremoille’s best move was to send his cousin, de Rais, a proven soldier and a good Catholic, as marshal of the armies. With any sort of luck de Rais would be able to put the peasant girl back in her proper setting. The result was a curious triangle with Joan touring the countryside as a sort of supernatural saviour, the followers of Tremoille trying to undermine her influence, and de Rais busy organizing his troops. As the army set out from Blois, Joan made it clear what its general conduct should be. The regimental whores—a standard feature of medieval armies and some modern ones—were given a day in which to marry or pack their bags and get out. Blasphemy was forbidden and one fruity general, La Hire, was reduced to lurid cursing in private. All soldiers had to go to confession. It was forbidden to pillage and terrorize the civilian population, and food was to be paid for in cash. These measures made for much better discipline. Presently the Maid’s army properly paid and led, and with better morale, rested on the south bank of the Loire opposite Orleans and took stock of the situation. The English held Orleans with a force of about 3,500 men, and so far the campaign had been a boring one with opposing officers meeting and swapping gifts. Joan neither knew nor cared about any of this. While Gilles hurried to rustle up more food and men from Blois, Joan crossed the river with some troops in barges accompanied by a local commander charmingly known as the Bastard of Orleans. She rode into the town about eight o’clock in the evening on a white horse, wearing white armor, with a standard carried before her on which were angels bearing the fleurde-lys. The impact was stunning. Small wonder that the population lit torches and fell on their knees as if God Himself had arrived. But the English still remained in their fortifications quite unsubdued. As the procession passed they shouted insults such as “cow girl” and “bitch” at the amazing figure. Joan’s first sortie at the direct behest of her voices was almost a disaster. As she lay on a mattress, the paranormal voices caused her to spring up, don armour (someone pushed it down through a window) and ride out to an English fortification called Saint-Loup which some over-enthusiastic townfolk had attacked prematurely and without plan. Taking command, Joan soon got into trouble from which Gilles—who had just got back from Blois—managed to rescue her. The English became confused, and the French pressed home the attack and took the strongpoint. This was the start of a cumulative effect because the English, no less superstitious than the French, were much unsettled at the sight of a white-clad girl snatching victories out of the teeth of disaster. The Saint-Loup attack was Joan’s first victory for France. Whatever the origin of Joan’s voices, they contained little orthodox military wisdom: all they did was produce positive results. While Gilles and the Bastard talked technical siege-warfare, Joan galloped out on near-suicidal escapades from which Gilles had to rescue her. The English became disconcerted as well as alarmed. They had seen nothing like it. A magical virgin backed up by a professional soldier of talent was a frightening combination. Some men swore that nothing could harm her because she was in league with the Devil. When she was hit in the shoulder by a crossbow-bolt, Joan brushed aside assistance and rode on to the attack. The English could fight and beat the French, but not the combined forces of hell—or heaven. The rout started when the English troops tried to escape from Orleans across a wooden bridge over the Loire. Local fishermen countered the move by sending down a barge in flames which lodged against the woodwork and set the whole structure on fire. The result was a massacre in which even Glasdale, the English commander, perished. Joan shed tears of

compassion as the bodies floated downstream. Gilles merely sharpened his sword. Joan and her voices now seemed to need a ritual act to consolidate the capture of Orleans. In a scant nine days the entire balance of power in France had been reversed, and Joan wanted to see the Dauphin crowned at Reims. De Rais and other officers rode breakneck to the Abbey of Saint Remy, where the holy coronation oil was stored, and brought it back under guard along with the Abbot. Then the coronation took place. Afterwards, La Tremoille made de Rais a Marshal of France at the unprecedented age of 25, and the Maid herself was raised to the nobility as Joan of Arc. Joan wept for joy. What the voices thought we don’t know. But from this point onwards these two incredible individuals declined into horrors unspeakable. When the coronation was accomplished there was an ominous sign—Joan’s voices became silent. Acting now on her own initiative, she boldly proposed storming the English garrison in Paris. La Tremoille felt that he had to prevent this at all costs. Success—and God knew how many successes she had had—would mean that the whole of France would lie at her feet and Catharism, which the church had largely eradicated with much difficulty, would be reinstated in France if not throughout Europe. The trouble was that de Rais was following wherever she led. It had to be stopped. Hurriedly, La Tremoille signed a treaty with the Duke of Burgundy stating that the Duke had the right to support the English garrison in Paris if they were attacked. He went even further, and when Gilles did actually mount a preliminary attack on the capital, La Tremoille managed to get it sabotaged. Gilles raged about this to the king and to Tremoille himself, but was soothed with the unusual diplomatic lies and half-truths. As a diversion, two splendid coats-of-arms were presented to Gilles and Joan. But significantly, the letters patent authorising these tributes, which were issued from La Tremoille’s chateau at Sully-sur-Loire, do not mention Joan once. Not only was she a peasant but she was a Cathar, and the political machinery to eliminate her was already in operation. In September she laid a suit of armour, taken from an English knight, on the altar of the church of Saint Denis as a symbol of defeat. Not long afterwards she was captured, given an inquisitorial trial and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. It was the end of a beginning.

Catharism had produced a patriotic saint; it now got to work on the other half of the cathar cross: the fiend. By 1433 France was starting to settle down after years of turmoil. The aristocracy were now expected to return to their estates and debauch themselves in private, and the majority did so. After years of official killing which earned praise and high honours, everyone was expected to turn off the faucet. Those who couldn’t were catalogued as murderers by a society which owed its very existence to their blood-thirstiness. Gilles de Rais was one of those who failed to turn off the faucet. Now that Joan the Maid was gone, he was on his own; his grandfather, the ancient de Craon, had died in the same year. If debauchery was to be the accepted custom, he would be the king of debauchees. No excess could be too great. To this end he made the hideous mistake of becoming involved in black magick. That there is a powerful and utterly vile force in the universe I have personally no doubt whatsoever. It is a point on which both Catholics and Cathars agree. Gilles was easy to convince because with his own eyes he had seen the workings of the paranormal in Joan. The thrusting, immensely successful soldier thought that he could bend this force to his will. Years earlier Gilles had scanned a grimoire on the black arts. He now sent out a trusted retainer, Gilles de Sille, to bring magicians to Machecoul Castle in the hope of raising demons and even the Devil himself. Somehow de Rais needed to sustain the endless flood of gold that his princely style of living entailed. But when the magicians’ efforts proved unsuccessful, de Rais cast around for more expert practitioners. One curious phenomenon reported by a magician called La Riviere was a demon in the form of a leopard. But de Rais thought this was small-time stuff. He then sent an emissary to Florence, Italy, where all the best magicians were to be found. This emissary got to know a Francois Prelati who readily agreed to stay with the wealthy French noble and show him what was magically possible. No one quite knows what went on in Prelati’s magick circles, although a servant, eavesdropping at the door, said he heard “a certain noise, like that of a four-footed animal walking on the roof, approaching the skylight of the pond where they kept fish in the said place, near the room in which the said Gilles and Francois were to be found.” It was thought that this was the “leopard” allegedly seen by Riviere, and it quite possibly was. In a later chapter we will examine mystery big cats in a modern setting. The magicians were perhaps more successful than they realized in raising Satan. Even more sinister events were now starting to occur in Gilles’ life. Children began to disappear mysteriously while he was experimenting at Machecoul. At first no one noticed or cared. Large bands of waifs had wandered the countryside in the wake of the Hundred Years War. It was the custom for such refugees to beg at castle gates, so it was not too hard to lure them inside. De Rais relied on Gilles de Sille and Robert de Briqueville to do this part of the job for him. That these wretched children were murdered is beyond a doubt, since more than 40 bodies were recovered at the castle in 1437. In addition, another 40 were found at Champtoce Castle. After a time a few weak protests were registered. But Gilles was an immensely powerful landed noble in an age when the nobility were minor gods, and of course, there were no police. Sille and Briqueville bribed some of the complainants, and reassured others that their young sons were working as pages in distant castles. The unhappy parents could only hope it was true.

Sodomy, molestation, beheading and strangulation were some of the crimes perpetrated against these unfortunates. The victims were boys and girls ranging in age from about 9 to 17 years old. Their remains were burned in the castle’s huge fireplaces and the bones flung into the moat. There is reason to believe de Rais offered some of these human bodies to the devil in black magick ceremonies. Perhaps he fed a few to the strange “leopard.” How many children were thus tortured and killed is not known. The official church indictment suggests about 140, although many of the killings are undocumented. The total may have been as many as 200. In a few short years Gilles de Rais had become a dangerous psychopath. France had produced a saint, and now she was saddled with a madman of satanic proportions. And no one in authority was prepared to do anything about it. In some sort of diseased way de Rais still dreamed of Joan the Maid, so he cooked up the fantastic idea of putting on a super-play centering on the siege of Orleans and the Maid. Since this mammoth production had a cast of 600 players and took over a year to prepare, it is small wonder that the cost ran to over a million pounds. Admission was free. This mind-boggling show, put on at Orleans, ran Gilles deeply into debt. He still had lands, but this sort of ready cash was beyond even kings. It is hard to calculate the value in modern currency, but it was something of the order of 20 million dollars. After the play he began to mortgage and pawn everything available, such as the gold candlesticks from his private chapel, his personal black horse and, of course, property. The nobles, seeing that de Rais was completely deranged, directed the Parliament at Poitiers to appoint an executor to the de Rais estates. Gilles was now reduced to borrowing from tradesmen. The end came at Vannes where Gilles, on a journey in search of further victims, assaulted and slew a 10-year-old boy, whom he then beheaded and dropped into a cesspit. The corpse, as if in accusation, is said to have risen to the surface. Rumour and protest had now reached such a pitch that even medieval France could not ignore it. All too tardily the only effective force that could oppose Gilles de Rais, the Church, began to move. The Bishop of Nantes made official complaint, specifying the suspected crimes and providing a list of witnesses. But Gilles was long beyond even elementary caution. Even while the complaint was in circulation he obtained a further youngster, a boy purporting to be his page, assaulted him, had him done to death and had the body incinerated. This child, Villeblanche, was his last victim. On September 13, 1440, a body of troops arrived at Machecoul carrying a warrant issued by Jean de Malestroit in conjunction with the Duke of Brittany and countersigned by the Lord Bishop, Jean Guiole. Gilles de Rais, Marshal of France, was led away without protest. Prelati, Blanchet, Poitou and Henriet, his criminal servants, were also arrested. De Sille and Briqueville had already escaped. There were two trials, one secular and one ecclesiastic. At the first de Rais objected to the legality of the proceedings, refused to take the cath and was generally unhelpful. The atmosphere of tension could only be likened to the Nuremburg Trials, the court being filled with aristocrats who could hardly believe their senses. De Rais then became violent and arrogant—so much so that he was given two days to reconsider. He reappeared completely changed, admitted the charges and asked the judges’ pardon. His subordinates and 50 other witnesses then gave damning evidence. Since Gilles had again become uncooperative, it was suggested that torture be used to extract a full confession. This was postponed briefly so that he could reconsider further. It was then recorded that “on October 22, at the hour of Vespers, Gilles made a full confession before the whole assembly.” He was condemned to be hanged, then burned. But high political office has its privileges, even in the face of iniquity. Gilles de Rais was certainly hanged; but his body was taken intact from the smouldering faggots and buried in the church of Notre-Dame des Carmes. Poitou and Henriet were not so lucky—they were burned to ashes which were scattered contemptuously. The worst horror story of medieval France seemed at an end. But there are stranger things in heaven and earth than psychiatrists with their pet theories on sex-deviation have yet dreamed about. Few have pondered the saying of the Cathars that “after seven hundred years the laurel will be green again.” So we will ponder it ourselves.

Near midnight one evening in July 1971, two policemen on night patrol in a Ford Escort car saw a gray car jump the traffic lights outside St. Helier in Jersey and head for the harbour. They gave chase, and the two cars were soon hurtling at 75 miles an hour, jumping red traffic lights, with the gray car swerving wildly to avoid being overtaken. After 70 minutes the gray car took a bend too fast, went through a hedge and stopped finally in a field of tomatoes. A man sprang out and ran. After a two-hundred-yard chase one of the policemen brought him down with a football tackle. When more policemen arrived, they found they had made a very odd catch indeed. The man turned out to be one Edward Paisnel, and in his crashed car the Police found a woman’s black wig, two lengths of quarter-inch cord and a small torch masked with tape. In the lining of his jacket was found a flexible face mask and tape to hold it in place. Even more bizarre, he wore leather wristbands out of which protruded long sharp nails. More nails struck from the shoulders of his jacket supported by a thick layer of foam padding below. When questioned about this outfit, Paisnel responded with a curious remark. He said, “Several hundred years ago they would have burned me for this.” Paisnel’s house was then searched where even stranger items turned up, including books on witchcraft, a dagger with

a wooden blade and a dish containing a plaster toad. On the wall was a coat-of-arms designed by Paisnel himself. Further searching revealed a concealed room fitted with a circular Chubb security lock. The room contained a ladder, a stained tracksuit, a photograph of a house where a recent assault on a child had taken place, together with a raincoat with nails in the lapels. The maker’s label on this coat, ironically, bore the name “Galahad.” The police now had every reason to suspect that they had their hands on the rapist and child-attacker who had plagued Jersey for many years. They had, in fact, got hold of what the newspapers were calling “The Jersey Monster,” the terror of women and children throughout the island. Paisnel, who was born in 1925, worked as an odd-job man. He took pride in the fact that his ancestors came from Normandy where they had fought the English. The name Paisnel had various spellings back to medieval times such as Paynel, Payanel or Peynel. The historical Paisnels were lords of Hambye in Normandy and a knight, Raoul Paisnel, accompanied William the Conquerer to Britain in 1066. In 1950 Edward Paisnel married a Welsh girl named Joan Davies. They had a daughter, but the match was short-lived and finally Joan obtained a divorce. One Christmas Paisnel heard that a party of folks planned to sing carols at a local children’s home and he volunteered to join them. Subsequently, he offered to do repairs to the institution buildings. Eventually he married again, once more to a Joan—Joan Walden, who was in charge of the establishment. He began to take Joan and some of the kids for country drives and walks. The couple married in 1959. She was shocked when his home turned out to be a ramshackle farmhouse with not even the convenience of a lavatory, much less a bath or shower. Oddly, he often referred to her as “Puritanical Joan”, and treated her as if she was on a spiritual plane above him. Love-making was infrequent and Paisnel was prone to violent outbursts of temper. After two years of marriage a physically handicapped daughter was born to them. By this time Paisnel was eating his meals alone, disappearing for long intervals and reading his books. These included The Satanic Mass by Henry T. F. Rhodes. About this time Paisnel became a vegetarian, growing the produce in his own garden. But he continued to eat fish. In the garden he built a hideous plaster toad with goggling eyes. One day Joan saw a sort of black lily growing and asked Paisnel what on earth it was. Chuckling, he said. “That’s the Devil’s Lily.” It was a mandrake—a plant used in medieval times by sorcerers. On a later occasion something smashed its way into the hutch used for domestic pets and tore guinea pigs and a rabbit to pieces. As we will see in a later chapter, these bloody attacks on animals may have a paranormal origin. Paisnel had now started going around with another woman, Florence Hawkins. A 43-year-old spinster, she was probably in no position to fathom the mind of a man like Paisnel. When the committal proceedings against Paisnel opened at St. Helier, the following unusual exchange took place between Advocate Dorey and a detective. Advocate Dorey: “Did you have any knowledge of witchcraft in Jersey before this?” Detective: “I have never had any information of these societies.” Another detective then told the court that among the accused’s effects was a raffia cross. When this was shown to Paisnel in jail, his face went red. Chuckling strangely he said, “My masters would laugh long and loud at this.” He seemed to be afraid to touch the cross, and the sergeant asked if this was the case. Paisnel replied, “Not particularly. There is a much more powerful emblem than that. Our cocoon is getting larger. Your world is shrinking.” During the trial a string of witnesses—mostly youngsters—testified that Paisnel put a rope or cord around their neck to terrify them into submission before the assaults. The crimes described were rape, sodomy and criminal molestation of various sorts. Twenty-one cases were on the initial charge-sheet although only 13 of the more serious ones were put forward at the trial proper. Asked about the model toads, Paisnel answered, “That’s part of something.” Toads in witchcraft, in fact, symbolize venomous reptiles. Black magicians sometimes harnessed them to miniature ploughs in order to make fields sterile. Sometimes they were used in the black mass, a toad being substituted for the wafer. This sort of symbolism is no different in principle from Holy Communion, except that the evil arm of the Cathar cross is being invoked instead of the divine. Paisnel apparently knew something of his family history, some of which he had checked in France. He was aware of the betrothal of Joan Paynel to Gilles de Rais. Indeed, one of his sexual attacks was made at a place called Rue des Raisies, whose name commemorates the de Rais family who once owned it. It was noted in court that the crimes had taken place over a period of 15 years. The jury took 38 minutes to find Paisnel guilty on all charges. He was sentenced to 30 years in jail.

One of the facts about universal morality—including black magick—is that like attracts like. Initially, the process may be started for fun or merely out of curiosity; but once it has progressed a little way, the unwitting victim finds it increasingly difficult to turn back. A point of no return quickly approaches when he finds himself being used and is powerless to do anything about it. Only a dedicated exorcist can deal with such a situation. Two recent cases illustrate the point.

In 1972 five schoolboys experimented with spiritualist techniques in the home of one of them. One lad became possessed and saw what he believed was his grandfather who urged him to attack his friends. This boy attacked one of his companions with a knife, and tried to strangle a second one. Afterwards, his mind was a blank. The nightmare ended only when the Rev. Trevor Dearing of Hainault, Essex, held an exorcism ceremony in the classroom. He said the boys were scared to death and quite terrified at what had happened. Given the right conditions, evil entities often try to possess young children. In 1974, a mother became alarmed at the conduct of her eight-year-old daughter. The child had started slashing her own body with a table fork. After several such incidents the child would tearfully complain, “I don’t know what made me do it, Mummy.” Other strange behaviour followed. The child cut her sister’s dress to shreds with scissors, tore the curtains apart and even attacked the baby of the family. The child seemed terribly unhappy after these sessions, and couldn’t account for her own actions. The family doctor could find nothing wrong with her. Canon John Pearce-Higgins, vice-chairman of the Church’s Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies, sent the mother and child to a married couple who specialize in exorcism. While the woman held hands with the child, her husband placed his hands on the child’s shoulders and asked her to say a prayer. “From that moment,” reported the young mother, “Jean has never shown the slightest sign of wickedness and is the greatest of friends with her sister whom she at one time hated.” She added, “I’m satisfied that a miracle has been performed on my daughter.” We should not pass snap judgments on people like de Rais and Paisnel. We should also be cautious about psychiatric theories which often explain nothing. Some alert psychiatrists now realize that there is more to some mental aberrations than meets the analytical eye. At least one major British hospital discreetly invites an exorcist to visit some types of mental patients; many cures have been accomplished without any publicity whatsoever. Obviously, not all mentally abnormal people are possessed by demons (or whatever other word you care to use), but a good exorcist knows at once the ones he can help and the ones he cannot help. Even the most casual reader of the de Rais and Paisnel cases must notice multiple parallels which seem impossible to explain by ordinary causation. For instance, de Rais was betrothed to a Jeanne (or Joan) Paynel. The latter was Paisnel’s own name. Both his wives were called Joan. Both criminals had ancient French family connections and both liked coats-of-arms. Both were fond of theatricals—Gilles putting on expensive plays and Paisnel dressing up in costumes to commit crimes. Both were immersed in demonology. Both were affected by the Cathar religion—Gilles through close association with Joan of Arc and Paisnel with his vegetarianism plus fish, which was standard Cathar diet. Moreover, Paisnel tied his clothes up with a cord rather than a belt, as did the Cathars. In fact, they were known as “The People of the Little Cord” for this reason. Gilles was symbolically burned, and one of the first remarks made by Paisnel when he was arrested was: “Several hundred years ago they would have burned me for this.” Both men lived comparatively blameless lives until they embarked on black magick. They then began years of similar abnormal crimes of almost exactly the same duration—14 years in the case of de Rais, 15 years in the case of Paisnel. Both men initially subdued their victims with a cord or rope around the neck. Finally and curiously, the city where de Rais obtained his master-magician was called Florence—the name of Paisnel’s last female companion. All of this, together with the fact that reincarnation was an article of faith with the Cathars, raises the question of whether Paisnel was de Rais returned from the grave, or whether the spirit of de Rais possessed an otherwise innocent man. A skilled psychiatrist ought to probe these possibilities with the jailed Paisnel by collecting more facts than were brought out at the trial. For instance—who were “his masters?” What was the ultimate object of the black magick? Why did he make the comment about being burned, and what was the “expanding cocoon” he mentioned? Ronald Maxwell’s book The Jersey Monster, to which I am indebted for the outline of Paisnel’s crime career, was certainly less than fair to the Cathars who Maxwell believed practiced all sorts of abominations and perversions, though he does acknowledge that most of the evidence for this was obtained by torture. You can obtain practically any story you want by torture. The actual history of the Cathars shows that their teaching led in a different direction from that of the Roman church. Like the Buddhists, they disapproved of taking life, and abstained from all flesh foods except fish. They believed in reincarnation, as did the primitive Christians. Moreover, they had celibate Parfaits or priests even earlier than did the Roman church. They practiced a simple form of community life. The danger to Rome lay in the fact that some French nobles and priests had secretly become Cathars. At her trial, Joan of Arc said things that suggest she knew about these sympathizers. But the pressures were too strong. The main body of Cathars were meeting in the Pyrenees when the forces of the Inquisition caught them at a mountain called Montsegur and burned 200 Cathar Parfaits alive in 1244. The remainder were hunted systematically, and over 100 were buried alive in a cave of Lombrives. Joan of Arc and her voices paid dearly for the blessings of Christianity via Italy. These days most people are a good deal less dogmatic about cause and effect than they were in medieval times. So many old-time church dogmas have fallen to pieces, it is not worth patching the rotting fabric that remains. Yet somehow we seem to be coming round in a full circle. Cathars held the belief that time does not truly exist, and this world is an illusion

through which we struggle. Physicists are now coming to a somewhat similar conclusion, because matter becomes ever more phantomlike with each succeeding series of experiments; moreover, it is ambivalent. To quote Sir William Bragg: “They [the constituents of light] seem to be waves on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and particles on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.” Isn’t this the Janus with two faces, a physical exemplification of the dualism for which the Cathars were exterminated? Whether they were also right regarding reincarnation can be left for the reader to judge in considering the strange stories of de Rais and Paisnel. What we need to consider in the next chapter is the very curious relationships between cause, effect and time.

Chapter Three WHAT WERE YOU DOING NEXT MONTH?

The mind grows dizzy at the edge of this abyss. We cling to our pathetic individualities and would have them continue for ever, not knowing that the phrase has no meaning and that the Ego is not the essential part of ourselves. We are already absorbed into the fullness of God, and even if this absorption were still to come it would not be annihiliation, for the Ocean into which we are absorbed is not an Ocean of Matter but an Ocean of Mind. But Mind is a unity and to be part of it is to be all of it. Physically, we are animals, but psychically and spiritually we are trees, or rather one Tree, and its name is the Banyan Tree. We are members of one another and Time is merely one of our dimensions. James Laver, Nostradamus

There has always been something spooky about time. This is the case whether you are a Fellow of the Royal Society studying subatomic particles in bubble-chambers, or a housewife planning a short vacation. The subtle irrationalities of the “real” world need equally subtle minds to see the tricks. One such mind was Paul Dirac, master-physicist of Cambridge, who won a Nobel Prize in 1933. Dirac came up with the astonishing suggestion that intergalactic space is not really empty at all, but is a cosmic ocean of negative electrons. Such electrons would be undetectable unless hit by a high-energy particle such as a cosmic ray. In that event the negative electron would become a normal positive electron endowed with energy and mass. However, a microspace would exist where the negative electron had once rested, and this would represent a particle unknown to physics. This is the greatly simplified theory —and many thought it absurd. Yet less than a year later, the California Institute of Technology discovered the very “holes in space” predicted by Dirac—in other words, anti-electrons. A cosmic ocean of negative electrons is a sobering proposition by any count since it is undetectable except by virtue of the rare collisions observed in California. Moreover, it seemed to be making physics go in a circle by bringing back the concept of a 19th Century ether which the Michelson-Morley experiment had quite disproved. Many physicists fought shy of the whole weird business until Richard P. Feynman suggested something even weirder—that Dirac’s anti-electrons were actually electrons moving backwards in time. This reverse time travel, however, would necessarily be brief, because matter and antimatter in contact annihilate each other in a flash of energy. The idea withstood theoretical and observational criticism, and Feynman was awarded the Einstein Medal and the 1965 Nobel Prize. Time and matter had taken on a new relationship. Time has always boggled the human mind, but not the time of everyday living, which we accept and understand. It is the exceptions and apparent contradictions that make us uneasy. In some way time is a con trick, just as “solid” matter is a con trick. But it is a different sort of trick. The idea of a stone wall’s being really empty space printed with a pattern of atoms is not beyond reason if one uses some imagination. But the idea that time could run in reverse is positively frightening. What about cause and effect? What about free will? How about good and evil? It is enough to make every philosopher in the world dive into a deep air-raid shelter and lie there in trauma. Yet ordinary people have been reporting curious time effects since the beginning of recorded history. The amused tolerance once reseved for such over-imaginative people by self-appointed know-alls has reduced itself to a pained silence as physics slices the ground from under the feet of these pundits. Time is very odd indeed, just as ordinary citizens always claimed. Take the 1973 experience of Mrs. Marion Warren, for instance. Like many other women at Churchill Green near Bristol, Mrs. Warren was enthusiastic about the idea of a short communal holiday in Switzerland when such a scheme was suggested. Along with her friends, she booked a place for the trip. But three weeks before the flight Mrs. Warren had a ghastly nightmare. She related later, “I dreamed I was on the plane. I was looking out of the window and saw deep snow. There was a blizzard blowing. We were coming in to land and we fastened our seat-belts. Then I remember trees, a lot of trees, and these trees were thick. We hit them and there were flames and smoke—it was horrible. I could see the bodies of my friends in the snow.” This dream was so intense and frightening that Mrs. Warren cancelled her reservation on the trip. The flight took place as arranged, but the Vanguard airliner crashed on its approach before touchdown with the loss of over 100 lives. It crashed in a heavily-wooded region in a snowstorm, just as Mrs. Warren had foreseen. History is filled with episodes of this sort in which people appear to look forward in time. Whatever time is, it is certainly not the thing we commonly regard it with events spontaneously happening at a point known as “now.” If the present conditions the future, the future also seems to condition the present. Coming events do indeed cast their shadows before.

Some thinkers suggest that there are two time dimensions. Dr. Adrian Dobbs, a Cambridge mathematician, tried to marry this notion to quantum physics. This is tricky, because quantum physics doesn’t discuss reality, only probability. Quantum mechanics is a sort of fantasy science in which nothing is quite as it seems. The Dobbs theory, as I understand it, is that future events are disposed merely as probabilities much in the way that the velocity and position of an electron in an atom can only be a probability. The more accurately you calculate the velocity, the more uncertain becomes the electron’s position. If location is to be the criterion, then less reliance can be placed on the electron’s velocity. This is the law: you can’t have both the penny and the bun. It is really meaningless to ask where the electron of a hydrogen atom is at any given instant; it seems to be a blurred track that is everywhere at once. The Dobbs idea seems to be that there is a diminishing cone of probability leading to where the event occurs at “now.” The mind, however, can receive advance information along a second time-stream by means of hypothetical particles he calls “psitrons.” These psitrons, it is suggested, have negative mass and can therefore travel faster than light. What this means is that any train of events, if projected into the future, is surrounded by an infinite array of possibilities, only one set of which will be actualized. This is the set that “actually happens.” A psitron, if such a particle does exist, would be undetectable by any physical experiment. In theory, the argument is hard to fault because Feynman has shown that particles can move backwards or forwards in time. This scheme, of course, has many problems. For instance, how does the recipient brain get its psitrons to select the appropriate set of coming events? Do they sometimes pick up the wrong set and therefore a false prophecy? Why is such a lifesaving faculty not available to more people? Are percipients special people? If so, in what way? The faculty of foreknowledge undoubtedly saves lives. In 1967 a train was roaring down the track near Thirsk at nearly 80 miles an hour. Suddenly the British Rail driver, John Evans, sensed that all was not well. Instead of increasing speed still further, as he ought to have done on this length of line, he cut the speed to a mere 40 miles an hour. In a little while he spotted a cloud of dust ahead and immediately applied full brakes. In the path of the train were the derailed wagons of a cement train, and when the collision occurred it was a minor one. Mr. Evans’ premonition saved not only his own life but probably the lives of scores of other people. It could be fairly argued, however, that this was not a true case of foreknowledge, that the accident to the cement train had already happened and Mr. Evans picked up a signal telepathically from the mind of someone at the scene of the accident ahead. This may well be the case. In fact, true foreknowledge often has a quality of inevitability about it. Although Mrs. Warren cancelled her place on the flight, the plane did actually crash, exactly as she foresaw. Mr. Evans did not foresee a disaster; he simply had a strong intuitional impulse to go slow. Clearly these two cases are quite different. True foreknowledge is the foreseeing of an event, or series of events, weeks or perhaps months before they happen when there is no conceivable way for the seer to obtain the knowledge by normal means. A classic case was supplied by Malcolm Bessent, a London psychic, who sent the following premonition to the London Central Premonitions Registry in December 1969: “Starting with the year 1972-73, it will be a crucial year for the U.S.A. Water everywhere resulting in social upheaval, anarchy and political confusion. The people will be looking for a new leader, but none forthcoming. A new political structure will come into being.” This is a cast-iron case for precognition because even the book in which it was reported to the public appeared first as early as 1971, a year before Watergate burst over the American scene. In fact, until the events at Watergate occurred this message made little sense, since it is hard to equate water in its usual sense with political confusion and searches for a new leader.* How far ahead can the hypothetical psitrons probe and still select the correct sets of events? Mrs. Warren dreamed of the crashing Vanguard about three weeks before the event happened. Three weeks seems about the norm for most ordinary people. Psychics like Bessent seem able to range ahead two or three years. A few superpsychics have probed forward several centuries, as we will see presently. The most terrible land-accident of recent British history took place on October 21, 1966, when 116 children and 28 adults were killed in a sea of coal-waste which slid down a South Wales slag-heap at Aberfan after a heavy rain. During inquiries following the disaster, stories about precognition were rumoured. Peter Fairley, science correspondent of the Evening Standard, collected 76 cases which were analysed by Dr. J.C. Barker. Of these, some 22 subjects were able to supply the names of witnesses who confirmed that apparent precognition occurred prior to the catastrophe. One little boy, aged eight, did a drawing the day before he was killed. It showed slag-heaps and was captioned “The End.” That evening the same little boy reported “a man” near the bathroom door. This was probably an apparitional form, because no one could be found. Another child, nine-year-old Eryl Mai, startled her mother by saying, “Mummy, I’m not afraid to die.” Her mother tried to direct her attention away from making such morbid remarks but the little girl insisted. “No, I shall be with Peter and Jane.” Eryl, Peter and Jane were buried side by side in the great mass grave. Eryl’s foresight, as well as the foresight of various adult witnesses, seemed to extend forward in time to about 14 days prior to the accident. This may be related to a very curious phenomenon observed by the writer on October 8, thirteen days before the Aberfan disaster happened. About 7:30 in the evening of that day I was standing on the lifeboat slip in Tenby

harbour, fishing for whiting in the company of a dozen or so men and boys. It was a calm, clear night with a brilliant display of stars. Eventually we all became aware of an object in the sky directly overhead. Looking like a small, luminous blue-grey cloud, it was orbiting slowly in a circle equal to about three times its own diameter. About 10 minutes later there were exclamations from several of the fishermen as a dark object came out of the cloud and beamed a brilliant red light down on us. I felt a shock on realizing that here was a UFO going through the sort of weird maneuvers described in the press, but which I had never believed likely. The object with the red light was now moving leisurely in a south-southwesterly direction; simultaneously the bluish cloud was moving easterly at a rather faster speed. Months later, I tried to plot the tracks of these two objects. The luminous cloud was easier, since it moved from a point directly overhead toward the east, and it was possible to use the lifeboat slip as a sort of datum. Assuming that it would hold a steady course, I projected a line across the width of Wales. I noticed that, if the cloudlike object had in fact held a steady course for 57 miles from the point we saw it, it would have arrived over or very near Aberfan at about the time the first precognitive dreams and premonitions were starting to occur.* Since we still have no conclusive evidence of what UFOs are or why they occur, it is purely speculative to attempt to draw conclusions from the above. But if UFOs are manifestations from a different time-field and involve intelligences—and a lot of people now suspect this may be so—then the Aberfan witnesses may have picked up their precognitions via telepathy from these intelligences. This may seem wild, but then the facts are pretty wild. Foreknowledge is one of those inconvenient things that won’t go away no matter how you ignore it. Even my Grannie knew about it. Early in the century it was customary to go to bed with a candlestick. One evening Grannie had lit a candle in her ornate holder shaped like a maple-leaf and left it burning a little while. Presently she called my mother to see what had happened. The melting wax had taken on a strange spiral formation with fold overlapping fold. Grannie declared that it was a death portent known as a “winding sheet.” Ten minutes later a close relative arrived with the news that another member of the family, a little girl called Barbara, had been burned to death in a domestic fire. The problem of foreknowledge is crucial to our whole position as individuals. It is crucial to our morality and judicial system. If events are taking form weeks or months prior to their occurring, then how can praise or blame be properly apportioned? If Watergate was already sketched out some three years before the hapless burglars were arrested, who did the sketching? Is free will really just another illusion to hide skillful stage management by those who own us? These are real issues which demand to be addressed with the utmost intellectual honesty.

Retrogression in time is equally puzzling. Thousands of cases are on file in which reliable witnesses claim to have seen people, animals, vehicles and even whole landscapes, not as they exist today but as they existed in past time. Dr. J. B. Rhine and Dr. Helmut Schmidt have shown that precognition is a fact of nature. Retrocognition is less easy to prove by experiment since, by definition, the event has already occurred, and the result could possibly be discovered by normal means. On the other hand, it would certainly not be normal if the witness observed past events unknown to any living person. But proving such a thing is virtually impossible. Even so, it is hard to see why one should reject retrocognition when precognition is quite conclusively proved because one is no easier to accept than the other. One of the best-known of all cases of retrogression were the experiences of Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles on a warm August afternoon in 1901. This was given a lengthy critical analysis in a book by Lucille Iremonger whose 300 pages do everything except question the virginity of the two Edwardian schoolteacher spinsters. Miss Iremonger seems to reject the story because the witnesses acted so ineptly in presenting their material to the Society for Psychical Research. But often the inept witness is the truthful one; the slick guy with all the ready answers is often the crook—a point we remember from the last time we bought a gold brick. Certainly the Moberly-Jourdain story is a remarkable one. They claimed to have actually stepped back in time while wandering round the Versailles gardens and to have encountered various period figures en route, including one who they later decided must have been Marie Antoinette. But these were not just ghosts, the women claimed. The actual landscape changed. They saw buildings where no buildings now exist. And they actually walked through a spot which is today blocked by an old wall. Admittedly this does take a bit of swallowing, and Miss Iremonger will have none of it. Her most damning indictment is the fact that the two elderly teachers waited a week before setting down their experiences in writing, and their first document was so confused that they wrote a second one. Far from considering this suspicious, I believe it is the best possible evidence that the experience was authentic. Later evidence from Versailles tends to support the Moberly-Jourdain story. A London solicitor and his wife were walking in the grounds of the Trianons at Versailles in May, 1955. As they strolled casually along a path through the gardens, they saw three figures on the same path walking toward them. The figures disappeared suddenly while they were still a few yards away. The solicitor’s wife describes the incident this way: “Then a peculiar thing happened. It was as though a curtain were drawn across my mind, obliterating the vision, and I entirely forgot them till we reached the spot where we had seen them, when my husband suddenly said, ‘That’s odd. Did you

see a lady with two gentlemen walking towards us? What happened to them? They’ve vanished.’” The staff of an embassy, whose offices overlook Versailles, claim to have observed strange changes in the Versailles gardens as if they had somehow reverted to an earlier period of history. These later reports, made to the Society for Psychical research and described by Council Member Andrew Mackenzie, don’t of course guarantee the Moberly-Jourdain retrogression as genuine, but they do much to support it. The most interesting new point to emerge is the amnesia about the phenomenon as reported by the solicitor’s wife. This type of amnesia almost certainly happened to the Moberly-Jourdain pair; certainly that is suggested by their tardy and confused recording of the affair. Psychiatrists are now becoming familiar with this effect, especially in relation to UFO witnesses. John A. Keel, in his book The Mothman Prophecies (1975), discusses this curious amnesia in some depth using Dr. Grey Walter of the Burden Neurological Institute at Bristol as his basic authority. Perhaps this is the key to what Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain believed happened to them as against the seeming impossibility of such a thing’s occurring in the real world. I think they had the experience; but I don’t believe it happened in quite the way they thought it did. Basically, amnesia is action by the unconscious mind to block and erase something too traumatic to contemplate. When instant action is required, the witness simply faints and has poor recall. A case in point occurred in Swansea when a friend of mine had a caller one night and eventually escorted her to the door. The quiet street was well-illuminated. They were having a final chat when both of them saw a woman on the opposite footpath. She seemed to be scanning the numbers of the different houses. “She must be lost,” the caller said to my friend. “I’ll ask her what number she’s looking for. Perhaps I can help.” She crossed the street to speak to the stranger. This incident occurred shortly after the war before bomb-damage had been repaired. The stranger had now paused at an empty space where a couple of houses had been destroyed. As the woman approached to offer help, the stranger simply vanished. The witness at once collapsed in a dead faint, and my friend had to drag her indoors and revive her with stimulants. Had the experience been slightly less traumatic, the witness would probably have suffered merely amnesia. Much depends on circumstances. A ghost which appears and stays in view, looking like a real person, may produce no shock at all since it is accepted as being alive. It may be days or even weeks before the witness realizes that it could not possibly have been alive, but by then the traumatic effect has spent itself. We love the security of the familiar. When something apparently totally impossible intrudes suddenly into our consciousness, the shock is intense and can be highly unpleasant. The mind guards itself with the swoon and the amnesic block. Some secret police use rooms with distorted angles and weird perspectives to reduce the prisoner’s grasp on reality. Many witnesses of the paranormal seem subconsciously to enter into a sort of play-acting sequence with the phenomenon by pretending to take it at face value. This device reduces the shock of having to accept the unacceptable. The impossible is merely something not yet discovered. Hard-nosed skeptics are slowly learning it is wiser to keep their mouths shut.

Many retrogressive glimpses of events concern suicides, murders, battles and similar tragic happenings which must have been extremely traumatic to the participants. One well-attested case concerns, again, two women in France. This experience, however, was purely auditory. On August 4, 1951, two women visitors staying at an hotel in Dieppe heard what seems to have been an exact sound reproduction of the battle of August 19, 1942, when 500 Canadian troops stormed the Dieppe beaches and almost 1000 were killed. When these women sent an account of their experience to the Society for Psychical Research, they used the fictional names Agnes and Dorothy Norton. Their story runs as follows: Early in the morning, Agnes heard an unusual series of sounds from the Dieppe beach which was about a quarter of a mile away. It sounded like the cries of men “heard as if above a storm.” After a quarter of an hour or so she got up and roused her sister, and asked if she could also hear the sounds. Dorothy said she could hear them. They put on the light and checked the time. It was 4:20 a.m. in “summer time,” i.e., one hour ahead of Greenwich mean time. The women went to the balcony and looked in the direction of the sea. The sounds, a mixture of gunfire, shelling, dive-bombing and men’s yells, had now intensified. The noise came in waves of sound like a braodcast coming from a distant radio station, although individual yells and isolated shots were quite distinct. At 4:50 the sounds stopped abruptly only to begin again at 5:07 when they became so intense that the couple were surprised that the whole district wasn’t aroused. In the early morning light they could clearly hear a single rifle firing above the beach and the sound of planes going over until, at 5:40, the sounds again stopped abruptly. At 5:50 the noises resumed, but more faintly this time. At 6:00 they stopped, to be followed by a further faint resumption at 6:20. Dorothy, exhausted, went to sleep. Agnes still heard men’s cries faintly at 6:25. After 6:55 there was only silence. Dorothy related that on July 30, four days before the above experience, similar sounds, only much less intense, had awakened her. Agnes had remained asleep. Notes and times were jotted down while the experience was occurring. When the SPR studied these, it found an exact parallel between the times of events on Dieppe beach in August 1942 and the times of the

sounds as heard by the witnesses. The intense sounds noted as beginning at 5:07, for instance, correspond with the time accepted by historians as the exact time of the landing at Puys; the landing 15 minutes behind schedule, was the only landing at 5:07. It was also the bloodiest of the ill-fated Dieppe Raid.

No one reached forward into the future more surely than did Michael Nostradamus, prophet extraordinary. His quatrains have tantalized and perplexed scholars for 400 years because they are inexplicable by any known form of human logic. It is not easy to accept that specific events, such as Watergate, must have existed in some form more than two years before they occurred. It is even less easy to accept that events involving named individuals, whose grandfathers have not yet been born, must be taking shape two or even three centuries into the future. But if this is not so, how do we explain Nostradamus and his odd little verses? Born in 1503 in Provence, Nostradamus became learned in medicine at Montpellier, which probably had the best medical school in Europe at that time. As a Jew he probably knew a great deal about the Jewish magical art, the Cabala. He practiced medicine in a time of widespread plague, and this work took him to towns all over France. After four years he was granted his doctorate. The first stories about the prophecies of Nostradamus became current while he was wandering about Europe on this medical work, at which he seems to have been relatively successful, having made a modest fortune in combating the ravages of plague. In 1547 he settled in Salon in a house having a top room reached by a spiral staircase which is still in existence. Here he wrote his famous quatrains. The first volume, appropriately called Centuries, appeared in 1555. The first edition of Centuries is extremely rare, and the few copies still extant seem to be in private hands. The Editio Princeps edition, published in 1558, and a fuller edition, dated 1566, are in the Bibliotheque de Paris. A great many editions of the 17th Century are extant. Therefore Nostradamus can hardly be faulted on the score of not laying his data out well in advance of events. The quatrains are often obscure in their phrasing, and Nostradamus says that he did this deliberately so as not to scandalize “the fragile hearing” of his readers. He mentions this in connection with le commun advenement, the Common Advent, which many now believe referred to the French Revolution which he seems to have seen well over 200 years before it occurred. He evidently knew the exact date when it would erupt and the persecution of the Church that would accompany it. In the second edition he gives the date: 1792. Why, then, did he not date all his quatrains and why the obscurity? The answer is not hard to guess. Because he was Jewish he was highly vulnerable, and a charge of heresy was only too easy to level. Nostradamus walked a tightrope between religious bigotry on one side and superstitious awe on the other. In fact it was only by swearing that his books contained no criticism of the Roman Catholic Church that he got them published at all. He was balancing on a knife-edge; one slip and the authorities would have hit him with sorcery, witchcraft, heresy—the lot. How Nostradamus physically set about obtaining his precognitions we don’t know. Probably he locked himself in the upper chamber of his house in Salon and used some technique for releasing his subconscious mind. This may have been through the Cabala, or he could have used a smooth black stone moistened with water or oil as some practitioners still do in Haiti today. The Highland Scot often does it by gazing into the far distance over water. Few, however, have done it with greater effect than the Jewish doctor from Provence. Taken at face value, Nostradamus is mind-blowing. If you refuse to take him at face-value, then you must evade the little webs he spins with his quatrains. If these are what they seem to be, cause does not precede effect like the links in a chain; the entire chain exists and we are exploring the links as we come to them. This quite flattens the idea of options, and demolishes the Dobbs theory of psitrons selecting from an infinite variety of possibilities. The Nostradamus material suggests that the future in fact is predetermined. Religious thinkers have struggled for centuries to get their ship to clear this particular rock. The only rational way out of this impasse seems to be to accept reincarnation and the doctrine of karma. Nostradamus used puns and anagrams freely. Maybe he just liked the mental exercise or maybe he felt it safer to be obscure. Obscurity, however, in no way proves precognition. What proves it is the use of proper names in circumstances where their appearance as a purely chance effect must be deemed impossible. Possibly his two most famous quatrains concern the French Revolution when Louis and Marie Antoinette tried to escape from the Tuileries in 1792 in a heavy coach. The coach took a route through the little town of Verennes where there was supposed to be a change of horses. While the coachman searched for these horses, suspicions were aroused about the identity of the disguised travellers. A local chandler, who had been appointed procureur by the Commune, was brought to the scene. This man’s name was Sauce or Saulce. Saulce kept the royal party in custody until word arrived from the National Assembly ordering the king back to Paris. Louis and Marie Antoinette were taken back under guard and were eventually guillotined. This grisly episode seems to be encapsulated in two quatrains. The first runs thus:

De nuict viendra par la forest de Reines, Deux pars, vaultorte, Herne la pierre blanche, Le moyne noir en gris dedans Varennes: Esleu Cap. cause tempeste, feu, sang, tranche.

James Laver suggests the following translation: By night will come into Varennes through the forest of Reines two married persons by a circuitous route. Herne, the white stone, and the monk in grey, the Elected Capet; the result will be tempest, fire, blood and tranche. Lavar points out that if Herne is taken as one of the Hebrew prophets’ beloved anagrams, then it could mean Reine = queen. Marie Antoinette’s hair had indeed turned white by the time she was taken to the scaffold. Likewise noir could be an anagram of roi. Thus the phrase Le moyne noir could be “the monkish king.” Louis was in fact monkish and for part of his married life was impotent. He was also dressed in grey for his ill-fated escape attempt—so you have it both ways. Trancher means to cut or slice and that was how it ended. Cap. simply means Carpet; that was the actual title given to Louis by the revolutionary tribunal. He was no longer called “the king” but “Citizen Capet.” The second “Revolution” quatrain runs as follows:

La part solus mary sera mitre Retour: confict passera sur le thuille Par cinq cens: un trahyr sera tittre Narbon: & Saulce par coutaux avons d’ huille.

Laver suggests this as a translation: The husband alone will be mitred. Return. A conflict will pass over the tiles by five hundred; a traitor will be titled Narbonne and from Saulce we have oil in quarts. The first curious word in this quatrain is mitred. A mitre is a bishop’s tall headgear. The fact is that when Louis was returned to the Tuileries he was “mitred” in that the mob compelled him to put on the red cap of Liberty, the Phrygian cap, which looked like a mitre. The reference to conflict and tiles seems to bear on the fact that the revolutionaries—a mob of about 500 people—invaded the Tuileries, the place of Tiles, soon after the royals were recaptured. Saulce was certainly a traitor from the royalist standpoint and the Comte de Narbonne was involved in intrigues with the revolutionaries. The last phrase is interpreted by some historians as “oil sold in retail” (quartauts instead of coutaux). Either way it makes little difference. Saulce certainly sold large amounts of oil as a chandler. And it was he who sealed the fate of Louis and Marie Antoinette by sending the coach back. The entire historical succession of events which culminated in the trial and execution of the royal couple was determined by the psychology and pursuasions of an unknown purveyor of merchandise in a small French town noone had ever heard about. Saulce could have played it much as he wished. He could have called up a nearby body of royalist troops, camping across the river, and given Louis a bodyguard. He could have staged an escape, perhaps stealing Marie Anotinette’s jewelry as payment. He could have gone into a rage and shot the pair with his own hands. Saulce could have acted in any of a thousand different ways. In fact, he conformed strictly to the revolutionary code and informed the National Assembly. But did he do it out of volition or because the part was already drafted for him? If it was not drafted, how could a middle-aged Hebrew physician determine Saulce’s role and even his name and trade some 230 years before it happened? Peering some 375 years into the future, Nostradamus mentions Hitler and his armoured train and the depredations of the Nazis. The Jewish seer, however, misplaced one letter and calls him “Hister”. Clairvoyants sometimes do slightly fumble a name as Bessent did when he wrote “Water” instead of “Watergate.” Nostradamus wrote:

Bestes farouches de faim fleuves tranner; Plas part du champ encore Hister sera, En cage de fer le grande fera treisner, Quand rien enfant de Germain observera.

Laver’s translation is: Beasts mad with hunger will make the streams tremble; Hitler will be in control of an evergrowing territory; The great one will be dragged in a cage of iron When the offspring of Germans observe no law of God or

man. The RAF Pathfinder technique of igniting targets with incendiaries so they could be easily found by the main bomberstream seems to be vividly described in these lines:

Sera laissé feu vif, mort caché, Dedans les globes horrible espouvantable. De nuit à classe cite en poudre lasche La cité à feu, l’ennemy favorable.

Laver suggests the translation: There will be loosed living fire and death hidden in globes, Horrible! Frightful! By night hostile forces will reduce The city to powder, the fact that it is on fire being favourable to the enemy.

The prophecies of Nostradamus have impressed scholars for 400 years, from Videl in 1558 up to the first edition of James Laver’s book in 1942. I find the verses totally inexplicable unless one acknowledges that the future must exist already, and time is simply the vehicle with which it is explored. Practically the only way to preserve free will under this scheme is to accept metempsychosis or the doctrine of reincarnation. In other words, although the players and the play are already determined, there is still an indeterminate element over who will take which part. Even if the whole of Nostradamus is discarded except for his “Revolution” quatrains, the impossibility of explaining these remains. Somehow Michael Nostradamus knew about Saulce, oil purveyor and revolutionary upstart, 230 years before the man’s face appeared in history. This single fact damages our current ideas about causation beyond repair. *Herbert B. Greenhouse’s book Premonition—A Leap into the Future was published in London in 1971. Therefore, neither the author nor his publisher could have had any idea of the astonishing accuracy of this prediction. *It is interesting to note that a straight line connecting Tenby with Aberfan—the suspected course of the UFO—cuts the Clydach Valley where Shakespeare is reputed to have set the scene for A Midsummer Night’s Dream as related in Chapter 4. This supports the idea that these strange phenomena occur along linear tracks or “leys.”

Chapter Four ELOHIM—THE TROOPING FAIRIES

Then to the spicey nut-brown ale With stories told of many a feat How fairy Mab the junkets eat; She was pinch’d and pull’d, she said; And he, by Friar’s lantern led; Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day-labourers could not end; Then lies him down the lubber fiend, And, stretched out all the chimney’s length, Basks at the fire his fairy strength; And crop-full out of doors he flings, Ere the first cock his matin rings. Milton L’Allegro

It is one thing to concoct a theory, but quite a different thing to prove it. Physics has been especially blessed with people who dreamed bizzare dreams and then translated them into facts via mathematicics. But mathematics is a special language of its own, and most of it is an utter mystery except to mathematicians. It has its peculiar rules; you can even invent new ones provided you preserve the internal consistency. It is often difficult and sometimes impossible to translate mathematical results into the concepts of everyday living. Mathematics takes paradox in its stride and comes up triumphant by showing unsuspected aspects of nature. But try to put the process into words and you end up on a morass of incoherence. The trouble lies in the way we think. We think in terms of things—constructs such as buildings and machines, apples and oranges, atoms and electrons; but the fact is that atoms are not things, nor are electrons. About the best we can say is that an atom is a focus of energy manifestation with ambiguous and often illogical properties. And since the material world is built of atoms, it is in truth no more than a phantom—a temporary pattern of objectified energy that came out of the cosmos which gave it birth and to which it will return. It is simply a particular form of ghost with which we happen to be very familiar. Professor Otto R. Frisch puts it this way: “We should not ask what light really is. Articles and waves are both constructs of the human mind, designed to help us speak about the behaviour of light in different circumstances. With Bohr we give up the naive concept of reality, the idea that the world is made up of things waiting for us to discover their nature. The world is made up by us out of our experiences and the concepts we create to link them together.” Unless all this is clearly appreciated, it is futile to try to make sense out of the paradoxes that occur repeatedly all over the world. We must learn to forget the “solid” walls of houses, as does the TV engineer, since these do not affect the phenomena with which he deals. We must abandon the idea of solid objects traversing space and time. Instead, we should try to imagine a ghost-world of energy that is visited, it would seem, from time to time, by other ghosts. It is the nature and meaning of these other ghostly constructs with which we are concerned in this book, for it is becoming self-evident that there is not just one sort of ghost but many. I have never believed coincidence is a chance effect. As Albert Einstein, mathematician extraordinary, put it in a famous remark, “I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos.” A physicist bolding a similar belief was Wolfgang Pauli discoverer of the neutrino, who considered a nonmaterial unifying principle in the universe. These views are similar to those held by Schopenhauer and other philosophers. This unifying effect tends to bring like and like together, and often produces such weird and wonderful juxtapositioning that it is totally inexplicable by chance alone. An example of this effect occurred on August 31, 1974, when Prime Minister Edward Heath posed for a picture while he held up a copy of a new thriller by John Dyson. This picture was part of a promotional scheme, and Mr. Heath was asked to take part because he is a well-known yachtsman. The title of the book: The Prime Minister’s Boat Is Missing. Five days later

Mr. Heath’s sea-going yacht Morning Cloud was indeed missing while on passage in the Channel. What was left of the crew, after huge waves had washed a couple of them overboard, managed to get ashore some eight hours later. The wrecked yacht was eventually washed ashore on Brighton beach. The loss of an ocean-going yacht in inshore waters manned by a professional crew in summer weather seems almost impossible, short of a collision. An inquiry, with scientists from the Institute of Oceanography taking part, came to the conclusion that a Force 9 gale had produced 26-foot waves, and the crests of two of these waves had synchronised to produce a super-wave which overwhelmed the vessel. No one explained how Mr. Heath came to be involved with a prophetic book title or where Mr. Dyson got the idea for his thriller in the first place. Actually, precognition appears quite often in works of fiction.* Some thinkers believe this unifying effect suggests that the universe is not as we see it. Alfred Aiken writes: “The teaching that we are humans equipped with separate minds capable of making a choice between one Infinite All-inclusive Good and Evil, is evil itself—is the figment of nothingness responsible for all faulty assumptions. As God is All, there are no humans. We are Divine. No one has a separate mind. There is but one mind present, and that one is God, Infinite Intelligence. The very mind writing these words, reading these words, is God. There is no other One.” This idealist solution is attractive. The raw data of science tends to support it, whereas the materialistic diatribes of such Victorian philosophers as Ernst Haekel make for shabby reading today. Haekel declared: “The existence of ether (or cosmic ether) as a real element is a positive fact and has been known as such for the last twelve years. We sometimes read even today that ether is a pure hypothesis; this erroneous assertion comes not only from uninformed philosophers and popular writers, but even from prudent and exact physicists. But there would be just as much reason to deny the existence of ponderable matter. As a matter of fact, there are metaphysicians who accomplish even this feat, and whose highest wisdom lies in denying or calling into question the existence of an external universe; according to them only one real entity exists—their own precious personality, or, to be more correct, their immortal soul.”† By the middle of this century Western man had become spiritually castrated, without values and without hope. See ing this state of affairs, some of the other ghosts who share space with us came along to stage astral soap-operas in order to stimulate a reaction. A certain sort of ghost has always undertaken this function At its lowest level this may involve nothing more spiritual than an evening chase across the meadows after a mystery light or a lakeside glimpse of a dragon. At its highest, the witness may perform miracles of healing or found a new religion. These ghosts have this specific function: they mystify, mock, foment reaction and reveal. They act as spiritual enzymes, posing problems, acting out elaborate spoofs, offering to guide yet leading the searcher into a swamp, conducting the hunter after treasure or power to a hideous travesty of the very thing he craves. They are beautiful or ugly, according to circumstances. The Jews of olden time called them Satan, the Tester, because they test with spiritual acid acting through karma in order that the inner laws of creation be well-protected.

In 1969 Dr. Jacques Vallee produced a book called Passport to Magonia, describing it as a philosophy of non-facts, a tribute to all the people who dared to preserve a dream. It is really a part of Western man’s hesitant comeback in search of values. In this book Vallee acts as an apostate priest who marries the pseudoscience of ufology with fairy lore. This curious union has long been mooted by those in a position to assess the known facts about our fellow ghosts in space. I live in Wales, an essentially Celtic country, where the fairy and the flying saucer have long been familiar. The Welsh name for fairies is y Tylwyth Teg , the fair folk or family. The Ellyllon were pygmy elves or nature spirits—a name derived from the Welsh el, a spirit, which in turn came from the Hebrew Elohim= God. Such spirits have always been known to objectify materially on occasion, although this is usually in remote country places. Such haunts were becoming rare even as early as the 16th Century. When Shakespeare wrote his fairy play A Midsummer Night’s Dream he made extensive use of Welsh fairy lore. His Mab, for instance, is Welsh for a small child and is associated with Mabinogion—tales of enchantment told to the young in bygone days. Campbell, a poet, wrote a letter to a Mrs. Fletcher, who reprinted it in her autobiography in 1833. Campbell told her that he had discovered “a probability, almost a certainty, that Shakespeare visited friends in Brecon.” There is indeed a strong Welsh tradition that Shakespeare obtained his knowledge of fairy folklore from his friend Richard Price, son of Sir John Price of Brecon Priory. Moreover, it seems that they both went to investigate a local fairy haunt called Cwm Pwca, The Valley of Fairy Puck, which is a glen in the Clydach valley. This site is thought to form the original scene for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Today this area is industrialised. There are many sorts of fairy or nature spirits ranging from the tiny Ellyllon, which function within the cell-structure of vegetation, to the wandering Sighes, Elohim or Trooping Fairies whose illusions and paranormal hoaxes are an intrinsic part of the flying saucer story. The Celts carefully studied the Sighes, plotting the magnetic paths they traverse, watching the astral vehicles they use and pondering the deceptive ploys they adopt to demonstrate that it is folly to be gulled by appearances. Although no longer invited to hunt for fairy gold, we are asked by technical-looking people to step aboard a spaceship from Venus and examine the crewquarters. Eager UFO researchers still look for concrete flying saucers, little

suspecting that they are being conned by an astral phenomenon which piles illusion on illusion. The Celts knew of the existence of a spiritual force which concocted deceits in order to produce a reaction. Fairy lore tells of gifts that turn to ashes, beautiful maidens who suddenly become hags, and people who wander into the astral dimensions of fairyland and emerge only to discover that a century has sped by. Irish Celtic belief regarding the nature of these beings is set out by R.W. Rolleston in his book Myths and Legends of The Celtic Race (1919) thus: “The Danaans first made their appearance in Western Connaught when they were wafted into the land on a magic cloud. The fairyland in which they dwell is ordinarily inaccessible to mortals, yet it is ever near at hand; the invisible barriers may be and often are crossed by mortal men, and the Danaans themselves frequently come forth from them. They are for the most part radiantly beautiful and they are immortal (with limitations). They wield mysterious powers of enchantment and sorcery, but no sort of moral governance has ever been ascribed to them nor (in Bardic literature) is any sort of worship paid to them. They do not die naturally, but can be slain by each other and by mortals; and on the whole the mortal is the stronger. Their strength when they come into conflict with men (as frequently happens) lies in strategy and illusion. When the issue can be fairly knit between the rival powers, it is the human that conquers.” The folklore of Western Europe shows conclusively, I think, that olden accounts of the Sighes or Trooping Fairies and modern UFO reports are related. The fairies were said to travel through the air in troops or waves at periodic intervals; UFOs do the same. According to Robert Kirk’s classic The Secret Commonwealth, these fairy waves occur at three-month intervals; at these times people encounter this class of fairy. Such an exact time-schedule has admittedly not been observed with flying saucers. Dr. Claude Poher, head of the French Rockets Division of Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, studied UFOs in relation to variations in the earth’s magnetic field, concluding that periods of maximum disturbance correspond with those of the greatest number of UFO sightings. Dr. Poher came to believe that the magnetic field in the immediate neighborhood of a UFO could be 150,000 ampere turns per peter. Since the magnetic storms on the sun, known as sunspots, fluctuate through an 11 year cycle and are the biggest single cause of variations in the earth’s magnetic field, it appears that UFOs are indeed cyclic in character, just as folklore observed. John O’ Hanlon’s book Irish Folklore, published in 1870, describes the rings or patches made on the ground by the Trooping Fairies in the following terms: “Fairy rings are circular patches of stunted and burned-looking grass frequently found amid fine verdant fields. These are pointed out by people in the country as places where fairies had a ball and supper overnight. Sometimes their amusements become visible to belated travellers and an extra-ordinary light shines around them.” The same phenomenon is described in William A. Craigie’s Scandinavian Folklore (1896) in the following passage where the astral entities are called “bergfolk” or “Trolls”: “Beside Gudmandstrup in Oddsherred there is a mound called Hiule-hoi. The Bergfolk who live in it are well-known in the villages around about and, if anyone forgets to make the sign of the cross on their ale barrels, the Trolls from Hiule-hoi slip in there and steal the ale. Late one evening a peasant was coming past the mound and saw it standing on red posts and under it there was music, dancing and a grand festival.” O’Hanlon describes the sound of fairies taking to the air in these terms: “On alighting at or departing from a particular spot, their rapid motion through the air creates a noise somewhat resembling the loud humming of bees when swarming from a hive. Sometimes, what is called Shee gaoithe, a whirlwind, is supposed to have been raised by the passing fairy host.” Craigie describes the fairy spectacle as seen from the ground in the following passage: “One day Thorir and his comrades were out fishing and came home late. Ulf went to meet them and, when they had fixed up their boat for the night, Thorir saw a fire like the light of the moon over which hovered a blue flame. He asked what light that was. ‘Better not inquire into that,’ said Ulf. ‘It has no human origin.’ ‘Why should I not know of it?’ retorted Thoir, ‘Even though it is caused by Trolls?” Such traditional stories used to be published by folklorists with great deference to the scientific pundits of the day. The authors always make a point of advising us in long introductions that these quaint beliefs are a relic from the dark ages of superstition which the reader is invited to glance back on with an amused smile from his rational scientific position. Although explaining nothing, such assurances provide a cozy feeling of commonsense security. But observation through the course of time shows the attitude to be facile. The Trooping Fairies continue to troop; only they are now called UFOs. Fairy rings continue to appear; only they are now subject to checks with Geiger counters and measuring tapes. Witnesses often describe the sounds of departing UFOs as resembling dynamos rather than the humming of swarming bees. In short, the phenomenon has simply acquired a technical facade to suit the expectations of modern observers.

Just after the Christmas of 1975, two UFOs landed near Haverfordwest, Wales. The first one, a glowing reddish ball, slowly descended until it was lost to view in a wood. Six or seven people saw the object, and a small party was organised the

next morning to search for traces. None were found. A fortnight later, a similar object appeared one evening a few miles further north. The Western Telegraph of January 23, 1975, announced: “Two youths fled in terror from a field on a Clarbeston Road farm last week when they saw a strange ball of red light shoot off into the night right in front of them. John Davis (15) of Moorfield Avenue, Clarbeston Road, and 17 year old David Bevan of Longlands, Walton East, had gone to the field on Knock farm with a tractor to round up some cows. ‘We could see the light shining through the hedge before we got into the field,’ said John. ‘It was about 20 yards away then; it rose up in front of the tractor and disappeared.’ John described the light as shaped like a rugby football and about 18 inches in diameter. It glowed with a fierce red light, and hovered about three feet above the ground. John and David were so terrified by what they had seen, they left the cows and raced back to the farm. Mr. Randall Lavis, John’s father, and the cows were at the opposite end of the field to where the light appeared. It was possible they had gone there after being frightened by it. He advised his son not to go near if he sees the light again but to report it to the police.” A great many problems fan out from these and thousands of similar observations. To say that UFOs are really the Trooping Fairies of folklore is not to say enough. Even if we argue that they are a higher form of elemental which perpetrates illusions in order to demonstrate the essentially unreal nature of the physical world to disbelieving mankind, we have still accounted for nothing. We need to know how the UFO appearances are produced before we can logically progress to the problems of who produces them and why. UFOs are certainly not fortuitous. Earlier, I described UFOs as spiritual enzymes. This belief was reached following the investigations of acute thinkers in this field. Pierre Guerin, the French scientist, shows the paradoxical nature of the UFO problem by declaring: “In Ufology, any law is immediately falsified by subsequent sightings just as soon as it is formulated.” Aime Michel comments this way: “What would be needed—and it would suffice—would be that we should know that there is nothing in it or that, if there is anything in it, it is of no importance anyway. This is why ’they’ or somebody’ or ’something’ is showing us just enough for us to have no possible doubt that (A) there is something, and (B) that it is very important.” The London Buddhist Society takes a different view. According to the President, Mr. Christmas Humphries, the Devas or elementals are lowly forms of life and manifestations such as flying saucers are but side issues and not really of great concern to mankind. Even if this is true, it is not apparent. Any phenomenon which produces a human response, as UFOs do, obviously has some importance even though it gives rise to nothing more than a clinical study of human reactions. A phenomenon can be dismissed as unimportant only when we know what it is and can evaluate it. John A. Keel, an American writer who has researched the enigma of UFOs in greater depth than anyone I know, has reached some specific conclusions. He writes: “But investigators informed in the antics of the ultraterrestrial mimics are obliged to look deeper. These entities labour to cultivate belief in various frames of reference, and then they deliberately create new manifestations which support those beliefs.... Phantom campers, vehicles with built-on trailers, have been widely reported in the Western states in recent years. And we have reports of phantom airplanes and helicopters by the hundreds. In the 1930s thousands of people in northern Europe saw formations of mysterious aeroplanes over Norway, Sweden and Finland. Despite extensive searches by the military forces of several countries, the course of these ghost fliers, as they were called, was never determined.” Jacques Vallee, French American astrophysicist and computer specialist, puts it this way: “When the underlying archetypes are extracted from these rumours, the saucer myth is seen to coincide to a remarkable degree with the fairy-faith of Celtic countries, the observations of the scholars of past ages, and the widespread belief among all peoples concerning entities whose physical and psychological descriptions place them in the same category as the present-day ufonauts.” Gordon Creighton, linguist and one-time diplomat, now editor of Flying Saucer Review, concurs when he writes: “We pride ourselves nowadays on our enlightenment, but as Gurdjieff was always pointing out, it looks as though, for every piece of new knowledge that Man acquires, ten pieces of old knowledge are lost. I hope one day to show that there is much evidence that some of what we nowadays call ‘beings from flying saucers’ are much more probably creatures who share this earth with us; creatures who are totally unknown to most of us; regarding whom Science has not a single word to say; but about whom our own written and oral traditions, in all our civilizations, speak volumes.” The late incomparable Ivan T. Sanderson, zoologist and TV personality, instinctively attacked the problem of UFOs and their curious “pilots” from the biological angle. It didn’t work. Keel reports, “Privately Ivan, like myself, came to suspect that UFOs were inexorably related to psychic phenomena.” In his last book before he died, Investigating the Unexplained, Sanderson wrote: “But now we are being forced to accept the fact—and the ‘forcing’ is coming ever more often, and from all manner of diverse angles—that there are tangible, measurable and reproducible evidences of other ‘universes’ in contact with ours. And inhabiting these there would appear to be intelligences, ranging all the way from abyssmal idiots to godlike entities. The evidence for these contentions, moreover, lies primarily in our field of the tangible unexplaineds.” Sooner or later, if you study the subject, you must come to some conclusions about UFOs. And one of the first things to be concluded is that they are not what they purport to be. Moreover, they can be dangerous. But the degree of danger depends on the attitude of the person involved. UFOs—as Keel points out—are a reflective phenomenon. Chameleonlike, they can

switch their format to suit the observer’s preconceptions, only to leave him staring glassy-eyed at nothing. Anyone misguided enough to try to exploit the Trooping Fairies for his own ends is paid in bitter fairy gold. Over the last 20 years UFOs have left behind an impressive catalogue of suicides, psychiatric cases and shocked individuals. Yet there are others, such as Dr. Andrija Puharich and Uri Geller, who claim to have been illuminated by the entities. Maybe this is so. Since Western thought is untutored regarding the laws under which this astral phenomenon operates, we can only speculate. But UFOs are neither an apt subject for unwary experiment, nor a pastime for those with severe personal hang-ups.

Although a scientific study of the Trooping Fairy phenomenon has made heavy going, largely because the data so far collected lacks meaningful patterns, folklore—which is a sort of collective survey run by past generations—draws attention to certain significant effects. One of these is what was known as “pixillation”—that is, “to bewilder; confuse.” More loosely, it can be equated with amnesia. Here is a Welsh example from the 19th Century: “Two young women, daughters of a farmer in the parish of Llandyssul, were walking home one night from Lampeter Fair. After reaching the very field in one corner of which the house in which they lived stood, they wandered about this field for hours before they could find the building though it was a fine moonlight night. It seemed as if the house had vanished; and they informed me that they were convinced that this was the doings of the Goblin (Ellyllon) who had played them a trick.” This peculiar amnesia crops up in many fairy stories. When the village people of St. Dogmaels, Cardigan, encountered fairies, the account says: “It was no doubt the Ellyllon who led these folk astray and put the cap of oblivion on their heads which prevented them from ever telling of their adventures clearly.” Selective amnesia occurred in the case of the Versailles apparitions, and it has also struck witnesses of the Loch Ness monster as I will show in a later chapter. It occurs frequently and sometimes dramatically when witnesses encounter grounded UFOs. James M. McCampbell attributes most of these symptoms to microwave radiation, but I find this hard to accept. Folklore correctly drew attention to an effect which is certainly significant and is moreover, wide open for investigation by psychiatrists. One of the most specific effects to occur after close contact with the Trooping Fairies is human illness. Elf-disease— as it was known—was fully recorded in folklore. Early in 1958 a South American farmer called Antonio Villas Boas was assaulted—if that is the word—by being induced to copulate with a female crew-member of a flying saucer. This amazing case was investigated in detail by Dr. Walter Buhler and Dr. Olavo Fontes. Dr. Fontes later gave Boas a medical examination following the appearance of certain symptoms which included headaches, sleepiness and small unhealed wounds. After a dermatological examination of Boas, Dr. Fontes reported: “Several scars from recent cutaneous lesions on the backs of the hands, on the forearms, and on the legs. All present the same appearance, which recalls that of small cicatrized boils or wounds... There are still two which have not yet healed, one on each arm, and their appearance is that of small reddish nodules or lumps, harder than the surrounding skin....” English folklore has always recognized the fact that fairies can cause dermatological complaints. Elf-disease as it was called was classified into two categories—water-elf disease and land-elf disease. These diseases were also known as ‘elfcake’ because the victims suffered a hardening of the skin, presumably similar to that suffered by Boas. Treatment for the disease is prescribed in a medieval book called Saxon Leechdoms by Cockayne in a formula from the time of Henry VI which runs thus: “Take the root of gladen and make powder thereof, and give the diseased party half a spoonful thereof to drink in white wine, and let him eat thereof so much in his pottage at one time and it will help him within a while.” Folklore embodies vast numbers of centuries-old observations which investigation today shows are real effects. A typical example is the old Scandinavian belief in the Night-marra or nightmare. The marra, said to be a beautiful female fairy of evil disposition, had the peculiar habit of climbing on the backs of horses and riding them to exhaustion. William Craigie says: “It is often the case that in the morning the horses are found standing in the stable dripping with sweat although they have been there the whole night. In that case it is the marra who has ridden them and it is generally very bad for the horses. Marra often plaits the horses’ manes and tails into Marra-locks which it is impossible to comb out.” The Russians encountered the same story in the Caucasus in Azerbayjan in 1971 when two scientists, Ivor Bourtseva and his wife, found numbers of mares in different areas “whose manes had apparently been ‘plaited’ overnight; the mares were tired and sweating as if they had been ridden hard and fast.” The tradition in that part of Asia is that the mares are ridden not by fairies but by Almas (a sort of Caucasian Yeti). After seeing pictures of this curious braiding or plaiting effect, Dr. John Napier inquired among his horse-owning friends. One in England sent him several clumps of mane from an old gelding living in the open fields, and these showed a similar plaiting effect to the Caucasian manes. Napier inspected the animal and confirmed the plaiting as genuine. In Napier’s opinion this plaiting could be produced by the wind’s whipping and twisting the mane. But there is no proof of this, nor does such an explanation account for the alleged exhausted condition of the animals. Folklore, once again, draws attention to an unexplained fact about the real world. A large body of testimony holds that fairies are repelled by iron. This observation may turn out to be very significant

because many modern students of UFO phenomena are convinced that geomagnetism is fundamental to the production of the effects. And iron—as any first-year electrical student knows—is reactive to magnetic fields. There is an increasing amount of evidence that UFOs are intimately related to magnetic forces and therefore that soft iron, at the local level, may indeed have an inhibiting effect on the phenomenon. A study done by Sebastian Robiou of a 1972 UFO wave in Puerto Rico showed that the majority of sightings occurred within a 30-kilometer radius of areas which are magnetically anomalous. Areas which have a good deal higher or lower than average reading, magnetically speaking, are found all over the planet, although it is far from clear what causes them. Robiou noticed the odd fact that UFOs were never sighted directly over the anomalous areas, but always from the periphery outwards. John Keel believes this outward extension of the phenomenon may be up to about 320 kilometers. The late Guy Underwood, who used dowsing to investigate the magnetic patterns of the earth, came to some surprising conclusions. He classifies the primary magnetic currents into three classes: water-lines, aquastats and track lines. Some of these magnetic signals appear to emerge as spirals, whereas others are in linear formation. Underwood claimed that animals are sensitive to these signals and seek them out. If a spiral formation occurs in a field containing domestic stock such as horses or cows, the animals will lie above the spiral when giving birth; Underwood says that this makes birth easier and produces healthier stock. Moles always make their fortresses above the spirals, and badgers dig their sets over them. Gnats and flies congregate above the magnetic patterns in order to “dance” just as horses love to stand above them when “meditating”. These effects may well be of great physiological and psychological importance when thoroughly understood and applied. At present, however, they are not understood at all. Recently, an American electronics engineer informed me that he has been commissioned to survey an ancient site in North Salem, New Hampshire, known as “Mystery Hill”. This site has been carbon-dated to about 1,500 B.C. This engineer noticed how, in certain locations on this site, he encountered “a curious feeling of being at peace no matter what the weather or working conditions.” The idea grew on him that certain places might be in sympathy in some way with the human nervous system. Being an engineer he began to experiment. To his amazement he found that magnetic paths or tracks existed and were detectable by instruments he built for the purpose. His research in this area of the unknown continues at the time of writing. The Trooping Fairies were called Earth Gods (dei terreni) in the Book of Armagh, possibly because they use the earth’s magnetic flux in order to manifest. Although they seem able to generate artifacts to suit the contemporary scene, such as phantom aircraft and helicopters, there also seems to be a long-term consistency about some fairy creations. The “mound standing on posts” reported at Oddsherred, for instance, sounds very like a present day UFO standing on landing-legs. And this in turn is hard to distinguish from the objects shown in profusion in the flying saucer drawings found in the cave-art of the Franco-Cantabrian region of southern Europe dating from 10,000-15,000 years ago. The Trooping Fairies are not newcomers to the human scene any more than they are explorers from outer space. They are a phenomenon which displays on that spacialtemporal frontier where one sort of reality gives way to another. The world is not at all the straight-line three-dimensional affair we commonly visualise. We saw in the last chapter how even the human mind is able to bridge time and move both backwards and forwards through this dimension. The Trooping Fairies seem to have perfected this faculty to the extent that they can insert their illusory trifles into our near-future—which puts them beyond detection. If this is not true, then it is hard to explain the data. Thousands of encounters with flying saucers and humanoid entities have occurred worldwide during the last 30 years. If these incidents were the result of chance encounters, someone would have obtained a filmed record or a series of detailed stills years ago. The only way that such episodes can be engineered so that they remain total mysteries is for the entities to have advance knowledge of any situation before it occurs. Fantastic though this idea seems at first, we know it is possible because people can already do it, both experimentally in a laboratory and experientially in their private lives. To what extent fairy artifacts are real in the sense of being material is still one of the most baffling aspects of the enigma. Many witnesses seem to have had hallucinatory experiences with UFOs. Others may be mentally programmed by the phenomenon as was the illiterate Mohammed who wandered for years in the desert before finally hearing voices and seeing visions. There is much to be said for the argument that all religious awareness is produced by this paranormal programming. But all discussion on the intrinsic reality or nonreality of the Trooping Fairies falls down over the stark fact that we do not know what reality is anyway. Will Shakespeare of Stratford, who investigated the Welsh Trooping Fairies at first hand, had formed his own opinion. In The Tempest he puts in this way: Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, thin air; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

All that Rutherford, Heisenberg, Thomson, Pauli and Einstein have done is to confirm it. *According to Leo Talamonti, the science writer, such authors as Rider Haggard, Balzac, Rimbaud, Morgan Richardson, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, all made striking precognitive forecasts in their writings. Talamonti argues plausibly that the precognitive faculty probably operates almost continuously in many people but is suppressed by the logical part of the mind. †The Riddle of the Universe.

Chapter Five THE MYSTERY BIG CATS

But the terrors of Africa do not all come in one shape.... If the mngwa can be compared to any unknown animal in the uplands it is to the ndalawo of the Uganda forests, a savage man-killing carnivore, which is said to be the size and shape of a leopard but with black fur on its back, turning to grey beneath the body. The mngwa is supposed to be larger. The natives who have seen it say that it is as big as a donkey and striped with grey like a tabby cat Bernard Heuvelmans On the Track of Unknown Animals

It has always been obvious that this honeycomb matrix of atoms known as the material world is but a backcloth for an immaterial something which we call life. The only scientifically-demonstrable life is organic life; but research shows that this has such amazing properties, such as the ability to shift its gaze forward or backwards in time, the faculty of operating directly on matter (psychokinesis) and possibly the ability to inhabit various bodies in succession, that the restriction of life to organic cells seems highly unlikely. How life functions when it is not in cells is unknown, except that its potential seems to expand. Instead of being restricted to manipulating material particles it seems able to manipulate concepts in accordance with laws we know nothing about. When intelligent life reaches a certain stage in its evolution, it appears to become aware of the next higher stage by a process of perceptual awareness. The Trooping Fairies or Earth Gods—which seem to be beings intermediate between two universes or sets of space/time references—seem to help this process in mankind by an endless series of hoaxes, illusions and excursions apparently designed to produce a reaction in the dullest as well as the smartest of persons. These reactions range from ecstasy, enlightenment and the ability to perform miracles all the way to frightening, terrifying, mind-bending experiences. Paranormal animals are often used freely in this imagery, probably because people are emotionally responsive to such forms. The Scots, Irish and Welsh people were loath to divest themselves of the rich tradition of Celtic folklore even in the face of advancing Christianity. The Book of Kells, for instance, depicts St. Patrick with his feet symbolically planted on two paranormal monsters. One is a Great Serpent or dragon; the other is a feline. These creatures were astral entities and very much a part of the Celtic folk-belief. They were regarded as negative manifestations in the eternal process which seems bent on shaping the human psyche into something higher and better than it is today. There have always been sceptics and hyper-critics; perhaps the monster and the giant cat are especially aimed at breaking down doubts about the actuality of other planes of values and being. Perhaps significantly, these paranormal animals came to be increasingly reported in modern times at the precise moment when formal religions dramatically lost credence with people. Anglican churchmen, for instance, noted a steep decline in attendances at London churches early in the 1960s. Simultaneously, a rot set into the Roman Catholic Church so that it is now estimated that every year a quarter of a million practicing Catholics are now dropping out in Britain. This waning of faith in the old spiritual values coincided with the appearance of giant cats. Phantom cats and dogs are common in folklore. In East Anglia the apparition was called “Black Shuck,” a name derived from an Anglo-Saxon word denoting a demon. There are stories of the thing from all over Britain. In Yorkshire it was called “The Barguest”. It was a similar tradition from Dartmoor in Devon that gave Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the idea for his Sherlock Holmes yarn The Hound of the Baskervilles. In appearance the Black Dog is as big as a large mastiff, and it often has glowing eyes—a feature shared with some UFO entities. Some good modern circumstantial accounts exist regarding the beast. Janet Bord describes how a woman saw one in her bedroom when she was a child living in a cottage at Brendon in Worcestershire: “I was sitting at the end of the big brass bedstead playing with the ornamental knobs and looking out of the window when I became aware of a scratching noise. An enormous Black Dog has walked from the direction of the fireplace to my left. It passed round the end of the bed between me and the window, round the corner of the bed, and towards the door. As the dog passed between me and the window it swung its head round to stare at me—it has very large, very red eyes, which glowed from inside as if lit up. As it looked at me I was quite terrified and very much aware of the creature’s breath which was warm and strong as a gust of wind. The animal must have been very tall as I was sitting on the old-fashioned bedstead which was quite high yet our eyes were level. Funnily enough, by the time it reached the door it had vanished.” An airman at an RAF camp in East Anglia was followed by a Black Shuck one moonlight night as he rode back to

camp on a bicycle. At first he thought he was being followed by a stray dog, until he noticed that the animal always kept the same distance from the cycle no matter how fast or slow he travelled. Presently, he stopped and confronted the beast. It approached to within some yards and then stopped when he could distinctly hear it panting. When he moved off, it followed. It was still following when the camp gates came into view. Some trees were throwing a dense shadow across the road at one point, and after entering this shadow, the dog failed to emerge. As in the previous case it, too, had vanished. Clearly we are not talking about transparent images over which a fevered imagination has run riot, but apparently solid objects. Charles McCreery in Psychical Phenomena and the Physical World puts it this way: “An apparition can be completely lifelike. In fact, it can provide such an exact imitation of a normal figure that the percipient does not realize at the time that it is an apparition.” In the summer of 1968 several of us were in Connemara in the west of Ireland investigating an alleged monster in Lough Nahooin. One afternoon, while the rest of the party were sorting nets on the bank of the tiny peat lough, I decided to examine the stream which fed water into the pool and take a look at the bog-hole where the system originated. This meant crossing the bog for some distance and going out of sight around a hillock. After half an hour I returned to find the main party in a state of excitement. Soon after I had left, it seemed that a large catlike animal had come into view on the opposite side of the pool, about 100 yards distant. Everyone saw it. It remained in view for a few moments before disappearing among the limestone upcrops. Captain Lionel Leslie told me that it was a large creature quite unlike anything he had ever seen. Inquiry among Dublin’s zoologists failed to identify this animal. The true wildcat (Felis silvestris) is found only in Scotland, and is unknown in Ireland. I have watched these cats in a wild state, and the males are biggish animals up to a yard long. Domestic cats sometimes become feral, but hardly grow to the size of the thing seen by our party. A Dublin zoologist suggested that we may have seen a fox, but all our party insisted it was more like a huge cat. The mystery was never solved, and the heathery ground was too springy to retain tracks. This is the nearest that I have been personally to a mystery big cat.

Early in the 1960s—when religion in England began its downward plunge—the southeast corner was invaded by catlike animals which were described by alarmed witnesses as “pumas”. The puma, cougar, catamount or mountain lion is a big cat of the Americas. Old-time prospectors and explorers called it the “Traveller’s Friend” because it followed lone trekkers in the wilderness, apparently out of curiosity. Unlike lions, tigers and leopards, no puma is on record as an habitual man-eater, although the animal will attack if surprised or cornered. I am grateful to Bob Rickard who has kept an extensive file on the British mystery pumas and kindly allowed me to quote from it. Before doing so, however, let us look at the wild animal situation as it is in Britain in the 1970s. When Death Duties began to demolish the big estates of this country, their finish seemed certain. One of these is Longleat House owned by the Marquis of Bath. To keep the property intact, he opened it to the public for an admission fee. As an additional attraction and at the suggestion of a circus owner, he constructed a “safari park” containing free-ranging lions among which the public could drive their cars. Protests poured in at the havoc that would be wrought if these beasts escaped. One vicar, living over 50 miles away, said he did not want his parishioners eaten alive. But the scheme was an unqualified success, and eventually many sorts of animals were introduced to the Longleat compounds—but not climbing cats such as leopards and pumas. Other estates followed suit, generally using the big ground-dwelling cats such as lions. A few, such as the Highland Wildlife Park at Kincraig in Scotland, filled a compound with animals which were at one time indigenous to Britain. The Kincraig park is a drive-through area of 260 acres stocked with animals which were found in Scotland up to Roman times such as wild boar, brown bear, lynx, European bison and wolves. The last Scottish wild wolf was killed around 1742. Wild animals have often escaped from captivity in Britain. In some cases they have successfully acclimatised and established colonies. Sometimes they become pests. For example, the Coypu—a big South American rodent resembling a beaver—infests parts of East Anglia and has had to be trapped. Another troublesome escapee is the fish-eating mink. Other animals which have established themselves in the British countryside include a small kangaroo called a wallaby, and the Indian Crested Porcupine. The Crested Porcupine (Hystrixcristata) has established several colonies in forestry planations near Okehampton in Devon. The wild population is unknown, but may already be as many as 20 individuals, and therefore a potential threat to native wild mammals such as the badger. Some foreign birds have also established themselves, such as the Ring-necked parakeets which breed in parts of Sunray and Essex, and the Chilean flamingoes which have been observed in Wales. Both white and brown pelicans have also been reported recently. Large carnivores, however, are a different matter entirely. Usually they are messy feeders and leave behind assorted organic junk to be cleared by predatory birds. The nearest thing to vultures in Britain is the crow family, especially carrion crows and ravens, together with buzzards, a few kites, and an even smaller number of golden eagles in Scotland. Such birds soon draw the naturalist’s attention to animal carcasses, and to prey concealed by carnivores for consumption the next night. It seems quite impossible for a large carnivore to feed in the British countryside without leaving dozens of clues recognizable to any competent zoologist. Even small carnivores are soon detected. In March of 1975, a raccoon escaped from a collection in Wales, but was shot near Haverfordwest when it attacked a peacock in a pen. These facts sharpen the mystery of the “Surrey

Puma.”

The first puma-like animal in England appeared in September of 1962 near Heathy Park reservoir, Hants, where it was described as “like a young lion cub”. It was about two feet high, of a light sandy color, and had large paws. The report said that this beast had frightened nearby cattle. The sighting was in September. The following month, the same or a similiar beast was seen in the same area. In July of 1963, an early morning truck driver saw a “leopard” leap from the road into a park at Oxleas Wood, Shooters Hill, near London. Then four policemen reported that a “large golden animal” leapt over their squad-car bonnet into a wood. Experts thought it might be a cheetah, and there was a search when large footprints were found. The search was then stepped-up to cover 850 acres with 126 police, 30 soldiers and 21 dogs taking part. Nothing was found. In September, the Heathy Park cat was seen again. After this there was a lull until February 1964, when large paw prints, some two feet apart and two inches deep in firm ground, were discovered at Hawkhurst in Kent. A few days later a big cat—possibly either a tiger, cheetah or puma—was observed on a railway embankment near Cromer, Norfolk. A search with 30 police dogs failed to flush out the beast. In August 1964, at Bushylease Farm in Hants, a Freisian bullock was badly mauled and found alive in a pool of blood. Strange animal droppings were discovered nearby. At this early stage it was reasonable to suppose that a big cat had escaped from somewhere. The police treated the initial reports seriously and spent hundreds of man-hours on the problem. The phenomenon then moved down to Munstead in Surrey and henceforth came to be known as the “Surrey Puma”. The rolling downs and wooded valleys of the SurreyBerkshire-Hampshire-Sussex landscape could easily conceal half a dozen pumas or leopards—and could do so indefinitely provided the cats didn’t eat. But so far—despite that of the Bushylease bullock—no predation pattern had emerged. The Munstead case was pretty specific. A berry-picker saw an animal with a catlike face. It was about three feet high and five feet long, and of a brownish golden colour. It had stocky legs, large paws and a long tail with a black mark down the back to the tip of the tail. It certainly sounded like a puma. A few days later some large pug marks were found in loam and sand near a racing stable. A cast was taken of these; it was then noticed that the animal, whatever it was, had leaped a 5½-foot-high fence into some bushes. Stories about the “Surrey Puma” had now started to appear on national television, and several journalists had taken to lurking in the countryside with cameras. In late September 1964, a predation pattern of sorts seemed to appear. At Cranleigh, Surrey, a dead roe deer was found with claw marks and a broken neck. It was followed the next day, on September 24, by a badly clawed heifer at Hindhead Common. On the day following this incident, a “puma” crossed the road in front of a Landrover, and on September 29, more roe deer were attacked at Hascombe Place. In late October two sheep were killed at Lurgas Hall in Sussex. On November 12, two policemen saw the “puma” near the Thomas Grey memorial at stoke Poges in Bucks. This sighting was soon followed by one at Littleworth Common in the same district. The elusive big cat went back to the Lurgas Hall area where a 70pound sheep was killed and partly eaten after being dragged 200 yards. Large prints were discovered around the site. In January 1965, after a flurry of sightings in the Hurtwood Common area of Surrey, the police issued a warning to the public about the “puma” which was now thought to be wintering on the 4000-acre stretch of common. In February, however, a huge animal “like a leopard” sprang out of the bushes 15 yards in front of a girl cyclist at Ashhurst in the New Forest in Hampshire, and this set off another police search. By October the great cat was back in Surrey at Chiddingford when it audaciously sprang over the head of Viscount Chelmsford’s daughter as she tended her horses. Those naturalists who are wont to pontificate in public on everything from amoebae to wombats were now looking a trifle red in the face. Could a puma remain at large for years in Britain, or could it not? If it wasn’t a puma, then what was it? Clearly something was on the loose. As if to confirm the fact, on July 4, 1966, policemen and other witnesses watched the “puma” for 20 minutes at Worplesdon in Surrey as it stalked and killed a rabbit a hundred yards away. It was described as a brownish animal with a catlike face and a long tail. Two ex-police photographers who staked out the spot early in August claimed to have obtained a picture of a sandy catlike animal with a small head, muscular body and a hefty tail. This is a good verbal picture of a puma, and the sighting greatly reinforced the legend. A massive police and university hunt was launched covering 100 square miles of Surrey, Sussex and the Hampshire border region. This sweep of the countryside drew another blank. To encourage the searchers not to lose hope, there was a sighting of a “lynx” at Cannock Chase in Staffordshire only a few days later. Dr. Maurice Burton, retired from a career as a professional zoologist, took a close interest in the “Surrey Puma”. In fact, Dr. Burton seems to have been in the Munstead area when the mystery feline left its tracks all over the landscape. This sort of astonishing “coincidence” occurs frequently when experts arrive to check these kinds of phenomena. It has happened often with the Loch Ness monster. When Dr. Robert Rines called on friends of mine at Loch Ness to probe the mystery, the beast suddenly became visible below the house. Dr. Rines even managed to snatch a bit of poor-quality film of the thing. Tim Dinsdale also managed to grab a bit of film of the monster on his very first visit—something he has been unable to repeat in 15 years of trying. The Mumstead cat therefore was acting out a part long favoured by enigmatic animals—the part of spoofing the experts while they are actually in the area. The police made at least one cast of the footprints and sent it to London Zoo for official identification. The Zoo

concluded that it was indeed puma spoor. Dr. Burton disagreed. “In the annals of Zoology this must be the most tenuous identification on record,” he declared. Searching around, he learned of a local kennel which regularly exercised bloodhounds in the area. These animals, he thought, had made the footprints. But the Zoo refused to endorse the theory because at least one reliable witness had reported that the “puma” had leaped a considerable distance. Dr. Burton agreed that this was an important point and in the Daily Telegraph (July 23, 1966) said “It is the first acceptable description by an eyewitness (Miss Gompertz) and I am particularly impressed with the size of the jump which would fit puma.” The phenomenon must have been delighted at the way it was leading important naturalists by the nose in defiance of their scientific training, which requires organic evidence and a clear ecological pattern before entertaining the highly unlikely. But neither Dr. Burton nor the police had heard of the fairy sport of constructing illusions and hoaxes—and wouldn’t have believed it if they had. It was easier to believe in the damned puma. Offered the choice of two impossibles, you take the one more familiar. Dr. Burton seems to have been inspecting the police “puma” diary when he states: “Altogether, from September 1964 to August 1966, the official records show 362 sightings and there were many more, possibly as many again, claimed but not officially reported. In other words, this animal, declared by American experts to be ‘rarely seen by man; was showing itself on average once a day for a period of two years. The police... reckon that some 47 of the 362 are ‘solid’ sightings. Even this means that this animal, belonging to a species characterised by its highly secretive nature, was showing itself about once a fortnight during a period of two years. In two years it was reported from places as far apart as Cornwall and Norfolk, over an area of southern England of approximately 10,000 square miles. It has southern England of approximately 10,000 square miles. It has even been in two places many miles apart at the same time on the same day. It seems to have been particularly disturbed during one week when its presence was reported from 10 different places in half as many days.” Burton, writing as a pragmatic zoologist, published the above . . . Zoologist have the right to expect animals to conform to ordinary organic patterns as regards feeding and observation; if they fail to conform, they become suspect as animals. Burton concludes by remarking: “One surprising lack in this mounting trail of evidence was the failure to find any positive remains of a kill, although there was one vague report about a cache of deer bones. It is true there were occasional reports of a deer found dead with a broken neck and other such casualties, but nothing that resembled the typical puma method of covering the remains of a kill to return to it the following day ... There is little doubt in my mind, after sifting all the evidence, that the origin of the so-called Surrey Puma is no more than a large feral tomcat ... (and) the alleged puma sightings add up to fox, dog and even otter.” After recognizing that a free-ranging puma was untenable on the basis of hard evidence, Burton was now falling back on zoological cliches. None of the animals mentioned above has a catlike face and none can spring for the distances reported for the “puma”. Rather than admit that the problem was not a zoological one, Burton paraded suggestions which could not possibly fit the statements in the Godalming police “puma” diary. As if to sow the seeds of disorder in the observations, a series of quite absurd sightings occurred over the country during the next few years. At Cheriton Cross, Devon, an animal resembling a big dog appeared on a road, and a car passed right through it. The driver found that the dog had disappeared. At the end of April 1971, near the Road Research Laboratory in Surrey, a black-pantherlike creature was seen. From May 1971 to June 1972, a variety of “dogs” and large “cats” of unknown sort were reported everywhere from the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough to Bagshot in Surrey. In August 1972, a bunch of wild boar started to roam the English landscape. At Odiham, Hampshire, a big specimen was caught after a two-hour chase. This seems to have been a real animal, although where it came from is not known. On August 10, 1972, a big black boarlike animal ran into the woods at Nateley, Hampshire, and the police tracked it with a dog, but without success. A few days later, at North Warnborough in the same county, a big “funny looking pig” was observed with horses in a field. It vanished into a wood. While the police ran in three new directions searching for black panther, wild boar and disappearing dogs, the notorious “Surrey Puma” made a stealthy comeback. Various reports came from Farnborough, including a sighting on June 19, 1973, from two policemen at the Queen Elizabeth Park. The animal was seen early in the morning at the short range of 20 yards; it was described as catlike and “the same size and colour as a puma” with a long tail. It must have taken considerable courage to return to the station with this report when an expert had already identified the mystery animal as a fox. Early in August the phenomenon had shifted to Aldershot, Surrey, with reports from police and citizens. Bob Rickard says he has seen files on the subject of the “Surrey Puma” at the Zoological Society of London, and knows of at least one police file with several hundred entries. But despite these multiple exposures to the public gaze, not a single piece of evidence about the “puma” stood up to scrutiny. The alarming situation in Britain about keeping wild animals as pets made many people wonder if an escaped big cat was not the real truth about the mystery. Lions, tigers, leopards and pumas can be kept in anyone’s garden without a license, although the government demands a license for dogs over a few months old. Puma cubs at the time of writing (1975) can be bought for about £140; lions are more expensive but live longer. A Leeds man who kept a lion in a garden cage was ordered by a judge to get rid of it after complaints from alarmed neighbours. Several pumas have escaped and been recaptured. One got away from an Acton, London house and was subdued by a policeman using a chloroform pad. In 1975, another escaped puma

paddled quietly back to its cage when it was seen wandering a short distance from home. But the picture of a big brown pussycat to which one can feed the family scraps is soon exploded. Four years ago a puma left tied outside a house on a trading estate grabbed an eight year old boy as he ran past. It took 38 stitches and a lot of care to save the child from dying. Was the “Surrey Puma” another escapee that had stayed free? One problem with this theory is that the evidence, such as it is, points in wildly differing directions. Early in 1969, on the Dee estuary near Holywell, North Wales, some large bearlike prints were found. In December 1970, further bearlike prints turned up at Farnborough at the other end of the country. They crossed a garden, passed through a fence and crossed a schoolyard. The prints, about nine inches long, were in two inches of snow. The people who owned the garden—who first saw and reported the prints—said that something bumped against their house in the night and started their dog whimpering. Experts at Chessington Zoo studied pictures of the prints and said: “They are not bear prints . . . . They look like the webbed foot of a seagull.” Pictures of the Farnborough prints which I have seen look not at all like a seagull’s feet, but closely resemble the fore and hind feet of a brown bear. Prints in snow, however, must always be treated with caution. Dr. John Napier, a biologist who has made a special study of animal locomotion, shows how melting, wind erosion and other effects produce distorted outlines in snow, and certainly larger prints than the originals. Even so, I still do not think the Farnborough prints were made by a seagull: they could have been made by a dog with very long claws. The problem with this explanation is that a mysterious bear was in fact seen. In February of 1975 in North Yorkshire, a yorkshire milkman saw it ripping bark off a tree and got to within 20 yards before the animal rushed into a thicket. A subsequent search failed to find the animal, but a local gamekeeper claimed to have discovered more paw marks. The original witness said the animal was five feet tall and it “had glaring eyes.” Perhaps this feature is the missing clue, because glaring or glowing eyes are also attributes of the Black Dog. Had the police of southern England and numbers of zoologists been chasing ghosts? Charles Bowen, then editor of Flying Saucer Review, wondered if the “Surrey Puma” was in some way connected with UFOs. Much material, published and unpublished, does in fact lead to this suspicion. To test the idea, Bowen went to Bushlease Farm at Crondall where the “puma” allegedly had attacked a heifer. Edward Blanks, the farmer at Bushylease, clearly believed that the “puma” regularly prowled his fields, usually at night. The stink of ammonia and claw-marks on trees were described. Both he and his wife had seen the “puma,” on one occasion in the headlights of their car. Mr. Blanks then went on spontaneously to describe strange lights around the farm. On two occasions Bowen wrote, he suddenly became aware of a mysterious light on the roofs of the farm buildings. The light moved from roof to roof, yet he could not see the beam which produced the light. It was certainly not produced by headlights from the Odiham road—the local topography precluded that possibility. Mr. Blanks could not trace the source of the light, and he was worried and puzzled by the phenomenon, because on each occasion the mystery puma arrived on the scene shortly afterwards. The entire enigma of the vanishing big cats, Black Dogs, and mysterious wild boar does indeed seem to extend to UFOs. But it doesn’t stop there. The inquiry soon expands into psychic phenomena in general, into comparative religion and into a parallel or conjoined world of being, from which the abnormal happenings described seem to emerge. The catalogue of events surrounding the “Surrey Puma” is certainly not unique. Even a superficial study of religion in Britain shows that the mystery “puma” has always been with us, although it used to be called a “panther”. Students can study medieval carvings of it on churches at Charney Bassett in Berkshire, Stoney Stanton in Leicestershire, Darley Dale in Derbyshire, Egleton in Rutland, and Ridlington in the same county. Black Dogs are also depicted on many churches. A tympanum at Southwell Minster in Nottinghamshire shows such saints as St. Michael doing battle with these paranormal creature. The “Surrey Puma”, the Black Dog, and other zoological abnormals have always been known about. They were regarded as demonic manifestations, and nothing that science has so far discovered explains them in any better terms. The matter is not so much a case of what scientists are prepared to accept; it is what they are determined to ignore rather than admit the self-evident. In the next chapter we will look at some further specimens in the ghostly zoo and try to see where they lead.

Chapter Six THE PHANTOM MENAGERIE

As every year passes and the net closes, it becomes harder to understand why no monsters have been captured, in spite of the numerous expeditions set up for this specific purpose; why evidence of skulls and bones is so singularly absent; and why Exhibit A—be it a mound of dung, a mummified hand, a switch of hair, or even a Yeti scalp —when sent to the laboratories for expert analysis turns out to be something quite different. These are the questions that intelligent people ask. John Napier Bigfoot (1972)

But on our holy mount the heights are fit for mankind; on it there is no terrifying monster; light and darkness follow each other as in nature generally; there are no dragon-like apparitions, but all is divine and holy. Felix Faber (1484)

If a paranormal force exists—and it certainly seems to exist—which produces ploys, diversions, scares and hoaxes that are often built around simulated animals, then the mystery of the missing evidence as set out by Dr. Napier above is no longer a mystery. A magnetic field cannot be discovered by using picks and shovels; nor can the fall of cosmic rays be observed by the poet however exquisite his sensibilities. The name given to this force matters little. It can be called the Trooping Fairies, UFO operators, demons or Satan. No doubt other names will come; but nomenclature all too often is really a decent screen to shelter ignorance. And ignorant about this force we certainly are. One of its characteristic long-term effects is the dragon syndrome. Men have been wrestling metaphysically with this serpentine horror for 10,000 years. Dragons became classic ingredients of good-versus-evil epics as soon as palaeolithic man in Europe left the caves and set up camp in lake-dwellings and hutments. The story spread everywhere. Throughout the world heroic gods struggled with great writhing monsters, and their battles were recorded in cuneiform and hieroglyphs, in wood, carved stone and even stained glass windows. But what was being recorded? Was it a real but now extinct animal, a religious fantasy, or something else? Almost every carter whipping his wagon along the lanes of 17th Century Sussex had a tale to tell about the local dragon. It had been seen here and it had been seen there. It was said to have attacked this and to have eaten that. Rumors flew so thick that a journalist of the period, John Trundle, published a broadsheet fully describing the phenomenon. Dated London, 1614, it runs as follows:

In Sussex there is a pretty market towne called Horsam, near which is a forest called St. Leonards Forrest, and there is a vast and unfrequented place, heathie, vaultie, full of unwholesome shades and overgrown hollows where this serpent is thought to be bred, certaine and too true that there it yet lives, within 3 or 4 miles compass are its usual haunts, oftentimes at a place called Fay-gate, and it hath been seene within half a mile of Horsam, a wonder no doubt, most, terrible and noisome to the inhabitants thereabouts. There is always in his track or path left a glutinous and slimie matter (as by a small similitude we may perceive in a snaile) which is very corrupt and offensive to the scent, insomuch that they perceive the air to be putrified withal which must needs be very dangerous; for though the corruption of it cannot strike the outward parts of a man, unless heated into the blood, yet by receiving it into any of our breathing organs (the nose or mouth) it is by authoritie of all authors, writing in that kinde, mortall and deadlie; as one thus saith: ’Nosia Serpentane est admits sangine Pestis’ (Lucan). The Serpent or Dragon, as some call it, is reputed to be nine feete or rather more in length, and shaped almost in the form of the axle-tree of a cart, a quantitie of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller at both ends. The former part which he shoots forth as a necke is supposed to be an ell long, with a white ring as it were of scales about it. The scales along his backe seeme to be blackish and so much as is discovered under his bellie appeareth to be red; for I speak of no nearer description than a reasonable ocular distance; for coming too neare it hath already been too dearlie pay’d for, as you shall hear hereafter. It is likewise discovered to have large feete, but the eye may be there deceived, for some suppose that serpents have no feet but glide along upon certain ribbes and scales, which both defend them, from the upper part of the throat, unto the lower part of their bellie, and also cause them to move much faster, for so this doth and rids away, as we call it, as fast as a man can run. He is of countenance very proud, and at the sight or hearing of man or cattell, will raise his neck upright, and seem to listen and loke about with great arrogance. There are likewise on either side of him discovered two great bunches, so big as a large foote ball, and as some think, will grow into wings, but God I hope will so defend the poor people of the neighbourhood, that he shall be destroyed before he growe so fledge. He will cast venome about 4 roddes from him, so by woefull experience it was proved on the bodies of a man and a woman coming that way, who afterwards were found dead, being poysoned and very much swelled, but not preyed upon; likewise a man going to chase it and as he imagined to destroy it with great mastiff dogs were both killed and he himself glad to return with haste to preserve his own life. Yet this is to be noted that the dogs were not preyed upon, but slaine and left whole—for his food is thought to be for the most part in a

conie warren which he most frequents, and it is found to be much scanted and impaired in the increase it had wont to afford. These persons whose names are hear underprinted have seen this serpent, besides divers others, as the carrier at Horsam, who lieth at the White Horse in Southwark, and who can certifie the truth of all that hath herein been related. John Steele, Christopher Holder, and a widow woman dwelling at Fay-gate.

Britain had to wait 319 years before it had such a specific eyewitness descripton of a dragon. By that time the year was 1933 and the witnesses, a company director and his wife, were driving a car along Loch Ness. Names had changed, too. Instead of calling it a “Serpent or Dragon”, it was now becoming known as a “monster”. Even so, the two descriptions appear identical. Indeed, the “great bunches” as big as a football were actually photographed in 1934 by a London surgeon on holiday. They look like big bladders. The “large feete” have also been seen and filmed in flipperlike motion at long range. Taken all round, John Trundle did a reasonable reporting job for the period. One would hardly have expected him to tramp the wilderness of 17th Century Sussex for the sake of a penny broadsheet. People are constantly encountering dragons even today. The late Ivan T. Sanderson told me that he received an average of about one communication a week from such witnesses. Many of these reports are restrained, lucid and logical. An example Sanderson sent me from his files is the following from Mrs. Mabel E. Hawes of Downs, Texas:

My mother’s home was in Redwood, New York, about seven miles from Alexandria Bay on the St. Lawrence River. There are several small lakes in that territory. Like all natives Mother was an avid fisherman. On a visit, I went with her to a small lake called Lake of the Woods early one morning around seven o’clock. We were in a skiff; I in the middle seat facing my mother. Both poles were in the water—we were still-fishing for Oswego bass. Suddenly I noticed Mother’s line jerking slightly and waited for her to hook and reel in. When she didn’t I glanced up and she was staring in awe at something back of me. When I spoke to her she said quietly: ‘Hon, quietly look back of you but don’t get frightened.’ When I looked I saw the most fantastic creature. We wasted no time in pulling anchor and heading for the shore— about 100 feet. It was quite close to the boat and both of us had the same fear—it might upset us. Neither of us spoke until we climbed out on the dock and then a reaction set in. This water-creature appeared to be about 20 feet in length. In color it seemed to be a greyish-tan with a head not much bigger around than the neck. It had a sawtooth growth along its head and down the length of the neck or body for about six or seven feet. It was look ing our way and about three arcs were plainly visible. When we started rowing it submerged causing the calm surface of the water to become real agitated. The dock and boat belonged to a family who owned about half the land surrounding the lake. They were two brothers by name of Harris and my mother was a friend of theirs. The Harrises asked what happened because we usually stayed out fishing for three or four hours. My mother was most reluctant to relate what we’d seen but did so finally but without going into detail. Then one of the brothers put our minds at ease. It seems they had twice seen such a creature and even a guest from Syracuse (a dentist, I believe) had also seen it while fishing. Mr. Harris also told of finding a wide, slide-like track in the mud on the shore. This occurred back in July of 1929.

Why should a middle aged woman sit down and write such a long, cogent account to a biologist if it isn’t true? Yet if i t is true then where is Dr. Napier’s Exhibit A? Why no giant nest containing dragon’s eggs onto which an innocent hunter stumbles to alert an incredulous world? Why the healthy population of Oswego bass if a monster is filling its hungry belly in the depths? These are indeed the sort of questions that intelligent people ask; and a part of the answer is forced on us. No limnologist (with his beady eye on a doctorate) will ever write a thesis called The Dragon and its place in the eco-system of the St. Lawrence basin, because the answer doesn’t come out that way. When a dragon started romping around on a British motor highway my first instinct was to grab a camera and rush to the spot. But years of disillusion have turned me into something of a cynic regarding dragon phenomena, and positively nothing will shift me from this regrettable position except a view of Napier’s Exhibit A. Even so, it was an odd story, that monster of the Dundee road. It all began when Mrs. Maureen Ford, wife of Scottish flyweight boxer David Ford, was driving home with some friends along the A85 between Dundee and Perth on September 30, 1965. It was half an hour till midnight, and the car was speeding along in the direction of Perth. Looking out of a side window Mrs. Ford suddenly saw a large, strange object by the roadside. “It was a long grey shape,” she said later. “It had no legs but I’m sure I saw long pointed ears.” She drew me a picture of the thing—a narrow, cigar-shaped object with a long neck and cowlike head with long ears or horns on top. This object, whatever it was, lay on a bank of the River Tay estuary not far from the open sea. By the time Mrs. Ford described what she’d seen, the car was a long way past the spot, and in the normal course of events, the whole incident would have been dismissed as a view of wandering cattle lying in the grass. Over an hour later however—it was now close to one a.m.—another car went through the area but in the opposite direction to the Ford party. It contained Robert Swankie, owner of the National Bar in Arbroath. He had been down to London on business and was now on the Dundee side of Perth, the last leg of his homeward journey. The mystery object seems to have crossed the road since Mrs. Ford saw it, and suddenly Mr. Swankie picked it up in his headlights. “The head was more than two feet long,” he said later. “The body—which was about 20 feet long—was humped like a giant caterpillar. It was moving very slowly and made a noise like someone dragging a heavy weight through the grass.”

He slowed down and lowered a side-window but kept the car moving, unsure what to do next. He drove on and didn’t stop till he reached the start of the Dundee bypass. The next morning he reported the affair to the police; they visited the place but found nothing unusual. At this point in the epic, a Miss Russell-Fergusson of Clarach Recordings, Oban, entered the picture. Hot-footing it to the area, she obtained the Ford and Swankie accounts on tape. When I asked for a copy of these recordings, it developed that she had sent them on to Constance Whyte for analysis. Mrs. Whyte (who is an M.D.) is the author of an excellent book on the Loch Ness phenomena called More Than A Legend which she compiled when she lived in Inverness; her husband was the manager of the Caledonian canal. I had corresponded with Constance Whyte for years and at once asked her to describe the Swankie encounter from the tape. She replied: “He was motoring about one a.m. towards Dundee and was on a twisty bit of road about 6 miles from Perth. His headlights picked up something moving on the near side of the road (i.e. the side away from the Tay estuary). He said that the Silhouette was as drawn by him (no doubt you have a copy of his sketch). He slowed down and opened his window . . . looked to see if there was any following car ... and saw the lights of one about five minutes [sic] behind him, so carried on to the start of the Dundee bypass (about 12 miles further on) when the following car, occupied by a lady driver alone caught up with him and he waved her to stop but without success. “Mr. Swankie does not say that he actually stopped at all. He does not explain by what illumination he saw the ‘thing’ when he was alongside it. He makes no mention of any reaction on the part of the ‘thing’ either to him or the sound of his car. His description seems to me to correspond pretty closely to the semi-comic postcards of the Loch Ness monster.” Mrs. Whyte—as her book shows—firmly regarded monsters as unknown organic animals. Yet this brute didn’t seem like an animal, known or unknown. In fact, on a normal clear night a car’s headlights supply ample light, by scatter and reflection, to illuminate large objects at the side of a car even if they are three or four yards distant. If it was an animal, presumably it had crawled ashore out of the mile-wide Tay. Yet, although it was as big as two rhinoceroses, it had not brought down a part of the bank as it came ashore, nor flattened everything for yards around. Mrs. Swankie had to be unreliable in order for Mrs. Whyte’s unproven assumption to survive. The police were equally baffled, and in due course an “explanation” emerged. A police spokesman at Longfargan told the Scottish Express, “We know of nothing in that area which could possibly be confused with a monster. Of course, in the dark, the headlights of a car could play tricks when they strike walls and trees.” In that case one wonders why Mr. Swankie’s headlights had not created monsters for him all the way up through the Scottish lowlands. After having her main witness spurned by Mrs. Whyte, Miss Fergusson became coy and protective about the original tape. When I tried again to borrow it, she said, “I am using it for my own research.” The only other odd thing I found out was this: Scotland’s ancient reputation for being a place of witches and witchcraft is by no means without substance. Perth had witches who were reputed to perform their rites on Kinnoul, a 729foot-high hill on the Dundee side of the town. Old records of the Kirk Session at Perth describe how these cults were savagely suppressed at the Reformation. In The Muses’ Threnodie (1638) Henry Adamson describes a “dragon’s hole” in the steep face of Kinnoul where witchcraft rites took place. It was just beyond the foot of Kinnoul hill that the witnesses encountered the dragon of the A85 road.

Although monstrous dogs, panthers, dragons and similar zoological impossibles have figured prominently in British mythology for centuries, the concept of a gigantic biped resembling a primitive man is a comparative newcomer. It was first recorded in Alberta in 1811 by trader-explorer David Thompson who came across some huge tracks. They may have been grizzly bear tracks, although Thompson’s companion didn’t think so. Whatever the truth, Sasquatch had made its lumbering debut. During the next 175 years it was to develop into a star performer, masquerading in different locales under such names as Almas, Yeti, Big Grey Man and Bigfoot. This particular member of the Phantom Menagerie specialised in leaving footprints, and these—at least for a time—seemed to support its organic credibility. In 1951, when mountaineer Eric Shipton brought home from the Himelaya the dagger-sharp picture of a Yeti’s footprint, the zoologists went to work on it like beavers. Hundreds of Yeti prints have been discovered only to be dismissed as the prints of bears, langur monkeys and other familiar beasts. The Shipton picture cannot be so dismissed and Dr. Napier, anatomist and authority on primates, says that this could be the single piece of evidence that underwrites the Yeti as an animal. But the trouble with Shipton’s picture is that it is unique. In fact, it was not impressed in snow but in a thinnish layer of icecrystals produced by the melting of snow and its subsequent refreezing. That accounts for the excellent detail absent in prints found in powdery, much less melting, snow. The Shipton print is a bit like a very rare fossil which can turn up only when conditions are perfect. Dr. Napier’s contribution to the Yeti mystery is to uncover a curious mistake. Associated with the Shipton picture is the picture of a line of prints crossing a snow-covered slope. These have repeatedly been published as showing a line of Yeti tracks. In the opinion of Eric Shipton and Michael Ward, the photographers, they were merely a line of goat tracks. It is not

clear why a solitary goat should be wandering around high above the snow-line at 18,000 feet. Unfortunately the mountaineers didn’t take a vertical shot of a single print instead of an oblique view, because the trail, whatever it was that made it, has a striking resemblance to mystery tracks that have been photographed in Scotland. The Scottish Yeti is no invention of the Tourist Board. Tracks attributed to the phenomenon have been seen in the Cairngorms and in that desolate area below Rannoch Moor known as the Black Mount. They have been seen on a sea beach of Canna and on the Skye peak of Sgurr Dearg in the Cuillin Hills. Many of the reports come from Ben MacDhui, however, where the thing is known as the Big Grey Man. The Fear Liath More, as it is called in Gaelic, has the peculiar ability to produce unreasoning terror in those who encounter it. There is an impressive record of mountaineers who have run for their lives for no particular reason. One of the first to admit that he had acted in this irrational way was Professor J. Norman Collie, F.R.S. While climbling Ben MacDhui in 1888 or 1889, he heard great crunching footsteps near the summit-cairn. Suddenly, he found himself running down the mountain. Years later he described the incident in the Journal of the Cairngorm Club. Others agreed that there was something very odd indeed about the summit of Ben MacDhui. Dr. A. M. Kallas, for example, was on the mountain with his brother. The latter had gone up and sat down near the summit-cairn. Glancing in that direction, Dr. Kallas suddenly saw a “man” about 10 feet high passing behind the cairn. His brother saw nothing. There is a well-known optical phenomenon called the “Spectre of Brocken” in which the shadow of the mountaineer is cast onto an opaque wall of mist to produce a gigantic figure. Such an effect does not explain the Ben MacDhui figure, because climber Richard Frere saw the figure after dark and in some detail. He confirms in private correspondence that the following account, which he gave to Affleck Brown, is exactly how the incident occurred: Mr. Frere set out alone one January and climbed Ben MacDhui. He decided to spend the night camped in the shelter of the summit-cairn. After he had been in his tent for some time, he developed uneasy feelings and opened the flap. Outside, it was a cold, brilliant night. Suddenly, about 20 yards away, he saw what he describes as “a great brown creature swaggering down the hill”. It rolled slightly as it walked, and took long, measured paces. It seemed to be covered in shortish brown hair. It had a disproportionately large head carried on a thick, powerful neck. It didn’t resemble an ape since its hairy arms were not unduly long and it stood perfectly erect. From the width of its shoulders compared to its hips Frere imagined it must be of male sex. The next morning he searched the area for footprints, but found no trace on the broken rock, however, he struck an ice-axe into the ground where the creature had stood. From that spot its great head had been silhouetted against the horizon. Simple trigonomery indicated that it must have been between 24-30 feet high.* James Alan Rennie had more luck at finding footprints of the Scottish Bigfoot. In December of 1952, he came across some strange tracks about a mile from Cromdale in Lower Speyside and took pictures of them. They ran across a stretch of snow-covered moorland. Each print was 19 inches long, and about 14 inches wide with about 7 feet between steps. Like the Himalayan tracks they seem to be bilobal in shape, and at one point, on a sunken roadway, they leaped a distance of 30 feet. He followed the tracks for about half a mile until they terminated at the foot of a pine. About 20 yards further on they resumed again on a piece of arable land which they traversed, then went down a hill to the river and finally terminated, spookily enough, opposite the village churchyard. Unfortunately, Mr. Rennie did not take a vertical picture of a good print, so we have no idea of detail. He suggests that these huge tracks were produced by warm air coming into contact with cold air and producing blobs of water. The meteorologists, however, have never heard of such a phenomenon and have no idea how it might work. But the giant Rennie tracks bear little resemblance to the majority of Scottish mystery tracks, since these are usually fairly small bilobals not unlike the print of a pony’s hoof, except that they seem to be made by a biped. Sir James Ross found examples when he was exploring the Antarctic in 1840, and Dr. Campbell told me that he saw a perfect set of pony prints on a beach on the Isle of Canna, which is inaccessible except by sea. This bipedal pony has its place in English folklore where it is called the “Colt Pixie”, supposedly a spirit or fairy in the shape of a horse. In Scotland it was called the “Urisk”, and Scott, in his notes to The Lady of the Lake, describes it as “a figure between a goat and a man; in short, precisely that of a Grecian satyr.” The most notorious appearance of these mystery prints was in February of 1855, when a ponylike trail was discovered in Fresh snow in Devonshire. These prints measured 4 x 2¾ inches, with a tiny stride of an undeviating 8½ inches. The idea of a satyr taking tiny mincing steps, entering scores of gardens, crossing two rivers estuaries and covering possibly 100 miles in a night is rather disquieting. How could such an odd spoor possibly originate? While the zoology experts, safe in London, argued whether badgers, birds or meteoric phenomena (unspecified) had produced the prints, the unhappy Devonshire locals barred their doors at nights. They were remembering stories of similar tracks found around the Dewerstone, a rocky elevation on the borders of Dartmoor. The Dewerstone tracks had sometimes been accompanied by what looked like the prints of a naked human foot. Indeed, many parts of England were thus haunted, and numerous cases of mysterious footsteps are collected in Lancashire Folklore (1867). An opthalmic surgeon attempted to come to terms with the phenomenon in a Flying Saucer Review article. This gentleman had been making a series of neat burns across a patient’s retina using a laser ophthalmoscope when it struck him that

the mystery prints may have been produced by a laser in a UFO, and used in the form of single pulses as a very accurate altimeter. Apart from the fact that there is no evidence that UFOs are mechanical machines requiring altimeters, the idea doesn’t square with the footprint evidence. Commander R. T. Gould, who made a detailed study of the Devonshire Colt-Pixie, relates the following: “In one instance the track entered a covered shed and passed through it out of a broken part of the wall at the other end . . . “ This single observation knocks out both lasers and water blobs falling from the sky. It also argues a certain intelligence since a random phenomenon would not seek out a hole through which to exist. Until something better turns up, I’ll stick with the hilarious notion of Devonshire girls anxiously locking their doors because a satyr is prancing in the garden. Incidentally, I wish the satyr luck.

Pan, the goat-footed god, is not so funny when you encounter him, however. The chief symptom of being in the presence of Pan is panic, which the Oxford dictionary defines as: “unreasoning and excessive terror, from Greek panicos, of god Pan, reputed to cause panic.” I tried to meet up with this strange phenomenon by climbing mountains in Greece, from where Pan was first described, and in the Scottish Cairngorms in the Ben MacDhui region, but had no luck. But P.A. Densham, an experienced mountaineer in charge of aircraft rescue in the Cairngorms during the war, nearly got himself killed by panicos. On a fine day in May of 1945, Densham climbed to the top of Ben MacDhui and reached the summit soon after noon. As he was admiring the view, a mist came down, so he sat down and started eating sandwiches. After a time he heard crunching footsteps and sensed a “presence”. At first, he put the footsteps down to noises caused by the expansion and contraction of rocks. When the sounds approached the summit-cairn, he went over to investigate. When he got to within a few feet of the apparent source of the footsteps, an inexplicable terror gripped him, and he rushed at “an incredible rate” toward a precipice known as Lurcher’s Crag. Deflecting himself with difficulty from what would have been a death-plunge, he continued his flight all the way down the ridge to Altmok bridge. How many “accidents” have been caused by climbers meeting Pan is not known, because terrified running on a mountain is likely to silence the victim forever. Surprisingly, no mountaineering club has ever systematically collected information on the topic. The phenomenon is certainly not localised to the Cairngorms. Hamish Corrie, when he was nearing the summit of Sgurr Dearg on Skye, turned back when he was overcome by “an unaccountable panic”. The late John Buchan reported the same effect in the Bavarian Alps. He describes how, in 1910, he was returning through a pinewood on a sunny morning with a local forester when panic struck them out of the blue. Both of them fled without speaking until they collapsed from exhaustion on the valley highway below. Buchan comments that a friend of his “ran for dear life” when climbing Jotunheim in Norway. The Pan effect may be worldwide. Some people claim to have had religious experiences in the Cairngorms. Buddhist Sir Hugh Rankin and his wife say that once they once encountered a Bodhisattva, one of the perfected men said to control the destiny of the world. Richard Frere who thinks there is something odd about some mountains, writes, “I think a mountain top sharpens all the senses and adds dimensions to living in a way but little understood.” Prepared to try anything, I went up alone on the peak immediately to the south of Ben MacDhui. Nothing much resulted except a feeling of tranquility, and you tend to get this in mountains anyway. But I did think it odd that, instead of feeling tired after seven hours’ tramping over boulders and heather plus the actual climbing of the mountain, I got back fresher than when I started and with not a blister in sight.

It seems clear that there are many mysteries in mountains. The Pan effect is basically a dangerous psychological phenomenon, with the victim fleeing wildly from something he cannot see. It may or may not be connected with the Colt Pixie footprints. Yet it is hard to completely separate the gigantic apeman-like figure seen by Richard Frere from the panic which seized Professor Collie and Peter Densham at the very same spot. The problem is to connect these effects—if they can be connected—to the problem of Bigfoot and the Yeti which purport to be organic creatures. As a matter of fact, the evidence doesn’t point in that direction at all. Animals are at their most vulnerable when engaged in their often fantastic preliminaries to copulation. Mating mammals are often totally oblivious to the approaching hunter, whether they be crazy March hares, or breeding, big cats. Corbett exploited the mating instinct in tigers and leopards to shoot many man-eaters. Why has no one stumbled on a pair of Yeti gazing into each other’s eyes? Why has a cute hairy baby never been abandoned by Mama only to fall into the eager hands of the collector as happens with other animals? Real animals stay alive by eating. Giant primates, such as the gorilla, feed almost continuously during daylight, and in no dainty fashion. Indeed, naturalists often detect gorillas from the litter of vegetation smashed during their foraging. Bigfoot of the North American west coast, however, allegedly lives in coastal evergreen forests which produce low-energy food of the poorest quality. It is impossible to imagine this miserable fare could sustain a race of eight foot-high anthropoids any more than an occasional Oswego bass could sustain the monster seen by Mrs. Hawes, or an odd roe-deer could sustain the “Surrey

Puma”. In terms of wildlife as we know it, this illogicality exists with all members of the Phantom Menagerie. The Yeti and the Almas, the manape of Asia, have long been under suspicion by the natives of those regions. Professor Richen, the eminent Mongolian scientist, found that many Lamas believed that the Almas were “unclean beings that possessed magical powers of sorcery.” This belief that the things were somehow abnormal continues southwards. “In Tibet,” says Odette Tchernine, who has done as much as anyone to plug the idea that yetis are live animals, “amongst remote and uninformed communities there has always been the tendency to attach an aura of the supernatural to any living entity that frightened them by not quite conforming to preconceived ideas and by not providing an explanation for simple minds.” This patronizing attitude is not supported by facts. The Wambutti pygmies of the Ituri forests knew all about the Okapi long before Sir Harry Johnston collected the first skin. Likewise the Coelacanth, the Takin and many other hitherto unknown forms were perfectly well-known to the natives of the regions where they live. If the natives think there is something peculiar about an animal, it is wise to take note. Miss Tchernine spikes her own case even further by saying: “There are religious qualms about Almas. The outbacks of Russia have many Moslems, and in the minds of some of them, especially in the case of older people, there is a confused image of the real but mysterious Almas—not a man, not an animal. They call these living apparitions Shaitan, their names for Satan. To superstitious people in that part of the world, an Almas is a Shaitan.” Considering the amount of time and money expended in uniformly unsuccessful efforts to collect a single piece of concrete evidence to support the existence of the Asiatic man-ape, it seems likely that the “superstitious people” were not as dull as Miss Tchernine supposes when they talked about Shaitan. Certainly the zoologists have made no headway. Professors Richen and Porshnev beat all the thickets of Central Asia in search of a specimen. Oil millionaire Tom Slick, explorers like Tom Stobbart and expeditions such as that of the Daily Mail have scoured Nepal in search of a Yeti, only to come back with artifacts of goatskin manufactured by the sympathetic Sherpas. For me, it is no longer possible to believe in an organic Bigfoot, Almas or Yeti. Instead I welcome these creatures into the safe ark of the Phantom Menagerie, where all things are real, provided you define the sort of reality you want. Whether a particular animal should be firmly lodged in the Phantom Menagerie or not is sometimes a matter of fine judgment. The Bishop of Salisbury’s birds, as authentic a phantom as any, raise no problem—but how about Loch Ness crocodiles? Stories about the Bishop’s birds of Salisbury cathedral have circulated for years. As the legend has it, they are white and they presage the Bishop’s death. Some people claim to have seen them circling above the cathedral spire. When Bishop Hallam of Salisbury died while attending the Council of Constance in 1414, the birds reportedly appeared while he was lying in state in the Town Hall. According to the Constance Tow Records, a whole flock of strange birds landed on the roof of the Hall, but had vanished by dawn. In the Records it was called “the great sign of the birds.” The daughter of a more recent Bishop describes how she was walking in the Palace grounds at Salisbury an hour or two after her father’s death. Suddenly, two great white birds took off from the ground in front of her. They had an immense wingspread, and their feathers were dazzlingly white. She watched them fly over the cathedral and disappear toward the west. The daughter of another Bishop, Edith Olivier, describes how she went on the annual picnic of the Wilton choir boys on August 16, 1911. The return journey in a horse-brake was long and tiring. She recounts:

I became very tired and I had been leaning back in my seat watching the sky for some time when I became aware that I was staring at two enormous birds with very long wings. These wings were so brilliantly white that even their shaded underside shone like water reflecting light. They flew up over the Hurdcott meadows towards the northwest and they came up the sky with still wings which did not strike the air. It dawned upon me that I had never seen such birds before and I called to the boys to look at them. As I did so, we drove under an avenue of trees and only the smallest quoir boy who was sitting beside me said that he had seen them too. The horses walked their way to the end of the avenue and the birds were out of sight when we came into the open. When we got to Wilton, Albert Musselwhite, our parish Clerk, opened the door of the brake for me to get out at the Rectory. As he did so, he said: ‘I am sorry to tell you that the Bishop of Salisbury is dead.’

The Loch Ness crocodile affair is part of a general mystery regarding anomalous crocodilians in Britain. According to the Gentleman’s Magazine (1866), several small crocs turned up in Oxfordshire between 1836 and 1860, one specimen, over a foot long, was found in a farmyard at Over-Norton. Evidently these were real creatures, and several were killed. Commander R.T. Gould mentions a fresh skull, believed to be of a crocodile, brought up in a fishing-net at the mouth of the River Shiel in Loch Moidart. Stories of crocodiles in Loch Ness are not new. A Mrs. J. S. Fraser reported to theDaily Mail (January 1, 1934) that locals had warned her about Loch Ness crocodiles back in 1888. A man who once lived in South Africa supposedly kept several young crocodiles in a tank on the lochside and one or more escaped into the water. In February of 1933, an alleged crocodile some six to eight feet long with a short neck and long, toothed jaws was reported from the River Ness. The witness, Miss K. MacDonald, did not associate it in any way with the Loch Ness monster which she saw on a later occasion, in 1934. The idea of subtropicals such as crocodiles surviving, let alone attaining considerable size, in a loch which has an

almost unvarying average temperature of about 35° F. is zoologically most unlikely. Certainly there are fish-eating crocodiles, and for one of these, food would be no problem. On the other hand, crocodiles are air-breathers and spend much of their time at the surface or hauled up on shore. Although there have been no crocodile reports since Miss MacDonald’s 1934 sighting, the foot of a large crocodile has been found in Loch Ness. The owner of this relic is a lady living in a lochside cottage. When I called to see it with an interested observer, she brought it out with much reluctance, complaining that a well-known Loch Ness investigator had once hacked a bit off it while she had her back turned. We eventually handled the specimen. Beautifully preserved, it measures over a foot in length and six or seven inches wide. One of the claws is missing, but the remaining ones look as if polished. This foot was found by a relative of the owner in shallow water as he came ashore from a boat. The object could possibly be an old game-trophy planted in the loch as a hoax. Surprising things have been found in Loch Ness. A student, prospecting the shore far from any road, saw two white objects in several feet of water. He bravely waded in and salvaged two large plaster busts. Whom they depicted we know not. If anyone has misplaced a couple of plaster busts of, say, Frederick the Great, weighing about 60 pounds apiece, perhaps he could let us know. Maybe he dropped a large crocodile’s foot at the same time.

The Phantom Menagerie is a law unto itself. Whereas ordinary animals go through the rites of love-making, consume quantities of food and build dens, members of the Phantom Menagerie do none of these things. Only at one point do they follow the rules applying to real wildlife—some species become extinct. An example is the Merrow. When I was a boy, I saw an alleged Merrow in the London Zoo aquarium and was very disappointed. It was labelled “Dugong”, but anything less like a Mermaid or Merrow it would have been hard to imagine. Was this the thing that was supposed to croon sailors to their death in the deeps? Where was its mirror and long lovely hair? I came away from the Dugong with the profound conviction that either all the old-time sailors were daft, or zoologists had made a false identification. Later experience suggests that the sailors were right, and the zoologists hopelessly wrong. Indeed, the sailors, even in those days, had already placed the Merrow in the Phantom Menagerie. For instance, John Swan in his Speculum Mundi (1635) discusses whether they could be evil spirits “as fishermen believed”.. In a history of the islands published in 1676, Luke Debes, a Dane who became provost of the Fairoe Islands in the 17th Century, devotes a chapter to “Spectres and Illusions of Satan in Faeroe” in which the Merrow figures prominently. Old time salt-sea men didn’t think the Merrow was an animal at all, much less a Dugong. Early polar explorers frequently encountered the Merrow, and this fact alone shows how absurd the Dugong theory really is; Dugongs are tropical, not polar, animals. Henry Hudson encountered one on his second attempt to find a northwest passage, and Captain James Weddell also met up with the phenomenon. Weddell describes the event in his book Voyage Towards the South Pole (1827). He put a man ashore on Hall Island to guard some stores, and this chap watched a mermaid from the beach for about two minutes. Weddell believed the witness after he had grilled him thoroughly, and had him swear on the cross to the truth of the incident. Hudson did even better; he left a full account in the ship’s log. It runs thus:

The 15th (June, 1608). All day and night clear; sunshine; the wind at East, the latitude at noone 75 degree, 7 minutes. We went westward by our account 13 leagues. In the afternoone the sea was asswagged; the wind being at East we set sayle and stood South by East and South South-East as we could. This morning, one of our companie looking overboord saw a mermaid, and calling up some of the companie to see her, one more came up, and by that time shee was come close to the ship’s side, looking earnestly on the men: a little after a sea came and overturned her: From the Navill upwards her backe and breasts were like a womans (as they say who sawe her) and her body as big as one of us; her skin very white; and long hair hanging down behinde of colour blacke; in her going downe they saw her tayle, which was like the tayle of a Porposse and speckled like a Macrell. Their names that saw her were Thomas Hilles and Robert Raynar.

It is impossible to equate such specific accounts with any animal known to science. And Henry Hudson—who was in the best position to judge—would never have soiled his log with a load of rubbish. In fact it might perhaps have been better had he not logged the incident at all because there was an old sea-superstition that to log the sighting of a mermaid or a sea serpent invited bad luck. In view of the grisly way Henry Hudson ended up, there may be something in it. Mariners profoundly distrusted the mermaid. Old Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Uppsala in 1555, remarked, “There be monsters in the sea, as it were imitating the shape of a man, having a doleful kinde of sounde or singing, as the Nereides.” He was referring, of course, to the Song of the Sirens which know-it-alls have dismissed all through this present age of pseudo-rationality as a noise made by seals. After living for 25 years on a coast harboring plenty of seal, I can only report that, although they grunt, growl, belch, gurgle and snort, they don’t sing. A friendly old bull who likes to study the hull of my boat sometimes makes a noise like escaping steam. But something sings. It sings in Polar Regions and it is a song of death. Ship’s crews who visit the sea south of Spitzbergen have long known about the phenomenon. It has the peculiar effect

of causing seamen to climb over the ship’s side and fling themselves into the icy water for no known reason. In that latitude the practice is almost instantly fatal. When a Captain is faced with this sort of problem nearly a thousand miles north of the Arctic Circle, he tends to forget the university wiseacres’ muttering about seals and Dugongs and looks for more effective help. And what the skippers did was to have my exorcist friend, the Rev. Dr. Omand, shipped up to Spitzbergen to rid the sea of whatever it was that infested it. He arrived in July of 1973 and conducted a service of exorcism while his ship floated over the most troubled area. The Sirens stopped singing around Spitzbergen. No doubt they will tune up elsewhere and grab a few more victims. Wise men have long known about the Phantom Menagerie and its strange beasts. That is why the dragon, the Merrow and the Black Dog are depicted so freely and pointedly on medieval churches. It was a form of insurance. “We know all about you and what you are,” the early church fathers seem to be saying. And, adding a saint to the picture, they conclude: “So don’t try any tricks.” Having reached these conclusions, I decided the time had come to bring the difficult and dangerous art of exorcism to bear on that most famous member of the Phantom Menagerie, the Loch Ness monster. If medieval priests were prepared to denounce and confront dragon phenomena, then why shouldn’t a modern priest do so? If one did do so, what would happen? The one Loch Ness experiment that had never been tried, was overdue. * Richard Frere is convinced about the Phantom Menagerie and thinks it includes the Loch Ness Monster as well as the Big Gray Man.

Chapter Seven THE EXORCISM OF LOCH NESS

And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way. And, behold, they cried out, saying, what have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time? And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding. So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.

St. Matthew’s Gospel

The exorcism of Loch Ness came about following a disagreement in a newspaper. The argument was between two ministers of religion over the identity of the Loch Ness monster. One of the parties to the disagreement, the Rev. Dr. Donald Omand, later put his side of the case this way:

You will possibly conclude that one of us contended that it had actually been seen while the other denied such a possibility. If so, you will be wrong. Neither of us had the slightest doubt that the evidence of a long line of very reliable witnesses had been both honest and convincing. The point on which we differed was the nature of what had been seen. My antagonist held the common view of those who believe that the phenomenon is a real prehistoric creature which has managed to survive in the deep waters of Loch Ness—the sort of creature that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might have introduced intoThe Lost World. This I have never been able to accept. I have questioned quite a few of those who, very diffidently, admit having seen the monster. All of them were honest, sensible people who disliked publicity. One other quality I spotted in each of them. They possessed the mysterious receptiveness which I inherited from my mother. Each year I drive along most of the long, somewhat tedious, shore of Loch Ness in travelling from the Kyle of Lochalsh to Inverness, and never yet have I observed the monster. This is because I have not been there at the right time, or I am certain that I should have seen it. The explanation for these extraordinary appearances, in my submission, lies not in the field of science, but in the realm of the supernatural. * What has been seen and is still visible to some on occasion, is not a concrete present-day monster but a projection into our day and age of something which had its habitat in Loch Ness and its surroundings millions of years ago.

Dr. Omand is arguing that the Loch Ness monster is not an animal at all, but a member of the Phantom Menagerie. He is simply updating the arguments of folklore which James McKinley, in Folklore of Scottish Lochs and Springs, expresses thus: “So far we have dealt with water-spirits more or less human in form. Another class consists of those with the shape of horses and bulls. The members of this class are connected especially with Highland districts. Lonely lochs were their favorite haunt.” A form of exorcisms was used against these paranormal water-monsters both in Ireland and in Scotland, and it survived until the 18th Century. There was a belief that such monsters went up the River Glass and into Loch Glass near Dingwall. About 1730 James Fraser, the minister of Alness Parish, remarked about the practice this way: “They say the River is not sonsy [well-favoured], nor yet the loch from which it comes, being Loch Glaish, 3 miles in length. Apparitions they report to be seen about it and that called the Water-horse. And they think the water is sanctified by bringing water to it from Lochmoire, from which the Alness River runs.” We do not know why water from the Alness was thought to have this effect. Many Celtic saints used the traditional bell, book and candle in their exorcisms. Discoveries in Scotland at sites where worship of the dragon was carried out in pagan times suggest that human and animal sacrifices were made. However, since nothing is known about those 4000 years-old rituals, it is possible they were aimed at banishing the dragon and were really an early form of exorcism. After reading of Dr. Omand’s belief in the paranormal nature of the Loch Ness monster in his book Experiences of a Present-Day Exorcist, I exchanged some letters and telephone calls with him; he then asked me to stay a couple of days at his home in Devon. When I went down in the spring of 1973, he had already discussed the desirability of performing an exorcism at the loch with the Bishop of Crediton, and they had jointly decided that it was desirable. My visit was largely to discuss the

practical side—the how and when—and to meet some of Dr. Omand’s aides.

Exorcism is a specialized and dangerous vocation. “The exorcist, besides having nerves of steel, must have a depth and understanding of life that is almost Christlike in order to survive,” says Francois Strachan in Casting Out Devils. The exorcist can only function by maintaining a very high standard of self-discipline amounting to asceticism. He is, in effect, fishing into the depths of hell, and if he is personally found wanting, the exorcism ceremony is likely to be a non-event. There are of course plenty of skeptics about all this. Dr. Colin Hamer, Roman Catholic doctor of philosophy and Licentiate of Sacred Theology, answers these as follows: “The greatest snare set for us by the devils is, as it is the greatest subterfuge to which our psychological hang-ups resort, the lazy and apparently convenient assumption that the devil does not exist, that we have no hang-ups, and that life is merely what we individually choose to make it.” Exorcism often fails. It is not enough simply to be well-meaning and to recite the words correctly; if that is all you can do, you may do more harm than good. Occasionally exorcism can produce frightful results. In 1975, after being told he was infested with an evil spirit, Michael Taylor of Ossett, Yorkshire, submitted to an exorcism ceremony in a church conducted by the vicar, the Rev. Peter Vincent. But something went wrong. Taylor, a pleasant family man with five sons and a wife of whom he was very fond, turned into a homicidal madman within hours of the ceremony. Going home, he tore his wife to pieces with his bare hands, even ripping out her tongue and eyes. Then he slew the family dog. Police found him ranging the streets of the town, naked and blood-covered. At the trial, at which Taylor was found to be insane, the judge described the case as “frightening”. Dr. Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark, commented: “Much can be explained in terms of natural causes.... nevertheless, there is an unknown quantity which, I believe, must be attributed to psychic and unknown forces. In my experience, I have met people who have done appalling things which no doctor or psychiatrist has been ableto explain.” Exorcism is strictly not for amateurs. Merely to be a cleric is not enough. The effective exorcist carries with him an immense moral authority based on his own convictions and the tenor of his life. Moreover, he has a nameless quality which seems to be inherited. Well-intentioned people who do not measure up to these standards but press ahead regardless are lucky if they produce nothing worse than the nil result seen in the following typical case: In 1974 at Tregarth near Bethesda, in Wales, Mr. Gareth Owen, a weighing machine representative, claimed to have seen a ghost in the council house he occupied with his wife and six children. He saw the apparition four times in daylight, and once at night over a period of about 18 months. He said nothing to his family to avoid alarming them. Then his wife saw the figure in the same place that her husband had seen it. It was a man about six feet tall with a small moustache and dressed in present-day clothes. Mrs. Owen said, “I saw this man in the living room and he moved from the centre of the room towards the window. I went into the room to see who it was but he disappeared.” When she spoke with her husband, she learned for the first time of his own sightings of the figure. Mr. Owen remarked, “The odd thing about this figure is that after disappearing suddenly into thin air it passes by the living room window again. It’s so real I have gone to the door—as the man looked like a solid figure—to find nothing.” The Owens had been awakened during the night at various times by cold air blowing on their faces. The terrified children had been sent to live with different relatives. An exorcism performed by two ministers was not a success. The family had to be rehoused. A spokesman for Arfon Council stated, “The case of Mr. and Mrs. Owen has been considered and they will be treated as a priority case.” With things of this sort in mind, I went down to Devon to meet Donald Omand, and found him to be a Highland Scot with Scandinavian family connections. There is little doubt that he is one of the most successful exorcists in the world. In the course of hundreds of exorcisms in many countries he has managed to combat the ravages of black magic, sea-madness (sirenism), witchcraft—both European and African—as well as the evil possession of such circus animals as lions, tigers, bears and leopards. As General Secretary and International Chaplain of the Council for the Church in the Circus, he is consulted by most British and continental circuses over questions arising regarding the paranormal. Circus folk are intensely aware of such influences (as were old-time sailors) and the perils involved. Accidents sometimes defy rational explanation; the time to take steps is before such things occur—so circus folk believe. They like the bigtop to be thoroughly debugged of what, for want of a better word, we call “Satanism”. Donald Omand also works in various hospitals and clinics where he has successfully cured certain types of mental patients. Dr. Omand proved to be an elderly, soft-spoken man given to long, distracted silences, and having an utter disregard for any domestic timetable. In his bungalow home near Honiton he kept dogs, and a baying pack surrounded me on arrival. These dogs were strays or outcasts rescued from extermination. One was a beautiful golden brindle greyhound with a peculiar penetrating gaze called Twinkle with which I was soon involved in the ritual of a walk. But there was more to it than that. Twinkle, in Donald’s view, had an acute psychic awareness, and sometimes accompanied him on exorcisms. I was, so to speak, being assessed by a canine expert on the occult. Twinkle sniffed and stared, then returned to sleep peacefully. In that quiet Devon room full of sleeping dogs, with its walls and spaces stacked with treasures bestowed on Donald Omand by circus-folk from a dozen countries, with its masks, talismans and carvings each with its own evil history now expurged, we discussed the Loch Ness monster. Donald got on the phone and people called. The next day I gave an informal

talk at the home of Miss Theo Brown outside Exeter to the Exeter University Folklore Society. That evening Iagreed to meet Dr. Omand at Loch Ness on June 2, 1973, for the exorcism.

The affair of the Loch Ness monster had been getting ragged around the edges for a long time. It didn’t make sense. There were too many associated effects which reeked of synchronicity, as if someone were constructing a gigantic guessinggame with sinister overtones. There was the involvement of Steve Gorzula and his friend Kenny Cameron, for instance. Steve Gorzula was a marine biology student doing post-graduate research for his Ph.D. into the ecology of brittle-stars at the University Marine Biological Station on the Isle of Cumbrae. He wrote to announce: “I know of a small monster in a lake in southern Ireland. This lake is only half a mile wide at its widest point. I was told of this specimen by an Irish diver and hope to visit the area next summer with another zoologist. The expedition would have to be small as locals regard sightings of the monster as a bad omen. The monster was seen by Jim Corrigan who I met on a diver’s course in Cornwall. Jim’s sighting was from the land. It lies up under trees on a floating log at one end of the lake so a dive there could be worthwhile. Another diver and I are diving in Loch Ness this weekend (purely to calm our nerves and take stock of the technical problems one may encounter in freshwater).” After labouring for three years with the mystery of Irish monsters during which we tried to net them, lure them with food and even blow them out of the water only to find that there is not the slightest ecological trace of their real existence, I was no more than morbidly interested to know how this Phantom Menagerie animal had presented itself to Corrigan. Writing from Cricklewood, Corrigan explained it this way: “It was three years ago on a summer evening when I saw it as I was driving past the lake on Achill. It looked like a triangle moving through the water. I didn’t see any head or tail; it just moved across the lake and disappeared under the trees at the edge of the lake. It was coloured black and appeared to move very fast. I don’t know what type of substance it was but it appeared shiny. What I saw was about 12 feet long.” Jim Corrigan’s drawing showed the sort of angular hump that has now become almost commonplace from Loch Ness witnesses. He had also heard about a local land-sighting many years earlier and wrote: “An old woman who I know very well told me how she went to the lake to get water for tea for the people who were working on the bogs nearby. As she filled her can at the side of the lake, she saw what looked like a big grey horse on the other side of the lake. It looked so horrible that she dropped the can and ran. This happened about 50 years ago. This lake is situated on Achill island on the west coast of Mayo. I planned to dive there with Steve Gorzula but I don’t think this would do any good as the lake is surrounded by bog and has a very deep layer of mud on the bottom.” What the old lady had looked at over her can of bog-water was a dragon, or water-horse. Hundreds of people in Ireland have seen these apparently solid apparitions. In Scandinavian mythology the thing was called Sleipnir, the slippery one, and it was said to have eight legs. Some petroglyphs illustrate these multiple legs. The monster was regarded as a portent of evil, a manifestation of Loki. If we try to extrapolate from the mythological descriptions and the sketchy accounts of living witnesses to produce an animal, what we come up with is a thing like a sort of monstrous equatic caterpillar with a horsylooking front portion. Horrible indeed! Steve Gorzula and Kenny Cameron were now going up to Loch Ness fairly regularly on weekend diving trips.They then began to experience what I call the “toothache syndrome”, something I had already encountered in Ireland during the dragon netting experiments*. It is a severe form of mysterious neuralgia which lasts as long as one is investigating the phenomena. Moreover, Kenny had started to encounter unknown objects during his work on the Isle of Cumbrae. Steve Gorzula wrote as follows:

We are diving at Loch Ness this weekend by Aldourie to look over the hard pebble banks again. We both found it strange that in that area, in 20 feet of water, we felt narcotized as if we were at say 100 feet. The ‘neuralgia’ that you suffered at Lough Nahooin in Ireland is even more of a ‘coincidence’ than you perhaps originally thought. Last September I went to the dentist in Largs on the mainland. I had not been for two years yet I was complimented on the excellent teeth I had which just needed nicotine stains cleaned from behind the incisors. However, the week before I last dove in Loch Ness I began sucking blood from between my teeth and the whole mouth was very inflamed with an ulcer behind my lower left molars; I almost cancelled the trip. Our dives were on the 3rd of February and the Aldourie dive upset Kenny quite a bit. After two visits to the doctor and two failed mouth-washes I went to the dentist in Largs on the 5 and 12 of March. He found by x-rays that an impacted wisdom tooth on the lower left had triggered off St. Vincent’s disease in the papillae of my teeth and I’d lost all their tips. He arranged for me to go to Glasgow Dental Hospital. Up there the dental surgeon seemed to think I was playing a joke. He found no sign of infection and asked me three times if I had had a wisdom tooth out. I have contacted neither dentist since. On March 15 Kenny was on the trawler in Loch Striven (he works on the University Marine Biology boat). They zig-zagged over the area taking samples of water for the botanist working on the phyto-plankton bloom. As they travelled back down the loch they were followed by an object about 12 meters down which rose to 10 meters. Their speed was about three knots and I’ve enclosed the trace for you. We do not think this trace was made either by a seal or a submarine and we are puzzled as to why there is no ‘ghost trace’ at 24 meters. Kenny also had toothache in March but we are fine now.

I had already come across a reference to the “toothache syndrome” in an ancient Babylonian text reproduced by Sir E.

A. Wallis Budge in his Babylonian Life and History, the last verse of which runs: “And the Worm [dragon] said: What are these dried bones to me? Let me drink amongst the teeth, and set me on the gums that I may devour the blood of the teeth and of their gums destroy the strength. Then shall I hold the bolt of the door.” I met Steve Gorzula and Kenny Cameron at Loch Ness when I went up for the exorcism. They did a few dives, but were becoming increasingly uneasy about Loch Ness. Kenny finally decided never to dive there again. Steve Gorzula in the end got himself a biology job in Venezuela. Synchronicity being what it is, his first research assignment was to collect and study specimens of a poisonous marsh caterpillar* which stings by means of its hairs. It causes hemorrhages. The demon who thought all this up must have fallen over laughing. There was the peculiar case of Sundberg and the flying saucer. At first I didn’t believe a word of it, but in the end I became a believer. Jan-Ove Sundberg, a Swedish freelance journalist, arrived in Scotland on August 11, 1971, to collect material on the Loch Ness monster for the Swedish magazine Lektyr. On August 16 between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m.—according to his own account—he was trying to take a short cut through the woods above Foyers to visit the new power station construction. He then became unaccountably lost. Suddenly he came across an “extremely strange machine” in a woodland glade. This object was shaped like a grey-black cigar about 10 meters long, and it was about 70-100 meters away. Near the object Mr. Sundberg saw three figures come out of some bushes. These beings stood together as if chatting. They were dressed in what looked like divers’ suits with helmets over their heads. For a few moments Sundberg thought they were technical workers from Foyers. And then, he says, he realized they were not human at all. He stared at them in a state of shock. In profile, the UFO looked almost like a smoothing-iron with a standing portion at one end representing the “handle”. This had a shutter or hatch on top of it. After some minutes, the creatures began to step inside one by one. They stood about 5 ft. 8 inches to 5 ft. 10 inches high, and were generally grey in tone. Without a sound the object lifted straight off to a height of some 15-20 meters and then, said Mr. Sundberg, “it accelerated like a speedboat on the water and disappeared over the hill in a southern direction” heading for Loch Mhor. During the whole of this episode Sundberg had had a camera with 20 unexposed frames in it hung round his neck. He declares he was too paralyzed to use it until the last being was stepping through the hatch when he raised it and shot one picture. Sundberg sent this picture to researchers in the U.S.A. and it eventually reached Professor James A. Harder of the University of California at Berkeley. On return to Sweden—Sundberg relates—he began to be worried by paranormal occurrences. He found himself being terrorised by a “man in black” who left strange footprints behind him in the garden. These prints also appeared in the garden of a neighbour, Mr. Egon Holst. Sundberg was shortly afterwards admitted to a mental hospital where he stayed for two months, suffering from a nervous breakdown. He wrote to various people about this. One was John A. Keel, the well-known New York investigator and author. It was via Keel that I first came to hear of the affair. At first I thought it was psychotic bunk. As it happened, however, I was at Loch Ness myself in August, 1971, and I kept notes. To my amazement, these showed that three other people saw mysterious flying objects over Loch Ness exactly three days before Sundberg had his alleged encounter in the woods. One of these observers is a friend, Graham Snape, a lecturer in engineering, and he had his brief sighting while I was actually talking to him on the night of August 13. It was a fine calm night, and Snape’s account runs as follows: “I observed the object travelling from left to right in the night sky, approximately level with the background hill peaks. It was travelling almost horizontally, very fast, but in perfect silence. It was irregular in shape although roughly circular. The most impressive feature was the colour, which was a white core with a purple/violet annulus around it. Size is difficult since so much depends on the distance between observer and object. Assuming it to be directly over the loch I would estimate the minimum core diameter at 5 feet with a maximum of 10 feet.” This object was moving down-loch and therefore in the direction of Foyers. Stuart Campbell, Investigations Coordinator of Edinburgh University UFO Research Society, took a great interest in this case. He visited Foyers several times after obtaining Sundberg’s original picture from Professor Harder. This picture proved a disappointment; it showed little but trees. Only with great difficulty and the help of the local police was the actual site located where Sundberg had had his adventure. It was on a remote track high on the hill beside a forestry plantation. Mr. Campbell took pictures of his own, but was not impressed. He pointed out: “This picture shows the exact view taken by Sundberg although, unlike his photograph, mine is in focus right through to the far fence. You can see how dense the forest is at this point, and the copse at the far end is scarcely open either. Nowhere could a UFO bigger than a matchbox land.” It was a valid objection. A thick growth of fir hemmed in the area where Sundberg claimed to have seen the figures and the object. One was bound to suspect that Sundberg had hallucinated the whole thing from start to finish. But, if so, why the coincidence of Graham Snape’s flying object so convenient in time and place? When I went to Scotland for the exorcism, I intended to examine the Sundberg landing site for myself and try to form a conclusion. But things didn’t turn out that way at all.

The exorcism took place in the early evening of June 2. Our rendezvous was Strone, the house of Wing Commander and Mrs. Cary out on the rocky point above Urquhart Castle where we had arranged to use a couple of caravan-trailers. Donald Omand arrived during the afternoon in a car driven by his photographer. They were preceded by a red sports car carrying his aide, Captain Tony Artus, a serving artillery officer on short leave from Colchester Barracks. We soon foregathered in the Cary’s drawing room to look at maps. Five rites were to take place, one at the four extremities of Loch Ness and a concluding one in the middle. For this purpose Basil Cary kindly offered to let us use one of his boats. We were anxious now to get the exorcism completed. BBC television had heard about it, and a camera team was in the neighbourhood. Since the ballyhoo of publicity was the last thing we wanted, we set off at once. I went with Tony Artus to point the route and locate the spot where each ceremony would take place, since I knew the topography by heart. The first stop was the beach at Lochend. As we trooped across the pebble bank, a chill wind blew up Loch Ness and cast two-foot waves onto the beach. Donald Omand asked us to kneel, one by one, for a protective ceremony. This consisted of a brief benediction, followed by the application of holy water in the form of a cross to the foreheads of the participants. In view of what happened later, this symbolic act seemed curiously significant. Approaching the water’s edge, Dr. Omand began to deliver the exorcism rite in a low voice which was often drowned by the slice and drag of the undertow hauling at the pebbles. The full exorcism is given in the appendix, but the salient part ran thus: “Grant that by the power entrusted to Thy unworthy servant, this highland loch and the land adjoining it may be delivered from all evil spirits; all vain imaginations; projections and fantasms; and all deceits of the evil one. O Lord, subject them to Thy servant’s commands that, at his bidding, they will harm neither man nor beast, but depart to the place appointed them, there to remain forever.” Donald had taken the bottle of holy water carried by Tony Artus, and to add emphasis to different points in the service, he vigorously cast a small quantity of the water into the loch. We went up to the cars, drove through Inverness, and then down the southwest shore to the second station, another pebble beach which we approached by a steep track down from the road. The exorcism was enacted again. At Fort Augustus we went down a path through a meadow to Borlum Bay, and the same ceremony was gone through. I am not formally religious. I would define myself as a progressive agnostic. Yet I felt a distinct tension creep into the atmosphere at this point. It was as if we had shifted some invisible levers, and were awaiting the result. I squinted narrowly at the shadows on Loch Ness looking for the blackness which betokens an incipient monster, but there was nothing. Donald’s photographer was beginning to look strained. Tony Artus had settled into a long silence. Only Donald seemed completely unaffected. He still had bright energy, and the far-away distracted look I had seen in Devon was in his eye. We climbed in the cars and looped up the serpentine road back to Strone, completing one Loch Ness circuit. After a word with Basil about the boat we all went down the steep brae to where it was moored in a cove. Basil came along looking bemused, unsure whether to treat the whole thing as a joke or as something terribly serious. After drifting close inshore while Donald performed the fourth exorcism near Urquhart Castle, we began to pull for the open loch. Tony was at the cars with Donald in the stern and the photographer and me in the bow. Ideally, I would have liked the last exorcism of all to take place over the 970-foot-deep area the Vickers submarine Pisces had discovered in 1969. This lay a little south of the Castle and was nearly in mid-loch. Unfortunately, evening was closing in and the wind had increased, producing the occasional whitecap. It seemed to me a bit too hazardous to pull a well-laden boat half a mile out over this stuff and then back again. Earlier I had questioned the need to go to the middle of Loch Ness. Donald had explained that it was for the same reason that he enters the cage of the circus big cats when exorcising them. An exorcism performed through the bars is useless. Only by standing close in front of the animals and trusting the power you are invoking is the rite made effective. Thus we pulled outwards until Dr. Omand said that this was far enough. As the boat wallowed in the grey billows marching up from Fort Augustus, 15 miles down-loch, I felt apprehensive. If the evil ones could produce manifestations to order, now was the time. If psychological expectation can create monsters—as Dr. Lyall Watson has argued—then the entire area ought to have been bristling with the things. But we saw nothing. Donald was busy in the stern, finishing the business off. Holy water splashed from the bottle as he commanded: “I adjure thee, thou ancient serpent, by the judge of the quick and the dead, by Him who made thee and the world, that thou cloak thyself no more in manifestations of prehistoric demons, which henceforth shall bring no sorrow to the children of men.” The last of the holy water scattered into Loch Ness as Tony was already bending the oars for shore. As we paused under the squat tower of Urquhart Castle, I saw that a change had come over Donald Omand, who suddenly looked very old and very cold. Afraid he was going to faint, I asked Tony to pull round quickly to the Cary’s cove at Goat Rock. It took several hands to help Donald out of the boat, over the rocks and up the precipitous hillside. Later he explained that this sort of depletion always follows a successful exorcism. On Sunday we rested. On Monday that BBC camera team arrived. Donald Omand kindly reenacted the ceremony, this

time clad in full vestments. Basil and I rowed around Urquhart Bay at the whim of the producer. The whole affair was tedious, inconsequential and—as it turned out—discourteous. The BBC people slid off for lunch at the Drumnadrochit Hotel without offering us so much as a charitable drink for our morning’s work. The BBC finance department really ought to have better control over what happens to its hospitality allowances. On Tuesday, Dr. Omand went for a drive around Cluny with his photographer. Tony had already roared away back to Colchester Barracks. Since Donald was going over to Skye on Wednesday before returning south in preparation for his exorcism trip to Spitzbergen, mentioned earlier, I had time to think of other things, such as Sundberg and his UFO. I wanted to find the Foyers site and take pictures and measurements. I had already mentioned this idea to Donald Omand, but he was far from keen. Once, he told me, he had seen a UFO near Salisbury Plain, and didn’t like the look of it one bit. He cautioned me mildly against going and left it at that.

It was an overcast evening. When I went down to see the Carys around nine o’clock taking with me the Sundberg correspondence, I still intended to visit the alleged UFO site the next day despite Dr. Omand’s warning. I particularly wanted Winifred Cary’s views on the Sundberg episode. Mrs. Cary is a forthright old lady whose opinions sometimes border on the brutal. After a colorful and amazing life in British India, she returned to England shortly before war broke out to become a major in Special Operations Executive. But running parallel with this military pragmatism is a strong psychic disposition which Dr. Omand detected instantly. One of her favourite afternoon diversions is to watch television horse-racing and to pick the winners. Although she knows nothing of form, the quality of her precognition can be judged by the fact that she picked the first, second and fourth runners in that year’s (1973) Derby. But she never bets or allows her predictions to be used for betting, holding that to do so would be to destroy the gift. After studying the Sundberg material, Mrs. Cary declared it most odd. One night in November, from the garden, she had seen a golden oval object with a reddish aura travelling some hundreds of feet above the water along the middle of Loch Ness. About a year later her husband, Wing Commander Cary, saw an “orange globe” as it travelled laterally across the sky until it vanished behind the Bunloit hills. Mrs. Cary cautioned me strongly against visiting the UFO landing site. She was sitting in her usual armchair with her back to the window overlooking the front garden. I was facing the window. Basil was on my right pouring a drink at the sideboard. Mrs. Cary said, “One reads of people being whisked away. It may be nonsense but I shouldn’t go.” Coming on top of Dr. Omand’s similar advice, I decided then I would not go. At that precise moment there was a tremendous rushing sound like a tornado outside the window, and the garden seemed to be filled with indefinable frantic movement. A series of violent thuds sounded as if from a heavy object striking either the wall or the sun-lounge door. Through the window behind Mrs. Cary I suddenly saw what looked like a pyramidshaped column of blackish smoke about eight feet high revolving in a frenzy. Part of it was involved in a rosebush, which looked as if it were being ripped out of the ground. Mrs. Cary shrieked and turned her face to the window. The episode lasted 10 or 15 seconds, and then was instantly finished. I still sat there, staring at the window, feeling alarmed and rather peculiar. Basil, who was preparing his drink, had heard nothing and he turned in amazement when his wife screamed. Dutifully he searched the garden but found it silent and quite normal. The next morning I asked Mrs. Cary to record the incident as she saw it, and here is her account:

We were sitting in the sitting room. I had my back to the window. ... Ted Holiday was facing me sitting on the sofa. My husband was in the room standing on my left by the sideboard. We were discussing flying saucers or something of the sort. Ted had told me the story of one that was supposed to have landed on the far side of the glen up on top of the hills, and he was thinking of going up there to take photos, and I said, ‘I don’t think I would if I were you. I wouldn’t go near the place. One has heard stories about people being whisked into space: I don’t think I would go near there’—and I repeated this. And then, suddenly, there was a most frightful noise . . . . three terrific crashes just outside the window by the front door as if something was hurtling itself at the door, I think, or the window..... I’m not sure. Looking over my shoulder I got an impression that there was something at the window although I didn’t see exactly what it was. And then, looking at Ted, I saw a beam of white light that shot across the room from the window on my left. I saw a white circle of light on Ted Holiday’s forehead. It was white light . . . . not like electric light . . . . and the circle was about three or four inches in diameter. I thought the house had been struck by lightning with this light shooting across the room but I couldn’t understand why the light was white. I got a terrible fright. The light stayed on only for perhaps a second but I definitely saw it . . . . there was no question about it. I said to Ted, ‘What on earth’s that? What happened?’ and I said to my husband, ‘What was it? You’d better go and see.’ He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about—I never heard a thing.’ He went out to look but there was nothing there. It gave us an awful fright—it gave Ted a fright too. I couldn’t imagine what it was—those frightful crashes and this light shooting in at the window. He said he’d seen a dark swirly shape outside the window. Well, I saw something there but I couldn’t say what it was. What I really noticed was this beam of light shooting across the room onto Ted’s forehead, this white circle on his head.

This light was visible only to Mrs. Cary. Although I was staring fixedly at the window throughout, I saw nothing of it. The really odd part was that it evidently illuminated the precise area where the holy water had been applied prior to the exorcism. All of us at this stage were feeling pretty shaken—even including skeptical Basil. The thought of leaving the room and

going into the dark garden terrified me. It was 10 minutes before I borrowed a torch and set out to describe the affair to Dr. Omand; whom I found fast asleep in the upper caravan. Donald said that he had rather expected a reactionary manifestation but there was nothing to worry about. He advised us to go to our rooms and stay there until dawn. The Carys had asked me to stay in their spare room for the night, and this I was glad to do. We slept uneasily; Mrs. Cary said she didn’t sleep at all. I felt worried and regretful at visiting this sort of thing on old, hospitable friends. Besides, it was not finished. The next morning before breakfast I decided to step down to the lower caravan to collect some oddments from my suitcase. It was a beautiful fresh morning, and the lawns wet with dew. As I turned the corner of the house I stopped involuntarily. Across the grass, beyond the roadway and at the top of the slope leading down to Loch Ness at the top of which the caravan was located, stood a figure. It was a man dressed entirely in black. Unlike other walkers who sometimes pause along here to admire the Loch Ness panorama, this one had his back to the loch and was staring at me fixedly as soon as I turned the corner. Indeed, to all appearances he was waiting for me. We were about 30 yards apart, and for several seconds I just stared back wondering who the hell this was. Simultaneously, I felt a strong sensation of malevolence, cold and passionless. Vaguely I remembered Sundberg’s black figures around the UFO, and for a second tried to form an association. But the notion seemed so utterly absurd in broad daylight with half a dozen friends within calling distance that I shut the idea out. I walked forward warily, never taking my eyes off the figure. He was about six feet tall and appeared to be dressed in black leather or plastic. He wore a helmet and gloves and was masked, even to the nose, mouth and chin. The eyes were covered in goggles, but on closer approach, I could detect no eyes behind the lenses. The figure remained motionless as I approached except possibly for a slight stirring of the feet. It didn’t speak and I could hear no breathing. I drew level and hesitated slightly, uncertain what to do next, then walked past at a range of about a yard. I stopped a few feet beyond him and gazed down at Loch Ness. I stayed thus for perhaps 10 seconds, making a decision. Something about the figure seemed abnormal and I felt the need to test whether it was real. I started to turn with the vague plan of pretending to slip on the grass so that I might lurch against the figure and thus check its solidity, but this proved impossible. As I was turning my head, I heard a curious whispering or whistling sound and I swung round to find the man had gone. In two steps I was on the road. There was about half a mile of empty road visible to the right and about a hundred yards to the left. No living person could have gotten out of sight so quickly. Yet he had undoubtedly gone. I told no one about this incident for months because it seemed logically impossible, and I had not the slightest evidence that it took place. Presumably it could have been a hallucination; but, in that case, I must wander in a nightmare world in which it is impossible to tell the imaginary from the actual, and this I reject. Something was there, just as I believe in retrospect Sundberg came across something in the wood. Had I gone to Foyers, as I intended, perhaps the UFO would have been waiting again but with more sinister designs. It is impossible to say. With mixed feelings, the next day I watched Donald Omand leave for Devon on the first stage of his journey to exorcise the Spitzbergen sirens. He told me that further manifestations around the house were now most unlikely. On the other hand, the monster would probably continue to be seen in the loch, because long-standing astral forms are not easily dissolved. The original exorcism would need to be reinforced with further rites which he would do each time he was in Scotland. He was breaking his southward journey at Pitlochry, and he gave me the phone number in case anything unpleasant did occur and I needed to contact him. Mrs. Cary was nervous and looked worn-out. Dr. Omand, however, was correct; nothing further happened except for some strange knockings on the Carys’ kitchen door which I heard one evening but couldn’t explain.

Dr. Omand was also correct about the monster. It didn’t vanish from the scene, but continued to show itself to such witnesses as my friends Mr. and Mrs. Richard Jenkyns, who have a lochside house at Invermoriston. This house stands in several acres of heavily-wooded grounds only a few feet above loch-level, and commands a superb view across Ness. The Jenkynses only went to live in Scotland in 1973, and their interest in the so-called monster was minimal until November of that year. Below their wide frontage of garden lies a rocky beach overgrown with old trees. On the morning in question Mr. Jenkyns went to start a tractor near these trees in order to shift some forestry debris from the far side of the lawn. What happened then is described in an account he gave soon after the incident:

The date was Saturday, November 10, and the time 11:45 a.m. The weather was stormy with a strong northwesterly wind and two-foot waves on the loch. I was on the bank about 10 yards from the shore and 20 feet above it. I had started the tractor with a loud bang when almost immediately I heard a very loud splash as if someone had gone in from the high board very flat. I got off the tractor and went to look at the loch but could see nothing. A few moments later I glanced out again and there, nicely framed by a curved overhanging branch about 10 to 15 yards out, was a fishlike object (at first) starting to appear quite slowly and steadily until it was about 18 inches above the water-surface and then, a moment later, it came up about another two feet.

Now, for the first time, I realized that I had seen the beastie and I became rather bewildered. I could literally feel the hair on the back of my neck tingling. Its color was black or browny-grey. Texture neither rough nor smooth nor shiny; matt is the best word I can think of. Diameter about nine inches; no fins or gills. There appeared to be very large scales on the head but this was only an impression. There was a great gash of a mouth at least 9 inches long and tight shut and above the centre of the mouth what may have been a small black eye or a blow-hole. The general appearance was that of a tube, slightly rounded at the top with the head profile rather like that of a snake. It moved forward for several yards and then sank.

This was the overwhelmingly realistic way that the monster presented itself to an intelligent, cultured witness some five months after the exorcism. What Richard Jenkyns had seen in fact was a classic sighting of what Scandinavian mythology calls the Nok or Neck. In his The Fiary Mythology Keightley classifies the neck as the fourth component of fairylore along with mermen and mermaids. It was said to have affinities to the trolls which—as we saw earlier—were associated with flying objects. All these forms were said to belong to the fallen angels. William A. Craigie in his Scandinavian Folklore (1896) says the creature had magical attributes and was considered dangerous. Among the various names used for it were Nykur, Nok, Neck, Long Horse, Hell Horse, River Horse and Kelpie (= Gaelic celpach, a colt). In mythology the Neck was believed to be a water-troll which could assume the shape of a half-boat. In fact, Richard Jenkyns made precisely this mistake during his second sighting when he mistook the monster for a boat, which shows how mythology does indeed mirror the real world. Many people have asked how water monsters can possibly be associated with UFOs. It is a perfectly fair question but difficult to answer. The only material available for scientific study are the witnesses to the phenomena and their subjective reactions. With this in mind I asked Dick Jenkyns for his help. I asked him to carefully note any incident or circumstance, however ostensibly trivial, that might bear on the monster. In particular I wanted his exact subjective response should he obtain another sighting. He readily agreed to keep a sharp lookout from his unique home and let me know at once if anything occurred. It was nearly a year later, on September 30, 1974, before Mr. and Mrs. Jenkyns saw the monster again. This time it was lying about half a mile away under a great precipice on the opposite shore which terminates in a conspicuous acre known as the “Horseshoe”. Until they brought binoculars, the Jenkynses thought they were looking at a boat. Then, they saw that it was really a huge, bladder-shaped object some 50-60 feet in length. This bladder was rough and possibly warty, and extended about 10 feet above the surface. It was enormous—as big as a whale. There seemed to be a trailing tail, or possibly a neck at one end. Dick Jenkyns’ reaction to this hideous thing was this: “I felt that the beast was obscene. This feeling of obscenity persists and the whole thing put me in mind of a gigantic stomach with a long writhing gut attached.” The detailed reactions of these witnesses during the half-hour sighting are most interesting. Mr. Jenkyns relates: “During this sighting/manifestation I certainly did not appear on reflection to have been acting quite normally, as Phyllis said that after some time I sat down on a sofa and went to sleep for a few minutes. Moreover, although we both saw the beast there were slight differences between us. Nevertheless, there was no difficulty in being certain of what we saw. Another point which makes me wonder is that although we had a camera fully-loaded, neither of us thought of using it and neither did we telephone any of our neighbours in spite of the length of the sighting. The camera is not a very powerful one but it might have shown an outline.” Amnesia, either partial or total, is widespread among UFO witnesses, some of whom have had to be hypnotically regressed to recover the story of what happened. I had already heard of this effect from Loch Ness before, notably in the case of Dr. Kenneth McLeod. Dr. McLeod, Commissioner of Public Health of Cortland, New York, saw the monster from the driver’s side of the car while he was visiting Scotland in July of 1968 and taking his father a drive along Loch Ness. He drew his father’s attention to the beast neither then nor later, when they were having tea. On reflection he thought his own conduct on this point odd and unexplainable. In 1973, a strange amnesia story emerged from South America. Two men, a distinguished scholar and an industrialist, were travelling by car between Balnearia and Cordoba one night when a light flashed in the sky. A little later they encountered a mysterious “railway coach” parked near the road where no normal coach could have been. Having seen this phenomenon the men drove past it to their destination, only to find that their journey had been inexplicably foreshortened, and several villages they ought to have passed through did not register in their recollection. That this anomaly was a real effect was shown by the fact that their car used 12½ liters of fuel for a trip which normally takes 25 liters. It appeared that, between departure and arrival, they had travelled at the impossible rate of 185 kilometers an hour. One should now compare the reaction of these witnesses to the reaction of Mr. Jenkyns and Dr. McLeod at Loch Ness. One man woke his wife and daughters to tell them about his pleasant visit to Balnearia but “at no time did he mention to them (because he did not remember) any of the vicissitudes of the journey with the phenomena of the ‘flash,’ the ‘train’ and the inexplicable contraction of the journey.” The other witness only recalled the amazing events of the night days later when quizzed by his daughter who had, by then, heard the first man’s halting account. “Only then,” says Dr. Galindez, who describes the incident in Flying Saucer Review “did he describe the phenomena mentioned above.”

Again: “Both men told us that they found it utterly incomprehensible that they should have displayed no curiosity about the strange object [the train] and Senor Brunelli admitted ‘that on the occasion in question he did not behave as he would normally have done.’” Clearly, witnesses who see flying saucers and monsters exhibit atypical behaviour of a similar sort. Therefore, it is fair to suspect that the causation probably lies in the same field. John A. Keel believes that the experiences are largely hallucinatory, the hallucination being triggered by the phenomenon of the “flash”. We are, thinks Keel, sometimes programmed by paranormal beings into accepting various objects and events as real when these are not real. The “flash” that triggers this may or may not be optically visible. This belief is extremely ancient, and the Bible assumes it to be true. How the mind of man is correlated to the phenomena is arguable; but that a correlation does exist is beyond further reasonable doubt. Early Christians certainly experienced the effects noted at Loch Ness when they retired to wilderness places to test the merits of their newfound religion. St. Nilus, a Sinai monk of about 400 A.D., who was associated with the first monastery on Mount Sinai, the Holy Mountain of Moses, wrote a letter to novices explaining these effects. It runs: “Be not afraid and have no dread either of the threatenings and bugbears of the evil spirits, or of voices, and tremours of your dwellings, or of the lightning and flashes of fire, or of the attacks of strange men, camels, and dragons, who burst suddenly into your cells by night with clamour and roaring, or of the crazy laughter, the dancing, and the other ways the foul fiends would affright you, which you have met since your profession.” Certainly the “flash” phenomenon has occurred at Loch Ness. Tim Dinsdale, the well-known lecturer and author of several books on the Loch Ness monster, was “flashed” in 1974. On a dark night in June of that year he had left the Cary’s house and was going down the brae to his boat moored at Goat Rock. Suddenly a blinding light flashed near the ground about 10 yards away to his right. For a moment he thought he might have accidentally fired off one of the flashes on his numerous cameras. After he had waited for a moment, however, a second flash occurred down near the trees at the water’s edge. The phenomenon was silent, and an inspection of the area the next day failed to provide an explanation. Dinsdale is aware that strange things happen at Loch Ness, but is unable to reconcile this with the apparent solidity of monsters. In an April 1974 letter to me he wrote, “I also have been aware for some years past of what seems to be a paranormal side to all of this. But I just cannot see how a purely psychic phenomenon produces wake-arms which appear on movie film and a solid object which registers on sonar and on underwater cameras ... not to mention large humps which the RAF say have a cross-section of about that of an elephant.” Thus, although paranormal effects are widely associated with the Loch Ness monster, the impelling spectacle of the creature and its attendant side effects convinces most observers that it is real against the powers of their own logic and this despite a total lack of concrete evidence. So perhaps we had better examine the monster in the context of real animals for a moment. A three and one half-ton killer whale now in captivity in England eats 120 pounds of fish a day. By extrapolation— which is unlikely to be more than 20% inaccurate—a 35-ton carnivorous animal would consume nearly four tons of fish a week —200 tons a year. Given a viable breeding population of such creatures, which could consist of no fewer than 20 individuals, the annual food intake is going to be something like 4000 tons. This is an impossible figure for an acid lake like Loch Ness in which fish grow slowly and the salmon runs have declined—and neither the Ness Fishery Board nor the Fishery Officers know anything about such massive reputed depredations. We can forget the fish. An enormous sediment-feeder, such as a worm, is less easy to dispose of. The idea has some merit, at least in theory. A huge wormlike animal was observed at sea by Dr. L.A. Walford, Director of the Fish and Wildlife Research Center of the United States Department of the Interior in August 1963, off the coast of New Jersey. Dr. Walford’s description, from the New York Times of August 20, 1963, runs as follows: “It was at least 40 feet in length and about five inches thick and perhaps seven to eight inches deep and looked something like an enormously long flattened eel. It was an invertebrate. It looked like so much jelly. I could see no bones and no eyes, nose or mouth. But there it was, undulating along looking as if it were almost made of fluid glass. A number of us saw it.... I didn’t see it at first because I was busy with our project. But when the thing was pointed out to me—there it was. It was somewhat difficult to see because it was transparent. But I finally made a tentative identification of it as what is known as a Venus Girdle ... However, upon examining my scientific references, I soon and surprisingly determined that the Venus Girdle does not grow longer than a few feet.” Although Dr. Walford had no way of knowing it at the time, the creature he describes had been observed in large numbers at close quarters only seven years earlier. Indeed, a specimen was captured but it escaped by breaking in two. Mr. and Mrs. Eric Hiscock, on a round-the-world voyage in their yacht Wanderer III, had left Fiji and were about 400 miles to sea, heading for Australia when they came across a mass of the creatures which they at first mistook for ordinary sea-snakes. Eric Hiscock records: “The sea was literally alive with them and at times it was impossible to plunge the boatbook down without touching one. Near the surface were little ‘snakes’, a foot or less in length, but lower down and just within boathook reach were

‘snakes’ as long as Wanderer [30 feet] and as thick as my arm. They were of a jellylike substance, pale brown in color, with dark brown regular markings on them. Our attempts to capture one failed because when we got the boathook under it—which was easy enough to do as the creatures were slow moving and took no avoiding action—and lifted part of it above the surface, the ‘snake’ immediately broke in half and two ‘snakes’ went wriggling along where one had been before. We have since seen sea-snakes of a more substantial nature, particularly in the Arafura Sea, which were solid like land snakes and with tough skins. But the ‘jelly-snakes’ we met that calm day in the South Pacific must have been out of the ordinary for we have never seen anything of the kind since nor have we met anyone familiar with them.” That evening the Hiscocks picked up a broadcast from Fiji saying that a minor earthquake had taken place, resulting in a 15-foot tidal wave. They wondered, reasonably enough, if some great underwater disturbance had forced the creatures up from the abyss. This would account for the large numbers and their sluggish behaviour. The transparent appearance can be accounted for by suggesting that they are larval forms, because some marine larvae are indeed transparent. What a 30-foot larva would become as an adult boggles the imagination, however. The late Ivan T. Sanderson didn’t think this idea of a giant worm absurd. He wrote: “There is a grave and growing suspicion amongst interested scientists ... who say they have seen the Loch Ness and other ‘monsters’ that at least some of them appear not to be vertebrated (i.e., some of them appear to be without jointed backbones). Some of the sketches made by observers and even some of the photos seem to bear this out. Moreover, it is just the lack of eyes, nose and/or mouth, as reported by Dr. Walford, that strengthens the suggestion that they are invertebrates.” But the Loch Ness monster, even if it were an organic animal, which I no longer believe, is certainly no eight inchthick “jelly-worm”. If I were allowed a flight of fanciful speculation, I would suggest that its organic prototype may have been a colossal worm that inhabited the shallow, warm Permian seas of 200 million years ago. Millions of square miles of rich sedimentary deposits awaited exploitation, much of them lacking oxygen due to water stratification. Only a vast creature able to rise and restore its supply of oxygen at long intervals could exploit such an environment. But why so unspeakable an animal should survive in phantasmal form to baffle us down the centuries remains a mystery guarded by the Phantom Menagerie. We do know that one creature plentiful during the Permian, the King or Horseshoe crab, has also been detected in Loch Ness. At least it looks like a Horseshoe crab in the only picture ever taken of it. This picture was obtained in 1971 by Dr. Robert Rines of the Massachusetts Academy of Applied Science after he lowered a stroboscopic camera to the floor of Loch Ness and took various pictures. The animal is seen apparently scuttling across the middle of the frame. It is, Dr. Rine writes, “an object having a body resembling some kind of crustacean or shelled creature with a long horse-shoe crab-like tail portion (believed by analysts at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the Smithsonian Institute to be animate but not identifiable as yet).”

At the conclusion of the Loch Ness exorcism, I paused and took stock. It is not an exercise I should care to repeat. It was exhausting in ways I never expected. As I assisted Donald Omand, I came to understand why ordinary mortals make poor exorcists, and why the adepts are those who live dedicated and impeccable lives. Not for nothing is the dragon depicted being overcome by Saint George or by godlike heroes such as Marduk. The struggle is at a mental level, and between principalities and powers not of this world. I am well aware that many scientific readers will attribute the tornado-like manifestation, the light flashes and the sinister men in black to products of the human mind. As one who has no axe to grind either way, I have to say this explanation carries little weight. My gut-reaction then and later was that another factor was involved. The entire mystery seems to center on the nature of this factor and its associations. The thought is not new. In the Chinese classic the Shan Hai King, the dragon is called “Enlightener of Darkness” and the divinatory work Yih Lin says, “A black dragon vomits light and makes Yin (darkness) turn into Yang (light).” When I returned to Loch Ness in 1974 to continue investigations, I was stopped after a few days with a heart attack. As a stretcher carried me up the side of the loch, I peered groggily over the side and noted with cynical approval that we had just passed over the exact spot where the man in black had stood the previous year. Synchronicity and the forces that control it never give up. Dr. Omand’s wording here is not too happy. Everything is potentially within the field of science just as all phenomena are a part of nature. *See the author’s earlier book The Dragon and the Disc. * Lonomia aschelotin

Chapter Eight THE SCIENCE OF WISHFUL THINKING

When I went up to Cambridge, as an undergraduate reading the natural sciences, the Darwinian Theory was behind the whole teaching. One did not appreciate that it was still only a theory. It was taught us as a fact. The geological evidence given in its support seemed convincing because no other side was ever presented. There was no hint that, in many other countries, the theory had never been accepted at all. It was about thirty years before I even thought of questioning this dogma, which may be briefly summed up as the idea that all nature arrived at its present form because more efficient designs always ousted less satisfactory ones, by depriving them either of life or food-supply. The survival of the fittest was Nature’s great aim; although what Nature was, and how this aim was really achieved, remained a matter of faith. T.C. Lethbridge, Ghost and Ghoul (1961)

Our ingrained view of nature, the world and the universe is grossly faulty. Our notions about time and causation are demonstrably naive and fictitious. Our beliefs about life and its origins are half-baked. And nothing has done more to confuse, fuddle and obfuscate the issue than has Darwinism. Small wonder we make little sense of the Goblin Universe. I am neither a dogmatic evolutionist nor a rabid anti-evolutionist. I am simply one of many who wonder how the whole thing works. But when one side habitually overstates its case, as evolutionists do in books and on the TV and radio, it is hard not to be irritated. Evolution by natural selection is after all, still only a theory. It has never been demonstrated. Yet it is forced down our throats as an article of faith on every possible occasion. This dangerous practice brings to mind the blind fervor with which church dogmas were driven home during the Middle Ages, and the intellectual stagnation that resulted. Evolution was the pseudoscience that went off half cocked. The notion of all life beings unified and animal forms changing with time was not an idea original to Darwin. Monet, Lemark and Lyell all played with the idea of a unified lifeforce, but it was Lyell who had the most impact on Darwin. When Darwin set off on his naturalist’s travels on the Beagle in 1831, Lyell’s book Principles of Geology occupied an important place on his shelf. The eventual publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species was really the result of a sprint between Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace on who could get the idea out first. To calm the proceedings, a paper by both authors was read at a meeting of the Linnaean Society in 1858. In this competitive climate it was tempting to forget anything that failed to support the grand doctrine. Today, instead of knowing the truth about the origin of living things, we probably know as little as Darwin. Evolution stresses the mutability of species. But what is meant by “species?” Darwin claimed that individuals alone exist in nature, and species is a purely arbitrary concept. He then wrote 700 pages proving where these arbitrary concepts originated. In fact, Origin of Species—as Robert Ardrey rather acidly points out—tells us just about everything except where species did originate. Modern authorities hand out biological gobbledegook. Professor Ernest Mayr of Harvard, for instance, says, “Species are groups of actually or potentially inter-breeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.” Simpson (1961) says, “An evolutionary species is a lineage (an ancestral-descendant sequence of population) evolving separately from others and with its own unitary evolutionary role and tendencies.” All of which is as clear as the archaic mud from which life is supposed to have arisen. Evolutionist propaganda is frequently illustrated with genealogical diagrams which owe as much to imagination as they do to blind faith in the doctrine. Professor J. S. Weiner in Man’s Natural History (1971) admits, however, “Evidence of the actual transition from one genus to the other is far from conclusive and we have to rely on rather fragmentary fossil specimens....” To put it in basic terms, evolution means the replacement of one set of genes with another. And the only known source of new genes is via mutation. Weiner claims that from the evolutionary point of view, the equilibrium time for the establishment of a favourable mutation may be measured in hundreds or thousands of generations. But this has been tested without success. Experiments with Drosophila, a fly that produces 25 generations a year at ordinary temperatures, began in 1910. Over 800 generations of Drosophila have been bred, many using x-rays to speed the rate of mutations, and the result was over 400 varieties of the fly. All these varieties were said to have bred freely with the parent stock, and at no stage did anything other than Drosophila melanogaster emerge. Goldshmidt continued experiments with this prolific fly, but obtained variations so tiny that if hundreds of them were combined in one specimen there would still be no new species. Professor Mayr doggedly resumed the search. He tried both to decrease and to increase the number of bristles on the flies. But when the experiments were pressed to a limit, the result was sterility. From this he deduced that populations have an

inbuilt resistance to change—something he calls “genetic homeostasis.” Although he believes that evolutionary change does take place, he can cite no observed cases, and confesses that he relies on extrapolation. And this is just a fancy word for guessing. In a moment of great frankness for an evolutionary biologist, Professor Deevey admitted “some remarkable things have been done by cross-breeding and selection inside the species barrier, or within the circle of closely-related species, such as the wheats. But wheat is still wheat and not, for example, grapefruit; and we can no more grow wings on pigs than hens can make cylindrical eggs.” From our vantage point the reader and I are not too impressed. We are told that evolution happens; but the experiments do not show it happening. We are told that life is eager and able to evolve; but a leading expert tells us that life has a built-in resistance to change. No wonder the witnesses are discovered extrapolating (or guessing) so frequently and using their florid imaginations with diagrams. We remain silent and attentive; but a little thought-bubble emerges from our heads and it reads, “Something stinks in the evolutionary camp.” Norman MacBeth, an American lawyer laid up during a long illness, took to reading the evolutionists’ case. The thought came to him, “If this was brought up in court I could get it thrown out.” Instead of a solid structure of testable evidence, one is confronted with a teetering mountain of conjecture and extrapolation balanced on a rubble of contradictions no one has ever resolved. MacBeth saw how a resolute advocate could push the whole thing over with one hand. Some of these contradictions stand out like a sore thumb. Not only are evolutionists unable to show clearly where animal-species come from, they are equally at a loss to explain why they vanish. The extinction of the dinosaurs is as big a mystery as the extinction of mammoths and the wooly rhino. Yet other living things go unchanged. Sir J. W. Dawson in his Geological History of Plants says, “The old Cambrian and Silurian seas were tenanted with seaweeds not very dissimilar from those of the present time.” In a Smithsonian Institute report, R. E. Snodgrass of the U.S. Bureau of Entomology remarks: “The oldest known insects of the geological records are so much like modern insects that palaeontology gives little assistance in a study of insect structures. Probably no other group of animals have so effectively covered their evolutionary tracks as have the insects.” The silverfish and the cockroach remain virtually unchanged from their ancestors of 350 million years ago. Other forms, too, have remained unchanged for aeons including the wings of bats, the coelacanth, the horseshoe crab and many more. Arthur Koestler voices a general unease among thinkers when he writes, “There is today a growing conviction amongst biologists that Darwinism alone cannot explain the evolution of species.” And he quotes veteran biologist Dr. Ludwig van Bertalanffy who commented in 1969: “I think the fact that a theory so vague, so insufficiently verifiable and so far from the criteria otherwise applied to ‘hard’ science, has become a dogma, can only be explained on sociological grounds. Society and science have been so steeped in the ideas of mechanism, utilitarianism and the economic concept of free competition, that instead of God, Selection was enthroned as ultimate reality.” Every evolutionist agrees that the process must be a step-by-step affair; each successive step must carry a distinct advantage for the animal concerned if it does indeed work on the hit-or-miss principle. But if this is true, then how do we explain the Kenyan flattid bugs as described by Robert Ardrey? Ardrey was shown a “plant” consisting of twigs covered in coral-colored flowers of the raceme type and resembling an aloe—a typical South African plant. On closer inspection he saw that the oblong-shaped blossoms were really the wings of insects. The total effect, he says, was so realistic one could almost expect to smell the perfume. It turned out that Dr. L.S.B. Leakey had bred generations of the quaint bugs only to find that, from a given batch of eggs, the female produces at least one bug with green wings (i.e., not coral) and several of intermediate shades. The green bug positions itself at the tip of the insect “flower,” the intermediates lie directly behind it and the pure coral-coloured bugs lie behind these. Dr. Leakey demonstrated the system to Ardrey by shaking the bush. For a moment, the air was filled with flattid bugs. After a short time they landed on the stick and crawled rapidly over each other’s back until “the green leader had resumed his budlike position with his varicoloured companions just behind.” Even stranger—the coral-flowered bush does not exist in nature; it is a form created by the flattid bugs themselves. How all this was achieved by step by step, hit-or-miss evolution is impossible to imagine. Robert Ardrey comments, “How random mutation can account for such imitations must be left for geneticists to worry about.” Evolutionists like Sir Julian Huxley, J.M. Smith, Garrett Hardin and Loren Eisley try to explain such things by introducing sheer complication. Factors such as Rh systems, Gm groups, the ability to taste phenylthiocarbamide and red cell antigens are paraded before us. At the drop of a hat the geneticists will discourse on sickle-cell genes, the prevalence of homozygous individuals and the decreasing frequency of G6 PDD in New Guinea. All of this is clever and important, and a mile above my head. But it still doesn’t explain how a bunch of small African bugs arrange themselves unfailingly into the pattern of a flower that never existed. Did chance do this or did some external mind think it up? This is the essence of the matter. As a jury we now shuffle our feet and glance at each other meaningfully. The witnesses have made a poor show, and not a single piece of hard evidence is on exhibition. Is evolution as taught a sort of biological cover up? Charles Darwin was never too happy about evolution in the way he was forced to present it. The test for any scientific

theory is unambiguous evidence, and this was the one thing Darwinian evolution lacked. No one knew this better than Darwin himself, as he was honest enough to admit to his friends. In a letter to Dr. Bentham, in 1863, he wrote: “In fact, belief in Natural Selection must at present be grounded on general considerations... When we descend to details, we can prove that no one species has changed [i.e., we cannot prove that a single species has changed]; nor can we prove that the supposed changes are beneficial, which is the groundwork of the theory. Nor can we explain why some species have changed and others have not.”* As the decades went by, this extraordinary situation remained unaltered. In 1931, addressing the British Association, Professor H. S. Osborne of the U.S.A., one of the world’s greatest palaeontologists, said, “We are more at a loss than ever to understand the causes of evolution.” Two years later Professor James Ritchie of Edinburgh University wrote inNature (September 1933), “The problem of the origin of species seems to be as far away as ever.” Darwin’s friends had always been acutely conscious of the illogicalities entombed in Origin of Species. After reading the book Sir Charles Lyell delicately suggested that, in a future edition, “You may here and there insert an actual case to relieve the vast number of abstract propositions.” Unfortunately there are no “actual cases.” Something was wrong, Darwin knew it and many of his friends knew it. And, since his general observations and competence as a zoologist have never been in doubt, the truth could only be that something vital, something unknown and unsuspected, was missing from the picture. But the original idea, as it stood, suited the sociological context of the times admirably, as Dr. Bertalanffy points out. The intellectuals of Europe, busy tearing themselves free from centuries of irrational church dogma, welcomed this new weapon. In politics, the seeds of dialectical materialism had already sprouted in the mind of Karl Marx, who was eager to name Darwin on the dedication page of Das Kapital—a fate Darwin was fortunate enough to avoid. Britain—then in her heyday of gunboat diplomacy—could hardly quarrel with a concept so befitting the politics of the times. In Germany Nietzsche was laying the foundations of the master race doctrine which was so effectively jackbooted into practice by Julius Streicher and other hoodlums. Thus Darwin, despite of his own reservations about evolution, found himself virtually canonised. Scientists who were completely atheistic in outlook now crowded the stage. Sir Julian Huxley inEssays of a Biologist wrote, “Creation of earth and stars, plants, animals and man—Darwin swept the last vestiges of that into the wastepaper basket of outworn imaginations, already piled high with the debris of earlier ages.” And Professor D.M.S. Watson flatly told zoologists assembled for the British Association conference in 1929, “The theory of evolution is a theory universally accepted, not because it can be proved true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.” Thus was the “science” of Darwinian evolution born. Never in the history of the world had such a maze of guesswork, half truths, speculation and bluster been misrepresented to so many people as fact when it was nothing of the sort. It was simply a speculation, unproved and undemonstrated, a belief held against all opposition merely because scientists could see no alternative. And while the “truth” of evolution was being propagated to millions of students and children, all effective resistance was stifled at the source. When Sir Ambrose Fleming, F.R.S., tried to arrange to give a talk on the BBC in 1934 outlining the case against Darwinian evolution, he was refused permission. This censorship was as ironic as it was outrageous; it was Fleming’s invention of the thermionic valve which made broadcasting possible in the first place. The situation was clear. Science chose to pretend that an unproven hypothesis was factually true rather than face the alternative of selective, ongoing evolution designed and managed by a supra-human mind or minds. No one could imagine how such a scheme could work. In 1935, however, a breakthrough occurred.

The first hint of it was a paper published jointly in the Quarterly Review of Biology by Dr. H. S. Burr and Dr. F. S.C. Northrop. It concerned investigations into the electrical basis of organic structures. Dr. Burr—now Emeritus Professor of Anatomy at Yale School of Medicine—found the subject so fruitful that he and his colleagues worked on it for the next 40 years. In simple terms, these scientists were finding that living things are not merely material biochemical structures. They have an underlying electrical form which exists as a field—or region of influence—which determines the shape and functions of the organism. Professor Burr gives the following definition: “The pattern or organization of any biological system is established by a complex electro-dynamic field which is in part determined by its atomic physio-chemical components and which in part determines the behaviour and orientation of those components. This field is electrical in the physical sense and by its properties relates the entities of the biological system in a characteristic pattern and is itself, in part, a result of the existence of those entities. It determines and is determined by the components. More than establishing pattern it must maintain pattern in the midst of a physio-chemical flux. Therefore it must regulate and control living things. It must be the mechanism, the outcome of whose activity is wholeness, organisation and continuity.” Burr calls these electrical templates of organic things “life-fields” or “L-fields.” Everything has an L-field, from a microscopic single cell to a whale. These fields are precisely measurable using special voltmeters and electrodes developed

for the purpose. The voltages developed in all but the smallest organisms are of the order of millivolts. An experiment on the L-fields of frogs’ eggs demonstrated, however, that even this modest charge modified the developing animal, and the frog’s nervous system always grew along the axis with the highest voltage gradient. Every animal is, so to speak, pre-planned from an electro-magnetic blueprint which controls growth, morphogenesis, maintenance and repair. This work began to give us an inkling of how Nature really operates as opposed to the ludicrous speculations which had proliferated for over a century. The inner mysteries have little to do with genetics because L-fields override the normal laws of chemistry and physics. L-fields, in fact, compel atoms and molecules to form appropriate shapes, and to keep these shapes as individual cells die and need replacing. Instead of trial and error, Burr and his colleagues found perfect order. Every atom carries an electrical charge and is acted on by the field of the organism. A modification takes place between the field and the organism and vice versa, which has the authority of unfailing natural law. We now begin to see how flattid bugs perform their cute trick of turning into make-believe “flowers.” They are directed by an overall field much as if they were proteins finding their way to their correct place in an organic system. Sensational speculators were soon making absurd claims about the Burr-Northrop discoveries. A book on the market a few years ago sported a ridiculous blurb reading, “Research by one of America’s most eminent biologists suggests that science is now in a position to prove the existence of the soul.” Professor Burr implies no such thing. He says, “The L-field is not independent of matter, but an appropriate determinant of the behaviour of matter.” What he could reasonably claim to have demonstrated, however, is the actual existence of what mystics call the etheric body. An L-field does not fit the physical structure like a glove; it extends for a varying distance beyond the boundaries of the form, especially around the head. This electro-magnetic aura can be observed through a solution of coal tar dyes such as dicynine. Some people can see the aura or Lfield without this optical aid. But an L-field is not immortal and thus a “soul.” If “souls” indeed exist, then they are something else—some sort of mental principle, nonmaterial and undetectable to physical experiment. But the existence of L-fields does demonstrate a possible mechanism for affecting evolution. The primitive concept of God’s fashioning animals out of clay and then breathing life into them is of course childishly naive. If there is a direct formative process at work, the L-fields are the point at which it might operate. Is there any evidence for this? There is obviously a human mental principle which has quite remarkable properties. It takes no account of time as we consciously know it; past, present and future seem to be regarded by it as a contiguous present. Its existence has been amply proved by the laboratory experiments of Rhine, Vasiliey and many others. Psychics such as Hurkos and prophets like Nostradamus illustrate it in action. This mental principle has no known wavelength and is non-electromagnetic because it passes readily into the interior of a Faraday cage and out again. No one has ever isolated or quantified the phenomenon; nor do we know its laws. Could a powerful application of this principle mold or modify the L-fields of organisms? When Uri Geller, the Israeli psychic, was tested by the Stanford Research Institute in the early 1970s, there were some interesting results bearing on the above. A 1 gram weight was placed on an electrical scale, and the apparatus covered with an aluminium can followed by a glass cover. After the machine had been extensively tested with vibrations, static electricity and magnetism, and the results recorded, Geller tried to deflect the scale mentally. He succeeded to the extent of producing a 1,500 mg. weight decrease, and later, a 800 mg. weight increase. More significantly, however, in another experiment, he influenced a magnetometer to a reading of .3 of a gauss—an appreciable magnetic effect comparable to the earth’s field. If these effects are genuine—and the Stanford Institute offers no counterhypothesis—then our mysterious mental principle has further wonders in its magical repertoire—the ability to influence mass and to vary magnetic fields. In some famous experiments with plants using a polygraph or “lie detector,” Cleve Backster showed that these organisms are highly sensitive to emotions in other life forms. This is the case even when the plant is enclosed in a Faraday cage or surrounded with a lead screen. The mental principle that enables Hurkos to solve murders and allowed Nostradamus to peer hundreds of years into the future seems to be shared in some degree by all living things. It appears to act directly on the Lfield. Professor Burr confirms that the health of the individual modifies the L-field and that electrometric correlation is possible, leading probably to better medical diagnosis in the near future. But the essential point is that something nonmaterial —a thought in the mind of the operator or the dying reactions of a small experimental animal—are translated into measurable physical effects by no known means. Perhaps we are now looking somewhat dimly at the real mechanism of evolution. To talk of a hit-or-miss stupidity of chance mutations is as ludicrous as talking about a Creator making animals of clay. A far more subtle and effective method of modifying animals exists and it can be shown to exist—the effect of mind on matter. Unlike the materialist fantasies of Huxley, the hard evidence is on the table. In the introduction to Origin of Species Darwin said that evolution as a scientific theory “would be unsatisfactory until it could be shown how the innumerable species inhabiting this world have been modified.” But the book does not show how species have been modified because no one knew. Darwin himself lost all faith in ideas of spiritual design because he couldn’t see how it could work; so he settled uneasily for a mechanistic system. It was the wrong choice. We now know—and can prove—that a mechanism for the mental (or spiritual) control over living things does indeed exist, and can be shown to exist. It is not unreasonable to suppose that it is functional and always has been functional.

Professor Burr, co-discoverer of L-fields, is clearly led to a similar belief because he says: “The universe in which we find ourselves and from which we can not be separated is a place of law and order. It is not an accident or chaos. It is organised and maintained by an electro-dynamic field capable of determining the position and movement of all charged particles. For nearly half a century the logical consequences of this theory have been subjected to rigorously controlled experimental conditions and have met with no contradictions.” Even so, many problems remain. That there has been a long procession of diverse forms in the earth’s history is clear from fossil evidence. Yet it remains a mystery why these forms came about, why some have remained unchanged while others died out. Where man himself originated is still highly conjectural despite “family trees,” no two of which are alike, illustrating anthropological works. These are usually salted with chronological scales suiting the taste of the palaeontologist. The resulting confusion is shown by some fossils discovered in the 1970’s in Ethiopia’s Omo River valley. Dr. John Napier comments: “A preliminary report by F. Clark Howell (1969) suggests that Australopithecus and Paranthropus [alleged ancestoral forms] were present in the Omo valley four million years ago. Thus in a matter of 10 years our ideas of the time scale of hominid evolution have been radically changed. In 1959 most of us would have settled for one million years as a reasonable estimate for the age of the Australopithicines. In the early 1960’s there was scientific evidence that the period extended back in time for nearly two million years and now, in 1969, it has doubled once again.” All of which smacks of the parlour game “Think of a number and double it.” If we continue the game, it leads to distinctly odd results because if we again double the latest estimate of the age of man’s alleged ape-man relatives, we get the figure of eight million years. And this is getting interestingly close to the 10½ million years that Edgar Cayce, America’s greatest mystic, gave—while in trance—as the date when man first appeared on earth. Mystics, of course, are often wrong and many are charlatans. But Cayce was unique and several books describe his paranormal insight, especially in medicine. As an inquiring layman I find the guessing of an anthropologist in no way preferable to the statements of an entranced psychic of proven ability who is using a weird faculty which spans time, penetrates a Faraday cage and effects L-fields. Man, Cayce declared, appeared in “five places at once”—i.e., there were originally five races. The same suggestion now comes from an anthropologist, Dr. S. Carleton Coon of Harvard, who suggests (1961) that man evolved from an early hominid and was transformed asynchronously, in different parts of the world, into Homo sapiens no fewer than five times. Either Dr. Coon has been studying Cayce or we have here a puckish example of synchronicity which must enliven even the bone hunter’s speculative day on occasion. Darwin, who chucked God out with the Victorian garbage, was a touch premature. If the human mind—according to how it thinks—can cause plants to cringe or flourish, can depress scales and affect magnetometers, it is not hard to figure what a Cosmic Mind could do. It could do anything at all. Admittedly this is cold comfort for the Marxists, but dogma, political, scientific or religious, leads you into such situations unfailingly. They will have to learn to be more rational in the future. Darwinian evolution is as dead as the Dodo, along with those other extinct forms Darwin tried to explain and failed. We now see that plants and animals are under electronic control. And this control appears to be subject to further control from a timeless, nonmaterial agency loosely specified as mind, will, soul or spirit. This is not a matter of faith, but of scientific experiment. Evolution by selection does occur; but the selection is rational and intelligent. Far more subtle than any human intelligence, it is therefore extremely difficult to comprehend. Yet it has many attributes humans recognise in themselves. It enjoys the grotesque and even the horrifying. It is both spendthrift and immensely economical. It labors to perfect the seemingly impossible just for fun. Above all, it has an awareness of beauty in form and structure that dazzles the mind. If we try to probe a little deeper into the mystery of being, we find ourselves in the Goblin Universe along with Alice having tea with mad hares in top hats. It is all great fun—but what does it mean? * Darwin’s Life and Letters, iii, p. 25.

Chapter Nine THE HALL OF MIRRORS

We are not talking about Rhine’s experiments in extra-sensory perception, or about naked girls copulating with a high priest on an altar. We are talking about a belief that has been discredited for the past three centuries, but which has never ceased to be accepted by a small number of men and women, that certain magical operations can produce a result in nature—as when the North Berwick witches confessed to causing the storm that almost wrecked the fleet of James VI of Scotland when he was returning from Denmark with his newly married bride. We dismiss this as pure illusion. And no practicing magician would deny that it could have been pure illusion. But, he would insist, there are forces in nature, and in the human mind, which can be called upon through certain magical disciplines, and which could cause such a storm. In fact the more I study the case of the North Berwick witches, the more I am inclined to doubt my original opinion that they were persecuted innocents. There are now plenty of convincing accounts of African rainmakers who can call up a storm through tribal ceremonies, and it strikes me as a real possibility that the North Berwick witches may have discovered how to work the same trick. Colin Wilson, The Search for Abraxes (1972)

The Goblin Universe is a hall of distorting mirrors into which we are born with yelling protest. For a long time we take conceited pleasure in admiring ourselves in some of the simpler reflections. But when we start to encounter the more grotesque mirrors, our nerve fails. We shake with terror at the thought that the monster with a four foot nose is ourselves. And how about that trick effect which enables us to see round corners and into unvisited areas? We become so nervous that the light footfall of the passing caretaker nearly sends us through the roof. Most of the scientists among us shut their eyes and stagger around like sleepwalkers pretending they are home and dry in their own disciplines. The politicians and lawyers wear specially constructed blinkers which give them the appearance of purblind donkeys. Some people weep; others just blunder through the Hall of Mirrors with their eyes rigidly fixed on the soap opera showing on their portable TV but those with a sharp ear will detect a sound. It is the chuckle of the caretaker as he polishes the mirrors. He knows there is another row at the back of the first bunch built to even stranger specifications. And behind these there are still more, beyond all descriptions. The caretaker chuckles because he knows that these mirrors conceal a palace of infinite extent and beauty, and that we, the owners, are scared to death of our own property. It really is very funny. Even the caretaker’s cat is grinning. Of course there are grave difficulties about admitting the distortion effect of the mirrors. If the legal profession, for instance, had to face the strangeness of the mirrors, it would come off its hinges. No person, say lawyers and the police, can be in two places at once. Yet a learned Victorian called Frederick Myers showed that this is not so. In a monumental study called Pantasms of the Living he proved that people can appear fully clothed and apparently perfectly normal in places where they in fact were not. Their body was in one place while something else—call it the simulacrum or astral—was somewhere else. How many prosecutors have given such a thing even a passing thought? Moreover, the simulacrum can turn up even after death as a horrified Al Capone discovered when one of the victims of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre started to haunt him in his apartment. The pundits said it was a hallucination engineered by Capone’s syphillis, but that won’t wash, because other witnesses also saw the ghoul. The Goblin Universe is a hydrogen bomb. Admit the truth about one thing and you end up facing the truth about a thousand more, and your existing system blows up. Awkward and embarrassing facts are usually ignored. But a great peculiarity about the Goblin Universe is that it will not be ignored. Poltergeists often throw objects at utter sceptics. Members of the Phantom Menagerie appear in front of bored cops who want only to scribble their daily reports and get home. UFOs swoop over cities like Washington, Rome and London to thumb their noses at bureaucrats laboring over forms in triplicate for new consignments of toilet paper. Like it or lump it, we are all in that damned Hall of Mirrors. I don’t know whether there are beings called Trooping Fairies or UFO operators, but there is—absolutely flatly, undoubtedly and definitely—something up there. Some pretty sharp minds are now scrutinizing this particular mirror. One was Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the Northwestern University astronomer who directed the very professional Center for UFO Studies. A lot of associated work has been discreetly farmed out to keen brains in universities around the world. Awhile ago I received a letter of inquiry from a Cambridge University scholar who asked for more details about the Man in Black I encountered during

the Loch Ness exorcism. He admitted, guardedly, that in the course of investigations he, too, had encountered such beings. Even Ivan T. Sanderson, the pragmatic biologist, supported the idea and in his last book, before he died. He wrote: “But now we are being forced to accept the fact—and the ‘forcing’ is coming ever more often, and from all manner of diverse angles—that there are tangible, measurable, and reproducible evidences of other ‘universes’ in contact with ours. And inhabiting these there would appear to be intelligences, ranging all the way from abyssmal idiots to godlike entities.” We badly need to measure the refractive angles of the UFO mirror and obtain a small section for analysis. Inevitably we will discover another mirror behind it with even stranger properties. We may even get a glimpse of the Men in Black in the act of donning their intimidating costumes. Do they use phantom zippers? One day legal history will be made when the prosecution argues that the accused could have committed the crime because witnesses to his alibi—that he was at the other end of the country at the time—were looking not at the man’s body but at its astral counterpart. And he might produce professors to prove it possible. No doubt the Society for Civil Liberties will go quietly mad when this news breaks, and they have my sympathy. The rest of us will end on the funny farm when we see the jargon the legalists cook up to explain this aspect of the Goblin Universe. What happens if a phantom jumps bail? The caretaker’s cat’s grin broadens. Reincarnation is quite another thing, and here is a personal story. When I was a small kid, I developed a mania for cactus plants which has never left me. It was not just any old sort of cactus, but prickly pears. Watching cowboy films, my eyes were never on the actors but on any prickly pears in the background. When I went abroad, I sought out clumps of prickly pear and studied them, eating the fruit and filling my lips with prickles. But why? As a hobby it was even more nonproductive than secret drinking. As the years went by, I dreamed on a number of occasions that I was a thoroughly nasty type with the passionless concentration of the gunfighter. To kill men efficiently you do not hate or feel—you simply do the job and do it well. This seemed to go on for some time. How Nemesis eventually arrived I know not, except that I was on my back shuffling off this mortal coil and looking straight up into a thicket of those flat, green, prickly pads under which I lay. So whenever things go badly I think on these things, and go look at my homegrown thicket of prickly pear. Occasionally I’ve thought about going back to the American Southwest to try and find the spot. That this sort of thing always goes on I don’t doubt. Just after the last war, in 1947, for example, a sinister baby was born in England. His name was Graham Young. Although his family background was completely normal, Young was far from normal. At the age of 9 he began to take an interest in small bottles, and by the time he was 11 he had begun a study of poisons. While still at Junior School he showed a fascination with Hitler and took to wearing homemade swastikas—this at a time when almost everyone in Britain was shuddering at the concentration camp films and knowing that we escaped a similar fate in 1940 only by a hair’s breadth. For a child of 11 to count Hitler as a hero was incomprehensible. Young’s other great hero, incidentally, was Dr. William Palmer, the Victorian poisoner. Young soon found his true vocation. He bought antimony, atropine and digitalis. His first victim was a small fellowpupil at Junior School who landed in the hospital with three grains of antimony inside him. Fortunately the lad survived. Frankenstein Young then turned on his own family. By the time he was 13, he was giving deadly doses to his father, sister and stepmother. Meanwhile he was building up a secret library which included such repulsive works as A Handbook of Poisonings, Poisoners in the Dock, and Sixty Famous Trials, etc. Finally his stepmother died from the lethal doses, having consumed 20 grains of antimony. At the funeral Young even managed to slip a friendly dose of antimony into a sandwich prepared for one of the mourners. Luckily the man was only very ill. While this was going on, with fiendish cunning, Young had started poisoning his sister with thallium, and his father with antimony, so there would be no symptomatic link. The police were only alerted when the school science master saw Young studying books on poisons and watched him analyzing lethal mixtures in the school lab. On arrest he was found to have three bottles of antimony in his coat, with ample further supplies hidden in an old shed. He was given 15 years’ detention in Broadmoor criminal asylum and was found to have the secondhighest I.Q. in the whole establishment. To keep in practice, Young took a stroll in the asylum gardens where he noticed some clumps of laurel, from which cyanide can be extracted. A short time later an inmate of Broadmoor died of cyanide poisoning. The authorities quickly removed the laurel bushes. Against the wishes of his own family—who had good cause to know a human monster when they saw one—Young was discharged from Broadmoor at the age of 23. Soon he was stocking up with antimony and thallium, and applying for jobs with a great show of innocence. When he finally landed the job of storeman at a photographic works, the management had no idea they were employing an ex-poisoner. It was left for the employees to discover this fact the hard way. The head storeman took ill along with a second storeman. A whole string of factory workers soon followed them. It seemed Young had adopted the endearing habit of making the midmorning coffee and wheeling it around on a trolley. A man-eating tiger loose in the plant would have been less threatening. Young liked to visit the victims in the hospital so that he could note their exact symptoms in his secret diary. Another victim died and others became violently ill and lost their hair, generally showing all the signs of acute poisoning. Obviously it was all due to a serious fault in one of the many industrial processes, so the management called in experts, who found no fault. But when the police started discreet checking of personnel, Young was arrested for the second

time. He had now killed three persons and nearly killed close to a dozen more. With that, Young’s unique career came to a close. How can someone like Young be explained? He was a fanatic over Hitler, even growing a Hitlerian moustache and endlessly playing Wagnerian records; Wagner was Hitler’s favorite composer. Young thought the Nazi death camps legal and purifying. He inhaled ether and dabbled in Black Magick. Like Hitler—who the Russian pathologists claim, after studying the body, had only one testicle—Young had an aversion to sex and women. He told the police, “I suppose I ceased to see them as people or, more correctly, a part of me had. They became guinea pigs.” But this explains nothing. Repeatedly he claimed that “voices” urged him to “clean and purify” the race by eliminating people. What sort of hideous mirror are we looking into in the Hall of Mirrors when it turns a highly intelligent young man from a decent family into something out of a horror film? Did Young, a normal eight year old youngster, become infested? Was he unlucky enough to be invaded by a mind not his own? Young was as cold as a fish and showed no emotion, but on one occasion after he had been drinking, he burst into tears before his sister and complained of being lonely. She urged him to join a social group but he shook his head. “No nothing like that can help,” he said. “You see, there’s a terrible coldness inside me.” I have heard about the coldness of demonic possession before, but as long as most medics deny the existence of the Goblin Universe they will never comprehend people like Graham Young. Murderers are common enough. Psychotics are an everyday phenomenon. But when a brilliant child ruthlessly sets out on a crime career of such a frightful and motiveless nature, it ranks—fortunately—as unique. I don’t think Young is a reincarnated Nazi; I believe he was taken over by some malign spirit fresh from the hell-pits of Buchenwald or Auschwitz when he was a young boy—and God knows there were enough discarnate people around at that time eligible for the job. But all this, of course, is mere superstitious nonsense to most psychiatrists. Jung, who walked through the Hall of Mirrors with his eyes open, might have understood. In fact, on one remarkable occasion, he spontaneously produced paranormal sounds from a bookcase in the presence of Freud, who took a dim view of what seemed to him to be a tasteless practical joke. It was no joke as Jung well knew; for this reason he always had a wider breadth of vision over such things than Freud. My friend Dr. Omand might have helped Graham Young just as he helped a Scandinavian youngster who in true vampire fashion attacked his victims and sucked their blood. One day when we are a bit wiser we will send all lawyers aspiring to be judges on an intensive course of instruction on such matters, and the state will have a select panel of exorcists on call working in liason with the regular psychiatrists.

The Hall of Mirrors, which is simply the external aspect of the Goblin Universe, holds a multitude of mysteries. One of the most astonishing of these is the way we seem to be everywhere in the Hall at the same instant. Freud declared, “There is no appeal beyond reason.” But he was wrong. Intuition is beyond reason, and many a scientific experiment has succeeded because the experimenter played a pure hunch. Synchronicity is beyond reason because events somehow seem to assemble themselves in time in advance of their occurring.* We become cross-eyed on looking into some of the mirrors and wonder if it is not all a fantastic dream. But the caretaker’s dry chuckle assures us it is not. Folklore is enjoying a revival because scientific investigators such as Dr. Lyall Watson are discovering meaningful observations buried among the myths. Take the old belief, for instance, that rodents can be got rid of by reciting satyrical verses to them. In As You Like It, Shakespeare has Rosalind say, “I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras’ time, that I was an Irish rat—which I can hardly remember.” It sounds crazy. But it is no more crazy than the monks of St. Catherine’s monastery who prayed to be relieved of fleas, flies and bugs—a request, it is said, that God has granted up to the present day. Nor is it crazier than when Lady Dowding—wife of Lord Dowding, the famous RAF chief who commanded the Battle of Britain—adjured her domestic rodents to be gone. And go they did. And when we put some firm planks into this wild structure and find experimenters affecting the L-fields of plants merely by taking thought on the matter and recording the results on a polygraph, we find, certainly not for the first time, that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Future researchers could try reciting some scathing lyrics to a cage full of rats and then check their progress against a control group. Maybe Shakespeare would end up having the last laugh and join the chuckling caretaker and his cat. In the Hall of Mirrors we see ghosts, some in period costume as well as lots in jeans and sweat-shirts. For centuries wise men have been fascinated by this set of mirrors, but none have so far figured the trick. Is the ghost less real than ourselves or—God help us—more real? Are there various categories of ghosts? And how about the ones who add insult to injury and chuck a handful of pebbles through the mirror and hit us on our person? That sort of trick beats perpetual motion, and we feel mortally affronted at not knowing how it is done. Let us therefore put forward a hypothesis. Suppose you can create some sort of L-field with your mind. And suppose this field is strong enough to attract supercharged particles. The particles are real (in our world), but unstable in their assemblage since this depends on the indeterminate mental component discussed earlier. This might account for the simulcrae of living people; if it was produced by a discarnate mind, you would have a ghost. And if you postulate the existence of more powerful—superhuman—minds in the cosmos these might well create such pseudo-organics as the Surrey “Puma,” Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. People like Dr. Alexandra David-Neel claim that not only are such constructs possible, but they have achieved them personally. On one

occasion, in Tibet, Dr. Neel mentally constructed a porter who moved about the camp like any other porter, and was taken as such by the other camp servants. But the form proved hard to dissolve or disperse, and it took all Dr. Neel’s concentration to get rid of the phantom. This could be an important clue regarding members of the Phantom Menagerie. Dr. Omand explained to me that a single exorcism ceremony was most unlikely to disperse such a long-standing phenomenon as the Loch Ness monster. Like a material object in space, these things seem to be carried along almost endlessly by their own inertia, although, of course, with phantoms it is a different sort of inertia. The L-field—or whatever it is that holds them in shape—seems to have a varying cohesion ranging from the production of a faint mist all the way to virtual solidity. Those persons who report that ghosts actually touched them are not necessarily lying or dreaming. I can affirm this after both hearing and feeling the shudder of Lionel Leslie’s bedstead when the long-dead Irishman pounded it with his fist. To comprehend the Goblin Universe, we need a modified science of physics. In its major aspects it is unlikely to contradict the existing schema, but will vastly extend and supplement it. This is the exciting and challenging territory that scientists will traverse in the future. Many have already embarked on the journey—especially in France, America, Russia and Britain. In the end there is going to be a great meeting of minds—a grand consensus. “Why” questions are much harder to answer than “how” questions. Scientists seldom express an opinion over the former, and leave them to philosophers and the theologians. Yet every individual short of a moron wonders about the “why” because we feel the need to justify the fact of our being alive. After pondering the why question of monsters like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness beast for over three decades, I am no nearer a completely satisfactory solution. The answer, I suspect, as Dr. Napier thinks, is probably quite illogical in terms of our present reasoning. But lightning was also illogical when folk believed the effect was produced by gods in the atmosphere, for why was such activity usually restricted to hot summer weather? A scientific explanation for the Phantom Menagerie will one day come. Both the Smithsonian Institute and the British Museum know that such phenomena occur. But since there is not the slightest evidence that the things are organic, these august organisations wisely wait to see if a really concrete line of inquiry opens up. I am becoming more and more convinced that the physical aspect of monsters, ghosts, flying saucers and many other unexplained phenomena lies in the behaviour of electromagnetic fields. Loch Ness, for instance, was formed by the filling with water of a great volcanic fissure in remote ages; almost certainly a magnetic anomaly exists along the fault line of the Great Glen, and it may be amplified by the oscillation or seiche effect studied by Dr. C. H. Mortimer and others at Loch Ness. Considerable energy potentials are involved, and these may lend themselves to the production of such phenomena as the Loch Ness monster. Even such areas of sinister interest as the so-called Bermuda Triangle offer themselves to the theory. The last landmark seen on the surface of the earth by the astronauts in Apollo 12 was the strange “white water” of the Bahama Banks. They observed wide swaths of highly-refractive material which were luminous and surrounded by a sort of halo suggestive of a magnetic field. The Bahamas form the southwestern side of the Bermuda Triangle, the weird area where ships and aircraft have mysteriously disappeared. If there is an intense geomagnetic anomaly south of Bermuda—whether produced by hot ocean currents as Ivan Sanderson suggested, or by a secondary gravitational field as Dr. John Carstoiu suggested—this may supply the particular type of energy for the abnormal effects reported. But this leaves unanswered the basic question of what or who is producing the effects. Here we are in grave danger of joining the cavemen in attributing what may be a natural phenomenon to action by the gods. In a sense, everything that occurs is “natural” in that it manifests in the phenomenal universe. For that reason, terms like supernatural and paranormal merely beg the question. Because we don’t know the laws applying to these kinds of phenomena, we give them a funny label; yet they must be as much a part of the world as breathing, swimming or visiting your Aunt Agatha. Basically, we know two distinct sorts of phenomena. One is measurable and real whether it be an atom, an electrical field or a “phantom” particle like a neutrino. The other sort is Mind. This seems to be the master of the former in that it uses it as a tool in order to manifest. No one knows what Mind is. Some thinkers suggest that it could be a ray or assemblage of massless particles travelling faster than light. But this idea strikes me as facile. Subatomic particles are not objects like tiny bullets; but the temptation to think that this is what they are is as seductive as the wriggles of a belly dancer. There is probably only one sort of phenomenon—mind—and all other sorts are produced by it and for it. And the effects of Mind, as people like Rhine, Vasiliev, Geller and Backster have demonstrated, can be measured in repeatable experiments. Although invisible, and apparently nonphysical, it is as actual as Mount Everest. What we seem to be wrestling with at this point is the question of how many and which Minds are operating in the environment of the earth. Since Mind can only be detected by the effects it produces, we are forced to look again at the phenomena under discussion. The most powerful mind we know is the human mind. It is my conviction that no human mind or minds could possibly construct and sustain over many generations the gargoyle masquerading as Bigfoot, or the frightening monstrosity know as the Loch Ness monster. It is clear, I think, that some other Mind or minds are at work. Since, by definition, these are not human, the question of motive is impossible even to guess. Only painstaking observation of the effects recorded on a computerized basis over a long period is likely to provide the answer. This is already being attempted in the case of

UFOs. I urged this methodology for the Loch Ness monster, and helped Dr. Peter Baker to sift some of the 300 or so documented “hard” sightings. Lack of money prevented further research in this direction.

The question of Mind is the key to all these mysteries. One response to the problem, of course, is religion. One of the few important things known about the universe at large is that it is unified and governed, certainly in its grosser aspects, by the same physical laws. The monotheistic religions therefore have at least a fundamental base for their acceptance of one supreme God. This notion neatly fits the concept of a universal master field which balances and drives myriads of lesser fields, many of which, as we find on earth, are electromagnetic in nature. Of the four great world religions: Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Judaism and Christianity, the first three have never shackled themselves to the belief in a humanized God encased in a mass of unproven dogma. We know nothing of Jesus the Christ except by anonymous hearsay. We know even less about William Shakespeare, who has been dead only a few centuries, and still have not the slightest idea of where he worked and how he worked. Yet a Christian ethos exists just as Hamlet exists, and we must make of it what we will. The Jews had the best approach when they built the magnificent Temple in Jerusalem which had a place for God in the Inner Sanctuary. But when the Romans smashed their way into this Holy of Holies, they were nonplussed to discover only a small empty room. This seems to me extremely neat and apt. You cannot see Mind, not even a human mind. As good a way as any of exemplifying a super Mind or universal field would be to exhibit as empty space. Attempts to attribute Mind to subatomic particles of various weird sorts have so far failed. Professor John Taylor of King’s College, London, who gave Uri Geller a stringent testing in Britain, concludes that the component causing the Geller effects is probably nonionizing electromagnetic radiation. This may well be so. But it tells us nothing about what mind is or how the Russians have reportedly achieved similar results between hypnotist and subject when the latter was in a lead screened room close by or a thousand miles away. Although Uri Geller may bend small objects by means of magnetic radiation, this certainly cannot explain how he can determine the subject of drawings he has never seen. Our ideas about causality are wildly at fault. Somehow the universal Mind orders events so that there is no paradox, time itself being a function of Mind. One cubic metre of space/time contains more tricks than a box of monkeys, and at present only a few of them are imperfectly understood. It is quite reasonable to ask why some of these Higher Minds in the cosmos—if they exist—do not manifest themselves to us. Dr. Andrija Puharich claims, along with Uri Geller, to have been in contact with such Minds in specific, intimate conversations. Of course many people have made such claims. But never before have witnesses returned from such contacts exhibiting apparently miraculous powers before stunned physicists in their own laboratories; nor has one of them ever before been a distinguished scientist himself with an established reputation in his own field and everything to lose by fraud or bad publicity. Moreover, there are other cases which should be treated seriously such as the Spanish UMMO affair in which, as I understand it, a spacecraft landed and left behind certain documents. Various people were advised about this by mail; I was one of them. Because I don’t read Spanish, I sent the communication to Mr. Gordon Creighton ofFlying Saucer Review whose expert translations of the UMMO papers reveal a complex and interesting series of concepts. The UMMO documents—no matter who wrote them—illustrate the difficulties scientists face as they struggle to come to terms with the new type of thinking that exploded into the world with the relativity physicists. Herbert Dingle, Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at London University, studied relativity for half a century, but condemned it as false because it failed to meet the criterion of common sense and reality—that two clocks travelling in space can both seem faster than each other. The UMMO documents say, “We deny the EARTH principle of the third excluded term (the excluded middle, enunciated by Aristotle) according to which propositions can only be TRUE or FALSE.” They also say, “the whole ontology of terrestrial thinkers is saturated with expressions like TO BE, I AM NOT, I EXIST, without any option for other forms of different content.” The writer then says flatly, “Unless you yourselves clarify your forms of informative communication the process of seeking the truth will be very laborious and slow.” All this grasping after ghosts, studying the possible formation of monsters and so forth, therefore, has a profound content. Many of the events we have examined seem stupid, even puerile; but we should never forget that some of the most important discoveries started off as little more than parlor tricks. Although the early experiments of Daguerre and others went almost unnoticed, they led to the astonishing developments of modern physics and astronomy. A boy’s interest in the unexplained movements of a kettle lid led directly to the first effective mechanical power and the Industrial Revolution. The list could be extended almost endlessly. There is a mighty undercurrent behind the household apparition and the much joked about “Nessie” of picture postcards; so mighty it will one day sweep away a whole garbage bin of faulty ideas we still hold dear.

Meantime, the caretaker who looks after the Hall of Mirrors whistles soundlessly as he polishes and adjusts the

surfaces. No one ever becomes bored coming in here, because the mirrors are changed secretly from an endless stock of variations in the basement. From time to time we pause in amazement and frustration. “What on earth is the point of this fantastic project?” We ask each other. Well, it is certainly educational. The physicist who detects a certain particle vanishing at A only for it to mysteriously reappear at C spends 20 years trying to figure how it is done, and is a wiser man in consequence. When we reach out to detain a ghost only to stub our fingers on a brick wall, the realization penetrates our thick skulls that there are other dimensions of being than those we inhabit. When a poltergeist narrowly misses us with a stone, we rush the thing away to study it only to find that it came from a local quarry. But much worse is to come. A man who died years ago is seen strolling through the Hall and glancing at the mirrors as if he had seen some of them before. One woman looks into a dreadful mirror and sees her house going up in flames. Rushing home, she finds the curtains just starting to smolder from a defective appliance. In the end we can stand no more of it. One by one we force our way behind the mirrors into the darkness to discover what makes the damned things work. But many of those left in the Hall have a queasy feeling that, given a little time, the departed ones will, strangely, be seen reentering and looking with no surprise at mirrors they recognize. The caretaker chuckles at all this coming and going. And when visitors burst their way, often painfully, to the back of the mirrors, he chortles openly, knowing that at the back another set of mirrors projects multidimensional images. Some visitors sit entranced for several centuries staring at a single mirror, still thinking it is yesterday. It is part of the caretaker’s job to lead these people kindly to a small adjacent hospital where they may, after a time, try the process again, this time a little more wisely. Down the length of the Hall we get the impression that the caretaker’s face is somehow familiar, and a name floats to mind. Surely it is not Albert Einstein? A few—a very few—people do not walk through the Hall at all, but sit in the middle in meditation. Already they have discovered that all parts of the building are visible from any given point and it is a waste of energy to walk around them. Several can see the second and third rows of mirrors without too much effort. But one or two of the real masters can see everything, and they know how the Goblin Universe really functions. The caretaker sweeps round the feet of these high personages with much respect and ceases to chuckle. But his cat is still grinning, because the fresh hordes of newcomers on their first tour of the Hall are a wonder to behold, enthralled and perplexed as they are by even the most elementary of the mirrors. *When Jung and Pauli collaborated over the idea of synchronicity it was to suggest that the principle of causality is of relative, not of absolute significance—that occurrences that coincide in time are linked by some sort of interdependence. The ancient Chinese embodied this concept in a system of thinking called The Emerald Table’.

Appendix A Scientific Controversy Regarding Monsters The question of whether members of the Phantom Menagerie are organic animals or not represents one of the greatest unresolved mysteries of our time. The writer believes they are not, but various people including Dr. Robert Rines of the Mass. Academy of Applied Science, Professor R.P. Mackal of Chicago University, Tim Dinsdale and my longstanding friends at Loch Ness, Wing Commander and Mrs. Cary, lean towards unknown organic animals as an explanation. But no major museum or Institution, including the Smithsonian and the British Museum of Natural History, have been willing to support this idea. This is because no tangible evidence whatsoever relating to acquatic monsters, Yeti, Sasquatch, Bigfoot or the Surrey “Puma” has ever stood up to critical analysis. The Phantom Menagerie hides behind alleged footprints, blurry photographs, objects detected by sonar echoes and the testimony of eye-witnesses. Ecologically they make very little sense, although not all scientists agree about this. The pro-animal case as argued by Drs. R. W. Sheldon and S. R. Kerr in a paper published inLimnology and Oceanography (Vol. 17, No. 5, Sept. 1972) which runs thus:

The Population Density of Monsters in Loch Ness

It is well known that there are monsters in Loch Ness. Their most characteristic features are that they are rarely seen and never caught, but there are records of sightings extending back many centuries. The fact that they are rarely seen suggests that the population is small. It is known from direct observation that the animals themselves are large, and it follows from this that the population must be small. It can be demonstrated quite easily from trophic dynamic considerations that many large animals could not exist in Loch Ness; but a few could. It has been suggested from time to time that because the monsters are never caught, it must therefore follow that they do not exist. This is both irresponsible and illogical. Many accounts have been written of Loch Ness and its monsters (e.g. Holiday, 1968) but very few quantitative observations have been made. We know nothing of their distribution. The population structure of the monster community is also unknown to us. As they are rarely seen and never caught, (characteristic features) it is particularly difficult to study their population dynamics. However, it is our purpose to show that it is possible to estimate the number of monsters that can exist in Loch Ness. The production rate of oceanic organisms is size dependent, but in ecologically stable areas the standing stock is constant at all sizes (Sheldon et al. 1972). It is not unreasonable to assume that similar relationships exist in large bodies of freshwater. If this is so, then the standing stock of monsters, taken over logarithmic size intervals, should be similar to that of other organisms (e.g. fish or plankton). We have not been able to find any information on the standing stocks of Loch Ness, but an estimate of the fish stock can be made if the probable yield is known. A deep oligotrophic lake such as Loch Ness should give an annual yield of rather less than 1 kg-1. This estimate can be refined by calculations based on Ryder’s (1964, 1965) morphoedaphic index (total dissolved solids/mean depth). Again, we could not find data from Loch Ness and have used a value for total dissolved solids for the northern part of Loch Lomond (Darling and Boyd, 1969). The estimate of mean depth was taken from Hutchinson (1957). By using this information in Ryder’s (1964) equation we calculate that Loch Ness should give an average fish yield of 0.55 kg ha-1 yr-1. The ratio of biomass to production of a fish producing system will range from about 1 to 5, so that the standing stock of fish in Loch Ness should lie in the range from 0.55 to 2.75 kg ha-1. The concentration of monsters should be similar. The area of Loch Ness is about 5,700 ha. The total mass of monsters in the loch is therefore in the range 3,135 to 15,675 kg. InFig. 1 we show the number of monsters the loch could support relative to individual size. The minimum average size is taken arbitrarily as 100 kg; anything smaller is not suitably monstrous. The number of monsters in the loch could vary from 1 to 156 depending on the standing stock and average size. The largest number would occur in the situation where high standing stock and small average monster size coincide; however, we believe that such a situation is unlikely. The smallest number must be more than two if the species is to be maintained. Monsters have been seen in the loch for hundreds of years so that there must be a breeding population. The alternative possibility, a single monster of great age, is unlikely, and inter alia is not in keeping with the wide range of size estimates reported in the literature. A viable population could be quite small but probably would not be less than 10. This constraint is indicated by the vertical line in Fig. 1. All the combinations of individual monster weight and population shown by Fig. 1 are theoretically possible, but we would only consider those to the right of the vertical line to be realistic.

Fig. 1. The probable number of monsters in loch Ness. Upper curve: at a standing stock of 2.75 kg ha-1; lower curve: at a standing stock of 0.55 kg ha-1. The vertical line indicates the suggested minimum population size.

We will now attempt to show that some of the individual monster weight and population combinations are more probable than others. Much of our reasoning is based on observational evidence. The trophic position of the monster is probably that of terminal predators feeding on fish (Holiday, 1968). The growth efficiency of many aquatic predators is around 10%. If the monsters are similarly efficient and if a major part of the fish production is used 1 by them, then their production must be of the order of 300 kg yr-or more. The average number of deaths per year is determined in a stable population by the ratio of production to mean size. On this basis monsters weighing 100 kg would have to die at a minimum rate of about 3 per year. Larger monsters would die less frequently. Two lines of evidence support the view that monsters do not die frequently and must therefore be large. Firstly, corpses are never found. Secondly, a relatively large number of juveniles must exist if adult mortality is high, but although small monsters have been seen from time to time they are not common. It seems therefore that Loch Ness must contain a small number of large monsters. These could weigh as much as 1,500 kg monster could be about 8 m long, a size that agrees well with observational data. We are aware that in these calculations we have not taken migratory fish into consideration. These will increase the effective standing stock of the loch and this could result in their being either more or larger monsters than we have shown. However, Sheldon et al. (1972) suggest that standing stocks are not absolutely constant. There is probably some decrease at the higher trophic levels which could result in there being either fewer or smaller monsters than we have shown. These two factors are antipathetic, and although we do not know the relative magnitudes, they are both likely to be of the order of a factor of two. They will tend to cancel each other and it is not improbable therefore that the population density that we have described for the monsters in Loch Ness is near to the true value. It is not unknown for sightings of monsters, both in Loch Ness and elsewhere, to go unrecorded (Heuvelmans, 1968; Holiday, 1968). Fear of ridicule is the main reason why many observers do not make their observations known to science. But it is the skeptics who are at fault. Monster observers should be encouraged. The occurrence of monsters is quite reasonable and is by no means fantastic. We would like to thank Kate Kranck for drawing our attention to this problem, because until she mentioned it we were unaware that monsters were a problem. R. W. Sheldon S. R. Kerr Fisheries Research Board of Canada, Marine Ecology Laboratory, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Limnologists with actual experience at Loch Ness didn’t accept this explanation for monster phenomenon, however. One of these was Dr. C. H. Mortimer who conducted experiments in Loch Ness in 1953 on behalf of the Royal Society relating to temperature zones in the loch. Dr. Mortimer’s reply to the above paper runs as follows:

The Loch Ness Monster—Limnology or Paralimnology?

Now that the discussion of the Loch Ness monster, fact or myth, has been elevated to the learned columns of this journal (Sheldon and Kerr, 1972; Scheider and Wallis, 1973), I hope limnologists will feel less inhibited professionally in debating, at least in a semi-serious vein, whether the monster belongs to their science or to parascience. As a declared sceptic, I welcome demonstration by Sheldon and Kerr of a possibility as a contribution to that debate, but feel they do their case a disservice by drawing conclusions from weakly-based assertions. Using N for “Nessie”—a name beloved of the news media when solid news is sparse—the following table, with key words underlined, summarises the argument.

Assertions.

Conclusions.

N “rarely seen” but by “direct observation” known to be large. N therefore small in number. Because “corpses are never found” and “small monsters are Loch Ness must contain a small number of large N. not common”. “Observational data”

“Agree(s) well” with an N length of 8 m.

N has been “seen in the loch for hundreds of years”.

There must be a breeding population.

N is “never caught”. But to

suggest that N does not exist is “irresponsible and illogical”.

Skeptics are “at fault”.

N-observers “should be encouraged”.

A fish-eating economy does appear to be the only possible one for N in the impoverished, dark, peaty waters of Loch Ness. The logical approach, which perhaps the authors intended, would start with: “Let us assume that what has been seen is N, and then calculate whether N-existence is possible on nutritional grounds” (and on energetic grounds relating to chase and capture—although migrating salmon pass through the Loch for part of the year, no salmon-chasing commotions have been reported, as far as I know). But this still leaves the principal question—what has been “seen” and “observed”?—unanswered. A professional view on the subject is that of Burton (1961). Formerly a zoologist in the British Museum, Burton was later the science correspondent ofLondon Illustrated News. He gives a number of possible explanations—some of them more plausible than others—for what has been seen, but concludes that “there seems to be no evidence at all for the existence in Loch Ness of plesiosaurs or any other prehistoric monster” (Burton, 1961, p. 172). If Sheldon and Kerr’s arguments are sound they apply with equal force to other large lakes with relatively stable biotic compositions and fish faunas. Why in all these lakes, and in Loch Ness for that matter, has no tooth or scale, no bone or skin, no tangible trace come to light over the centuries? There are “monsters” in the deep oceans, but proof of their existence is based, not on an unsupported assertion, but on tangible zoological evidence. For even the Leviathan is sometimes stranded; and tentacles of giant squid occasionally surface as evidence of mortal battles with sperm whales. There remain many mysteries in the ocean, but they are based on real clues, on tangible specimens or artifacts: for example, Schmidt’s giant Leptocephalus in the Copenhagen Museum. In Loch Ness, one of the most closely observed water bodies in the world, we have none of these things. Monster-watching is now organised with almost military thoroughness (with cameras, sonar sets, and submarines); the loch is on the route of thousands of press-conditioned tourists; it is also part of the Caledonian canal system; fishing boats, small naval vessels, and pleasure craft pass through constantly. Apart from two bays, it is nowhere wider than 2 miles. And yet, to the true believer (professional or lay), the anticipated probability of finding something does not appear to decrease with the negative results of each passing year of organised observation. There always remains some residual unexplained point or observation to sustain the faith. Is there an analogy here with ESP? I enjoy the fun, but must relegate it for the time being to parascience. At this point in the argument, stuffy zoologists who voice the kind of pompous biases I have expressed are confronted with the miracle of the coelacanth. But the important point about the coelacanth is that the hunt began after Miss Courtnay-Latimer had seen an unusual specimen and had shown it to a qualified ichthyologist. No such specimen or even part of one do we have from Loch Ness. In the complete absence, over centuries, of tangible zoological evidence, we are left with some poorly focussed unscaled photographs, verbal accounts of observers given in good faith, and some unexplained sonar echoes (obtained by highly competent teams, e.g. Braithwaite, 1968). On the latter point I would remark that, with its steep rocky sides, Loch Ness is a reverberant basin; I know from personal experience that lateral echoes are easy to pick up on the side-lobes of an echosounder’s beam. That is the most likely explanation of press pictures of N obtained from fishing boat echo-sounders (e.g. Daily Herald, London, 7 December 1954), but does not explain Braithwaite’s (and other? Time, 20 November 1972) observations. For those, a possibility worth looking into depends on the acoustic-reflective properties of internal waves or regions of shear instability, in particular the steep-fronted internal surges, associated in Loch Ness with short internal waves and described by Thorp et al. (1972). It is well known that internal density gradients in water (e.g. thermoclines) can be picked up on echo-sounders (Hollan 1966); and the steep and corrugated “fronts” of the Loch Ness surge is a possible, although somewhat far-fetched, explanation of the anomalous echoes. If the even less likely explanation—existence of N— turns out to be the correct one, here is one skeptic who will be delighted to be confounded. But some fun would go out of life if the myth of fourteen centuries (from St. Columba to Time) were finally laid to rest.

C. H. Mortimer Center for Great lakes Studies, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Dr. Mortimer’s paper shows that some experienced limnologists have been forced to consider ESP and the paranormal as almost the only remaining explanation for Loch Ness monster phenomena much in the same way that Professor John Napier was driven to coin the term “Goblin Universe” to explain the Yeti and Sasquatch. Biologists reject the existence of small static populations of unknown animals partly because of an effect known as gene-deterioration. How this operates in practice was shown by an experience of the U. S. government, which built up a herd of reindeer on one of the Pribilof islands off Alaska to serve as a food supply to the local inhabitants. In 1911, twenty-one does and four bucks were established on the island, and by 1938 these had increased to well over 2000 deer. Through a lack of fresh blood, gene-deterioration then set in and by 1950 only eight reindeer remained. The idea that a few monsters live for many centuries in some remote forest or isolated lake is therefore biologically unlikely in the light of what is known about living things. The situation now amounts to this: the paranormal has been forced upon the attention of several science disciplines. It was forced on the physicists rather dramatically through the demonstrations of “mind over matter” by the Russian women Alla

Vinogradova and Nelya Kulagina as well as by Uri Geller. It is now being forced on limnologists and zoologists who are being confronted by phenomena outside their existing conceptual framework. In a recent letter to the writer, Dr. R. W. Sheldon commented: “If, as you suggest, the basis of some of the water monster legends is either extra-terrestrial or, more probably, psychological, then, as an ecologist, I have to make my bow and leave the stage to others more competent to investigate such phenomena.” I disagree with this conclusion. The Geller—Vinogradova phenomena does not automatically make the quantum theory obsolete; nor does a phantom monster negate what we know about living animals and their environment. Indeed, knowledge about the paranormal is likely to enrich our understanding of living things and how they function; it certainly cannot detract from it. Thus the best people to study the effects are the existing experts even though they may well have to extend their terms of reference to areas that may seem disturbing and alien. [The following paper is Sheldon and Kerr’s response to Dr. Mortimer’s reply to their original article.]

The Loch Ness Monster: Reply to comments of C. H. Mortimer

There is no reason why science cannot be both a serious occupation and also fun to do. The note on the Loch Ness monster was written for fun. We enjoyed writing it and we hope that people enjoyed reading it. But it was never intended to be, nor is it, science fiction. Within the limitations we stated, our reasoning was serious and moderately rigorous. The primary value of the contribution by Scheider and Wallis (1973), in our view, is that it nicely underscores the point that a real question may be lurking somewhere in the dark, peaty waters of current ecological theory. We do not know, of course, whether there are monsters in Loch Ness; but we do suspect that fairly large organisms could exist in large bodies of freshwater if the food chain behaves itself. We consider it probable that if the foods webs of oligotrophic lakes and oligotrophic oceans are similar and if the standing stock of fish is roughly what we assumed it to be then there exists in Loch Ness (and other large bodies of freshwater) the potential for several thousand kilograms of living tissue to exist in relatively large lumps. It would seem to follow from this that even if someone could achieve the philosophically difficult task of proving that such large lumps do not exist in any form in Loch Ness, the apparently valid question of an unrealized potential would still remain to be explained. When things are looked at from this viewpoint the negative arguments based on the “no tooth, no scale” approach or those based on assumptions concerning the nature of the beast, plesiosaur or otherwise, become irrelevant. As we state in the paper we do not consider the reasoning that because monsters are never caught they do not exist to be valid. The following story is not a parallel to the Loch Ness situation because it deals with things that were known, but it is instructive. There are many anglers in Britain and during the summer it is rare to find any body of water without fishermen (or fisherwomen). As one might expect most of the record catches (in terms of large individuals) are of fairly long standing. Big fish are still caught, but they are no bigger than those caught in the past, with one notable exception. Until the early 1950s a big carp (Cyprinus carpio) was 10 1b and the record was 24½. To a gentleman named Richard Walker this did not seem reasonable. There were large carp in Europe and they ought to grow bigger in Britain. He set out to catch a big one and did so. The fish he caught was a monster of 44 lb. She is (or was) in the London Zoo and in the late 1950s was well over 50 lb and in the pink of condition. Catching large carp is still an occupation for the dedicated few but 20 and 30 lb monsters are now considered to be fairly normal. Where had these big fish been before 1950? There have been carp in Britain for several hundred years and for at least the last 100 years innumerable baits with concealed hooks have been cast hopefully into British lakes. These fish were not caught because no one went about it the right way. Before 1950 these monsters were rarely seen and never caught. They lived in well-fished and closely observed bodies of water. Therefore they did not exist?

In conclusion we would like to draw attention to a fact that has recently been pointed out to us. Apparently, the trophic structure of tundra and alpine ecosystems is similar to that of the ocean. Now the tundra is an inhospitable place and it is best left to the musk-ox and other small animals, but the alpine system could be interesting. If we could find data for the standing stock of any trophic level in the Himalayan region we could estimate the population density of the Abominable Snowman. R. W. Sheldon S. R. Kerr Marine Ecology Laboratory Bedford Institute Dartmouth, Nova Scotia REFERENCE SCHEIDER, W., AND P. WALLIS. 1973. An alternate method of calculating the population density of monsters in Loch Ness. Limnol. Oceanogr. 18: 343. Submitted: 26 December 1972 Accepted: 12 January 1973

Appendix B The Loch Ness Exorcism Exorcism is not merely a recital of words uttered by some well-meaning person. The words act as a focus for the will and personality of the exorcist who must be totally dedicated to what he is attempting. Without this single-minded concentration the exorcism will have as little effect as if the exorcist had read out some of the lyrics from a Sinatra record. Dr. Lyall Watson puts it this way: “Our future lies in the mind and in our understanding of it, but the intricate rituals and ceremonies that once surrounded occult practices associated with the powers of the mind may surprise us and turn out to have direct effects of their own. Matter, mind and magic are all one in the cosmos.” The Loch Ness exorcism convinced me, an agnostic, that forces and apparent personalities exist for which science has no name. Neither imagination nor hallucination can wholly explain what I saw and heard, and I have no desire to repeat the experiment. Without stringent precautions and exceptional personal character, exorcism can lead to psychosomatic illness or even to the madhouse. The form of words used by the Rev. Dr. Donald Omand is given below.

The Order of Services Employed in the Exorcism of Loch Ness

1. The Exorcising of Salt and Water. First the Salt. “I exorcise thee, O Creature of Salt, by the living God, by the true God, by the Holy God, by that God who by the prophet Eliseus commanded thee to be cast into the water to cure its barrenness: that thou mayest by this exorcism be made beneficial to the faithful, and become to all those who make use of thee healthful both to soul and body: and that in whatsoever place thou shalt be sprinkled, all illusions and wickedness and crafty wiles of Satan may be chased away and depart from that place; and every unclean spirit commanded in His name, who is to come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire.”

Next the Water. “I exorcise thee, O Creature of Water, in the name of God the Father Almighty, and in the name of Jesus Christ His son our Lord and in the virtue of the Holy Ghost, that thou mayest by this exorcism have power to chase away all the strength of the enemy; that thou mayest be enabled to cast him out, and put him to flight with all his apostate angels, by the virtue of the same Jesus Christ our Lord who is to come to judge the living and the dead by fire.” (Now the priest casts the salt into the water in the form of a cross, declaring: “Let this mixture of salt and water be made in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”)

Lastly the final prayer, intended to be offered up by the whole church: “Regard with a favourable countenance this creature of salt and water, enlighten it with Thy bounty, sanctify it with the dew of Thy Fatherly Goodness, that wheresoever it is sprinkled, all infestations of the unclean spirit may depart and all fear of the venomous serpent may be chased away, through the invocation of Thy holy name.” (The sprinkling of Holy water on all participating.)

2.

Preliminary Exorcism. “God, the son of God, who by death destroyeth death, and overcame Him who had the power of death, Beat down Satan quickly. Grant that by the power entrusted to Thy unworthy servant, this Highland loch and the land adjoining it, may be delivered from all evil spirits; all vain imaginations, projections and fantasms; and all deceits of the evil one. O Lord, subject them to Thy servant’s commands that, at his bidding, they will harm neither man nor beast, but depart to the place appointed them, there to remain forever.”

(Holy water to be sprinkled on the loch three times)

3.

A Binding of All Evil (To be invoked at each outlet or other junction of the loch) “O God, who didst create this and all waterways and every handiwork of nature, we do bind the ancient dragon in Thy name, that he will anticipate our final condemnation and in the interim he will harm no one and will not cross the border or outlet at any point. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”

(Sprinkling of Holy water)

4.

A Prayer Based on Part of the Mozarabic Rite. “O God, the author of blessing and Fount of Salvation, we earnestly pray and beseech you to pour the manifold dew of your grace and the abundance of your blessing upon this loch and the land encircling it. Amen. May you grant them prosperity and drive out adversity. Amen. May you drive out Satan, the author of evil. Amen. May you place therein the Angel of Light, the guard and defender of good. Amen. By the multitude of your mercies may peace abound for those who sail upon these waters and all who dwell upon the adjacent shores. Amen. May the evils of devil worship and nefarious magic cease and only powers and practices agreeable to our Lord Jesus Christ be continued hereabouts. Amen. So may there always be present here, O Lord, those of your gifts which are profitable to all. Amen. Send, O Lord, to this loch your good and holy angel. Amen. As watchman, sentinel and guard. Amen. To resist evil things and provide good things. Amen. So that all disquiet and disaster may be banished from this loch. May your presence always keep far from here, need, pestilence, sickness and the attacks of the evil ones. Amen. So that where your Holy Name is invoked, abundant good may follow and the evil influence of the dragon be overcome and your protection and the help of the Saints take its place.” (The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father etc.)

Final Exorcism, Pronounced at the Heart of the Loch

“O Lord, Holy Father Almighty, Everlasting God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has condemned to everlasting punishment that tyrant and apostate who was cast out of Heaven, and who has sent Thine only-begotten son into this world to destroy his works, hear our prayer, and come with speed to deliver us. Strike terror, O Lord, into the wild beast rooting up Thy vine. Give Thy servants faith to fight manfully against the wicked serpent, lest he despise those who put their trust in Thee, and lest he say, like Pharaoh “I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.” May the right hand of Thy power constrain him to cease all evil machinations in this loch, that he may no longer presume to hold captive the souls which Thou hast graciously created in Thine image and redeemed in Thy most holy son. I adjure thee, thou ancient serpent, by the judge of the quick and the dead, by Him who made thee and the world, that thou cloak thyself no more in manifestations of prehistoric demons, which henceforth shall bring no sorrow to the children of men. Begone, thou hideous demon, unto the place appointed thee and return no more to plague the servants of Almighty God.”

(General spraying of Holy water)

Bibliography

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