Poltergeist: A Classic Study in Destructive Haunting (6 page)

“Psychokinesis” means, of course, “mind over matter.” And it has been widely accepted by investigators since the mid-1930s, when Dr.
J.
B.
Rhine, of Duke University, conducted a series of experiments with a gambler who claimed that he could influence the fall of the dice by concentrating on them.
Rhine’s experiments showed that the gambler was correct; he could, to some extent, influence the dice to make it turn up sixes.
Since then, there have been thousands of similar experiments, and the evidence for PK is regarded as overwhelming.

Yet it has to be admitted that even its “star performers”—Nina Kulagina, Felicia Parise, Ingo Swann, Uri Geller—cannot make objects fly around the room as poltergeists seem to be able to.
The Russian Kulagina first came to the attention of scientists when she was in hospital after a nervous breakdown; her doctors were fascinated to see that she could reach into her sewing basket and take out any color of thread she wanted without looking at it.
They tested her and found that she could, beyond all doubt, “see” colors with her fingertips.
Her healing powers were also remarkable—for example, she could make wounds heal up in a very short time simply by holding her hand above them.
But it was when they tested her for PK that they discovered her outstanding abilities.
She could sit at a table, stare at a small object—like a matchbox or a wineglass—and make it move without touching it.
She told investigators that when her concentration “worked,” she felt a sharp pain in her spine, and her eyesight blurred.
Her blood pressure would rise abruptly.

But then, Nina Kulagina’s most spectacular feat was to make an apple fall off a table.
Ingo Swann, an American, is able to deflect compass needles by PK; Felicia Parise, who was inspired to try “mind over matter” after seeing a film about Kulagina, can move small objects like matchsticks and pieces of paper.
Uri Geller, the world’s best-known “psychic,” can bend spoons by gently rubbing them with his finger, and snap metal rings by simply holding his hand above them.

Now Geller has, in fact, produced certain “poltergeist effects.” In 1976, I spent some time with Geller in Barcelona, interviewing him for a book I subsequently wrote about him.
A number of objects fell out of the air when I was with him, and these seemed to be typical examples of “teleportation.” Another friend, Jesse Lasky, has described to me how, when Uri was having dinner at their flat, there was a pinging noise like a bullet, and a silver button flew across the kitchen; it had come out of the bedroom drawer of Jesse’s wife, Pat: Geller was standing by the refrigerator with a bottle of milk in one hand and a tin of Coca-Cola in the other when it happened.
Another odd feature of this incident is that the button—if it came from the bedroom drawer—must have somehow traveled through three walls to reach the kitchen.
“Interpenetration of matter” is another curious feature in many poltergeist cases.

But then, Geller was not trying to make this happen.
As I discovered when getting to know him, odd events seem to happen when he is around.
On the morning I went to meet him, at an office in the West End of London, he asked me, “Do you have any connection with Spain?” I said that I didn’t.
A moment before I walked into the office, a Spanish coin had risen out of the ashtray on the desk, and floated across to the other side of the room, where Geller and a public relations officer were standing.
I subsequently came to know the PRO well enough to accept her word that this really took place.
When Geller left the Lasky’s flat in central London, he buzzed them from the intercom at the front door and explained with embarrassment that he had damaged the door.
A wrought-iron dragon which decorated the center of the door had been twisted—fortunately they were able to force it back without breaking it.
Geller explained that he is never sure when such things will happen, or even whether the razor with which he shaves is likely to buckle in
his hand.

In short, it seems that even the most talented practitioners of psychokinesis cannot produce real “poltergeist effects”
at will.
But this is not necessarily a proof that they themselves are not responsible.
For we now come to the oddest part of this story: the recent discovery that human beings appear to have two different people living inside their heads.

In a sense, of course, this discovery was made by Freud, who called it the unconscious.
Jung went further, and accepted that the unconscious is a kind of great psychic ocean, to which all living creatures are somehow connected.
Yet it was not until the early 1960s that scientists began to suspect that the two different “selves” live in different parts of the brain.

If you could lift off the top of the skull and look at the brain, you would see something resembling a walnut, with two wrinkled halves.
Joining the halves is a bridge of nerve fibers called the
corpus callosum
.
In the 1930s, scientists wondered whether they could prevent epilepsy by severing this bridge—to prevent the “electrical storm” from spreading from one half of the brain to the other.
In fact, it seemed to work.
And, oddly enough, the severing of the “bridge” seemed to make no real difference to the patient.

In the 1950s Roger Sperry of the University of Chicago (and later Cal Tech
[2]
) began studying these “split-brain” patients, and made the interesting discovery that they had, in effect, turned into two people.
For example, one split-brain patient tried to button up his flies with one hand, while the other hand tried to undo them.
Another tried to embrace his wife with one arm, while his other hand pushed her violently away.
In fact, it looked rather as if his conscious love for his wife was being opposed by an unconscious dislike.
The split-brain experiment had given its unconscious mind the power to control one of his arms.

Now this upper part of the brain—the cerebrum or cerebral hemispheres—is our specifically human part.
It has developed at an incredible pace over the past half million years—so swiftly (in evolutionary terms) that some scientists talk about the “brain explosion.” And, like the rest of the brain, it seems to consist of two identical parts, which are a mirror-
image of one another.
(No one has yet discovered why the brain has these two halves—the obvious theory is that we have two of everything in case one is damaged.)

In the middle of the nineteenth century, doctors noticed that the two halves of the brain seem to have two different functions.
A man whose left hemisphere is damaged finds it hard to express himself in words; yet he can still recognize faces, appreciate art or enjoy music.
A man whose right hemisphere is damaged can speak perfectly clearly and logically; yet he cannot draw the simplest patterns or whistle a tune.
The left cerebral hemisphere deals with language and logic; the right deals with recognition and intuition.
You could say that the left is a scientist and the right is an artist.

Oddly enough, the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body—the left arm and leg—and vice versa.
The same applies to our eyes, though in a slightly more complicated fashion.
Each of our eyes is connected to both halves of the brain, the left side of each eye to the right brain, the right side of each eye to the left brain.
(We say that the left visual field is connected to the right brain and vice versa.) If a scientist wishes to investigate the eyes of a split-brain patient, he has to make the patient look to the right or left, or hold the gaze fixed in front, so that different objects can be “shown” to the right or left visual fields.
It will simplify matters if we say that the left eye is connected to the right brain and vice versa.

Sperry made his most interesting discovery about the eyes of split-brain patients.
If the patient was shown an apple with his left eye and an orange with his right, and asked what he had just seen, he would reply “Orange.” Asked to write with his left hand what he had just seen, he would write “Apple.” Asked what he had just written, he would
reply “Orange.”

A patient who was shown a “dirty” picture with the left eye blushed; asked why she was blushing she replied, “I don’t know.”

It seems, then, that we have two different people living in the two halves of the brain, and that the person you call “you” lives in the left.
A few centimeters away there is another person who is virtually a stranger—yet who also believes he is the rightful occupant of the head.

Now, at least, we can begin to see a possible reason why the “medium” in poltergeist cases is quite unaware that he or she is causing the effects.
We have only to assume that the effects are caused by the person living in the right half of the brain, and we can see that the “you” in the left would be unconscious of what was happening.

But this would still leave the question: how does the right brain
do
it?
In fact, is there any evidence whatsoever that the right brain possesses paranormal powers?

And the answer to this is a qualified yes.
We can begin with one of the simplest and best authenticated of all “paranormal powers,” water divining.
The water diviner, or dowser, holds a forked hazel twig (or even a forked rod made from two strips out of a whalebone corset, tied at the end) in both hands, so there is a certain tension—a certain “springiness”—in the rod.
And when they walk over an underground stream or spring, the rod twists either upwards or downwards in their hands.

In fact, dowsers can dowse for almost anything, from oil and minerals to a coin hidden under the carpet.
It seems that they merely have to decide what they’re looking for, and the unconscious mind—or the “other self”—does the rest.

I have described elsewhere
[3]
how I discovered, to my own astonishment, that I could dowse.
I was visiting a circle of standing stones called the Merry Maidens, in Cornwall—a circle that probably dates back to the same period as Stonehenge.
When I held the rod—made of two strips of plastic tied at the end—so as to give it a certain tension, it responded powerfully when I approached the stones.
It would twist upward as I came close to the stone, and then dip again as I stepped back or walked past it.
What surprised me was that I felt nothing, no tingling in the hands, no sense of expectancy.
It seemed to happen as automatically as the response of a voltmeter in an electric circuit.
Since then I have shown dozens of people how to dowse.
It is my own experience that nine out of ten people can dowse, and that all young children can do it.
Some adults have to “tune in”—to learn to allow the mind and muscles to relax—but this can usually be done in a few minutes.

Scientific tests have shown that what happens in dowsing is that the muscles convulse—or tighten—of their own accord.
And if the dowser holds a pendulum—made of a wooden bob on a short length of string—then the pendulum goes into a circular swing over standing stones or underground water—once again, through some unconscious action of the muscles.

Another experiment performed by Roger Sperry throws an interesting light on dowsing.
He tried flashing green or red lights at random into the “blind” eye of split-brain patients (into the left visual field, connected to the right cerebral hemisphere).
The patients were then asked what color had just been seen.
Naturally, they had no idea, and the guesses showed a random score.
But if they were allowed a second guess, they would always get it right.
They might say: “Red—oh no, green .
.
.” The right side of the brain had overheard the wrong guess, and communicated by
causing the patient’s muscles to twitch
.
It was the equivalent of a kick under the table.

Unable to communicate in any other way, the right brain did it by contracting the muscles.

It seems, therefore a reasonable guess that this is also what happens in dowsing.
The right brain knows there is water down there, or some peculiar magnetic force in the standing stones; it communicates this knowledge by causing the muscles to tense, which makes the rod jerk upwards.

Most “psychics” observe that deliberate effort inhibits their powers.
One psychic, Lois Bourne, has written:

One of the greatest barriers to mediumship is the intellect, and the most serious problem I had to learn in my early psychic career was the suspension of my intellect.
If, during the practice of extra-sensory perception, I allowed logic to prevail, and permitted myself to rationalize the impressions I received, and the things I said, I would be hopelessly lost within a conflict.
It is necessary that I totally by-pass my conscious mind .
.
.