The President's Vampire: Strange-But-True Tales of the United States of America (19 page)

Whatever its origins, Gloomsinger plays an unclear but essential role in the stalking, murdering, and mutilation attributed to the Bye-Bye Man. The most important question remains, of course, why did he do it at all?

Motivation

If the Voduon thread is followed back to Africa, we find mutilation murders reminiscent of the Bye-Bye Man’s alleged crimes. A number of people are killed every year so that their limbs, tongues, eyes, and sex organs can be used for magical ingredients. These “muti” killings, however, occur in the southern part of the continent, and Voduon has its origins among the Yoruba people of West Africa. The ritual murders seen there involve different kinds of mutilations, with an emphasis on blood.(52) The Bye-Bye Man seems to have no use for body parts, beyond what’s needed for keeping Gloomsinger in a state of repair, which suggests that he is not interested in the “trophies” or “souvenirs” collected by conventional serial killers.

Ordinary homicidal maniacs favor photographs of their victims, articles of clothing, and sometimes pieces of anatomy, but rarely eyes and tongues. (An exception was Charles Albright of Texas, who murdered three women in 1990-1991 and carefully removed their eyes.) There is also an enduring belief in the eyes’ ability to retain an image of the last thing that a person sees, which has caused some killers to mutilate their victim’s body. This may be, for example, why the Soviet-era murderer, Andrei Chikatilo, stabbed eyes. Among his other atrocities, Chikatilo also bit out tongues but does not seem to have collected them. None of this, however, explains why the Bye-Bye Man supposedly kills people who think of his name.

If the story is a product of the sitters’ subconscious, then it may be comparable to a dream, which leaves it open to other kinds of interpretations.

Removing or destroying eyes often symbolizes castration. Eyes in combination with the tongue may represent the full complement of male reproductive organs and several elements in the story can be interpreted in terms of emasculation. There is the use of desk scissors as a weapon, the bloody “seaman’s sack,” and the female voice presumably used by the Bye-Bye Man, suggesting that he is a eunuch.

If the Bye-Bye Man’s secret name is the essence of his power, then when someone learns that name, it may be equivalent to castration. Following this line of reasoning, the Bye-Bye Man’s blindness represents the loss of his masculinity, and Gloomsinger –made from eyes and tongues—acts as substitute genitals. They are artificial, though, and subject to decay, requiring regular restoration, which may reflect a degree of male insecurity. When the Bye-Bye Man locates someone who is thinking of his name, he kills them and incorporates the organs into Gloomsinger, thereby recovering his power/masculinity. He is, at least temporarily, whole. The idea of male genitals being separated from the body and acting independently is found in several North American Trickster tales and recalls the ameboid sperm produced by some invertebrates. (Instead of being propelled by whip-like flagella, they crawl along on pseudopods in search of the egg.)

Was the Spirit of the Board’s story an expression of sexual anxieties felt by the young men? Prader Willi Syndrome prevents the onset of sexual maturity; perhaps the residents inspired some insecurity? Could the source have been resentment felt by a woman pressured into continuing with a project that frightened her? It’s possible, but it’s also possible that this theory is a combination of my own apprehensions and a desire to find a rationale for the Bye-Bye Man’s otherwise inexplicable behavior. Having taken that grain of salt we can now…

Return to Algiers

Algiers is the one indisputable fact in the whole story. If it sprang from the sitters’ subconscious, where did they learn about a relatively obscure district of New Orleans? The most likely source is the 1987 film,
Angel Heart
.

Angel Heart
was adapted from the William Hjorstberg novel,
Falling Angel
(1978). It tells the story of private detective Harold Angel, who has been hired by a wealthy and mysterious client named Louis Cyphre to find a singer suffering from amnesia. (For readers who collect coincidences, Harold Angel came from “A little place in Wisconsin you’ve never heard of. Just outside Madison.”(53)) Almost all of the novel’s action takes place in New York City, but the movie has Angel travel down to New Orleans, where he becomes involved with voodoo, black magic, and murder. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote: “His odyssey in
Angel Heart
takes him from New York to Algiers, La., a town across from New Orleans that makes the fleshpots of Bourbon Street look like Disneyland.“(54) The Algiers scenes were actually filmed in an abandoned plantation village called Laurel Valley Village in Thibodaux, Louisiana, which gives the impression that Algiers is a rural town.(55) This might explain why neither the sitters, the Spirit of the Board, nor Roger Ebert, seemed to know that it is a part of New Orleans. I watched
Angel Heart
before writing this and could not find any reference to it as a part of the city.

These are just some of the sources that may have contributed to the Bye-Bye Man’s story; it contains nothing that requires paranormal involvement. Telepathy or other phenomena may have played a part—Eli saw suggestions of it during the séances—but psychic powers are not needed to explain where the story might have come from. This was not a laboratory experiment, so sitters talked about the messages they were getting, speculated freely, and may have been engaged in a “process of joint imaginative creation” that was expressed through the board.(56) With regard to Katherine and John’s experiences, however, the way the story was created may be less important than the effect it had once it existed. Did it frighten them into believing an attack of tinnitus and a vivid dream were supernatural? Or could the story itself have led to paranormal manifestations?

In the discussion of demons, it was suggested that the combination of the Bye-Bye Man story and the “if you think about him…” formula might have acted as a kind of mental invocation. What if the same method produced results without the intervention of invisible entities? We’ve discussed two explanations for the sitters’ experiences so far, one based on spirits and the other on the human mind. What if “spirits” in the sense of paranormal manifestations were not a separate phenomenon, but one that originated with the participants themselves?

What if it was a manifestation of the “Philip Effect”?

The Imaginary Ghost

In 1972, the Society for Psychical Research in Toronto conducted an experiment that attempted to answer three questions: could séance phenomena be created in full light, are these phenomena produced by living people or disembodied spirits, and is a medium necessary for phenomena to occur? None of the eight participants considered themselves especially psychic or showed evidence of being a medium,(57) and they tried to answer these questions by creating a ghost of their own, an imaginary historical figure named Philip. Members of the society gave him a tragic and romantic background, similar to the legends associated with traditional ghosts.

They decided that “Philip was an aristocratic Englishman living in the middle 1600s at the time of Oliver Cromwell. He had been a supporter of the king and was a Catholic. He was married to a beautiful but cold and frigid wife, Dorothea, the daughter of a neighboring nobleman. One day, when out riding the boundaries of his estates, Philip came across a gypsy encampment and saw there a beautiful dark-eyed, raven-haired gypsy girl, Margo, and fell instantly in love with her.

“He brought her back secretly to live in the gatehouse near the stables of Diddington Manor —his family home. For some time he kept his love nest secret, but eventually Dorothea, realizing he was keeping someone else there, found Margo, and accused her of witchcraft and of stealing her husband. Philip was too scared of losing his reputation and his possessions to protest at the trial of Margo, and she was convicted of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Philip subsequently was stricken with remorse that he had not tried to defend Margo and use [sic] to pace the battlements of Diddington in despair. Finally, one morning his body was found at the foot of the battlements where he had cast himself in a fit of agony and remorse.“(58)

The story was a mixture of fact and fiction with errors deliberately included to emphasize Philip’s fictitious nature. There is, for instance, no record of a young, noble couple named Philip and Dorothea ever living at Diddington Manor, which is a real place. Also, English witches were normally hanged, not burned at the stake.

The society met once a week to work on their ghost. They would discuss Philip, talk about his life, interests, and how he would act in different situations. One member drew a portrait of him as a handsome young man with a beard. Sitting in a circle, the group would meditate on the drawing, trying to create a vivid picture of Philip in their minds that might turn into a visible apparition. Nothing significant happened, however, until the fall of 1973, when the group changed their approach. British parapsychologists Kenneth Batcheldor and Colin Brookes-Smith had been studying séance phenomena and recommended creating an “atmosphere of jollity and relaxation,” so the members began sitting around a table, singing silly songs, eating candy, telling jokes, and addressing the table directly as Philip. (59)

Rosemary Ellen Guiley described the results of their experiment in her
Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experiences
: “After the Owen group [Dr. A.R.G. Owen, director of the project] conducted several sessions, the table began to vibrate, resound with raps and knocks, and move seemingly of its own accord. Philip then began to communicate by rapping in response to questions.

“Philip answered questions consistent with his fictitious history, but could produce nothing beyond what the group had conceived. Philip also gave historically accurate information concerning real events and people. The Owen group theorized this material came from their own collective unconscious.

“Sessions with Philip continued for several years. A levitation and movement of the table were recorded on film in 1974. Efforts to capture Philip’s voice on tape were inconclusive. Members of the group thought whispers were made in response to questions…”(60)

They never succeeded in producing a visible apparition, and neither did other groups that used the same methods to create “ghosts” like “Lilith,” a French-Canadian spy executed in France during World War II; “Axel,” a man from the future; “Santa Claus”, “Silk the Dolphin”, and others.

If these results have been accurately reported, then people willing to accept propositions they know to be untrue can produce paranormal phenomena under certain conditions. This has profound implications for science, religion, and the occult, and makes an interesting comparison to the theories advanced by Fred Beck. (See “The Devil’s Militia.”) Could the situation in Wisconsin, though produced accidentally, have generated the Bye-Bye Man? There are similarities between the two groups but also important differences, and these may explain the varying results.

The Toronto society set out to answer definite questions, and their results reflect this deliberate approach, producing phenomena that were consistent, long-lasting, repeatable, and limited. Philip was also approached cautiously, with steps taken to “contain” the project.

“The group always met in one particular room which was designated as ‘Philip’s room,’ and not used for any other purpose. It had been agreed that if any kind of manifestation of Philip’s presence was obtained, he should be confined to one room. There was a specific reason for all this. Until it was known in what form his manifestation might occur, it was felt safer to ensure that this only occurred when the group was together.“(61) The room also contained pictures of Diddington Manor and period objects like books, documents, pictures, and fencing foils. (Philip loved fencing.) Manifestations were eventually produced in other places, but only through a group effort; they never occurred spontaneously or to sitters who were by themselves.

The artificial ghosts were also placed outside the sitter’s time. Philip, Lilith, and Axel were either dead or had not yet been born and, as “spirits,” could not be expected to appear outside of the séance room. Furthermore, they were all benign characters, so if any phenomena did happen to “leak “ out, they would probably reflect this. The sitters had placed at least four lines of defense between themselves and their creations: the ghosts were self-evidently imaginary, their fictional lives were over or had not yet begun, they had harmless personalities, and their ability to produce phenomena depended on the presence of the group.

As for those who took part, Dr. Owen said of them: “The members of the group are regarded as perfectly normal people, or as normal as people can actually be.”(62) Their willingness and ability to take part in a long-term project also points to stable personal lives and careers.

In Wisconsin, the situation was very different. The sitters were looking for evidence of telepathy or verifiable spirit communication through casual experiments with a Ouija board; it was an impromptu arrangement that produced unforeseen results.

Unlike Philip, the sitters had not deliberately created the Bye-Bye Man. There was no attempt to create a vivid mental picture or contact him directly or produce manifestations. In fact, the séances ended almost immediately after the story emerged. Why then did Katherine and John, despite comparatively small investments in time and emotion, describe phenomena that were more dramatic than those connected with Philip?