The President's Vampire: Strange-But-True Tales of the United States of America (20 page)

There aren’t many rules that can be applied to strange phenomena, except perhaps that you run out of film right before something interesting happens. Certain elements and conditions, however, seem to be associated with the paranormal and when these are present, manifestations may be more dramatic, if short-lived and unreliable, than those seen in Toronto.

Spontaneity is one of them. Impressive phenomena rarely occur under controlled conditions, and while there are exceptions (remote-viewing claims to be one), it is normally the difference between a parapsychologist detecting blips of telekinesis with statistical analysis and a poltergeist flinging furniture through the air. The Bye-Bye Man, like the poltergeist, appeared spontaneously.

Emotion is another element. The most useful one for generating séance-type phenomena seems to be “jollity” when experienced by the sitters, but powerful emotions like passion, guilt, and desire are traditionally associated with ghosts and played an important part in Philip’s fictional biography. What if, instead of “Philip” the romantic knight, the Toronto group had tried to create “Phil,” a happily married grocer who liked crossword puzzles and died in his sleep? Would it have worked? In contrast with the powerful but artificial emotions used in Philip, the Bye-Bye Man was created against a backdrop of genuine fear, dislocation, and sexual tension.

Emotional Impact?

Fear is an important element in this account. John and Eli shared a fascination with it, while Katherine was subject to panic attacks. Did the possibility of actually confronting their creation face to face, in an uncontrolled situation, create an element of fear that was absent in the Philip experiment, and produce results that Philip could not?

The Bye-Bye Man, after all, was not consciously created and his existence could not be disproved. He claimed to be a living being, not a disembodied spirit, and was threatening to kill and mutilate the sitters. Even if the group believed the story came from their subconscious, there may be a corner of our brains, some convolution inherited from millions of years of bug-eating, tree-dwelling ancestors, that regards all threats as real.

Danger creates intense feelings and may have produced manifestations without the conscious effort required by Philip. When seemingly paranormal phenomena occurred, however, John’s experience was more elaborate and frightening than Katherine’s and that may have been due to other factors in his life.

John was in a state of transition. He had just dropped out of college, worked as a dishwasher, lived in boarding houses, and was not in a relationship; in almost every respect, he was adrift in “the gap between old and new.”(63)

People making the change from old to new, especially those experiencing important milestones like birth, puberty, marriage, and death are traditionally believed to be vulnerable to supernatural forces. Countless rituals have been devised to keep them safe while the change is occurring and to help complete the process. While John was not going through one of the recognized transitions, it was a stressful, ill-defined period that may have intensified his experience with the Bye-Bye Man. Katherine’s comparatively stable life may, in contrast, have moderated hers.

The classic connection between a state of transition and unexplained phenomena is the pubescent child, usually a girl, found at the center of so many poltergeist cases. There are many other examples, but the apparent relationship between transformation and the paranormal may even apply to physical space. “In-between” spots—places that exist to be passed through, like stairways, doorways, and windows—are frequently associated with strange phenomena. John and Katherine’s experiences, for instance, involved a bridge and hallway. The effect is even seen in buildings undergoing renovations, when places with no reputation for ghosts become the scene of spooky goings-on, while previously haunted spots see their ghosts vanish for good. Either way, it’s usually blamed on “disturbing the spirits.”

One more complicated (and complicating) emotion may have been a by-product of the séances themselves. When the board began producing messages, the trio fell into specific roles: Eli devised experiments and motivated the sitters, while Katherine acted as medium, but only in combination with John, whose part was essential but difficult to define. The pair seemed to be attuned to the paranormal and each other in a way that Eli was not. It suggests there was a rapport between them; there certainly was an attraction.

Using a Ouija board requires a great deal of time spent in intimate physical contact, with glances and pheromones being exchanged over the planchette, and it was not long after the events described here that Eli and Katherine separated and she began seeing John.

While there’s nothing unusual about a break-up, the paranormal seems to stimulate irrational lust the way it does irrational fear. It may not be a coincidence that the Greek god of the wild and primitive, Pan, caused “pan-ic” and was depicted in a state of chronic physical excitement. According to a friend who investigates haunted houses, the people who ask for help frequently display inappropriate, and seemingly uncharacteristic, forwardness towards investigators. There’s no way of knowing if this played a part in John and Katherine’s mutual attraction, but sex and guilt were added to the already overheated atmosphere of the séance room.

In contrast to the complicated emotions and casual approach seen in Wisconsin, the Toronto Society was cool and systematic. They developed techniques for creating a limited number of repeatable, verifiable phenomena, while keeping potentially disruptive elements under control and insulating the participants against unforeseen results. Several of these disruptive elements were present with the Bye-Bye Man and none of the safeguards, which may have resulted in phenomena that were dramatic, but also ephemeral and subjective. Eli stood next to Katherine on the railroad bridge and heard nothing, while John’s experience might have been a dream.

But what if he was awake? And what if John’s account of what happened that night is accurate?

Other Artificial Entities

The American Academy of Science recognizes parapsychology as a science, and Philip was a scientific experiment carried out by a group of researchers. But what if they had called themselves a coven, and described what they were doing as magic? It probably would have had similar results. Spiritualists, sorcerers, and parapsychologists may differ in their assumptions about what’s being done and why, but they share a common goal—acquiring some degree of control over paranormal phenomena. Mystics of every description have been working on the problem for millennia.

Some have regarded occult powers as a side issue in the pursuit of higher spiritual development, while others were interested in the tangible benefits of wealth, influence, love, and revenge. Numerous theories were needed to make the magical/paranormal comprehensible and provide a framework within which the operator could achieve results. Among the concepts are two that may help us understand the Bye-Bye Man: the “thought-form” and the “artificial elemental.”

Definitions vary, but a thought-form is essentially a ”non-physical entity created by thought,”(64) while an artificial elemental is similar, but infused with strong emotion. Individuals and groups can create these beings deliberately or accidentally, but “The phenomena produced consciously, with a view of bringing about a prescribed result… are generally—but not always—the work of a single person.”(65) Thought-forms normally exist on the mental or astral sphere where they are invisible to all but the psychic or unusually sensitive, though other less finely tuned individuals may sense their presence. The French scholar, traveler, and writer, Madame Alexandra David-Neel, describes a number of different kinds of thought-forms in her 1929 book,
Magic and Mystery in Tibet
.

The durable David-Neel (1868-1969) was a Buddhist who spent 14 years in Tibet and surrounding countries studying mysticism with swamis, hermits, and lamas. She describes a number of magical phenomena including “messages carried on the wind” (telepathy), enchanting a knife so that a selected victim will use it to commit suicide,
tumo
(the ability to generate high temperatures in the body), and the creation of the thought-form or
tulpa
. David-Neel experimented with the latter. She spent months in solitary meditation, carried out certain rituals, and successfully created “a monk, short and fat, of an innocent and jolly type.”(66)

At first, it required concentration for David-Neel to see her
tulpa
, but it soon appeared without effort, while remaining invisible to others. The mind-monk traveled with her party and obeyed commands, but over time it grew less cherubic and more independent: “The fat, chubby-cheeked fellow grew leaner, his face assumed a vaguely mocking, sly, malignant look. He became more troublesome and bold. In brief, he escaped my control.”(67)

David-Neel believed this process was inevitable. “Once the
tulpa
is endowed with enough vitality to be playing the part of a real being, it tends to free itself from its maker’s control. This, say Tibetan occultists, happens nearly mechanically, just as the child, when his body is completed and able to live apart, leaves its mother’s womb.”(68) She accepted the possibility that the monk was the result of auto-suggestion (i.e., it was all in her imagination), except “a herdsman who brought me a present of butter saw the
tulpa
in my tent and took it for a live lama.”(69) (Was the herdsman clairvoyant? Was the figure materializing in this world? The author does not offer an opinion.)

Over time, the monk’s presence became so disturbing that David-Neel was forced to dissolve it, a task that required ”six months of hard struggle. My mind-creature was tenacious of life.”(70)

A
tulpa
can also appear spontaneously. It might happen to a traveler “passing through some sinister tract of country,”(71) and Western mountain-climbers have reported experiences that could be related to
tulpa
-lore. When, for example, Reinhold Messner made a solo ascent of Mt. Everest in 1980 he “imagined that an invisible companion was climbing beside him.”(72) (Alpinists see and hear many strange things, but they also suffer from fatigue and lack of oxygen.) In cases where the
tulpa
is created unconsciously, and “the author or authors…does not aim at a fixed result,” the outcome may be something like the phenomena described by John and Katherine, with bits and pieces of the thought-form’s persona realized in paranormal form.

Had the séances continued, these “scraps” of Bye-Bye Man might have coalesced into something more formidable and the results might have been fatal. David-Neel describes instances of magicians being killed by the thought-forms they created. Perhaps “the more you think about him, the more dangerous he becomes” aspect of the story was a warning, not an invocation. Another possibility is that the group, or members of it, created a similar being called an artificial elemental.

The British occultist Dion Fortune described her encounter with this phenomenon in
Psychic Self-Defense
(1930). Fortune had been betrayed by a friend and was lying in bed, sleepily contemplating revenge, when “I felt a curious drawing out sensation from my solar plexus, and there materialised beside me on the bed a large wolf. It was a well materialised ectoplasmic form…grey and colourless, and…had weight. I could distinctly feel its back pressing against me as it lay beside me on the bed as a large dog might.”(73)

The apparition was distinctly evil, and unlike David Neel’s monk, did not obey commands. Its nature was fixed by the emotions that caused it to appear in the first place, and had Fortune not reabsorbed it, the “were-wolf” would have gone on to create more evil. The experience was exhausting, but Fortune believed it had taught her a method for creating artificial elementals.

1. The actor needs to be in “the condition between sleeping and waking…”

2. Their mood has to be one of “brooding highly charged with emotion…”

3. They have to make an “invocation of the appropriate natural force…”(74)

Did John, like Fortune, unknowingly carry out these steps? He had not been sleeping well and was spending the night on the floor; perhaps, he was half-awake. There’s no way of knowing his mental state, but he was no longer seeing Eli and Katherine regularly and earlier that evening had been unable to reach any friends. John may have been bored, lonely, or even “brooding.” It seems unlikely that anything so dramatic as invoking a natural force was involved (Fortune claims to have been thinking about the mythical wolf Fenris right before the figure materialized), but the séances had just ended and the Bye-Bye Man was a recent memory.

Did John experience frustration, desire, resentment, and guilt that night? Did this formless but potent mixture of thoughts and feelings cast into the shape of the Bye-Bye Man? If so, it was unlike Fortune’s were-wolf in that it seems to have embodied not revenge, but emotional conflict.

Ambivalence seems to be at the heart of John’s story. Picture the scene. It is the middle of the night and a young man is asleep. He hears a knock on the door and a voice calling to him. It is the woman he is attracted to and she’s asking to be let into his bedroom. Does John bang into furniture and overturn lamps in his race to the door? No, he goes limp with fear and lies on the floor in a state of terror till morning. Whatever happened, whether this was a thought-form, artificial elemental, bad dream, or other phenomenon, Katherine seems to have excited strong emotions in John, but he was either unwilling or afraid to act on them. Perhaps the castration symbols in the Bye-Bye Man’s story express guilt over contemplated sexual misconduct. Violating sexual taboos and patricide drove King Oedipus to put out his eyes.