Wild Talents (19 page)

21

I looked at a picture, and it fell from a wall.

The diabolical thought of Usefulness rises in my mind.

If ever I can make up my mind to declare myself the enemy of all mankind, then shall I turn altruist, and devote my life to being of use and of benefit to my fellow-beings.

Everything that is of slavery, ancient and modern, is a phenomenon of usefulness. The prisons are filled with unconventional interpreters of uses. If it were not for uses, we’d be free of lawyers. Give up the idea of improvements, and that is an escape from politicians.

Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you, and you may make the litter of their circumstances that you have made of your own. The Good Samaritan binds up wounds with poison ivy. If I give anybody a coin, I hand him good and evil, just as truly as I hand him head and tail. Whoever discovered the uses of coal was a benefactor of all mankind, and most damnably something else. Automobiles, and their seemingly indispensable services—but automobiles and crime and a million exasperations. There are persons who think they see clear advantages in the use of a telephone—then the telephone rings.

If, by looking at it, a picture can be taken down from a wall, why could not a house be pulled down, by still more intently staring at it?

If, occultly, mentally, physically, however, a house could be pulled down, why could not a house be put up, by concentrating upon its materials?

Now visions of the Era of Witchcraft—miracles of invisible bricklaying, and marvels of masonry without masons—subtle uses and advantages that will merge both
A.D.
and
B.C.
into one period of barbarism, known as
B.W.
—

But the factories and labors and laborers—everything else that is now employed in our primitive ways of buildings houses. Unemployment and starvation and charity—political disturbances—the outcry against putting the machines out of work. There is no understanding any messiah, inventor, discoverer, or anybody else who is working for betterment, except by recognizing him as partly a fiend.

And yet, in one respect, I am suspicious of all this wisdom. The only reason that it is not conventional mechanistic philosophy is that the conventionalist is more subdued. But, if to every action there is a reaction that is equal and opposite, there is to every advantage, or betterment, an equal disadvantage, or worsement. This view—except as quantitatively expressed—seems to me to be in full agreement with my experiences with advantages and uses and betterments: but, as quantitatively expressed, it is without authority to me, because I cannot accept that ever has any action-reaction been cut in two, its parts separated, and isolated, so that it could be determined what either part was equal to.

I looked at a picture, and it fell from a wall.

Once upon a time, Dr. Gilbert waved a wand that he had rubbed with the skin of a cat, and bits of paper rose from a table. This was in the year one, of Our Lord, Electricity, who was born as a parlor stunt.

And yet there are many persons, who have read widely, who think that witchcraft, or the idea of witchcraft, has passed away.

They have not read widely enough. They have not thought widely enough. What idea has ever passed away? Witchcraft, instead of being a “superstition of the past,” is of common report. I look over my data for the year 1924, for instance, and note the number of cases, most of them called “poltergeist disturbances,” that were reported in England. Probably in the United States more numerously were cases reported, but, because of library facilities, I have especially noted phenomena in England. Cases of witchcraft and other uncanny occurrences, in England, in the year 1924, were reported from East Barnet, Monkton, Lymm, Bradford, Chiswick, Mountsorrel, Dudley, Hayes, Maidstone, Minster Thanet, Epping, Grimsby, Keighley, and Clyst St. Lawrence.

New York newspapers reported three cases, close together, in the year 1927.
New York Herald Tribune,
Aug. 12, 1927—Fred Koett and his wife compelled to move from their home, near Ellenwood, Kansas. For months this house had been bewitched—pictures turned to the wall—other objects moving about—their pet dog stabbed with a pitch fork by an invisible.
New York Herald Tribune,
Sept. 12, 1927—Frank Decker’s barn, near Fredon, N.J., destroyed by fire. For five years there had been unaccountable noises, opening and shutting doors, and pictures on walls swinging back and forth.
Home News
(Bronx), Nov. 27, 1927—belief of William Blair, County Tyrone, Ireland, that his cattle were bewitched. He accused a neighbor, Isabella Hazelton, of being a witch—“witch” sued him for slander—five and costs.

My general expression is against the existence of poltergeists as spirits—but that the doings are the phenomena of undeveloped magicians, mostly youngsters, who have no awareness of their powers as their own—or, in the cases of mischievous, or malicious, persecutions, are more or less consciously directed influences by enemies—or that, in this aspect, “poltergeist disturbances” are witchcraft under a new name. The change of name came about probably for two reasons: such a reaction against the atrocities of witchcraft trials that the existence of witches was sweepingly denied, so that continuing phenomena had to be called something else; and the endeavor by the spiritualists to take over witchcraft, as evidence of the existence of “spirits of the departed.”

If witches there be, there must of course be some humorous witches. The trail of the joke crosses our accounts of the most deadly occurrences. In many accounts of poltergeist disturbances, the look is more of mischief than of hate for victims. The London
Daily Mail,
May 1, 1907, is responsible for what is coming now:

An elderly woman, Mme. Blerotti, had called upon the magistrate of the Ste. Marguerite district of Paris, and had told him that, at the risk of being thought a madwoman, she had a complaint to make against somebody unknown. She lived in a flat in the Rue Montreuil with her son and her brother. Every time she entered the flat, she was compelled by some unseen force to walk on her hands, with her legs in the air. The woman was detained by the magistrate, who sent a policeman to the address given. The policeman returned with Mme. Blerotti’s son, a clerk, aged twenty-seven. “What my mother has told you, is true,” he said. “I do not pretend to explain it. I only know that when my mother, my uncle, and myself enter the flat, we are immediately impelled to walk on our hands.” M. Paul Reiss, aged fifty, the third occupant of the flat, was sent for. “It is perfectly true,” he said. “Every time I go in, I am irresistibly impelled to walk around on my hands.” The concierge of the house was brought to the magistrate. “To tell the truth,” he said, “I thought that my tenants had gone mad, but as soon as I entered the rooms occupied by them, I found myself on all fours, endeavoring to throw my feet in the air.”

The magistrate concluded that here was an unknown malady. He ordered that the apartments should be disinfected.

There used to be a newspaper story of the “traveling needle.” People perhaps sat on needles, though they thought it more dignified to report that needles had entered their bodies by way of their elbows. Then, five, ten, twenty, years later, the needles came out by way of distant parts. We seldom hear of the “traveling needle,” nowadays: so I think that most—not all—of these old stories were newspaper yarns. I was interested in these stories, as told back in the 1880s and 90s, but never came upon one that seemed to me to be authentic, or to offer material much to speculate upon. I took suggestion from the method of “black magic,” of piercing, with a needle, the heart, or some other part, of an image of a proposed victim, and, according to beliefs, succeeded in affecting a corresponding part of a human being—

An inquest, in the Shoreditch (London) Coroner’s court, Nov. 14, 1919—a child, Rosina Newton, aged thirteen months, had died. A needle was found in her heart. “There was no skin wound to show where it had entered the body.” It was the short life of this child that attracted my attention. The parents had no remembrance of any injury to her, such as that of a needle entering her body.

It seems unlikely that anybody so intensely hated this infant as to concentrate upon a desire for her death: but I have stories that may indicate the doing of harm to children as vengeance upon parents.

And in the annals of “black magic” often appears the sorcerer, who obtains something of the belongings, or of the body, of a victim, to secure a contact, or a sense of contact. Parings of fingernails are recommended, but the procuring of a lock of the victim’s hair is supposed to be most effective. There may be psychic hounds, who, from a belonging, pick up a scent, and then maintain, and operate along, a path, or a current, between themselves and their victims. In such terms, of harm, or of possession, may be understandable the hair-clippers of our records.

There is a strange story, in the
Times of India
(Bombay), Aug. 30, 1928. A part of this story that does not seem so very strange to me is that three times a newborn infant of a Muslim woman, of Bhonghir, had been “mysteriously and supernaturally” snatched away from her. The strange part is that the police, though they had explained that these disappearances were only ordinary or “natural” kidnappings, had gone to the trouble of taking this woman, who for the fourth time was in a state of expectation, to the Victoria Zenana Hospital, at Secunderabad; and that the hospital authorities had gone to the trouble and expense of assigning her to a special ward, where special nurses watched her, night and day. The fourth infant arrived, and this one, so surrounded by test conditions, did not mysteriously vanish: so it was supposed to be demonstrated that the three disappearances were ordinary kidnappings. The explanation that occurs to one is that, though it was not mentioned in the
Times of India,
there was probably a scare, at Bhonghir, and that this demonstration was made to allay it.

Just how, by ordinary, or “natural,” means, anybody could, time after time, without being seen, snatch a new-born infant from a woman, was not inquired into. All such “demonstrations” start with the implied assumption that there is not witchcraft, and then show that there is not witchcraft. That is, there is no consideration for the thought that a witch might exist and might fear to practice so publicly as in a hospital ward. The “demonstration” was that there was not witchcraft in a hospital ward, and that therefore there is not witchcraft. Many of our data are of most public, or daring, or defiant occurrences: but it is notable that they stop—mostly, though not invariably—when public attention is aroused. Sometimes they stop, and then renew periodically.

About the first of May, 1922, Pauline Picard, a Breton child aged twelve, disappeared from her home on a farm near Brest, France. I take this account from various issues of the
Journal des Debats
(Paris), May and June, 1922. Upon May 26th, a cyclist, passing Picard’s farm, saw something in a field not far from the road. He investigated. He came upon Pauline’s naked and headless body. At the roadside were found her clothes. It was noted that they were “neatly folded.”

The body was decomposed. Hands and feet, as well as head, were missing. This body, visible from the road, was found at a point half a mile from the Picard farmhouse.

It seems most likely that, if it was seen by a passing cyclist, it could not long have been lying so conspicuous, but unseen, by members of the Picard family. Nevertheless, that it had so lain was the opinion that was accepted at the inquest. It was said that the child must have wandered from home, and, returning, must have died of exhaustion; and that the body had been defaced by rats and foxes. This story of the wandering child, dying of exhaustion, half a mile from her home, was given plausibility by the circumstances that once before Pauline had wandered far, and that she had been affected mentally. At least, she had disappeared, and had been found far away.

Upon April 6th of this year 1922, Pauline disappeared. Several days later, a child was found wandering in the streets of Cherbourg. The Picards were notified, and, going to Cherbourg, identified this child as Pauline, who, however, did not recognize them, being in a state of lapsed consciousness, or amnesia. If Pauline Picard, aged twelve, had made this journey afoot, or by means that are called “natural,” between a farm near Brest and Cherbourg, in a state of amnesia, which it seems would somewhere be noted, but had not been reported, she had gone, unreported, a distance by land of about 230 miles.

Twice Pauline Picard disappeared. The first disappearance was not an ordinary runaway, or was not an ordinary kidnaping, because something had profoundly affected this child mentally. I have notes upon more than a few cases of persons who have appeared, as if they had been occultly transported, or at any rate have appeared in places so far from their homes that they were untraceable, and were amnesiatics. An expression for which I should like to find material is that, three times, in distant parts of India, “wolf children” were reported, after the times of disappearance of the infants of Bhonghir. The official explanation of the second disappearance and the death of Pauline Picard bears the marks of dictation by taboo. If the body of this child had been also otherwise mutilated, the explanation of defacement by rats and foxes would be more nearly convincing: but something, or somebody, had, as if to prevent identification, removed, without other mutilations, hands and feet and head—and also, contradictorily, had placed the body in a conspicuous position, as if planning to have it found. The verdict at the inquest required belief that this decomposed body had lain, conspicuous, but unseen, for several weeks, in this field. There is a small particular that adds to the improbability. It seems that the clothes—also conspicuous by the roadside—had not been lying there, for several weeks, subject to the disturbing effects of rains and wind. They were “neatly folded.”

It is as if somebody had removed head, hands, and feet from this body, and had stripped the clothes from it, so that it could not be identified; and had placed the clothes nearby, so that it could be identified.