CHAPTER 5
The uninvited: possession
Not all cases of possession involve
malevolent entities. Some appear
to result from the awakening of
dormant sub-personalities and
even past life memories
Not all cases of possession involve
malevolent entities. Some appear
to result from the awakening of
dormant sub-personalities and
even past life memories
POSSESSION has decidedly negative connotations, but there have been incidents in which the uninvited spirit proved to have a benign purpose. In the summer of 1877, Mary Lurancy Vennum, a 13-year-old girl from Watseka, Illinois, suffered a series of convulsions, falling into a trance-like state for hours at a time. All efforts to awaken her failed.
While she was in this state she spoke of seeing angels and a brother and sister who had died some years earlier. Shortly after this, Lurancy was subdued by a succession of dominant personalities who spoke through her, including a crotchety old woman called Katrina Hogan. The family finally resigned themselves to having their daughter committed to an asylum, but then a neighbouring family named Roff intervened. They persuaded Lurancy’s parents to consult a doctor from Wisconsin who had treated their own daughter, also with the name of Mary, in the months before she died. Mary Roff had suffered similar ‘fits’ in which she demonstrated clairvoyant abilities such as being able to read through a blindfold. These episodes had been witnessed by several eminent and respectable citizens of Watseka who were prepared to swear to what they had seen.
When Dr Stevens visited the Vennum house on 1 February 1878, Katrina Hogan was in control. At first she was cold and aloof, gazing abstractedly into space and ordering Dr Stevens to leave her be whenever he attempted to come near. But his persistence paid off and by and by Dr Stevens was able to draw out ‘Katrina’s’ personal history. Soon another personality appeared, a young man named Willie Canning whose hold on Lurancy was erratic and offered little of value that the doctor could verify. With the parent’s permission Dr Stevens tried hypnosis and Lurancy reasserted herself but remained in a trance. She spoke of having been possessed of evil spirits, but that may have been her interpretation conditioned by her strict religious upbringing. Then events took an even more interesting turn.
Lurancy announced that she could see other spirits around her, one of whom was Mary Roff. Lurancy did not know Mary Roff, who had died when Lurancy was just a year old, nor had she visited the Roff home up to that point.
Mrs Roff was present when her ‘Mary’ came through, speaking through Lurancy, but there is no suggestion that Lurancy was faking to impress or ingratiate herself with the dead girl’s mother. The next morning ‘Mary’ calmly announced her intention to go ‘home’ by which she meant the Roff household. This naturally created some embarrassment for Mr and Mrs Vennum who were reluctant to have their daughter ‘adopted’ by a neighbour, but in her present state of mind it could have been argued that Lurancy was no longer their daughter. On 11 February, after much soul searching the Vennums agreed to let their daughter have her way.
En route they passed the Roff’s old house where their daughter had died and ‘Mary’ insisted on being taken there, but she was eventually persuaded that it was no longer the family home. When she arrived at the new house she expressed delight at seeing her old piano and appeared to recognize the relatives who greeted her. Of course, none of this proves anything. Lurancy could have been shamming in order to secure attention. There was little risk in claiming to recognize the Roff’s previous home as in those days everyone knew their neighbours and the history of the town. As for the piano, it was a fair assumption that it would have been in the family for some years and presumably had occupied pride of place in the previous house.
‘The next morning “Mary” calmly announced her intention to go “home” ...’
But even the most cynical witnesses were astonished to hear ‘Mary’ greet her old Sunday School teacher using her maiden name which Lurancy could not have known. Intrigued, the family subjected ‘Mary’ to a barrage of probing personal questions relating to seemingly insignificant incidents in her childhood which even the most imaginative impostor could not have faked. She satisfied them on all counts. She even remembered details of a family holiday and could name the spot where her pet dog had died. Most remarkably of all, she recalled the exact words written many years earlier by a medium during a séance who claimed to be channelling Mary’s spirit communications.
Over the following weeks she recognized personal items that she had owned which Mr and Mrs Roff left unobtrusively in the hope of them being identified, but ‘Mary’ did more than acknowledge them. She would snatch them up in delight and offer some minor detail related to the item that her parents could verify. Clearly this was something more than a remarkable performance. It was a phenomenon, a rare example of benign possession which was similar in many ways to recorded cases of reincarnation, except that Mary Roff died when Lurancy was a small child. It could not be explained as a multiple personality disorder since ‘Mary Roff’ evidently had intimate personal knowledge of the Roff family and her previous life.
In the same way that Mrs Brown channelled long-gone composers, artists claim to have been so inspired. The top picture is by an F Thompson which was later found to resemble a painting by the dead artist R S Gifford (bottom picture), who was supposed to have ‘drawn through’ Thompson
On her arrival at the Roff house ‘Mary’ had predicted that she would be using Lurancy for three weeks after which she would return to the spirit world and allow Lurancy to continue with her life. She kept her word. On the morning of 21 May, ‘Mary Roff’ vacated the body of her host and Lurancy returned to her parents. She later married and lived a normal happy life, but from time to time Mr and Mrs Roff would pay a visit at which time their daughter would make an appearance to reassure them that all was well. In gratitude for being allowed to say goodbye to her family, the benign spirit even intervened during the birth of Lurancy’s first child, putting her into a trance to alleviate the pains of childbirth.
Not all cases of possession are as inconvenient for their host as the Mary Lurancy Vennum case, or as unpleasant as that portrayed in The Exorcist. The following is a case in point.
On New Year’s Day 1970, the musicologist Sir Donald Tovey gave his expert opinion on the authenticity of certain compositions by Beethoven and Liszt which had reputedly been ‘channelled’ through London medium Mrs Rosemary Brown. He then took the opportunity to share his insights into why the world was now ready to receive these gifts from heaven.
‘To understand himself fully [Man] should become aware of the fact that he does not consist merely of a temporary form which is doomed to age and die. He has an immortal soul which is housed in an immortal body and endowed with a mind that is independent of a physical brain. In communication through music and conversation, an organized group of musicians who have departed from your world are attempting to establish a precept for humanity; i.e. that physical death is a transition from one state of consciousness to another wherein one retains one’s individuality. The realization of this fact should assist man to a greater insight into his own nature and potential super-terrestrial activities.’
This was profound and revealing stuff. The only problem was that Sir Donald Tovey had been dead for some years when he gave this ‘lecture’ through the auspices of Mrs Brown. Sceptics might say that it was extremely convenient that Mrs Brown was able to channel both the great composers and a respected music critic to verify their work, but there was no disputing the fact that the music was of a very high quality and that its complexity was way beyond Mrs Brown’s humble talents. By all accounts she was a pianist of moderate ability and her knowledge of music was rudimentary at best. Yet for the last five years she had been taking dictation from Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Brahms and Debussy at a speed she could barely keep up with and, according to a number of influential musicologists, in their distinctive style.
There was one problem, however, and this appears to be the key to the whole mystery. The music was ‘first class’ according to one critic, but it was not music of genius. If the great composers were active again on the other side, why then did they not produce masterworks rather than highly proficient imitations which any serious music student could conceivably have created to impress their professor? And why choose Mrs Brown? Admittedly she was a practising medium, but surely they would have attempted to commune with a serious musician who would have done their new compositions justice and with whom they would have had a greater empathy.
Although this appears to be a clear case of possession there is a distinct possibility that it might be an example of split personality disorder, albeit a highly productive one. Word association tests carried out by researcher Whately Carrimgton in 1935 with the mediums Osborne Leonard and Eileen Garrett suggest claim are the mediators between themselves and the spirits might actually be their own sub-personalities and that these sink back into the unconscious when the dominant personality reclaims control (when the medium wakes from their trance). In comparing their responses to key words Carrington discovered that the controls were mirror images of the mediums – a characteristic of multiple personalities. This would account for the mediums’ inability to remember what they had channelled and also for the mysterious appearance of their phenomenal latent talents. At the same time it might also explain why the music was technically impressive, but not of the quality that such men of genius would be expected to produce if they had been given a chance to continue working from the ‘other side’.
This theory does not explain incidents of genuine mediumship in which the medium has communicated personal information that he or she could not have had access to, unconsciously or otherwise, and which was subsequently verified as correct by the bereaved. But it could be significant that subjects have exhibited telepathic abilities under hypnosis, such as sharing physical sensations with the hypnotist, which might suggest that when the left side of the brain (the objective or ordinary mind) is put to sleep, the right side of the brain (also known as the subjective or subliminal mind) might then be receptive to spirit communications.
Automatic art, or automatism to give it its clinical name, is not a recent phenomenon. In the 1930s, the American psychiatrist Dr Anita Mull experimented with the technique to see if she could connect with her mentally ill patients. Against all the laws of logic and the expectations of her medical colleagues, many of Dr Mull’s patients produced impressive prose, paintings, sketches and musical compositions with their passive hand (the one they did not normally use to write with), with both hands simultaneously, occasionally writing and drawing upside down or even backwards. A number of patients were even able to draw ‘blind’, without looking at the paper. All of this was done fluidly, at great speed and without error. Dr Muhl believed that these latent talents originated in the unconscious, but there are those on the fringes of the scientific community who suspect that there might be spirits or a past-life personality at work. What other explanation, they say, can account for the feats of former antiques dealer John Tuckey who can complete epic Dickensian novels in a distinctive nineteenth-century copperplate script in a matter of weeks? Or what about the remarkable achievements of the Brazilian automatic artist Luiz Gasparetto who can produce two paintings in the style of different great masters simultaneously, one working upright and the other created upside down. Often Gasparetto will take less than a minute to produce a sketch worthy of Cézanne or Manet – and he doesn’t even use brushes. He will employ his fingers and even his toes to create a one-minute masterpiece.
There is another theory to account for such accomplishments and this is that each of us contains more than one personality which are normally controlled by the dominant persona that has, effectively, taken the driving seat.
When psychiatrist Morton Prince placed patient Clara Fowler under hypnosis he unwittingly freed two contrasting personalities, each unaware of the other. Clara had been morose, subdued and suffered from depression while her two alter egos could not have been more different. One was considerably more mature and self-assured while the second, which identified herself as ‘Sally’, was a lively and mischievous little girl who would ‘possess’ Clara at inconvenient moments. Without warning ‘Sally’ would take over for hours at a time and when Clara regained control she would find herself in another part of town, bewildered as to how she got there. At the height of her influence, ‘Sally’ moved to another town, secured a job as a waitress for two weeks and then vacated her host who consequently had to talk her way out of a job she hadn’t applied for and find her own way back home.
A painting by Mary Howitt (Mrs Alaric Watts), produced under inspiration by the spirit world. The original is in the archives of the Society for Psychical Research
Spiritualists might interpret these experiences as evidence of possession, while a psychiatrist would regard them as sub-personalities, but if they are merely aspects of our unconscious why then do they create a separate personal history for themselves, speak in another voice and exhibit talents which the dominant personality does not possess? Could it be that they are, in fact, transitory memories and talents from that person’s former lives which have been reawakened?
A belief in ghosts does not necessarily lead to an acceptance of reincarnation – the idea that we all experience a series of lives in order to achieve enlightenment or self-realization – but the cyclic nature of life as reflected in the changing seasons and the principle of evolution suggests that it is not only logical but highly desirable that we need more than one life in order to fulfil our full potential. While the evidence for reincarnation may be seen to be as compelling as that for the existence of spirits, it was not until the late 1960s when the Beatles popularly introduced the West to meditation and mind-expanding drugs that this spiritual world view entered Western consciousness, although it had been a core belief of the Celts and the ancient Greeks.
‘... when they were three and a half their father took them back to Hexham and was astonished to hear the girls point out places they had never seen in this life ...’
In post-war Britain the concept of reincarnation was considered to be an alien idea peculiar to the exotic Eastern philosophies of Hinduism, Shintoism and Buddhism. So when, in 1962, a Catholic father announced that his daughters were living proof of the existence of reincarnation it was seen as a challenge to the authority of the Church which had declared the concept heretical.
John Pollock had lost his first two daughters, Joanna, 11, and Jacqueline, 6, in May 1957 when a driver lost control of her car and careered into the children near their home in Hexham, Northumberland. Pollock assumed that God had taken his girls to punish him for believing in reincarnation, but a year later, when his wife learnt that she was pregnant, Pollock became convinced that the souls of the two girls would be reborn in order to demonstrate that the church was wrong to deny the natural process of death and rebirth. When his wife’s gynaecologist informed the couple that they were to expect a single child Pollock assured him he was wrong – there would be twins, both girls. On 4 October1958, he was proved correct.
The twins were monozygotic (meaning they developed from a single egg) yet the second twin Jennifer, was born with a thin white line on her forehead in the same place that her dead sister Jacqueline had sustained a wound while falling from her bicycle. Her parents were also puzzled by the appearance of a distinctive birth mark on her left hip, identical to the one that Jacqueline had.
The girls grew up in Whitley Bay, but when they were three and a half their father took them back to Hexham and was astonished to hear the girls point out places they had never seen in this life and talk about where they had played, even though they had left the town before they could walk. They knew when they were approaching their school although it was out of sight, and they recognized their old home as they passed it although their father had said nothing.
Six months later, they were given Joanna and Jacqueline’s toy box. They identified all their dead sisters’ dolls by name. They were also observed playing a game that their mother, Florence Pollock, found disturbing. Jennifer lay on the floor with her head in Gillian’s lap, play-acting that she was dying and her sister would say, ‘The blood’s coming out of your eyes. That’s where the car hit you.’ Neither parent had discussed the accident with the children. On another occasion their mother heard them screaming in the street. When she came out she saw them clutching each other and looking terrified in the direction of a stationary car with its motor running. The girls were crying, ‘The car! It’s coming at us!’
The possibility that they might be the reincarnation of their elder, deceased sisters brought no comfort to their mother who could not reconcile the evidence of her own eyes with the Church’s edict that belief in reincarnation was a mortal sin. For this reason she made an excellent impartial witness. To Florence Pollock’s relief, however, the incident with the car marked the end of the affair. At the age of five the girls abruptly ceased to seem conscious of the connection with their former lives and developed into normal, healthy children.
This is consistent with a belief that at the age of five all children lose their link with the other world. At this point, to borrow an expression from the esoteric tradition, ‘the veil comes down’. Children cease to play with imaginary friends and become grounded in the ‘real’ world. And perhaps something of the magic of childhood and worldly innocence dies with it.