In the meantime, while Chris had been to see the forensic artist, I had been visiting ‘Professor Brainstorm’. His real name is Harry Oldfield and he is a scientist who has conducted a great deal of research into crystal and has been coming up with some very controversial results. He is definitely outside the mainstream, but I wondered whether he might be able to suggest a new means of getting to the truth about the skulls. Although I was not too hopeful, I felt we had nothing to lose. One way or another, we were determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of the crystal skulls.
I arrived at Harry Oldfield’s ‘electro-crystal therapy’ centre in Ruislip, north-west London, to find the surgery of the 1930s semidetached house was packed with people holding boxes wired up to themselves. Harry was using electrically charged crystals to help heal people who had been written off by the medical profession. Although I was sceptical about the healing power of crystals, I had now heard from all the owners of crystal skulls in private collections that their skulls had the power to heal. So was it possible that the skulls could work directly to affect the human body? I was very resistant to the idea of crystal, let alone crystal skulls, having any healing powers whatsoever. Maybe the reason that I didn’t believe that crystals could heal was because I thought of them as just stones, to which my attitude had at best been indifferent.
I tended to agree with academic Dr Linda Schele who called the crystal skulls the ‘relics of the twentieth century’. She likened them to the relics of dead saints sold during the medieval period for their healing powers. Undoubtedly, many of these relics were fake. But people really believed that they could heal. Certainly, when people believe that something will make them better, it often does. This ‘placebo effect’ has been well documented and I had always assumed that this was the only effect that the crystal skulls could actually have.
But I had by now come across some research which challenged my preconceptions. One scientific study into the possible healing effects of crystals had been carried out in the USA by C. Norman Shealy and described in his book Miracles Do Happen.1 Shealy looked at the effect of crystals on depression. A sample of 141 chronically depressed patients was given either a piece of glass or a piece of quartz to wear around their neck. The subjects were not told which they were wearing. After two weeks, 85 per cent of all the participants reported an improvement, in all likelihood a ‘placebo effect’. But six months later, only 28 per cent of those who were wearing glass reported any continued improvement, whereas 80 per cent of those who were using crystal were still claiming that they could feel its benefits. So, at least for depression, crystal seemed to have more than just a placebo effect. But what of the claims that crystals can heal physical conditions?
Harry Oldfield says he has used the healing power of crystal to successfully treat a diverse range of ailments from cancer and heart disease to arthritis. He greeted me with a vigorous handshake. He was school-boyish in appearance despite being in his mid-40s. He explained that his interest in crystals had come via a rather circuitous route.
As a science teacher at a busy London comprehensive school, Harry was always dreaming up ways of getting his students to share his passion for science. One day he introduced an aura photography camera into the classroom.
The aura camera photographs the electro-magnetic energy ring around the body, displaying it in a range of colours using the technique known as ‘Kirlian photography’, invented behind the Iron Curtain during the 1930s. Eastern philosophy and alternative medical practice recognize that the body is made of different energy centres through which electro-magnetic energy flows. But this idea is still dismissed by most scientists in the West. I was reminded, however, of Dorland’s theory that subtle energy is produced by the body and can be affected by contact with crystal. Exactly the same theory is the foundation of Harry Oldfield’s work.
Back in his classroom, Harry’s students used Kirlian photography techniques and began to notice subtle differences between the energy fields of those who were going down with ’flu and those who were not. Harry recognized the potential of Kirlian photography as a diagnostic tool and developed a video version, which he called PIP, or ‘poly contrast interface’ photography, and which could also show disturbances in the energy field. These disturbances would occur before the physical symptoms of an illness presented themselves. The different patterns would indicate the exact location of a health problem.
Although Harry initially worked closely with the medical profession, he found medical practitioners less keen when he became interested in treatment as well as diagnosis. Harry had been diagnosing illness then referring patients on for hospital treatment, but he felt that conventional medical treatment for diseases such as cancer was often misguided. He considered the standard ‘cut and burn’ approach often too harsh for the body and so he set out to find a gentler way of healing.
Harry began to develop a machine that would work with the body’s own natural energy frequencies. He spent some time working on it, but felt there was something missing. It was a friend who suggested that he might use crystals. Harry began experimenting and found that they were indeed the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
Harry now uses electricity to stimulate crystals and to send a pulse into the patient’s body. He says that crystals can be stimulated by hand, but even the best crystal therapists can not be on top form all the time. Harry believes that, when stimulated by quartz crystal, the body uses its own electrical forces to heal. He sees his work as ‘rebalancing’ the body, and likens himself to a piano tuner ‘with a Steinway piano which has gone out of tune’. The crystals are like a tuning device. As Harry says, ‘All I do is tweak the strings, tweak some a little bit further, relax some and leave others alone because they are OK.’
Harry explained that using crystal for healing was not new, but had been practised by Native Americans for millennia. He claimed that he had also made a discovery which he thought confirmed the traditional Native American belief that crystal was not an inanimate object, but contained a living presence.
Harry went on to describe this discovery, which had occurred whilst he was working with his video imaging system. One day, his camera had been recording changes in the energy field of a patient when his eye had been drawn to the crystal that the woman was holding. A strange white ether-like substance seemed to be emerging from it. Invisible to the naked eye, it was clearly visible on the video imaging system. It moved up from the surface of the crystal, looking like a snake emerging from a basket.
‘Good God, look at that!’ Harry exclaimed, whereupon the ‘presence’ vanished. Harry now calls this ‘the crystal entity’, the being that lives within the crystal. Since first catching sight of the elusive creature, he has seen it numerous times and even has several video recordings of it.
I didn’t want to believe any of this, but Harry invited me to witness it for myself. I sat down and he selected a large piece of crystal for me. Apparently the entity cannot be seen in all crystals. I held the crystal while Harry got the camera running. I watched the screen, which showed my hand holding the crystal. After a few moments had passed, with the crystal lying flat on the palm of my hand, I could see a strange snake-like form seeming to emerge from the crystal. Although nothing was visible when I glanced at the crystal in my hand, when I looked at the screen I could see a white, semi-transparent form, almost like a wisp of smoke.
As I looked on transfixed, I thought of the ancient Mayan carving which showed Lady Xoc looking at a vision serpent seen emerging from a skull. Was this what she had been looking at? Was this a vision serpent? Had this electronic device enabled us to actually see what normally could only be seen in an altered state of consciousness? Or was it just some elaborate form of video trickery?
I moved my hand slightly, and whatever it was I had been looking at disappeared from view, seeming almost to dart back into the crystal.
‘They like the heat of the human hand, but they don’t like movement,’ said Harry, excitedly.
I put the crystal down. What was I doing here? Had I been conned or had I really seen an ‘entity’ inside a piece of crystal?
Harry was speaking animatedly. He was clearly thrilled by his discovery. ‘They are out there looking for alien life forms when we have them right here,’ he said. ‘This is a life form like no other on the planet. It is not carbon based.’
Had Harry identified a non carbon-based life form or was it wild imaginings? As I left the privet hedges and rose-bushes of Ruislip behind, I was undecided. Did Native Americans really believe that crystal was in some way alive? It seemed so weird. I thought back to Star Johnsen- Moser and her encounter with the ‘presence’ inside the crystal skull. Was this what the crystal entity was? Surely this was just the stuff of science-fiction fantasy?
Figure 25: Some of the traditional tribal territories of the USA and Central America