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ON THE STUDY OF SHAMANISM AND ALTERNATE MODES OF HEALING
September 3-5, 1988, Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, California
An Initial Report
On a Possible Paranormal Event
by
William C. Leikam
PREFACE
The online format of this article, published in hard copy in the above proceedings of the conference, has been altered because the charts could not be included. They are exclusive to the published hard copy.
INTRODUCTION
To assume that all psychic events, no matter what they might be, are fraudulent as some skeptics, such as Robert Steiner of the Bay Area Skeptics, purport, actually invites a deeper question about the psyche of human beings. If paranormal events are fraudulent, then why should so many hundreds of thousands of people over the ages want to perpetrate such fraud? What does this say about our modern psychological needs? Why is it that most reports are frequently given by people who have no prior knowledge of or prior experience with the paranormal, as is the case I am about to report on? I find these questions of utmost importance for any psychological and parapsychological investigation.
SYNTHESIS OF THE EVENTS
Imagine yourself having grown up in the rational, pragmatic culture of the twentieth century where science dictates the rules of reality. You have accepted the rational, logical, scientific definition of reality as certainly as you have assumed that the sun will rise in the morning. One night, however, you go to bed and, upon retiring, you look down the hallway where, suddenly, you see a blue shaft of light flash across the end of the corridor. Seconds later, another flash, about the size of an average person's arm, and then a third streaks past. Stunned, unable to explain the events, you hear a clicking sound in another room. It is curious, different from any of the sounds that you have ever heard the house make when temperature changes occur. You get out of bed to check, and walk down the hall only to find yourself surrounded by such sounds. They have no immediate, apparent source. The clicking noise then changes into something that reminds you of two metal strips being snapped together. Carefully, you proceed into a room that is your study, off the hallway, with the heating duct just to the left of the desk. You stand there wondering about these strange sounds, when, suddenly, a loud rattling sound of pipes comes from the wall and the heating duct, and a light gathers, almost like fog. A flash, like that of a camera, ignites the room. It is the first event of this kind, but by far not the last. There must be some explanation for this, you feel, some natural cause making these sounds. These lights and the events are unnerving, so much so that you cannot sleep.
The following day, late in the afternoon, the same events occur but they are spread throughout the house, and the sounds and flashes of light, sometimes blue or red, increase in frequency daily and far into the night, off and on, twenty-four hours a day. After living in the house for nearly twenty-five years and never having heard nor experienced anything like this, you are suddenly enmeshed in a quest for understanding, but, no matter what you do, explanations are elusive and the many different kinds of engineers that you bring in have no explanation.
"REALITY" ACCOUNT
The above description is a composite of the events that I am presently investigating. The owner of the house in Sunnyvale, California, and the person affected by these events, is a sixty-five-year-old woman whom I will call Alice in this report. She lives alone and has suffered a great deal, both emotionally and physically, from these events. Alice is a very rational person whose outlook toward life is clearly within the framework of the rational and scientific.
When the phenomena began, in late January 1988, and continued to develop, by February 23, 1988, Alice had the presence of mind to begin documenting them. Over the months, her notes became increasingly more detailed: date, time, description of the event as well as any situation that directly concerned the event. She began to document the events first with a tape recorder; starting March 18, 1988, with using an 8mm Sony Handycam video recorder and later a Sony VHS video camera.
Alice firmly believed that the sounds and the flashes can be explained in a rational, natural way. She wondered whether the cracking sounds (like popcorn popping), clicking noises (like two steel springs snapping together), hard thumps, etc, might not be caused by the settling of her house. The flashes of light also could be a gaseous emission from the heating ducts being ignited by a short circuit in the gas furnace room at the end of the hallway. Because the flashes were of most concern, she decided to ask an electrical engineer to come and check out all the wiring in the house and, as the events heightened in intensity, she began drawing in a number of technicians, engineers, physicists, and chemical engineers to have them rationally explain and correct the problem.
The electrical engineer checked all circuits and, on February 26, 1988, established "... that the problem was not in the circuitry." At 8:00pm that day Alice decided to completely turn off the power in the house at the main line coming from the street. From 9:15 through 10:20pm, with all electricity turned off in the house, there was a flash seen in the front hallway in addition to pops heard throughout the house.
At 10:20pm, she turned the power on again and at 2:00am that very night, more flashes occurred in the front hallway. At 3:30am, house pipes knocked, "sounding as though it came from the rear bathroom" (according to her notes). At 4:00am, the same knocking sound and a flash occurred. For the following forty minutes, there were five more flashes of light in the bathroom. First the knocking of pipes and then a flash, sometimes small, sometimes filling the whole house, eventually became a recurring pattern. On February 29, 1988, 7:45 a.m., Alice reports, "I slept on the couch in the living room, totally exhausted."
As the months passed, she called in the first of two structural engineers, the Building Inspector Superintendent for the Sunnyvale City Public Works Department, to test and examine the house's foundations, up to the roof. He listened also to the noises on the tape recordings and could not identify them as being caused by a house settling. On May 5, 1988, the City of Sunnyvale's Building Inspector listened to the noises and did not find them caused by house settling or the house growing structurally weak or caused by any other flaws in the construction of the house. He said, "You've been very thorough. There's nothing I can do to help. This, in my opinion, is not a material problem." (Alice's notes, p.22)
On March 2, 1988, a Pacific Gas & Electric serviceman came to the house and checked the gas meter and all gas-operated appliances in the house. He also drove stake into the ground around the house to see whether gases such as methane were emitted from the ground, causing the flashes, but found nothing.
On March 3, 1988, the sounds significantly increased and began to include heavy bumps and thumping in addition to the pops and pipe noises. Asking Alice whether there were any significant changes in her life at this time, she said that there were none. After more visits by electrical engineers, one said, "We are at a loss to know what could be done next." The noises and flashes continued unabated.
By March 5, 1988, Alice began suffering from physical ailments that she directly associated with the noises which were "fraying my nerves" (notes, p.5). On the night of March 3, she had decided to sleep over at a neighbor's house, because she had been getting very little sleep during prior nights. Having slept away from her house for two days, early morning of March 5, at 4:00am, she awoke with dry heaves that lasted until around 6:30am. By 7:30am, she noticed that her arms and hands were swollen so that her skin was taut. She returned home at 8:30am and, within an hour, the swelling had completely disappeared.
The intensity of the sounds and lights had reached such a level that Alice took sleeping pills just to get a few hour's sleep, and she decided to talk with her parish priest. On March 16, he called to tell her that if the problem continues he would "come out in a few days to bless the house." The noises continued, he was notified, came and blessed the house, but there was no reprieve.
On March 18, Alice decided to use a Sony 8 mm Handycam video camera to record the flashes and have other people come to her house to stay overnight to witness, and check into the history of the place. The camera was first positioned on March 18. During this time there were both flashes and sounds, but the lights appeared in areas away from the camera. However, at 12:05am, she decided to reposition it at the entrance to the bathroom, where moments before she had seen a flash. At 12:30am, Alice reports that she "may have gotten the flash recorded, because from my bed it appeared that a flash occurred." And she did catch it. On March 21, she called in four people to watch the recording. They saw a "yellow... explosive flash from the left side of the furnace vent, rear bath." Loud, pounding noises followed shortly thereafter. However, I viewed the same tape on which the flash was recorded and saw nothing, save a glitch in the film. The following night she stayed over at a neighbor's house and the flashes and sounds "followed" her there. Alice was very disturbed about this event and others that followed.
Two chemical engineers were asked to discuss the problem. After reviewing all of the information that Alice had put together they concluded, in all seriousness, that there was the possibility it was "spiritual." This was the third indication in Alice's notes that something other than the ordinary, and rationally explainable, might be occurring.
PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT
When I was called in to be an adjunct to the investigations, I was as skeptical as Alice. However, Alice had done such a thorough job in covering electrical and structural aspects and calling in other experts not mentioned in this report, that I suggested that we look elsewhere. I recommended that we contact the National Geological Society in Menlo Park and ask them whether there could be a fracture fault in the area. In 1986, Paul Devereux, author of Earth Lights, had told me during the conference "Is the Earth a Living Organism," held at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, that along fault lines more earth lights are seen than elsewhere. Alice called the Menlo Park offices but they could not answer the question because a fault assessment of the Sunnyvale area had never been made. This leaves, at least at this point, the possibility open that what has been witnessed are earth lights and not a poltergeist. However, an earth light does not explain the noises.
A second possibility, since the events "followed" Alice within the neighborhood, but not elsewhere, might be that somehow her house had become a conduit for some of the high-technology electrical activities nearby, such as that of the Lockheed Corporation. It might be that Alice herself acts like an antenna to these high tech industries. This may not be so farfetched, because there are accounts of people whose dental cavities, when filled with amalgam, can receive radio signals to such an extent that radio stations can actually be heard. Other possibilities, e.g. fluorescent gasses, frequency arcing of ham radio transmissions through the house pipes, etc, are being checked out.
I took one of the video tapes home and made notes on what I heard. There was not much to see, since the camera had been set up in the hallway and, later, had faced the bathroom toward the forced air heating ventilator. During one of the nights, the video camera was situated first three feet into the bedroom, facing the hallway. In its second position, inside the bedroom, one foot from the bathroom door, at VCR playback number 2250, there is a faint sound like that of an old clock ticking but nowhere and at no time did Alice have a ticking clock in her bedroom or elsewhere in the vicinity. Shortly thereafter there is a rather loud pop, followed by a sound like that of a pebble rolling over a hard surface. However, that portion of the house is fully carpeted. Such sound is an anomaly. Shortly thereafter, once Alice had fallen asleep, there is a voice, her's I assume, saying simply, "Leo." Earlier, at number l047, on the video counter, there is a loud bump and, in her sleep, very faintly again, Alice says, "Leo's talking."
I am presently approaching this case as though it were both psychic and rational, not overlooking any possibility, yet keeping both dimensions clear and separate. To gain some insights into the nature of such paranormal events and the present theory about the origin of poltergeists, I am using Lloyd Auerbach's book ESP, Hauntings and Poltergeists: A Parapsychologist's Handbook. He says that events such as moving objects, household items toppling for no readily explained reason and others, arise as a psychokinetic event within the subconscious of the individual most effected and present. Auerbach and others describe a poltergeist as a psychic storm. However, given the overall nature of the events in Alice's house, they do not firmly fit into the ordinary poltergeist descriptions, there are varied sounds, flashing and shafts of light.
Nonetheless, if there is a psychological element in this case, I wonder whether the mention of Leo might have any significance. I felt that I had to move carefully because, first, I did not know Alice very well, secondly, I had not been called in as a depth psychologist, and thirdly, I had not at that time read all the documentation that I have since been given. I asked Alice whether she had ever known someone by the name of Leo. She paused momentarily and then said, "Oh, a long time ago I knew a man by that name." I did not pursue this further for the above reasons, but had the impression that Leo may have been a significant person. A second possibility within this realm is that Alice's severe rationality and her desperate search for an explanation of these events suggest that she has repressed the irrational in her life over so many years, that now her subconscious is forcing its way through. In the conflict between the rational and irrational, events are being translated as psychokinetic events, somewhat different from those around poltergeist appearances which, in traditional terms, are "location possessions" as contrasted to possessions of an individual. However, it was because of Alice's feelings that at the extreme the events could vaguely be a traditional poltergeist or a location possession that she did have her parish priest bless the house with holy water. She said, in a conversation on August 31, 1988, "Deep down, I still think it has a natural explanation."
A number of additional points must be made:
- More than one person has witnessed these events. For instance, a woman named Janice stayed overnight with Alice and saw a coherent flash of light, like a narrow laser beam.
- There are a number of witnesses, including myself, who readily heard the popping, crackling, banging and other sounds on the video film; and
- the flashes of light have a pattern. Just prior to a flash, the pipes bang and then, in one room or another, the light flashes. The location patterns for these flashes seem rather consistent, e.g. below the large mirror of her bedroom, in the bathroom and in the hallway.
NEO-SHAMANIC VIEWS
Looking at Alice's note, August 30, 1988, "flash in the bedroom, followed by a dull rolling sound under the house and the hallway lit up," there are a number of concerns that emerge from a neo-shamanic viewpoint. If a shaman is going to work within the modern, technological society, s/he has to remember that s/he is not working within the context of traditional societies. Western cultures are not steeped in the mystical or paranormal.
- The neo-shaman must understand the world view of the person s/he is working with and be compassionate. In the case of Alice, her world view is very rational and scientific. To immediately plunge into paranormal explanations would mean that one could be rejected because the paranormal contradicts and is unacceptable to the person's view of reality.
- A shamanic investigator must know the cultural background of the person, even one generation or two back. There are occasions when a person's background indicates non-Western ways of seeing reality, slightly or deeply ingrained. A person may hold a Western scientific view of reality on the surface when, in fact, there lies a more mystical view of reality beneath.
- The researcher must develop ease and openness, so that depth-psychological work can proceed, especially when events may have a psychokinetic character and could be explained, as Auerbach says, as a "psychic storm." Remember, in the modern world one is often called not to play, within such investigations, the role of depth psychologists but instead that of a scientist or a parapsychologist investigating an objective event that has, as the person involved sees it, really nothing to do with the events. Alice may not be comfortable entertaining the idea that the events could be spiritual or psychic. To open somebody to such possibilities, one must gradually shift roles from the initial intent to a secondary role. This takes time and has to be consciously attended to.
- The researcher must be sensitive to the individual's emotional state at all times, especially when there is a great deal of difference between world views. An investigator cannot move, blinded by the intensity that s/he feels, at the expense of the person involved and, ultimately, the investigation itself.
At the beginning stage of this case, I felt if I mentioned paranormal ideas and explanations prematurely it would destroy the relationship. Therefore, I am still looking at this event as having a natural explanation, yet considering the psychic a possibility. More detailed investigation is needed before this case can be resolved. The events began with a good deal of intensity, moved to an extreme level and then, as of late, shifted to occurring in intervals of several days. When we read Alice's notes, it feels as though the house is a living entity. A final report will be given at next year's conference.
References:
1. Auerbach, Lloyd. ESP, Hauntings and Poltergeists: A Parapsychologist's Handbook. New York: Warner Books, 1986.
2. Devereux, Paul. Earth Lights. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, Great Britain: Turnstone Press, 1982.
3. Notes, excerpted from Alice's documentation of the events, Sunnyvale, California, February through August 30, 1988.
4. "The Dynamics of Altered States of Consciousness," Proceedings of the International Conference on Shamanism, May 11-13, 1984, Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, California.
5. "The Emergence of the Urban Shaman: An Experiential Perspective", Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Study of Shamanism, August 31-September 2, 1985, Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, California.
6. "Illness, Disease and the Western Shamanic Healing Method," Proceedings of the Third International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing, August 30-September 1, 1986, Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, California.
7. "Music, Sound and Healing: Exploring the Terrain, the Initial Step," Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing, September 5-7, 1987, Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, California.
8. "A New Event in the Psi Field," Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing," September 2-4, 1989, Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, California.
9. "The Destruction of Spirit Mountain: An Observation of Conflicting Values," Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing, September 2-4, 1994, Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael, California.
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