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Lugana Limita
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30
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for your research files
Parapsychology according
to Woody Allen .
Examining Psychic
Phenomena
There is no question that there is an unseen world. The
problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it
open? Unexplainable events occur constantly. One man
will see spirits. Another will hear voices. A third will wake
up and find himself running in the Preakness. How many of
us have not at one time or another felt an ice-cold hand on
the back of our neck while we were home alone? (Not me,
thank God, but some have.) What is behind these experi-
ences? Or in front of them, for that matter? Is it true that
some men can foresce the future or communicate with
ghosts? And after death is it still possible to take showers?
Fortunately, these questions about psychic phenomena
are answered in a soon to be published book, Boo!, by Dr.
Osgood Mulford Twelge, the noted parapsychologist and
professor of ectoplasm at Columbia University. Dr. Twelge
has assembled a remarkable history of supernatural inci-
dents that covers the whole range of psychic phenomena,
from thought transference to the bizarre experience of two
brothers on opposite parts of the globe, one of whom took a
bath while the other suddenly got clean. What follows is but
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* a sampling of Dr. Twelge's most celebrated cases, with his
comments.
Examining Psychic Phenomena
9
APPARITIONS
On March 16, 1882, Mr. J. C. Dubbs awoke in the middle
of the night and saw his brother Amos, who had been dead
for fourteen years, sitting at the foot of his bed flicking
chickens. Dubbs asked his brother what he was doing there,
and his brother said not to worry, he was dead and was only
in town for the weekend. Dubbs asked his brother what it
was like in "the other world," and his brother said it was
not unlike Cleveland. He said he had returned to give
Dubbs a message, which was that a dark-blue suit and
Argyle socks are a big mistake.
At that point, Dubbs's servant girl entered and saw
Dubbs talking to "a shapeless, milky haze," which she said
reminded her of Amos Dubbs but was a little better-looking.
Finally, the ghost asked Dubbs to join him in an aria from
Faust, which the two sang with great fervor. As dawn rose,
the ghost walked through the wall, and Dubbs, trying to
follow, broke his nosc.
This appears to be a classic case of the apparition
phenomenon, and if Dubbs is to be believed, the ghost
returned again and caused Mrs. Dubbs to rise out of a chair
and hover over the dinner table for twenty minutes until she
dropped into some gravy. It is interesting to note that spirits
have a tendency to be mischievous, which A. F. Childe, the
British mystic, attributes to a marked feeling of inferiority
they have over being dead. "Apparitions" are often associ-
ated with individuals who have suffered an unusual demise.
Amos Dubbs, for instance; had died under mysterious
circumstances when a farmer accidentally planted him
along with some turnips.
SPIRIT DEPARTURE
Mr. Albert Sykes reports the following experience: "I was
sitting having biscuits with some friends when I felt my
spirit leave my body and go make a telephone call. For
some reason, it called the Moscowitz Fiber Glass Company.
My spirit then returned to my body and sat for another
twenty minutes or so, hoping nobody would suggest cha-
rades. When the conversation turned to mutual funds, it left
again and began wandering around the city. I am con-
vinced that it visited the Statue of Liberty and then saw the
stage show at Radio City Music Hall. Following that, it
went to Benny's Steak House and ran up a tab of sixty-cight
dollars. My spirit then decided to return to my body, but it
was impossible to get a cab. Finally, it walked up Fifth
Avenue and rejoined me just in time to catch the late news.
I could tell that it was reentering my body, because I felt a
sudden chill, and a voice said, 'I'm back. You want to pass
me those raisins?'
"This phenomenon has happened to me several times
since. Once, my spirit went to Miami for a weekend, and
once it was, arrested for trying to leave Macy's without
paying for a tie. The fourth time, it was actually my body
that left my spirit, although all it did was get a rubdown
and come right back."
Spirit departure was very common around 1910, when
many "spirits" were reported wandering aimlessly around
India searching for the American Consulate. The phenome-
non is quite similar to transubstantiation, the process
whereby a person will suddenly dematerialize and remateri-
alize somewhere else in the world. This is not a bad way to
travel, although there is usually a half-hour wait for
luggage. The most astonishing case of transubstantiation
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was that of Sir Arthur Nurney, who vanished. with an
audible pop while he was taking a bath and suddenly
appeared in the string section of the Vienna Symphony
Orchestra. He stayed on as the first violinist for twenty-
seven years, although he could only play "Three Blind
Mice," and vanished abruptly one day during Mozart's
Jupiter Symphony, turning up in bed with Winston
Churchill.
PRECOGNITION
Mr. Fenton Allentuck describes the following precognitive
dream: "I went to sleep at midnight and dreamed that I
was playing whist with a plate of chives. Suddenly the
dream shifted, and I saw my grandfather about to be run
over by a truck in the middle of the street, where he was
waltzing with a clothing dummy. I tried to scream, but
when I opened my mouth the only sound that came out was
chimes, and my grandfather was run over.
"I awoke in a sweat and ran to my grandfather's house
and asked him if he had plans to go waltzing with a
clothing dummy. He said of course not, although he had
contemplated posing as a shepherd to fool his enemies.
Relieved, I walked home, but learned later that the old
man had slipped on a chicken-salad sandwich and fallen off
the Chrysler Building."
Precognitive dreams are too common to be dismissed as
pure coincidence. Here a man dreams of a relative's death,
and it occurs. Not everyone is so lucky. J. Martinez, of
Kennebunkport. Mame, dreamed he won the Irish Sweep-
stakes. When he awoke. his bed had floated out to sea.
Examining Psychic Phenomena
II
TRANCES
Sir Hugh Swiggles, the skeptic, reports an interesting séance
experience:
We attended the home of Madame Reynaud, the noted
medium, where we were all told to sit around the table and
join hands. Mr. Weeks couldn't stop giggling, and Madame
Reynaud smashed him on the head with a Ouija board. The
lights were turned out, and Madame Reynaud attempted to
contact Mrs. Marple's husband, who had died at the opera
when his beard caught fire. The following is an exact
transcript:
MRS. MARPLE: What do you see?
MEDIUM: I see a man with blue eyes and a pinwheel hat.
MRS. MARPLE: That's my husband!
MEDIUM: His name is . . . Robert. No . . . Richard
MRS. MARPLE: Quincy.
MEDIUM: Quincy! Yes, that's it!
MRS. MARPLE: What else about him?
MEDIUM: He is bald but usually keeps some leaves on his
head so nobody will notice.
MRS. MARPLE: Yes! Exactly!
MEDIUM: For some reason, he has an object . : . a loin of
pork.
MRS. MARPLE: My anniversary present to him! Can you
make him speak?
MEDIUM: Speak, spirit. Speak.
QUINCY: Claire, this is Quincy.
MRS. MARPLE: Oh, Quincy! Quincy!
QUINCY: How long do you keep the chicken in when you're
trying to broil it?
MRS. MARPLE: That voice! It's him!
MEDIUM: Everybody concentrate.
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Examining Psychic Phenomena
13
MRS. MARPLE: Quincy, are they treating you okay?
QUINCY: Not bad, except it takes four days to get your
cleaning back.
MRS. MARPLE: Quincy, do you miss me?
QUINCY: Huh? Oh, er, sure. Sure, kid. I got to be
going. . . .
MEDIUM: I'm losing it. He's fading. .
.
I found this séance to pass the most stringent tests of
credulity, with the minor exception of a phonograph, which
was found under Madame Reynaud's dress.
. There is no doubt that certain events recorded at séances
arc genuine. Who does not recall the famous incident at
Sybil Seretsky's, when her goldfish sang "I Got Rhythm" --
a favorite tune of her recently deceased nephew? But
contacting the dead is at best difficult, since most deceased
are reluctant to speak up, and those that do seem to hem
and haw before getting to the point, The author has
actually seen a table rise, and Dr. Joshua Fleagle, of
Harvard, attended a séance in which a table not only rose
but excused itself and went upstairs to sleep.
CLAIRVOYANCE
One of the most astounding cases of clairvoyance is that of
the noted Greek psychic, Achille Londos. Londos realized
he had "unusual powers" by the age of ten, when he could
lie in bed and, by concentrating, make his father's false
teeth jump out of his mouth. After a neighbor's husband
had been missing for three weeks, Londos told them to look
in the stove, where the man was found knitting. Londos
could concentrate on a person's face and force the image to
come out on a roil of ordinary Kodak film, although he
could never seem to get anybody to smile.
In 1964, he was called in to aid police in capturing the
Düsseldorf Strangler, a fiend who always left a baked
Alaska on the chests of his victims. Merely by sniffing a
handkerchief, Londos led police to Siegfried Lenz, handy .
man at a school for deaf turkeys, who said he was the
strangler and could he-please have his handkerchief back.
Londos is just one of many people with psychic powers.
C. N. Jerome, the psychic, of Newport, Rhode Island.
claims he can guess any card being thought of by a squir-
rel.
PROGNOSTICATION
Finally, we come to Aristonidis, the sixteenth-century count
whose predictions continue to dazzle and perplex even the
most skeptical. Typical examples are:
"Two nations will go to war, but only one will win."
(Experts feel this probably refers to the Russo-Japanese
War of 1904-05-an astounding feat of prognostication,
considering the fact that it was made in 1540.)
"A man in Istanbul will have his hat blocked, and it will
be ruined."
(In 1860, Abu Hamid, Ottoman warrior, sent his cap out
to be cleaned, and it came back with spots.)
"I sec a great person, who one day will invent for
mankind a garment to be worn over his trousers for
protection while cooking. It will be called an 'abron' or
'aprone.'"
(Aristonidis meant the apron, of course.)
"A leader will emerge in France. He will be very short
and will cause great calamity."
(This is a reference either to Napoleon or to Marcel
Lumet, an eighteenth-century midget who instigated a plot
to rub béarnaise sauce on Voltaire.)
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"In the New World, there will be a place named
California, and a man named Joseph Cotten will become
famous."
(No explanation necessary.)
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