Amherst 3

Hubbell writes a narrative as a story, based on what he was told, 

but his arrival is when the events were closing, and near the end of the book.

Not so much because they were petering out, as because

they had become too much for the family, and she was sent away.

He arrived at the end of June 1878, and she left at the end of July.

Perhaps the poltergeist,
or else Esther's element of the equation,
had been roused by all the attention, and the presence of a visitor coming especially
to take an interest in the case, and escalated its fire raising bahviour.
Much as Maurice Gross did by his presence in Enfield.
which isn't to say that any of this had to be consciously the action
of Esther Cox.

It's a very creditable case, despite who Hubbell was.
The copy, which i have, appears to have been printed around 1879, 
when Hubbell visited Esther for the last time,
Which gives the narrative more credibility.

Amherst 2

Amherst continued

There's an idea that poltergeist phenomenon are the result

of childhood abuse. Well, it surfaced in the recent rendering 

of the Bell Witch story, 

But most of these films badly corrupt the content of the original story

to make them more scary and exciting, 

which usually means more extreme and gory.

I would go as far as to say such films have little or no value.

But there is a certain reality to the idea of adolescent disturbance 

often or even usually being the source of poltergeist outbreaks. 

I have worked with clients suffering from personality disorder, for instance,

Who self harm, and there is a certain similarity to the actions

of poltergeists in this but it is not always true that a woman who self harms 

has been abused, in childhood. 

Amherst is interesting because the suggestion that this happened is
verified in the fact can be that the participants were real people
Their names, the Teeds, appear in the relevant Canadian census for Amherst.

Amherst

The Amherst house

"Esther Cox, you are mine to kill"

Walter Hubbell, something of a showman, wrote a book called

The Haunted House

About the Amherst Poltergeist.

It does seem likely that Esther herself was the poltergeist agent, 

And that she had been disturbed in her formative period,

If you read the tale, by her relationship with her boyfriend 

Bob. The implication probably being that he made a sexual 

Advance at her which disrupted her sensibilities and being from

 a religious environment as she was, 

She felt guilty and unclean herself. 

Hence the incidents, the message above, and the fire setting.

It's an interesting story, and very much written as one by Hubbell.

Pity I can't write it all out on this blog.

I'll write up some of the interestinf features over the next couple of blogs.

Neuschwanstein

I don't recall asking here, but does anyone know where 

In English publications the story of the vision 

Or Van Gudden's dream can be found?

He allegedly foresaw his and King Ludwig of Bavaria's death 

At the side of the lake, nearby which Ludwig was being treated

For his illness.He had been displaced by his brother

For his living in a fantasy  world, and disregarding the political 

Situation of the day, for his own pleasures.

Quite apart from the story that the king was murdered,

Which has been controversial, and that his death was  accidental?

There was this interesting story thst his doctor dreamed of the event

The night before.

I read this, presumably in a book of ghost tales, 

Maybe even in one that i have, in my collection, but

I can't find any details of it.

A lot of early collections lack indexes...

The source appears to be

P141 of the Annales des Sciences Psychiques 1892,

It could be in one of Flammarion's books?

It's an interesting tale of a premonition. 

I recall reading it but don't have the details clear.

I think it was told as a story?

gouffre

It's another wet morning. 

There used to be strange noises recorded as coming off the sea.

Have you heard of those? They had various names,

One of which was "gouffre"

A bit like sound mirages perhaps.

I remember hearing them on a beach somewhere when i was younger,

Probably on one of those interminable Penmaemwahr holidays.

Today if you hear an odd noise coming off the sea, it seems,

From the newspapers at least,

That somebody is building a wind farm,

At least that's how it was explained in a Worthing newspaper recently.

I wonder what it was in the days when what was out there

was only shipping?

The end of, or a ghostly reminiscence perhaps,

Of Atlantis?

The last hyperborean echoes have been lost forever.

Prince Namor won't be seen walking the streets any longer

T

trying to remember who he is,

But i expect there'll be another alleged film based allegedly

On old marvel characters, about him shortly, as well.

The only one of those, which has any feel at all

For the original is the Ghost  Rider.

from The Four, unpublished novel

Why did he keep it? Why was it still, as always, tucked into his bag? 

Because of the quote, written inside opposite the contents page maybe.

"The essence of all knowledge is the question of retrieval of feeling and purpose,

 lost with the dead. It ought to be our desire to recover, not only to retain, 

but to bring back to life an unending, which presence declines to survive."

That passage struck a nerve with Rowley. When he read it, he always had a clear impression of his mother's face in his mind's eye, and usually not otherwise. He had 

come to believe that she had sent it to him, that it had been given up by the sea

at his feet, for him alone to find, as if the 'Other Side' was another continent on the opposite side of the sea, that it had been catapulted out, dry and without water stains, after a sea-born journey impressed him profoundly. He thought of the oceans, not as water

any more, but as ethereal, immaterial, and a sort of wireless transmitter from that Other Side, wherever that was. A book which in itself barely fitted into the palm of his adolescent hand, with its dingy brown cover and almost illegible golden embossed title, a book whose contents appeared to relate to the most unusual - for want of a better word - 

experimental sciences.........

The ghost story

I find myself becoming very frustrated at the way

The Horror story

Has taken over from the ghost story genre. 

Today if anyone says "ghost story" they tend to mean a horror story.

I was shocked when the recent rendering of the Enfield haunting 

Turned out to be a horror story.

Ok, M.R. James wrote some dark forms terrorising individuals, 

But they were ghost stories.

The key to the difference lies in whether the story 

Is about the terror of meeting that darkness

Or about one human being chopping another to pieces, and the supernatural
being tacked on, almost as an afterthought or an excuse.

In a factual haunting death or harm to the individual

must account for 1 case in a million.

That ought to also apply to the ghost story.

Trouble is that the ghost story is considered an inferior genre.
(I remember a writing tutor even telling me this to my face.)

So the horror story isn't?

In my mind it's abominable. Literally abominable.

A ghost story is about enhancing thst skill to scare and puzzle 

and extend tension. That's a general writing skill.

Why does the character experiencing it then also have to

be its victim?

The question that i have is:

Why are we praising the serial killer as a hero,

And his/her victims as if we wanted to kill people ourselves?

This is leading to a serious bastardisation of the art.

Why are we praising ugliness and evil?

What's wrong with us?
 

I am trying to organise a twitter page, 

And am currently working out how to get to grips with it.

I also have been organising making my web links more easily recognisable.

Difficult when you have a common name like mine.

Yesterday i was mounting an exhibition of my photographs of India,

 in Worthing, uk,so have been very busy. 

Details of that are on facebook.

I hope all links to match up with "terry a k white."

Anyway, i have a great affinity with the Indian subcontinent.

Especially Tibet and Nepal. 

I felt very in rapport in Agra, at the Taj, 

Which is as special as it is made out to be. 

I may have mentioned that i thought

I may have been there in another incarnation.

Maybe i could have been one of those who was involved in its building, 

or watched it being built. It has a special meaning for me. Maybe that

connection has a significance in terms of my abiding interest in Buddhism.

I like the way that they employ demons as dark protectors,

The Green Tara for example, or the garuda.

I like the melding of good and evil into the concept of wisdom.

Eastern thought has an edge to it that i like

Borley 2

Borley 2

Whether there really was an original haunting at Borley before the build up depends on 

How much of the original stories in circulation coming from the Bulls,

Accurately did represent evidence of a haunting, and from the Smiths. 

I gather doubts have been cast over that.

I have to say that it's very easy to cast doubt

In retrospect, when all of the participants are dead, which may be more about a modern generation wanting to destroy the credibility of the past.

There was perhaps some element  

which did represent a haunting, which was magnified 

By extra and dubious material Into so many books.

I have all of the original Harry Price books, and they are

Enjoyably produced copies, unlike so many books today.

. It's a pity that so much rubbish has got into their pages,

From the Foysters and the Marie Lairre nonsense.

It would be serious if there were nothing in it, as it's almost a British

Institution.

 as well we need the mystery .
Without this there would be nothing to stand agwinst the stupid prosaicness
 of this idiot society

Borley

Borley

This is, of necessity perhaps (?) The most written about haunting.

Is it the only one with a published manual to its history, a sort of Borley encyclopedia?

It's fascinating as a story.

It's a kind of myth, and probably a lot of it has its origin in hoax 

And expansion. 

You only need to think about the numerous tv ghost hunting programs 

to know what i mean. Confabulation.

The story was exaggerated by Harry Price probably. 

I don't think he was as bad as he has been painted. In those days there were

Plenty of practitioners who weren't very honourable or honest

In how they approached the paranormal. 

Ada Goodrich-Freer was the worst, but Elliott O'Donell 

Appears to have made his name on confabulating stories,

How do you get to the truth if you can't rely on the authors to be sincere, 

and not make things up?

I'd take a lot of covincing of any medium being genuine.

I wouldn't give any credence to the ramblings coming out of a ouija board, 

For instance. A lot of nonsense in the Borley literature stems from that.

And its clear that Marianne Foyster made up a lot 

during her husband's peculiar period of tenure of the living.

To be continued.....

conspiracies

Conspiracies are like stories. They grow.

Urban myths and myths generally have a life of their own,

They pass through different people's minds, each one having a different take on them, until they pass out of all recognition.

I had an idea as a painter that you could describe art like that.

The creation of something independent in your own name, 

Becomes a sort of goal for the artist, his or her driving force.

When that piece of work takes in a life of its own, 

It changes the author or painter from playing god

To becoming a god maker.

You get paintings like that. Munch's The Scream,

Or the Sunflowers by Van Gogh,

Or the Mona Lisa, and literature, 

Like The Christmas Carol, 

The continuation of an idea until it becomes alive

Of course is the basis for works like The Picture of Dorian Grey.

It's also problematic, because that sort of creation makes the appalling mess of 

Social government, when bad ideas are followed through

until they become redolent of the all consuming horror that they always were,

but on an epic scale, like today's society.

Rennes 3

I can't help wondering if De Cherissey, 

when he was devising the code around Poussin and Teniers 

Had the carvings at Shugburgh in mind.

Could he have visited it, at least know about it.

There's a claim that the code there has been used to render the word Magdalene.

Whatever, it predates the whole Plantade De Cherissey story, and conspiracy

To draw the Berenger Sauniere treasure story into a plot 

And giving Plantade a historical and mystical origin, 

But maybe it did have some kind of foundation, which was embellished.

All of the best stories have a factual origin in something substantial.

There is geometry in works of art. 

it's that quality of the mind of the artist, which creates shapes, 

and identifies linkages, between things in space. 

Why a photographer's eye defines a form between the objects of his selected image.

There will be design and shapes because there is a depth to an image, 

and you get taught at school about perspective

Using lines converging into the distance. 

Also there is the golden mean, as well as other aesthetic principles,

 that establish themselves.

Here though, I wonder if there isn't a tendency to select certain 

Works of art for a specific purpose,

That De Cherissey and the rest have latched on to, for their own purposes.

What were the original purposes.

Mythis us funny. It doesn't just die. It stops starts, takes off again, 

In a totally different way.

rennes 2

Rennes 2

I find this whole story of a modern myth developing out of old material

Quite fascinating.

Of course a lot of it is fiction.

The writers need to check their sources properly, and 

as a family historian i know that you can't make an assumption

Stand alone by itself. 

You have to get a number of pieces of complimentary evidence.

Then facts slot into place. 

The facts here seem to be very mixed.

Plantade and others placed a lot of dicuments in the Biblioteque Nationale,

And the authorities there themselves were very dubious about them.

The codes appear to have been devised by one of the conspirators, and 

Owe their origin to him, not to any factual material.

Apparently the quoted source book for the scripts on the tombstones come from a spurious source given in De Sede's book. 

A lot of work has been done from the days of Henry Lincoln's researches, 

Which i remember seeing as a kid, to add in the conspiracy on behalf

Of Plantade's royal ancestry as fact, and bringing in Christ 

And the Vatican into a bigger conspiracy.

But what prior to Plantade and Sede actually was real?

If this "Holy Grail" story originates out of people being misled by the conspiracy

Then what can be verified?

I have a number of questions. 

One is about the alleged "pentacle " geometry in the Poussin painting..

How much did the Poussin painting interest

 Phillipe de Cherisey, who was responsible for its complexities?

It obviously played a large part in his construction. 

What i wanted to know is why  the interest in this painting.

Lincoln goes to Shugburgh to see a weird inscription there associated

With a copy of the Poussin painting.

As Lincoln says surely this is a hard coincidence to take in.

This dates to 1748-63 according to Wiki.

That's worth a look, as it seems to suggest that there is 

After all something about Poussin.....

To be continued...

 

 

treasure hunters, Rennes

I hang an exhibition today.

After a day of frantic preparation, decided to sit down and blog.

Likely to thunder today. 

I was looking at the Rennes Le Chateau story yesterday 

In between. What has that to do with the supernatural?

Well, what has the whole Da Vinci Code mythos 

Got to do with it?

Treasure hunting always did link into the paranormal, 

and the occult. The basic similarity is that the magic practitioner 

and the treasure seeker, are both seeking to get power, wealth, 

and a better quality of life, where society simply doesn't afford them 

Normal opportunities.

Look back at grimoires. Especially in the Caribbean, 

Where hunting for treasure was one of the reasons for the 

Dissemination of occult material over there, at the turn of nineteenth century.

Or the Buddhist belief in finding hidden secreted sutras and sastras.

Rennes is a particularly good example because it expanded

From a search for an explanation of the priest Berenger Sauniere's wealth

(Which i tend to agree with critics probably owed more to 

Selling masses than finding buried treasure

Or having a "great secret".

Yes this "Great Secret" thing is, of course, a magical idiom.

Read Eliphas Levi.)

I am not Christian, and frankly it means nothing to me,

 if Christ did have a wife and children,

And to me it's a case of a "big deal!"

But i did like the first movie version of the Book.

Mind you that could just be because Audrey Tautou was in it!

But i would like to look at the whole story's origin, 

Not so much the known Plantard Hoax

As the Henry Lincoln stories, and De Sade's book, 

"Accursed Treasure"

And the whole wild spin that came out if that, and had to, of course,

Drag in the occult

........to be continued......