Colin Wilson - Mysteries: An Investigation into the Occult, the Paranormal and the Supernatural

MYSTERIES

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE OCCULT,

THE PARANORMAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL

COLIN WILSON

F OR E DDIE C AMPBELL
WITH AFFECTION

Colin Wilson is one of the most prolific, versatile and popular writers at work today. He was born in Leicester in 1931, and left school at sixteen. After he had spent years working in a wool warehouse, a laboratory, a plastics factory and a coffee bar, his first book The Outsider was published in 1956. It received outstanding critical acclaim and was an immediate bestseller.

Since then he has written many books on philosophy, the occult, crime and sexual deviance, plus a host of successful novels which have won him an international reputation. His work has been translated into Spanish, French, Swedish, Dutch, Japanese, German, Italian, Portuguese, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Hebrew.

By the same author

NON-FICTION

The Outsider cycle:

The Outsider

Religion and the Rebel

The Age of Defeat

The Strength to Dream

Origins of the Sexual Impulse

Beyond the Outsider

Introduction to the New Existentialism

Books on the occult and paranormal

The Occult

Poltergeist

Psychic Detectives

Strange Powers

The Geller Phenomenon

A Dictionary of Possibilities (with John Grant)

Other Non-Fiction:

An Encyclopedia of Murder (with Pat Pitman)

An Encyclopedia of Modern Murder (with Donald Seaman)

A Casebook of Murder

Order of Assassins

Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs

Bernard ShawA Reassessment

New Pathways in Psychology

The Quest for Wilhelm Reich

The War Against SleepThe Philosophy of Gurdjieff

The Lord of the underworldA Study of Jung

The Craft of the Novel

The Strange Genius of David Lindsay Frankensteins Castle

Access to Inner Worlds

Eagle and Earwig (Essays on books and writers)

Poetry and Mysticism

A Book of Booze

Starseekers

The Brandy of the Damned (Essays on Music)

Anti-Sartre

The Misfits

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Voyage to a Beginning

FICTION

The Sorme Trilogy:

Ritual in the Dark

The Man without a Shadow (re-titled The Sex Diary of Gerard Sorme)

The God of the Labyrinth

Other Fiction:

Adrift in Soho

The World of Violence

Necessary Doubt

The Glass Cage

The Mind Parasites

The Killer

The Philosophers Stone

The Black Room

The Space Vampires

The Schoolgirl Murder Case

Rasputin: A Novel

Spider World: The Tower

Spider World: The Delta

It would have been impossible to write this book without the help of many friends who have kept me supplied with material, or drawn my attention to cases that I might otherwise not have seen. Chief among these has been Ira Einhorn, who is virtually a one-man liaison service for parapsychologists and scientists interested in various aspects of the paranormal. My old friend June OShea has also provided me with invaluable material, including Walter Princes original articles on the Doris case. Lawrence Leshan spoke to me of the Philip case, and put me in touch with Dr George Owen, who not only sent me his wifes book on the subject, but provided equally fascinating material on Matthew Manning, Uri Geller and on poltergeist phenomena. I am also indebted for material to C. L. Tilburn, Hugh Corbett, Walter Williams, Robert Turner, Joyce Carol Oates, Doris Cerea, Kathie Schlichting, Angelica de St. Prix, Jerry Neff, John Comley, Sir Robin Mackworth-Young, Jacquetta Hawkes, Arthur Young, Martin Gardner, Nigel Morland, Jesse Lasky jnr, Carol Davies, Anita Gregory, Wilson Knight, Theo Brown, Andrew Green, Idries Shah, Linda Woolery, Arthur Guirdham, Geoffrey Ashe, Bjrn Sjval, Sheila Clarkson, Stephen Skinner and Robert Temple. The National Enquirer was kind enough to send me photostats of various items that I had otherwise been unable to trace. The Society for Psychical Research, represented by its Librarian Miss Eleanor OKeefe, has been equally generous in lending me otherwise unobtainable books, as has the Harry Price Library of London University. The staff of the London Library has shown incredible patience and ingenuity in tracing dozens of obscure books and references that would otherwise have been unavailable to me. (Their particular triumph was the details of the career of Benoit de Maillet.)

Finally, I wish to offer my warmest thanks to my English and American editors, Rivers Scott and Anne Freedgood, for their truly enormous labours in getting this book into its final shape.

Colin Wilson

My experience of panic attacks. The schoolmistress effect. My realisation that we contain a hierarchy of selves. J. G. Bennetts description of his experience of higher consciousness at Fontainebleau. Faculty X. Gurdjieff s power to transfer energy. Fritz Peters story. Rasputin revives Anna Vyrubova. Story of the two monks. Suffocating effects of the robot. Nietzsches vision on Leutsch. Ramakrishnas suicide attempt. Men are far stronger than they suspect. What lies at the top of the ladder of selves? My aim in writing this book. The mechanics of contacting our higher selves. Can paranormal phenomena be explained in terms of the ladder-of-selves theory? Dowsing, divination, multiple personality. Ian Stevensons case of Jasbir Lal Jat. Poltergeist activity. Anne Owens glimpse of the future. Alan Vaughans experience of possession and higher consciousness. Proust, William James, Toynbee: All is well feeling. Basic importance of security. The ultimate questions about the universe: do they have answers? Sartres nausea: Camuss absurdity. Lack of inner pressure. The failure of psychical research to provide conclusive answers. Attempt at a comprehensive theory of the occult. T. C. Lethbridge and the pragmatic approach.

Tom Lethbridge moves into Hole House. Lethbridge and dowsing. The witch who lived next door. Her astral projections. She teaches Tom how to throw pentagrams. How to use the pendulum. Locating buried silver. Lethbridge studies rates of length. Searching for truffles. The problem of ghosts. The invisible porter of Trinity. The ghoul on the stairs. The apparition of Hole Mill. Was she a tape recording? The suicide in the wood. The blanket of depression on Ladram beach. Mina is urged to jump over the cliff. The common denominator: water. Lethbridges field theory of ghosts and ghouls. Bill Lewis and Leonard Locker. Are ghosts intelligent? Beverley Nichols story of the haunted house of Torquay. Arthur Guirdhams theory of houses that induce illness. Lethbridges poltergeist on Skellig Michael. A ghost steals the sandwiches. Vanishings and apports. Sir Oliver Lodges tape recording theory. Andrew Green and the house in Ealing. The haunting of the Ma Barker house in Florida. Unusual powers of animals: the cats second sight. Are cats whiskers divining rods? The behaviour of the hawk moth. Is dowsing electrical? Sexual electricity. Freida Weisl, whose orgasms made ornaments jump off the mantelpiece. Electrical theory of the paranormal. Lethbridge and other dimensions. Can the pendulum reveal what is beyond death? The second whorl of the spiral. The timeless zone. Robert Leftwich and the superconscious theory of dowsing. Jungs other selves. The concept of promotion. Our inborn passivity. Lethbridges last days. Lethbridges four areas of study.