PSYCHIC ROULETTE–

PLAYING GAMES WITH THE SUPERNATURAL

From ARTICLES BY G. VANDEMAN - Edited  

  1- TYPEWRITER IN A TRANCE-

Evidently Arthur Ford didn't waste any time, once he was dead. Before the day was out he had sent word back from the other side lat he was feeling "as young as the merry month of May." The next morning he was on the line-the typewriter line-himself, chatting with an old friend. And hardly were his ashes scattered over the Atlantic when he began dictating a book that was destined to become a best seller.

So says the book's earthbound author, Ruth Montgomery. Arthur Ford, of course, was America's foremost psychic medium when he died of a heart attack on January 4,1971, at the age of 73. He is perhaps best remembered as the medium who conducted the televised séance, aired on the Canadian network, in which Bishop Pike allegedly talked with his suicide son.

The book claims to be an inside, first-hand, eyewitness account of hat the afterlife is like. And its phenomenal sale is a witness to man's eternal curiosity about the other side of death. Everybody wants to know!

Ruth Montgomery says that she did not write the book, that Arthur Ford did. Her part was only to sit at her typewriter for fifteen minutes a day from January 4 to May 7, 1971. She simply placed a sheet of yellow paper in the typewriter, meditated, and prayed for protection. Then she placed her fingers on the keys in touch posi­tion, and Arthur Ford, from the unseen world, typed the messages, single-spaced without punctuation or capitalization.

That's the way it happened, she says. And she remarks that the spirit-world spelling is better than her own. The book is spiced with bright and breezy talk concerning the whereabouts of famous names, from Jack Kennedy to Winston Churchill to Marilyn Monroe. But, strangely enough, Arthur Ford doesn't seem to know just what has happened to either God or Jesus.

Never had so detailed a description of the afterlife been available for $5.95. It attacks many previously held notions and beliefs about the hereafter. Some who read it are pleased. Some are disappointed. Newsweek comments, "By comparison to Ford's bland busybodylessness, the heaven-or-hell-of traditional Christian doctrine looks downright exciting."

At this point it might be appropriate to assess what the book has accomplished thus far, or may be expected to accomplish—other than some sizable royalty checks. Ruth Montgomery says that letters have come in by the thousands. People have told her that the book saved them from divorce and suicide and despair.

Perhaps so. And, on the plus side, the book does contain some clear admonition about giving up cigarettes and drugs and drink. Mrs. Montgomery was still smoking, however, when she came to Los Angeles to plug the book in April 1972.

Leaving such tangibles as royalties and cigarettes, the results are more difficult to tabulate. One thing is certain. The man or woman who wishes to be assured that there is no death, no hell, no judgment, and no devil to worry about would find the book comforting. The man who doesn't want God looking over his shoulder, either now or later, the man who would prefer a future life in which both God and Jesus keep themselves out of sight, and so remote as to scarcely intrude even upon his thoughts—that man would be reassured. And the man who either doubts or neglects the ancient Book that Christians have long believed to be divinely inspired would take comfort in the fact that Arthur Ford scarcely mentions it.

If all this is the kind of assurance needed in this hectic generation, then it is there for the reading. And if a man prefers a vague, confused picture of a meaningless, less-than-half-real, sure-to-be­boring future, this is it. If he wants an entertaining, breezily written tranquilizer for his serious thoughts about God and His claims upon a man, this is the book.

Put it this way: If this book is authentic, if it is a true picture of the world beyond, then it is the biggest story of all time. If it is not, then it is difficult to estimate its potential for damage to the human spirit. The big question, of course, is this: Did Arthur Ford write it? If not, who did? We intend to find out.

2- Playing Dice With the Universe

Is man playing dice with the universe? And if he is, is it safe? When he knocks at the door of the unseen world, who answers?

Who originates the strange messages that type themselves, without human guidance, on waiting typewriters? Who paints the pictures in the crystal balls? Is somebody running an answering service for the dead?

What about this accelerated feedback from the unseen? What about the games that people play with the mind? Are they harmless pastimes? Or questionable passports to psychic addiction?

Man is tossing balls across the wall of the unseen world. And somebody is tossing them back. Who? And is it dangerous? Maybe we ought to know.

Picture a man lying on the battlefield, wounded and alone. He sees a figure coming toward him in the semi-darkness. But is it a friend or an enemy? Suppose he should whisper, "Who goes there?" What would be the answer? Would it be a bullet, a friendly word, or silence? Should he gamble? Or would it be safer to make no sound?

It is not unlike man's dilemma today. He desperately wants to know what is on the other side. He wants to know who goes there. Should he toss a ball over the wall and see if it comes back? Is it safe to initiate the game without knowing the identity of his opposite player? Or is he gambling with destiny?

I was passing through London the day that King George died. Princess Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, you remember, were in Africa en route to Australia, and little Prince Charles and Princess Anne were vacationing with their royal grandparents at Sandringham.

On the morning of the king's death immediate news of the bereavement was withheld from the children, who were playing in the nursery. However, little Prince Charles noticed that the maids who came in to care for the room were weeping.

"Why is everyone so unhappy?" he inquired. And the nurse told him quietly, "Because Grandpa has gone away."

The little prince was soon asking for Granny. When at last the Queen Mother came into the nursery, Prince Charles climbed up on her knee. Then, looking intently into her face, he asked, "Where has Grandpa gone?"

The Queen Mother was silent. At the moment she could think of nothing to say.

What would you have said?

Death, from the day it first coldly introduced itself to man, has been a forbidding enigma. But it has been reserved for this generation to probe deeper into the mystery of death than any other. This is a generation that wants to know. It is satisfied with nothing less.

It is little wonder, then, that we find ourselves surrounded by a psychic cinerama that defies description. No man can close his eyes to it. It is here. We can see it, hear it, feel it. And every man must decide what his relationship to it shall be.

Do those who turn to psychic phenomena find the answers? Are the voices they hear out of the silence the voices of the dead? Can we reach out into another world with our fingertips? And if we can, is it safe to do so?

Here we meet an issue that comes very close to the inner man. For who can fail to understand the loneliness, the silence, that settles down upon the person who has seen some treasured life slip into the shadows of death? Yesterday life was complete. Doors were open. Good-byes were followed by reunion. But today life has broken in two. Doors have slammed shut. And it all seems so final. No wonder the lonely seek comfort from whatever source. No wonder the lonely cry out, "Tell me it isn't so! Tell me there is no death!"

We can have only compassion for those who knock on the door of the unseen and listen for an answer. But do the voices that answer back show the same compassion? That is the question.

You see, the appeal of the spirit world lies largely in its claim that communication with the dead is possible. If that claim is true, then it is one of the most welcome messages ever to reach the ears of those who have loved and lost. But if it is not, then it is the cruelest fraud ever perpetrated upon lonely, grieving men and women. The claim is either true or untrue. It cannot be both.

The accelerating tempo of the times, the pace of change, the intense interest in the hereafter, our deep hidden hunger, our thirst for love, our spiritual loneliness, our fear of death—all these both challenge and demand that we investigate the claims of the psychic world. For death is our greatest problem. Until the problem of death is solved, until we find a way to conquer death, we stand helpless before it.

The widely told legend says that it happened in the streets of Baghdad.

A merchant sent his servant to the market. But soon he returned trembling and greatly agitated, and said to his master, "Down in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd, and when I turned around I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Master, please lend me your horse, for I must hasten away to avoid her. I will ride to Samarra and there I will hide, and Death will not find me."

The merchant lent him the horse, and the servant galloped away in a cloud of dust.

A little later the merchant himself went to the marketplace and saw Death standing in the crowd. He said to her, "Why did you frighten my servant this morning? Why did you make a threatening gesture ?"

"That was not a threatening gesture," said Death. "It was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra"

Only a legend out of the streets of Baghdad. But it paints a graphic picture of the fatalism that is gripping countless minds today. For every man has an appointment with the death angel. And they say there is no way to avoid it.

Frustrated man tries to forget. He goes to the marketplace for pleasure and profit. He falls in love with toyland. He rebels against a future that he cannot control. But sooner or later, even in the busy marketplace, man is jostled by the death angel, rudely reminded of her presence. And what else can he do but begin a wild ride to Samarra, hoping to find some place to hide, some barrier behind which death shall forget to look?

What shall the barrier be? Will it be a barrier of science? Within laboratory walls technicians are even now tampering with the riddle of the human cell. Will they yet find, in the test tube, answers that will push death to the wall?

Will it be a barrier of modern medicine? A vaccine for every ill that curses mankind? A way to retard aging? And if the discoveries are late in coming, might the body of man be frozen to await the day when magic cures are available?

Will it be a barrier of space technology? Will man yet soar on wings of weightlessness to some distant world where he might find the secret of never-ending life?

Or is the barrier against death available, even now, in the area of the psychic? Is death only the door to realms of existence much to be desired?

The truth is that, with all these suggested hopes, man still fears that all his barriers will fail, and that one day the lights will all go out, never to come on again.

So what else can he do but continue his wild ride to Samarra?

What else--except to deny that death exists? No wonder he calls out in the silence of the lonely night, "Tell me it isn't true!" And listens for an answer!

3- The Haunted Bishop

Bishop James A. Pike didn't believe in life after death. So he said. But his convictions were rather easily uprooted as a train of astonishing phenomena seemed to draw him like a magnet into the realm of the occult.

The tragedy that triggered it all was the suicide of his son Jim on February 4,1966. Just before Jim took his life in a New York City hotel room, he had spent several months with his father in Cambridge in the happiest period of their father-son relationship. The sudden death brought great sorrow to Bishop Pike, especially because drugs had been involved. Quite naturally the grieving father wondered if he had failed in giving guidance to his son.

Soon after Jim's body had been cremated and his ashes scattered over the Pacific Ocean just beyond the Golden Gate, Bishop Pike returned to the same Cambridge apartment he had occupied with his son. David Barr, the bishop's chaplain, and Maren Bergrud, a secretary, occupied the flat with him.

Then it began to happen. And the incredible thing about the mysterious phenomena was that all were in some way reminiscent of young Jim.

Jim, while he lived, was always buying postcards of the places he visited, though often failing to mail them. Now, without explanation, two of these postcards appeared in front of the nightstand in the bishop's bedroom, placed at a 140-degree angle. Naturally they thought of Jim.

Two days later, Maren Bergrud appeared at breakfast with a section of her bangs burned off as if cut with scissors. Jim had not liked her bangs.

The next morning she awoke with a cry of pain. Two of her fingernails had been injured as if by a sharp instrument pressed under them. And then, when she returned from applying a Band-Aid, David Barr cried out, "Maren, the rest of your bangs are gone!"

But that was not all. Maren had been disturbed by another astonishing incident during the night.

The bishop had retired earlier than the others the night before. After he had fallen asleep, Maren remembered that a book she needed was on the dresser in his bedroom. Tiptoeing into the darkened room, she was startled to see the bishop sitting up in bed and speaking into space. But strangely, his words were not an expression of his own philosophy, but rather that of his son. The bishop remembered nothing of the incident.

David Barr then recalled that he had awakened in the night with a nightmarish sense of anxiety, a feeling that the future was utterly black and hopeless. It was not unlike the way Jim had felt when coming out of a drug trip.

When the three returned to the flat the next day after a quick trip to London, they were met by a whole array of unexplained phenomena. In front of the bishop's nightstand, where the two postcards had been placed, were now two books--at the same 140-degree angle. Then Maren noticed that two photos of Jim and his father had disappeared from the bishop's mirror. They were found in a disordered heap of clothes in the closet. They also found there some blank stationery they had never seen, and more post­cards. But only one side of the closet was in disarray. The other side was in perfect order.

Then David searched the living room. Almost immediately he noticed that the clock on the bookshelf read 8:19. It had been stopped at 12:15 for weeks. But now the hands formed the same enigmatic 140-degree angle. Could this be Cambridge time for Jim's death in New York?

None of the three believed in life after death. But now they changed their minds. And they began to watch for the unexplain­able every time they entered the apartment. Venetian blinds were closed as Jim would have closed them. The heat was turned up as Jim had liked it. One morning all the milk in the refrigerator, including what had been delivered that morning, was sour. They found a Bible in front of the bishop's nightstand, and a book behind the electric heater.

They now had definitely decided that death does not end all. What should be done? The bishop called on Canon John Pierce­-Higgins of London for counsel. He suggested the name of Ena Twigg, a famous British medium. The three tried a Ouija board first, but it was not completely satisfactory, so a time for a séance with Ena Twigg was set.

On the day before the séance, and again just as they were preparing to leave, there was another flurry of the unexplained. There were closed windows opened, books moved, clothes misplaced, safety pins scattered about, and a broken cigarette in front of the nightstand—Jim's brand. A mirror slid off a closet shelf as Maren watched. And a lock of singed blond hair, clearly Maren's, turned up in front of the nightstand. To top it off, open safety pins in the bathroom were found arranged in the now familiar 140-degree angle.

The bishop now looked forward with eager anticipation to the séance. Maren accompanied him to take notes. Ena Twigg lapsed into a trance and then announced. "He's here." The bishop sensed Jim's presence. A message followed.

He was into it now. There was no turning back. There was a second sitting with Ena Twigg. The bishop wanted the name of a good medium in America that he might contact. While in trance, she mentioned "Spiritual Frontiers." Neither he nor Ena Twigg knew anything about Spiritual Frontiers. But Jim was to be with his father in August, she said.

Several weeks after returning to the United States, Bishop Pike was preaching in New York City. At the conclusion of one service, a minister, a stranger to the bishop, told him that he had seen two figures behind him in the pulpit as he spoke--one a tall young man named Jim, the other a patriarchal figure named Elias. How did this stranger know that Jim's maternal grandfather was named Elias? The minister turned out to be Arthur Ford, of Spiritual Frontiers, who was to figure prominently in the bishop's life.

The bishop returned to his diocese in California and took up his administrative duties there. August was approaching. On July 31 the strange appearance of a misplaced book reminded him of Jim's promise. The next day, August 1, he learned that George Daisley, a medium connected with Spiritual Frontiers, was in the area. The bishop telephoned him as soon as possible, only to learn that the medium was expecting his call. Jim, he said, had contacted him two weeks before.

There followed five sessions with George Daisley, and then the famous televised séance with Arthur Ford. The bishop was now irrevocably committed to the occult. Even before he left Cambridge he had remarked, "If he [Jim] is trying to get my attention--well, he's got it!" And the shadowy world of the occult had drawn him like an irresistible magnet ever since.

The bishop was not an emotional type of man. He prided himself on the logic of his decisions. His decisions, in this matter, had been based on his personal formula of "facts plus faith." The facts--the unexplained phenomena. The faith. Well, doesn't everything have to be accepted by faith?

The facts, to him, seemed adequate. After all, who else could it be but Jim? Who else could have known all the intimate details of Jim's life that were everywhere evident in the strange succession of phenomena both in Cambridge and later?

Facts plus faith? Or facts plus fraud? There were facts all right.

The phenomena really happened. But was it Jim behind it all?

Bishop Pike lost his life in the Jordan desert where he had been searching for the "historical" Jesus. His wife Diane, while waiting in a Jerusalem hotel room for word of her husband, had a vision. She reports that she saw him leave his body in a filmy, cloudlike substance. She saw it slowly rise between two rocks up toward the brim of the canyon. She could tell he was smiling, she said, though his form was featureless, and she felt a sense of peace. She remembered how she and Jim had made so much fun of the idea of people ascending to heaven as the Christians believed. But she readily accepted this as fact. She saw her husband ascend to heaven, where he was greeted by Jim and by his old friend Paul Tillich.

Here is a strange reunion. A bishop who did not believe in Christ. A suicide son who wanted a religion that does not "force God and Jesus down one's throat." And Paul Tillich, the renowned theologian who was called "the father of the death-of-God school." Yet all arrive in heaven. And the bishop is alleged to have sent back word through the medium Ethel Johnson Meyers, "I have overcome, overcome, overcome, overcome!"

Was Diane's vision genuine? It must be admitted that it contained one element of truth, for it was in the Jordan desert that the bishop's body was found. But can it be accepted as an authentic revelation from the world beyond? Or was it all a planned, polished, supernatural fantasy staged just for Diane?

It might be important to know!

4- Psychic Pastimes

A group of American parapsychologists visited the research laboratories at Leningrad University in the summer of 1971. They came home with tales of a psychic holding her hand near an object and making it hop across the table without touching it.

"As clear-cut a case of psychokinesis as ever I saw," enthused one of the returning parapsychologists. His wife listened with a frown. Then she asked quietly, "But, dear, couldn't you have picked up the object and moved it just as well?"

To her, a senseless pastime. To the parapsychologists, serious business. Almost from his earliest days man has played games with the unseen world. But late in the I840s he heard some knocks on the wall of a wooden shack and answered them. His games have been stepping up in intensity ever since. Those isolated rappings in the home of the Fox sisters, at Hydesville, New York, have crescendoed into a veritable thunder of feedback from the unseen world.

Innocent pastimes? Well, once in a while a prank was involved. The psychic David Bubar relates that during his student days he used to play pranks with his psychic abilities. Sometimes during church he would direct thoughts through mental telepathy into the mind of the preacher, or a layman who was leading in prayer, and they would repeat the words he would give to them.

Eileen Garrett is a medium and president of the American Society for Psychical Research. She speaks of the "shabby trade of the soothsayer" and says, "On the one hand [America] is hardboiled enough to sneer at anything it cannot see or understand. On the other hand, it is gullible enough to patronize the fortunetellers who infest our cities. It spends large sums of money to hear such astounding revelations as 'You're a good friend but a dangerous enemy,' or 'Don't argue with your boss next Wednesday.' "

Such is the lure of the psychic, the pull of the unseen.

A Berkeley, California, underground magazine recently made a survey and discovered (to no one's surprise) that 94 percent of the kids read magazine horoscopes and 68 percent scanned newspaper astrology columns. However, only 6 percent believed that the predictions regularly come true. Three fourths of those questioned admitted to having participated in some sort of occult phenomena. Over half believed in flying saucers, 65 percent thought they had extrasensory perception yet only 14 percent thought it was possible to communicate with the dead. Most of them believed in reincarnation and--quite importantly—85 percent believed that drugs were not the definitive answer to reaching psychic goals.

Some experts in the field believe that for most people this interest in the psychic is only a fad. People are romantic. And they want excitement and adventure. They find statistics about card guessing and laboratory experiments dull, so they gravitate toward more entertaining phenomena--séances, Ouija boards, table tapping, tarot cards, and crystal balls. As for the world of show business, it is said that seventy-five out of every hundred actors have had psychic experiences.

But if you think that the occult world consists of nothing more than the old and familiar brands of spiritism and hypnotism and astrology, a quick tour through the state of California alone would convince you that we have seen only the tip of the psychic iceberg. For there you will find astrologers and mediums of incredible varieties, reincarnation and karma, tarot cards, palmistry, and crystal balls. You will also find Indian medicine men. And Zen Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Yoga—the latter in the disguise of health and reducing classes.

And that is only the beginning. There is a movement called Subud, a far-out combination of philosophy, mysticism, and noise whose unearthly sessions are said to frighten away many first­timers. There is the Church of Satan with its Anton LaVey, and his Satanic Bible. There is a Tibetan Meditation Center, a Jesuit Catholic church that has rock mass and offers study groups in the occult, and a traditional United Church of Christ that holds a weird Wednesday-evening service where pews are removed and rugs laid down, with strobe lights illuminating psychedelic posters on the walls. On Easter a young girl portraying Jesus stumbles across the floor with the weight of a cross on her shoulders, while sound effects simulate the crucifixion nailing. There is black and white magic. And in at least one high school, students are turned onto psychic phenomena on week-long field trips to the mountains.

One psychic alone teaches such a wide range of subjects as parapsychology, Tibetan Yoga, Polynesian Huna, the teachings of Gurdjieff, Ashvagosha (Awakening of Faith), past life perception, self-hypnosis, age regression, fountain of health, and steps to higher consciousness. That's just one psychic. And even in his tiny suburban town he packs them in.

Another psychic has a spirit guide who says he received his teaching directly from Jesus. She uses this guide for anyone who wishes to try him--to locate lost children, recover misplaced documents, or cure people about to have surgery. And there is the Universal Receivers Prayer Group, said to be the most powerful psychic group operating in northern California today. Their prayers work, they say. They direct them to anyone who is listening, apparently, hoping that "God or the Higher Self or the Spirit World" will hear them and listen to what they have to say.

There are the Rosicrucians, of course, and their big Egyptian museum. And there are the numerologists. And there is a graphologist from Seattle who breaks handwriting down into some­thing that looks like a fusion of an astrological chart with a Rorschach test. Doctors, psychiatrists, and even the police have called her in on difficult cases. There is also a licensed physician who uses both astrology and hypnosis to cure his patients. And a Jesuit priest is said to be the authority on hypnotism in northern California. He started out by teaching people how to relax.

Also in California is the man who is toying with extrasensory perception between plants and people. He says plants will react­-on a lie detector apparatus—if you say you are going to burn them, or even think about it. There is a man who has X-ray vision. He looks into a person's body, sees what is wrong, and makes a diagnosis. They say he is always right. And there is the psychic who runs a youth rehabilitation center and tries to show his students that a psychic trip is better than a drug trip. What's more, it's free.

But you haven't heard anything yet. A Sacramento group believes that spacemen were responsible for the creation of the human race and that they come back to look in on us from time to time.

There is nothing particularly psychic about the city of Placerville, east of Sacramento. But several mediums claim that it is what is going on above Placerville that is important. A great city is allegedly being built directly over Placerville. The city, they say, is being constructed by beings from other planets who are working feverishly to finish it in time. When our planet gets so polluted that it is uninhabitable, those beings supposedly will reach down and pick up those humans who have the best vibrations. This select group would be placed in a state of suspended animation for twenty or thirty years until the earth's atmosphere is cleared, and then dropped down again.

And then, north of Oroville, on five mountainous acres, the City of Jesus is rising slowly but surely. It is to be a meditation center, -­free and no questions asked.

But the tales about Mount Shasta are most unbelievable of all. It is said that there are two cities lying beneath Mount Shasta. Its secret inhabitants are supposed to have hollowed out great masses from the center of the mountain, using incredible bells that sliced and burrowed like a laser beam, with vibrations on a frequency too high for humans to hear. There are supposed to be twelve Masters who come down on the slopes of Mount Shasta and give instruction there. One medium claims she met Jesus on Mount Shasta. And she says He told her He was born and lives on Orion.

The psychic healers are scattered through California. There is one who heals by sticking his fingers, along with facial tissue, right into the patient's body. Another uses an eerie mixture of massage and regression to past lives. And there is the Scottish physician ghost that told a wife whose husband was ill to cut off the top of her husband's head to relieve the pressure. And she did—with her finger.

Well, there are the witches—black and white and gray. And the wizards. And wiccacraft, which is different. A man who plays an orange. A psychic who reads sand. One who talks to animals. There is psychometry. There is Krishna Consciousness. And for some reason one writer has included the Jesus freaks with the psychic crowd.

The extent of psychic activity in the one state of California is beyond all tabulation. This in spite of California's anti-fortune­telling law, which says that mediums and fortune-tellers can't operate. The same law, however, says that churches are free to do anything. So many psychics buy clerical titles. This means a thriving business for Bishop Kirby Hensley, of the Universal Life Church, Inc. He ordains ministers for a price, and sells them Doctor of Divinity degrees. Bishop Hensley can neither read nor write.

What shall we say of all this frenzied flurry of psychic involvement? Are these simply pastimes? Not one of the principals involved, the psychics and the mediums, would agree to that. Nor would most of their clients. Most of them are dead serious. To them they are not pastimes, but altars.

Are they harmless diversions, then? The innocent hunger for something beyond computers and commuting? Or are they dangerous games played with unidentified opposites in the unseen world? One thing is certain. Something has touched a sensitive nerve of public interest. And it is not over yet. The weird and eerie world of the occult seems to be a huge submerged magnet pulling the explorer into it, almost against his will, and demanding verification by the physical senses.

Man likes the psychic ball game even if he doesn't know the identity of his opposing team. He has no intention of calling it off. His enchantment has overcome his fear. The distant thunder of those raps on the walls of a wooden shack is now crashing dangerously near.

But is anybody running for cover?

5- Helter Skelter

It was an insane story of corpses, rituals, and weirdness. Ghastly tales of sacrifice on the beaches of California. Stolen dune buggies and hypnotized girls. A deluded drop-out who convinced his followers that he was both Jesus and Satan. The weird beyond weird.

Unfortunately, the story is not a best-selling novel. It is the real-life tragedy of Charles Manson, who through some strange power welded his so-called family into a warlike clan that killed.

What was the background that made such a tale of horror possible? Where did Charles Manson get his ideas? Are others playing games with the same dangerous sources? Perhaps we ought to know.

Through most of the 1960s he sat in jail. Outside in America much was happening. There were various liberation movements, riots, assassinations, the beginning of Vietnam, peace rallies, sexual liberation, rock and roll, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, napalm, Hare Krishna, and more. He monitored it all through magazines and hearsay—and thought.

It was during those prison days that Charles Manson began studying magic, hypnotism, warlockry, astral projection, scientology, Masonic lore, ego games, and subliminal motivation. He was particularly fascinated by hypnotism and subliminal motivation. He was determined to use these to control others. And he was also hooked on the new thing called scientology. He reasoned that it would enable him to do anything he chose, or be anything he chose.

He read up on the techniques of psychiatry—especially group therapy. These he could use in the plan that was formulating in his mind. And black magic.

He particularly liked a book called Stranger in a Strange Land, the story of a power-hungry telepathic Martian who roamed this earth with a harem, proselytizing for a new religious movement. He borrowed many of his ideas and considerable terminology from this book. Hopefully, he didn't intend to use the ritual cannibalism it described. But who knows what was stirring in his mind?

One thing is certain. When he walked out of jail on March 21, 1967, he had a plan in mind. And America, with its new doctrine of love and flowers, was ready to be kind to wounded, mixed-up kids who walked its streets.

Right away he collected the first of his girls and moved to San Francisco and the Haight. Then came drugs. It seems that it was an LSD trip that first gave him the idea that he, Charles Manson, was Jesus. And on the Haight, of course, he encountered the entire collection of subcultural currents that had been building up through the decade. Acid music—dope—sexual freedom—peace rallies—astrology and the occult. Turn on, tune in, drop out. Under­ground newspapers—crash pads—communes—long hair. And the concept of the underground superstar.

Control. That was what he was into all along. He whose life had been an ugly mixture of poverty and jail and boredom, now could have his own universe. And he seemed to attract those who thirsted for a leader. They were ready to accept him in whatever role he chose to cast himself. At the end of the summer of love they set out to roam the coastal highways, collecting more girls as they went.

It seems there was a year of flowers and nomad-community living. But sometime in the spring or summer of 1968 a change occurred in the family. In walked Satan, witchcraft, devil worship, and violence. It was probably on Sunset Strip that he first made contact with far-out motorcycle groups with names like The Satan Slaves and The Straight Satans. He kept up his association with these during the year of violence.

Undoubtedly Manson borrowed his ideas from plenty of sources. He prided himself on his vast range of weird information. But there were some specific inputs that led to his death trip—three groups in particular that were active in the Los Angeles area.

There was The Solar Lodge of the Ordo Temple Orientis, a magical cult specializing in blood-drinking and sex-magic. And there was an obscure occult group of forty or so which has been called the Kirke Order of Dog Blood.

And then there was The Process Church of the Final Judgment, an English organization dedicated to blood, weirdness, and end-of­the-world slaughter. The Process, as the group is known, was active in Los Angeles in 1968 when Manson abandoned flowers, and in the summer of 1969 when murder reigned. Its leader believed himself to be Christ—which probably only strengthened Manson's idea that he could be Christ too. And the group teaches that Christ and Satan have abandoned their differences and now work together.

At any rate, somewhere, out of some combination of psychic inputs, Manson evolved a plan. He would go out with his dune buggies and his girls and his knives to create his own Armageddon.

It was this unification of Christ and Satan that appealed most to this disordered mind. He, Charles Manson, could be both Christ and Satan. He, Charles Manson, would pull off the second coming--and his own Armageddon with it.

There was still another influence in Charles Manson's life that, in his weird thinking, seemed to tie all his activities together and give them a name. It was Helter Skelter.

The Beatles had put out a new white double album. On it was the song "Helter Skelter." Evidently Manson did not know that a helter skelter is nothing more than a slide in a British amusement park. He began listening to that song, and he seemed to hear the Beatles telling him to call them, or send them a telegram. He heard all sorts of things in that song.

Now it is true that the album was made at a time when the Beatles were locked in bitter quarrels, and that that was reflected in the album. "Helter Skelter" is an insistent rock and roll number. And it is very weird sounding--especially the long final section which sounds like a "universal march of wrecked maniacs."

Manson already had an Armageddon in mind. Now he had a name for it. It meant violence. It meant killing. It meant a fleet of helter-skelter dune buggies armed for attack. It meant a hide-out in Death Valley. It meant helter-skelter maps and a helter-skelter escape route plotted all the way from Death Valley along the fire roads to the sea, avoiding major highways. An Armageddon trail.

And Manson was serious. He gave his girls lessons in knife throwing and in throat slitting. He had visions of decorating their hideout with human skulls. And Helter Skelter was to happen soon.

But enough of that. We are repulsed by everything about the Charles Manson story--the killing, the witchcraft, the Satan worship, the sacrifice rituals, and all the rest. And probably we would agree that some of these extreme occult groups, judging by the effect they had on Charles Manson, must be at least potentially dangerous.

But these are the extreme. Not all occult groups advocate violence. Many are highly respectable. Certainly we are not classing them all together.

On the other hand, could it be that some element of danger extends throughout all the occult? Could it be that the entire psychic world is riddled with a degree of danger? Where is the borderline between harmless cults and dangerous cults? Or is there any?

Untold thousands of sincere people are searching for the truth in this matter. They have lost loved ones. They are desperately lonely. It is only natural that they should look for comfort from whatever source. Surely this innocent searching for comfort cannot be classed with participation in cults of violence.

Of course not. But could it be that there is an element of danger in both—however hidden? Is there a connection—however remote? What could be more important than to find out?

6- Psychic Ice Is Thin

After four months of automatic writing, fifteen minutes a day, the book was complete. Arthur Ford had ended his predictions. And now Ruth Montgomery wrote an epilogue for the volume. What she said there may be as significant as anything in the book.

She asks, "Can automatic writing be dangerous?" And she says, "The answer is Yes. Unless a person is well balanced mentally and physically, he should not open a door through which mischievous or malevolent spirits can enter."

Automatic writing can be dangerous. Why? Because mischievous or malevolent spirits might enter. And she feels it important that the person who attempts spirit communication should be well balanced mentally and physically.

I ask you, Have you ever known anyone who did not consider himself to be well balanced? The other fellow may be a little off the beam, but not me! You know how it is.

Hans Holtzer, another devotee of the psychic world, has something to say along the same line. He agrees with Mrs. Montgomery that "to seek contact with the dead, therefore, is a matter for only well adjusted individuals to undertake. It is particularly ill suited for the unbalanced or too strongly bereaved, at least without proper instruction by a psychic researcher."

Again we ask: Who is to decide who is well balanced and who is not? It is usually the individual himself who decides whether or not to attempt contact with the dead.

Hans Holtzer continues, "Some of these channels are genuine and some are not. Most people under emotional stress are quite incapable of distinguishing the true from the false at a glance. Moreover, the desire to communicate and the hope that one will succeed are powerful inducements to make a person overlook the earmarks of fraud or self-deception."

Certainly it is most natural, most understandable, that those who grieve should reach out for some contact with the one they have lost, if such a possibility is held out to them. And certainly it would not be surprising if a person under the emotional stress of a recent bereavement is not as discriminating, does not reason as logically, does not sort the evidence as critically, as someone else might. But Hans Holtzer also says, "Those driven only by idle curiosity should stay away from contacting the living dead."

It is implied that only the researcher is informed enough, balanced enough, to safely attempt spirit communication. But by what standard does the researcher decide which channels are safe and which are not? What are the earmarks of fraud? If there are such earmarks, ought they not to be made known to all, including the bereaved and the curious, so that those very groups who are most susceptible to deception may be protected against it?

There are true and false channels, he says. Evidently psychic ice, at least at times, is thin.

Now here is something interesting. It comes from a sixth-generation witch. She says, "Being sensitive and psychic is an abnormal condition, and those who are have a distorted viewpoint. Professional psychics have done more harm to the advancement of psychic research than any other group in the world. Getting advice from a psychic is not the thing to do! Having come from a family of psychics, I feel qualified to express my opinion."

Well, what do you think of that? Those who attempt spirit communication should be well balanced, we are told. But this same witch, who ought to know, says that being psychic is an abnormal condition. Yet the professional psychics are the ones who routinely make contact with the unseen. At least there is agreement on one thing. There are dangers in the psychic world.

Now this from a well-known medium: "A person who wants to become a medium must realize the tremendous responsibility which this places upon him and also realize that there are dangers in it as well. There are spirits on the other side who are willing to come back to a medium and take possession of him. . . . There are spirits who are impersonators and will come back through a medium and make claims that are not true." (Emphasis ours.)

If you visit a medium, then, there is the possibility that evil spirits may take possession of that medium. And the spirits may be impersonators, claiming to be what they are not and telling you what is not true. What else can her words mean? What infinite possibilities for confusion and fraud and danger are opened up here!

Another warning comes from a serious and dedicated psychologist and parapsychologist who teaches and researches the occult at the University of California in Los Angeles. She feels that cults can be dangerous and that black magic and witchcraft are very tricky and unpleasant fields to dabble in. Even the Ouija board, she says, can be harmful, because most people don't realize that it can lead to a dissociation, and even a serious split in the personality. Evidently psychic ice is sometimes thin. That's what the psychics say. And they ought to know.

Most important of all, however, and most frightening, is the suggestion that the spirits who communicate may be impersonators, and may not tell the truth.

Diane Pike, when Bishop Pike was lost in the desert, contacted a number of mediums in an effort to locate him. But she made a significant statement: "Of course my husband and I both know that the information obtained through mediums is not always accurate."

 I ask you, if information from the other side is not always accurate, then is there not always an element of danger? Are we ever safe when truth is absent? Do we really want to play games with sometimes-lying spirits when destiny is involved?

I understand that Bishop Pike was once asked if he had considered the possibility that he might be involved with the world of evil spirits. He replied that the thought had crossed his mind, but that it was too disturbing and he had buried it.

He was already too involved. And that's the way it happens. That's the pattern. Karl Jaspers said it so well: "I recognized too late that murky elements had taken a hand. I got to know them after they already had too much power. There was no way back. I now had the world of spirits I had wanted to see. The demons came up from the abyss." Already too much power.

Raphael Casson, once a practicing medium, says, "The way into spiritualism is extraordinarily easy; the way out is extremely dangerous."

Why is this true? Why is the psychic world so easy to enter and so difficult to leave? It is because the pull of the supernormal is greater than we think. Once we have embraced it, it may be almost impossible to let go.

But there is another reason. The deep loneliness within, the desire to be reunited with a loved one, makes it extremely difficult to turn away. The grieving one is haunted by the thought that by rejecting spirit communication he might be rejecting his loved one. And that, of course, to him is unthinkable. He wants to know, and know for sure, before he risks rejecting one he loves.

It would be cruel not to understand.

But is it kind, is it loving, to be silent in the face of danger? Is it kind, is it loving, to see someone who is in the grip of loneliness taken advantage of—and say nothing?

We see racketeers who scheme to get a widow's money while she is stilI caught in the first deep hurt of separation. And we say: How cruel! But could it be that psychic racketeers are taking a like advantage, and one far more serious? Are they slipping into lonely lives under cover of their tears and offering them false comfort?

If the psychic world can offer the comfort that it claims to offer, if it is able to put the living in touch with the dead as it says it can, if the spirits produced in the darkened room are who they claim to be and not impersonators--then it is cruel even to raise the question. But if there is some reasonable doubt about the credentials of those psychic comforters from the spirit world, then the question must be raised, no matter how deep and seemingly unkind may be the temporary hurt. Otherwise, the day is sure to come when someone wilI cry out too late, "You knew! Why didn't you tell me?"

Lifeguards, as they rescue drowning persons, may be rough.

They don't handle them gently. But they are saving their lives. The surgeon's knife is drastic treatment. But it is kind, because it is the only way. A mother may seem harsh as she snatches her child from the path of an oncoming automobile. But she loves her child. A passerby may pound unceremoniously on your door. But you don't care—if your house is afire. It isn't easy to question the safety of a drug on which a patient has come to depend. But question the physician must.

 And question we must in the case of psychic attachments on which lonely people have come to depend. Question we must. Until we know that psychic ice is safe enough and strong enough to hold our weight. Or until we discover, in time, that it is too thin, too treacherous to travel at any speed. Question we must. No matter how many have traveled it before. No matter how well grooved the psychic trail that appears to safely bridge the lonely gulf between us and those we love.

7- Who's Tossing Them Back?

Man is tossing balls across the wall of the unseen world. And somebody is tossing them back. Who? Man thinks he knows.

 Ruth Montgomery thinks it is Arthur Ford. Bishop Pike thought it was Jim. A lot of people think it is Uncle Joe. Others are not completely sure.

Jess Stern, author of a number of best sellers in the psychic field, has some interesting things to say: "Many times, in discussions with mediums, I have questioned whether they were getting their extrasensory information in a special pipeline from the great beyond, as they thought, or as a dramatic exercise of their own subconscious."

And he continues, "The most celebrated of American mediums, the late Arthur Ford, who claimed spirit contact with thousands, including the magician Harry Houdini and young Jim Pike, the bishop's son, was not quite as sure toward the twilight of his career of the authenticity of his spirit guide as he had once been. "Like other guides, Fletcher was a friendly entity or spirit which presumably attached itself to the medium's subconscious, but which the medium considered a force outside himself through which the spirit world conveniently communicated, being on the same wavelength.

" 'Wouldn't it be amusing,' Ford said once with a wry smile, 'if what I thought was Fletcher all these years was actually my own subconscious dramatizing a purely clairvoyant experience?'

"However, before his own death, the medium's faith in Fletcher was reinforced by a reassuring message from young Jim Pike for his father."

Notice what reinforced Arthur Ford's faith. A message from Jim.

Jess Stearn again raises the question. "In the search for evidence of survival, any subjective experience is suspect on the grounds of wishful thinking. With my imagination I can visualize anyone I know who has passed on, and by sinking into the subconscious invoke conversations that are clearly offshoots of this imagination. "What assurance did I have that the psychics weren't doing pretty much the same thing?"

He speaks now of Douglas Johnson, the psychic healer. "Recognizing the problem of distinguishing reality from fantasy, Douglas Johnson felt the test lay not in the vividness of a presumed communication, but in the nature of the information, information that could have come from only the other side."

Notice the evidence—"the nature of the information, information that could have come from only the other side."

But Jess Steam says, "As had Arthur Ford, Johnson had learned to question the spirits that spoke to him, realizing he might only be dramatizing a clairvoyant experience." He says Douglas Johnson "is very demanding of himself--and his spirits," and quotes him as saying, "We psychics and spiritualists must constantly make sure that we are not fooling ourselves as to where the information is coming from. That's why I always try to demand proof of Spirit."

What would the proof be? The nature of the information.

A medium who is considered one of the most reputable in Los Angeles, also has questions. She says, "I know I receive direct communication but who is to say where that communication is coming from? How do we know that it is coming from the actual person whose name we are receiving from spirit? Suppose I see an entity build up beside you and I get the name John and then there will be some sort of message. But is this really coming from Uncle John? Only you can be the judge. There are so many things about the spirit world and mediumship that we don't know! I've been in this work for years, but I still feel as if I'm in kindergarten."

The medium says she has received and transmitted hundreds of messages later verified as being from people who have passed over into spirit. But she asks, "How do I know if that message has come directly from a particular person named or another authority?"

Her husband tried to help. He said, "She constantly gets accurate messages both clairaudiently and clairvoyantly. She will get them as being from so-and-so and she'll repeat them and, as happens with all good mediums, she finds out later that they contained information that could be checked out as being true."

Again, what is the proof? The accuracy of the message. But she still wonders if it came directly from that person or from some other authority.

The question persists. Who is tossing back the ball? The voices we hear may be from the other side. But whose voices are they? Are they telling the truth? And even if they are, what is their purpose? Have they come to enlighten us, or to delude us? To inform, or to invade?

Ruth Montgomery sincerely believes that her book originated with Arthur Ford. How does she know? What convinces her? The nature of the information. Information that only he would have.

One individual, after visiting a psychic, enthused, "When he saw where I had gone to that day, and when I would be back, I knew then he had a pipeline to God. How else could it be explained?"

That is the consistent reasoning. That is the evidence. That is the proof that seems to be almost universally accepted. If the information is right, if it checks out, then there must be a pipeline to God.

A pipeline to God—if the information checks out. That seems to be the only criterion of genuineness. No other test is applied. If the information checks out, even some of it, then it must be genuine. There is no thought of checking these spirit messages by some dependable standard. To thousands of sincere minds the thought has never occurred that something can be supernatural and still not be from God. It has never occurred to them that a miracle can be a fraud. Countless messages from the spirit world are accepted simply because "no one else would know that."

What convinces Ruth Montgomery? The nature of the information. What convinced Bishop Pike? The nature of the information. What convinces the mediums? The nature of the information. What convinces the thousands who visit the mediums? The nature of the information. If it is information that no one else would know, then there must be a pipeline to God.

A pipeline to the unseen world? Yes. A pipeline to God? Not necessarily.

Ruth Montgomery tells us that there are mischievous or malevolent spirits on the other side. Then no question could be more appropriate than this. How does she know that she herself has not been taken in by these very spirits of which she speaks?

Impossible? Don't be too sure!

Let me ask you, Are you sure no one else knows those family secrets, those intimate details that are so convincing to many thousands of sincere seekers for truth?

What about those mischievous spirits that Mrs. Montgomery talks about? In her book it is repeatedly emphasized that the spirit world is not distant, but right here, all about us. If that is true, if evil spirits are right here, out of our sight but watching us all the time, don't you suppose they know some of the family secrets as well as we do? And if there are impersonators in the spirit world, and spirits willing to lie, as psychics themselves have suggested, do you see what can happen? Talented impersonators--plus unlimited information--plus a willingness to lie—plus the cover of being invisible!

Is the individual who checks only the accuracy of a few pieces of information being sufficiently cautious? Is he being cautious at all? Or is he making himself an easy target?

Do you see now that an experience may be supernatural—and not be from God? That it may be a miracle—and still be a fraud? Correct information doesn't prove a thing so long as mischievous, lying, impersonating spirits are lingering nearby.

And so, if you toss a ball across the wall of the unseen world and it comes back with a family secret written on it, it doesn't necessarily mean that Uncle Joe tossed it back. It may only mean that spirits can write!

CONTINUE