'Poltergeist' Phenomena: Parallels, Patterns, Puzzles

 "The entity carved symbols above the bedroom door."

If a reader is knowledgeable about 'talking poltergeist' cases of different epochs, there will be parallels and variations noticeable upon learning about the 'unexplained phenomena' chronicled by Deborah Moffitt with her case study of "The True Story of the Moffitt Family Haunting" in Southern California 1987-1992.  A beginning point for such an analysis is offered with the previous blog articles "List of Talking Poltergeist Accounts" and "The Poltergeist In Retrospect".  The sequence of events is usually found to be strange and bizarre by witnesses reporting their circumstances and typically they have shown little knowledge of the diverse aspects and correlations documented in other cases.  Once an account of a case has been recognized as offering some degree of sincerity, it is the investigator having researched the subject and perhaps even experienced some manner of personal initiation who should be able to develop a meaningful perspective of the various analogies.  The similarities and unique aspects of the cases when considered altogether offer evidence of an omnipresent Spiritual Force.

Also illuminating is comparing the 'talking poltergeist' cases with other documented forms of transcendental communication.  Numerous transcripts of transcendental communication affirm the spiritual evolution processes of karma and reincarnation; however, the latter has been explained to be not the only way of spiritual progression for an individual personality/soul on Earth or in the ascended realm of existence.

Transcendental communication transcripts include commentary about the need to elucidate metaphysical truths in a metaphorical way due to the limited understanding of people on Earth.  Persistent readers of this blog may recall the statement from the 'controlling spirit' speaking through trance medium Mrs. J. H. Conant in 1869: ". . . In the first place, it should be understood that these séances are not controlled at all times by the same spirit, but for each occasion an intelligence is selected best adapted to that occasion."  Thus, it may be inferred that a factor for anomalous occurrences is the mentality and spiritual orientations of experiencers. 

A person might profess a belief in 'God' (according to how one perceives the meaning of the word); however, experiencing anomalous events and failing to consider God in the equation suggests the term is regarded in a limited way.  A lesson of manifold case studies of so-called 'unexplained phenomena' is that God/Oneness should be understood in an unlimited way.

For many decades people throughout the world have been exposed to media in the popular culture presenting paranormal scenarios fostering horrifying and frightful depictions of phenomena that alternatively may be researched in detailed and fascinating case studies (many examples are provided by articles at this blog).  I've noticed descriptions of movies released in recent years that are based on cases that needed no fictionalization to be engrossing.  Movies that are ridiculous yet for some viewers entertaining as 'scary' provide examples of commercial exploitation of subjects that would be better examined through serious research or at least with adaptations respectful of the documented testimonials and biographical case studies.  Original nonfiction accounts are more fascinating than the pablum shaped by superstition with the commercial intention to thrill.  The selection of information sources is a predicament with profound consequences for an individual's mentality and consciousness.  One transcendental communicator is quoted in relation to the human transition to what is sometimes called 'the afterlife':

Now there are really no dead except those who are not awake.  Many people, masses of people, the whole human race go around with the eyes open and it appears that they are awake.  They're not!   They are aware only of their little outside dream and hoping it will be as they emotionally expect it to be.  They are not awake!  These are the living dead!  All of us must come up out of that state.  By degrees we come out of our dream into a greater state of reality.  Those that leave the physical structure in what is called death, enter a plane called the astral.  The majority enter only what is called the low-level astral plane.  Are these planes stacked up out there like chips?  No!  They are merely states of awareness of this or that human being which he has taken with him as gathered on this earth plane.  Right here in this room, my friends, there are various astral levels.  ("Yada Speaks")

One of the phenomenal Mahatma Letters (1, 2) of 1882 offers this statement:
 

Suffice for you, for the present to know, that a man, an Ego like yours or mine, may be immortal from one to the other Round.  Let us say I begin my immortality at the present fourth Round, i.e., having become a full adept (which unhappily I am not) I arrest the hand of Death at will, and when finally obliged to submit to it, my knowledge of the secrets of nature puts me in a position to retain my consciousness and distinct perception of Self as an object to my own reflective consciousness and cognition; and thus avoiding all such dismemberments of principles, that as a rule take place after the physical death of average humanity, I remain as Koothoomi in my Ego throughout the whole series of births and lives across the seven worlds and Arupa-lokas until finally I land again on this earth among the fifth race men of the full fifth Round beings.  I would have been, in such a case — "immortal" for an inconceivable (to you) long period, embracing many milliards of years.  And yet am "I" truly immortal for all that?  Unless I make the same efforts as I do now, to secure for myself another such furlough from Nature's Law, Koothoomi will vanish and may become a Mr. Smith or an innocent Babu, when his leave expires.

Deborah Moffitt's 2015 nonfiction case study of "the Moffitt Family haunting" Unwelcomed was written after many years had passed.  She stated in one of her recorded audio interviews, "The only reason it's [the book] coming out now is because my husband passed away.  He was the last one that was frightened of this."

Unwelcomed presents numerous photographs of what was accepted as the "symbol" of the haunting entity: "Throughout our home we discovered various manifestations of a triangle with a small tail extending out of the base."  There are variants to this symbol and other recurring symbols shown in photographs include crossed lines and a variety of diagrams including what might be described as wheels along with stars.

Prior to 'talking poltergeist' cases of recent decades becoming available for comparison, 'cross-correspondences' in mediumship cases were studied by researchers affiliated with the British Society for Psychical Research in the early 20th Century.  The following is a description of 'Cross-Correspondence' by T. Konstantin Oesterreich (1880-1949) from Occultism and Modern Science (1921).

The store of mediumistic phenomena was further increased some ten years ago by a new development, hitherto unknown, that of Cross-Correspondence.  It was discovered by the distinguished secretary of the British Society for Psychical Research, Alice Johnson, who, while studying the automatic writings, of the different mediums, became aware of a strange relationship between them.  In some cases this consisted of striking allusions made by one written communication to the other, in the use by both mediums of the same strange expressions, in a common reference to a certain literary quotation, and so on.  This relationship was of too frequent and systematic a character to be merely due to chance, and did not necessarily exist between two mediums only, but between several.  For instance, on April 8, 1907, Mrs. Piper uttered the words "Light in the West" while in a trance in London.  On the same day, three hours later, Mrs. Verrall, a medium in Cambridge, wrote automatically among other things: "Rosy is the East, etc.  You will find that you have written a message for Mr. Piddington, a message that you have not understood, but that he has.  Tell him this."  Moreover, on the same day, a little later, a third medium, in Calcutta, Mrs. Holland, wrote: "This exceptional sky, beneath which dusk renders the East as beautiful and shining as the West, Martha became Mary and Lea Rachel."  Closer analysis of these expressions and of their contrast proved that all three scripts were related to each other.

A second instance: On August 6, 1906, Mrs. Holland wrote in India at the end of a fairly long communication, separated by a wider space and in an altered hand:

"Yelo" (scribbled).
"Yellowed Ivory."

Two days later Mrs. Verrall wrote in Cambridge on August 8:

"I have done it to-night y yellow is the
  yellow
  yellow
Say only yellow.”

And her daughter also wrote automatically at the same time, without her mother's knowledge:

"Camomile and resin the prescription is old on yellow paper in a box with a sweet scent."

In other cases automatic writings supplement each other, and only make coherent sense when added together. It is—to use a metaphor—almost as though a manuscript had been cut into scraps and handed to various compositors who would only be able to make sense of the whole after joining the fragments together.  Oddly enough, cross-correspondence first showed itself suddenly among a number of mediums, including Mrs. Verrall, Mrs. Holland, Mrs. Piper, and others.


. . . the relationship between the various automatic scripts can only be the outcome of an intelligence beyond the ken of the mediums, which uses the latter to prove its own independent existence through the cross-correspondences.  Only an intelligence, it is argued, would be capable of meting out a consecutive idea into distinct parts and then directing the pen of the various mediums so that each should write separate fragments of the whole.

"Cross Correspondences" is also a subject that has been reported by Rosalind Heywood (1895-1980), author of two books published in London: The Sixth Sense: An Inquiry Into Extra-Sensory Perception (1959) and The Infinite Hive: A Personal Record of Extrasensory Experiences (1964) / American titles Beyond the Reach of Sense and ESP: A Personal Memoir.  Heywood joined the Society for Psychical Research in 1938 and in the earlier book referred to cross correspondences as "classical jigsaw puzzles."  She observed further: "There were also a number of simpler cases—sometimes called cross references—which were more a repetition of motifs, either alluded to or directly quoted, in various languages and settings and taken from both classical and modern literature."

The following excerpts from The Sixth Sense offers an example of a "well-known and not too complicated example" of a case of "cross references as well as cross correspondences" known as the 'Hope, Star and Browning Case' involving quotations from Robert Browning poetry.

The Hope, Star and Browning case started soon after January 16, 1907.  On that date Mr. Piddington asked Mrs. Piper's 'Myers' if in future he could indicate that a cross correspondence was being attempted by drawing, say, a circle with a triangle inside.  But he naturally did not mention this request to the other automatists.  On January 23rd Mrs. Verrall's 'Myers' wrote in her script: ". . . an anagram would be better.  Tell him that—rats, stars, tars and so on . . . or again tears, stare."  This was followed by another anagram which Mrs. Verrall afterwards remembered had also been devised during their lives by Myers, her husband and Sir Richard Jebb.

On January 28th Mrs. Verrall's 'Myers' set about elaborating the Star idea.  "Aster" (Latin = star), he wrote, "Teras [an anagram for Aster, occasionally used in Greek for a constellation and also meaning a wonder or a sign].  The world's wonder.  And all a wonder and a wild desire.  The very wings of her.  A WINGED DESIRE.  Hupopteros eros [Greek = winged love].  Then there is Blake.  And mocked my loss of liberty.  But it is all the same thing—the winged desire.  Eros potheinos [Greek = love, the much desired] the hope that leaves the earth for the sky.  That is what I want.  On earth the broken sounds—threads—in the sky the perfect arc.  The C major of this life.  But your recollection is at fault."

After this was drawn:

and the script concluded: "ADB is the part that completes the arc."

It is clear that only a fraction of the meaning in this script was apparent to its writer, Mrs. Verrall, for when she sent it to Miss Johnson she commented: "Is the enclosed an attempt at Bird?  Winged hupopteros and Abt Vogler (Vogel) suggest it.  The latter part is all quotations from R. B.'s Abt Vogler, and earlier from The Ring and the Book . . ."  The phrase "That is what I want" did not apparently attract her attention to the preceding sentence where "The passion that leaves the earth" is wrongly given as "The hope that leaves the earth."  There are indications later that this may be a deliberate misquotation.

Miss Verrall had not seen these scripts of her mother's but on February 3rd she wrote ". . . where the song birds pipe their tune in the early morning," and followed this by "Therapeutikos ed exoticon" (a healer from aliens) which was a veiled hint of what was to come later.  

Details of the case include a Mrs. Verrall automatic writing script included on February 17:
 

"That was the sign," said her 'Myers.'  "She will understand when she sees it . . . No arts avail . . . and a star above it all rats everywhere in Hamelin town."  Here the anagram begun in Mrs. Verrall's script is going strong,—arts, star, rats—and by the mention of "rats everywhere in Hamelin Town," the script is linked to the earlier phrase, "The healer from aliens," which is an apt description of Browning's Pied Piper.

Rosalind Heywood concluded about the 'Hope, Star and Browning Case':

This case is a typical example of a series of allusions, implications and direct cross references written by two automatists, Mrs. and Miss Verrall, which were made meaningful by key words given by a third, Mrs. Piper.  It is far more complicated than it appears in summary for some of the allusions are meaningful in connection with other cross correspondences and are also links in coherent trains of thought which emerge elsewhere.

In 2017 there is a Society for Psychical Research website.  Alta L. Piper wrote a biography of her mother The Life and Work of Mrs. Piper (1929).  Previous blog articles about correlations among 'talking poltergeist' cases include "'Gef': A Modern Sphinx as an Esoteric Lesson about Oneness", "Significance of 'Unexplained Phenomena'" and "Links Between 'Poltergeist' Cases".