Ghost Hunters
Deborah Blum's Ghost Hunters is quite deceptively named--the subtitle, William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death, is more apt. The book follows the life's work of the founding members of the Society for Psychical Research--Frederic Myers, Edmund Gurney, and Henry Sidgwick--along with their American colleague, Harvard psychologist William James (brother of Henry). These scholars were caught between the charlatans of Lily Dale and the hardboiled skeptics of the scientific establishment, whose knee-jerk ridicule of psychical research seems just as dogmatic as those religious leaders who had pooh-poohed the theory of evolution only a few decades before.There are poignant stories aplenty here: images from a dream used to locate the body of a missing teenager; the sad cases of mediums whose early promise dissolved into fakery and alcoholism; and a man obsessed with contacting his long-dead lover, whose golden memory eclipses the presence of his living wife. But the reader finds the scarcity of concrete 'proof' downright frustrating, so just imagine how those tireless researchers of the British and American Psychical Societies must have felt. It's all too fitting that these scholars should ultimately provide the most compelling evidence in the book--that is to say, their own after-death communication.After the extraordinarily dedicated Australian researcher Richard Hodgson died of a heart attack on the handball court, he spoke to his old friend William James via the Boston medium Leonora Piper:
I am happy exceedingly difficult to come very. I understand why Myers came seldom. I must leave. I cannot stay. I cannot remain today.
The spirits of Gurney and Myers expressed this frustration in the cross correspondences experiment, which is the only one I found truly convincing. Several mediums separated by hundreds (or thousands) of miles, with no contact at all between them, came up with the eeriest corresponding messages using automatic writing. This "unlikely kind of chain letter from the dead" seems way too eerie for coincidence, really fascinating stuff. Anyway, I found it amusing how the spirits of the former psychical researchers sometimes took on the tone of short-tempered schoolmasters when talking to the mediums:
"Back in the old despondency," read one passage, taken down by Alice Fleming and signed 'Edmund Gurney.' "Why don't you write daily? You seem to form habits only to break them."Mrs. Fleming told Alice Johnson that the complaint spilled out after she had been too busy to spare time for automatic writing. "If you don't care to try every day for a short period of time, better drop it all together. It's like making appointments and not keeping them," the Gurney message continued. 'You endanger your own powers of sensitiveness and annoy us bitterly."Some of the messages signed by Myers seethed with frustration: "Yet another attempt to run the blockade--to strive to get a message through--how can I make your hand docile enough--how can I convince them?"The nearest simile I can find to express the difficulties of sending a message is that I appear to be standing behind a sheet of frosted glass--which blurs sight and deadens sound--dictating feebly--to a reluctant and somewhat obtuse secretary."A terrible feeling of impotence burdens me."
Ghost Hunters reinforced for me Jim Harold's belief that the paranormal of today is merely the science of tomorrow--or, put another way: "the unbelief of the educated classes...will be found by succeeding ages, to have been nothing better than unreasoning and unreasonable prejudice." That's from a Mr. Joshua Proctor, one of the correspondents quoted in Catherine Crowe's The Night-Side of Nature--a bestselling collection of supposedly-true ghost stories first published in 1848. I'll be blogging about that book next.
Adventures in Germany: Ottobeuren
My first stop in Bavaria was a little town called Ottobeuren, known for its huge Benedictine monastery. Here's an early-morning view of the basilica from my hotel window:
There are a couple reasons why I came here. I first heard about Ottobeuren while listening to A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich: the most valuable Allied spy of World War II, Fritz Kolbe, stayed here for a few days and was able to photograph his documents in the perfect privacy of the monastery library. (The narrator pronounced it Ott-oh-byur-in, but the bus driver didn't understand me when I pronounced it that way. Apparently it's Ott-oh-bway-rin.)Anyway, I was intrigued by the monastery's description in the book, and when I googled it, I found another item of interest in the basilica: the complete skeletons of four obscure saints reclining in glass coffins, plus a lot of skulls and other bones in smaller glass cases (the skull of Saint Apollonia, for instance, is crowned with a wreath of jewels). Check out what's left of Saint Maurus below:
I know, it's not a very detailed photograph, but I couldn't bring myself to take any pictures at close range. These glass coffins were horrifying and wonderful all at once. It made me wonder who had exhumed these early saints, wired their bones together, and dressed them in velvet so they could be displayed like this.According to the website, the monastery library and museum should have been open, but the door was locked and I was too timid to ask the lady at the gift shop if she spoke English. The sign said both gift shop and museum were closed for lunch, but lunchtime was over by the time I visited. I really should have asked, so that at least I would have known for sure that the museum was closed for the winter (or perhaps because of the construction). This is something I struggle with when I travel--this ridiculous timidity. I've come all this way...why not stick out my neck just a little bit further?Otherwise, Ottobeuren is a quiet, pleasant little town with a few spa-hotels. I was a bit taken aback when I checked my credit card bill to find my stay at the Hotel St. Ulrich was listed as "SANATORIUM OTTOBEUREN"! My room was adorable and cozy, and because I only really came to check out the church and monastery (and there wasn't much else to do anyway), I ended up spending quite a bit of time curled up with my laptop. It was a very productive trip.Here's a little shrine to St. Ulrich on the path from the church to the hotel:
And here's Ottobeuren's Marketplatz by night:
My time here was wonderfully relaxing, and it was really neat to be able to walk the halls Fritz Kolbe walked sixty-odd years ago. I'm not sure yet how the visit will inform my fiction, but it certainly will somehow.Next post: Nuremberg and more pictures of the Christkindlesmarkt!
a recipe for Chai tea
Rural Cavan seems like the last place you'd expect to find a Tibetan Buddhist retreat, doesn't it? Jampa Ling is located in a Georgian mansion outside the village of Bawnboy, not too far from the Northern border, and my two days there were a highlight of my spring '06 research trip for Moon Ireland. Some folks pay for room and board and others volunteer their time (and some work and make a donation), and there are regular prayer-times and some of the most delicious homecooked vegetarian food I've ever had. I met a lovely guy named David who made chai for us all, and was kind enough to provide me with the recipe. Once you've made chai from scratch you'll never want to go back to teabags.Ideally you'd have a mortar and pestle to crush the ginger and cardamom seeds, as well as a strainer. Quantities of most ingredients are to taste.
Cleansing Chai Tea3 sticks of cinnamon3 whole clovesginger, crushedcardamom seeds, broken openfennelnatural sweetener (raw sugar or agave)non-dairy milk (optional)Add spices to water in a saucepan and slow-boil for twenty minutes or more. If you're going to add milk afterwards, let the tea come to a boil two or three times before straining so that the flavor holds up against the milk. Pour mixture through strainer into teacups and add sugar to sweeten.
(Note: this recipe was veganized on August 19, 2013.)