The Script Writers
On a Saturday in January, I went over to Paul's house to pick him up for the experiment in the Farady cage. Technically a Faraday cage is a shield or screen made of a series of parallel wires connected at one end. Electromagnetic waves which are not influenced by the screen include radio, TV, X-ray and light. Since laser is focused light rays it would not have been influenced by the screen.
I discussed experiments in the cage and with the medium with my brother. His attitude was, "What have you got to lose?" He wrote me, "White light is another matter. It includes all the frequencies of light and probably quite a bit outside the usual visual range. The closest thing to a generator of pure white light is the sun at high noon. You might pin your chum down as to just how white light gets inside a Faraday cage. In fact, what is a Faraday cage? A Faraday shield or screen is an electrostatic shield made of a series of parallel wires connected at one end. The common point is grounded. Electromagnetic waves are not influenced by the screen. There is no doubt that electromagnetic radiation can have an effect upon the nervous system. As I said before, electromagnetic radiation includes radio waves, TV waves, x-rays, light, etc."
According to Paul, the Faraday cage shoud screen out all but very low or very high frequency waves. Paul tried to tell me that the building that we were going to do the experiments in was all metal including the walls. I did not believe this but I did not argue with him. He felt that for low frequency waves to penetrate, the perpetrators would have to have a direct shot which he did not think would be possible on campus. He kept insisting that the building which contained the Faraday cage was steel. I was reasonably sure that it had steel girders, but it looked perfectly normal to me otherwise. I wondered if perhaps Paul was involved with the Voices in some kind of a cover story. He had told me that Silicon Valley was a very psychic area.
When I arrived Paul and his wife, Mary, were at breakfast and invited me in for a cup of coffee. Paul said that they had talked to many people of all kinds who came to their house. We discussed my ad in the local papers and I gave Paul a Xerox of the letter I received which was the only reply. After some disussion we left and I drove Paul over to the university. We went up in the elevator to the office and Paul ushered me into the office which contained the Faraday cage. I had never seen a Faraday cage before, only drawings in an encyclopedia. This one was entirely of copper screen built over two-by-four supports. I looked it over carefully when I entered, and made sure that it was grounded, and that the copper mesh connected throughout. I assumed the heavy wrapped coils I saw were ground wires. This one really was a human cage, an enclosure fitted with a bed and a pillow, quite different from the picture I had seen. It was also full of junk the Physics Department didn't have room to store anywhere else, including a vacuum cleaner.
Paul told me to lie down and make myself comfortable. That kind of thing is not my style so I sat in a chair. He gave me a book to read on the current psychic stuff. I did not use it because it bored me thoroughly and I was not sure but what the whole experiment was some sort of bogus concotion. I had brought some nutrition material that I hoped to use in lectures and read that. I settled myself as well as I could in the cage. The phone rang and Paul answered, giving his last name. This made me wonder because nobody was supposed to know that we were there. The conversation was abrupt and told me nothing.
I don't remember how long I sat in the Faraday cage. I should have kept track of time, but I didn't. It was long enough to do all the Nutrition Reviews on cancer and diet that I wanted to. During the time I was in the cage I was aware of tingling on the backs of my hands, feet and my knees. I turned the chair around once because I was getting Voices in my left ear and wanted to see if I still received them when I turned around. I did, but on the right side. I was startled to find Paul sitting right behind me. I don't know where I thought he had gone, but it was so quiet that I had believed I was alone. He had been observing me the whole time.
He was making notes on what I assumed was a lecture, but may have been the questions he wanted me to ask the Voices. He had me ask them, "Do you know that you are not of this sphere, or that you do not have bodies?" At first I could only get derisive answers and catcalls. Finally a female Voice answered, "Yes, we do." It could have meant anything. He had me ask other questions but the Voices were not cooperative.
On the way home Paul told me it was very hard to set up these experiments and we discussed my feelings about precognition and deja-vu. He felt that some of the things that come through in experiences of this kind are valuable and suggested that I might reach higher levels of consiousness and do better work in nutrition through them. He mentioned Revelations in the Bible and the fact that they might describe a world that is to come. He talked about the possiblity of a nuclear holocaust and that this might be one path to some kind of survival in ways we could not imagine.
I was relieved to be out of the cage. I was not comfortable with Paul. I could not believe that he believed what he was saying, at least not a man of his education and standing. I felt I was in a two-dimensional situation. One was literally where I was and what I was hearing. The other was what he really represented and what I really believed. I am quite sure that neither of us was honest with the other.
Despite this, I agreed to meet his medium. On the morning that I went to what I thought was going to be a seance with the medium, it turned out to be an exorcism, mine. When I arrived, Paul and Mary asked me what kind of a night I had just had.
They assured me that they all had terrible nights. I couldn't help wondering if it was something that they all had eaten. Paul woke up with a backache, and Mary was awakened by a blow on her back, while the exorcist simply couldn't sleep and finally, as she said, "decided to go with it," and took a sleeping pill. It was made quite clear to me that it was all the fault of my Astrals because they knew I was coming to see the exorcist who claimed that she hadn't suffered much because she was strong and had spiritual power. I didn't think the Astrals did it, but I was darn sure the Voices could. They were in two different leagues, the totally imaginary and the technological state-of-the-art.
The exorcist, Iris Madden, was a large, attractive blondish woman with hazel-green eyes, who seized me by the hand and looked at me earnestly. She plunked herself down on a footstool opposite me and said raptly, "Now tell me all about it, dear." I tried to reconstruct the events of the past two years for her. She asked, "Now, I don't suppose you've held anything back, but did they go after you in a sexual way?" I was forced to admit that while they got me upset, they didn't exactly bring me off. Then she told me, "Well, you can't tell me anything I haven't heard before or shock me. When I was a very young woman, they had me, and I experienced the whole thing right in my bed as though there was a man there. It was perfectly awful." I couldn't help wondering if perhaps she had enjoyed it.
I asked her some questions about her practice. She did not seem to like my questions or my taking over the conversation, and she soon regained control of our session. She told me all about her retreat and her patients who had been sent to her by doctors with a note saying, "This is one of yours."
"Oh, yes," she said, "I insist upon that. I can't take any chances because they might have something that could be diagnosed." Her theory was that all the unexplained things like aches and pains, depression, disease, and psychosomatic complaints generally are due to the discarnate spirits. You could call it the discarnate disease theory.
I asked how she got started as an exorcist. She told me that she had been possessed for six years, and that finally she had a little talk with God to the effect that, even busy as He was, if He could help her, she would spend the rest of her life helping other people in the same fix. After her talk with God she started her business. I wondered how much it was going to cost me, but I was willing to give it a go.
"Now dear, I'm going to explain to you what I'm going to do." She told me that she would put her hands on me and that I must try to concentrate and tell her what the Voices were saying or doing and what I was feeling. She said that her breathing would change, that she might mutter words I wouldn't understand, and that sometimes she might swear like a dock worker.
"Oh, yes, I really give it to them." She placed me in a chair and told me to meditate. She started with a prayer. My hosts sat near me and I was startled to see Paul taking notes without permission. She took both my hands in hers and commanded me to look into her eyes. I gazed at her face and she said, "I can see his face. He has quite a sarcastic sneer. He's daring me to get him out."
I said, "I hope I'm not looking at you that way," and she said, "Oh, no, dear--it's him!" She told me, "Look deep into my eyes." I gazed into her beautiful greenish eyes, and then I realized that you can never look into more than one at a time, so I concentrated on her left one. The more I looked, the more the pupil seemed to jump to my right, and her eye seemed to alternate between receding into her head and coming forward. The oval of her socket distorted oddly. I guess my astigmatism caused it and the fact that she was close, but I couldn't help thinking that whoever was in there, he was a "bad 'un." I definitely didn't have the right attitude.
After a period of staring fixedly into my eyes, she said, "One is coming out into this great white light. I can feel it coming," and she clutched my hands tightly and shuddered violently. Then she went into a trance.
"Do you live on a farm? I see a farm." Thinking of the 4-H Club sign that used to be on the fence, I said, "Yes." Then she said, "I'm getting an old woman with an apron on and her white hair drawn back." It occurred to me that this might have been me with the sun on my hair when I was getting the house cleaned up before moving in. I said uncertainly, "I don't think so." Then she said, "Well, she probably lived with someone."
"Do you have something square the animals gather around?"
Feeling that one didn't have to be clairvoyant to figure this out, I said, "Yes."
"Are there any brasses around a door?" I considered my two brass buckets on the fireplace and said, "No." Then I remembered the candlesticks on the hall table and said, "Yes."
"Do you have a fireplace that's been changed in any way?"
"Not that I know of." I forgot we painted it.
"Did you change the floor in some way?" This was a fairly easy deduction from our opening conversation when I had to admit that I hadn't heard any Voices until I moved into the house two years before. Thinking of the hall and the Fraciscan tile we put down, I said, "Yes."
She got up and moved behind me, placing her hands on my forehead and neck, and told me to tell her whatever the Voices were saying. They were very cooperative. One said, "I love you, Dorothy. I love you. I love you."
"No, you don't," she shouted. "Don't listen to him. Fight it." This happened again, with Paul recording the conversation. He seemed a little embarrassed by the whole procedure. I wasn't surprised. I was embarrassed too.
"Ask him what their names are." A female Voice replied, "I don't know."
"Yes, you do know. Ask them again." Again the answer, "I don't know."
"Go back where you came from. You don't belong in this body." There was some mumbling on the exorcist's part. While all this was going on, her arms and hands vibrated on my head and neck, and she said she could feel the power coming out of me. At least I was getting a massage with the exodus.
While I was seated in the chair, she began to work on my back lower down. She found an area over my left hip bone which was quite tight, and which she named something unpronounceable. Another discarnate one came out of there. Then she had me move forward in my seat, and she complained that my back wasn't flexible. She forgot how long she'd been leaning on it. She blamed it on dressage, but I assured her that one needed a flexible back for dressage. She was right, though, my back was as straight as a poker from resisting her ministrations. I was tired of sitting there, but trying to concentrate on that magical white light which kept turning pink or lavender in spite of all I could do. She asked me, "What do you see?" I told her obscene images, because all I could see was a Georgia O'Keefe color scheme with a kissing mouth in the middle of it, and I didn't like its attitude. It was a vivid scarlet lip shade in the middle of a purple mouth with a white background and the mouth made a round wet O. It reminded me of an old Tangee ad.
Finally after a time, she had Paul try his hand at healing. She was resting on the footstool exhausted from her vibrations. He worked on my neck and head, and they both told me that my jaw was quite stiff which is nothing new. My husband's been telling me that for years. While we relaxed, they all said there was a noticeable softening in my jaw line. It was a relief to open my eyes and see that the sun was shining. After her rest, with Paul's help, she got a third Astral out, and we stopped because she was afraid I would get too tired. Paul protested that they should continue because he felt great power. She had asked him earlier if he could feel the energy, and he said, yes, that he felt things were going well. Afterwards they wanted to know if I could hear the Voices. I said, "Yes, but far away."
Following my exorcism, we sat around and drank tea, and it was decided that my house should be exorcised too. I was asked if anybody had died there. I told them of one accident on the street corner in which a young girl had died on her graduation night before the house was built. Then I told her that it was quite a neighborhood for accidents. She said that this was caused by magnetism, that there were places like this all over the world. She said that accidents were caused by magnetism making people accelerate when they should slow down, or not pay attention. I listened to all this and I was just as polite as I could be. Certainly there is something magnetic about my house even if it's just my brainwaves.
They decided to come to my house the next week to exorcise the house and yard. Iris could see a hanging, and she felt she could pick the tree on which it had occurred in the woods. She described the lot accurately, which is not hard to do since it can be seen from the road. I felt I had nothing to lose and I was simply not sure who was putting whom on.
Iris had me hold her cross which has power according to her. The design for the cross was given to her husband in a dream. I was advised to buy a cross and wear it all the time. She offered to put her power into it when she came to exorcise the house.
She asked me if any of the rooms seemed especially cold or inhabited by spirits. I said, "No, we just have a bad heating system," which produced the only laughter of the morning. She said that didn't matter because she is especially sensitive to hot and cold, and all she has to do is to step into a room and she'll know. She didn't say what.
After the exorcism at my house, we planned to go back to Paul's house, which the exorcist described as a beautiful house of light, not like mine. Then they were going to finish working on me.
She described a session she conducted in Saratoga and said that she had five women pounding on her door at the hotel and it was all this sex thing. I couldn't help thinking that it was a bad repeat of the private detective's story or my diathermy-like experience.
She wanted to know if there was much of the color orange in the house, because red and orange especially attract the spirits. I had to admit that there were touches of orange in the wallpaper and draperies, but it turned out that it was all right. I could have an orange cushion too. In fact, the chair they had me seated on for the exorcism was orange.
We parted on friendly terms. Paul and Iris were going to the university to spend the rest of the day doing experiments. I thought this peculiar because he had stated that he preferred to take me on a week-end when there was no one around and he was taking Mrs. Madden on a weekday.
The Voices rode home in the car with me joshing me all the way to the bank, the garden store and home. "Dorothy, how could you do that?" etc., etc., etc.
Theoretically Iris was to teach classes over the weekend in Palo Alto, and is always busy flying around from place to place. I couldn't help wondering if she used a laser powered broomstick, a luster duster. Lasers do make good dusters.
Later I talked to Paul on the phone. He told me that he had never seen Iris work before. Previously he told me that they knew her. I told him that I thought she did and said very obvious things that any individual would who was conning you. He said that obviously, the vibes weren't right and that we should wait until I was more receptive. The exorcism of the house was cancelled. My schedule and Paul's would not mesh.
I finally got around to visiting the Palo Alto nurse with whom Iris Madden was supposed to have stayed. She turned out to be living in a nice condominium in Palo Alto, and was not a nurse at all but claimed to be a psychologist. She was an attractive young woman in early middle age, and I liked her. She seemed to be operating out of her apartment.
On the phone I told her Mary had given me her name and that I was interested in meeting other people who had had my experienc. She received me very kindly and gave me tea. She seemed perfectly straightforward and told me that she did nothing with machines, after I asked her if she worked with biofeedback. She said that she had other people who did that. She had a beautiful mandala in shades of pink and lavender over her fireplace which is supposed to be her portrait, and which she used for meditation.
I asked her how long she had known the medium. She told me three years but I had the impression that the question was unexpected and that she was taken aback. They did have a workshop at her apartment, and some people from Saratoga attended it. The only people that she knew who had heard voices were two men, and they both went the psychiatric-psychological counseling route. She told me that the area was very psychic which was the same remark that Paul had made. I was forced to consider the fact that Silicon Valley had forty top secret projects under development and four hundred more that required secret clearance.
After listening to my tale, she asked me if I would consider another psychic. I asked her what she meant, and she said she could call a friend on the phone whose ears wiggle and I could get a reading over the phone. She seemed quite serious. This seemed odd, but I was willing to go along with it. I'd already gone along with so much. I talked to the friend who claimed to have been working on psychic contacts for six or seven years. She felt that I was being groomed for mediumship and invited me to a workshop. I thanked her and told her I didn't feel ready to attend her healing workshop the next Saturday. She stressed that I shouldn't feel fearful, and that it was a good sign that I could decide not to come and see her.
The psychologist told me that she trains nurses because nurses are licensed to touch people, which indicates to me that they do the kind of thing that Iris does. She asked me if she might tell a group that she was seeing that night about me and I said, yes, that I was interested in talking to anyone who had experienced the same manifestations that I had. I never had any contact with her again.
Later I called the California State Board of Medical Investigations, and they did not have her listed as a consulting psychologist. It still seems strange to me that Mary did not know her right profession after she said that Iris Madden was coming to see all her friends. Mary had even indicated that they would have been glad to have her stay at their house, but she lacked transportation.
I spent a lot of time time pondering the personalities involved and whether they were honest or not.
It occurred to me that somebody had to be funding the medium, and that travel from her home in England was expensive. She was supposed to come twice a year and I didn't think she was making expenses with her lectures. I realized that she might make a good courier because anyone would think she was just a harmless nut. The horse trainer traveled frequently to Europe, supposedly on horse-buying expeditions for his clients. That would make another good cover. Paul was in bad repute on campus due to his interest in parapsychology but had traveled to Russia. Was he also a tool?
It was quite easy for me to grasp that if you were involved in intelligence, either HUMINT or ELINT, the current fad for holistic health and parapsychology made quite a good cover. I had also discovered that some psychiatrist who had done brain research on a serious level were now unaccountably dabbling in the occult.
Source:
Dorothy Burdick, Such Things are Known: (New York, N.Y.: Vantage Press, Inc., 1982), 114-123.