I found True Hauntings by Hazel Dennings extremely interesting - not so much because it detailed - extensively - another haunting case, but more because it did so in a more personalised way which made me feel as if I was experiencing everything in the recounted stories. However, as is evidenced by the title, these weren't, apparently, tales that were fabricated by the author's - or indeed, anyone's - imagination, but more accounts of real events that happened to, not surprisingly, real people.
Interestingly, in the Introduction, the author tells us that she was the President for the Parapsychology Association of Riverside, as well as seemingly a paranormal investigator who worked with psychics. I say seemingly as there is still a lot of questions in my mind. But I suppose that is to be expected since it is only the first page!
As I read on, I discovered more. Here, in my hands was a book that was about to lead me into the stories which would be told from the perspective of the spiritual entities which the tales themselves concerned. Not a book that would be accounting from a third person perspective, but rather in first-person. I have not come across a lot of books like this one and as a result, my intrigue and curiosity got the better of me and I continued reading as Chapter 1 approached.
It seemed that the organisation that Hazel Dennings briefly referred to wasn't so much about researching ESP, PK and the like in experiments undertaken in a scientific environment and scientific methods. That the organisation was concerned in exploring the paranormal in such a way was a mistaken assumption on my part, for the name itself sounded more scientific than 'Ghostbusting Association'. Indeed, from how the author described its activities, the Association sounded very much like a spiritually-minded real-life Ghostbusting organisation - just with less than three members. And instead of PKE meters being used, mediums were being employed. However, I was captivated still despite this, so I pushed any further judgements, doubts and criticisms to one side and read on. Unfortunately, my questioning mind turned itself on automatically when the author explains about her original ideas about what to put in and what to take out of the book, since she made the claim that "possession" and "psychic attack" have 'become so prevalent in our society, and so much pain and suffering results from this type of invasion into human affairs, that I have decided it must be included in any examination of hauntings.' Hmm. Maybe there were more such events occurring in 1996 than there are now. Still, this interesting point just meant that the chocolate ice cream I was now, metaphorically, wolfing down had some interesting additions that I had neither expected nor ordered. I once again pushed my left brain hemisphere to one side, and tried, once more, to read on, unperturbed by my own mind.
I have to chuckle with how the first chapter starts with the question, 'Have you ever had an eerie feeling that something was in the room with you, even though you could not see anything?', because I can honestly say that the answer for me is certainly yes. I once had, in 2015, a persistent sensation on my neck, and initially, I disregarded it, as I thought it was my imagination. But then it continued, so I thought I should send my finger to probe, and I discovered that it was a scarab beetle with a gorgeously metallic green shielding. Sadly, I killed it. But then it's not everyday that a tickling sensation on one's neck is due to a dawdling beetle! The more I read in the first chapter, the more I realised - and understood - why I had enjoyed the book so much the first time I had read the book (some three or four years ago). I hoped that I would gain the same sense of adventure, mystery and intrigue that the book had persuaded me to develop then. If my questioning mind allowed it now, of course.
Whist I wasn't (and still not) entirely familiar with the author, nor who exactly she was, I found I could breathe some fresh air as references were made to people and organisations that I did, at last, recognise. The inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, was referred to in his attempts to create a device that would permit the picking up of spirit voices. Interestingly also, some spiritual friends had, recently, referred to him - but in terms of his attempts to create a time-travel machine. The Parapsychology Foundation, the Society for Psychical Research and notable figures, like Florence Cook and DD Home, were also included and described, as well as the American Society for Psychical Research with its member at the time being W. Garrett.
The author immediately struck me with being quite knowledgeable about what she was talking about. This was not a usual spiritualistic book. This was a spiritually-minded book with a difference. She recounted a couple of examples of OBEs and past life recollections and, to my immense surprise, even included, though very briefly, how a child identified the murderer in an Indian case, because she recognised him when she was reborn. As interesting as the speculations and views and research details were given both by the author herself and about specialising institutions and individuals, I pondered, not for the first time, whether past lives - the subject being discussed in the current chapter - really are past lives. Especially since it is suggested that we do not quite understand time as such, as well as the idea that time is an illusion, and is merely a concept that only humans have created or conceived of. What if "past lives" are actually other, multi-dimensional lives which fragments of the soul, like the horcruxes of Lord Voldemort from JK Rowling's Harry Potter series*, experience? And that such fragments of the soul (regardless of what the "soul" actually is, irrespective of whether humans can objectively find evidence of its existence) can live out lives, just like the ones here that we are all experiencing on Earth as individuals, co-exist separate from each other. If this is true, then its implications for mediumship are also interesting, as well as life in the "physical" dimension in general, since perhaps the so-called spirit that the medium is (hypothetically of course) channeling from or communicating with is such a fragment, or "horcrux", not the whole spirit. It would only be the whole spirit or soul once all of the fragments had been unified. So potentially if ailments or disease had a past-life origin (and in this instance, by 'past life', we mean multi-dimensional life/lives) then such ailments could be spontaneously be caused by whatever is happening at the same exact moment in this life as what is happening to the person's other "horcruxes" in the other parallel lives. Then again, as with all the explanations available for past lives, either all of them are possible at the same time, or each one is possible depending on the person's beliefs about what past lives are. So in a sense, what one's beliefs are becomes that person's reality - so a person who believes past lives are a load of nonsense thus have past lives that equal that effect, whilst another's past lives who believes them to have existed in the past have such "past" lives. Whatever the case may be regarding what past lives actually are, it seems that no matter what explanation each individual adopts regarding the phenomena, they will all find some way to support it, whether that be in anecdotal evidence, scientific findings, or some type of personal philosophy.
Carl Jung's ideas about everyone being connected to each other through the collective unconscious could be easily attributed to the multi-dimensional idea about past lives. This means that 'Cleopatra syndrome' in the context, could be explained by simply that everyone is connected at such a level and, perhaps, everyone has a horcrux of everyone else whether that be in this lifetime or the parallel lives that everyone is experiencing at every one moment.
However, this is all wild, though exciting, speculation, and since this is a book review, not a personal interview, the book must once more be picked up, read and then criticised.
Having got another overview and more material on which to ponder and reflect, I swiftly moved to the second chapter. This, again, proved interesting. The first part of the chapter concerned a personal experience that was the reason for why and how the author had got into ghostbusting people's haunted houses. In this, she relates details about how, one night, she'd experienced real terror with strange noises and misplaced objects in her home. After sharing some of these details with a friend who had knowledge about this area, she tried to demand that the spirit in her home leave her alone, as she'd been advised.
The chapter then goes on to describe one of the first haunting cases that Denning dealt with, which was about a woman who feared death and requested the author's help. This was relieved through the medium picking up and subsequently dealing with the woman's grandmother's presence and the fact that she did not know she was dead. The medium also picked up on a past life that involved a beheading, which accounted for why the woman suffered terrible headaches. The fear of death, meanwhile, was due to the woman trying to 'bottle-up' her psychic abilities to appear to be normal to her colleagues at college. The author then tries to explain why the grandmother's spirit found herself trapped in this physical plane of life and the various emotions and feelings she'd probably went through as a consequence. Towards the end of a chapter, another case is described, which was also interesting, though different to the first.
It was beginning to appear that in each chapter, which was dedicated to a different area or aspect of hauntings, included cases that Denning had investigated which specifically related to that particular domain. Certainly this seemed to be the case. It was interesting to read about how the author first came across mediumship herself - through a neighbour, and how the medium concerned benefited enormously from her spirit guide, Alicia, a girl who had died at seventeen from starvation during the Civil War, being around her home whilst she tended to a sick husband and suffered from depression. The author then focuses on spirits that help, continuing their duties like they had when they were alive - doing household chores for the family with which they'd lived. Such activities also included the moving of furniture, and the author cites Matthew Manning as having experienced this. Another reference to a person with whom I am familiar. Another case then grabbed my attention. This one concerned spirits inhabiting the home of a young family, with the spirits convinced that they are still the owners of the house. To add to the haunted aura of the house, one room refuses to cool down, despite the windows being kept open. The story which then unfolded was as follows (p.35): 'The three spirits had been "living" in that house for about thirty years.The woman, Doris, and one of the men, Edmund, were brother and sister. They were the last of the original family that had owned the house. They had lived in it together until Doris and her boyfriend, Richard, became engaged. Edmund, furious with his sister, killed Richard and buried him behind the fireplace so the crime would not be discovered. When Doris and Edmund died within a short period of time of each other, the three spirits found themselves still together in the old house.' So this seemed like another case of spirits being stuck on earth, unaware that they were actually dead, not alive. Another account that Denning gives concerns a couple who bought a house, and had decided to remove a wall to expose their nice garden. However, as a result of this wall starting to be removed, strange things began to afflict the couple - workers would be attacked by an unseen person, whilst tools would go missing. Consequently, workers would refuse to continue and quit the job at hand. In turned out that not only had the spirit responsible - one of the previous owners of the house - didn't realise that she was dead, but she also desired to make the new owners' lives as unpleasant as possible, because she did not like them changing the decor of the interior of the house, nor the removal of privacy by dismantling the wall. Once again, however, Dennings and the new owners tried to convince the spirit that she was dead, that they were sorry for the changes to the house that the spirit disliked, but that they were the now the owners of the house, not her. The author concludes the chapter with explaining how emotions can result in turmoil which then attracts disruptive spirits into the life of the victims concerned.
The next chapter sounded particularly exciting, since it was going to deal with benevolent spiritual entities. Indeed, it was: there were acounts dealing with 'spirit manifestations', the sound of a baby crying...But the medium who helped to ivestigate did not pick up any spirits in the house - at least during the time they were visiting. However, upon a follow-up visit, Gertrude the medium did pick up on a spirit, contrary to last time. The spirit she encountered was that of the deceased grandmother, who 'welcomed her graciously'. This spirit made a request of the medium, which was to reassure the family that she was not earthbound and that she could go whenever she pleased.
Another event was when a couple had parked outside the author's house and were pleaing for help because the wife had seen her father who had been dead for two years and she was now, consequently, experiencing extreme terror. The author includes an experience which involved her personally, and was where a psychic whom she was visiting picked up on the fact that her father-in-law had passed over and subsequently gave an accurate description of them. The psychic then relayed his messages, which the author's husband was able to accept too.
It seemed to me that there was plenty of variety when it came to the experiences that were described in the book. I turned to the next chapter, eager to read more. The next chapters dealt with loved-ones that, for one reason or another, had remained bound to earth, unable to pass into the spirit world, assisting, practically, those suffering from bereavement, accounts of spirits that have become restless due to having gone through a violent death, discarnate entities that are bound by an emotional attachment, as well as spiritual entities that are in need of help.
In this chapter, one client felt during the night that she was not alone. When she attempted to move her head, to her horror, she could not move it. (This appears to be a good example of sleep paralysis, which is normal and is part of the process that occurs during sleep and prevents one from acting out their dreams as doing so may potentially harm or kill the person concerned.) When she tried to scream, she found that she couldn't. Eventually, these feelings subsided and she managed to get out of bed. These events repeated continually for a while, then she was convinced she heard someone say to her to speak to them. When she opened her eyes, 'A young man knelt by her bed, looking at her. Again she tried to scream for help, but only a low moan came from her throat. She closed her eyes for a few seconds; when she opened them again the apparition was gone.' Upon investigation, the medium came across an angry spirit present. After doing a ritual involving the medium walking around the client three times and the sprinkle of herbs, the angry spirit found to his annoyance that he could not get to his victim anymore. The author then began to lecture the spirit on how her can get help in his spiritual dimension and find peace of mind. However, the angry spirit then said to Gertrude the medium, 'Will you tell that bitch to shut up so I can think?' After a few moments' silence, the author reattempted the lecture, after which another spirit had become present and was talking to the original spirit. Not too long later, however, both spirits left for good, never to disturb the young girl again.
The book provided an interesting contrast to a more sceptically-minded book that I am currently reading in my spare time, called Strange North-East Derbyshire, by William J Eyre, which archives the various ghost hauntings or paranormal occurrences in that county of England, which the author amongst others have gone and investigated. However, although the stories given to them about the hauntings etc are related, numerous accounts have easily been explained more normally (e.g. a mobile-phone type buzzing being the result of a mobile phone mast emitting not far away, as well as objects suddenly falling off shelves and breaking as a consequence of large vehicles whizzing past on the main road, whose vibrations cause the breakages rather than a poltergeist), without any mention of ghosts or poltergeists. Despite this, a small minority could not readily be explained and, it seems, are still in need of a satisfactory explanation.
Although I found True Hauntings to be a most interesting read, I could not help but wonder how many of the accounts described were really caused by ghostly entities. Perhaps this did not matter if these explanations fitted the belief systems of those concerned, and that the phenomena did get sorted out in some way and at some time, even if not directly as a result of the two investigators. Needless to say, the book was useful in providing an alternative (although some may argue outdated) way of looking at haunting phenomena. Personally, though, I'd think I'd prefer an explanation that was very much "this-world" orientated, than an explanation concerning the existence of angry spirits that refuse to rest and who vent their emotions by breaking my valuable possessions!
*For those unfamiliar with JK Rowling's Harry Potter series, the 'horcrux' was an object or person on which the main evil character, Lord Voldemort's seven fragments of his soul were embedded. One of these was a ring, and another was the main good character, Harry Potter. However, in the context of "past lives", the horcrux is used as a term to refer to the fragments of one's souls which may exist as separate personalities in other, parallel dimensions and which are experiencing life separately from one another but at the same time (i.e. each is occurring spontaneously all the time).
References
True Hauntings by Denning, H. (1996). USA: Llewellyn Publications.
Strange North-East Derbyshire by Eyre, William J. (2016). Croydon: CPI Group.
