I’ve never bothered to have them analyzed because it seemed unlikely that my camera alone, out of the several hundred thousand focused on that piece of Florida skyline, would have captured an inquisitive alien – though one would have been well-advised to keep an eye on humanity at that particular moment. (The images are almost certainly lens ‘flares’ caused by reflections from the sea of cars in the foreground.)
The story of the ‘Cottingley fairies’ is a tragi-comedy which, very conveniently, was resolved just in time for this book. The comic elements speak for themselves; the tragedy is that a man of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s talents could so combine genius and utter stupidity, wasting time on an obvious hoax when he should have been more usefully employed in Baker Street. And the story proves once again the truth of the old saying: ‘Cameras can’t lie – but liars can photograph.’
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8 – Mysteries from East and West
This chapter is about three mysteries which have long fascinated us. Two of them, Spontaneous Human Combustion and the ability of eastern fakirs and pilgrims to withstand the pain of hooks and knives skewered into their flesh, are mentioned in our earlier books, but only briefly. We felt there was little new to say about them, and so, reluctantly, we moved on to consider phenomena upon which researchers had shed new light.
Later, we found that we had been mistaken. A letter from an English doctor convinced us that we should reopen our investigations into Spontaneous Human Combustion; while the answer to the hook hanging mystery lay virtually under our noses.
It came – long after the Strange Powers book had gone to press but fortunately in time for the television series – from a distinguished professor of physiology who had conducted his experiments no more than a mile from Arthur C. Clarke’s home in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
He also had much to tell us about firewalking. A set of extraordinary photographs brought back from the Arctic in 1984 reminded us of the third mystery. Perhaps someone, somewhere, will write to explain it, too.
But first we must travel to the East …
Sri Lankan Superstition
When it comes to investigating the supernatural, the West now has no monopoly. The East, from whence so many mysteries have been reported by generations of marvelling travellers, has begun to produce its own psychical researchers. Few have been more assiduous or successful than two sceptics from Sri Lanka: one an outspoken maverick who devoted his life to the banishment of superstition; the other a respected professor of physiology who believes he can explain the most puzzling feats of the Oriental yogis – the ability to walk on fire and to hang from hooks without suffering serious injury.
On the morning of 13 May 1965 a terrified family gathered amidst the palm trees at the garden gate of a house at Karainagar near Jaffna, the northernmost town of Sri Lanka. They had come to greet a visitor from Colombo (far to the south) in the hope that he would rid them of a poltergeist which, they believed, had been turning their home and lives upside down for almost three months.
They had been bombarded with stones which seemed to materialize inside the house, bruised by flying bottles and tins, and nauseated by the sand and dirt which used to appear suddenly in their rice at mealtimes. Money and possessions had gone missing, including keys, a leather bag and even a pair of false teeth left briefly on a stone by a well while their owner was having a wash. The family had also been plagued with illness since the onset of the sinister events.
The visitor was Dr Abraham Kovoor, then Sri Lanka’s foremost psychical researcher, who had come to investigate. First, he walked round the outside of the house, pausing to admire the ornate satin-wood doors and peering into the outhouse at the back where agricultural implements were stored. Then, Poirot-like, Kovoor set up his headquarters in the shed and turned his attention to the family: an elderly couple, their son and daughter, and the daughter’s three girls, Devanayaki (thirteen), Sukirtham (eight) and four-year-old Selvamalar.
The adults were each questioned and their stories duly noted in Kovoor’s casebook, but these interrogations were a formality: the psychic sleuth had already spotted the culprit. He wrote later:
The fifth person to be questioned was the 13-year-old Devanayaki. Unlike the others who were questioned earlier, I adopted a different technique in dealing with her. I started with the assurance that I was in the know of what had happened in the house, and that I knew who was responsible for them. Without any hesitation, and with a smile on her face, Devanayaki explained to me in answer to my questions all that she had done during the previous two-and-a-half months.
The teenager had been responsible for all the ‘poltergeist manifestations’, with two exceptions: the disappearance of the false teeth, which had probably been snatched from the edge of the well by a passing crow, and the family illnesses, which were put down to coincidence. Dr Kovoor had simply used his powers of observation to crack the case. ‘When I met all the members of the family as I stepped into the house first,’ he said, ‘I could spot out the poltergeist because Devanayaki’s facial expressions betrayed her.’
He had also noticed that the ‘poltergeist’ was never active between 9 A.M. and 2 P.M., the hours when Devanayaki was at school. Devanayaki, it turned out, had been jealous of her younger sister and, piqued by the lack of attention paid to her, had invented the ‘poltergeist’ to annoy the grown-ups. Dr Kovoor prescribed a course of deep hypnosis for the unhappy teenager and instructed her family to treat her with extra love and kindness.
The result was that the poltergeist never reappeared. Devanayaki’s family was rewarded with good marks from a model schoolgirl, and Dr Kovoor with a large Christmas hamper.
For Abraham Kovoor, however, it was simply another victory in his campaign against the superstitions which, he believed, reached right to the heart of life in Sri Lanka. Fortune-tellers still flourish throughout the island, even in the Fort of Colombo, the city’s business district.
Under the shady colonnade outside the Colombo Apothecaries store, for example, queues form early in the day at the stall of astrologer and palmist Miss Kosala Guneratna, who thoughtfully provides newspapers for her waiting clients to read. Near by, at 66 1/3 Chatham Street, another astrologer, Mr B. Wettasinghe, uses a pocket calculator to compute the future. Throughout the Pettah, the city’s teeming market area, more exotic seers ply their trade. In Jamahattha Street, Mrs P. Thiyagarajah gives ‘light readings’ by holding up a soot-blackened saucer to the sunlight and interpreting the patterns made on the surface by the dancing rays. Strangest of all, perhaps, are Rajah and Ranee, the psychic parrots, who hold their consultations on the pavement outside a Hindu temple.
Upon payment of 1 rupee, the parrots’ keeper fans out a pack of cards on the pavement in front of their wicker cage. Then he releases one of the birds, which scurries out and pecks one of the cards. On it, according to the parrot-keeper, his client’s fate is written. Many Sri Lankans consult astrologers before making important decisions. Patients have been known to postpone operations because the stars seem unfavourably aligned, and the horoscopes of prospective marriage partners are minutely compared to ensure compatibility.
An ill-starred future can even mean the cancellation of marriage plans. Often, the times of important events are ordained according to the planetary conjunctions – even the opening ceremony of the futuristic Arthur C. Clarke Centre for Modern Technologies was carried out to a precise astrological schedule.
In the country districts, belief in demons is widespread, and Kattadiyas, the local variety of witch doctor, are hired to impose or exorcize curses. In one elaborate ceremony, regularly performed in the villages, the Kattadiya entices the evil demon from a ‘possessed’ person and, after a colourful wrestling ritual, traps it in an empty bottle which is then consigned to the depths of the Indian Ocean, out of harm’s way.
Such strong belief in the forces of the supernatural enraged Abraham Kovoor. ‘Superstitions flourish on the ignorance and credulity of people,’ he proclaimed, and he made it his business to debunk the beliefs of the ‘gullibles’, as he called them. Once, in India, he pretended that water from a railway station tap came from the holy river Ganges, and was delighted when ‘many miraculous cures’ were attributed to it. And he issued this challenge to the magicians and psychics:
He who does not allow his miracles to be investigated is a crook, he who does not have the courage to investigate a miracle is a gullible, and he who is prepared to believe without verification is a fool. If there were a single person with supernatural powers in any part of the world, I would have become a pauper long ago because I have offered an award of one lakh [100,000] Sri Lanka rupees to anyone who can demonstrate any one of the 23 items of miracles mentioned in my permanent challenge under fraud-proof conditions.