The Element Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Hauntings: The Complete A–Z for the Entire Magical World

CARROLL, LEWIS [1832–1898]

Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson), best remembered as the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, was a celebrated poet, mathematician, logician, photographer and paranormal investigator. As one of the original members of the Society for Psychical Research, Carroll was interested in ghostly phenomenon. He was also fascinated by psi abilities such as telepathy and convinced that they would one day become accepted and valued by the scientific community. In a letter dated 4 December 1882, Carroll wrote on this subject to his friend James Langton Clark:

I have just read a small pamphlet, the first report of the Psychical Society on ‘thought reading’. The evidence, which seems to have been most carefully taken, excludes the possibility that unconscious guidance by pressure will account for all the phenomena. All seems to point to the existence of a natural force, allied to electricity and nerve-force, by which brain can act on brain. I think we are close on the day when this shall be classed among the known natural forces, and its laws tabulated, and when the scientific sceptics, who always shut their eyes till the last moment to any evidence that seems to point beyond materialism, will have to accept it as a proved fact in nature.

CAULD LAD OF HILTON

In English folklore the Cauld Lad of Hilton is a spirit who is half brownie and half ghost and who is alleged to have haunted Hilton Castle in Northumbria. Hilton Castle is now in ruins.

According to legend the spirit was supposed to have been that of a stable boy killed by a past Lord of Hilton in a rage because the boy didn’t immediately obey his order to fetch a horse. The boy was killed with a hayfork and his body was tossed into the pond. The spirit, a young naked boy, was supposedly heard working about the kitchen at nights. Usually he would tidy up and do chores, but sometimes he would toss things about and disarrange whatever had been left tidy.

He was an unhappy spirit who could be heard singing sadly. The servants eventually banished the spirit one night by laying out a green cloak and hood for him. At midnight he put them on and frisked about ‘til cock-crow singing,

Here’s a cloak and here’s a hood,

The Cauld Lad of Hilton will do nae mair good!

And with the coming of the dawn it is said he vanished forever.

CAYCE, EDGAR (1877–1945)

A psychic reader and ESP researcher who arguably did the most in the twentieth century to advance psychic knowledge. Born in rural Kentucky, Cayce was close to his grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Cayce, who was said to be psychic. One day tragedy struck; Cayce witnessed the horrific death of his grandfather in an accident with a horse. After this incident, and encouraged by his mother and grandmother, the young Cayce claimed to visit his grandfather’s spirit in the barns.

Cayce experienced other traumas in his youth. At 15 he was hit from behind by a baseball and began to feel dizzy. His father sent him to bed, and he entered into a hypnotic trance, telling his father exactly what needed to be done to make him better. His father followed these instructions, and Cayce recovered within a day. When he was in his early twenties he lost his voice. Helped by a travelling hypnotist, Cayce again entered into a trance. While in the trance he was once again able to diagnose a cure. He coughed up some blood, and his voice returned.

In 1901, Cayce started to give psychic readings to clients, and over the next 40 years he gave and recorded in writing over 12,000 readings on health, past lives, ancient mysteries and predictions of the future. These readings are still being studied today.

In 1933 Cayce and his supporters formed in Virginia Beach (where it still remains today) the Association for Research and Enlightenment for the purpose of studying, researching and providing information about ESP, as well as life after death, dreams and holistic health. Three other programmes or organizations were also established around Cayce’s work: a master’s degree in transpersonal studies at Atlantic University, Virginia Beach, was set up in 1930; the Edgar Cayce Foundation, also at Virginia Beach, was set up in 1948 to provide custodial ownership of the Cayce readings and documents; and a diploma in preventive health care based on Cayce’s readings was set up in 1986 at the Harold Reilly School of Massotherapy.

Cayce was a remarkably gifted psychic with an incredible intellect. It is said that he could sleep on any book, paper or document and remember its contents when he awoke. He was able to use his psychic abilities in four ways: precognition, retrocognition, clairvoyance and telepathy. That is, he could see into the future and predict events to come; he could look into a person’s past to find the origins of an existing health problem; he could see inside the human body and see through objects; and he was able to enter another person’s mind to discover what they were thinking.

Called the ‘Sleeping Prophet’, Cayce practised absent healing for several years, helping to cure people all over the world, even though he had no formal education and never went to medical school. Receiving a name and address, Cayce would enter a trance state and then read the person’s condition and prescribe cures and treatments, which were, reportedly, 90 per cent accurate. His success was so great that thousands sought his help. Cayce’s ability to diagnose accurately and name body parts astonished some medical experts, although others dismissed his readings on account of his lack of formal training.

In August 1944, with three to four years’ backlog of mail, Cayce collapsed with exhaustion. He was aware that doing more than two readings a day was too much for his body and mind, but over the years he had been so moved by the suffering of others that he was doing far in excess of this number. He retired to the mountains to recuperate, returning home in November 1944. On 1 January he told his friends he would find healing on the 5th, and they prepared for the worst. On 5 January, Cayce died peacefully at the age of 67.

Cayce spent much of his life trying to understand what he did when he entered a trance. He spoke about unknown civilizations where the soul could travel without the restriction of gravity and communicate through thought. He attributed poor health to harmful deeds in a past life, and many of his readings concerned karma and reincarnation. The chief difference between Cayce’s suggested treatments and conventional medicine was that Cayce sought to heal the whole body by treating the causes rather than the symptoms of a patient’s problem. The patient, however, needed to have faith and hope in the reading for it to work. Mind is the builder, Cayce would always say, and he firmly believed that the body responded to commands from the mind.

Cayce maintained that we all have psychic ability and that experiences such as dreams and intuition are proof of that. He also believed that if a person had good intentions and love in their heart they would always have a steady supply of psychic power to tap into.

CEREBRAL ANOXIA

The medical term for a lack of oxygen flowing to the brain, which sometimes triggers sensory distortions and hallucinations. Some believe it to be the physical means by which phenomena such as near-death experiences and out-of-body episodes might be rationally explained.

CHAFFIN WILL CASE

An unusual case in which a father who had died appeared to one of his sons to tell him about an unknown will. Many believe that this case provides proof of survival after death, but others believe it can be explained by clairvoyance.

James L Chaffin was a farmer from Davie County, North Carolina, who had four sons. In 1905 he made a will, formally witnessed and signed, in which he left his farm to his third son, Marshall. No provision was made for the other members of his family. In 1921 he suffered a fatal fall.

In June 1925 Chaffin’s second son, James P Chaffin, started to have vivid dreams. In these he saw his father standing at his bedside. What he saw is best described in his own words, as given in a sworn statement that was taken down by a Mr Johnson, a lawyer and a member of the American Society for Psychical Research, who visited the family in 1927 to interview them about their unusual experience.

In all my life I never heard my father mention having made a later will than the one dated in 1905. I think it was in June of 1925 that I began to have very vivid dreams that my father appeared to me at my bedside but made no verbal communication. Some time later, I think it was the latter part of June 1925, he appeared at my bedside again, dressed as I had often seen him dressed in life, wearing a black overcoat which I knew to be his own coat. This time my father’s spirit spoke to me, he took hold of his overcoat this way and pulled it back and said, ‘You will find my will in my overcoat pocket’, and then disappeared.

The next morning I arose fully convinced that my father’s spirit had visited me for the purpose of explaining some mistake. I went to mother’s and sought for the overcoat but found that it was gone. Mother stated that she had given the overcoat to my brother John who lives in Yadkin County about twenty miles northwest of my home. I think it was on the 6th of July, which was on Monday following the events stated in the last paragraph, I went to my brother’s home in Yadkin County and found the coat. On examination of the inside pocket I found that the lining had been sewed together. I immediately cut the stitches and found a little roll of paper tied with a string which was in my father’s handwriting and contained only the following words: ‘Read the 27th chapter of Genesis in my daddie’s old Bible.’

At this point I was so convinced that the mystery was to be cleared up I was unwilling to go to mother’s home to examine the old Bible without the presence of a witness and I induced a neighbor, Mr Thos. Blackwelder, to accompany me, also my daughter and Mr Blackwelder’s daughter were present. Arriving at mother’s home we had a considerable search before we found the old Bible. At last we did find it in the top drawer in an upstairs room. The book was so dilapidated that when we took it out it fell into three pieces. Mr Blackwelder picked up the portion containing the Book of Genesis and turned the leaves until he came to the 27th chapter of Genesis and there we found two leaves folded together, the left hand page folded to the right and the right hand page folded to the left forming a pocket and in this pocket Mr Blackwelder found the will.

The 27th chapter of Genesis tells how Jacob, the younger brother, supplanted Esau in winning his birthright. The paper that they found was in the father’s handwriting and it read as follows:

After reading the 27th chapter of Genesis, I, James L Chaffin, do make my last will and testament, and here it is. I want, after giving my body a decent burial, my little property to be equally divided between my four children, if they are living at my death, both personal and real estate divided equal if not living, give share to their children. And if she is living, you all must take care of your mammy. Now this is my last will and testament. Witness my hand and seal. James L Chaffin, This January 16, 1919.

The will, although unwitnessed, was legally valid under the laws of the state of North Carolina, but by the time the second will was discovered the son who had inherited the farm had died and the property had passed to his widow and son. In December 1925 the three remaining sons brought a suit against them to recover their share of the estate. On the day of the trial, after the selection and swearing in of the jury, the widow and her son were shown the second will for the first time. They immediately admitted that the document was genuine, and withdrew their objections to having it certified by the court as his valid will.

There have been many explanations for this extraordinary case. Some think that James, upset at being excluded, forged a will and concocted a ghost story to back it up, but this does not explain why he waited four years, why so many people believed the second will to be genuine or why he created a ghost story. He could simply have said that he had found the will and this would have been just as plausible.

Other explanations put forward include the suggestion that James did know about the will but forgot about it until the memory was dramatized in dream form and brought back into his consciousness. It is also possible that this is an excellent example of ESP on the part of James. Finally it must be considered that a genuine apparition of the dead did appear to James and deliver information to him telepathically. As none of these explanations can be proved, the case remains inconclusive.

CHANNELLING

The process through which a medium communicates information from spirits and other non-physical beings, such as angels, deities or guardian spirits, by entering into a trance or some other altered state of consciousness.

The urge to communicate with the spirit world is as old as humankind itself. In primitive cultures certain individuals – priests, shamans or medicine people – would seek out the wisdom of the spirit world. The ancient Egyptians and Romans, as well as the early Chinese, Babylonians, Tibetans, Assyrians and Celts, all channelled spirits and entities, and holy men and women of Judaism, Christianity and Islam received divine guidance.

Divination and healing are forms of channelling, as is possession, when an entity seizes control of an individual. In the Middle Ages possession was seen as demonic rather than divine. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when spiritualism was at its height, channelling grew in popularity. The Fox sisters, three young women from New York, first brought public attention to channelling in 1848 when they announced the arrival of spirits in their séances.

One famous medium of the mid-nineteenth century was Nettie Colburn, a trance channeller whose spirit guides advised President Lincoln. Between 1861 and 1863 Mrs Lincoln called her to the White House to use her skills to advise the President on a wide variety of subjects – advice he was known to have followed. For example, Colburn channelled advice about how Lincoln could raise morale among the Yankee troops, and her advice worked.

After spiritualism declined in the early twentieth century, channelling did not receive widespread attention again until the early 1970s, when Jane Roberts published the Seth books, which were allegedly channelled to her by a non-physical entity called Seth. Channelling is no longer a hot topic, but popular interest remains to this day.

Different mediums have different ways of channelling. Sometimes it happens when the channeller falls into a sudden trance-like state, or it can be induced. Methods to induce channelling include meditation, prayer, hypnosis, fasting, chanting, dancing, breath exercises, sleep deprivation and taking hallucinogenic drugs.

Direct voice channelling occurs when another entity or personality takes temporary possession of the channeller’s body, often using voices and mannerisms different from those of the channeller. The channeller may be unaware of what is being said or done and may not recall anything afterwards. Mental channelling, the mediation of thoughts, words, images and feelings, is also done in a state of light trance, but this time the channeller is aware of the process. The channeller’s voice may or may not change, and he or she may communicate through automatic writing, a Ouija board or similar device, or even sleep or dreams. Physical channelling involves physical effects such as psychic healing, apports and levitation. In the wider sense of the term, channelling could also include intuition, inspiration and imagination, and as such it becomes a way for everyone to connect to a higher source of wisdom.

A number of theories have been put forward to explain channelling. The simplest is that channellers do actually get in touch with the spirit world. Others believe that channellers engage in deliberate fraud or that it is symptomatic of multiple personality disorder. The trouble with the latter argument is that mentally ill people do not tend to have control over their communicators, but channellers typically do. The view advanced by some psychologists is that channelled entities are not separate entities but part of the channeller’s subconscious that takes on the personality of an entity in order to express itself.

Many psychics believe that channelling is a skill anyone can learn and that it shouldn’t just be the preserve of professional mediums. It’s important to remember that everyone will have a different experience of channelling, and the insights received may come in any number of different forms. It is up to the individual to translate and interpret.

CHARISMATIC

Coming from the Greek charisma meaning a gift of grace, charismatic is a term often used to describe someone with psychic and/or spiritual gifts, which can include channelling, healing and the ability to perform miracles.

CHARLTON HOUSE

Now a municipal building but formerly a stately home, Charlton House in Greenwich, London, has been the focus of many paranormal investigations by ghost researchers.

Charlton House was built in the early seventeenth century and sold in 1680 to William Langhorne, a wealthy East India merchant, who, desperate for an heir to his wealth, married for the second time, at 85, to a woman of 17. He died two months later, in 1715, before his new wife conceived. His restless ghost is said to haunt the house to this day, still looking for a woman who will bear him a child. There have also been sightings of a servant girl from the Jacobean period carrying a dead baby in her arms, and of phantom rabbits.

During World War I the house was turned into a hospital, and in World War II it suffered much damage from bombing raids. Workers found the body of a child walled up in one of the house’s chimneys. Today Charlton House is a public library, and employees and visitors have reported hauntings, especially in two rooms on the third floor: the Grand Salon and the Long Gallery, where a rabbit hutch used to be kept.

The house has been investigated by the Society for Psychical Research, the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena and the Ghost Club. Some unusual phenomena have been recorded, including cold spots, unexplained sounds of explosions, objects moving and mysterious voices. In late 1995 an apport is thought to have manifested during a taping for a BBC show on the paranormal. Prior to the vigil, when the lights were turned off, the room was searched. Around 11 pm an explosion was heard in the room. The lights were turned on, and in the centre of the floor was a blue and white teacup, broken neatly and arranged into a circle of seven pieces, as though laid out by someone rather than having fallen to the floor. No one could identify the cup as belonging to Charlton House. The BBC team investigated, and no evidence of a hoax was found.

Vigils continue to be held to this day, with some investigators saying they make contact with spirits. One of the most dramatic contacts took place on 30 July 1999, with members of the Ghost Club. A loud noise was heard and a test object placed in the room by the investigators, a carved wooden mushroom, flew about ten feet into the air. Again, no evidence of a hoax was found.

CHARMS

The word charm comes from a Latin word for a song or chant, but today it is associated with magic and can mean much the same thing as a spell. It is sometimes said that someone leads a charmed life, meaning a lucky or happy one. Many people also wear what they call good luck charms – talismans and amulets. Most people think particular objects are lucky, such as a four-leafed clover, a rabbit’s foot or horseshoe. Whether or not these can bring luck is controversial, but one thing is sure: if the belief is there, the chances for good luck are increased, for the power of the mind actually does the work.

In folklore the world over there are also various charms against ghosts and spirits. Crossing oneself is a simple charm to ward off evil. Various gems, stones and metals like iron are thought to possess special powers to protect against ghosts. Salt scattered across the threshold or carried in a pocket and silver amulets, jewellery and crucifixes are also considered to be protective charms.

When a person dies various rituals are thought to act as charms against ghosts. For example, some say that all doors and windows should be left open so that the soul doesn’t feel trapped. The corpse should be carried out of the house feet first, otherwise the dead person may return; and during the funeral, furniture in the house should be rearranged so that if the ghost tries to come back it will not recognize anything. Finally, it is regarded as unwise to speak ill of the dead, in case they return to haunt the living.

CHASE VAULT

On the island of Barbados there is a burial vault in Christ Church cemetery known simply as the Chase Vault. In 1807 a Mrs Goddard was buried there, followed in 1812 by Dorcas Chase, a possible suicide. When the vault was opened a month or so later to bury Dorcas’s father, Thomas Chase, all the coffins had been moved from their original places. At first it was thought that the only explanation was grave robbers, but curiously, the seal of the tomb had not been tampered with.

In 1816 there were two more burials, and in both cases, when the vault was opened, the coffins already there had been moved into different places. Most peculiar of all was the fact that the casket of Thomas Chase, made of lead, weighing 240 pounds, and virtually impossible to move by a single individual, had also been relocated. Each time the coffins were put back in their proper places and the vault sealed with cement, but again in 1819 the vault was opened and the coffins had been rearranged.

This time the governor sprinkled sand on the floor to see if any footprints would be left and pressed his personal seal into the fresh cement. In 1820 when the vault was opened again, the coffins had been rearranged; some were even flipped upside down, even though the concrete seal was undisturbed and no footprints showed. The governor eventually ordered the coffins to be removed and buried elsewhere and for the vault to be left open. On investigation no water was discovered in the vault that could have shifted the coffins, and the possibility of earthquake movement was also ruled out. The mystery of the Chase Vault has never been solved.

CHIANG-SHIH

In Chinese folklore Chiang-shih, or ‘hopping ghost’, is a combination of spirit monster and unburied corpse, which vaguely resembles a Western vampire; it comes to life and wreaks death and misfortune. The Chinese believed that an unburied corpse was a great danger because it could easily be inhabited by evil spirits.

Traditionally the Chinese would bury their dead in garments that bound their legs together, so the spirit was thought to hop instead of walk. The Chiang-shih are blind but intensely powerful, with great supernatural powers, including gale-force breath, swordlike fingernails, incredibly long eyebrows that can be used to lasso or bind an enemy, shape-shifting powers and the ability to fly.

The Chiang-shih is created when a person dies a violent or painful death or when the soul has been angered because of an improper burial or improper preparation for burial, or when improper respects are paid to the dead. Something even being buried in the wrong location can cause a person to become a Chiang-shih.