Occult Experiments in the Home. Duncan Barford

there is always the possibility of natural explanations for seemingly paranormal events, and these should not be discarded where they can be determined. When trying to establish the truth of an experience it must be admitted that there are always other possibilities. Maybe it was indeed the family cat that made those scratching noises behind the speakers after all. She never did enjoy being shut inside at night. Perhaps, in her frustration, she had astrally projected herself upstairs.

      Notes

      ^1. The term was coined (1852) by English physiologist and naturalist William Benjamin Carpenter.

      ^2. I recently read about an investigation into telepathy where one of the experimenters noticed a charming correlation: that positive results were recorded only on those days when birdsong was audible inside the laboratory (Foxx, 2006. See sleeve notes: “Thought Experiment”).

      ^3. The philosopher Ken Wilber uses the terms “translation” and “transformation” to discuss this difference (1996: 46ff). As is well known, to change yourself through therapy takes years. This is because (in Wilber’s terms) therapy merely “translates” our issues between unconscious and conscious; Wilber’s model suggests that this “translation” is simply movement of issues within the same level of personal development. Magick, on the other hand, encourages “transformation” by presenting us with our experience as something other. Magick can provide a much faster track for self-development, although it is probably fair to admit that the effects may be more volatile.

      ^4. “[W]e do not know whether that we on the empirical plane regard as physical may not, in the Unknown beyond our experience, be identical with what on this side of the border we distinguish from the physical as psychic …. They may be identical somewhere beyond our present experience” (Jung, 1936).

       CHAPTER TWO

      A nice place to meet dead people

      For reasons that will become obvious I’ve disguised names, dates and locations in the story that follows. It was told to me by a close friend, whom I’ll call Karen. The narrative is based mostly on notes she made in her journal at the time.

      It was a Sunday evening in early autumn, 2006. Karen remembers it was a warm day and that she was on her way to the building where she used a shared computer to pick up her emails. She was working on a particular project and expecting an important email that she would have to act upon as soon as it arrived. She did not relish the thought of this, and had put off checking her email for as long as she could, but now she accepted it was time to get stuck into what needed to be done.

      Karen lives in Brighton. This much I haven’t disguised. She was crossing the road, near St Peter’s church, whose grubby white edifice dominates the flat area in the city centre known as Grand Parade, a few hundred metres from the seafront. She looked up and saw a friend of hers—we’ll call him Dave—who skidded to a halt on his bike.

      “We both said ‘hi’,” remembers Karen, “and he looked pleased to see me. We stood and talked about things that were happening to us just then, which is how I know it must’ve been that time of year. I mentioned that I’d taken up kundalini yoga and talked about the business project I was working on. He mentioned he was into sea-kayaking. He told me this was great in the summer, because he’d bought a summer wetsuit, but he was scared of the winter because he didn’t think he could afford a winter one.”

      Karen and Dave talked for about 20 minutes until Karen felt the unwelcome pull of that important email. She glanced up and down the street, wondering if there might be a café open at this time on a Sunday, but she couldn’t think of any. After they had talked for another ten minutes she bowed to the inevitable: “I’ve got to go.”

      Looking back, she remembered how disappointed Dave looked when she said these words. He had been cycling towards the sea but she had not asked where he was going. After they parted, she remembered thinking it was odd how Dave hadn’t commented on her new hairstyle; she had drastically shortened her hair after wearing it long for years. All her friends had commented on how different she looked but Dave did not seem to have noticed. Also, in the months that followed, his slightly extreme use of the word scared to describe how he felt about the onset of winter lingered in her memory. But at the time, she simply continued on her way and picked up her emails.

      It was in February the following year that things took a strange turn. Karen, having stopped off again to read her emails, was reminded of her last meeting with Dave. “I just thought to myself: ‘Well, it’s probably time I saw Dave again.’”

      It was not unusual for months to pass without them seeing each other. They had met as co-members of an organization that ran various projects. They had both worked on one particular project that supplied a community service to city residents. Both of them had enjoyed the activity it involved them in, and were disappointed when the project’s funding was cut and it was wound up. Karen was still a member of the parent organization, in a different capacity, but Dave had moved on. Although they enjoyed each other’s company and were always pleased to see each other, their infrequent meetings generally happened by accident.

      Karen had a tough winter. A close business associate died unexpectedly before Christmas and the loss hit her hard. There was also a spate of deaths among people associated with the organization where she had worked with Dave. An acquaintance called Graham had killed himself, and a female colleague, Kerry, had died of a heart attack. Karen dropped into the organization and was talking with her colleagues about the people who had died, when another colleague, Jo, said: “Oh, and Dave Jones has killed himself.”

      Karen did not place the name at first, partly because she was not sure of Dave’s surname, but also she was not sure how Jo could have known Dave, because they had not worked on the same projects. But then Jo mentioned how “Dave Jones” was always on his bike and interested in sea-kayaking. Karen remembered there had been two men named “Dave” on the community project, but she was suddenly extremely worried about her friend.

      The next week she took along a photograph of Dave. As Karen herself related:

      Jo said: “No, that’s not him,” but I discovered later she thought I was pointing at someone else in the picture. Even so, it continued to worry me, so I double-checked with Jo and then she realized her mistake and said: “Oh, it might be him.” Susan—another worker—was there and she knew Dave well. She looked at the picture and said: “I think it might be.” She suggested I talk to Beth, someone who worked closely with Dave. So I went to Judy, who’s a manager, and asked if it was possible to get in touch with Beth. The next week I took my photograph to Beth. She said: “That’s definitely him.”

      Karen was suddenly confronted by the brutal fact that another of her friends had died. Everyone who had heard about Dave’s death had mentioned, so far, that he’d killed himself by an overdose. But how could she be absolutely sure he had died?

      “Beth had access to Dave’s records,” explained Karen. “She couldn’t tell me any details but she mentioned that he died in January 2006. ‘That can’t be right,’ I said, because I saw him in October 2006.”

      Karen and Beth decided that the “01” of January in the date of Dave’s death on his record must have been a mistake for “10” October.

      However, Karen’s investigation did not end here. Although she and Dave had not been very close, Karen was distressed to discover he had ended his own life. Part of her felt guilty that she’d not been a better friend. It was unlikely, but she could not help wondering that if she’d made more effort perhaps he would have opened up and talked about whatever was on his mind. In any case, she wanted to find out if there was a memorial where she could visit to pay her respects.

      Confidentiality rules kept getting in the way. First, she went to the remaining administrators of the community project. Officially, they declined to tell her anything, but unofficially they confirmed that a “Dave Jones” had worked on the project at the same time she had and that he had died. She also wrote a letter to the only remaining manager of the project at the time she and Dave worked