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Modern Science Fiction and Fantasy genres abound with tales of mind-readers,telekinetics and other fascinating mental powers and phenomena. Horror overflows with poltergeists and deranged people with mind-warping abilities. In fact, it has become a common thread of thought to view poltergeists, Extrasensory perception (ESP), psycho-telekinesis (PK) and other fascinating psychical occurances as little more than fanciful thinking and literary devices. Nothing, as evidence proves, could be further from the truth.
Psychic abilities and sensitivities to unseen influences are hardly new ideas. Ancient man trusted, implicitly, in the unseen powers of his world. Influenced by the magnetic centres of the earth, early man built shrines to powers and Gods who seemed at once earthly and unattainable. Inspired by the expansiveness and inherent order of the cosmos, he created tales of both bountiful and malovent deities and spirits. Early man did not question his feelings and impulses. He simply accepted them as they were. The inborn psychic abilities that led him to magnetic power points where neither questioned nor examined. They simply were.
By the beginning of the Dark Ages, humanity had progressed to questioning and denial of psychic ability. While condemning the impulses early man had accepted, and naming those who clung to that innate ability as influenced by the Devil, Medieval man willingly embraced a more complex, if tartlingly similar, line of thought. Medieval peoples generally accepted the performance of “miracles” and the visitations of deified spirits and angels as a common truth. It was a leap of faith that was to span centuries
from its conception, even beyond the Age of Enlightenment.
Even as late as the nineteenth century, reknowned biologist and father of the evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin, theorised that the use of mental influence over the physical world was the next logical step in human evolution. Among his contemporary supporters were those who believed that man already possessed an untapped well of psychic ability. The Fox sisters, with their discovery that communication with the spirit world could be achieved by humans, begaun the Spirituality movement in the mid-nineteenth century. They were joined by such notable mediums as Daniel Home, famous for his performance of spectacular feats while under trance, and Leonora Piper, a medium so skilled and respected that she gained the attention of Britain’s famed Society for Psychical Research near the opening days of the twentieth century. Later, in 1951, famed trance medium Eileen Garrett founded the parapsychological Foundation, for the study of psychic abilities such as clairvoyance, ESP, and PK.
Of all the psychic abilities, the poltergeist phenomenon is perhaps the most misunderstood. Believed for centuries to be the destructive tendencies of spirits haunting the home, this strange and often frightening phenomenon gained its name from this belief, as the German translation of “noisy ghost.” When, after the advent of the Spiritualism Movement, it was discovered that this phenomenon had a pattern of being tied to a particular person, rather than a location, the idea that these “noisy ghosts” were actually spirits who had possessed the body of a living person, and the spirits’ magnetic energy was causing items to move or explode. It wasn’t until standard psychology became involved in the investigation that it was discovered that the so-called “poltergeist” phenomenon which so terrified people wasn’t influenced by spirits at all. Instead, it was scientifically established in the mid-twentieth century that the cause of these disturbances was actually the mental energies of a subject, particularly in the case of girls near puberty, causing the movement. This application of mental power could be deliberate, but is most often beyond the subject’s control, as evidenced by the fear with which most subjects view such goings on.
While the fields of spirituality and poltergeist research have experienced a rocky road from conception to acceptance, other fields of parapsychology have enjoyed instant recognition and even respect. Such fields include dowsing and psycho-telekinesis. Psycho-telekinesis, or PK as it is some-times called, has gained respect only after rigorous laboratory testing, but few researchers found themselves able to disregard the possiblity of its existence, with poltergeist as such a scientifically established telekinetic ability. It wasn’t such a flight of fancy to consider that, if a subject could perform such feats completely without will, then the application of will could also bring about the same results, except more controlled. Dowsing, of all the parapsychological fields, has enjoyed a long history of respect. There is some evidence that dowsing, particularly as it applies to water sources, began with early man and his search for potable water. It even managed to retain its respectability during the highly volatile Dark Ages, when many of the old paranomal techniques were degraded and lost. Perhaps dowsing survived persecution because of its practicality, compared to the arts of conversing with the dead.
After all the millinia, during which man has sought the supernatural and its explanation, perhaps it would take merely a re-arrangement of words to turn Darwin’s theory into a prophesey. Perhaps the next logical evolutionary step for man is not to achieve mental influence over the physical world, but rather, to understand it. Only time will tell.
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