The Link - Matthew Manning

8/9/2019 The Link - Matthew Manning

1/176


2/176

The Link

Matthew Manning's Own Story

of His Extraordinary Psychic Gifts

with an Introduction by Peter Bander

HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON

New York


3/176

Copyright C I 1974 by Colin Smythe Ltd.Introduction copyright 1975 by Peter Bander. All rights reserved, including the right to reproducethis book or portions thereof in any form.

First published in the United States in 5975.

Published simultaneously in Canada byHolt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada, Limited.

Printed in the United States of America


4/176

PREFACE

Shortly after the war I read Harry Price's book Poltergeist over England. I was already acquainted with An Adventure by theMisses Moberly and Jourdain and these two volumes were the

basis of any imperfect understanding of the supernatural I pos-sessed. At that time I could not foresee that a generation later Ishould be introducing an account of experiences far stranger, morepersistent and diverse than any which Harry Price was able torecount. The narrative that follows has an added immediacy be-cause the victim (and I believe any poltergeist-child is an unwittingvictim) is in this case my son. I am grateful for the information

I obtained and remembered from Price's book: without it the phe-nomenon that began to uncoil might have remained unrecognizedfar longer, and the anxiety which it provoked might have beenmore serious for my family.

The household in which the events originally took place in 1966had one characteristic common to most poltergeist cases: children.Andrew was six, Rosalind eight, and the eldest (the author) justeleven. None of them could comprehend the nature of the situa-tion, and this factor undoubtedly increased their apprehension. Asthe events persisted I became aware of certain characteristics theforce revealed. This poltergeist was a silent operator and not tobe caught red-handed. It was teasingly just that much faster and


5/176

farseeing than humans, and the realization of this increased oursense of frustration and helplessness.

In retrospect, the arrival of Dr. George Owen seems coinci-dental, but his range of experience of the subject was unrivaled

and he provided the psychological assurance which my familyneeded at that time. We were especially comforted by his confi-dence that the phenomenon was transitory, was expendable, wouldgo away. In this he was correct. When the activities resumed fiveyears later everyone was more experienced, desiring only to liveundisturbed and in peace, but this wish was to be tempestuouslyupset.

The forces displayed during the second outbreak were consid-erably more intense, mischievous, and daring. I believe they de-served far more serious and scientific an examination than, in fact,they received and I am convinced there were clues undetectedwhich, if they had been followed, may well have advanced ourunderstanding of the dynamics and motives of poltergeist energy.

The reader of this book will at some point have to evaluate theevidence and decide upon its veracity and probability. I know theauthor has no intent to convince the incredulous nor wish to de-ceive the sympathetic. It is a description by a young man who hasbeen at the center of experiences so exceptional that they couldnot be allowed to remain unrecorded.

My personal attitude throughout, I trust, was to be open-minded, which is all a layman can be. There was no other choicethan to respond to events as they occurred, but inevitably I de-veloped a heightened awareness of the situation. I became moreobservant and testing and looked always for the sensible explana-tion of events. Later I realized that if I was to assess the probabilityof the evidence my choice was unequivocal: either I rejected intoto the paranormal explanation of events or I accepted it. (Evento dismiss 98 percent as exuberant pranks would leave a crucial2 percent unexplained to challenge my judgment.) The first optionbecame increasingly untenable and less rational than acceptanceof the alternative.

It is a reflection of the responsibility with which people todaytreat psychic phenomena to record the unexpected degree of social

6


6/176

acceptance by people who were acquainted with our situation. Anoverwhelming, and unexpected, majority accepted (I believe sin-cerely) our accounts of poltergeist activity, dematerializations andspirit activity to which we had been subjected. Matthew himselfquickly appreciated his responsibility to his family, to his school,to those motivated by desire to understand, and to scientific in-quiry. Few of us perhaps realized the unique burden that he hascarried. I am proud to record the sense of dignity with which hehas faced his destiny, and I earnestly trust that he will possess thefortitude to continue.

I hope the reader will find material of interest in The Link andappreciate the youthful extent of the author's literary experience.If this Preface stimulates inquiry then it is no secret that this nar-rative is itself a preface to a far larger story.

Derek G. ManningOctober 1973


7/176

INTRODUCTION

By the age of eighteen, when Matthew Manning wrote thisbook, he had experienced more psychic phenomena than mostpeople hear about in a lifetime. Without apology for the skeptical

approach I have maintained since I first met him, I consider hisstory to be more than just fascinating and totally absorbing; it isthe record of a young man whom nature appears to have set asidefrom others.

Exactly what causes the many phenomena to manifest them-selves in Matthew's presence is not yet certain. A year ago, when Iwas writing the preface to the British edition of this book, various

explanations abounded but none seemed even faintly conclusive.Since publication of that edition, Matthew has submitted his giftsto serious and extensive scientific tests and experiments, the resultsof which shed new light daily on his extraordinary powers. In July1974, a group of eminent scientists made some phenomenal dis-coveries which not only appear to put Matthew's psychic abilitiesinto perspective but also promise, after further evaluation of the

results, a revolution in psychical research and a hithertoundreamed-of explanation to many riddles and mysteries. In thisnew introduction, then, I have included as up-to-date an accountas possible of the results of the latest experiments with Matthew.

When I was first approached by Matthew, there were those whosincerely believed that he should have gone instead to some esoteric

9


8/176

sage who might have helped him to develop higher spiritual aware-ness and perhaps even trained him in the art of becoming aclairvoyant master. My own backgroundcriminal psychology,theology, and pedagogics, a former senior lecturer at the Cambridge

Institute of Education, and now a publisher and editor of a para-psychology journalwas considered by some critics too materialisticand pragmatic for a young "sensitive," as they described him.Nevertheless, our partnership has, I believe, enriched both our livesand widened the horizon of our vision to a degree neither of uscould have foreseen.

Matthew must be classed as an introvert. As a young child, his

mother told me, he would absolutely refuse to talk to strangers.This was always attributed to extreme shyness. When he wasscolded for misbehavior, he would withdraw into a corner and re-main there, sometimes for hours, curled up in total isolation. Hestill prefers his own company, and I have always found him re-luctant to say more than appeared absolutely necessary. On theother hand, he is neither secretive nor does he refuse to answer

questions. When asked to relate an incident, he will do so in suchdetail that one who does not know him personally may sometimeswonder whether he is telling a rehearsed story. Of course, it soonbecomes quite obvious that he is simply describing a series of eventshe experienced. I cannot stress enough Matthew's almost fanaticdesire to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. He would make anexcellent witness in court because he has a nearly perfect photo-graphic memory and he is self-critical and almost pedantic whenrelating an event or experience.

Matthew's own account of his family life, his schoolmates, hisassociates, and his actions and reactions during the turbulent yearssince the start of the psychic disturbances speaks for itself. Through-out my association with him, I have remained an outsider lookingin. Naturally I formed my own opinions of Matthew, his parents,his teachers, and his schoolmates.

I do not envy Matthew his gifts and talents. As I have remarked,they have set him apart from his contemporaries. While othersenjoyed friendships and shared the usual schoolboy excitements,Matthew was an object of curiosity, a stranger whose favor one

I0


9/176

sought when one needed something, and often a person to beavoided because of his "strange powers." No doubt, distorted reportsabout what was happening at the school, rumors and fears of par-

ents that their sons might catch whatever "affliction" Matthew had,contributed much to his predicament. Nonetheless, a small coreof loyal friends supported him throughout his school days. It isfair to say that he had only one intimate friend, whose understand-ing and deep affinity with Matthew have been a great help to him.This friend, David Reay Warrener, is now a student at a theologi-cal college in Wales; his own outlook on life and his decision to

study theology were largely influenced by his association withMatthew.Matthew's strongest support and understanding came from his

parents. Their conduct throughout those trying years commandsthe greatest respect. They probably suffered more than Matthewrealized at the time, yet their help was unstinting. In this age ofegalitarianism, I would facetiously describe the circumstances of

the Manning family as being slightly more equal than the averageEnglish family. The whole background is solid English middleclass. For generations the Manning sons and daughters have re-ceived the best education. The Mannings own a very pleasanthouse, furnished in the finest English tradition. Matthew's father,Derek Manning, an architect of some standing and a collector ofantique glass, emerges in Matthew's narrative as very much the

paterfamilias, a no-nonsense man. Matthew's mother is a devotedwife and a loving mother and friend to her three children.

It is against this family background that the chaos caused bythe original poltergeist manifestations and later events must beseen; the Manning family is closely knit, and they naturally fearedanything that could disturb the happiness and tranquillity of theirhomelife.

Apart from his parents, the two people most closely involvedwith Matthew were his headmaster at Oakham School and thematron of his school house. Both were, of course, in loco parentiswhile Matthew was resident at the school. The matron (a some-what archaic title given to housemothers in English boardingschools) not only was sympathetic toward Matthew's gifts and de-

II


10/176

lighted at the prospect of obtaining "first-hand evidence" for some-thing she already believed in, but she had no doubt that Matthewwas a natural medium and therefore a great comfort to her spiritualneeds. Her role in the school and especially her influence on theheadmaster, who on two occasions wished Matthew to be with-drawn from the school because of the unbearable disturbancescaused by poltergeistery and other phenomena, is not quite clear.But there can be little doubt that she used whatever influence shehad to smooth Matthew's path.

To students in British boarding schools, headmasters are almostlike incarnations of God. They are responsible for many hundreds

of young boys and men. Mr. John D. Buchanan, headmaster atOakham, ranks among the best-known heads of boarding schools.At the onset of the events related by Matthew, the headmasterbegan to receive second- and third-hand reports and complaintsfrom the parents of many pupils and, no doubt, from membersof his staff. One of Matthew's fellow pupils actually had to bewithdrawn from the school because of the nervous strain caused

by the nightly disturbances. Twice the headmaster felt forced toask Matthew's parents to take the young man away from theschool; gentle persuasion and logical reasoning made him with-draw his request.

Matthew Manning's case, although perhaps unique in its phe-nomenal manifestations, is by no means isolated. The phenomenaattracted or caused by him are of an unusual nature and extremely

powerful, but the records show that poltergeist manifestations arenot uncommon in communities such as boarding schools. In hisdecision to keep Matthew at Oakham School, Mr. Buchanan chosethe less difficult of two options. It is reasonable to assume that,had he sent Matthew home, he would have been forced into adefensive position vis--vis the public mediaschools like Eton,Harrow, and Oakham, which pride themselves on being "in pursuitof excellence," are easy targets for the "popular" press. Moreover,he would have been forced to prove to the satisfaction of theschool's governors and trustees that Matthew Manning had causeddeliberate disturbances and unrest among the pupils; and againsthis will and personal conviction, he would have ruined the boy's

12


11/176

future. Obviously, Mr. Buchanan had no legal or moral reasons toinsist on Matthew's removal from the school. His decision to allowMatthew to stay was made quietly, with sober and careful judg-

ment. It was only after Matthew completed his studies and hadpassed his examinations that the headmaster made a statement tothe British press:

The things that happened when Matthew was at Oakham were simplymind-boggling. He must be the most unique boy I have met in twenty-eight years as a Master and Headmaster. Of course, I am a skeptic aboutpsychic matters, but I know that something quite extraordinary washappening. I bent over backwards not to get involved, but I am surethere were paranormal powers at work to produce such mysterious hap-penings. I personally witnessed none of the happenings but plenty ofpeople in his school house did. I had him under my personal care forabout three years and I became very worried about all these happenings.There was never any explanation as to how all these disarrangementsof dormitories etc. occurred. Knives, bricks, glass, pebbles and such likeappeared without any clue as to their origin. And yet nothing ever ap-peared to be missing from other parts of the school. The boys whoshared Matthew's dormitory and whose bunks moved about wereabsolutely adamant that it had happened; they were honest and niceboys and I know they did not tell lies. Yes, I decided to play the wholething down as best I could, but something very odd was going on.

As to Matthew Manning himself, as a person he is a bit of a loner;he is rather lethargic, except at pottery at which he excelled. He was

certainly not academically brilliant. His automatic paintings and draw-ings a la Direr and other great Masters all seemed to sport their ownidentity and origin. Yet I know for a fact that Matthew really was notmuch good at drawing or painting. His art master was most impressedby the paintings purporting to be produced by the Great Masters.

To sum it all up: Matthew is mature, he is gentle and above all com-pletely honest.

Most of Matthew's fellow pupils are today students at universi-ties throughout Britain. Their attitude toward what happened atOakham School is surprisingly rational and lacking in sensation-alism. In fact, speaking to them about certain happenings narratedby Matthew in his book, one gains the distinct impression thatMatthew has often understated the case, and certainly never real-

1 3


12/176

ized the deep impression those happenings made on his fellowpupils. All his contemporaries and his elders at the school areunanimous in the opinion that Matthew is an extraordinarypsychic.

My involvement with Matthew began a few months before heleft the relatively sheltered environment of Oakham. I discussedwith Mr. Derek Manning what possible future lay ahead forMatthew, and I suggested that it might not be a bad idea to givethe young man a "rest from it all." Matthew agreed quite readilyto get to work on an account of his last few years. I made it clear

that I did not expect him to write the autobiography of an eighteen-year-old boy. Instead, I suggested that his narrative be restrictedto the period from the onset of the psychic phenomena to thepresent. He was to come from Cambridge, where he lived, aboutonce a fortnight to Gerrards Cross, where we would go through hismanuscript chapter by chapter, and if necessary, line by line. Isuggested that Matthew should accept the generous offer made by

his father to settle for a small allowance for one year, and in thecourse of the next few months we could determine whetherMatthew showed any aptitude in the publishing business. To-gether with my colleague Cohn Smythe, also a publisher, I madean arrangement with regard to the United Kingdom rights to thebook. An agreement was drawn up, and Matthew Manning be-came an author (with, alas, a very uncertain future and no real

income as yet).Of course, a multitude of questions arose in my own mind, andneedless to say, many of my former academic colleagues asked mequestions that I found very difficult to answer. I received a longletter from a dear and respected friend, the doyen of parapsycho-logical research in Britain, Dr. Robert Crookall, D.Sc., Ph.D.,B.Sc., warning me of the terrible dangers of taking on a youngman like Matthew Manning and allowing him to turn into a psy-chic freak; Dr. Crookall felt Matthew was far too young to beallowed to participate in experiments or pursue automatic writingand such matters.

My friends and colleagues were still asking whether Matthew

14


13/176

was a Wunderkind or perhaps a special messenger from "the otherside," and I was still trying to convince them that Matthew Man-ning was a normal, healthy, and intelligent young man who hap-

pened to possess some unusually strong paranormal gifts, whenovernight something happened in Britain (and, we soon discov-ered, throughout the world) that caused us more trouble, incon-venience, and nuisance than had even the poltergeists. For somereason, television and the newspapers suddenly had one topic theyflogged day after day, week after week: Mr. Uri Geller. No soonerhad Mr. Geller appeared on television with his spoon- and key-

bending performances than the questions we were asked changed:is Matthew Manning another Uri Geller? I am not going to bedrawn into the current controversy over Mr. Geller's activities. Iam not really interested in whether Mr. Geller has been the victimof "those around him," as some claim, or whether what has ap-peared about him in the media is authorized by him. All I knowis that Matthew Manning and Uri Geller have one thing in com-

mon, that they are both human beings. And there, in my opinion,the similarity ends.The increasing demands on Matthew forced us to settle the

question of publicity then. We decided that Matthew's first prioritywas to complete his book (in spite of the frequent psychic inter-ruptions such as the case of Bishop Kephalas Nektarios, describedin Appendix I). I assumed full responsibility for all rights onMatthew's work, and for coordinating activities involving legiti-mate scientific institutions that might ask our cooperation in theirresearch. It was at this stage that I believe I made a serious mistakeas far as Matthew's psychic activities were concerned. Althoughthis point is arguable, I still think I should not have encouragedMatthew to engage in activities similar to those performed ontelevision by Uri Geller. Of course, it all started as a joke whichthen grew into a challenge and finally became an obsession withmany. Could Matthew bend keys, spoons, and the like? I think it issilly that a little thing such as a bent spoon can become an issueof worldwide concern. Yes, Matthew could bend metal objects, butthe novelty of doing it wore off very quickly. Not only did it usuallyexhaust Matthew, but the unpleasant "psychic side effects"--dis-

1 5


14/176

turbances, poltergeist activities, and all the things we thought wehad gotten rid ofseemed to return as soon as Matthew concen-trated on bending metal objects. They bent everywhere in thehouse, whether Matthew wanted them to or not. Once, while hewas on the second floor of my office, I received complaints from mystaff on the ground floor that the six keys to the file cabinets hadbent in the manager's pocket. In order to lock the file cabinets,new keys had to be ordered from the manufacturers.

As the weeks passed, the challenges forced upon Matthew, andto some degree on me, became even more demanding. In May1974, I was contacted by an acquaintance who, I discovered later,

is a high-ranking senior officer in the Special Branch (roughlyanalogous to the American FBI or CIA). He had seen photographsof Geller at Frankfurt Airport where Uri had purportedly causeda pair of Clejuso handcuffs to bend very slightly; as a matter offact, opinion was divided whether or not they actually had bent.According to my acquaintance, this was prima facie evidence offraud, because "these handcuffs are made of a special metal which

does not bend." To prove his point, he offered to have one pairdelivered to my office the same afternoon.I accepted, although in retrospect I think that was a mistake.

The handcuffs were delivered at 3 P.M., and as Matthew happenedto be in my office, he suggested that he put them on and I lockthem. When nothing had happened by 4:3o P.M., I took them offMatthew, placed them in my briefcase, and took them home withme that evening. After dinner, Matthew came into my study andasked whether I could put the handcuffs around his wrists onceagain. "I have the feeling that something is going to happen," hesaid. Now I realize that it was thoughtless and foolish of me toagree to his request: past experience had taught me that whenMatthew says something is going to happen, it does happen. Whilethe handcuffs were tightly locked around his wrists, Matthewwatched television. After an hour, my colleague Mr. Smythe, who,among others, was also present in the house, suggested taking thecuffs off Matthew because it was evident that the tight fit wascausing him discomfort. The right cuff was released, but there wassome difficulty with the left. Because Matthew assured us nothing

16


15/176

had really happened (although he did feel very exhausted), wesimply thought that the difficulty in releasing the cuff was dueto our unfamiliarity with the key mechanism. We turned the keyto the left cuff and nothing happened; we tried for about ten min-utes, when I got impatient, blaming the manufacturers for invent-ing stupid devices that did not work properly. I then asked Mat-thew to come into a well-lighted room where I could see moreclearly what I was doing. To my horror, I noticed the bar that Ihad released fifteen minutes earlier from the right wrist had bentto about ten degrees. At first I did not believe my eyes. I tried topush the bar back into the lock but I could not manage even topress the bar back into the slot. I examined the handcuff on theleft wrist. My reaction was psychological shock. I went cold, thenhot; my mouth became dry and I felt my composure cracking. Idon't know how I managed to explain to those present what Ihad just then noticed, but somehow I did. Inside the locking de-vice, the notched bar had bent to what I estimated as some fifteendegrees (it turned out to be a very accurate guess). I have in mypossession several witnesses' affidavits attesting to this event. Thesetestimonies, however, cannot reflect how I felt at the momentmyshock, my worries about Matthew, stuck to a handcuff, and myanxiety over the probable reaction of the man who had lent methe handcuffs.

I telephoned the gentleman and begged him to come to myhouse immediately. When he arrived, he was angry, annoyed, and,

as he put it, deeply disappointed that I should have abused afriendly gesture and have the audacity to call him in, probably tomake publicity capital out of it. To prove his point, he informedme that the necessary papers authorizing him to search my housefrom top to bottom were on their way. In his opinion, these hand-cuffs could only be bent with hydraulic equipment, and he wassure to find it on my premises. He also made it clear that having

found it, he would expose both Matthew and me. I somehow hadthe presence of mind to ask him to look at the handcuffs beforeattempting to discredit us. I told him, if you can tell me whathydraulic or other equipment can bend a bar inside a lock withless than cp.r millimeter to spare on each side of the lock casing,

1 7


16/176

I'll save you the bother of applying for a search warrant and giveyou written authority to turn the house upside down."

It would take far too long to relate the happenings of the nexttwo hours in detail; suffice it to say that after Matthew had been

interrogated for about one hour (the handcuff still on him, andno witness allowed in the same room), a way was found by whichthe circumference of the cuff was widened by about one and a halfcentimeters, without getting the locking bar out of position. Thehandcuffs were immediately placed in a sealed envelope andtaken personally by my acquaintance to the forensic laboratoriesof the Metropolitan Police, where they underwent the most strin-

gent tests.The report from the forensic laboratories was generously madeknown to me and five others. We were allowed to write our ownsummary of this report and were given the X-ray photos of themetallurgical examinations. Making very technical references tothe metal, its structure and molecular behavior under stress, thereport stated categorically that at no time had any physical forcebeen brought to bear on these handcuffs. The only explanationthat made any sense to the police forensic experts was that thehandcuffs had been manufactured defective. The fact that theyhad actually been placed onto Matthew's wrists, that one of themost senior officers had personally inspected them on Matthew'swrists, that they had been taken off Matthew's wrists and had beenpersonally delivered by this officer to the laboratory, could not betaken into evidence by the examining forensic experts. Their re-port stated: no physical force has at any time been brought to bearon the handcuffs because after bending only three degrees understress, the metal's molecular structure would have changed.

Two other events had taken place at my house two weeks earlier.On the first occasion I was host to several guests who are well-known television personalities. Although we did not intend to in-volve Matthew in "doing his thing" or satisfying anybody's curi-osity, a certain tension developed between Matthew and one ofthe ladies present. This dear lady, who has been on television weekafter week since 1954 and who is a household name in Britain,has a reputation for speaking her mind. She does not approve of

8


17/176

young men with long hair, and if they sport a beard, in her opinionthey are anarchists and probably a menace to civilized Britain. PoorMatthew had not even been properly introduced before he wasverbally assailed in no uncertain terms. Tension of this kind bringsout the worst in most of us; in Matthew it seems to release a forcethat creates havoc. We heard knocking on the French windowsof the drawing room; my two guard dogs, a very large Great Daneand a Labrador whoresents intruders, were let out within abouttwo seconds. The floodlights were switched on; the dogs barkedand searched for an intruder. In the garden we found that sixheavy baskets filled with rocks and waterplants had been thrownfrom their normal position on a ledge into the middle of the fish-pond. The water was still whirling and muddy. Two statues, onebronze and one marble, had been turned 18o degrees. Needless tosay, I have since made quite certain that this lady did not meetMatthew again.

The second incident is a very personal one. It concerned a per-son very near and dear to me who had died on a Monday. OnWednesday evening I gave a large dinner party, and Matthew wasone of the guests. The conversation after dinner concerned itselfentirely with political matters. At no time did we discuss the de-ceased lady, nor would there have been any point in doing so be-cause she was not known to anyone there except me and Mr. ColinSmythe. At about ten o'clock that night, Matthew said that a tre-mendous force was building up, and in fear of another unwelcomemanifestation, Mr. Smythe hurriedly gave Matthew a pad of paperand a pen. We were able to camouflage the activities from theother guests reasonably well.

To my surprise and deep sadness, I suddenly recognized thehandwriting that was slowly appearing. There were only four lines;yet this was unlike any automatic writing I had seen Matthew dobefore. I noticed that he was going through agony writing thosefew lines. There was no mistaking the handwriting; it was, in fact,that of the woman who had died only two days earlier. The con-tents of this short message were even more moving. My onlythought at that moment was, "If only she had told her husbandthis before she died." A week later her husband was staying at my

19


18/176

house for a few days. On the last day of his stay, he asked me towalk with him in the garden; he was still heartbroken and hardlycapable of comprehending that his wife had died. He suddenlystopped and said: "I must tell you this: just before Dorothy diedshe called me over and told me. . . ." And here were the verysame words that on the previous Wednesday had been written byMatthew in the lady's handwriting.

These happenings coincided with Matthew Manning's immi-nent departure for Toronto, Canada, where Dr. George Owen hadconvened a seminar that was to be attended by twenty-one leading

scientists from the Western world. Dr. Owen, who had knownMatthew since the first outbreak of the poltergeist phenomena inFebruary 1967, had some time before left Cambridge Universityto be the director of the New Horizons Research Foundation inToronto. Naturally, we had corresponded for some time, and Ihappily agreed to Dr. Owen's suggestion that Matthew shouldattend a special conference on psychokinesis in Toronto during

the last two weeks of June and the first week of July 1974. In anagreement between Dr. Owen and myself, acting for Van DurenPublications, it was specified that we would have full access to allresearch results and that a diary would be kept of all notable eventsduring the experiments. Dr. Owen had agreed to send us a pre-liminary report and keep us generally informed by telephone fromToronto of any special happenings. The cooperation between

Toronto and ourselves throughout the three weeks was most fruit-ful and beneficial to all parties concerned. Dr. Owen, who mustbe given full credit for his imaginative and farsighted approachto the whole series of experiments that were carried out, will indue course publish a series of learned papers on Matthew Man-ning and the Toronto experiments. These papers will not be de-signed to be read by the general public and they will requireconsiderable knowledge of various academic disciplines. Other emi-nent scientists will also publish papers in diverse disciplines, allconcerned with the Toronto results. A documentary film was madein Toronto, and under the technical advice of Dr. Owen, severalmore documentaries can be expected during the next few years.

20


19/176

On October 8, 1974, I received the first official report fromToronto. Joel L. Whitton, M.D., research fellow, published alearned paper entitled "Ramp Functions" in EEG Power Spectra During Actual and Attempted Paranormal Events, and Dr. Owenpublished A Preliminary Report on Matthew Manning's PhysicalPhenomena. In the usual modest terminology of the great scientists,they state in a short preface: ". . . the result promises to lead toa new field of fesearch whose interest may well extend beyond themerely parapsychological into more general realms of neurophysio-logical psychology. . . ."

Among the twenty-one giants of science who participated in theexperiments with Matthew Manning is another modest man, Pro-fessor Brian Josephson, F.R.S., Nobel prize recipient in physics(1973). Dr. Josephson has stated in an interview with the Daily Mail of London:

We are on the verge of discoveries which may be extremely importantfor physics. We are dealing here [with Matthew] with a new kind of

energy. This force must be subject to laws. I believe ordinary methodsof scientific investigation will tell us much about psychic phenomena.They are mysterious, but they are no more mysterious than a lot of thingsin physics already. In times past, "respectable" scientists would havenothing to do with psychical phenomena; many of them still won't. Ithink that the "respectable" scientists may find they have missed theboat!

The Daily Mail's literary editor followed Professor Josephson'sremarks with the question:

To hear this from a professor of physics at Cambridge, speaking fromthat scientific holy of holies, the Cavendish Laboratory, makes psychicresearch seem a lot more impressive than it ever did before; and whocould be more "respectable" than a professor of physics with a Nobelprize?

During the Toronto conference, a whole series of experimentswas carried out with Matthew Manning, involving a tremendousamount of work. As the basis of my own narrative of events anddiscoveries, I use the diary the researchers kept at Toronto. Of ne-cessity and for the purposes of this book, the facts and figures are

2.1


20/176

simplified; I am also adding the theories, hypotheses, and evenintelligent guesses that are in the diary. First the facts.

An initial series of eight experiments was carried out with Mat-thew Manning (followed by many other experiments involving dif-ferent persons either alone or with Matthew present), duringwhich Matthew was connected to an electroencephalograph andan electromyograph, and both devices were connected to a com-puter. After taking "normal" readings of Matthew's brain-wavepattern, both under relaxed conditions and while concentrating onsome project, Matthew was instructed to "switch his power on."(I have questioned some of the scientists about using this peculiarphrase and was given to understand that Matthew had used thedescription of "switching power on" in conversation; the scientistssimply adopted the phrase in order to discover what would happenif Matthew did switch his power on.) During the actual experi-ment, a key to a Canadian Dominion lock was placed into Mat-thew's hand, or alternately, he placed his hand above a key. Theidea was to discover whether Matthew's brain wave would showany peculiar change during the operation.

As soon as Matthew complied with the instruction, the elec-troencephalograph registered an unexpected and quite unique read-ing. To all but one of the scientists present, the brain-wave pattern,registered each time for a period of twenty seconds, was entirelynew. One of the medical professors present recalled having seen

such a pattern once before in a patient to whom a severe overdoseof a hallucinatory drug had been administered; the circumstancesof that observation, however, had been such that no particular at-tention had been paid to its significance.

My initial reaction on receiving one of the electroencephalo-grams (EEG's), sent to me without an explanation or indicationthat this was a reading of Matthew's brain-wave pattern, wasskeptical. I just could not accept the readings and findings, becausethey seemed to be totally outside my own experience with EEG's.As a qualified psychologist, I questioned not only the validity ofthe readings but also the description that had been given to thisnew brain wave: it was called a "ramp function." (Dr. Joel Whit-

22


21/176

ton explained later that he had simply given a name to it so as toexplain the situation to his fellow scientists. The actual EEG looksrather like a ramp, and "ramp function" was simply a pictorial de-scription.)

During these experiments, the electromyograph showed no mus-cular activity whatsoever; one can therefore dispense with anyfurther reference to this instrument. The readings from the com-puter, however: are interesting. According to the evaluation givenin REM (rapid eye movement), Matthew had been in a fourthdegree of deep sleep. It was quite obvious to the scientists present

that Matthew had not been asleepthey could see he was wideawake. After twenty seconds, the ramp function stopped and thereadings of Matthew's brain-wave pattern returned to normal.Some of the metal objects that had been placed under Matthew'shand had either bent or continued to bend afterward.

The second significant observation was made when the rampfunction was traced back to the part of the brain from which it

originated. We will have to await the written conclusions by someof the scientists who are most anxious that this discovery shouldbe presented in an appropriate scientific evaluation. The onlystatement available is that the ramp function has been traced to apart of the human brain hitherto believed to be defunct and de-generated. The old "animal brain" of homo sapiens was one ofthe descriptions given, and "das Ur Gehirn" was another.

I think at this point it is appropriate to quote directly from Dr.Whitton's report.

The "ramp function" has not been reported previously; however, thelarge increase in theta energy and the usual decrease in beta energywhich characterizes the ramp function compared to other states hasbeen found by Motoyama (1965) to distinguish "paranormal" be-haviour.

In test number 2 (MM2) there were two attempts at paranormalbehaviour, i.e., MM attempted to bend two keys without using anyobvious physical force. The second key did not bend and no rampfunction was evidenced during the attempt with this key. A ramp func-tion did appear, however, during the attempt with the first key duringthe first 10.24 seconds of the attempt. However, the first key did not

23


22/176

bend until later in the experiment. It mysteriously bent while lying on atable in [an] adjoining room, but before the end of the experimentwhile MM was still "hooked up" to the EEG amplifier. MM claims thisdelayed effect occurs occasionally with metal objects he is "psychically"bending.

Summary

1. During the first to seconds of an attempt at paranormal behaviourby subjects with reportedly "psi" ability, the EEG power spectrumat the vertex demonstrates a form characterized as a ramp function.

2. The ramp is distinguished by a peak in the delta or low theta

band, with most of the energy in the lower EEG frequencies withpercentage theta twice that of beta.3. Motoyama's (1965) finding of an increased theta energy in high

scoring ESP subjects during paranormal behaviour is confirmed.4. The ramp function does not appear to be related to the following

behaviours: resting eyes open, resting eyes closed, movements ofmuscles, talking, or intense concentration. The ramp function ap-pears to be a unique physiological correlate of paranormal be-haviour in the 3 psychics tested.

5. The ramp function was found in all three of the types of para-normal behaviour attempted: "psychokinesis," "projection," and

i

"aura-viewing."

The discovery of the ramp function led immediately to a seriesof further experiments. Several persons reputed to be psychic weresimilarly tested. Following these tests, a number of theories andhypotheses were put forward by the scientists:

I. The origin of the ramp function (and therefore the source ofpsychic energy) in Matthew was found to be in the oldest part ofthe human brain; Dr. Whitton therefore suggests that psychicability or energy is not a "random gift" or a "space-age ability," butan innate function and ability in homo sapiens that probably goesback to the earliest history of man; it may be a function that be-came lost or defunct in most people many thousands of years ago.

2. The psychic energy level recorded in Matthew was exceptionallyhighin fact, unique. Two questions must be asked: why isMatthew's energy level so much higher than that of other knownpsychics? And, is there a common factor among psychics that ac-

24


23/176


24/176


25/176

After experiments with over one thousand subjects, we are completelybaffled by the results. Not only are the Kirlian photographs we tooktotally different from anything we have ever seen, but this young manappears to possess the ability of generating his own energy which justcancels out the 35,000 volts of the machine. In fact, I am not quite sureabout what really happened; at one moment, he seemed to absorb thetotal energy from the machine, and at the next, he forced such anenergy back into the machine that the machines just "gave up theirghost." If we had not seen this with our own eyes, we would not havebelieved this possible. I can state categorically that in order to do whatMatthew did by simply placing his hand on the Kirlian machine, one

would need highly sophisticated electronic equipment.Finally, I ought to mention one of the experiments which, for

reasons of scientific accuracy, must be described as inconclusive.Dr. Brian Josephson carried out an experiment with a compassin which Matthew placed his hand above the compass and theneedle spun violently. When Matthew "switched off" his energy,the needle, instead of swinging slowly back and forth until it cameto rest, suddenly stopped dead. Since Professor Josephson thoughtthe humidity in the room may have had an effect on the needle'sbehavior, he preferred to label the results "inconclusive." Duringsubsequent experiments at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cam-bridge, however, the same effect on the needle was observed. Atthe same time it was discovered that Matthew's energy affected

the magnetic field of the compass. Instruments designed to measurechanges in magnetic fields were situated several yards away fromthe compass, and as Matthew switched his power on above theneedle, the instruments registered a change. When Matthewwalked over to the instruments, they again immediately registereda change in magnetic field around the compass, but the needle ofthe compass remained stationary. Professor Josephson could find

no rational explanation for the behavior of the compass needleand the instruments; unless he can prove that Matthew Manningeither influenced the compass needle or the instruments, and untilthe nature of Matthew's energy output can be defined scientifically,as a physicist he feels compelled to label such results "incon-clusive."

2 7


26/176

Seen in the light of the Toronto results, Matthew Manning'sbook takes on a new and unexpected significance. Matthew's giftsare still mysterious and fascinating, but the "spook" has gone outof them. While Matthew and his extraordinary abilities will prob-ably occupy scientific research for many years to come, let us inthe meantime also realize that Matthew's contribution, especiallyin Toronto, may put a firm and final end to the rampant fantasiesabout psychic gifts.

Today we can say that to be psychic simply means to be able toutilize a faculty that is latent in each of us. I am not minimizingMatthew Manning's unique position among those who possess psy-

chic qualities, for his are clearly among the most powerful known;nor am I dismissing the spiritual and philosophical implicationsof Matthew's manifestations of paranormal phenomena. All I amstressing is the realization that man's innate talents and abilitiescomprise the psychic as well as the physical.

Toronto has not supplied an answer or solution to the mostimportant question: does Matthew, when he "switches his power

on," communicate with anybody? All the appearances indicate thathe does. I, for one, would like to know why Picasso, Durer, Ber-trand Russell, and hundreds of men and women known to bedead, would want to communicate through an eighteen-year-oldschoolboy. The mystery has not yet been solved; but at long last asolution may be in sight.

This is a most unsatisfactory end to the introduction; I would

have preferred to present an open-and-shut case. All I have beenable to do is to open the lid of Pandora's box. I only hope that theknowledge we have gained through the Toronto experiments andall our desires to learn more will not be dispersed to play havocamong mankind. On the contrary, I share Matthew's deep wishthat whatever we learn in the next few years will benefit man andhelp toward a better worldhere and hereafter.

P.B.Gerrards CrossBuckinghamshire, EnglandOctober 1974

28


27/176

1

I had always looked forward to going back to school after myholidays. It was not that I was unhappy, but I very much enjoyedthe company of my school friends, not knowing many people athome.

My Easter holidays were over and on Sunday I was getting readyfor my journey back to school; my father was going to accompany

me because he had requested an interview with my headmaster.The thought of what might result from this interview worried mevery much, but then my father had been a very worried man forsome time and my family had reached a breaking point. For thelast four weeks we all had been subjected to the most disturbingand sometimes frightening happenings in the house. Just to de-scribe them as psychic phenomena does not capture the dismay my

parents, my younger brother, and sister had lived through. Thereis no doubt that I was at the very root of all that had happened.

In view of these extraordinary phenomena, my father thoughtit only fair to inform the headmaster that in his own opinionandhe was proven rightthere was a possibility that such phenomenamight occur after I returned to school. Judging by the disturbanceshappening to those who were closest to me, he assumed that ifsimilar occurrences should take place at my school, the disturbancesmight have far more devastating effects than they had in my home.

On Sunday night my father and I left Cambridge by car formy school. I do not know whether I felt sorry for myself or for myfather, and we had not even left the outskirts of Cambridge when

29


28/176

we talked about some of the things that had happened, trying tomake sense of them and somehow to find an explanation thatmight satisfy the headmaster and prepare me for the ordeal myfather anticipated and I feared.

It had all started on the morning of February i8, 1967, earlyon a gray Saturday morning, when my family witnessed for thefirst time phenomena that began suddenly for no apparent reason,and appeared to cease just as suddenly at Easter that year.

We were occupying at that time a recently built, detached house,and had lived there for seven years. Being a reasonably modernhouse, it had an open style and contained several ground-to-ceiling

windows.Our house ran to a predictable and orderly routine, but sud-

denly this was no longer the case. Overnight the pattern of livingwas disrupted.

My father used to begin his day at 7 A.M. by opening up thegrate of the all-night fire to add fuel to it. Afterward he would goback upstairs to the bathroom and come down to the living room

at about 7:25 A.M.He did so on February 18, a Saturday. Lying on its side, on thefloor, was a silver tankard that was usually kept on a wooden shelffour and a half feet from the floor. He was surprised to find thatit was not damaged, even though directly beneath the shelf was acupboard; the tankard would have hit this if it had fallen of its ownaccord.

My younger brother and sister and I were questioned about thisat breakfast. No one accepted responsibility for the tankard andall denied any knowledge of it.

Naturally enough we immediately thought that we had beenburgled during the night. This idea was soon dispelled when wefound that no other objects were missing. It would not have beeneasy for a burglar to have broken in at night, anyway, without therisk of waking someone. The event was forgotten.

On the following Wednesday morning, my father found thetankard again lying on its side on the floor, under identical circum-stances. Once again each member of the family pleaded innocence; jokingly we all accused one another, although we knew that my

30


29/176

father was always the first to come downstairs and enter the room;in fact he woke up the rest of us each day.

We were by now a little curious and puzzled as to the cause ofthe tankard's apparently inexplicable movement. There was noreason for it: the shelf was of well-seasoned, planed, and polishedwood, and was perfectly horizontal. We kept no pets that couldhave displaced it, and the shelf was not near any fireplace or flue.

The tankard was surrounded that night by a ring of sprinkledtalc, placed there, unknown to me or my brother and sister, by myparents. If the tankard subsequently slid horizontally toward theedge of the shelf and the floor, the powder would be disturbed.

The powder ring was still intact when the tankard was foundon the floor the next morning. It must, therefore, have risen verti-cally and then moved horizontally to achieve such a position with-out disturbing the powder. Furthermore, this piece of amateur de-tective work seemed to have encouraged the person who movedthe tankard. My mother, glancing at the table laid the night beforefor breakfast, noticed a large flower-filled vase had been placed onthe mat where we normally put the teapot. The vase had beenmoved from the opposite end of the room, some twenty feet, with-out spilling any of the water. I then found an old pottery dogconspicuously repositioned above the fireplace, five feet from itsusual position on a nearby shelf.

It was now that we began to suspect some freakish happeningswere taking place. Our feelings were mixed. We did not knowwhether to laugh or cry. We had no idea what might happen next,or what counteraction we could take, as it was totally outside ourfield of experience. Obviously none of us had ever encounteredsuch happenings before, and although they were amusing in theirimpishness, they frightened us because we were not acquaintedwith them, and were unaware of their limits and purpose. Wecould not understand why this should suddenly happen; thereseemed no discernible cause.

Feeling that some form of counteraction was necessary, myfather next attempted to find out what could be done and whomight be able to help us. He tried the doctor and the police. The

31


30/176

latter, although very sympathetic, were unable to offer assistance,but they advised him to approach the Cambridge Psychical Re-search Society. He got in touch with its secretary, Dr. GeorgeOwen, an expert on poltergeist phenomena who was at this time afellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, lecturing in genetics.

Dr. Owen informed us that such outbreaks were often associatedwith the presence of children, that their duration was generallytwo to eight weeks, and that once they ceased, they would notrecur. He was unable to suggest any preventive measures, butassured us that the scientific interest outweighed the inconveniencesthese events occasioned.

As Dr. Owen could offer no "cure" for the phenomena, my fatherwrote to another university expert, at a provincial university,briefly describing the events and concluding that "this activity isapparently increasing."

We have three children [my father wrote], Matthew, aged eleven yearssix months, Rosalind, eight years seven months, and Andrew, sevenyears old, and although they may be indirectly responsible for theseoccurrences, I am reasonably certain that the physical movement ofthese articles is not their work.

I am an interested student of antiques and our room accommodatesa number of my acquisitions, most of which could be broken bydropping. It is therefore particularly gratifying to observe that in themain fragile objects are undisturbed! A basket containing ornamentalgourds which has twice been moved weighs two and three-quarter

pounds.The general effect of these movements suggests a sense of impishmischief allied with a careful sense of order, and so far my family areoutwardly taking the matter fairly light-heartedly. It is possible, how-ever, that the results are perhaps psychologically more disturbing, andfor this reason I should be relieved to see these episodes concluded.

The letter was never answered.With similar happenings continuing and increasing in intensity,

the phenomena appeared to get more powerful. They became adaily routine and always took place between 7:oo A.M. and 7:3oA.M.; this period covered half an hour when the family was in asemiconscious state, just awaking.

32


31/176

Professor Dean found the results of Matthew s experiments with Kirlian

photography absolutely unique. Matthew s normal radiation (1) is

already stronger than that of most people. In (2) he switched his

power on and in (3) he focused the energy to pinpoints.


32/176

(Above) Mr. Derek Manning, Mat-

thew s father, holds the first object

found displaced, a silver tankard.

(Left) Matthew at age eleven, shortly

after the first outbreak of poltergeist

activity in 1967.


33/176

Mrs. Valerie Manning Rosalind Manning

In November 1968 the Mannings moved to Linton, near Cambridge.

The white buildings toward the rear of their house were built in 1600or earlier.


34/176

In the spring of 1971, after a violent outbreak of poltergeistery at the

Manning household, similar phenomena occurred for the first time at

Matthew s boarding school. Throughout the ensuing havoc, Matthew

(1) found a source of support and comfort in the matron (2). At her

suggestion, he and the house tutor (3) sought help from outside ex-

perts, who instructed Matthew in the use of banishing rituals andexorcism.


35/176

From the top of the stairs it was possible to hear knocks andother sounds as the upheavals increased, but we did not witnessany of these objects in flight. Invariably the objects moved werelightweight ornaments, chairs, cutlery, ashtrays, baskets, plates, a

small coffee table and a score of other articles, but none was everbroken or spilled. The tankard was regularly moved; we wonderedif it was perhaps some form of defiant protest against my father,since it was his .tankard, and he alone drank from it. Also, a vaseof flowers would frequently be brought and placed on the breakfasttable, in front of where my mother sat.

On one occasion my father entered the living room early, before

any disturbances had taken place, and put in the room a transistorradio playing music. This appeared to have a deterrent effect, asthe phenomenon was not as strong as had been previously ex-perienced.

As the physical manifestations increased, the house began toproduce erratic and unsuspected taps and creaks. The noiseswould vary from a dull knocking to a sound like a small stone

being thrown at the window, and they continued throughout theday and night in all parts of the house.

On several occasions at night all the doors and openings intothe living room were sealed by cotton threads which would besnapped if anyone entered the room, and the staircase was simi-larly booby-trapped. It appeared that nothing could be attributedto human mischief as the threads remained intact but the room

was again disturbed.Dr. Owen and my father watched the room from the outside

on more than one occasion, and they found that during thesetimes no phenomena could be witnessed. As soon as they relin-quished their positions, however, the objects would begin to moveas if they were aware only too well of when they were beingwatched.

In order to really double-check to the best of his ability thatthese movements were not spurious, Dr. Owen arrived one morn-ing without warning, to watch the room by himself. He even tookthe trouble of leaving his car some distance away and walking thelast part so that he could take up position unseen at about 6:3o A.M.

33


36/176

While he watched, no object was seen to move, and neither didanyone enter the room. At 7:15 he ceased watching, and camearound to the front door. When he reached the room a few secondslater, he discovered small objects had again moved.

On March 6 at George Owen's suggestion, my brother, mysister, and I were sent to stay in different friends' houses for aweek. Although my parents had no difficulty in finding friendsto have Rosalind and Andrew to stay with, they had great difficultyin finding anyone who was willing to have me under his roof. Evenat this stage it appeared that I was being regarded as the personaround which this force centered, principally because of my age,

although I was not made aware of this fact.During that time we spent away from home, no movement tookplace around my parents or myself, or my brother and sister, butthe noises were still audible to my parents at home during all hoursof the day. This experiment did appear to prove that the forceresided in one of us three children.

As if to make up for lost time, when we returned we weregreeted on the first morning by a fresh outbreak executed withrenewed vigor. On March 13, nine objects moved between 7 : ooA.M. and 7:3o A.M., and although that may not have been an ex-traordinarily large number, the objects increased in size, so that anupholstered chair moved about six feet, a dining chair was up-turned, a candlestick was placed in the middle of a vase of flowers,and other small objects moved.

A peak in the physical manifestations was reached on the fol-lowing morning, when eleven objects were moved during fifteenminutes. From that day on there appeared to be a waning of themovements; small objects moved shorter distances. We had beenwitness to this poltergeist for nearly three months, and althoughwe had not noted some characteristics occasionally found in similarcases, such as fire raising and smell producing, the other hallmarksof a poltergeist were unmistakable. Dr. Owen had warned myfather about these possibilities.

The last event that occurred was of particular interest, and itwas unlike anything we had previously experienced. Seated on asettee, my sister had been drawing, with her work on her knees;

34


37/176

she had made a mistake, and wanting to correct it, she looked forthe eraser she had used earlier, but could not find it. She was sittingalone in the living room as I entered it. I stopped dead in my tracksas I saw an eraser ascending slowly from behind the settee on which

she sat. At the same moment as I saw it, she too caught sight of it.It rose about five feet from the floor, hung in the air, and slowlyfloated down to land beside her. Although it was her lost eraser, wewere terrified for the first time and rushed from the house.

One event that assured us the force resided not in our house butin a member of the family took place in another house, sometwenty miles away. On arriving at my grandparents' home one

Sunday, my mother placed her coat upstairs, laid flat on a bed.When we came to leave and my mother went to fetch her coat,she found it arranged on the floor at the side of the bed, in thesame manner as it had been left on the bed. Although my grand-parents would not hear of our explanation, we realized that it wasprobably one of those poltergeist manifestations.

In many ways the most interesting aspect of the phenomenonwas a "pinging" sound that we often heard; it seemed to reboundoff windows or radiators, and occasionally glass or china. Althoughit sounded like tiny beads striking these objects, the sound wassimilar to that made by a bat. It occurred to us that the poltergeistwas perhaps employing a technique comparable to that of a bat,in negotiating articles through the air and around corners. Was itpossible that the poltergeist was using something like a bat's echo-sounding device to avoid obstacles?

I had in my bedroom the skull of a monk, which I had removedfrom the subsiding cliff that had once supported a medieval mon-astery. Thinking that this was a cause of this episode, we dulyburied the skull under the nearest tree, but it did not change theintensity of the happenings.

Another interesting occurrence befell my father on more thanone occasion. While asleep at night, he would be awakened sud-denly for no apparent reason. He was not in a drowsy state, butperfectly alert and aware of everything going on around him. Hehad the feeling that a cat was moving on top of his bedclothes,up and down his legs, trying to find a comfortable position in which

35


38/176

to settle down. After it had apparently done so, he would feel aweight on his feet, although there was no cat. Having experiencedthis on more occasions than he cared to, he obtained some sleepingpills from the doctor, and he no longer woke up during the night.

The reaction of the family was initially one of fright, but grad-ually we began to joke about it, and we could see an amusing sideto it, which I think was of great help to us all. People are alwaysfrightened of happenings they cannot understand, and this wasour situation. On the other hand, people who cannot comprehendsomething will often reject it. But what was there to reject in ourcase? Such undeniable evidence of moving objects could not be

rejected and dismissed as if they had been imagined. We tried tounderstand it but, I admit, we were not very successful. We feltisolated because we knew no one else who had any similar experi-ence and who might have been able to help us. We were seizedwith a sense of always having to look over our shoulders to see ifwe were going to get hit, although this never happened. Mymother was reluctant to stay in the house on her own at this time,

and would wander aimlessly around the nearest town.Soon after the last event with the eraser, we left for an Easterholiday, which happened to serve as a very useful break, as it tookour minds off the subject. On our return three weeks later all wasquiet again, as it had been before February i8.

The following extract is taken from a letter subsequently written

by Dr. Owen:. . . thank you for your careful description of the events surroundingMatthew. In the haunting . . . at your previous home . . . my opinionwas that the happenings were genuine, and not caused by trickery, thatthe house was not haunted, and that the events were PK (psycho-kinesis) caused by a member of the household. It was not possible atthat time to ascertain which member of the family was the source ofthe force. Matthew was the most likely on the grounds of age, althoughthere was no other factor to indicate this especially. His obvious intel-ligence, pleasant nature, and underlying seriousness were, of course,quite typical of other poltergeist people, but these characteristics wereshared by the rest of your family. At one time I wondered if Mrs.

36


39/176

Manning was the unconscious involuntary source of the force, as oc-casionally it is manifested by older persons, but this was only becauseshe was the one who seemed outwardly to be the most tense. However,in these things it is obviously hard to separate cause and effect.

I think you can assume that the present occurrences are not due toyour house being "haunted" at all. The force, whatever it may be, re-sides principally in Matthew.

I might say here that Dr. Owen is a well-qualified and experi-enced researcher with a strict scientific approach to parapsychology.He won, in 1963, the Treatise Award of the ParapsychologyFoundation, and the following year was awarded the Duke Uni-

versity prize for distinguished work in parapsychology. His scien-tific papers have also been published in such learned andprestigious journals as "Proceedings of the Royal Society." In 1970he accepted an invitation to become the director of the NewHorizons Research Foundation, in Toronto.

At the time the poltergeist phenomena was occurring I was due

to take the Common Entrance Examination which would deter-mine which school I was to go to after I had left preparatory school,and I was very tense. I believe that this may have been a contribu-tory factor to the outbreak of the phenomenon in the first place,and that because of the tension I felt, I was generating "energy"which was helping to cause the poltergeist activity.

After the examination I left my preparatory school in 1968 and

in September I entered a large boarding school. In the autumn of1968 we also moved and bought an old house some eight milesaway from our previous home. The reason for the move had noth-ing to do with the poltergeist and it was not because we thoughtour house was haunted. I settled into the new school and the fam-ily into a new house. The events that had made such havoc of ourlives disappeared and were soon forgotten.

It is common for schoolboys to have "crazes" of something, usu-ally for a short period of time, and this is all everybody talks aboutwhile it is the fashion. Late in 1969 one such "craze" swept myclassmates in my house at school: holding seances (which in retro-spect I think was a stupid thing to have engaged in).

37


40/176

We adopted several methods of communication with varyingdegrees of success. This also depended a great deal on who wastaking part in the sance, and I remember that a number of myfriends cheated. Even so, some results are worth mentioning. Wetried these seances with different combinations of operators andsome of the best results seemed to be achieved when I was one ofthe team. Although the messages we received were largely garbledand made little sense to any of us, my presence was usually aguarantee for something "coming through" without cheating.

One of the most striking happenings took place when three ofus tried to contact the grandfather of one of the boys who, althoughpresent, was not actually taking part in the seance. He wantedus to find out from his grandfather where he died. This boy knewthe place but we did not. The name spelt out was RAVENS-GLASS, which was the correct answer. This could of course beexplained by telepathy.

Other results were perhaps not quite so impressive and werelargely of the type: "James warns you not to do this. You are put-ting your lives at risk." We also received our fair share of messagespurporting to be from Marie Antoinette and Winston Churchill!When the "other side" was asked why better results were achievedwhen I was involved in the experiment the reply spelled out wasFREDERICK WHITE, which was the name of my grandfatherwho had died some eleven years previously.

However, this "craze" for seances changed after most people hadbecome too frightened to continue.

For nearly a year after this, nothing unusual occurred, and 197owas a quiet year. At that time I took two English "0" levels (aseries of examinations required for graduation from high school).The remainder of my "0" levels were due to be taken during thesummer of 1971, so that by the end of 197o I had six "0" levelsleft to be taken.

The spring and summer terms in 197o passed without disturb-ance and the poltergeist of three years ago was forgotten. After all,Dr. Owen had told us more than once that poltergeists never re-turned.

38


41/176

Early in July 1970 the school closed for the summer holidaysand I returned home.

On July 17, a few days into the summer holidays, my parentsbought an antique wardrobe for my bedroom, which was on theground floor. It was a very heavy large oak wardrobe, and becauseof its size it had at one time been cut in half down the middle tomake it possible" to move it. As soon as it was placed in my room Igot an odd feeling from it; I liked it and at the same time I feltthere was something very wrong with it, probably because it hadbeen cut through the middle. I hung up my clothes and closed thedoors. There were two doors which made up its front, and one ofthese doors had bolts to secure it at the top and bottom; the otherdoor had a key-operated lock that closed the cupboard firmly. Ishut and locked it and left the room.

Returning to the room some minutes later to fetch something,I found both doors hanging open; I bolted and locked them again.I could not immediately see any reason for the doors opening ontheir own, as both halves of the cupboard were screwed firmly to-gether. I again left the room, with the wardrobe doors firmlylocked.

Half an hour later, when I returned, both doors were again wideopen. I assumed the two halves were not fitting together properly,and again locked the doors with the two bolts and the key.

After closing the doors and checking that I could not open themwhen they were locked, I put the key in my pocket so that nobodyelse could open them. This procedure did not prevent the doorsfrom opening, after I continued to lock them; however, they wouldopen only if I was not watching them. I told my parents of thetrouble I was having in keeping the doors closed, and I was metwith a negative, uninterested response, and did not therefore saymore about it.

This trouble continued for several weeks until I returned toschool in September. While I was at school nothing odd occurredand I soon forgot the cupboard. Although I was suspicious of thecause of the opening of the doors, I did not think that it was an-other poltergeist.

39


42/176


43/176

did at least limit itself to small objects like cushions or coat hangers,and I therefore persuaded myself that there might be a naturalexplanation for these small movements. This gave me some sortof comfort. But disturbances would occur at intervals throughoutthe day when I was alone in the room.

Early on Christmas morning I was awakened by an unusualnoise from behind the paneling on the other side of the room. Itsounded to me like a cat scratching the paneling from the inside.This continued for some minutes and then faded away, to be fol-lowed by a noise from just outside the window which sounded likesomeone walking backward and forward on gravel. This stopped,and when I looked out of the window, I saw that the snow on theground showed no footprints; in fact there was no gravel thereeither, which I thought strange. By the time I was back in bedagain the scratching was coming from behind the paneling again.

While it was still audible I fetched my mother downstairs, sothat she too could hear the sound. As if to deliberately defy me,the room was quiet when we got downstairs and my mother refusedto believe that any such noises had occurred. Having once moremet with such a response, I decided not to mention the subjectagain, even though the disturbances continued right up until theend of the holidays.

I was relieved to return to school where I would be reasonablysafe from any paranormal activity. If anything should happen atschool it would be difficult to prove because of the number of boyswho could deliberately or accidentally move objects.

During a weekend at home, in the next term, on two or threeoccasions I was struck lightly from behind by cushions that werebeing projected from one side of the room to the other.

Several days later my pen disappeared from the desk in mystudy at school. I thought it must have been stolen or "borrowed"by a school friend. I found it in the study next door, and as all theoccupants denied having taken it from my room, I decided that Imust have left it in there by mistake, even though I could notremember having been there. It soon disappeared again undersimilar circumstances, and this time I found it in a different studyfarther away. This process was repeated with other objects as well,

41


44/176

although at this stage it was not possible to rule out mischief bymy fellow pupils.

Although it appeared impossible to prove that the happeningsat school were not caused by "friends," there was an incident wehad to accept as paranormal. Three of us sat in our study togetherone night, listening to a record. I got up to put another record onthe turntable, ready to operate the arm with an automatic switch.As I pushed this switch, the record began to lift off the turntable,revolving in a different direction from the turntable below it, andrising slowly up the center shaft. When it reached the top of theshaft, it stopped and jammed there, making it difficult to move it

without exerting some force.In April 1971 I went home for the Easter holidays. It soon be-

came evident that the phenomena were increasing in intensity inmy room, and, unknown to me at this time, outside it.

A few days after I returned home my parents noticed objectsthat were not in their usual positions; they thought that thesethings had been moved accidentally or deliberately by a member

of the family. These thoughts were dispelled when my motherfound a flashlight in the middle of the pantry floor when she camedown to make breakfast; this they had no explanation for. At thetime they did not mention it to anybody, so that we were bothplaying the same game of experiencing paranormal happeningsand saying nothing to each other. The pattern of events did notcontinue for much more than a week before we were all witness

to a chaotic outbreak of frighteningly powerful poltergeist phenom-ena that was to continue for over three months.

42


45/176

2

On Easter Sunday my parents had some friends in during theevening, and I was out of the house. I came home and shortlyafterward their friends left at about ten o'clock.

As they were showing their guests to the door they passedthrough the dining room, and to my mother's embarrassment founda large pewter plate upside down on the table; they said nothingto their friends or to me about it.

I had gone to bed by this time and I lay there restlessly althoughI do not remember whether it was particularly hot that night. Isuddenly heard a scraping noise coming from the direction of thecupboard, which continued for about thirty seconds. Having lis-tened to it for a moment, I switched on my lamp and saw to my

horror that the cupboard was inching out from the wall towardme. When it halted it had advanced about eighteen inches. Iswitched off the light and almost simultaneously my bed started tovibrate violently back and forth. I was now too timid to move andI lay in anticipation of whatever might happen next. The vibrat-ing ceased and I felt the bottom end of my bed rising from the floorto what I estimated to be about one foot. The head end of the bed

then rose two or three inches, and at the same time the bed pitchedout toward the center of the room and finally settled at an angleto the wall.

I was not going to accept being shunted around and I got outof bed as quickly as I could, intent on informing my parents that

43


46/176

I'd had enough, that I was not going to occupy the room anymoreuntil something was done about it.

It transpired that they were not free from worry either; firstthey had found the pewter plate upturned on the dining roomtable and then on returning to the sitting room they saw the setteepulled out at an angle across the room. When we went to inspectmy bedroom we found a heavy armchair placed across the doorwaybarring any entry to the room. It was at this stage that for a secondtime in five years we felt we were caught up in some freakish andfrightening dilemma.

I spent that night upstairs in my parents' room on the floor ina sleeping bag, and although we all feared the worst, nothing moreoccurred until early next morning.

The first room we saw was the dining room. It looked as thougha bomb had hit it. Chairs were upturned or simply not in the room,the table was no longer on its feet, and ornaments were strewnaround the room and on the floor. The sitting room was in a similarstate as was nearly every other ground floor room in the house.

Tables and chairs were piled on top of each other, pictures weredismounted, and several objects and pieces of cutlery had vanished.Having inspected the field of battle we began to replace every-thing, starting in the sitting room. We moved to the dining roomand corrected the disarrayed furniture; we found an object herethat had been moved from the sitting room, and on returning itthere, we found that this room was again in a state of total disarray,

just minutes after we had tidied it. After the kitchen and diningroom had been tidied up we righted the sitting room again. Thistook us only a few minutes, by which time the dining room hadagain been "attacked."

This sequence of upsetting one room after another continuedall day on Easter Monday, and although we were obviously wor-ried, we could see an amusing side to it all. We were perturbed

because we could not understand it, and we did not know whatwould or could happen next. Objects were constantly being moved,but could never, at this stage, be seen to move.

It was not unusual to find the kettle in the refrigerator, all thechairs placed on the table, a hat hung up on a nail where a pictureshould have been, or a broom balanced across the back of a chair.

44


47/176

On the second day of the outbreak, when my brother and sisterwere entering the kitchen early in the morning, they were met,as they came through the kitchen door, by a serving cart glidingtoward them about an inch from the floor; they turned and ranaway and the cart was found soon afterward jammed in the door-way where they had been standing. They later watched a detergentbottle rocking from side to side on the edge of the bath, while noone else was near it.

This sequence of events continued in the same fashion for sev-eral days. It was soon evident that the phenomena became par-ticularly pronounced at certain times of the day, chiefly mid-morning and evening.

The events that took place were peculiar and even amusing; yetat the same time they were often too difficult to be reproduced byany member of the family. Some of the most interesting demon-strations were those that involved delicate balancing feats, and onmore than one occasion we found a broom resting across the hori-zontal handrail of our staircase. It was easily off-balanced fromits position when touched. In our sitting room we had three metal-framed tables with stone tops, and these were occasionally deli-cately placed one on top of the other; the total weight of the tableswas obviously great. Beds seemed to suffer more than any otherpieces of furniture, and they were frequently stripped completely,or even overturned. My sister's bed was particularly "victimized,"and on one occasion it was found with two of its feet hanging out

of a first floor window. Many objects disappeared, to be foundlater hidden or returned to a different, and usually very obvious,place. These were not necessarily small articles, but also includedpictures, bedclothes, kitchen equipment, and ornaments whichwould often be found in the backs of cupboards or under beds.

My father was worried and keen to see an end to these activities;he tried to seek advice from Dr. George Owen, only to find that he

had recently emigrated to Canada. This increased the dilemma,because there was now nothing we could do except watch as thisassertive force tried to dominate us and rule the house. We wereagain faced with the problem of having no one to turn to.

Further, we were surprised and intimidated by an uncanny abil-ity of the poltergeist to carry out almost anything that anyone hap-

45


48/176

pened to suggest, including the turning on of lights and taps. Ithad, so it seemed, an affinity for electrical appliances. During thefirst days of the phenomenon, an electric ring on our cooker blewout, rendering it cracked and unusable and causing a fuse in themain fuse box to blow so that the ceramic fuse case was filled withthe molten metal of the destroyed fuse. Light bulbs seemed to havea shortened life span, and the cooker adopted a peculiar habit ofturning itself on unless it was unplugged.

Childlike scribbles materialized on walls throughout the house;these were usually executed with the lead from a pencil. Althoughthey looked as if they were drawn with a pencil, they were in fact

seen to grow on the wall, from the center outward, without anypencil being used. They were like a spreading cancer, scribbly"circles" such as a young child would make. About fifteen of theseappeared, until they were superseded by a similarly implementedscrawl akin to an astrological Leo sign (my birthday is in August).These "designs" were about two or three inches in diameter. Thescribbling that followed later was somewhat more worrying, or at

least it was to me. On more than one occasion I saw on the walls thewords, "Matthew Beware," in a childlike handwriting. The warn-ings did not tell me what to beware of, and I ignored them as muchas possible. It was as though there was a child causing many ofthe disturbances, because so many of the occurrences displayed achildish mentality.

After we had become more or less accustomed to the movements

of objects, we were subjected to a new spectacle which was equallya nuisance. This was the covering of areas of floor with water whichwe found to be coming from the "U" bends of wash basins andlavatory bowls in the house. The water, having been in some wayremoved, would be discovered in large pools on the floor. Thisphenomenon did seem to limit itself to one area of the stone floorin the hall, with one or two exceptions.

It then stopped using just water and would use whatever liquidhappened to be in the house. On other occasions we found acid,paint strippers, and ink poured on the floor, all of which could betraced to containers in the house. One example is particularly in-teresting: we found a liquid poured all over a linoleum-covered

46


49/176

floor upstairs. This had dissolved the floor covering and seepedunderneath it to the wooden floorboards. It later dissolved clothsthat were used to mop it up, and it burned the skin. We decidedthat it was sodium hydroxide, as there was in the cellar a jar ofsodium hydroxide crystals, which had been used for cleaning a dirtyold sink. These crystals had found their way into the water on thefloor upstairs.

Sometimes ail the drawers and cupboard doors in the kitchenwould be found hanging open, or a vase of flowers might be dis-covered in the oven. I remember on one occasion starting to laythe table for lunch; I had placed the mats around the table and Iwent to fetch the cutlery which was already on a tray in thekitchen. This could not have taken me more than twenty seconds,but by the time I returned, the mats were no longer on the table.They were found laid out on the floor in the sitting room, in ex-actly the same positions they had been in on the table.

After the poltergeist activities had been going on for two weeks,it became clear that a certain pattern was emerging. The phenom-enon was basically divisible into three categories: the first waspurely disruptive and annoying, the second was concerned withsymmetry and balance, and the third was a demonstration of noisyand boisterous movement designed, it seemed, to attract spec-tators.

I have already described the first category, which was chieflymovement of furniture and domestic disruption; the second cate-gory included the balancing tricks, and events such as the tablemats. The third type was probably the most interesting, as wecould actually witness the happening in progress. Objects wouldbe hurled up the stairs, with great force and noise, and could bewatched in flight if one stood at the top of the stairs. Often I couldsit in the dining room and watch as objects passed me by, flyingthrough the room and up the stairs. Occasionally these articlescame from the dining room where I sat but usually appeared fromthe kitchen. They would first vibrate, then shake violently untilthey rose up into the air to move away. Bends or obstacles pre-sented no hindrance and were carefully negotiated. Once in flight,the objects gained speed as they approached the stairs, until they

I 47


50/176

struck a wall, falling onto the stairs with great noise. Particularlyheavy items caused a lot of commotion when they crashed, suchas hammers, mallets, wooden coat hangers, blocks of wood, galloncans of paint stripper, and carpentry tools. Those who watchedthese objects from the landing on the first floor noted that they werecapable of turning the two right angles on the staircase, and some-times lobbing themselves over the handrail at the top of the stairsonto the landing. This always happened either during the middleof the morning or early in the evening.

My sister had in her bedroom a table about twenty-nine incheshigh by thirty-six inches long by eighteen inches wide; it also helda drawer under the top of it. Her bedroom was at the front of thehouse, on the first floor. On the table she kept a pile of books andpapers, a mug of pencils, and other ornaments.

This table with everything on it vanished one afternoon. Wesearched the house for it, but in vain. On a second search a littlelater, it was discovered standing in our cellar, with all the papersand ornaments still exactly in place on it. In fact it appeared that

none of the objects on it had been disturbed. It had traveled no lessthan 105 feet, descended three flights of stairs, passed through fivedoorways, some less than 3o inches wide, and made no fewer thanten complete right-angled changes of direction.

Another startling incident that really amounted to a show offorce occurred when a heavy double bed with all its coverings wasupended. The total force required to carry out such a feat is im-

mense. Let it suffice to state tha

Date post:	01-Jun-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	malazza
View:	224 times
Download:	1 times

The Link - Matthew Manning

Documents