Stairs

[poliphilo]

Alfred Hitchcock loved staircases. They're everywhere in his work. Suspicion, Vertigo, Psycho, Topaz, Frenzy, Family Plot (I'm only listing movies I've seen recently) all feature important and/or climactic sequences involving stairs.

Nothing is more suspenseful (and Hitchcock's business was suspense) than a person on the stairs. Ooh, don't go up there! Ooh, don't go down there! Stairs are transitional. Uncanny. In Limbo. As Christopher Robin says of
his special place halfway down the stairs-

"It isn't really
Anywhere!
It's somewhere else
Instead!"

Unsurprisingly a lot of hauntings focus on staircases. You lie in bed and hear the footsteps come creaking up- to stop (if you're lucky) just outside your bedroom door. One of Hans Holzer's "true" stories has a woman turning on the stairs to see the bloodstained figure of a man below her reaching out his hand for help.

I remember crouching at the top of the stairs to hear my mother and father arguing at the bottom. "You are the most selfish person I have ever known," she said. In that moment I realized that they and I were separate. They could tear one another to pieces and it didn't have to affect me. My heart stopped hammering and I felt peaceful. I had a soul of my own. There were stairs between us.

My grandmother told me of a flight of stone steps going down to the river in her home town of Maidstone. Folklore said that it you climbed it 13 times you would be doused with a bucket of blood. Of course, no-one had ever actually put this to the test...

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, I read that one the other day.

I like it when he has Mrs Meyers or Mrs Twigg on hand to speak up for the ghosts- and we get some idea (usually confused) of the story behind the haunting.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I remember Sybil Leek's books in the early seventies about witchcraft. I always thought she was a big fat phony. Now I am not so sure. She seems to have real ability as a medium.

I, too, like Mrs. Meyers.

There's something so cozy about these ghost stories, and I do like finding out about the world the ghosts feel they're still inhabiting. As you say, it's a glimpse into history.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten Leek was a witch. I don't think I ever read her books. Maybe I did a long, long time ago. By the time I hit the Wiccan scene (in 1991) she'd become outmoded, even forgotten. There were certain names that were accorded the respect due to honoured ancestors- and Leek wasn't one of them.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've been Googling Leek. It seems she may have told a lot of porky-pies about herself. http://www.redflame93.com/Leek.html

But that's how it is with occultists. There's usually (always?) a dollop of charlatanism.

Which isn't to say that she was altogether a fraud.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting article.

I haven't read enough of Holzer to differentiate her style from Mrs. Meyers, but I guess it's possible she could have been a medium as well as a liar--

Mrs. Meyers seems to have actual conversations, which would be hard to fake.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think it's entirely possible she was a genuine medium as well as a liar.

Mediumship (if genuine) has nothing to do with the conscious personality. In fact the medium's conscious personality gets displaced, over-ridden, put to one side when a spirit takes over her body.

How odd that must be! You do this one thing supremely well but it's completely out of your control. All you do is go into a trance and come out of it again, with apparently no recollection of what has happened in between.

It must be very unsettling. I can imagine someone with this gift having a very fragile (and flakey) personality.

Also Leek was trying to make a living out of her psychism. In order to get commissions coming in she had to sell herself- hard.

I've been on the brink of that kind of celebrity myself. The vicar who became a witch. There was a lot of media interest at one point. But to sustain it, to keep them coming back for more, I'd have had to dress up in silly robes and stage publicity stunts and tell lies about where I'd come from and what I could do.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

It must be very unsettling. I can imagine someone with this gift having a very fragile (and flakey) personality.


There is a gifted psychic who lives in our state. He is so good at it that he is booked for three years in advance. I went to see him with my sister when a friend couldn't go, and she had two appointments.

He had never seen us.

I met him at the door, and got a jolt when I first saw him: his hair was light flowing gray, and was halfway down his back. He had small bright blue eyes, a sweet, sort of ingenuous smile, and was quite tall and a little heavy.

He led me back into his rather dark office, which was decorated with rainbows, which he loved. His clients were always sending him rainbow pictures.

He spent about a minute or so just looking at my aura. I didn't know the etiquette for sitting with a psychic, so I just smiled slightly and kept silent.

He got so many things--just one thing after another--and what really impressed me was that, even though he got my husband's name, the number of my children, and so on, what he really focused on was my soul's journey.

He saw me in terms of my life--writing, being wounded by my marriage--

I mentioned God in passing, and he said without hesitation, "I believe you will find God is your Self."

All the time he was talking he was writing wildly with his right hand, very messy writing, scribbling almost.

He said my husband, "bless his heart," was very destructive, that I was well away from him, that he didn't see him living to be old...

He talked about my writing something, a book.

My sister, who went in after I did, came out as stunned as I. She said he told her the most fascinating things, instantly said she was in her second marriage, could no longer have children, talked about the communication barrier with her new husband...

"He was so unjudgmental," she said.

It was because he was stepping out of the way and just talking.

Later I got a newsletter from him. It was naive and a little smug, a surprise.

But I got to thinking about it: he was tapping deeply, I think, and talking at a different level from the surface where we were sitting in his office. It wasn't idle conversation.

He was just a country man, not well-read or sophisticated. But while he was seeing me, he was without his persona.

--

His newsletter, though: very poorly written, and a little preachy.

--

I'm glad you pulled back from the media. So many people are wounded by publicity.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I knew a practising spirit medium. She was a strange, flustered little woman with some very odd ideas. For one thing she believed she was really a space alien. I wouldn't even say she was that good a medium- I attended one of her seances once and wasn't hugely impressed (though Ailz's grandfather "came through" and addressed her by a name that only he ever used.) But I never doubted her sincerity. She was too mousy and put-upon and ill-educated (or so I thought) to be pulling a scam.

Your man sounds remarkable.

And you have now written a book and will, I think, get it (or another book) published.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Your man sounds remarkable.

And you have now written a book and will, I think, get it (or another book) published.

I went to see him one more time, three years later. He told me my aura color, which was just like before (gold) and my sister's was the same (white).

I didn't want to go back after that. I was beginning to want to make that connection through him--it was very seductive.

I dreamed about him, that I went to his house, and that he came out and was no longer gentle and unjudgmental. He had short hair, like a businessman. He frowned at me.

That was, I think, his persona coming through. I just didn't want to go back anymore. I'd learned something stunning: that there was a depth in us that can be seen and understood. It was enough to make me wonder even more about God.

Yes! I have written a book, after all! :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Perhaps your subconscious was warning you off.

People can get addicted to consulting psychics.

I worked briefly on a Tarot phone line. We had one woman who phoned up several times a day to speak to her favourite "psychic". She told us she worked for the Government in Whitehall.

I guess the tax payer was funding her habit.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

People can get addicted to consulting psychics.

Some people went to see him regularly, like seeing a therapist!

He charged, back then--it's been 15 years--$80 for thirty minutes.

I worked briefly on a Tarot phone line. We had one woman who phoned up several times a day to speak to her favourite "psychic".

A Tarot phone line! Wow!

I can imagine that lonely people (or bored government employees!) find such connections to feel almost like (never quite, but close) love.

I took Contact training years ago, for crisis phone line volunteer work. We were told that many mentally ill people would be calling us daily (and sometimes several times daily), just to make a connection with someone who cared.

After completing the training, I made the decision not to take part. I didn't feel tough enough to deal with the weird calls we were warned we'd be getting.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It was a strange set-up. We occupied a couple of attic rooms next to the railway station. One room was for Tarot, the other was for "chat" which meant talking dirty. Male employees weren't particularly welcome because they were only of use in the one room. Most of the women plied between the two.

I lasted three weeks. Most of the clients (even the Tarot folk) wanted to talk to a woman and a lot would hang up when they heard my voice.

I felt that what I was doing (on the odd occasions when I got to do it) was a kind of therapy.

They sacked me because I wasn't productive enough. I can't say I was sorry.