Narrator: Voodoo: it’s a strange and powerful word which conjures up all sorts of contrasting images. From the melodramatic scenes in Hollywood B movies, to the terror of alien possession. Various types of voodoo have existed for hundreds of years in a subculture of the West Indies. But the fact is that the practice of voodoo today is stronger than ever, not only in its native Haiti and around the Caribbean, and the American Deep South, but wherever Caribbean populations have emigrated – even in London.
Hyacinth: Voodoo is African witchcraft. It’s practised in
every society – they have different names for it. Some call it obeah, some call
it jumbee, some people just call it black magic. What it does is, it can
protect people, it can cause harm, and it is a mixture of Christianity and
rituals all descended from Africa. The bible is strongly used in voodoo.
Narrator: At its most benign voodoo is a kind of religion,
steeped in mysticism with a strong belief in the separation between body and
spirit. Living spirits, it is believed, can vacate one body and enter that of
another. But even spirits of the dead can enter into living bodies.
Hyacinth: Well, voodoo leaders and priestesses and shepherds[?],
they do believe your spirit wander from your body many a times. And actually at twelve midday that’s when they
believe your body is at its most vulnerable.
Because then you don’t cast a shadow, which means the spirit has left
the body, and the body is empty. So the wrong spirit could come back in your
body. Your spirit might be wandering around and when it comes back there’s no
space for it. Because when it comes back that space has been filled by a spirit
that does not belong to your body.
Narrator: But voodoo has a far more sinister side. Practitioners
claim to be able to harness the spirits of the dead and direct them at
unfortunate victims, so creating a sort of spiritual weapon which can cause
real mental and physical harm even over great distances.
Hyacinth: These spirits can do real harm. They can do
serious damage, they can cause mental illness. They can cause physical
deformity that you could never imagine. You have to have death. You have to
have spirit of the dead. Whether good spirits or bad spirits. Bad spirits we
get from people who have died untimely death. People who lived horrible lives.
They are the ones whose spirit you could call upon to actually inflict hurt. You
couldn’t call upon that spirit to inflict any good on anybody. Because that
spirit died miserable.
Narrator: This extraordinary story of voodoo possession
takes place in no more exotic a place than North London in a very ordinary
suburban house. It concerns Gay, she believes that a voodoo attack aimed at her
from far away Mississippi has invaded her house and is taking over her life.
Gay claims that nameless entities have appeared throughout her house and actually
attacked her physically.
Gay [A white woman with a London accent]: I’ve had different
kind of things here, and they are like animals, I mean they are from hell
itself. I can’t even walk out my house and have a break to get away from them.
These actually follow me out of my house to wherever I’m going. And as I’m
walking up the street they’re pulling at my jacket. They’re picking stones or
something at my legs.
Narrator: Her husband John has also experienced a range of
terrifying paranormal events.
John [A black man with an American accent]: I’ve seen
figurines that I know are solid objects move. I’ve seen smoke coming from
places where there’s no fire and no opening. I’ve seen shapes that look like
people when there’s obviously nobody there.
Narrator: Gay and John were married while John was serving
in the American Air Force and stationed in Britain. When John left the forces
they set up house in London. Ultimately marital problems led John to return to
his native Mississippi for a while. There he entered into a romantic
relationship with a former girlfriend.
John: Well I more or less met someone that I knew back in
school, years ago. And it seemed to be starting out as a casual friendship. But
as I’ve learned, there was nothing casual about it.
Gay: An old school sweetheart, or supposed to have been
[rolls eyes]. Um, but in fact she was into voodoo and a lot of herbal things
that they use to control people down in Mississippi.
John: It seems to be part of the underground culture of
Mississippi. You hear about different people spoken in whispers, because they
say it’s not a good idea to speak their name out loud, and the different things
they tend to do to people around them if they don’t like you. They either get
rid of you one way or another.
Narrator: John admits that while he was in Mississippi he
personally took part in voodoo ceremonies. When he returned to London and to
Gay, the troubles began.
Gay: The woman in Mississippi is to blame for everything.
John: It seems like
the essence of her plan was to – might as well say, get even with me for things
I’ve done to her, wrongdoings I’ve done to her. And the easiest way to do that
was to start with what was closest to me. And Gay sure is one of the closest
things to me, so the easiest way to get to me was to go after them. I’m not
sure how they could transmit that kind of power over this distance. But it’s
being done! I wish I had the knowledge to understand how they do it. Then I’d
have a better chance of being able to effect stopping it.
Narrator: The voodoo tradition suggests that voodoo attacks
can be transmitted in a number of ways, often acting through some object or
item of clothing belonging to the victim.
Hyacinth: A curse can be placed on someone by taking bits of
their clothes and their fingernails, hair, stuff like that. With their
clothing, it can’t be anything new. It has to be something that the person has
worn and has perspiration. They don’t even have to wear it again. All they have
to do is take that to the obeah man or the voodoo man. Whatever is going to be
put it in like oil or powder or stuff like that. They take that there and it’s
placed in it. It can be given to you through food or stuff thrown around your
house. Or even if the person don’t have anything for you, by just getting to
know the person by looking, you can actually have something done to them. You
don’t have to take anything of the person.
John: There are some people I have heard rumours of who are
practically vegetables because they really have no mind any more. They’ve been
affected so much by what has been done to them.
Narrator: Voodoo ceremonies frequently involve groups of
people banding together to combine their psychic powers. It raises profound
questions about the nature of evil.
Eddie Burks, Psychic Medium: It is alarming when one hears
that a band of people can cause an attack like this at a distance, but let’s
look at it at two levels. We know very well that people can band together and
cause the most terrible things to happen. We’ve witnessed it recently in Ruanda
and we’ve witnessed it Bosnia. I mean here we have groups of soldiers killing
their neighbours, raping them and so on. Now it’s in our nature that we can
group together and behave very basely, and when we gather together we’re apt to
strengthen the intention to be base. And if we now translate that into the
context of the psychic, spiritual level – well more the psychic than the
spiritual - with the greater freedom over distance that that can offer, it
becomes much more understandable. It’s only human nature behaving like human
nature, but with more power at its elbow.
Narrator: It seems totally incredible that voodoo or
witchcraft practices carried out in far away Mississippi can be felt here in
London. How could that be possible?
Prof. Brian Josephson, Nobel Laureate in Physics: The theory
we use nowadays suggests that sometimes one bit of matter may influence another
bit of matter at a distance, and erm some experiments carried out in France
suggest this really does happen. They had, in one part of a laboratory they had
something that was being switched at a high speed, and there was a
corresponding effect across the other side of the room. And that effect was
found so rapidly that even a signal travelling at the speed of light would not
have been able to get from one end of the room to the other in time to have an
influence. So science does at any rate does have some strange things connected
with distant influence.
Dr Peter Fenwick, Consultant Neuro Psychiatrist: The most
interesting piece of research that really makes my hair stand up, is two
studies. The first is the one from America that shows that mind can directly influence
matter, the way balls fall – amazing. The second one is some studies from Mexico
that shows that one brain, if it’s in empathic contact with another brain, can
alter that brain’s activity directly. Now if that’s true, then mind can act at
a distance. Amazing studies.
Eddie Burks: We know from many experiments that telepathy
works over long distances, and just as effectively from one continent to
another as from one room to another. And this has been shown by various people,
Dr J B Rhine for example did a lot of work on this.
Narrator: According to both Gay and John, undoubtedly the
most fearful and terrifying aspect of this case is that the evil powers in
Mississippi have even attempted, and Gay claims succeeded, in attacking Gay
sexually.
John: As to whether or not this presence could rape her – yes.
Because the physical effects that I’ve seen, like when she has cuts on her
legs, that seem to just come from nowhere. Or she has a bruise that just shows
up mysteriously. She hasn’t banged herself anywhere, and a bruise comes up for
nothing. It’s like if they can affect her physically like that, then of course
they could rape her.
Eddie Burks: In my experience, sexual assaults are often
associated with severe hauntings, and with the sort of attack that we’ve been
associated with in this programme. And this, these sexual assaults can take various
forms. In the less severe cases there’s the presence of sexual intereference
for example, in the early stages of going to sleep or waking up. And the
worrying thing for me as someone trying to deal with some of these cases, is
that the person that’s affected by such attack is sometimes unwilling to let it
go. Because of this they have found some perverse satisfaction.
John: Them raping her makes you want to go out and do
something physically to them. It makes you wish you had them right to hand
where you could deal with them there. Not in this form where you can see them
move but you can’t touch them.
Narrator: Voodoo curses, uttered in far away Mississippi,
and having an effect on a woman in suburban north London – it seems impossible
to believe. But Gay’s own accounts of her ordeal, even when they’re related
some time after the event, are very disturbing. She claims that she has been psychically
raped.
Gay: Well when I was raped in Suffolk [poss. Southwark], it was
like somebody – I was sitting on the bed – and it was like somebody pinched my
backside and made me jump. And I started getting cramps in my stomach and I had
to sit down. And I just felt this thing inside of me, and the pain was excruciating,
and I just went berserk because – I knew what was happening but I didn’t know
how to stop it. And I was running round banging my back into the wall, thinking that might get it
off. And pleading with it to stop, because it was really really hurting. It
felt like it was going to come through my stomach.
Narrator: Because of the strangeness of the circumstances, a
question about the state of Gay’s mind cannot be avoided. Has she suffered from
a series of psychic attacks? Or is the problem linked to her own anxieties, her
own fantasies?
Eddie Burks: When I get a case of this sort, in order to
judge the validity of it I take into account the personality of the person, as
far as I’m able to assess it first of all over the telephone, or maybe on first
acquaintance. I also take into account the type of phenomena that they
describe. I mean by now I’ve a fairly good idea of what characterises a real
event. And what characterises something which is psychotic. And I judged from
my talk with her that this was genuine.
Gay: Yeah. When I first had all this trouble, and I was raped,
I went to see my doctor in [Suffolk / Southwark] and I told him what had
happened. And he of course sent me to see a psychiatrist. And I was all for it.
I would have loved nothing more than to be told I was mad, because I didn’t
understand. So I saw this psychiatrist that was there for that day, and the
first thing he asked me was, did I hear voices. Was I hearing voices. And I just
went crazy, because if I heard voices, I could ask them, you know, and I’d hear
a reply, what’s going on. And after everything cooled down, I told him
everything that had happened, the psychiatrist, and he was from Addenbrooke’s
in Cambridge. And he turned round and he told me that he was going back to tell
my doctor, in the next room, that I needed no medication. And that as far as he
was concerned, I was saner than he was, and that he was only sorry that he didn’t
know anybody that he could put me in contact with.
Narrator: In some considerable desperation Gay and John
eventually sought help. They called in Eddie Burks, one of this country’s
leading psychic mediums. Despite the power of John and Gay’s story, Eddie Burks
found no alien presence in the house.
Eddie [to John and Gay in their front room]: Have you an
upright chair like a kitchen chair? Have you got an upright chair I could use?
So you’ve not been too troubled today?
Gay: I’ve been… There’s been things around me but not the
smell that…
Eddie Burks: When I met her this confirmed my feeling that
this was genuine. So therefore I was rather pleased that I’d been called in to
help.
Eddie [sitting on his upright chair]: It’s been quiet all
day. There really is no influence in this place at all at the moment, as far as
I can see. It’s just gone. It’s kept out the way.
Eddie Burks: I would
normally expect to go into a house like that and get some sense of the psychic
ambience of the place. But when I went in it was as though it had been cleaned
out, it was clear. And I thought about this and came to the conclusion that the
unpleasant psychic phenomena, the entities concerned had withdrawn completely –
because they would have quite clearly anticipated my coming, it would have been
talked about, it was mentally projected and so on. They got out of the way.
Eddie [on his chair]: Can you feel the presence ascending
through now? Different, isn’t it, to the dark presence. Intention is to flood
this place with light. Not the sort of light that we can see with the ordinary
vision, but the bright light of the angelic presence that’s here, which has a
great power of cleansing. It has an astringent quality, and will make this
place untenable by the forces of darkness. I’d like to just – can you join
hands, as a threesome – this will help to protect you as well. I do all this in
the name of God, in the name of Jesus. I would like to seal off this visit with
the Lord’s Prayer. And you can join me in this if you wish. Our Father, Who Art
In Heaven….
Eddie Burks: The individual left on their own and not having
access to this sort of help is best advised to use prayer. To go back to
whatever religious belief they have if they have one. Most people have one from
their young days. And use that as the platform from which they begin to build
up a defence. Religious traditions have a power of their own, whatever they
come from they have a power of their own. And in a sense, what the religious
tradition does is offer a power in the same region of the non-material as the
attack is coming from.
Hyacinth: There are many ways in which you can protect
yourself. There’s the cross, the bible, certain scriptures from the bible you
can use. There are rings and chains, charms and colours, and actual lines and
sayings that you will actually get only from a voodoo priestess. Only from her
can you get those to protect yourself.
John [after Eddie has left the house]: I feel, well I’ll
just say – different. The heat that seemed to come on all of a sudden, I can
still feel it all over me. There’s energy or something rippling up and down my
back. And my mood feels a bit lighter.
Gay: They won’t change. And they knew Eddie was coming. So
that’s why he probably didn’t pick anything up. Except that it had been here.
But they would have been destroyed if they’d been here when Eddie came. So
maybe that’s the last of them here at least.
Narrator: For a while after Eddie’s visit the house remained
calm and quiet. But since then, Gay says the alien spirits have returned to
haunt her.
