I thought that you might find an episode from my past to be at least entertaining, and perhaps capable of shedding some light on a subject we have been discussing on this blog: the existence/nonexistence of the supernatural.
Over 45 years ago, I was a student of electrical engineering (computer design) at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Although I was raised as a Lutheran and confirmed at age 12, I had long since shed my Christian upbringing and was deeply involved in a hedonistic lifestyle of sex, drinking and drugs. Madison was considered the second-most liberal school in the country (after UC Berkeley), and this was the time of hippies, Timothy Leary (“turn on, tune in, drop out”), the Stones (Sympathy for the Devil), the Weather Underground, etc. Nevertheless, I loved computer design, and only occasionally went down on State Street with my hippie girlfriend to join the mayhem of tear gas and bricked-up storefronts as students protested Nixon’s war in Cambodia.
As I said, I loved engineering. I knew I wanted to be a computer designer since 7th grade. Classes were easier for me because I studied many of the concepts on my own before university. But one of the most challenging courses for all of us was “Lines, Waves and Antennas”, which laid out the theoretical basis for Electromagnetic Theory, and its applications. There is not an area in electrical engineering, and optics for that matter, that does not depend on this theory for its foundation. The equations were partial differential equations, difficult to grasp — not simple like E = MC2. And their application was also difficult (ever tried calculating the optimum positioning of a TV antenna?). These equations are called Maxwell’s equations, after James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). Maxwell was a brilliant scholar (and an evangelical Christian BTW, “born again” in 1853 and elder in his church).
Anyway, I was also a brother in Kappa Eta Kappa, a social/professional EE fraternity, where I served terms as both president and social chairman. We were always looking for interesting topics to bring before the group at our monthly meeting. Some of the upperclassmen told us about the professor who taught the above-mentioned “Lines, Waves and Antennas” course; they said he dedicated the last hour’s lecture each semester to his experiences investigating the Spiritualist Church. Wow! That sounded like a hoot, so we contacted him and asked him to speak at our meeting; he gladly accepted.
Now, you must know that this professor was no crackpot in any way other than this one oddity. We highly respected him for his ability to grasp so esoteric a topic as Maxwell’s Equations. He himself did not accept the ideas of the Spiritualist Church, but thought it would be interesting to investigate and debunk. Even after his experiences, he did not accept their beliefs (but had no other explanation). He gathered together a gaggle of UW professors in various other disciplines (drama, psychology, etc.), and they decided to attend a Spiritualist meeting. Madison was a crazy town, and just about anything could be found there. The professor (I’m trying to remember his name) related their experience:
The meeting was like a liberal church service, with singing and a teaching. However, when a basket was passed around, instead of/in addition to donations, people dropped in sealed envelopes containing a question for the leader to address. Then things got kind of weird, because the leader didn’t open the envelopes — he simply put them to his forehead and “read” them. A typical question might ask about the welfare of a relative behind the Iron Curtain. Then the leader would proceed to answer the question. Of course, there was no way to know whether his answers were correct. This was interesting, but there are many ways to explain these goings-on.
The prof group was straightforward with the congregation about its intentions and lack of belief in what was going on, but their relationship was amicable and they continued to attend meetings. After some trust had been established, congregation members invited the prof group to attend a “seance”. This required trust because there were many stories of researchers jumping up in the middle of a seance and causing serious harm to the medium, who was in a trance-like state. The prof described his experiences at seances:
A typical seance was held in an upstairs bedroom of the home of a blue-collar worker who had discovered that he had clairvoyant abilities. He received something like $15 for holding a seance. Our professor and his team would inspect the room for false walls, electronics, etc., before the seance, and they recorded the event on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. They also brought their own “trumpet”, which is a small megaphone like crooners used in the 1940’s. During the seance, the trumpet would “levitate”, so our professor painted it with luminescent stripes so that it would be visible in the darkened room.
The professor said that everyone would sit around the room, and the medium (leader) would go into a trance. Soon after, the trumpet would levitate and a voice would emanate from it. It was like the Johnny Carson Show: “good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. We are happy to join you from the other side.” The lead spirit, who filled the role of MC, would announce that evening’s events and personalities, who may be dead relatives or well-known figures from the past.
The professor told of some of the more unusual apparitions he witnessed. The trumpet would sometimes go flying around in the darkened room. The professor made a ring with his arms, and asked the spirit to make it go through the ring; the trumpet spun violently through it several times. Once, freshly-cut flowers “rained” from the ceiling, prompting the professor to ask that the seance be interrupted while he cleaned the flowers from his recorder. He also reported “materializations”, where a substance called ectoplasm would flow out of the medium’s navel, then grow into a human form. Once, the professor reported, the form approached him and motioned for him to join her near a red light burning in the corner. As he watched, the figure removed her veil, revealing a head devoid of features, like an egg. Then, slowly, facial features appeared. After they interacted for a time, the figure suddenly took on an urgent visage, and turned to hurry toward the medium, shrinking as she went, and disappeared in the medium’s navel.
We asked the professor what he made of all this, but was noncommittal. He said that Disney or a magician could create illusions like this, but for $15?
We also asked him if anything that he witnessed made him suspect deception of any kind. He said, once. As the MC spirit was announcing the evening’s guests from the other side, one of them caught his attention: James Clerk Maxwell! Now this would be interesting. The professor was something of a fan of Maxwell, and was familiar with details of his life that few others knew. Besides, he had a few technical questions to ask. Finally, “Maxwell” made his appearance. Our professor engaged him in conversation, and it quickly became apparent that this spirit was less familiar with Maxwell, and much less his work, than the professor. With some “hems” and “haws”, the spirit disappeared, and the MC returned. The MC apologized, and explained that just as mortals were trying to contact the spirit world, these spirits were trying to contact us. Sometimes they portrayed people other than themselves, to see if they could pull it off. Deception.
Anyhow, all this was more than I could process. I had no explanation for all these bizarre events he recounted. Hoax? Hallucination? Conspiracy? Magic act? Dream? But I could find no plausible motive, and the professor had much to lose by relating such ridiculous fantasies. He seemed to be driven to get it out, like the guy in “Close Encounters” (but not so extreme), dedicating one hour per semester to it and risking disciplinary actions by the school.
I never followed up on this event, and another ten years would pass before I had my own encounter… with Christ. But looking back, I see this episode as the first evidence, second-hand as it was, that something might be out there beyond the natural world.