Double, double, toil and trouble!
Fire burn and caldron bubble!
You can’t have a Devil without witches. Well…in popular culture at any rate. And witches must have caldrons! In the illustration above, the stuff in the caldron is as green as the skin of the witches who are cooking up a most strange, and noxious, brew. The one on the left brought her Magic Book…perhaps:
Ooops! That’s not it. I forgot…the Devil banned that one. Maybe:
I have my doubts. Why? The ingredients:
Fillet of a fenny snake
Eye of a newt
Toe of a frog
Wool of a bat
Tongue of a dog
Adder’s fork
Blind-worm’s sting
Lizard’s leg
Howlet’s wing
And that’s what little girls are made of! Wrong recipe. Perhaps the Magic Book is The Witches’ Guide to Good Cooking. If you act now, I’ll sell you a copy for $15.00! And as a special bonus, I’ll include a copy of Begone, Satan! For only $5.00! The first 50 callers will also receive a free copy of Decadent Art, A Pictorial Guide to the Automobiles of Earling, Iowa. Oh, you must be at least 18 years old to get that book. Still, what is cooking in the bubbly caldron?
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
A hell-broth? Who would drink a hell-broth drink? By the 1980s, millions were downing hell-broth martinis at a Bizarre Happy Hour like you won’t believe. By the time of the McMartin Preschool Trial, it seemed as though ever kitchen had a bubbly caldron making the stuff. Superstition, always strongly present in Christianity, but overwhelmingly so among Evangelicals, reached a seismic level by 1984. That takes us up to the paranoid ravings of Judy Johnson. She was crazy, but it’s shocking to find out how easy it is to make other people go crazy. On February 2, 1984, Wayne Satz of KABC-TV in Los Angeles began broadcasting news stories about the McMartin Preschool trial.
Critics of Mr. Satz have pointed out that his treatment of the trial was based on an unconditional acceptance of the credibility of the charges made against the accused. Although there was no Spider Walk, there soon emerged a rather Tangled Web woven as the trial proceeded. He became personally involved with:
Kee McFarlane. She described herself as a psychotherapist. The problem was, she was completely unlicensed. She worked at the Children’s Institute International. This organization worked with abused children. However, sexual abuse was not a key part of their portfolio. McFarlane was interested in child sexual abuse, and used anatomically correct dolls and puppets when questioning children. This procedure has come under sustained attack, since the use of such dolls has, when tested, raised concerns about the type of information provided by the children involved. Still, McFarlane became a critical witness in the McMartin trial, since she had interviewed hundreds of the children involved. Her interview techniques have proved to be very controversial. In particular, they were highly suggestive, and the same questions were asked over and over again. It was also alleged that there was a tendency to ask “speculative” questions. A fascinating article called I’m Sorry: a long delayed apology from one of the accusers in the notorious preschool molestation case (LA Times; 10/30/2005) recounted the impression that dolls and hand-puppets made on one of the children:
There was a room with a lot of toys and stuffed animals and dolls. The dolls were pasty white and had hair where the private parts were. They wanted us to take off their clothes. It was just really weird.
I see…who’s inflicting the trauma? Of course, I’m sure the children had been taught that you don’t take others’ clothes off to see their genitals. That is highly inappropriate behavior, and I’m sure that being told by adults to do exactly that with the dolls and puppets probably made a considerable impact on what the children said during their questioning. Bizarre claims were made that children were being transported from the school to a variety of locations to be abused. There was considerable pressure to say what the adults wanted to the children to say:
I remember going in our van with all my brothers and sisters and driving to airports and houses and being asked if we had been [abused in] these places. I remember telling people [that the McMartin teachers] took us to Harry's Meat Market, and describing what I thought the market was like. I had never been in there before, and I was fairly certain I was going to get in trouble for what I was saying because it probably was not accurate.
And he concluded his account by saying the following:
I'm a supermarket manager, and the thing I like best about my job is the interactions I get to have with customers' kids. I love talking and listening to them. I've been told I would be perfect for opening a children's day care. That's very ironic. I would love to look at the defendants from the McMartin Pre-School and tell them, "I'm sorry."
Who can forget Marie Baniszewski’s heart-breaking cry…
Q. Now, Marie, if Shirley says you are the one who lit the paper, started the fire to heat the iron, and stood there while she was branded, is that the truth?
A. I did not.
Q. Shirley is not telling the truth? Did Shirley not tell the truth about that, Marie, or are you not telling the truth?
A. Oh, God help me.
Oh, God Help Me! As she finally yielded to the demands being made by Diabolical Adults to tell the lies they wanted her to tell. That’s sad, as I believe that she was a little girl who wanted to tell the truth. I expressed my firm belief that God will not hold her accountable for her lies. The adults…He most certainly will. So too here. It seems to me that the apologetic person really owes no apology. But he certainly is owed an apology…apologies. The same article interviewed a psychologist named James Wood. He studied the techniques used by Kee McFarlane, and commented on the dolls:
Giving children dolls and puppets during a forensic interview encourages them to pretend and fantasize instead of sticking to facts, Wood says.
Well, dolls and puppets are toys. They are for Make-Believe. A little girl pretends that her doll is her baby, and the doll even comes with a little baby’s bottle and a hole in the mouth so she can feed it. How horrifying! Surely this little girl has been sexually abused, and that is clear by the fact that she calls the doll her baby, and declares that the baby needs her bottle! No, wait! That’s not how you do it, Sweetie!
Oh dear! How about this?
That’s better!
Good Heavens…Shemp is sick! Every time the nutty doctor leans forward in the rocking chair…Shemp’s heart makes a strange sound. And no, there is no Endoric Whoopee Cushion on the chair. We’re about to find out why:
A little girl walks in.
What a relief! The little girl dropped her doll under the chair. When the doctor leans forward, it squeezes the doll. And so the doll says…Mama! The whole idea is no doubt getting a good head-start on socializing girls to later become mothers. Still, the girl will make-believe and pretend.
Interesting quotes from the questioning:
Interviewer 1: We got a mountain of dolls here. Here's a little girl. Easy to tell she's a girl. She has a bow, and her vagina's underneath.... Kids throw 'em, beat 'em up, and everything. You should've seen [another child] beating 'em up. Boy we had a good time--
Interviewer 2: Beating up Mr. Ray doll.
Interviewer 1: And, um, let's see. I wonder, Pac-Man, if you remember any of the games that you used to play at that school.
Ray, by the way, was the main target of the Satanic Prosecutorial Cult. And my how fun it is to beat up a little girl doll who wears a bow and has a clearly visible vagina. More:
Interviewer 1: Yeah? Like which ones do you remember?
Kyle: Like Mr. Ray--he would--he would get his camera, and then he--they would--they would--he would take their pants off, and-- then they would go in their pool and they--then he would take pictures.
Interviewer 2: Your mom and dad already know that game 'cause they heard it from other kids' moms and dads.
Interviewer 1: Did any other teachers play, Pac-Man?
Kyle: Yeah ... they took pictures too.
Interviewer 1: Oh, boy. Gee, we're really figuring this out. What a big help you are. My goodness.
And Pac-Man can probably tell us how they were figuring this out:
Interviewer 1: We can talk about those secrets now, Pac-Man. And you can help Kyle ... everybody's talking about it now.... You know what? We're going to tell you one of our special secrets 'cause we have a secret that we've been telling all the kids, and this one is--you're going to like this one, Pac-Man, 'cause Kyle's dad is a policeman.... We know that sometimes Mr. Ray was at that school. He wasn't a teacher then, but we know that he was at school. Do you remember that, Pac-Man?
Kyle: He didn't work there, but I know that when [another child] was there, it happened.
Interviewer 1: Well, you know what? We know that even before Kyle was there [Ray] was there. And we know that he was there when Kyle was there too.
The child clearly said that Evil Mr. Ray Doll did NOT work there when he went to the preschool. The interviewers told him to say that Ray Buckley did work there when he was there. In his apology:
They talked about Ray Buckey, whom I had never met.
The Tangled Woven Web? The newsman who fed the lies to the public became personally involved with…Kee Macfarlane…and neither felt the need to disclose it. One obtained the lies, and the other fed the lies to a horrified public. That’s one hell of a Tangled Web. And I’ve been contacted by another figure at the center of this Horrible Crime Against Children, and he too wants to make a statement:
Right! Pac-Man says that he had nothing to do with any of it. And I suppose that, given the statement about the little girl doll all the kids liked to beat up, we should be glad that no further abuse occurred…
Ms. Pac-Man has a bow and a….
And my strange Witches’ Brew? So many ingredients went into the hell-broth that finally threw the American mind back to the days of the Salem Witch Trials!
A relatively short time ago I took the possession, sorry…position, that Regan MacNeill’s delusion about being demon-possessed may have owed its origination to someone other than herself. I suggested that the real beginning may have been when Chris, possibly with Sharon’s involvement, told the Hypnotist about Captain Howdy. To some extent, this involved seeking the lowest common denominator…the Ouija board. I remember when a game called Magic 8-Ball was around.
In fact, the toy was invented in 1950, and is still sold today. The basic mechanism of the device was based on a gimmick used by a prominent clairvoyant. So, it is basically a ball-shaped Ouija board, marketed to children. The toy was, naturally, available in 1973. Why didn’t the Exorcist make use of the Magic 8-ball? Probably because it was too toyish…that being a word I just made up. Try Me! As the Ouija board equally demands. The 8-ball owes its origin to a fraud named Mary Carter, who invented the:
And:
And here is another variation:
The Syco-Slate! The Syco-Seer! And my favorite…the Pocket Fortune Teller. The gimmick involves a piece of slate put in a Tubular Bell…sorry, for some reason, I don’t think that’s right. Oh, yes! Tubular container. Mary would then put a piece of chalk into it, close the container, and then…boom! The slate had an answer from the spirit world written across it. And that prompted the invention of the round, black manifestation of the Ouija board. The latter had the answers…yes…and no. But the Magic 8-Ball had all kinds of wishy-washy answers in between; there being 20 possible answers in all.
I have only a few rules…one of which is…if you can work in the 3 Stooges, go for it:
Shall we gaze into the magic ball and see what the future holds for you?
The woman is Mattie Herring, and she uses the magic ball to tell the future of the evil dictator Moe Hailstone and his cronies. Her name is a joke on the name of a German spy called Mati Hari, who was executed by the French. She was, besides being a spy for the Kaiser, an “exotic dancer.” I found a picture of her that I can show without offending the Devil’s sensibilities about s-e-x:
But I think I saw Mati Hari perform while I was in Earling, Iowa:
Oh, so an “exotic dancer” is a stripper…with horns. Who knew? Horns? Now I know I was in Earling!
The Ouija board is based on the idea of spirit-writing, also called automatic-writing. Occultists believed that if someone were able to enter the right state of mind, then spirit-beings would use the Kooky-Occultist’s hand to write messages on a piece of paper. Of course, the person is not consciously writing. At least, that’s what they tell you before they take your money. I must admit that in another really cool movie, this technique is featured in a dramatic scene. It is from the Changeling.
Wait, that’s not exactly it. That is a shot of a tall silver cone that wobbles around on its own. It almost reminds me of:
The cover of Led Zeppelin’s most forgettable album. As for the big, silver cone, I would point out that the woman dressed in black and white is the medium, and it seems to be that she has her hands under the table, where there’s probably some kind of magnet that makes the Magic Cone wiggle around as she works it with her hand. The Magic Cone may be a very strange device called a Spirit Trumpet:
And you use…wait…wrong trumpet. Here it is:
This is a really cool gimmick. And it can be used in different ways. When all are seated at the table for the séance, all the lights in the room are turned off. Of course they are. Then the trumpet floats around the room, and the participants hear the voices of spirits coming from the trumpet. This shot shows the trumpet magically moving around in the air:
But you can also do this:
My favorite is:
At the risk of blowing my own horn, and hoping not to cause any offense to the Diabolical Prudish One, if prophetic messages delivered from your stomach might be called, to coin an expression…spirit-burping, and there may even be…spirit-farting, what ever would we call what’s happening in the picture above? How strange can it get? Let’s see! In the past, mediums were known for the ectoplasm gimmick. Ectoplasm was a weird substance that allowed spirit-beings to enter the material world. But where does it come from?
This material is excreted as a gauze-like substance from orifices of medium’s body
Oh, I get it:
And:
That’s not very lady-like! Actually, in the picture provided above, the fake thing coming from the medium’s mouth is ectoplasm, and the spirit-entity speaks through her mouth, and then launches into an
ectoplasmic rendition of Jeepers Creepers…Louis Armstrong style.
Hey, everyone! Don’t drink the milk! It’s gone bad! Actually, the medium is barfing up ectoplasm. Doesn’t seem like mediums have made this whole I-Need-To-Speak-To-A-Dead-Prophet thing a little bit more disgusting that it needs to be?
Come on! It’s at the end of hall!
Well, I thought I had covered all possible body openings involved in producing ectoplasm, not to mention delivering prophetic messages! No…I missed one:
From your ear? But I’m not done yet! I spoke about Diabolical Kee Mcfarlane Dolls before. In another essay, I spoke about how creepy some ventriloquist’s wine-skins…I mean…dummies can be. But they aren’t as creepy as the Creepiest of the Creepy! What’s that? You’re right…ectoplasm dolls:
Here the medium, who looks more like a large, is blowing ectoplasm into the creepiest blow-up dolls you’ve ever seen. During one of my trips to Earling, Iowa, I saw their interesting version of this trick:
I’ve never understood these things..but they’re apparently cheap:
Hey guys…guess what? They don’t look like that! Only $8.95? That’s less than my witch cookbook! One even brings your wine! Or your wine-skin, in case you want to speak to the dead. So maybe she’s a robot! I shall endeavor to take weird as far as it can possibly go. If you have $8.95, you won’t be able to buy my cookbook. But you can buy a Love Maid, or you can buy 3 of these:
I am currently opening the Incredible Ectoplasmic Love Doll company. I’m starting with a sale, seeing how I anticipate having trouble selling any of my products. I’m selling this beauty for $20:
And this one’s a steal at $14.95:
And as disappointing as this will be, my attorney has told me I can’t sell this model:
Because she looks too much like a nun. But I have made my own version of the Love Maid doll:
My version does everything the other version does..except I made mine able to say….I have a headache! I haven’t received any orders for her yet.
And I almost forgot:
Regan MacNeill’s version of Ectoplasm.
And to think, this all started with a Spirit Trumpet. But I will go back to the scene from the Changeling, put aside the Silver Cone, and focus on the stack of papers sitting beside on the table.
And this is the how we learn that the spirit haunting, not possessing, the house is named Joseph.
Perhaps there’s also something called spirit-drawing. Regan, besides being a budding young sculptress, also liked to draw. We are shown two of her creations while Karras waits for Chris to wash the macaroni and tobacco leaves from his clothes. I’ve discussed both drawings in other essays, where The Flyer, which rhymes with Dyer, and the Strange Tree with Upside Down Birds, who are really upside-down priests, are said to be highly relevant to the story. I suppose that those were not the result of spirit-drawing, but I think that the star of another cool movie may have been producing spirit-drawings:
Yes, that is Aiden. And another strange phenomenon is called hypergraphia, which is a condition where someone feels compelled to write or draw. It is often associated with temporal lobe lesions as found in epilepsy. In the Exorcist, much time is spent trying to chase down Regan’s supposed temporal lobe lesion.
Hypergraphia also figures in another, very cool movie:
And:
More:
I suppose it depends on whether you think that Jack Torrance is simply insane, or whether he has really become sucked into the orbit of Care-taker Grady, a strange spirit-entity haunting the Overlook Hotel. As Jack is going insane, Wendy finally makes her way into the room that he has been using to work on his novel. And how hard he has been working! To her horror, she finds that he has been typing the same, iconic line over and over again:
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
I suppose that’s true of us as well. In the movie Stay, Henry is found to have been engaging in a little hypergraphia himself:
Here the words “forgive me” have been written over and over again:
And how is spirit-writing relative to this discussion? That’s obvious…that’s all the Ouija board really is…the planchette is used to write out answers. But the term planchette existed before the Ouija board did, dating back to the late 1850s. Originally, the planchette held a pencil, and, like the more modern planchette associated with the Ouija board, you simply moved it around on a piece of paper until you…sorry, Pazuzu, gave you some weird kind of message:
And an interesting ad:
