The True Essence of Vampirism or Simply Another Viewpoint

Why are we in love with vampires? and don't tell me that I'm the only one who I am in fond of them... well, I have a theory... it is probably because we are the only ones who have realized the potentials of humanity and we have embraced this belief. Being a vampire is a higher state of existence. You are still a human being but one that has been evolved. You have finally achieved to beat the disease of dying and you are free. When you are a true vampire nothing can harm you, neither the light nor any mortal human hand or instrument. Your existence is beyond the physical laws and you no longer need to submit to them.

Why we don't have any proof of their existence? That's an interesting question. Why should they give us any answers after all? We are inferior to them, we are just their food... Would you give answers to a lamb before killing it? No, surely not. You wouldn't even bother to think about his feelings...

That's why the existence of vampires is so alluring to so many people. It reminds us that though we are restricted (or so we feel) to the physical boundaries there is hope... We can be the superhumans. What if being a superman means turning against humanity? After all, it was always that way. The fittest wins... and cruelty is subjective (as a friend of mine says)...

They Live Among Us

Marc Berry: Susan walked down the quiet avenue, wisps of fog swirling around her feet. No stranger to the lonely street, she was accustomed to its twists and turns as she shook off the stresses of her hectic work day. What she could not shake off so easily was the unaccustomed sense that she was not alone. Perhaps it was something in the way the mist seemed to cling to her feet, or the damp chill that so easily penetrated the light coat she wore. Or perhaps she really wasn't alone after all. The stranger stood, unmoving, in the middle of the street just ahead of Susan, the fog coiling around him like a lover's seduction. Where he had come from, why she hadn't seen him before, were questions that Susan couldn't think to ask, as she stared at the nightmare vision before her. His clothes, so black that they seemed to be more of an absence of light than a colour, made it appear as though his his head rode a wave of moonless night. His skin was as pale and cold as the mists that swirled around him, his face a mask of chilled beauty that was hypnotic in its inhumanity.

Vampire: the word conjures up visions of pale monsters who walk in the guise of man, endlessly searching for their next victim. In the modern incarnation, the vampire is one who drains away a person's vitality and life force, leaving his victim listless, tired, and drained of energy. We refer to them as psychic vampires, but they are no less frightening as the blood suckers of legend. But are all psychic vampires as evil as we want to believe?

There are a great variety of psychic vampires, but they all share one thing in common: a need for life force. For some reason they are unable to produce or maintain sufficient levels of this energy to sustain themselves. Some are aware of their condition, others are not, but they all need to replenish their energy from exterior sources. Energy sources range from the environment, to living creatures, to specific emotions such as fear or love.

There are deliberate vampires, who, in order to increase their lifespan, and maintain a healthy quality of life, have deliberately cultivated the ability to steal life force from others. These predators most closely resemble the monsters that we think them to be, and are to be avoided wherever possible. There are unintentional vampires, who are not consciously aware of their need. They manifest as parasitic individuals, drama queens, and the like, who's draining effects are generally mild unless one is exposed to them for an extended period of time.

There also exists in our society a third category of vampire: the self acknowledged vampire. These people know that they have a deficiency in their energy body that needs to be regularly replenished. While some of them adopt a "goth" lifestyle, complete with hair, makeup, and clothing, many of them are normal people with normal lives. They are construction workers and secretaries, brothers and sisters, friends and co-workers. They are you and me.

Most of them follow a code of ethics that precludes predatory feeding, preferring to find a donor instead of a victim. If they do not reveal themselves to you, you might never know who or what they are. Many belong to a vampire organization, called a house, though some prefer not to affiliate themselves with any particular group. If it were not for the vampire aspect of their lives, they would be indistinguishable from everybody else.

What makes them need life force? Why do they have a deficiency in their energy systems? It could be similar to models of weight loss and gain. There are some individuals who are thin, and are healthy that way. Then there are other individuals who are skinny and not healthy that way; they require supplements to balance their system and so raise their weight up to healthy levels. So it might also be with energy feeders: some may be perfectly healthy operating on less energy, while the same lessened energy levels in an other would be insufficient to maintain their lives. That situation could be an indicator that the individuals are missing a frequency set that they either cannot retain or manufacture. These individuals could be made healthy by replacing the frequency or harmonic set from external sources, which is where the energetic individuals would come in. Those who are healthy have, or can create, the energies they need for life, whether those needs be great or small.

I wonder if the psychic vampire are not a precursor to man's next evolutionary phase? Consider this: in our society we have psychic vampires, and we have people diagnosed as hyperactive, one of the key symptoms of which is an uncontrolled overabundance of energy. What if the latter could function as an energy source for the former? What if, through subsequent development, the "vampire" could, in addition to feeding, take a group's excess energy, and direct it toward a useful end, rather like the components of a flashlight? The group would provide the power, and the vampire would direct the energy to produce light?

It is widely held belief that mankind is moving toward a more enlightened age, one of spiritual awareness, and psychic ability. Many vampires believe that they have inherent psychic abilities, and indeed is a requirement for energetic feeding. Perhaps these abilities are an extension of an overall ability to harness life energy, and direct it to the betterment of mankind.

It is clear that we, as a species, are moving on in our overall development. We are developing a world consciousness, an awareness that we are all connected. An increasing number of people are manifesting abilities once relegated to the realm of the mystic. In the larger group, everybody has a role to play. Perhaps some are energy sources, and others are directors of that energy, while still others are healers and builders, with each individual helping to maintain the overall organism that is man.

Whatever you choose to believe, believe this: there are vampires in your life. Right now, and possibly closer than you think. While some are predatory or parasitic in nature, there are many more who are just trying to live. When I have a deficiency in my systems, I seek to correct it, just as they do. The majority of them are not out to harm you. They just want to live a good life, the same as you and I.

MBerry is co-founder of NewBranes.com, a blog covering all aspects of the paranormal.
His ultimate long term goal is to discover the General Unified Theory of Everything Weird.

Article Copyright© Marc Berry

source: unexplained-mysteries.com

Astral projection: Visiting the higher planes

Astral Projection: Doorway to a New Dimension

Are you ready to explore other dimensions of human existence? Jerry Gross explains where astral projection - or out-of-body experience - can take us, and the amazing world that awaits us there.

The concept of astral projection has been around for a long time, but until today, it has been hidden from most of humanity. Now, with the aid of astral projection, new levels of knowledge and power enable us to discover the answer to Man's eternal question about life in the physical body. Death takes on a new meaning as we begin to realize that it is only a transition to another dimension, or place of existence. By learning to astral project, we can learn many things about ourselves, and unlearn many things that were previously thought to be true. This leads us to the realization that our physical bodies are only a part of our entire selves, and there is more to our existence than meets the eye!

In our limited awareness, the reality we live and breathe on earth, with its beautiful landscapes, mountains, rivers, streams, animals and insects, can be compared with the petals on a flower. What we see is not the whole flower, but only a part. This is because man has lost touch with the use of his own mind. He concludes, erroneously, that the physical world is the only reality there is. He believes that his life as an individual has only to do with the flesh body of himself, and concludes that the physical world is solid and real because his senses tell him it "feels" solid and real. The mind has abilities that go beyond the five senses of the physical world. The petal of the flower that we now experience is the material world or physical plane of existence. It has a specific vibration, just as all creatures on this level vibrate at the same rate. Because of this, regardless of where we go on this level, all things take on the appearance of being solid, material objects. Just as the colors of the rainbow show the effects of the different vibrations of light, and the melodies on the piano show the effect of the different notes, so, too, does the entire universe contain various octaves, or rates of vibration. These universal harmonics comprise the different levels of existence.

So the earth plane we live on is only one of many dimensions. There are other spheres that we describe as being above or below us. Actually, they are not really above or below us, but rather at all times around us, permeating all things. Astral projection allows us to discover that the people and objects existing on these other realms can be just as solid and real as any object on the earth terrain. And if we happened to be in another level, looking back "down" into this region, we would view an earth that was not solid. Right now, at every instant, we are living, coexisting with, and walking through people and objects of another dimension! When a person astral projects, he or she can see these other frontiers.

Our Astral Bodies

When we were born into this physical world, we were provided with a physical body to carry out our duties. Astral projection allows us to project "out of the body" and into the next plane of existence, which is the astral plane. When we do this, we are in another body, which is called the "astral body." We already possess this astral body, just as all other people, animals, creatures and everything on earth possess an astral body.

The astral body has some amazing properties. Unlike the physical body, which is held down by gravity, the astral body can overcome this limitation by the effort of thought alone. While out of the body, we can not only walk around as if in the physical, but also soar above the trees, or go out into space. Another property of the astral body is that it cannot be injured. One of the greatest fears while on earth is pain or injury. While out of the body, this normal human reaction can be unlearned, because there is absolutely nothing that will cause damage to the astral body! In the next dimension, fire, knives, guns, falling from great heights, electrical shocks, disease, wild animals or being run over by a steam roller can do no harm. Many people receive lessons about this in their dreams. Watch for them, because you'll discover that you always survive - don't you?

In this next level of existence, which all of us can visit, there are many familiar things, such as cars, trains, planes, and highways. Everything that is on this earth right now comes from the astral plane. Many people get this backwards. They think the astral dimension was molded from earth. The truth is, the earth was fashioned from the ideas and discoveries which originated on the astral.

When we are out of the body, communication is accomplished by thought. Another word for this is telepathy. In other words, it is not necessary to move our lips in order to be heard, although we can do this if we wish. Sometimes, when we hear what we think is just a thought, this could actually be someone communicating to us from the astral.

This next plane of existence has been sought after, researched, and argued about by philosophers and religious people from time immemorial. Until now, it has remained elusive and has evaded discovery to all but the most diligent. The individual who looks within instead of without, who looks to correct his own imperfections, and who treats others as he wishes to be treated will have the door of discovery swing wide open for him.

Conquering Our Fears

When we begin to explore this, we must first overcome the obstacle of fear, which will present itself in many forms. The fear of death, pain, injury, the unknown, evil, devils, hell and Satan may loom up before us. We must conquer our own fears head on, and they will rapidly disappear.

We are mental creators, and out of the ether of the next dimension, we can create that which we wish around us. If we are convinced a devil is out there to trick or deceive us, and if we have already pictured in our minds what this devil looks like and what he plans on doing, we should really not be surprised when our worst fears are confirmed. The devils we create become real and solid in the next dimension because we created them.
We are mental creators, and out of the ether of the next dimension, we can create that which we wish around us.

In the astral plane, we can meet those we love, or that which we fear. If we have no fear, we won't meet fear. It's as simple as that. So we can save ourselves trouble by putting nonsense like that out of our mind. Remember there is nothing that can harm us while we are out of our bodies. This teaching of fear has held people in mental bondage long enough! Its exposure is sure to cause a fury in those who have become trapped in the habit of their own thinking. We must release ourselves from the death grip of fear and set ourselves free.

In the astral plane, we can also visit our loved ones who have passed on before us. We can then ask them face-to-face how they like their new surroundings. We can see schools and universities, and may even find ourselves in a classroom, listening to a lecture.

This is also where we can discover the history of the world, and the history of our lives. The "Hall of Records" contains our present lives as well as our past. In it, are recorded our accomplishments and our failures. We can meet our spiritual teachers - which the churches have termed our "guardian angels" - and we can ask them for advice and guidance on our problems.

The astral plane is a vast dimension of existence, and contains life in abundance. It does not operate by the very same laws of the earth plane, and so many things that are quite impossible on earth, are quite commonplace in the astral. Mind over matter is common. Colors are more beautiful, and we may experience endless fascination with new and exciting things that there are to see and discover.
The astral plane is a vast dimension of existence, and contains life in abundance. It does not operate by the very same laws of the earth plane, and so many things that are quite impossible on earth, are quite commonplace in the astral.

For many centuries, the teachings of certain churches have been that some things are mysteries and are not to be questioned. Eve eating from the tree of knowledge and the subsequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden was sighted as proof. This erroneous interpretation was made by those who were ignorant, or by those who wanted to keep the masses of people in subjugation. Man's redemption in the final analysis will come from his knowledge of himself and his love of his neighbor, not from his ignorance.

Tapping the Subconscious

The astral plane contains many things that are not on earth at this time. Some of them may appear in the future on earth, and some are from the earth's past. Many different types of animals that have become extinct on earth exist in the astral. Remember, there is no death.

Astral projection enables us to use the part of our mind that has been dormant or sleeping. We can wake up this part and put it to work. It is called the subconscious, and it can be used to give us the knowledge we need to find out more about ourselves, our purpose on earth, and our relationship with God. Most people think of their mind as only that portion they recognize as their conscious mind, or waking mind. It has been said that the mind is 10 percent conscious, and 90 percent subconscious. We can learn to expand this 10 percent.

Everyone goes to the astral plane at night while they are asleep. Think of this! Astral projection takes place without a person even being aware of it! As strange and hard to believe as this sounds, it is true. To begin exploring astral projection, pay attention to your dreams each night. Eventually, you will come to the realization that you were in the astral plane, but did not realize it.

When we take the first step, of allowing for the possibility of multiple dimensions and astral projection as realities, we can then focus on ways to understand, explore, and actually experience these things. In doing so, we can open the door to an amazing and expansive existence that was heretofore beyond our wildest imagination!

written by Jerry Gross
source: paranormal.about.com

H.P. Lovecraft and Paranormal

Image via WikipediaDreamer of the Dark

Was the most influential horror writer of the 20th century a believer in the paranormal? DANIEL HARMS examines the evidence.

Mention of the name Howard Phillips Lovecraft might elicit nothing more than a noncommittal shrug from most people, but for fans of the macabre he is still a revered figure, held in awe for his unique literary visions of cosmic horror.

Lovecraft spent most of his life (1890-1937) in Providence, Rhode Island. The last son of a once-wealthy family, he devoted his life to literature, soon finding that his strengths lay in tales of the uncanny. These stories attracted a small following among the readers of Weird Tales and other pulp magazines, and his correspondents included a formidable roster of early horror writers. Since his early death, the popularity of his work has grown – in ways he could never have imagined – inspiring countless stories and novels, films, cartoons, games and even cuddly toys.

His tales have continued to compel readers because of their convincing melding of fact and fantasy and their evocation of a world both phantasmagoric and believable at the same time. The stories serve as a loosely constructed chronicle of the "Old Ones," alien creatures from other worlds and other dimensions. The Old Ones include the mindless chaos Azathoth; the Black Goat of the Woods, Shub-Niggurath; and Cthulhu, a winged squid-like god who lives in a sunken city in the Pacific. Once, in the planet’s distant past, the Old Ones lived on Earth, but eventually they fell into an æons-long sleep. Their worshippers, including the fish-men known as the "deep ones," and the crustacean-like fungi from the planet Yuggoth (Pluto) are still awake and sometimes menace humanity. Books such as the infamous Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred hold the Old Ones’ lore, and cults around the world work their rituals in the hope that their masters will return to rule again.

Given the power of his vision, many have speculated on just how much Lovecraft knew about the occult. Some occultists hail him as the prophet of a new Dark Age, claiming that his fiction bears genuine traces of ancient knowledge and re-emerging archetypes from the depths of our collective unconscious. Yet, all too often, their conclusions are based on guesswork, rather than the evidence of his own writing. Fortunately for us, he had perhaps one of the best-documented lives in literary history, writing approximately 100,000 letters over his 46 years. Through these letters, and other newly discovered sources, a glimpse into the reality of Lovecraft’s occult lore is finally possible.

Lovecraft as Debunker

To begin with, it’s clear that Lovecraft himself had no belief whatsoever in the occult. As a youth, he had come to doubt the Christian faith of his family, and explored the beliefs of the Greeks, Muslims, Egyptians, and Hindus. None of these satisfied him, and he turned to atheism and scepticism as the only possible alternatives. In 1925, he wrote to his friend Clark Ashton Smith, saying: "I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism – religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality". Anyone who wrote to him asking if the gods and occult tomes mentioned in his stories were real would receive a polite letter stating his disbelief in such notions.

He was not merely a passive believer in a philosophy of scepticism, but a passionate missionary for his creed. He wrote letters to local newspapers attacking claims of the Hollow Earth and astrology. These letters may contain more vitriol than reasoned critique, but they nonetheless make their points effectively and entertainingly. Such debates also raged in his letters, for he kept a wide circle of friends with widely differing perspectives from his own. If he were alive today, Lovecraft would probably be a strong supporter of CSICOP.

Lovecraft’s scepticism was so vehement that, at one point, it almost brought him a book deal. The celebrated stage magician Harry Houdini was known as a debunker of spiritualists and quacks. Lovecraft revised a fictionalised account of one of Houdini’s adventures, in which the conjuror escapes bandits and far worse things in the tunnels beneath the Great Pyramids ("Imprisoned with the Pharaohs"). Houdini was happy with the rewrite, and the two exchanged letters discussing future collaborations. Along with Providence author C M Eddy, they decided to write a book called The Cancer of Superstition, which they thought would strike a final blow against credulity. Houdini’s death in 1926 put an end to the project; if what survives is anything to go by, it was no great loss, the authors’ names being the book’s most interesting feature.

Nevertheless, Lovecraft was at least somewhat familiar with the literature of occultism, especially in his later years. At the time of his death, his library contained such works as Lewis Spence’s Encyclopædia of Occultism, Sir Walter Scott’s Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, Camille Flammarion’s Haunted Houses, and a variety of works on ghosts, folklore, and mythology. This was not the end of the matter, as Lovecraft also borrowed a number of occult works – as well as Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned and New Lands – from libraries and his friends, most notably Herman C Koenig of New York City. (Interestingly, Lovecraft actually mentions Fort by name in a couple of stories.). Lovecraft, then, was hardly an authority on matters esoteric and uncanny, but he had some basic knowledge that he incorporated into his tales.

New England folklore

To understand Lovecraft’s writing, we must first understand New England. The work is permeated with a love of the old lanes, ancient houses, winding alleys, and sunset skylines of this region. He travelled across the eastern United States and lived (unhappily) for a time in New York City, yet he always returned to Providence and New England. He conducted a good deal of research into the area’s folktales, coming across a number of legends that worked their way into his fiction.

The prize of his library was an old edition of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana. Mather (1663-1728) was a noted New England minister, whose writings encouraged the belief in witchcraft and indirectly led to the Salem witch-trials. Mather devotes one section of the book to the witch-trials, and another to miraculous and supernatural events – witch-findings, ghosts, supernatural warnings, and examples of poltergeist phenomena.

One of Mather’s sermons, reprinted in Magnalia, tells of the punishments God inflicted upon sinners. One prominent figure in the sermon is a young man with a distinctive blemish in his eye, who commits bestiality. His sin is exposed when a farm animal gives birth to an abomination bearing the same mark. The man confesses what he has done, and the local authorities have him executed.

When Lovecraft visited Salem in 1923, its old houses and quaint squares gave him a wonderful thrill. There, in the Charter Street Burying Ground, he found a willow growing around a shattered gravestone, with a crumbling old house beyond it. This house, which still stands, was once the home of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fiancée, and served as the inspiration for that author’s "Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret". The house made a deep impression on Lovecraft, who was also aware of the strand of folklore concerning New England families who kept ill or deformed relatives hidden in the attic. Weaving these elements together with Mather’s account, he created "The Unnamable".

In the story, two men sit in a cemetery and discuss whether anything can be "unnameable." Joel Manton asserts that nothing can bear such a label, save in a cheap horror story, but the narrator insists that such a thing can indeed exist, and alludes to Mather’s story. In this version, the half-human monstrosity grows into a beast that terrorises the countryside, attacking people on the roads and slaying the parson and his family. The townsfolk lock the monster in the attic of its father’s house, where it dies. The narrator ends his demonstration by stating that he found the creature’s bones and buried them – in the grave on which the two men are sitting. As this revelation is made, the monster reappears and attacks the unfortunate pair.

The Salem witch-trials of 1692 form a common motif in Lovecraft’s fiction. While he didn’t believe in witches, he was fascinated with what he saw as the morbidity of the Puritan lifestyle and the executions that had happened only a short train-ride away from 20th century Providence. While he never wrote a story centring on the witch trials, Lovecraft mingled them with other occult beliefs to create his own literary version of such events.

"Pickman’s Model" is the story of Richard Upton Pickman, a gifted painter from an old Salem family, one of whose ancestors was hanged during the witch-trials. Pickman’s paintings are of undeniable genius, but are so morbid that all the local artists ostracise him. Stinging with this rejection, Pickman brings his friend Thurber to a secret apartment in Boston’s North End, where he shows him a hideous series of paintings suggesting that the witches dealt with corpse-eating monsters that burrow beneath cemeteries and cities. In the end, it is revealed that they have more than a little to do with Pickman’s own dark heritage…

In "The Dreams in the Witch-House", a witch named Keziah Mason is imprisoned in the Salem jail, but escapes the authorities by drawing a curious design in blood on the wall of her cell. Such a magical diagram is a common motif in supernatural fiction, but Mason’s mastery of space and time is not due to any knowledge of ‘magic’ in the traditional sense. Rather, she enters other dimensions through her use of advanced mathematics and geometry, and creeps back to our world centuries later to find converts and sacrifices. She decides that a young mathematics student would be the perfect acolyte, and uses her powers and those of her familiar – the rat-like Brown Jenkin – to draw him into her sorcery. As fantasy author Fritz Leiber pointed out, this was one of the first uses of the mathematical concept of hyperspace in fiction.

The Vampires of Providence

Lovecraft’s "The Shunned House" may not be his most famous tale, but it contains one of the most striking uses of folklore in a horror story. He did not take any aspect of the story from just one source, but mixed and matched various elements to fit his own ends.

"The Shunned House" tells of a building on Benefit Street in Providence noted for the ill health of its tenants. When the narrator’s investigation begins, the house is abandoned. As a child, he visits the house, noting its air of desolation and a curious, anthropomorphic patch of phosphorescent mould in the basement. Going back through its history, he discovers tales of illness and creeping insanity engulfing its inhabitants, dating back to the time of the first builders. Invalids die shrieking about monsters, while some mutter in French, a language of which they have no knowledge. Later, it is revealed that the house was built on the site of the Roulet family graveyard – which nobody troubled to move when Benefit Street was straightened. The narrator informs his uncle, a historian, of these strange findings, and the two visit the house with scientific instruments – not to mention flame-throwers! – to put the horror to rest. Yet, the spirit that resides in the house is not easily defeated.

If the ‘Shunned House’ really existed, one might expect it to be a dark and forbidding dwelling, whispered about in local folklore. Yet the house which is most likely to have inspired the tale is nothing of the sort; now painted yellow, its cellar doors still open directly onto the sidewalk, and part of the overgrown yard is now a community garden. Lovecraft mentions in his letters that the house had a foreboding air, and that his aunt once lived there for a short time in the early 1920s.

Some scholars have sought the tale’s inspiration in local legends of the vampire. While the word conjures up images of castles perched high in the mountains of Transylvania, similar sources lay closer to home. As recently as a century ago, some Rhode Islanders believed in these monsters. In 1892, a wasting disease, now thought to be tuberculosis, struck the Brown family of Exeter. The locals became convinced that the dead family members fed off the living in spirit form, dragging their brothers and sisters with them to the grave. Digging up one of the daughters, Mercy Brown, they found her body fresh and seeping blood. The family burned the young woman’s heart to ashes and fed them to her brother, in an unsuccessful attempt to cure him. Christopher Rondina’s book The Vampire-Hunter’s Guide to New England details a number of such legends circulating in the rural areas of Rhode Island.

Oddly enough, however, these legends played virtually no role in the construction of Lovecraft’s tale – in fact, he dismisses them in a single sentence, one paraphrasing a book of folklore in his own collection, Charles M. Skinner’s Myths and Legends of Our Own Land (1896). A further perusal of this work uncovers a more likely source for Lovecraft’s story. Skinner writes of a house on Green Street in Schenectady, New York, said to have a patch of mould on the floor shaped like a body. Other parts of the story – the illness of the tenants, the unearthed and forgotten body beneath – may also be found in this story. It is unlikely that Lovecraft tried to find this house during his brief trips to upstate New York, but that did not stop the legend from influencing his work.

What, then, accounts for the sinister nature of the occupant of the forgotten tomb? Lovecraft incorporated a legend from John Fiske’s Myths and Myth-Makers (1872), regarding an event near the French town of Caude in 1598, when a group of men saw two wolves devouring the body of a boy. Chasing them, they found a man coated in blood and gore hiding in the woods. He was revealed to be one Jacques Roulet, who claimed to use a salve to change his shape to that of a wolf. He was convicted of murder but, before he could be executed, the government intervened and locked him in an asylum. In his story, Lovecraft suggests that the same Roulets had come to the New World and taken up residence in Providence, with sinister results.

Lovecraft’s genius, then, was to find inspiration and material aplenty in occult, folkloric and historical sources and to use them – with, as we have seen, no belief in the possibility of their reality – as the raw material for tales of an entirely different nature. When we finally meet the terror at the house on Benefit Street, it is much worse than any werewolf or vampire could be.

Lovecraft and the Western Esoteric Tradition

Black magic and forbidden books have been staples of European folklore for centuries, and Lovecraft makes extensive use of them in his works: immortal wizards plot revenge against their foes, magical keys open gates to other dimensions, and a book called the Necronomicon foretells the doom of humanity at the hands (or tentacles) of the Old Ones. These elements of Lovecraft’s fiction have led to plenty of speculation that he was a practising wizard, or at least had a deep knowledge of the magical lore of past ages. In fact, his knowledge of Western esotericism was pretty spotty for most of his career.

His story "The Horror at Red Hook" was his first attempt to use genuine magical lore as the basis for a story. "Red Hook" tells of a policeman’s fight against a sinister cult based in Brooklyn’s seedy Red Hook district. The cult – which mixes such diverse belief systems as Kurdish Yezidism, Tibetan shamanism, and Nestorian Christianity – meets in an old church used as a dance hall and worships demons such as Astaroth and Lilith. The tale is a jumble of occult lore, with good reason – he took most of his information, including a chant to the Greek goddess Hecate, from the Encyclopedia Britannica’s articles on magic and demonology, hardly a very esoteric source!

If nothing else, "Red Hook" made Lovecraft realise how little he knew about magic. He asked his correspondents for suggestions for his reading list. "Are there any good translations of any mediæval necromancers for raising spirits, invoking Lucifer, & all that sort of thing?" he asks in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith. By the end of his life, Lovecraft had read several works on magic, though most of them were sensationalistic works of a second-hand nature. These included Arthur Edward Waite’s Book of Black Magic and of Pacts, Lewis Spence’s Encyclopædia of Occultism, Sax Rohmer’s Romance of Sorcery, and The Mysteries of Magic by Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Constant).

The latter served Lovecraft well when he came to write The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Ward is a young scholar and historian who discovers that an ancestor, Joseph Curwen, while apparently a prominent and respectable merchant, was also a wizard with a library full of works on alchemy and mysticism. In 1771, a group made up of Providence’s most distinguished citizens attacked Curwen’s farmhouse and did away with him. During the raid, Curwen chanted two spells lifted straight from Levi’s The Mysteries of Magic. Nonetheless, when it came to the final incantation that resurrects the dead, Lovecraft could not find one suitable, so he wrote one in his own "R’lyehian" language.

As time went on, Lovecraft largely abandoned the trappings of magic and adopted a language more congenial to his temperament – that of science. In a letter written near the end of his life, he revealed that he found the language of esotericism "flat, childish, pompous, and unconvincing", and expressed his belief that a writer could make up occult books just as terrifying as any that actually existed. History has proven him right; his arch piece of literary invention, the Necronomicon, has inspired a tremendous number of ‘hoax’ versions, none of which match the power of Lovecraft’s vision.

Mysterious Contacts

Even as Lovecraft sought his terrors in the realm of science, his fame was already spreading among occultists. While he did not share their views, he was nonetheless a polite correspondent who answered their questions and presented his opinions without judgement. So, who were these occult figures? Or, given the rumours that still circulate, who weren’t they?

A great deal of nonsense has appeared about Lovecraft’s connection to the notorious magician Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), coiner of the term "magick" – pronounced may-jick – to distinguish his own "sex-magic" from conjuring parlour-tricks. Some authors say that the two men met, while others claim that Lovecraft’s wife Sonia Greene dated Crowley before marrying Lovecraft. None of this is true. Lovecraft had heard of Crowley, but had little information outside the newspapers of the day and such fictional caricatures as appeared in H Russell Wakefield’s "He Cometh and He Passeth By". He never corresponded with Crowley or read any of his work, and found him to be, if anything, "rather over-advertised". Lovecraft’s "The Thing on the Doorstep" refers to an English cult leader – but this seems to be the extent of Crowley’s influence on the Providence author.

Others have insisted that Lovecraft knew members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult fraternity founded in 1877 and whose membership included Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood, two authors whom Lovecraft admired greatly. He never wrote to either of these men, though – he resisted "fawning on the great". Further, no Golden Dawn-specific terminology turns up anywhere in his writings.

One person Lovecraft may have met was the science fiction writer and founder of the Church of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard. The two men did write for the pulps at the same time, and both even attended a Fiction Guild dinner in June 1936. In a letter to Robert Bloch (author of Psycho), Lovecraft mentions Hubbard’s name, but finds himself unable to remember meeting the gentleman. Of course, Hubbard did not found his Dianetics movement until well after Lovecraft was dead, and no researchers have found any Hubbard-Lovecraft letters.

This doesn’t mean that Lovecraft didn’t correspond with occultists. One of his pen pals was descended from a Salem witch, and sent him gruesome pieces of folklore that she hoped he would use in his stories (he never did). Another, a gentleman from Iowa named Olson, claimed he held the secret to immortality. His beliefs, as quoted in a letter from Lovecraft’s friend and fellow author Robert E Howard (of Conan the Barbarian fame), included a mixture of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy with physics and other curious tenets, such as the belief that Jesus was a vampire. Howard thought this was odd, if acceptable, but became most incensed when Olson asked him to send on a chain letter.

Nor should we forget E Hoffman Price, a prolific pulp author from New Orleans. Price was not only a soldier and renowned traveller, but described himself as a Theosophist and Buddhist and sometimes cast horoscopes for money. When Lovecraft travelled to Louisiana, Howard informed Price, and the two men spent the next 36 hours together. Later, Lovecraft collaborated with Hoffman on "Through the Gates of the Silver Key", in which Randolph Carter, Lovecraft’s hero and literary alter ego, goes through a mystical initiation in his search for ultimate meaning.

Perhaps the most famous of Lovecraft’s occult correspondents was William Lumley (1880-1960), a night watchman from Buffalo, New York. Before settling down, Lumley had been a sailor who heard strange tales in Port Said and other distant lands. Lumley told Lovecraft of his meetings with Eastern masters – including one who apparently visited him for a short time in Buffalo – and spectral figures in the haunted valleys and houses of western New York. Despite his scepticism, Lovecraft humoured his friend, and the two struck up a lively correspondence which lasted until Lovecraft’s death. When Lumley wrote a story called "The Diary of Alonzo Typer", about a haunted house near Attica, Lovecraft revised it for him. Lumley’s first draft has since been published and closely resembles a real-life journal of a paranormal investigation. Could Lumley have been describing an actual experience? Most of his papers have vanished, so there is no way of knowing.

Lovecraft and Theosophy

In the late 19th century, a Russian émigrée named Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky electrified the West. Blavatsky founded Theosophy, meaning roughly "divine knowledge", in 1875. Blavatsky’s "Masters" showed her the Book of Dzyan, a volume existing on the astral plane and written on palm leaves. With the help of the wisdom of Dzyan, the Theosophical Society set out to uncover the truths behind science, religion, and psychic phenomena. Previous civilisations on the lost continents of Lemuria and Atlantis had destroyed themselves due to lack of spiritual purity, but the Theosophists hoped through their researches to move humanity into the next stage of its spiritual evolution, and thereby bring the world to an age of brotherhood. Despite its high-minded claims, scandal rocked the group, and by the 1920s it was a pale shadow of its former self.

Lovecraft skirted the edges of Theosophical literature for over 10 years. In 1926, he read W Scott-Elliot’s Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria. This work is a description of the geography and culture of the lost continents, with notes on their former inhabitants. Shortly after reading this work, Lovecraft penned one of his most celebrated tales, "The Call of Cthulhu". The story tells of a worldwide psychic disturbance in which authors and poets have strange dreams of an underwater city in the Pacific. While some groups – including the Theosophists – consider this to be a good omen, one student of ethnology pieces together the truth: the dreams do not come from a kindly-disposed spiritual lord, but from an alien monstrosity whose return will destroy all of humanity.

Lovecraft’s friend E Hoffman Price notes in his memoirs how unimpressed he was with Lovecraft’s understanding of Theosophy. Perhaps if Lovecraft had read more of the stuff, many of the key concepts within Theosophical texts would have resonated with his own fictional creations. After all, the Theosophists discussed Lemuria, Atlantis, and the Imperishable Sacred Land to the far north (all of which were now lost), and a similar lore concerning lost continents was not unique to "The Call of Cthulhu", but turns up throughout Lovecraft’s œuvre, for instance in "The Temple" and "Out of the Aeons" (written with Hazel Heald). Another important Eastern concept dear to the Theospophists – reincarnation – serves as the theme for a number of Lovecraft stories, including The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, as mentioned opposite (p38). Finally, we should not neglect the fact that Blavatsky and Lovecraft had, in effect, the same goal – the reconciliation of myth and ancient knowledge with modern science. The difference, of course, is that Lovecraft attempted a fictional synthesis, while Blavatsky created a new philosophy centred on this notion.

Some commentators, among them Colin Wilson, have asked whether Blavatsky’s Book of Dzyan could be the inspiration for the Necronomicon. Lovecraft’s letters, though, tell a different story. He didn’t hear of the Book of Dzyan until E Hoffman Price told him about it in 1933. Price’s account of the phantasmal book intrigued him, and it actually appears alongside the Necronomicon in his later works, including "The Diary of Alonzo Typer" and "The Haunter of the Dark".

So did Lovecraft ever read Blavatsky’s work? As it turns out, he might have done. In November 1936, Californian science fantasy author Henry Kuttner sent one of Blavatsky’s works – either Isis Unveiled or The Secret Doctrine – to Providence. Lovecraft thanked his friend, mentioning that he’d always meant to read Blavatsky, but had never got around to it. He died four months later; if he had finally grappled with Blavatsky’s literary efforts, his thoughts on them were lost forever.

The Master’s Legacy

Lovecraft’s death brought his writer friends out en masse to offer their condolences. It was this outpouring of grief that kick-started Lovecraft fandom. Weird Tales, which had never given Lovecraft a cover illustration during his life, frantically reprinted his old stories and searched for new ones. August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, two of Lovecraft’s friends, founded Arkham House to publish his works in book form. The first Arkham House edition, The Outsider and Others, commands prices of up to $3,000 today. A rather unexpected side effect of all this attention was the adoption of Lovecraftian concepts into occult practice.

Modern occultists may be surprised to know that Lovecraft’s influence first made itself felt among the believers in the Hollow Earth and underground cities. Morris Doreal, head of the Brotherhood of the White Temple, referred to a "Yog Sog-Thoth, the gateway to the cycle below" in his Interpretations on the Emerald Tablets, published in 1948. Others discovered Lovecraft indirectly, through the stories of August Derleth, who in his own additions to the ‘Cthulhu Mythos’, as it came to be known, turned Lovecraft’s essentially amoral creations into the evil "Great Old Ones", who are opposed by the protective "Elder Gods." The book Agartha, written by Buddhist monk Robert Ernst Dickhoff in 1951, mentions both groups of beings, plus Lovecraft’s mountain of "Kadath". Richard Shaver, a Pennsylvania welder and long-time Weird Tales reader, used very similar imagery in his writing about the underground "deros" who inflict suffering upon mankind and the "teros" who oppose them.

Lovecraft’s ideas slowly made their way into other sections of the occult community. John Keel’s concept of "windows" – areas in which extra-dimensional beings might appear – is similar to Lovecraft’s notion that a place or object might serve as a focus for influences from Outside. Robert M Price and Charles Garofalo point out how Lovecraft anticipated von Däniken’s theory of "ancient astronauts" by several decades. I’m not suggesting Lovecraft directly inspired Keel or von Däniken, yet their ‘real’ ideas follow an intriguingly parallel course to the ‘fictional’ ones of the man from Providence.

Rumours of strange sects practising Lovecraftian magic have been with us for years, but two works published in 1972 brought them to a broader audience. Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Rituals included ceremonies by Michael Aquino to call Lovecraft’s gods Shub-Niggurath and Cthulhu into consciousness. LaVey and Aquino maintained that these rituals were merely psychodrama, a fact seemingly lost on many of those who practise them. A hemisphere away, Kenneth Grant published The Magical Revival, which hailed Lovecraft as a contemporary of Crowley who echoed his prophecies of a new æon. While occultists have never been averse to creating their own traditions, the embrace of an admittedly fictional pantheon started a firestorm of controversy that has never died down.

Despite this uncertainty, Lovecraftian magic is here to stay. Erik Davis’s article in the now-defunct magazine Gnosis provided much insight into its practitioners, but failed to capture its broad appeal. For example, I have talked with members of the Miskatonic Alchemical Expedition, a group of spiritual seekers who once met at a farmhouse near West Danby in upstate New York. There, they took hallucinogens and sought visions bringing contact with a wide variety of god-forms – including Lovecraft’s Old Ones. Black Moon Publishing, associated with Cincinnati’s Bate Cabal, provides photocopies of a staggering collection of Lovecraftian conjurations, rituals, Tarot decks, and theoretical speculation. As Lovecraft makes his resurgence in popular culture, it is likely that more people will practice magic based on his fiction.

Perhaps the most widespread and broadly appealing strand in this factitious magical tradition – and perhaps its creator’s most enduring legacy – is that madness-inducing book of eldritch lore, the Necronomicon. Since 1940, numerous attempts were made to write the book Lovecraft had invented. The most commercially successful of these were the Simon Necronomicon (1977), which emerged from the New York occult community, and George Hay’s Necronomicon: The Book of Dead Names (1978), published by Neville Spearman and later by Skoob Books. Having examined their beliefs for many years, I have to say that those who believe in the reality of such books are sincere – not to mention more numerous than most commentators have realised.

So the cult of Cthulhu lives. It may be that some day, Howard Phillips Lovecraft himself will be forgotten, while the devotees of his Old Ones "bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places," as he puts it in "The Call of Cthulhu".

I hope this will not be the case, and that Lovecraft’s unique literary gifts will be remembered alongside his creations.

source: Fortean Times

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Haunted English landscapes

Devil's Field

What happens to those places which have a reputation for being 'haunted', and which may have a record of disturbances' going back many years, once their topography changes beyond recognition? Remembrances of previous buildings may be preserved to retain 'character' in the new planning scheme, but what happens to the 'haunted' field, or wood, once lost beneath the bypass, or housing development? In our late 20th Century, we are so used to the continuous upheaval of building and roadworks, that we hold very short-term memories of our surroundings. Villages drowned beneath reservoirs, or cleared for the park of some Palladio-inspired country Squire, remain in the folk memory: fields lost to the relentless ribbon-development from town centres do not.

People are no longer tied to the same small town where their parents and grandparents lived before them. New housing estates are not necessarily settled by families from the immediate surrounding area. The closer we live together, the more insular we become.

Some places do strive to hold on to their recent, and distant past - if only for the tourists! York, for example, revels in its railway heritage, its wealth of medieval buildings, and its ancient Viking past. Those devotees of the city's ghost-lore delight in the Roman legion which reputedly marches knee-deep through the cellars of the Treasurer's House, conveniently forgetting that the Treasurer's House itself is a fortunate relic of a bygone age - in anywhere but York, it might not have survived. These spectacular and picturesque events are happily recorded in the local psyche, and will no doubt survive for centuries to come. It is the more mundane happenings that we lose. Whilst dining in an unassuming (and unlicensed) fish 'n' chip cafe in the middle of the old town, we were once treated to the remarkable peregrinations of a stainless steel teapot. Psychokinesis, perhaps? A poltergeist troubled by the flagrant disregard for the traditional mushy pea? Who knows, but it certainly won't make a stopping point on the York Ghost Walk.

Joking apart, it is just these peculiar, unsubstantiated incidents which skip the 'official' record, existing only in personal history. If we recorded these 'events' as our ancestors did, handed down through the generations, adding to the local mind-map, or sacred landscape, we would surely be closer to understanding the processes behind them. We have largely replaced the superstitious fear of past ages, with an inquiring mind determined to root out 'the Truth' - it is ironic, then, that we are losing this almost unseen - and certainly unappreciated - mass of peripheral data - on which we could test our (numerous) theories.

We would therefore like to place on record the superstitious local history of an unassuming place, which has in a year been transformed from gorses ringed scrubland to a coloured-brick Legoland of identikit houses. That which was known as Devil's Field is now the bijou suburbia of Adel Meadows. (We presume Beelzebub Gardens was rejected at an early stage of planning...)

The one-time village of Adel is now roughly described as that area which is pierced through by the A660 Leeds Skipton road, shortly after the treacherous Lawnswood roundabout. A succession of pre-war villas, 1950s flats, and later council houses cover the ancient wilderness of Farrar Moor as far as Holt Park top, the highest point in Leeds. Those with OS pathfinder 672 will find the 'officially' unnamed Devil's Field at SE265405. A few months ago, the gardens of Kingsley Avenue opened onto this rough grassland. A trackway took you through the copse and the little beck to Holt Farm. Those with courage, and bicycles, could go further to the looming Cookridge Hall and wander through the ruins of neglected kitchen gardens. Grass grew to the height of a child. All year long, wood was collected there for the bonfire feast, and zealously protected from Wreckers. This was a sacred place for children, but all knew of its unlucky reputation. Nothing prospered there.

Further up the hill, Holt Park Village had been built during the early seventies; on all sides new buildings were insinuated into narrow plots of land, yet the field remained untouched. Devil's Field. Nothing prospered there. They had tried to put buildings there in the past, it was said, but none would stand. Something wrong with the foundations. There was an underground lake at Devil's Field. Tunnels beneath a certain gorse-ring were sought each Summer, and never found. A variant on the lake story, told that something had 'gone wrong' with the drainage at Holt Park - instead of linking to the System, it ran downhill and collected beneath the field. You could not build on Devil's Field - no deep foundations stand there.

You couldn't build on Devil's Field but you could certainly dump there. It became a builder's spoil heap - glassy accretions of concrete formed strange lunar landscapes amongst the grass. Householders threw their garden leavings there. Others came to hide their night's work in the concrete dens. Broken bottles, used condoms, a tramp's fireplace, children's toys part-buried in stone. The Village-builders were not the first to leave their refuse on the site. Underneath the grass were cracked and broken grave-stones.

Devil's Field was haunted, but none could say by what. A man had disappeared there, it was said. Set off to reach the other side, and never made it to the fence. Still others would tell you of the tramp that died in the gorse-ring, whose body had lain there all the long hot Summer. Completely desiccated, they said. Each year the gorse-rings moved. Successive waves of children pushed their way through in annual trepidation.

One explanation for the unlucky nature of the place went back to its first owner. All this land had once belonged to Kirkstall Abbey. Following the dissolution, it was said to have been bought by a defrocked monk. At Cookridge Hall had lived Thomas Kirke, 17th Century composer, collector, astronomer, mason, and alchemist. In nearby Moseley Wood, he constructed interconnecting geometric pathways, and in the Norman church at Adel, he commissioned a heraldic window for the vestry. Those devotees of Kirke and his close friend, the antiquarian Ralph Thoresby, praise them as Yorkshire worthies: there is a local hinting that he felt some need for divine intercession.

The Hall passed through many owners, eventually becoming an institute for epileptics, and now a carefully manicured golf club in landscaped grounds. But a few years ago, it formed part of a peculiar landscape of fear for the local children. Always, somehow 'not right'.

After dark, Devil's Field was a place for gangs, riding over childish terrors with teenage bravado. One of these gangs organised a late summer ritual of hedge-hopping and apple-scrumping. On a particular evening, shortly before nearly killing themselves with the cider they had brewed in a tin bath, those gang members who lived at the bottom of the hill agreed to meet with those who lived at the top. As the story goes, the bottom-enders could hear the top-enders singing and shouting a few streets away, eventually catching sight of them about a hundred yards away, just crossing into the field. Moments later, the three boys came running at breakneck speed straight past their friends, with no intention of stopping: one yelling at the top of his voice. Shrugging their shoulders (as only 14 year-old boys can) and assuming some stupid trick, the latter party continued to the appointed meeting place, climbing up a grassy rise that covered the builders' rubble. As they crested the rise and looked towards the tall trees of the copse, a vast and luminous shape seemed suspended in the air. It was white, shining. One of the party described it as a 'ten foot tall Chrysanthemum Fountain' - only a firework could capture his impression of glistening, cold flames. No braver than their predecessors, they turned and ran - 'bricking it', in the vernacular.

This curious event was carefully omitted from all gang records. Both parties maintained a discreet silence over the matter.

Nothing more might ever have been thought of the whole affair had not, a few years later, a group of lads in a pub turned to discussing Devil's Field. One related the tale of how he, and two companions, had gone into the field one night. They had gone over to the copse, and suddenly before their shocked gaze a white and luminous light had risen from the ground. He was surprised to find that one of those present had been in the second party that night, and could more than corroborate his story.

This event thus entered the dubious record of Devil's Field. What was it? A ten foot will o' the wisp? Marsh gas, or methane effluvia from the buried waste? Who knows. Even if perfectly explainable by science, it is unlikely to be expunged from the local catalogue of 'hauntings'. Or is it? Now that the name, Devil's Field, is erased from the mind-map, have its terrors also ceased to exist?

Perhaps those new residents of Adel Meadows, with their elegant gabling and matched garages, carefully arranged forecourt shrubberies where the gorse-rings used to gather, perhaps they would care to tell us?

A Yorkshire tale of presences and mysteries, related for us by Jo Hirons from Northern Earth 86

Doppelganger (bilocation)

Doppelganger: a ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts its fleshly counterpart.

Do you have an exact double somewhere in the world? Can a person be in two places at once? There are many intriguing accounts throughout history of people who claim to have either encountered apparitions of themselves - their doppelgangers - or have experienced the phenomenon of bilocation, being in two separate locations at the very same time.

"Doppelganger" is German for "double walker" - a shadow self that is thought to accompany every person. Traditionally, it is said that only the owner of the doppelganger can see this phantom self, and that it can be a harbinger of death. Occasionally, however, a doppelganger can be seen by a person's friends or family, resulting in quite a bit of confusion.

In instances of bilocation, a person can either spontaneously or willingly project his or her double, known as a "wraith," to a remote location. This double is indistinguishable from the real person and can interact with others just as the real person would.

Famous Deaths Attributed to the Doppelganger

Percy Bysshe Shelley

On 8 July 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet, drowned in the Bay of Spezia near Lerici. On 15 August, while staying at Pisa, Mary Shelley wrote a letter to Maria Gisborne in which she relayed Percy's claims to her that he had met his own doppelgänger. A week after Mary's nearly fatal miscarriage, in the early hours of 23 June, Percy had had a nightmare about the house collapsing in a flood, and

... talking it over the next morning he told me that he had had many visions lately — he had seen the figure of himself which met him as he walked on the terrace & said to him — "How long do you mean to be content" — No very terrific words & certainly not prophetic of what has occurred. But Shelley had often seen these figures when ill; but the strangest thing is that Mrs W[illiams] saw him. Now Jane though a woman of sensibility, has not much imagination & is not in the slightest degree nervous — neither in dreams or otherwise. She was standing one day, the day before I was taken ill, [15 June] at a window that looked on the Terrace with Trelawny — it was day — she saw as she thought Shelley pass by the window, as he often was then, without a coat or jacket — he passed again — now as he passed both times the same way — and as from the side towards which he went each time there was no way to get back except past the window again (except over a wall twenty feet from the ground) she was struck at seeing him pass twice thus & looked out & seeing him no more she cried — "Good God can Shelley have leapt from the wall? Where can he be gone?" Shelley, said Trelawny — "No Shelley has past — What do you mean?" Trelawny says that she trembled exceedingly when she heard this & it proved indeed that Shelley had never been on the terrace & was far off at the time she saw him.

Percy Shelley's drama Prometheus Unbound (1820) contains the following passage in Act I: "Ere Babylon was dust, / The Magus Zoroaster, my dear child, / Met his own image walking in the garden. / That apparition, sole of men, he saw. / For know there are two worlds of life and death: / One that which thou beholdest; but the other / Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit / The shadows of all forms that think and live / Till death unite them and they part no more...."

John Donne

Izaak Walton claimed that John Donne, the English metaphysical poet, saw his wife's doppelgänger in 1612 in Paris, on the same night as the stillbirth of his daughter.

Two days after their arrival there, Mr. Donne was left alone, in that room in which Sir Robert, and he, and some other friends had dined together. To this place Sir Robert return'd within half an hour; and, as he left, so he found Mr. Donne alone; but, in such Extasie, and so alter'd as to his looks, as amaz'd Sir Robert to behold him: insomuch that he earnestly desired Mr. Donne to declare what had befaln him in the short time of his absence? to which, Mr. Donne was not able to make a present answer: but, after a long and perplext pause, did at last say, I have seen a dreadful Vision since I saw you: I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms: this, I have seen since I saw you. To which, Sir Robert reply'd; Sure Sir, you have slept since I saw you; and, this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake. To which Mr. Donnes reply was: I cannot be surer that I now live, then that I have not slept since I saw you: and am, as sure, that at her second appearing, she stopt, and look'd me in the face, and vanisht.

This account first appears in the edition of Life of Dr John Donne published in 1675, and is attributed to "a Person of Honour... told with such circumstances, and such asseveration, that... I verily believe he that told it me, did himself believe it to be true." At the time Donne was indeed extremely worried about his pregnant wife, and was going through severe illness himself. However, R. C. Bald points out that Walton's account "is riddled with inaccuracies. He says that Donne crossed from London to Paris with the Drurys in twelve days, and that the vision occurred two days later; the servant sent to London to make inquiries found Mrs Donne still confined to her bed in Drury House. Actually, of course, Donne did not arrive in Paris until more than three months after he left England, and his wife was not in London but in the Isle of Wight. The still-born child was buried on 24 January.... Yet as late as 14 April Donne in Paris was still ignorant of his wife's ordeal." In January, Donne was still at Amiens. His letters do not support the story as given.

Abraham Lincoln

Carl Sandburg's biography contains the following:

A queer dream or illusion had haunted Lincoln at times through the winter. On the evening of his election he had thrown himself on one of the haircloth sofas at home, just after the first telegrams of November 6 had told him he was elected President, and looking into a bureau mirror across the room he saw himself full length, but with two faces.
It bothered him; he got up; the illusion vanished; but when he lay down again there in the glass again were two faces, one paler than the other. He got up again, mixed in the election excitement, forgot about it; but it came back, and haunted him. He told his wife about it; she worried too.
A few days later he tried it once more and the illusion of the two faces again registered to his eyes. But that was the last; the ghost since then wouldn't come back, he told his wife, who said it was a sign he would be elected to a second term, and the death pallor of one face meant he wouldn't live through his second term.

This is adapted from Washington in Lincoln's Time (1895) by Noah Brooks, who claimed that he had heard it from Lincoln himself on 9 November 1864, at the time of his re-election, and that he had printed an account "directly after." He also claimed that the story was confirmed by Mary Todd Lincoln, and partially confirmed by Private Secretary John Hay (who thought it dated from Lincoln's nomination, not his election). Brooks's version is as follows (in Lincoln's own words):

It was just after my election in 1860, when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day and there had been a great "hurrah, boys," so that I was well tired out, and went home to rest, throwing myself down on a lounge in my chamber. Opposite where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it (and here he got up and placed furniture to illustrate the position), and looking in that glass I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler — say five shades — than the other. I got up, and the thing melted away, and I went off, and in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it — nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang as if something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home again that night I told my wife about it, and a few days afterward I made the experiment again, when (with a laugh), sure enough! the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was somewhat worried about it. She thought it was a "sign" that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.

Lincoln was known to be superstitious, and old mirrors will occasionally produce double images; whether this Janus illusion can be counted as a doppelgänger is perhaps debatable, though probably no more than other such claims of doppelgängers.

Emilie Sagée

Robert Dale Owen was responsible for writing down the singular case of Emilie Sagée. He was told this anecdote by Julie von Güldenstubbe, a Latvian aristocrat. Von Güldenstubbe reported that in the year 1845–46, at the age of 13, she witnessed, along with audiences of between 13 and 42 children, her 32-year-old French teacher Sagée bilocate, in broad daylight, inside her school, Pensionat von Neuwelcke. The actions of Sagée's doppelgänger included:

• Mimicking writing and eating, but with nothing in its hands.
• Moving independently of Sagée, and remaining motionless while she moved.
• Appearing to be in full health at a time when Sagée was badly ill.

Apparently, the doppelgänger also exerted resistance to the touch, but was non-physical (one girl passed through the doppelgänger's body).

Suggested literary texts

• The Dark Half - Stephen King
• William Wilson - Edgar Allan Poe
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Luis Stevenson

sources:
paranormal.about.com
wikipedia
answers.com