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 Happy October, all! In honour of All Hallow's Eve my focus this month is ghost stories.
Spirituality? Ghost stories? Absolutely! Ghost stories and fiction in the paranormal genre reflect ideas about spirituality, culture, beliefs. Besides being fun to read, they offer us rich cuisine for thought as we investigate. Ghost stories reflect the beliefs and fears of the predominant culture. And, what better time than October, when the winds turn chill and the hearth fires are lit again in suddenly cold twilights?
This month's selection is a short novel called The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill (Overlook Press: New York, 2007). In this and another story by Hill, The Woman in Black, we encounter innocent people who come into contact with malevolent forces and get burnt, even though these parties have nothing to do with the original victims. They are fine books but if you are of a skittish mentality, do not read when alone in the house!
Spiritually speaking there are some intriguing ideas inherent in The Man in the Picture. The plot revolves around an antique painting which brings negative energy, obsession, perhaps possession, and ultimately death to those who acquire it. Several elements here are worth noting:
The concept of inanimate objects conveying power. Sir James Frazier's seminal work on magic and spiritual beliefs going back to primitive times (The Golden Bough, discusses this in depth in Chapter 55, The Transference of Evil, part 1, The Transference to Inanimate Objects).
- Victricius, the Bishop of Rouen in the 4th century, encouraged the veneration of holy objects because they were in some ways the presence of the Divine.
- People in the frontier of the declining Roman Empire doubtless saw relics as a conduit to the saints for intervention on their behalf in what must have been grim, dark times in which there was much uncertainty. During WW1, small Bibles, rosaries, crosses and things which could be held were very popular. Again, very grim, uncertain times, and an idea that the inanimate object had some salvific, healing power.
- There are the stories of soldiers who were shot but saved because the bullet hit their cross, or their Bible. In Voudoun, there are many combinations of objects used in and for spells as in many other belief systems.
- Many Christians believe the Host and holy water to have special power to ward off evil. An example in fiction would be to ward off a vampire by holding up a crucifix or to throw holy water or a communion wafer at the manifestation of an evil spirit.
- In the famous Edwardian ghost story, W.W. Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw, whomever has the paw can make three wishes....alas, they are usually curses....the man who wishes his son was alive soon has a revenant knocking at his door.
- To this day, holy water is used in blessing of people and places.
In The Man in the Picture, the painting of a carnival scene in Venice is the conveyer belt for powerful, timeless, maleficence. Even after the death of the victim for whom the picture was commissioned, owning it becomes fatal for subsequent (innocent) owners. The idea of an inanimate object conveying evil to whoever receives it is not new: M. R. James' The Casting of the Runes, in my opinion one of the scariest ghost stories ever written, employs the use of a rune on a piece of paper. If it is accepted by anyone *(usually unknowingly: "Here, sir, you have dropped your newspaper..." "Thank you," says the new subject of the curse, taking the rune hidden inside the Daily Mail). In Hill's story, the cycle begins when a woman is replaced by her near-fiancee with another love. The woman, whose name is Clarissa Vigo, becomes consumed with hatred, rage, and lives only for revenge against her ex and his new love. (Note the name: Clarissa means "clear" and Vigo is very close to the word vigor which means active force/an effective binding force).
The newlyweds receive the painting as a wedding gift from Clarissa along with a threatening letter to the groom. In this case it's a gift which keeps on giving long after the original victims are gone...its malevolence seems to target anyone to acquires the picture. Anyone who owns the painting ends up with post traumatic stress, anxiety, obsession, descends into virtual possession, and ultimately, death. The latest victim is always seen in the picture being overpowered by other characters at the masked party, and his face is always the epitome of horror and fear. He is helpless and taken over by dark, powerful forces over which he has no control. Hold those thoughts a moment.
So, unlike many ghost stories in which the good guys win, the good guys always lose here (the same is true in Hill's The Woman in Black). Most movies and novels cater to our wish for the good person to come out on top. Thus, we are disquieted when in this case, they do not. It's disturbing that innocent people were polluted indiscriminately even after the original victim and for that matter, Clarissa, were long gone, that karma doesn't seem to be happening since they're good but receiving evil in return, that malevolence doesn't die with the perpetrator, and that an inanimate object, a painting, is as dangerous as a loaded Kalashnikov with a sensitive trigger.
Reading this story as a chaplain gave me a new slant on all this. The situation seemed so similar to those repeated daily in the hospital: someone is "just walking down the street" and no matter how much bran he eats, how many miles he runs, how much he puts in the plate at church: he learns he has metastatic lung cancer and is not long for this world. The patient who is diagnosed with COPD and has never smoked. Any patient with a serious and deadly diagnosis who feels out of control and becomes devoured by (the cancer, or whatever the disease or condition). In The Man in the Painting and in reality, at times prayer doesn't change the outcome. If you possess either the painting or the disease, you're a goner. It's the dilemma of Job: everything's just fine.... and then suddenly, it's not.
I discussed this whole idea with Bill Kupersmith (recently retired professor of English literature and recent graduate of a CPE residency), with whom I've collaborated on several published papers on spirituality, healing and fiction. Bill adds "traditional Christians have a problem with the supernatural because (1) dead people are either in Heaven or Hell, so there is no way they can affect us here on Earth and (2) even if they could, God would not allow innocent people to suffer from their malevolence." Bill posits that (2) is nonsense because if we accept that God permits the innocent to suffer and die as a result of natural forces (hurricanes, tornadoes, epidemics, war), why do we have issues about people suffering as a result of supernatural forces? "If I can die from a tree falling on me, why not from a witch's curse?" he asks. "My argument in favour of a good God's allowing a tree to fall on me (God isn't going to repeal the law of gravity for my personal benefit) would mean in the case of supernatural forces that they must have a consistency of their own. And that makes sense. If we expect blessings to work, we might expect curses to work too." Those of you who are familiar with Larry Dossey's book Be Careful What You Pray For will recognize this argument.
Evil, disease, death occur regardless of whether anyone 'deserves' them. Chaplains are often asked "why me, why is God doing this to me?" Both at the hospital and in The Man in the Picture, evil befalls good people in a seemingly random way. Unlike the book, the hospital is real. Bad things do happen to good people. Coping with that is one of the ultimate spiritual challenges in life.
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