BRIDGE OF SOULS
The Bridge of Souls in mythology and folklore is the heavenly road souls of the dead must travel in order to get to the afterlife. The most common motif used for the Bridge of Souls is that of the rainbow.
In Hawaii, Polynesia, Austria, Japan and among some Native American tribes, the rainbow is thought to be the path souls take on their way to heaven, and has been called a bridge or ladder to higher or other worlds. The Russians call the rainbow the ‘Gate to Heaven’. In New Zealand dead Maori chiefs are believed to travel up the rainbow to their new home. In parts of Germany and Austria, folklore suggests that children’s souls are led up the rainbow to heaven, and in some parts of England it is considered unlucky to point at a rainbow.
People all over the world have different ways of looking at and understanding rainbows. For some they suggest magical possibilities, for others a rainbow indicates that a project is going to fail - ‘building rainbows in the sky’ - but whenever a rainbow appears, and however rationally it can be explained as a natural phenomenon, even the most hardened sceptic cannot help but be struck by its magic and its beauty.
BROOM
The broom is intimately connected with witches and witchcraft. It was commonly believed that witches anointed their bodies with a salve given to them by the devil that enabled them to fly through the air upon a variety of sticks or stems, including broomsticks. The choice of the broom or besom as a likely means of transport is probably due to the association between brooms and female domesticity, though male witches were thought to ride in this way as well as women.
In Eastern European folklore a broom may be used in exorcism ceremonies to sweep evil spirits out the door. It is also thought that stepping over a broomstick, placing it under your pillow or putting a broom across a threshold will offer protection against evil spirits and ghosts at night.
BROWN LADY
An English manor house in Norfolk has been haunted for nearly 300 years by the so-called ‘Brown Lady’, who is believed to have been captured once on film in one of the most famous spirit photographs ever taken.
Raynham Hall is the seat of the Marquesses of Townshend. The Brown Lady is believed to be the ghost of Lady Dorothy Townshend, wife of the second Marquess of Townshend and sister to Sir Robert Walpole, the first prime minister of England. At the age of 26 Dorothy married Lord Charles Townshend. According to lore when Townshend discovered that Dorothy had been the mistress of Lord Wharton he locked her in her apartment until her death from either a broken heart or chicken pox or a fall down the stairs.
Until 1904 a portrait identified as Lady Dorothy hung in the hall. In the portrait the woman is dressed in brown and has large shining eyes. It was said that the portrait looked normal by day but at night the face became evil looking.
Over the centuries there have been a number of reports of encounters with the Brown Lady at Raynham Hall. In the early nineteenth century George IV allegedly woke in the middle of the night to see a woman dressed in brown. He was said to be so terrified that he refused to stay another hour in the house. In 1835 she was witnessed several times by a Colonel Loftus, a guest staying in the castle. Not long after, novelist Captain Frederick Mar-ryat was invited to a ball at the house. He allegedly encountered the ghost in the corridor and when it grinned diabolically at him he shot at it. The bullet was said to have gone right through the ghost and was later discovered lodged in a door behind where the ghost appeared.
In 1926 the ghost was seen again by the young Lord Townshend. In 1936 Lady Townshend hired a photographer called Indra Shira to take photographs of the house. While taking the photographs Shira noticed what looked like a shadowy figure dressed in white moving down the stairs. He asked his assistant to take a photograph and although the assistant could not see anything he aimed his camera in the direction indicated by Shira. When the photograph was developed the Brown Lady appeared as an outline wearing what looked like a wedding gown and veil. The photograph was published in Country Life magazine on 1 December 1936 and became an overnight sensation. Experts past and present have examined it and no evidence of fraud has ever been found.
BROWNIE
In Scottish folklore brownies are kindly spirits, also known as the bwca in Wales and the pixies in Cornwall. When they appear they are believed to look like small men - about three feet high - and are unkempt and wild in appearance. They are said to become attached to particular families and are happy to do chores for the family at night.
According to lore brownies don’t like to be offered payment for their work, either because they are too proud or because they are compassionate by nature, but they do enjoy and expect gifts of cream and good food. If gifts aren’t left out, or their work is criticized, brownies are said to become mischievous and cause trouble.
There are different stories about the origin of the name. One of the most plausible is that in the early seventeenth century, when the Covenanters in Scotland were being persecuted for their beliefs, many of them were forced to hides in caves and secret places, and food was carried to them by friends. They dressed themselves in a fantastic manner, and if seen in the night they would be taken for fairies. One band of Covenanters was led by a hunchback named Brown who, being small and active would slip out at night with some of the others and bring back the provisions left by their friends. Those who knew the truth named Brown and his band the ‘Brownies’.
BROWNING CIRCLE
The Browning circle was organized by nineteenth-century medium D D Home for poets Robert and Elizabeth Browning. The activities of the circle converted Elizabeth to spiritualism, but her husband condemned and ridiculed Home, calling him a toady, a fraud and a leech in a poem entitled ‘Mr Sludge, the Medium’ (1864).
The Brownings met Home in 1855 when they attended a séance he held for a wealthy couple who wanted to establish contact with their son, who had died three years previously. At the séance they witnessed table tilting, ghostly hands and rapping. Elizabeth was amazed, but Robert was unimpressed and expressed publicly his loathing for Home, suggesting that the whole thing could easily have been faked, as Home always wore loose clothing that could conceal tubes and strings to produce the phenomena. No one knows what caused Robert’s hatred, although some believe it may have been his low opinion of what he called Home’s ‘effeminacy’. Homosexuality was illegal in 1855, and there were many rumours of Home’s affairs with young men. The Brownings’ disagreement over spiritualism was the only public quarrel the couple had; Robert loathed Home so much that Elizabeth stopped talking about it. Punch magazine took Robert’s side, using rich imagery to suggest Elizabeth’s gullibility.
BUGUET, EDOUARD [1841–1901]
Edouard Buguet was a famous spirit photographer during the 1860s and 1870s until he was exposed as a fraud in 1875. Buguet’s photographs were remarkably clear, unlike the misty pictures from other contemporary spirit photos of the era. The French photographer went to extraordinary lengths to impose ghostly images upon his photos, using live models at first but later switching to sculpted heads when he began to fear being exposed.
In 1875 Buguet’s studio was raided after a tip-off from a dissatisfied customer. His tricks were exposed, and he was convicted of fraud and sent to prison for a year. Buguet never again worked as a photographer, but his photographs have become collectors’ items, with some believing that he did actually succeed in photographing ghosts.
BULL, TITUS [1871–1946]
Titus Bull was an American physician and neurologist who believed that spirit possession was at the root of many illnesses. In the 1920s and 1930s he worked in New York City and treated many of his patients with spiritualist therapy. With the help of medium Carolyn Duke, he claimed to treat and cure manic depressives, schizophrenics and alcoholics.
Bull believed that possessing spirits entered their victims through the base of the brain, the solar plexus or the reproductive organs. He thought that these spirits were not evil, just confused, and that they needed help to pass to their proper plane and leave the victim in peace. In 1932 he published a pamphlet entitled Analysis of Unusual Experiences in Healing Relative to Deceased Minds and Results of Materialism Foreshadowed. In it he suggests that spirit possession, although not a cause of mental illness, is a complicating factor and that trauma and stress can attract spirits to a person.
Bull practised general medicine in a time when little attention was paid to the mind-body connection in health, but as he was not systematic in his explanations, his work is often ignored by medical and psychical research societies.
BURIAL RITES
The idea of a journey to the afterlife is evident in every culture and every age, and it has always been considered a duty of the living to set the dead on their path to the other world. In primitive times symbols were carved on rocks and implements and weapons buried with the dead to help them in the next life. In Greece a gold coin was buried with the dead to pay the ferryman to take them across the River of Death. The Egyptians had the most elaborate burial rituals, which lasted for days. Today the idea of a journey can still be said to exist when we lay flowers on graves to provide beauty and peace in the hope the spirit will find it on the other side.
As well as preparations for the journey to the afterlife, the other important part of ancient burial rites was to make sure the spirit found peace and did not return to haunt the living. Some ancient cultures maintained contact with the dead, keeping artefacts of the deceased so that communication could take place with the help of a go-between. In many places in the world ancestral spirits and ancestor worship still play an important role, and burial rites create a doorway from this world to the next.
Gradually burial rites in the West have taken on the idea of paying respect to the person and his or her family, and the ritual has become a way to say goodbye. It is an important time because, according to psychics, the bereaved need to let go of the spirit so it can go on its way, and the spirit needs to let go of the bereaved. Burial rites therefore still represent a bridge between physical life and spiritual life.
BURUBURU
Buruburu, meaning the sound of shivering, is a terrible ghost from Japanese folklore that for reasons unknown is said to lurk in forests and graveyards in the form on an old person, who is sometimes one-eyed. According to legend it attaches itself to its victim’s spine and causes a chill to run down them, or in the worst case causes them to die of fright.
BYRD, EVELYN [1707–1737]
The ghost of Evelyn Byrd, daughter of William Byrd II, an early American colonial settler and founder of the city of Richmond, Virginia, is reputed to haunt the grounds of her childhood home, Westover, on the James River.
Born in 1707, Evelyn was sent to England at the age of 10 to be educated, and at the age of 16 she fell in love with a man her family considered unsuitable, possibly because they thought him too old for her. At 19 Evelyn returned to Westover depressed and heartbroken. She withdrew from all company except for that of her friend and neighbour, Anne Harrison, whom she met almost daily in a grove in the plantations. For ten years Evelyn wasted away, until her death in 1737.
Before her death Evelyn made a pact with Anne that if one of them was to die the other would return as a friendly ghost, and, true to her promise, Evelyn’s ghost is alleged to have been seen by Anne smiling in the grove where they used to meet. Over the years Evelyn’s ghost has been seen dressed in white or green lace many times at Westover. She is never frightening, and when she appears she always smiles.
BYRON, LORD GEORGE GORDON [1788–1824]
One of the greatest poets of English literature, Lord Byron was deeply fascinated by the supernatural and would investigate tales of hauntings himself. As a young man Byron reported seeing a phantom monk in the family home of Newstead Abbey, who may or may not have died at the hands of one of Byron’s ancestors.
The phantom’s appearance was thought to herald misfortune for the family, and Byron claimed to see the ‘goblin friar’ again shortly before his ill-fated marriage to heiress Anne Milbanke in 1815. He described it as:
… monk arrayed
In cowl, and beads, and dusky garb appeared
Now in the moonlight, and now lapsed in shade,
With steps that trod as heavy, yet unheard.
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CABINET
A box or confined space thought to attract, store and release spiritual forces, enabling a medium to produce phenomena. The use of cabinets to manifest paranormal activity began in the mid-1800s with the Davenport brothers. The brothers had themselves bound and locked in a wooden cabinet, where they were supposedly incapable of moving, but somehow musical instruments would play as if guided by spirit hands. Their act was a huge success, and until the early twentieth century cabinets or black curtains for the medium to retire behind were all the rage. Cabinets are rarely used by modern mediums.
CAGLIOSTRO, COUNT ALESSANDRO [1743–1795]
A charismatic figure in the courts of eighteenth-century Europe, Cagliostro was a magician, alchemist and psychic healer. Born in 1743 in Palermo, Sicily, to a poor family, Cagliostro turned his natural psychic talent into a lucrative fortune-telling business. He travelled to Malta at the age of 23 to study the occult and later in London joined the Freemasons. Using the name ‘The Divine Cagliostro’, he spent most of his adult life among the royal courts of Europe, performing various occult arts, such as healing by the laying on of hands, conjuring spirits and producing an ‘elixir of immortal life’ with the aid of his beautiful wife, Lorenza.
Cagliostro’s success created resentment, and in 1785 in France he and his wife fell out of favour with the Queen over the Affair of the Diamond Necklace’. The Comtesse de La Motte set him up by swindling 1.6 million francs for a diamond necklace and then accused Cagliostro of stealing it. Alessandro and Lorenza were sent to the Bastille and tried for fraud.
