Into the world of the other
Tiny Cracks (3)
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| Faun |
In the second part of
Tiny Cracks, I looked at conspiracy theories and noted that in polite liberal
society, admittance that there are real conspiracies is tantamount to whipping
your todger out at the dinner table. Only one thing is worse than talking about
conspiracies and that is talking about the supernatural. I don’t actually like that
term nor ‘paranormal’. Generally, the former is used by those who disparage the
concept and the latter by those who tend to believe in it.
I don’t fit into
either category and prefer to use the term, ‘Fortean’, named after Charles Fort.
Fort was a philosopher who collected thousands of scraps of newspaper cuttings
of anomalous events; events that made no sense in conventional terms but were
what he called ‘damned data’.
“A procession
of the damned.
By the damned, I mean the excluded.
We shall have a procession of
data that Science has excluded."
He was interested in the whole gamut of unexplained phenomena from falls
of fish from the sky to the ‘wild talent’s that many humans exhibit. However,
as important to him as the actual events he described, were the responses and
explanations of scientists; he poked merciless fun at the pretensions of
scientists to be able to access ultimate knowledge. Fort never took himself too
seriously and his writings, as Jerome Clark put it, ‘combine a ‘distinctive blend of mocking humor, penetrating insight,
and calculated outrageousness[1]".
Fort’s attitude to the phenomena he described was between
belief and outright skepticism; just how it should be. Most of the experiences
for which we could describe by using the terms ‘paranormal’ and ‘supernatural’,
don’t fit into categories accepted by science. As Fort said, they are excluded
from science but still they happen. Below I write about a variety of my own
strange experiences that could be described as ‘fortean’, beginning with my 'imaginary friend'.
My first brush with the world of the weird, though it
seemed natural at the time, was when I was a small child, probably around three
to five. I had a friend who lived in the field behind our house; not a human
friend but a centaur or a faun. At the distance of 46 years or so, the finer
details have been lost, though I can still see his face but I remember him as a
very friendly creature. Sometimes there was another one with him who was
slightly bigger and to me seemed older. None of the images I can find on the
internet capture how I see him in my mind, in particular his face which was
incredibly cheerful and friendly.
I was, of course, the only one who could see him but I
talked to my parents about him and he was a topic of conversation between my
parents and other adults... One of the curious things is that I don’t recall
ever standing next to him in the field only either looking from the garden or
from the house, though I’d wave to him from the window and he would wave back
and talk to me. Unlike some experiences of ‘imaginary friends’ that I’ve read
about, to my mind at the time, he really existed, even though I knew no one
else could see him.
I have the vague impression that I knew he was there to
look after and protect me. I also knew that he wouldn’t always be there. One
day, we were going away on holiday for a few weeks and I was standing around as
my Dad loaded up the motorbike and side car. I looked over towards the field
and saw him standing there and understood straight away that he was going away
too and wouldn’t be back. After we returned from the holiday, I remember my mum
asking me if I had seen my friend and I just replied that he didn’t live here
anymore. Even though no-one else could see him, he was, as that question
suggests, accepted as part of the family, weird as that might seem.
In recent decades, there has been quite a bit of research
on the subject of ‘imaginary friends’ by psychologists and fevered explanations
of what it all means. Of course it might not mean anything at all psychologically
but the phenomenon is an interesting one. Much of what I’ve glanced at on the
net about the subject is very contradictory but all of it agrees that its
origin is psychological rather than real. Now, it’s very unlikely that in 1960s
Liverpool, a half-human creature lived at the bottom of my garden and
communicated with me telepathically. However, I find it intriguing that
something that was apparently created in my mind should have been real enough
for me to interact with over a number of years.
Aside from the studies that relegate ‘imaginary friends’
purely to the realm of the imagination, Mike Hallowell, an author from Britain
has written an interesting book on the subject, Invizikids: the curious enigma of ‘imaginary’ childhood friends
which is summarised in this short article, Invizikids: imaginary childhood
friends. Hallowell interviewed nearly a 100 people from all around the world.
His take on the view of psychologists is amusing and spot on:
“Ask
anyone who has ever heard of the phenomenon what precipitates it and you will
likely receive one of two stock answers. Most psychologists argue that
youngsters create imaginary friends when they are short of siblings to interact
with. If you ain’t got a brother, make one. Short of a sister? Build one in
your head.
Of course, this may well hold true in some cases, but my research has
shown me that the majority of “imaginary” friends actually belong to children
who already have siblings, and it is at this juncture that the second
explanation usually raises its head.
“Ah”, say the psycho-sages, “When there are brothers and sisters at home
taking all the attention then kids will invent an imaginary playmate that they
can ‘keep to themselves’ and don’t have to share.”
So they you have it. Kids with allegedly imaginary friends invent them
either because they have no siblings or because they do have them. This is an
argument which, I would venture, pretty much sows up all the possibilities, but
it is flawed”.
Hallowell breaks ‘imaginary friends’ or Non-Corporeal
Companions (NCCs), as he calls them, into 4 types:
Type 1, Invisikids, look like normal children;
type 2, the Elementals, live outside, often in remote areas and are goblin or
pixie like; type 3, Animals that talk; type 4, Wackies, includes inanimate
objects that talk.
The prevalence of NCCs suggests to Hallowell, and
to an extent to me, that there is something going on that is more complex than
the simple psychological explanation that is you find amongst psychiatrists and
parent websites. It’s worth remembering that C. G. Jung had what could best be
described as an NCC, Philemon, whom he described as walking up and down the
garden with, whilst talking to him. Perhaps, it is with Jung’s concept of the
collective consciousness that we could begin our search for the origin of NCCs
but that is a discussion for another day.
Next up in Part two, time slips and ghostly
cyclists.
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