More than just Invisible

More than just Invisible

Friday, 19 July 2013

Into the world of the other (Part one)

Into the world of the other
Tiny Cracks (3)

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’.

 His first work, ‘The book of the Damned’ open with these words:

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.



[1] Clark, Jerome: The UFO Book, Visible Ink: 1998, p.200

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