Mystery, Magic & Nazi Gold
The topics explored by David Marsden can bring mystery and
magic back into lives made sterile by technology. Visiting a fortune teller may seem like
harmless fun. At any psychic fair you can buy cheap crystals and
symbols etc offering protection against supernatural agencies.
Doctors and psychiatrists provide psychoactive drugs to manage symptoms
caused by relationship problems, and criticize alternative
approaches to them. Religious organizations may condemn New Age
ideas, yet may provide exorcists to kick out the demons or
ghosts that they do not believe in. Martyn Carruthers
Demon - Part 1
I was a psychotherapist for most of my adult
life, and a fairly good one by all accounts. During those years
I specialized in too many things to be called a specialist. I also
pursued my interest in occult phenomena. I was always fascinated
when clients described events that are normally called magical,
or at least weird. Since retiring, I have become a ghost researcher.
There is a dark side, of course. Such interests can
become obsessive and at times people may lose their ability to discern between
their
objective or real worlds and subjective or imagined worlds.
And some phenomena seem to bridge these two worlds. Ghosts for
example ... and demons.
Ghost-hunting has become my pastime and I have many
"personal" ghost stories ... including some that I do not wish to
repeat. Demons are different. Demons can possess people and cause people to
do horrible things. This case is about demon possession.
|
Demon Possession |
The Catholic
Church defines true signs of possession as superhuman strength,
accompanied by fits and convulsions; personality changes;
predicting the future or other secret information; and understanding
and conversing in languages previously unknown to the victim. |
Halloween
In Canada, Halloween is a time for foolish parties
and mostly-harmless pranks. In Central Europe, this is the "Day of the
Dead" - a family holiday devoted to visiting graveyards and
placing candles and flowers on the graves of dead family members - who hopefully
rest in peace. Forget accomplishing anything else on that day in much of
Central Europe.
Halloween is a pre-Christian festival that was
practiced by Celtic and Slavic tribes. The doors to the world of the dead
are supposed to open, and the living can communicate with the dead - and
complete any outstanding or unfinished business. But (there is
always a but) other entities can cross over too - even entities that never
lived and so cannot be called dead. (Undead perhaps?)
I do not subscribe to most concepts of good and evil.
I have prejudged events too many times and seen too many good intentions
produce disgusting consequences and evil acts
do great good - and what is the road to Hell paved with? Yet some entities
seem to exist to hurt - to torment - to cause suffering.
|
Demonic Possession |
Early Puritan
ministers and later Protestant clergy agreed on similar symptoms as
the Catholic priests for declaring a person to be demonically
possessed. There was often ignorance about a person's medical
condition and behavior. |
Poland
This story started with an invitation from a colleague,
Martyn Carruthers, whose training programs often takes him into
the old "Iron Curtain" countries. Martyn was in Warsaw, Poland, and he
suggested that I visit him for Halloween. He said that he would enjoy
walking with me around some places that might more than satisfy my need
for ghost stories. Well ... why not? I bought a ticket.
Warsaw is a haunted city. The atrocities
by Russian and German troops are almost beyond
telling. Warsaw seems to have many spirits that cannot
rest in peace. The old city of Warsaw was flattened by German troops
at the end of World War two, and was replaced by grey socialist apartment
buildings.
Over the weekend we toured the old town, some monuments
of the once-Jewish ghetto and the old Russian Cytadel.
We walked through the beautiful Kampinowska Forest, the lungs of Warsaw,
which hides a Nazi killing ground. And we walked around a cemetery
near the center of town.
I have NEVER seen such a busy cemetery. People in their
thousands - or perhaps in their tens of thousands - were leaving candles
and flowers by the ton. Seen from the outside, a dense black
smoke hung over the cemetery like a bizarre Hollywood special effect.
After dark, the Warsaw cemeteries had so many burning candles that they
were probably brighter than during the day.
Ghosts?
Perhaps at the Umschlagplatz - a monument where Warsaw Jews were loaded
onto cattle trains destined for the Treblinka extermination camp. We went there
late, when it was dark, cold and deserted. I felt an echo of the terror
of the many people condemned to die because of their race, and I recalled
the similar genocides of North American native tribes.
Martyn asked if I would like to witness a session the next
day. He said that the client thought that he (the client) might be possessed -
and that he (Martyn) had delayed the appointment until I was in Poland.
What a friend! We walked to my hotel near Saski Park, and enjoyed Polish
Zubrowka vodka - flavored with buffalo grass - a friendly spirit,
Martyn called it.
Therapist vs The Rapist
Martyn's client arrived the next morning. Jan looked about
sixty-few, and he spoke good English with a south England accent. He seemed
well-educated and worked as a lawyer in the city of Poznan. He had visited
Toronto, and we briefly discussed why Canadians like American baseball.
Jan's voice became quieter and I leaned forward to hear
him better. Then his face and posture changed abruptly. He leaned
forward with squinting eyes and spoke in a hissing voice: "Do you know
why your wife died? She hated your work ... and you should have never
married a patient." Hair stand up on
my neck ... NOBODY knew that story! Not even Martyn. But ...
Jan was looking at me. "What's the matter?
" he asked. "Did I say something ...?"
Martyn asked Jan some rather ordinary questions about his
history. Jan mentioned that he had been raised by his mother who had died the
previous year. He said that his maternal grandfather
was murdered by Germans during the second world war and that he knew
nothing about his father's parents.
He
added that he had a problem that he wanted to get rid of. He said that
many people have asked him to stop frightening them - and many people
avoid him.
I was still shaken by
Jan's hurtful comments. Short, sharp, and designed to cause suffering.
And true. But how could he have known?
Suddenly Jan was hissing something about Martyn's
son ... I was surprised that Martyn had told Jan about his (Martyn's)
personal life, and perhaps Martyn had told Jan something he had
heard or guessed about my personal life. I felt angry.
After a moment Jan was again friendly and intelligent.
I asked Jan how often he had met Martyn - Jan said that this was the
first actual meeting, although they had made three or four brief
telephone calls. I asked Jan what he knew about me - Jan said that he
had expected to meet a therapist from Canada - nothing else.
What was going on? I signaled to Martyn that I
wanted to talk outside the room. Martyn offered to make more tea and
I asked what was happening. "I have no idea", Martyn
replied, "Interesting isn't it? I don't know how he knew so
much about my son. Was he right about you too?"
"Spot on", I murmured. We returned to Jan with
black tea and lemon pieces. "No vodka?" Jan joked, "This
is Poland, you know".
Jan's story was peculiar. People were avoiding him
and not saying why. Some people would become really angry and twice
recently he had even been struck - physically hit - by strangers. Jan
said that an angry woman called him a "straszny demon
cierpienia" - a horrible demon of suffering. Jan's ex-wife
would not meet Jan, saying that she had been hurt enough by Jan's cruelty.
It had started, Jan said, with a visit to the Auschwitz
concentration camp, a Nazi museum in southern Poland. Jan had taken
some Canadian relatives there, and he had sat on a bench near a gas chamber while his
relatives wandered around. Jan had been there before - as a child on a school
trip. Jan said he
despised the place and wished it destroyed. He said that on this last trip,
he found a place to sit in the sun and wait. He said
that he went to sleep while sitting there.
Jan said that he might have slept there for a half
hour, and that he dreamed that he was touring - or inspecting - the
KZ Auschwitz death camp at the height of its human destruction.
Jan said that in his dream, he not only witnessed but participated in
atrocities. He said that he awoke with a
feeling of coldness to his bones, although it was a warm and
sunny day. He dismissed the dream as brought on by the
surroundings.
Since that day Jan said that he could deeply
offend people without knowing how he did it. He said that would
"blank out" for a second or two, as he had done with us
twice. Jan's doctor called it fatigue, Jan said, and told
Jan to learn to control the stress of his work.
I am a
competent hypnotist. Martyn asked Jan if he would care to explore that
dream in Auschwitz. Jan nodded and sighed. "Yes", he said,
"perhaps it's time".
Martyn invited him to sit in a large comfortable chair and gestured for me
to begin a hypnotic induction. I asked Jan to close his eyes and relax his body - and
gently recall that visit - and that's when the trouble began.
At first Jan relaxed, then his face contorted. I
could feel chicken skin on my arms and back, and stopped
talking. Martyn continued.
"Jan - remember - you are in Auschwitz - you
are waiting for your friends - you are sleeping in warm sun..."
And so on, with suggestions for remembering that event. "You go
to sleep - and you start to dream ... and what is happening in the dream?"
Jan convulsed in his chair. His tongue seemed to stretch
and then retracted. "Nein"
Jan said, "Er ist meine - meine!". Martyn said a few words
in German to Jan and then switched back to English. "Jan - you are
dreaming a strange dream - what is happening?"
"Destruction" said Jan, with his eyes closed.
"Death. Angels of death are here. They feed here."
"Describe what you see" I
asked ... Jan's face distorted soundlessly.
"No ... it sees me ... it's coming ... it
is inside me ... NO!!!"
I was softly panting by this time. I have interviewed
many patients and heard endless strange stories - and some of the stories were
very weird - and some of my patients were diagnosed as psychotic. But who
can get used to this?
|
Many signs of demon possession
can be explained. Seizures and convulsions indicate epilepsy.
Personality changes indicate stress or
schizophrenia. Obscene acts indicate mental disorders. Sexual
thoughts are rather commonplace. But knowledge of future events or
secret information is considered by many to be spiritual or demonic. |
"Jan - what is happening?"
I continued, "Jan? ... What's going on?" Jan
swore - I don't know if in Polish or German. Then he spoke in English - something like
"It's inside me ... and it's hungry ... it feeds on suffering ... death
is an end ... it wants life ... any life ... my life"
"Why you?" asked Martyn, reasonably.
Auschwitz could be a feast for such an entity. But why should it want a
small cup of soup like Jan? Jan screamed again,
and I wondered if Martyn's neighbors might call the police. "My father
is German!" said Jan. "A Nazi! Nobody knows! He raped my mother!
My mother killed him! Nobody knows! But this thing knows everything!"
Exorcize Your Options
"Ask it if it knows where the Breslau gold is
buried" I said. "Go on, ask!"
Martyn looked at me strangely. THAT was not on his list of questions. "G-g-g-g-old?" sputtered Jan.
"Yes" I said quickly, before Martyn
interfered. "The gold hidden by the Nazis before the Russians
captured Breslau in 1944."
Before coming to Poland I had read about Polish ghosts.
Every castle is polluted with them of course, if you believe tourist
literature. I don't, but my research pointed again and again to the German province of
Silesia - now the Polish province of Slask. Although this may be one of the
most haunted places in Europe, not much is available about it in English.
It is the borderland between Germany, Poland and Czech Republic - an area
with a long history of wealth, poverty and violence.
The Polish city of Wroclaw was, for a time, the German
city of Breslau. Before the war Breslau had been a rich city. There had
been centuries of gold mining in Silesia. Yet little of it's wealth had
been found - unless it had been secretly spirited off to Berlin or Moscow.
There are many stories of hidden treasures in the Sowie (Owl) mountains of
Silesia - the same area where the Nazis developed secret weapons, nerve gas
and tried to build an atomic bomb in underground factories.
"Y-y-yes" whispered Jan,
hissing a word that sounded like "Bireeser". "Is Bireeser a place or a person?" asked
Martyn gently.
"Yes ... no! ... Bireeser! ... no! ... yes"
mumbled Jan, "no! ... yesss ... but not my father ... not my
father! Nein! Gruss Gott in Himmel! Not my father!!" Jan started
hyperventilating.
But I was already bringing Jan out of trance, suggesting
that he feel forgetful and relaxed. We drank our now-cold tea in
an exhausted silence, until Martyn made an appointment to meet Jan the next day.
We went into the old town of Warsaw for dinner, discussing what
Jan had told us. I was bursting with excitement that a famous ghost story
might be under my nose. Martyn wondered if Jan was at least partially
identified with his dead father. And who or what or where was Bireeser?
The Golden Rule
|
The Catholic Church cautions priests to investigate
the medical and psychological aspects of a
person before performing exorcism. The main symptom for declaring a
person possessed by a demon seems to be a powerful revulsion towards
sacred objects and texts. |
Bireeser ... Martyn
phoned a Polish friend and asked what bireeser meant.
Well, it didn't mean anything in Polish. He asked a German friend and
received the same answer. We went to the central Warsaw post office,
and scanned telephone directories for southwest Poland. No Bireeser - no
Breese - no Bewiese. No nothing.
We checked an online atlas in an internet cafe ... there was
no Bireeser in Poland. Perhaps it was a German place name for a village that
is now Polish, or more likely we were chasing a wild goose.
But this goose might lay a golden egg. Jan had another
appointment the next day ...
Demon - Part 2
David J. Marsden is a retired psychotherapist living
near Toronto, Canada. He investigates ghost stories. You can email David at:
 or Martyn at
 We offer
private sessions and mentorship. We train professional coaches to resolve a wide
range of emotional, mental and relationship challenges. Contact Martyn.
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Black Magic
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Possession
Copyright © David Marsden 2002 All rights reserved |
