The Eternity Project

29



Professor Bowen gestured to the open page of the book on her desk as she spoke.

‘A wraith is a disembodied spirit,’ she explained, ‘a ghost, but not the kind that you’d ordinarily think of.’

‘There’s more than one type?’ Ethan asked.

Professor Bowen stepped away from her desk and gestured to the books lining her shelves in their hundreds.

‘People think of ghosts and hauntings in much the same way,’ she explained. ‘They imagine translucent figures drifting down the halls of old houses, or maybe spirits interfering with household objects and such-like. But the supposedly paranormal aspect of existence is one that has been documented for centuries and is only really just starting to enter the public conscience as a real and tangible aspect of what it is to be alive.’

‘Would a crisis-apparition have anything to do with what we’ve described?’ Lopez asked.

Professor Bowen seemed surprised. ‘You know about crisis-apparitions?’

‘A friend of ours worked on a government project back in the 1960s,’ Ethan explained. ‘He was charged with studying crisis-apparitions that were recorded during the First World War.’

Professor Bowen nodded. ‘There were hundreds of them and in many conflicts beforehand, but it was only during the beginning of the last century that reliable first-hand accounts were recorded in detail. But a crisis-apparition is usually a benign event, a loved one saying goodbye to a family member.’

Ethan glanced at Jarvis, who was listening intently but saying nothing. For once, it seemed, he was learning as they were.

‘So wouldn’t that consist of absolute proof that the soul, or spirit, or whatever, can exist outside of the body and brain?’ Ethan asked Professor Bowen.

‘It is evidence,’ she replied, ‘but not absolute proof. Science requires as proof something tangible, something that can be measured and quantified and replicated in a laboratory. A personal experience, even one that confirms knowledge of a loved one’s death when there is no way of receiving that information by normal means, can only be judged by science as being unexplained. To just say something happened is not an answer, as no meaningful conclusion can be drawn from the statement and, thus, science has nothing to say.’

‘But you think differently,’ Lopez said.

Professor Bowen smiled. ‘I think exactly the same. However, just because something remains unexplained does not mean that it cannot be provided with some evidence to support it. I’ve been researching things like out-of-body experiences, NDEs – that is, near-death experiences – such-like for over twenty-five years and I can tell you two things for sure: one, that I don’t know what it all means, and, two, it happens all the time and it’s real.’

Ethan leaned against the office wall. ‘The soul outlives the body?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ she cautioned. ‘Nobody knows. All of the world’s religions are founded on the belief that there is life after death. It doesn’t matter which god they purport to worship or what name they give to that afterlife, whether it’s Heaven or Nirvana or Paradise: all faiths are void if there is no afterlife. Because we can say that nobody knows for sure if there’s an afterlife, then the lie of all humanity’s religions is exposed. But that doesn’t mean that the afterlife doesn’t exist, only that man’s attempts so far to rationalize and justify their beliefs are utterly in vain.’

‘How does this tie in with the homicides?’ Jarvis asked.

Professor Bowen gestured to the image of the wraith in her book.

‘There are stories from medieval times of what were called at the time “vengeful spirits”. Supposedly the souls of those wronged in life, they would return from the dead to get revenge on their assailants. These spirits were renowned for immense strength and violence and formed the origin of poltergeist legends. But according to these old accounts, a poltergeist is nothing compared to a wraith.’

‘And these things would actively hunt down enemies from their former lives?’ Ethan asked.

‘Supposedly so,’ Professor Bowen replied. ‘The only detailed account we have of a wraith comes from the diary of a man named Henry Wilberforce, a British Army Officer who served in India during the uprising of 1857. The insurrection was called The Mutiny, when Indian soldiers subservient to the British Crown rebelled when they were ordered to bite the paper off their ammunition cartridges, which they believed were coated in tallow. The use of the fat went against their religious beliefs.’

‘The grease was made from tallow or lard,’ Ethan said, recalling the event from history books, ‘which derived from beef or pork respectively and, therefore, upset both Hindus and Muslims. The rebellion was eventually put down.’

‘Precisely,’ Bowen confirmed. ‘During the conflict, many British prisoners were captured and were held in a place called the Black Hole of Calcutta, a prison so small, hot and dangerous that in one night alone only twenty-three of its one hundred forty-six prisoners survived, the dead victims of starvation, dehydration and the trampling of other prisoners.’


‘Makes Cook County look like the Ritz,’ Lopez observed.

‘One of those survivors was Henry Wilberforce,’ Bowen explained. ‘Liberated by British troops, he went on to serve as a provincial governor. But immediately after the deaths in the Black Hole, he recorded that every single prison guard in the jail was murdered over the next few nights. Some were crushed to death, others torn limb from limb, others impaled at impossible heights and angles on trees and railings. Most people thought that the jail survivors were responsible, but all of them presented alibis and none could explain how the jailors had come to die in such extreme ways.’

‘You’re saying that somebody’s ghost killed them?’ Lopez asked.

‘Nobody knows for sure,’ Bowen admitted, ‘but the event was recorded by Wilberforce as an example of an extreme supernatural event because one person actually saw the ghost that did it.’

‘What did he say?’ Ethan asked.

‘Not much of any use,’ Bowen replied. ‘He died of shock soon after saying that they had seen the Devil himself lift a man off his feet and tear him physically in half. That victim was one of the jailors.’

‘Wait one,’ Lopez said. ‘So you believe in this kind of phenomena, but you don’t believe it at the same time?’

‘It’s not about belief , ’ Professor Bowen said, ‘it’s about evidence. You only have to search the Internet to find a thousand pages of claims of violent hauntings and terrible poltergeist activity. But a more patient search on each of the cases reveals that other people who lived in the same houses noted no such activity. The Haunting in Connecticut, the Amityville Horror, the Exorcist: all of them have been made famous through television and film, yet none of them have a shred of evidence to support the claims and considerable evidence showing them to be false. The house in the Amityville case has been occupied continuously since the family concerned in the book and film moved out, yet nobody has reported anything untoward as having happened within the property since. ’

‘But?’ Ethan coaxed her with a smile.

‘But,’ she replied, ‘as with so many supposedly paranormal events, a small percentage defies rational explanation. They stand up to scrutiny, are witnessed by people who make no attempt to gain financially or otherwise from their stories, and often have footage or audio recordings to support their claims. They’re rare, but there, as I like to say.’

‘Could they crush an elevator car or tear a man in half ?’ Ethan challenged her.

Professor Bowen sighed.

‘I’ve never heard of anything like that,’ she admitted, ‘but, in 1967, in Rosenheim, Germany, scientists from the Max Planck Institute were called to a lawyer’s office to investigate an immense surge of poltergeist activity. Drawers would open and close, lights would swing, printers would spill their ink, telephone calls would be made when there was nobody actually using a phone. One set of records shows the talking clock being dialed three times per minute, too fast for the mechanical dialing system of the phones of the time to handle. On one occasion, every light bulb in the building blew at once. Such events require huge amounts of energy and yet nobody was doing anything untoward. The scientists set up cameras and voice recorders to monitor events and recorded some of the only existing footage of things like pictures rotating on their hooks, far beyond the reach of the witnesses. They also noted that electrical equipment would falter and lights would flicker when a nineteen-year-old employee was in the building. They eventually traced the events to her and, when she was sent on vacation, the poltergeist activity ceased.’

‘That’s hardly the same, even if it is true,’ Ethan said.

‘On one occasion,’ Professor Bowen added, ‘an extremely heavy filing cabinet was witnessed to have been shifted across the office floor. It would seem that, as remarkable as it may appear, it is possible that this kind of energy can indeed be directed by poltergeist activity and to an extent that exceeds our own physical capabilities.’

‘And you say that a wraith is worse?’ Lopez asked.

‘Much worse,’ Professor Bowen confirmed. ‘There is no precedent in modern times. The name derives from archaic Scottish dialect, meaning a ghost. However, most descriptions of a wraith suggest it’s something like a poltergeist on steroids, extremely violent and utterly unstoppable. There are numerous references to witches in ancient literature that might in fact refer to wraiths, but nobody’s really sure.’

Ethan glanced thoughtfully out of the window of the office.

‘So you’re saying that poltergeist activity is often attached to somebody who is alive, but a wraith is the spirit of somebody who is dead?’

Professor Bowen nodded. ‘That is almost certainly the case. Poltergeists tend to be caused by the living, through means that we just don’t understand that may involve an individual actually causing the entire disturbance themselves or being used as a channel for the events. It is often centered on troubled teenage girls, as in the Rosenheim case, or girls at about the age of puberty. Wraiths, on the other hand, are the spirits of the dead.’

Lopez looked at Ethan. ‘That kind of rules out Karina,’ she said.

Ethan shrugged. ‘All of this is just based on hearsay. Like you said, professor, there’s absolutely no evidence that there is an afterlife, anyway. So why should we even consider that this is the work of some kind of rampaging spirit?’

‘That’s not quite what I said,’ Professor Bowen corrected him. ‘Whatever you may or may not think about the afterlife, the notion that we can exist independently of our bodies is a fact.’