Providentia

Exonerating Edalji

Rural England at the beginning of the 20th century seemed peaceful enough although anyone who was perceived as "different" certainly faced problems from suspicious villagers.  And that especially applied to racial minorities. 

When Shapurji Edalji married Charlotte Stoneham and became a vicar  in the parish of Great Wyrley in South Staffordshire, he and his wife quickly learned how intolerant their fellow villagers could be.  While Reverend Edalji was of Parsi descent (he had been born in Mumbai, India and converted to the Anglican faith), he was also a clergyman and local parishioners resented someone of "heathen" background becoming a spiritual counselor to white Englishmen.  Although life was peaceful enough for the Edaljis, things became very different in 1888 when they began receiving a series of vicious, anonymous letters.  Local police were of no use since the lead investigator concluded, against all evidence, that the Edaljis' son George was responsible.  

As the eldest of three children born to the Edaljis, George Edalji made for a very unlikely culprit.   He was only twelve when the letters started coming and already a model student.  Although these letters eventually stopped (and later linked to a disgruntled  servant of the Edaljis), they resumed again in 1892 and were more vicious than ever.   Other letters were sent to clergy across the country over Reverend Edalji's forged signature.  By then,  George Edalji was sixteen years old and an excellent student but the police viewed him as their prime suspect and nothing that George's parents could say changed their minds.  The letter-writing continued until 1895 when the chief constable of Staffordshire stated quite firmly that "I may say at once that I will not believe any protestations of innocence your son may make".  

Again, the letters stopped and George Edalji went on to become a solicitor with what seemed to be an excellent career in law ahead of him.   By 1903 when the  letters began again, he had won awards from the Birmingham Law Society and had already written a book on law for travelers on the railways. 

In 1903 however, Great Wyrley was terrorized by a series of brutal attacks on sheep, horses, and cows that began at a local meadow.  In the attacks, still known as the Great Wiley Outrages,  the animals were gruesomely slashed and, on several occasions, left to bleed to death.  Anonymous letters were sent to various people in the area, one of them threatened that the same thing would start happening to the local village girls.  When some of the letters named George Edalji as a member of the gang responsible for the attacks,  the Edalji house was placed under police observation.  The fact that some of the slashings occurfed while Edalji's home was being watched didn't deter the police from arresting him following an eighth attack involving a pit-pony.   

Police and prosecutors were convinced that they had their man and the investigation was biased from the very beginning.   Edalji's coat was confiscated and stored along with samples of horsehide cut from the slashed pony   Despite the contaminated evidence, the presence of horsehairs on the coat was entered as evidence against him.  As well, when Edalji proved to have an alibi for the night that the eighth slashing had occurred, prosecutors adjusted their estimates of when the attack had taken place to get around the alibi.   As for his motive in committing the attacks,  the local media reported talk of Edalji's "heathen" background and hinted that the attacks had been meant as pagan sacrifices.  The fact  that another animal was mutilated while he was still awaiting trial didn't prevent  George Edalji from being convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison.  

Since no appeals process existed in the United Kingdom at the time, George Edalji had no option but to serve his sentence.   After protests and a petition with 10,000 signatures, he was released after serving only three years in prison on the grounds that the sentence had been too harsh but his life was thoroughly ruined.  Not only was he considered guilty in the eyes of the law, but he had lost his right to work as a solicitor.     In an effort to clear his name, George Edjalji's father wrote a pamphlet describing his son's ordeal and George Edalji then wrote his own version of events which was published the following year.  Seeking further publicity for his case, Edalji  included the newspaper clipping in a letter to the man whom he felt to be his best hope for getting justice:  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Already famous for his Sherlock Holmes stories,  Doyle received George Edalli's letter at an especially dark time in his own life.  His wife had died some time earlier and  Doyle, feeling rather lost, welcomed the chance to help George Edalji get justice.   Even before meeting Edjali directly, Doyle did a comprehensive analysis of the evidence used to convict him and found numerous glaring flaws including the lack of any true physical evidence.   The failure of police to find more than two spots of blood on George Edjali's clothing, despite his supposedly having slashed a pony across the belly, seemed a key error.  Conan Doyle also discovered that the handwriting analysis expert whose testimony established that Edalji had written the anonymous letters had been proven wrong in another major case. 

Once he satisfied himself that Edjali was innocent, Doyle arranged for a meeting where he discovered the final piece of evidence to prove his case.   A trained oculist, Conan Doyle realized at once that George Edjali suffered from severe myopia and astigmatism,  which he hadn't even realized before meeting with him.   The eye condition would have made it impossible for George Edjali to carry out the pony attack in almost total darkness in the way that the police had insisted he had done.

With the facts in hand, Doyle took the story to the Daily Telegraph in London to be published on January 11 and January 12, 1907.  To ensure maximum coverage of his review of the case, Doyle waived all copyrights so that newspapers across the country could run it as well.    Although there was nothing new about the facts that he had unearthed, the very name of Arthur Conan Doyle was enough to attract interest.   Sherlock Holmes was still a popular fictional character worldwide and Doyle didn't hesitate to use Holmes' reputation as a detective in a good cause.  The newspaper headline read "SHERLOCK HOLMES IS HAVING ONE MORE "LAST ADVENTURE"  AND THIS TIME IN REAL LIFE".   The story generated enough public outrage to force the British Home Office to appoint a three-man Committee of Enquiry to review George Edalji's conviction.  

Although the Committee was meant to be unbiased, the Home Office made the bizarre decision to include a cousin of the Chief Constable who had arrested Edalji as one of its members.  In the Committee's review of the evidence, they concluded that Edalji was innocent of the mutilation of the pony but concluded that he had written the letters.   The fact that Edalji had no conceivable motive seemed irrelevant.  In their final report, the Committee concluded that "Assuming him to be an innocent man, he has to some extent brought his troubles on himself".  By refusing to exonerate Edalji completely, the Home Office was free to refuse compensation for the years he had spent in prison although he was (grudgingly) granted a pardon.   The adverse publicity from Edjali's wrongful conviction led to the creation of the U.K.'s Court of Criminal Appeal in 1907. 

Doyle would continue to denounce the Committee's decision for decades afterwards and declared it to be "a blot upon the record of English justice".  While the Law Society showed their support for Edalji by reinstating him as a solicitor, he was never compensated for his prison term.   As for the animal slashings, there were three in Great Wyrley while Edalji was in prison and another one in 1907 although he had not returned to live in Great Wyrley after his release. 

A further series of anonymous letters (the early ones which had been signed by the self-styled "Captain of the Wyrley Gang") appeared on and off until 1934.  While a Midlands resident would later confess to sending the letters in 1934, the animal slashings were never solved.   Doyle continue to campaign for George Edalji's complete exoneration until his death in 1930.  George Edalji only returned to Wyrley twice after his release but he continued his law practice in London until his own death in 1953. 

As one of the most blatant examples of racial injustice in U.K. history, the George Edalji case has inspired numerous fiction and non-fiction books and continues to intrigue historians and journalists.  One book that has come out recently is by Roger Oldfield.  Entitled Outrage: The Edalji Five and the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes (Vanguard Press), the book provides an up-to-date overview of the Edalji case as well as a critique of Julian Barnes’s much-discussed novel on the case, Arthur and George (see www.outrage-rogeroldfield.co.uk).    

There have certainly been other examples of wrongful conviction since Edjali's time but the lingering legacy of this case continues to show how easily personal biases on the part of police and prosecutors can lead to gross miscarriages of justice.

*hat tip to Roger Oldfield for his suggested revisions. 

Does Online Social Connections Help With COVID-19 Isolation?

COVID-19 has given rise to a myriad of social, psychological, and health-related complications. The specific mental health implications of COVID-19 are still being uncovered, but we know that there are likely to be negative outcomes for many people. This is particularly the case for vulnerable members of the community, such as those with high health anxiety, and under conditions where individuals feel isolated or disconnected from others. A new study in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking examines whether the level of socially motivated Internet use acts as a buffer of the relationship between health anxiety, isolation behaviors, and depression. Participants (N = 473; 67.3 percent female; Mage = 23.03, SD = 7.50) from Australia completed self-report measures during the height of the national pandemic restrictions (April–May 2020). A regression analysis revealed positive relationships between health anxiety and isolation behaviors on depression and highlighted a three-way interaction effect. Specifically, health anxiety was significantly negatively associated with depression when participants engaged in fewer isolation behaviors. However, at higher levels of isolation behaviors, the relationship between health anxiety and depression was attenuated for participants with greater levels of online social connection. The findings suggest that online social connection buffered the negative effects of health anxiety under conditions of isolation. These results offer promising avenues to mitigate against vulnerabilities during the pandemic and highlight the need to promote alternate social support mechanisms in the absence of face-to-face connection. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

German Police Shoot Turkish Man with Alzheimer's Disease

A 63-year-old Turkish man  was left critically injured after being shot by a police officer in the German province of Bavaria according to reports dated April 1, 2021.  The man, identified as Habeş Temiz, had confronted police after refusing to leave  the premises of his neighbor’s property.    Temiz, who is reportedly suffering from Alzheimer's disease had become confrontational and was swinging a toy truck when police first used tear gas and, when that failed, followed with a round of warning shots and then three shots targeting the man.   Temiz was then hospitalized and his condition remains guarded.  

While the shooting is currently under investigation, German police have been repeatedly of harassing many of the the country's three million Turkish immigrants.    With a population of 81 million people, Germany has the second-largest Muslim population in Western Europe after France and anti-Muslim hate crimes have been frequently reported.  In 2018 alone,  there were 910 known incidents, including 48 attacks on mosques alone though this represents a slight decline from previous years.

According to one recent report by professor Tobias Singelnstein of Ruhr-University Bochum, institutionalized racism remains of  a structural problem among the German police, with reports of racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic insults, confirmed by police officers and victim testimonies.   Witnesses interviewed for the report have also accused some officers of going on deliberate "Turk hunts" in which they target Turkish immigrants and provoke them into verbal or physical reactions to which the officers respond with deadly force.   While it remains unclear whether this latest incident will reflect that trend, critics are already calling for better police training for dealing with people suffering from mental health issues that might lead to confrontations.  

 

The Brain of Archie Collins

After seven-year-old Eleanor Johnston died suddenly at her home in a Philadelphia suburb in 1902,  the resulting Coroner's report attributed her death to "cardiac arrest in syncopal form"   resulting from "shock and convulsions due to fright."    While the Coroner concluded that the little girl's death was unusual, he argued that it was "not without precedent" though this was scant comfort the Eleanor's parents.   

But for Archie Frederick Collins, the death of Eleanor Johnston, and others like her, suggested a far more exotic cause:  the effects of electric waves produced by lightning. A prolific science writer and amateur scientist, Collins had watched the early development of "wireless telegraphy" (a.k.a. radio) including   Heinrich Hertz's discovery of  radio waves in 1887 as well as  Guglielmo Marconi developing the first practical radiotelegraph transmitter and receiver in 1895.   Almost inevitably, this led to widespread speculation about how this could apply to research into the electrical nature of the human brain.   Was it possible that radio waves and other electrical  phenomena, including the electrical influence of lightning storms, could produce changes in the brain, and even deaths such as with Eleanor Johnston?

As Collins pointed out in a 1902 newspaper story, a powerful electric storm took place near Eleanor's home not long before her death and that, as the storm came closer and the lightning flashes came more regularly, Eleanor began displaying all of the classic signs of extreme fear.  He added that, "a bolt of lightning struck a house a quarter mile away and the life of the child was extinguished in the same instant."   To bolster his case, he argued that "It has long been observed that approaching electrical storms, though they be hundreds of miles distant, produce a marked action on those afflicted with certain forms of nervousness, on gouty persons, and rheumatics long before the most delicate meteorological instruments register that change."   

Along with people able to predict storms due to feeling "twinges" in their bodies,  there were also numerous reports of people experiencing seizures when lightning struck nearby, even if they were not directly affected.    Since lightning storms produced radio waves that could be directly measured with the right instruments,  couldn't some extremely "sensitive" human brains could do the same?   

All of which led to a rather remarkable (albeit bizarre) series of experiments that Collins carried out in the first few years of the 20th century.  His research was based on the use of a coherer, or signal detector, an integral part of the earliest radio receivers.    A coherer consisted of a glass tube containing two electrodes made of either brass or silver with silver filings or carbon granules between them.   When an electric current was applied to the plugs, the filings would "cohere" (cling together).  Using a galvanometer to measure electric current, the needle of the galvanometer would then swing back and forth according to the wavelength and amplitude of the radio waves being detected.  

Using a carbon coherer as a model, Collins developed an experimental apparatus involving the brain of a freshly-killed sheep he had bought from his local butcher.   After finding evidence of cohering when this brain was exposed to electric waves, he then tried the same experiment with cat brains.  Though he lived near a zoologist who could supply him with all the animal brains he needed, Collins soon decided to try the same experiment with a living cat.   

This involved luring an unfortunate house cat into his laboratory where it was then anesthetized and then operated on to expose the cat's brain (the surgery was carried out by the zoologist) and having two electrical probes inserted into holes drilled into the cat's skull.   As Collins later observed, passing an electric current through the wires convinced him that "it seemed evident that the cat was semi-consciously aware of the electric waves."   What was more, he reported that coming in contact with the cat's brain while the current was running led to Collins and the two men observing the experiment to experience a "peculiar tingling sensation" that he interpreted as more proof that brains could be sensitive to electric waves (the experiment only ended when the unfortunate cat finally died).

Having gone as far as he could with animal brains, Collins then  decided to repeat his experiment with a human brain.   After repeated attempts at getting a fresh brain from different medical researchers, he finally found a Philadelphia pathologist who agreed to let him use a brain from one of his patients.   Traveling to Philadelphia as soon as the brain became available, Collins was thrilled to hear weather reports predicting an electrical storm being on the way.  Carefully setting up his electrical apparatus, much as he had done with his cat, he began his experiment using earphones to listen for changes in the brain's coherence during the course of the storm.  

As he later wrote, "I was almost dazed in realizing that here at last, I had the absolute evidence direct from the lightning itself, and that the electric waves emitted by it produced produced a variable coherence of the brain.  Here, no artifice was used to manufacture the waves, but the same waves that killed little Eleanor Johnston caused the galvanometer needle (which was attached to the brain) to vibrate like a living thing, and the brain matter when the storm was at its height produced pulsating currents of the most pronounced type, through the medium of the brain acting as a self-righting coherer.  Now all of us (Collins and the two observers) watched the phenomenon of electric waves manifesting themselves through the medium of the human brain."   He also suggest that many people, sensing the effect that electrical storms had on their brains, managed to protect themselves by covering their heads with blankets though further research was likely needed.

Though he published his results, along with a complete description of his research method, in a prominent electrical engineering journal, it soon became apparent that nobody else was able to replicate his work.   The general consensus was that either Collins was simply finding what he wanted to find (the dreaded experimenter bias) or else some other part of his radio apparatus was picking up the radio waves.   

Somewhat disappointed at not having made medical history, Collins gave up his brain research and devoted himself to more practical pursuits, including starting his own wireless telephony company in 1903 and filing several patents for improvements in radio design.  He also tried to develop the first true radiotelephone and, to some extent, he succeeded though his increasingly grandiose claims soon got him in trouble with the U.S. government and a prison term for mail fraud.  

Still, it was Collins' success as a writer that seems to be his greatest claim to fame and generations of scientists and radio enthusiasts would later credit him for inspiring them.  As legacies go, it seems impressive enough and, best of all, no animals were sacrificed in the process...

 

 

William James and the Medium

“Medium Stands Test… Professors at University Fail to Discover Any Trickery in Woman’s Acts – She Has Never Been Educated, but Converses in Several Languages while in a Trance and Writes like an Expert.”

Eusapia Palladino was riding high in 1907 following a series of tests at the University of Naples which apparently confirmed her amazing skills as a medium.  The tests, which had been arranged by the Society for Psychical Research, were conducted by several professors at the University as well as members of the Society who were also amateur conjurers.   Though the investigators had actually caught Palladino cheating during some of the séances she conducted, they concluded that she had also produced genuine evidence for the supernatural as well.

The newspaper coverage of the tests was largely enthusiastic (and with virtually no mention of the cheating).  According to the Washington Post story on August 25, 1907,  Palladino was “an ignorant woman and is known to have received no education whatever.  Nevertheless, while in a trance she was able to converse in several modern languages and writes in each of them in script that is like copper plate.”   The story also described how she made tables levitate, move curtains, produce spirit touches, and receive messages from the beyond.    Aside from scant mention of  her failures in previous tests, the coverage she generally received tended to describe her as one of the wonders of the modern age.

So, who was Eusapia Palladino?  Though she was born to a peasant family in southern Italy in 1854 and received little formal education,  she was certainly not as “ignorant” as the newspapers would later claim.   Still, it's hard to get a handle on much of her early history since most of it comes from her own, decidedly biased, account of how she launched her career as Europe’s most famous medium. 

 According to Palladino, she first discovered her spiritual gifts when she was fourteen years of age.  Already an orphan (her mother died when she was born and her father when she was twelve), she was living with another family when she became the focus of poltergeist activity.   As she would later state, she had no interest in spiritualism and only participated in séances to please her host family and avoid being sent to a convent.   

Within a few years however, she became famous for her séances and the wide range of supernatural  activity that reportedly occurred when she was in a trance.   By 1888, she was being scientifically tested by various scientists, including eminent Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso.    It’s open to question as to how impartial these scientists really were and Eusapia’s own behaviour towards them may have played a role in their endorsement of her psychic gifts (some evidence suggests that she and Lombroso had a sexual relationship for a time).    

Despite being caught faking on numerous occasions, the circle of true believers  that  Palladino established seemed unable to see her as anything but a genuine psychic with amazing powers.  For decades, she toured Europe doing séances and being tested by celebrities and scientists alike.   In the many seances that she conducted across Europe, she would communicate with her spirit guide, John King, and display a range of impressive physical phenomena.  

Levitating tables was her specialty but she could also produce spirit hands and faces, play musical instruments without using her hands, make flowers and other objects appear out of thin air, and contact the dead. She was the talk of Europe in her day and was highly sought after (despite the enormous fees she charged).  Despite being caught faking numerous times,  the controversy over Palladino’s mediumship continued. Many genuine skeptics regarded her as a practiced fraud using a wide range of tricks that allowed her to fool many of the experts who tested her.  On the other side, there were the “open-minded” scientists such as Lombroso and Oliver Lodge who argued that there were enough unexplained  results to suggest that something supernatural was going on.

As for the times she was caught faking, Palladino and her manager explained this away as only occurring when her powers were not working at their best. This became more common as she grew older and her powers diminished (or skeptics began demanding tighter controls, your call).

It was only natural that she drew psychic researchers across Europe, including leading scientists such as Pierre and Marie Curie and Theodore Flournoy. Although she appeared to welcome attempts at scientific validation of her powers, researchers who dealt with her came to fear Palladino's volatile temper and frequent tantrums.  This was especially apparent during the  various attempts to control the conditions under which she conducted her seances. It was common for Palladino to storm out in a huff whenever things failed to go according to her expectations.

When she came to the United States in 1909, Palladino was in fine form with enthusiastic newspaper stories proclaiming the genuine nature of her powers.     Even on the steamer that brought her and her entourage across the Atlantic, she conducted three séances.  Cesare Lombroso had died that same year and she quickly took advantage of this by boasting that she was able to communicate with his spirit as well during the dozens of séances she conducted.

Among the observers who were apparently taken in by her tricks were magician Howard Thurston and Harvard philosopher, William James.   It was James (often called the “father of American psychology”) who become one of  her biggest supporters.   Already an ardent spiritualist, James was founding member of the American Society for Psychical Research and the author of various highly-respected works on religion and mysticism.   He had previously endorsed the mediumship skills of American medium  Leonora Piper by insisting that she knew details about his dead son William that she could not possibly have known.  Though later biographers have suggested ways that Piper could have gained  this information, the endorsement of someone like William James was considered powerful evidence in itself.

And then there was Hugo Munsterberg,  also of Harvard University.  Though it had been James who had first hired Munsterberg to run the psychological laboratory he had founded, they frequently clashed over Munsterberg’s persistent skepticism about spiritualism.   By 1909, James and Munsterberg were locked in a war of words over mediums such as Palladino.  James frequently accused Munsterberg of being overly analytical in rejecting supernatural explanations while Munsterberg in turn accused James of being naive.

After attending a number of seances, Munsterburg came to viewed Palladino as an alarming example of fraud masquerading as science. He wrote that Palladino was "a great artist, and as a vaudeville show she might be at the head of her profession, but I do not see how she can overcome in any cool observer, the feeling that it is trickery". It was during her American tour in 1909 when he attended a seance with Palladino and a "well-known scientist" (not named, but probably James).

During the seance, he sat on Palladino's left side and his companion on her right holding her hands and feet when the table behind them was supposed to move. Suddenly, there was a "wildly yelling scream". What Palladino did not know was that Munsterberg had arranged for an agent to slip in unobserved and to lie flat on the floor behind them to block any attempts at trickery. It turned out that she had slipped her foot out of her shoe and "with an athletic backward movement of the leg was reaching out and fishing with her toes" when the agent grabbed her foot (hence the scream).

Munsterberg was in his glory having caught Palladino in blatant fraud and many of his contemporaries viewed it as a refutation of James' views on psychic phenomena. As Josiah Royce later put it:  Eeny meeny, miny mo/Catch Eusapia by the toe/If she hollers, then we know/That James' doctrine isn't so.

Suffice it to say, James was not amused (although he acknowledged the fraud) and by the time of his death in the following year, he and Munsterberg were largely estranged. While Palladino had been caught in fraud before, this latest revelation seemed to put the final nail in her coffin and her career never really recovered.  Munsterberg's own abrupt death in 1916 put an end to his remarkable career as a psychologist and scientist and, while not as well known as other "ghostbusters" such as Harry Houdini,  his legacy of skepticism lives on.

 

The Home of Truth and the Divine Typewriter

Today, Home of Truth, Utah is nothing more than a ghost town located in southeastern Utah just twenty-four miles south of Monticello.  Visitors traveling to the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park near the town of Moab may occasionally stop and view the remains of the town but there seems little trace of the controversial community that had been there during the 1930s.

When Spiritualist Marie Ogden settled on the town (which was originally called Dry Valley) as the new headquarters for her community of followers to live in, the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns likely had no idea what was coming next.   She had developed a serious interest in Spiritualism following the death of her husband in 1929 and later established a School of Truth in collaboration with fellow Spiritualist William Dudley Pelley.  

Pelley, who was a hardline political extremist as well as a spiritualist, had developed a national organization based on his fears that Jews and Communists would eventually take over the world.  Following a “near-death” experience in 1928, Pelley declared a mission to "spiritually transform America".   With the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis in Germany, Pelley founded his own “Silver Legion” advocating many of their same anti-Semitic policies in the United States.  He would later run for President as part of the Christian Party.

All of this was too much for Marie Ogden and she decided to move her followers to Utah and the town that she rechristened “Home of Truth”.    Most of these followers came from Idaho where she had lived and done most of her lecturing before splitting with Pelley and relocating to Utah.   As part of her spiritualist message, she claimed that her typewriter received messages that relayed God’s will.  These divine messages inspired her to travel across the country establishing lecture groups and raising awareness of her mission.   It was the typewriter that reportedly directed her to Dry Valley which was declared to be the “axis of the Earth” and that she should establish her “home of truth” there.    Part of the appeal of the site was that it was near Church Rock which Ogden believed would be where Christ’s Second Coming would occur.

Any follower willing to relocate to the new community had to follow Ogden’s strict instructions.  That included renouncing any personal goods, becoming quasi-vegetarians, abstaining from tobacco and alcohol, and pledging absolute obedience to the “word” from Marie Ogden’s typewriter.   In a move that she likely learned from William Pelley, Marie Ogden also purchased the only newspaper in the county which acted as the main source of news for people in her community.    Throughout the 1930s, Home of Truth continued to attract followers and had as many as 100 people at its height in 1935.

The new community was set up along strictly communal lines, with three groups of buildings.  The Outer Portal included the dormitory and communal house while the largely uncompleted Middle Portal was to include the chapel made of cobblestones.  At the centre of the complex was the Inner Portal where Ogden lived with her daughter.  The Inner Portal also featured the divine typewriter that relayed God’s word on a daily basis and located on the exact axis of the world (no, I don’t know what that means either).   The dominant theme of the messages was that the last days were at hand and only the true believers at the Inner Portal would be spared. 

Along with revelations from her typewriter, Ogden also made regular trips to nearby Shay Mountain where she communed with God on a regular basis.   Her teachings came from a variety of sources including works of theosophy as well as doctrines such as reincarnation and communication with the dead.    Not only did she claim to be the reincarnated Virgin Mary but that many of her followers were reincarnations of various famous religious figures as well (including Brigham Young).   She also maintained sole financial control over the community although she allowed some of her male followers to hire themselves out as labourers to nearby farms.  

Though the Mormons in the surrounding communities were a little curious over what was happening in Marie Ogden’s Home of Truth, they were not particularly alarmed.   At first.   The newspaper she purchased was largely the same as ever except for her own prominent column titled, “Our Corner” which featured her unique take on metaphysics and reality.    Things began to change on February 11, 1935 with the death of one of her followers, Edith Peshak.

Peshak, who had been suffering from terminal cancer, had joined Marie Ogden’s community after being assured that her life could be saved if she embraced Ogden’s spiritualist beliefs.  Even after  Peshak died,  Ogden insisted that she was still receiving messages from her dead follower who was not really dead but “only in a state of purification” and would soon return to life.   To prepare for the resurrection, the body was washed three times a day and carefully tended, including feeding (don’t ask).   All of these details were lovingly presented in a new feature in her paper titled, “Rebirth of a Soul”.

While the surrounding Mormon communities had been accommodating up to then, this new preoccupation was a bit too much for them.  Sheriff Lawrence S. Palmer brought in a medical doctor and a nurse to examine the body to ensure that no sanitary laws were being violated.   Since the body was well-preserved, they could not force a burial but things went downhill for Marie Ogden’s community after that.

By February 1937, only a dozen of Marie Ogden’s original settlers were left (unless you count Edith Peshak).   It was then that Ogden received a new message stating that Peshak was about to return to life.   That was enough for authorities to return to Home of Truth and demand that a death certificate be filled out and that Edith Peshak be officially buried.   When Ogden refused despite being arrested (since Peshak was not really dead), police officers searched for the body but failed to find anything.  

The investigation only ended when another of Ogden’s followers, Tommy Robertson, admitted that he had cremated the body on Marie Ogden’s instructions.   The cremation had occurred shortly after the previous investigation despite Ogden’s insistence that the body was being preserved to prepare for Peshak’s resurrection.  This public revelation put the final nail in Marie Ogden’s dream and only a handful of her followers remained in Home of Truth after that. 

Though Home of Truth was largely a ghost town by then, Marie Ogden managed to struggle on until illness forced her into a nursing home.   She died on March 4, 1975 and the contents of her Inner Portal were sold at auction two years later.  No word on what happened to her divine typewriter...

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What is the Return-Trip Effect?

Research has documented the psychological phenomenon in which the trip back from a destination is experienced as shorter than the trip to the destination. Deemed the “return trip effect” (RTE), prior work explained this phenomenon in terms of differential familiarity between home and outbound destination or an underestimation of initial travel time. A new article published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science posits an anticipation account for the RTE: Outbound trips to a destination tend to foster higher levels of anticipation than return trips. Due to greater anticipation, people’s perception of time elongates. Importantly, the anticipation account makes novel predictions with regard to the occurrence of the RTE that cannot be accounted for by prior explanations. Multiple studies, with diverse methodologies, test and offer evidence in support of an anticipation account of the RTE. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Indonesian Police Officer Believed Dead in 2004 Tsunami Found Alive in Psychiatric Hospital

When Indonesian police officer Abrip Asep went missing during the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, his family naturally assumed that he had died along with the 230,000 other victims of that disaster.   Asep had been on duty in  Indonesia's westernmost province, Aceh, as part of Brimob, Indonesia's Mobil Brigade Corps, when a 9.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of the island of Sumatra and sent hundred-foot waves to strike the shorelines.  Though  many thousands were known to have died, Asep's body was never found and family members were left with no answers about what happened to him.  While his mother remained convinced that he was still alive, the rest of his extended family concluded that he must have died with so many others.

Until, that is, when photos of Asep were recently shared on a family group chat on social media, apparently by chance.   Recognizing his picture, family members contacted Aceh Regional Police who then learned that he had been in the Zaenal Abidin Mental Hospital in Banda Aceh for the last sixteen years.  "I couldn’t believe it," said one family member talking with the media.  "17 years of no news and we thought that he passed away, we didn’t know he was still alive."   According to doctors at the hospital, Asep had been traumatized by his experiences during the tsunami and was subsequently placed in the hospital though it remains a mystery why his family was never contacted.  

"Even though he is experiencing mental illness due to the tsunami, his family is very grateful to have found him alive," said a spokesperson for the Aceh Regional Police.   Despite his long hospital stay, he is reportedly in good health and has since been reunited with family members.   News about Asep has left other families who lost relatives in the 2004 disaster wondering if more such cases will be found though, so far, none have been reported.

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The Stalker and the Baseball Star

On June 14, 1949, Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus was returning to his hotel room at Edgewater Beach Hotel on Chicago's North Shore when he received an urgent message at the hotel desk, apparently sent to him by a woman identifying herself only as Ruth Ann Burns.   Though Waitkus failed to recognize the name, the message itself was brief stating only that "It's extremely important that I see you as soon as possible.  We're not acquainted, but I have something of importance to speak to you about I think it would be to your advantage to let me explain it to you.  I realize this is a little out of the ordinary, but as I said, it's rather important.  Please, come soon. I won't take up much of your time, I promise." 

Despite having just finished a game between the Phillies and his old team, the Chicago Cubs, Waitkus was curious enough to telephone the hotel room mentioned in the note.  While the woman answering the phone answered refused to say why she wanted to see him, she still insisted that he come in person.  Arriving at the room, he found that the only person staying there was 19-year-old Ruth Ann Steinhagen, someone he had never met before.   After entering the room, he sat down as asked her what she wanted at which point Steinhagen told him that she had a surprise for him.  She then pulled a .22 caliber rifle out of a closet and pointed it at his chest.

According to testimony Steinhagen later provided police, Waitkus jumped to his feet at that point, obviously terrified.  She then told him, "For two years you've bothered me, now you're going to die."  Though Waitkus cooperated when she told him to stand by the window, she then shot him at close range.   The bullet, which passed very close to  Waitkus' heart, failed to kill him instantly but, as he lay on the floor, she then proceeded to hold his hand.  Phoning the hotel detective, she stated "I just shot a man.  There's a long st0ry but I'm not going to talk about it."  The detective, Edward Purdy, immediately rushed to investigate and found her sitting on a bench near the elevators.   He also found Waitkus laying on the floor in her hotel room, the gun on the floor next to him, and immediately called for an ambulance as well as the police.

Phillies pitcher Russ Meyer, who happened to be Waitkus' roommate while they were staying at the hotel, later told reporters  that he had been immediately called by the Phillies' traveling secretary and told about his  badly injured friend.   "I remember them hauling Eddie out to the ambulance," he said in a media interview.  "The only thing he kept saying was, Why? Why? Why?"    Waitkus was taken to Illinois Masonic Hospital where doctors operated to save his life and, despite nearly dying on the operating table several times, managed to remove the bullet successfully.

As for Ruth Ann Steinhagen, she was transferred to the women's lockup at the downtown police headquarters and held without charge while police and reporters tried to make sense of her actions.  As part of their investigation, police took her back to the 12th floor hotel room where she had shot Waitkus and had her act out the entire shooting.  She told them that she had initially planned to stab her intended victim and had placed a paring knife in her skirt pocket before letting him into her room.   When he walked past her and sat down instead, she decided to use the rifle she had purchased earlier instead.   She also said that, after shooting her victim, Waitkus appeared to be smiling as he lay on the floor and she told him, "You like that, don't you?"   Though she reloaded the rifle and planned to shoot herself, she apparently changed her mind and called the hotel detective instead.

So, who was Ruth Ann Steinhagen and why did she shoot a man she had never met?   According to most newspaper accounts, Steinhagen had a fairly unexceptional childhood growing up in Chicago and had lived with her parents until completing business college.  Aside from being a "little more nervous than most girls" according to her mother, she showed no signs of mental health issues until she graduated from school and got a job as a clerk at a Chicago insurance company.   It was also around this time that she first became obsessed with Eddie Waitkus, apparently after seeing him play at her first baseball game in 1946. 

Saying of him that "he reminds me of everybody, especially my father,"  she soon began collecting every newspaper clipping she could find about his sports career.  Eventually having hundreds of pictures of Waitkus in her collection, she alarmed her parents by spreading these pictures out on the floor in her bedroom or on the kitchen table where she stared at them for hours.   Having learned of his Lithuanian background, she also began teaching herself words in that language as well as steadily eating baked beans because he was originally from Boston.  Many details about the full extent of this obsession would not come out until years later.  

When her parents attempted to intervene, including having her seen by two different psychiatrists, Steinhagen retaliated by moving out of their apartment into a nearby rooming house where she could be alone with her pictures.  She also continued going to baseball games where she could see Waitkus play.  As her mother would later relate,  Steinhagen had watched him walk by near where she was sitting and "almost fainting,"  But her obsession with Eddie Waitkus hardly ended there.   In her confession to police, Steinhagen admitted that she began planning to kill Waitkus almost immediately after he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1948.  

Though she told her mother and friends about her plan to shoot Waitkus with a gun she planned to buy, they were naturally alarmed but took no action as they refused to believe that the gentle girl would be capable of carrying out this threat.   It also helped that Waitkus was no longer in Chicago and everyone  assumed that her obsession would subside in time since she could no longer see him play on a regular basis.   Instead however, this forced absence apparently made her obsession even stronger.   The shooting would take place not long afterward.

During Steinhagen's trial, newspapers were filled with stories about "Baseball Annie" (their nickname for her) along with staged photographs of her writing at her prison desk with a framed photograph of Waitkus propped nearby.   As you might expect, newspapers also carried numerous sympathetic stories about Eddie Waitkus' long recovery and eventual return to baseball.    Testimony heard at the trial included a court-ordered report prepared by the chief of the Cook County Behavioral Unit.  Along with concluding that Steinhagen was "deranged" at the time of the shooting,  the report also included numerous memorable quotes from what she told her doctors when interviewed.   At one point, she admitted, "As time went on, I just became nuttier and nuttier about the guy, and I knew I would never get to known him in a normal way...and if I can't have him, nobody else can.  And then I decided to kill him."

To nobody's surprise, Steinhagen was eventually declared not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to a psychiatric hospital.  After three years however, she was declared sane enough to be released into the community.   Though Waitkus and his family vehemently opposed her release, he still declined to press charges against Steinhagen and she was never retried for her crime.  Details of her later life are surprisingly sketchy except that she lived quietly in Chicago until eventually dying in 2012 at age 83.    It likely says much about how obscure she had become by then that news of her death only came out months later.  Not even the morgue attendants recognized her name.

As for Eddie Waitkus, he eventually returned to play during the 1950 season and helped the Phillies win the National League Pennant that year.  He also named Best Comeback Player of the Year by the Associated Press.  But friends insisted that he was never the player he once was and his career in baseball only lasted five more years.  According to his son, Eddie Waitkus, Junior in a 1988 news story, there was a bright side to the shooting, however.   "While recovering from the shooting, my dad met my mother.  Had it not been for this horrible event in his life, my sister and I would probably not be here."   But the trauma also had a significant impact on Waitkus' personality and he acquired a new paranoia about meeting new people .  He would also rarely discuss the shooting and how close he came to death except with family members.

In 1952, Bernard Malamud published his now-classic book, "The Natural"  which was largely based on the Steinhagen case.   The book was later made into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford as "Roy Hobbs" who is shot by a deranged fan played by Barbara Kersey and, naturally enough,  this renewed interest in the long-ago case though (mercifully, Waitkus was already dead by this point).   If the still-living  Steinhagen had any comments to make about the film, they do not appear to be on record.

While some newspapers in 1949 carried editorials warning about the dangers of "celebrity worship",  there didn't appear to be any meaningful change in the security surrounding celebrities as they interacted with fans.  It would take many more years and many more cases involving violent fans before security details became common for celebrities whenever they were out in public.  Still, for better or worse, that 1949 shooting meant that the age of the celebrity stalker had arrived...

Astra-Zeneca Panic Leads to Bizarre Symptom Reports

Despite early reports concerning the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine codeveloped by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, the news that many European countries have suspended or delayed rollouts due to safety concerns.    While only a handful of cases of patients experiencing blood clots after receiving the vaccine have been reported,   widespread panic among potential vaccine users has led to many either refusing the vaccine or else reporting  symptoms that seem more due to placebo effects than actual side effects.   

In the United Kingdom, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) routinely monitors potential side effects of new medications and vaccines through Yellow Card reports submitted by medical doctors, health agencies, and by members of the public.  Common reactions such as headaches, fevers and muscle pains which typically go away on their own continue to be reported in up to ten percent of users while more serious symptoms, including blood clots, sepsis, and stroke have yet to be associated with vaccine use.  Along with these documented side effects, people who have been vaccinated are also reporting significant changes in their lives despite no real evidence that they are vaccine-related.   This includes forty-five reports of post-vaccination crying or screaming, four reports of eyes changing colour, seven reports of either growing or losing teeth,  thirty-nine people reporting losing weight after the vaccine (and three saying they've gained weight).   More common symptoms include flatulence (102 reports) or simply "feeling abnormal" (558 reports).  And some reports are even more bizarre, including two reporting post-vaccination retirement, five blaming the vaccine for being bitten or stung by an insect, one blaming the vaccine for becoming a smoker, and another implicating the vaccine in a failure to stick to a diet.  

A statement released by the MHRA addresses many of these unusual reports.  "'The Yellow Card scheme is a mechanism by which anybody can voluntarily report any suspected adverse reactions or side effects to the vaccine. 'It is very important to note that a Yellow Card report does not necessarily mean the vaccine caused that reaction or event. 'We ask for any suspicions to be reported, even if the reporter isn’t sure if it was caused by the vaccine. Reports to the scheme are known as suspected adverse reactions (ADRs). Many suspected ADRs reported on a Yellow Card do not have any relation to the vaccine or medicine and it is often coincidental that they both occurred around the same time.  The reports are continually reviewed to detect possible new side effects that may require regulatory action, and to differentiate these from things that would have happened regardless of the vaccine or medicine being administered, for instance due to underlying or undiagnosed illness. It is therefore important that the suspected ADRs described in this report are not interpreted as being proven side effects of Covid-19 vaccines.'

While health agencies have since concluded that there is no evidence of the AstraZeneca vaccine causing blood clots or other adverse reactions, at least one country, Denmark, is maintaining the rollout ban, at least for now.   It will likely be a while before the AstraZeneca vaccine becomes as widely trusted as its less controversial alternatives.