already there had been moved into different places. Most peculiar of all was the fact that the casket of Thomas Chase, made of lead, weighing 240 pounds, and virtually impossible to move by a single individual, had also been relocated. Each time the coffins were put back in their proper places and the vault sealed with cement, but again in 1819 the vault was opened and the coffins had been rearranged.
This time the governor sprinkled sand on the floor to see if any footprints would be left and pressed his personal seal into the fresh cement. In 1820 when the vault was opened again, the coffins had been rearranged; some were even flipped upside down, even though the concrete seal was undisturbed and no footprints showed. The governor eventually ordered the coffins to be removed and buried elsewhere and for the vault to be left open. On investigation no water was discovered in the vault that could have shifted the coffins, and the possibility of earthquake movement was also ruled out. The mystery of the Chase Vault has never been solved.
CHIANG-SHIH
In Chinese folklore Chiang-shih, or ‘hopping ghost’, is a combination of spirit monster and unburied corpse, which vaguely resembles a Western vampire; it comes to life and wreaks death and misfortune. The Chinese believed that an unburied corpse was a great danger because it could easily be inhabited by evil spirits.
Traditionally the Chinese would bury their dead in garments that bound their legs together, so the spirit was thought to hop instead of walk. The Chiang-shih are blind but intensely powerful, with great supernatural powers, including gale-force breath, swordlike fingernails, incredibly long eyebrows that can be used to lasso or bind an enemy, shape-shifting powers and the ability to fly.
The Chiang-shih is created when a person dies a violent or painful death or when the soul has been angered because of an improper burial or improper preparation for burial, or when improper respects are paid to the dead. Something even being buried in the wrong location can cause a person to become a Chiang-shih.
Traditionally the Chiang-shih were believed to suck the breath out of their victims. The main items used in defence against Chiang-shih are death blessings, written on yellow paper and stuck to the forehead of the deceased, garlic, mirrors, straw and chicken blood.
CHICKAMAUGA
One of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War was fought in Tennessee on the morning of 19 September 1863. Nearly 125,000 men fought at Chickamauga, and the combined casualties numbered 37,129. They compare with the 23,582 suffered at Antietam, known as the ‘bloodiest day of American history’.
The name Chickamauga is derived from an ancient Cherokee word meaning ‘River of Death’. Not surprisingly, there are several legends about hauntings there, but one of most bizarre concerns Old Green Eyes, a soldier who died in the battle. According to legend he is the ghost of a Confederate soldier whose head was severed from his body by a cannonball. Only his head was found, and his ghost is thought to roam the battlefield, moaning mournfully, searching for his body. There have been many sightings, some as recent as the 1970s, of two big, glowing eyes moving in the dark and reports of groaning sounds that send shivers up and down the spine.
CHILDREN
It is generally thought that psychic ability, often referred to as intuition or gut feeling, is natural in childhood, but as children get older they tend to lose that instinct and are taught to regard psychic experiences as imagination and superstition. Children’s minds can easily accept the existence of the non-physical, but don’t yet have boundaries of space and time and other models of perception that develop when they become adults. Their imagination is a reality to them, and they can see and comprehend things that adults no longer can do. They can cross the line into a fantasy world that adults have long since forgotten and exist in an altered state of reality that Edgar Cayce called unmanifest reality.
Anyone wanting to develop their psychic ability must start by returning to that childlike, dreamy state of mind where imaginary friends, gut instinct, make-believe, fantasy, awe of the amazing world we live in and the endless possibilities of our inner world are natural and real to us.
There are those who believe children are our real teachers and that their first task on earth is to teach adults about aspects of life they are neglecting. It may be something as simple as unconditional love or as complicated as resolving complex situations from the past. Unfortunately, many adults ignore the demands and idle chatter of children and don’t grasp this opportunity to get back in tune with themselves, missing a fabulous opportunity to learn and grow up again.
CHUREL
In India, the ghost of a low-caste woman who cannot find peace as she died in childbirth or during ritual impurity, i.e. during menstruation. Churels are thought to haunt graveyards or squalid places and take the form of a young woman with reversed feet and no mouth. They entice young men to them and hold them captive until they are old. Burying the corpse of a potential churel is said to prevent the ghost from escaping. If this fails, the area needs to be exorcized.
CIA, STAR GATE PROGRAMME
In 1972 the CIA, concerned by reports that the Soviet Union was dedicating substantial resources to what it called psychotronics – research into potential military applications of psychic and fringe science phenomena – began Project STAR GATE, a programme of psychic spying, or remote viewing. The project cost $20 million (£12 million) and lasted 23 years until the US military shut it down in September 1995.
The aim of the programme was to close the Cold War ‘psychic warfare gap’ and discover how serious a threat there was from Soviet psychotronics. Parapsychologists Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ of the Stanford Research Institute were asked to look for repeatable psychic phenomena that might be useful to military intelligence. Working with psychic Ingo Swann, the duo developed what they called ‘a perceptual channel across kilometer distances’, in other words, the ability to witness objects, people and events at a distance: remote viewing.
Initially called SCANATE, meaning ‘scan by co-ordinate’, the project required the viewer to describe what they could see at map grid references provided by the CIA. Early signs were encouraging, and the programme expanded. Also known as SUN STREAK, GRILL FLAME and, finally, STAR GATE, the programme was used to help many US military and intelligence-gathering operations over its 23 years. There were a few successes, but more than a few failures.
The team is said to have located Soviet weapons and technologies, such as a nuclear submarine in 1979, identified spies, helped find lost SCUD missiles in the first Gulf War and located plutonium in North Korea in 1994. All in all, more than 20 psychics were employed. With lives at stake, many of them found the work traumatic, some ending up in psychiatric hospitals.
The project was closed down in 1995, probably because the Defense Department lost confidence in it, but even today some psychics continue with police and government work; one assisted the FBI – clearly unsuccessfully – during the hunt for Osama bin Laden in late 2001.
CIRCLE
A symbol of oneness, completion and protection, the circle is believed to represent a sphere of personal power or psychic energy. It is often used for séances, where participants hold hands around a circular table. Ceremonial magic rites are also often performed within the sphere of a magic circle, which functions to concentrate the user’s power and protect against psychic entities. In ritual, a circle represents a holy space that protects from negative forces on the outside and facilitates communication with spirits and deities on the inside.
