to the seven planets and the eight notes of the musical scale (both the first and the eighth notes are red).
Despite the fact that colour healing has been in use for centuries, it wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that it began to receive attention in the West. In 1878 Edwin Babbitt published The Principles of Light and Colour, reaffirming the Pythagorean correspondences of music, colour and sound, and by so doing drew attention to the potential of colour healing. In the 1930s Dinshah Ghadiali proposed that imbalances are created by too much or too little of particular colours, and that balance can be restored with the use of coloured lights. Today modern colour therapy or healing is a controversial but popular alternative medicine technique involving the use of coloured lamps as well as coloured foods and drinks in coloured containers.
Modern science is able to provide evidence for some of the ancient claims about colour. In the 1970s and 1980s it was shown that coloured light triggers biochemical reactions in the body. Later research confirmed that blues and greens have a soothing effect and help lower stress, brain-wave activity and blood pressure. Warm colours such as orange and red have been shown to have a stimulating effect. Pink has been shown to have a relaxing effect in the short term, although in the longer term it can trigger irritability.
Each colour is associated with a specific vibrational frequency, so when there is a predominance of one or two colours in the environment that vibrational frequency – and the characteristics or qualities associated with that frequency – will tend to influence the activities conducted in that environment and the attitude of those in it. It is small wonder, then, that many psychologists use colour to produce beneficial effects in the home, workplace and in hospitals, and in visualization techniques patients are asked to imagine themselves bathed in a particular colour to encourage healing in mind, body and spirit.
COMMITTEE FOR THE SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION OF CLAIMS OF THE PARANORMAL
A non-profit scientific and educational organization, started in 1976 and based in Buffalo, New York, to ‘encourage the critical investigation of paranormal and fringe-science claims from a responsible, scientific point of view and disseminate factual information about the results of such inquiries to the scientific community and the public’. It also aims to promote science and scientific enquiry, critical thinking, science education and the use of reason in examining important issues. The organization maintains a network of people who critically examine paranormal claims and sponsors research into such claims.
The group originated as an offshoot of the American Humanist Association following a disagreement over the claims made by astrologers. It soon gathered a following of committed sceptics, including scientists, academics and science writers such as Isaac Asimov, Philip Klass, Ray Hyman, Sidney Hook, and others. The Skeptical Inquirer is the society’s official journal, and its aim is to explore and expose public gullibility about the paranormal.
Many local branches of the group are scattered across the US. Members include academics and scientists as well as magicians, many holding religious views, such as atheism, that are not in accord with belief in the paranormal. Although the group has debunked many claims of the paranormal, from hauntings to ESP to faith healing, there are some who believe it goes too far in its attempt to debunk from a scientific point of view. Nonetheless, it does provide a valuable counterbalance to paranormal claims.
CONSTELLATION, USS
The USS Constellation, floating in the harbour of Baltimore, is perhaps one of the most haunted ships in America.
The ship was commissioned by the US navy and first launched as a 36-gun frigate in 1797. Commodore Thomas Truxton was the first captain, and he set a bloody precedent. In 1799, after the Americans had won a battle against the French, the captain learned that seaman Neil Harvey had fallen asleep while on watch. The captain ordered another sailor to run a sword through the sleeping man and then had Harvey’s body tied to a cannon and blown to pieces in order to warn the other sailors. Many visitors to the ship report seeing Neil Harvey’s ghost wandering on deck, and it is said that some people even mistake him for a costumed tour guide.
During the nineteenth century the warship was damaged in battles, and the original ship was broken up in 1853. The Constellation was reborn in 1855 as a sloop, and served the US navy until 1933, when it was decommissioned and sat quietly in harbour. In 1955 it was brought home to Baltimore to await repairs, and this is when stories of ghosts began to be told. Sailors standing night watch on nearby ships said they heard odd noises and reported seeing ghosts walking on its deck.
To this day reports of sightings of spirits continue to occur. Captain Truxton has been seen, and cries and moans have been heard in the hold. An anonymous seaman has been spotted sadly wandering around the gun deck. He is believed to be a sailor who became overwhelmed by the harsh life at sea and hung himself.
The USS Constellation is docked at Pier 1 in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and is open to the public for tours.
CONTROL
A discarnate entity or spirit of the dead that is thought to communicate through a trance medium. The term is derived from the notion that a control is the entity that generally controls the trance state and decides which spirits will communicate and how they will communicate to the living through the medium. The term control would have been a familiar one during the height of spiritualism, but today it isn’t widely used and mediums prefer to use terms such as spirit helpers, gatekeepers or friends instead.
A control manifests during a trance state and generally takes over a medium’s body and consciousness, communicating through the medium.
According to various controls that have been questioned, controls are separate entities from the medium, and during trance, when the control takes over, the medium’s consciousness is displaced out of body or transported to the spirit world. In some case a medium may not be aware of the control until told by others who have witnessed the manifestation. A medium typically has one control, as was the case with Mina Crandon and her spirit control, Walter, but some may have more than one.
There are many who believe that controls are secondary personalities of the medium rather than spirits of the dead. Even prominent mediums like Eileen Garrett concluded that her control might have been a construct drawn from her own unconscious. Most controls do reflect aspects of the medium’s personality, and it is logical to conclude that they are secondary personalities of the medium. However, if controls are secondary personalities, they are unusual in that they do not interrupt and intrude during waking life, as secondary personalities do in multiple personality disorders.
COOK, FLORENCE [1856–1904]
Florence Cook is best remembered as the medium who was able to produce the full spirit materialization of her controls. She said she first noticed her psychic powers as a child when she heard angel voices and experienced her first trance state at the age of 14. At the age of 15 she lost her job as a teacher due to poltergeist phenomena and from then on devoted herself to her development as a medium.
Cook’s most prominent control spirit was called Katie King. Cook would retire into a cabinet and be tied to a chair with rope, the knots sealed with wax. After a few minutes King, who could not speak but only nod and smile, would emerge in front of the cabinet. After the spirit disappeared, the sitters waited for Cook’s instructions to release her, and they always found her in the cabinet still clothed and tied and exhausted from the experience.
Cook was not reluctant to allow the press in, and a reporter from the Daily Telegraph attended several of her séances. On the first occasion,
