A scene of special interest from a Dion Fortune occult novel

There are a few scenes in Dion Fortune's occult novels that have particular relevance to some of the material on here. 

These scenes contain familiar elements; they provide supporting evidence for some key theories about certain metaphysical influences and phenomena; they enable people to put similar experiences into a wider context and learn some useful lessons.

This post features one of these scenes. It caught my attention when I was skimming through Dion Fortune's novel The Demon Lover (1927). It describes the negative effect that a girl who is being controlled by an evil entity has on someone she encounters.

Bad energy repels the doctor
A mediumistic young girl called Veronica Mainwaring is a major character in The Demon Lover. While she is harmless in herself, everything changes when she comes under the hypnotic influence of a black magician called Justin Lucas.

After his death, he uses her to help him drain children of their vital energy so that he can materialise; some of the children die.

Possessed by the spirit of Lucas, a huge mastiff goes crazy and kills the doctor's son; this man had hoped to marry Veronica, so Lucas saw him as a rival.

Veronica is taking her morning walk when the doctor drives past in his dog cart:

“He gave her one glance, and shaking the reins, drove swiftly past without any other sign of recognition than was conveyed by that look of hate and repulsion.”

The doctor knows nothing but senses everything:

“...there was something about the girl which did not fall within the laws of his three-dimensional universe. What it was, he could not define, even to himself, but he hated and dreaded her as children and dogs hate and fear, without reason assigned, yet with an unerring instinct.“

The doctor senses that Veronica is overshadowed by Lucas's malign influence, he is repelled by the negative energy around her, and his intuition rightly tells him that she was somehow involved in his son's death. No wonder that he hates and fears and hurries away from her. 

Veronica behaves in a similar way towards the huge killer dog that she has inherited from Lucas. She is a dog lover and at first she quite likes the friendly old thing, but this changes after he comes under the evil influence of the dead Lucas:

“...to Veronica...the whole ‘feel’ of dog, kennel, and surroundings was so repellent that she drew hastily back and hurried away from the yard and its sinister occupant.”

Acting unprofessionally and out of character revisited

A few examples of people causing damage by acting unprofessionally and out of character have been given in the past; the time has now come to go into this phenomenon in a little more detail. 

The multi-level approach to finding explanations article mentions some of the influences that might cause people who are normally professional and efficient to behave uncharacteristically and make serious mistakes; this article revisits the issue, expands on these influences and includes some supporting material from previous articles.

The cases of interest here are those that occur at the third level down, the dimension where unseen influences such as energy vampires, people with witch-like personalities, psychic crime and psychological black magic operate.

There are questions to ask and possibilities to eliminate at each level before descending to the one below; there are also some points to be made before starting the exercise.

The definition of the problem
It is important to understand that examples of people doing something wrong are worth investigating only where two elements appear together i.e. when someone acts both unprofessionally and out of character. After all, some people will act unprofessionally because this is their usual mode of operation; not only that, a few of these incompetents might act out of character by doing a good, professional job for once! Neither of these groups is relevant here.

Acceptable margin of error
People are not machines; they sometimes have off days. Occasional errors will be made and should be allowed for, but an investigation into the cause is called for when so much damage has been done that the mistake cannot be overlooked, excused or explained away.

This is where the multi-level approach comes in.

Level 1: the person and the job
On this, the top, level, it is best to work systematically through a list of the most obvious and likely explanations for a damaging, out of character action. The possibilities fall into two groups: one is of factors in the life of the person who made the mistake and the other of common and typical problems with the job.

Predatory ghosts in Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood books

Jonathan Stroud’s predatory ghosts were introduced in a brief article in which some of their similarities to Terry Pratchett’s Elves were mentioned.

Since then, I have re-read Jonathan Stroud’s excellent Lockwood & Co. series and experienced an attack by a predator. This has inspired me to repeat, enhance and add to some of the original material.

The Lockwood & Co. books

The main characters in these supernatural thrillers are very interesting, and there is much witty and amusing dialogue. The action mostly takes place in and around an alternative version of modern-day London, which for me makes the stories even more enjoyable to read.

While much of the material doesn't inspire commentary, there is some particularly illuminating and relevant information about predatory ghosts in The Empty Grave, the fifth and final full-length Lockwood & Co. novel. 

Just as Terry Pratchett did with his Elves, Jonathan Stroud gives some warnings about his ghosts in words that have a wider application - to energy vampires and other predators for example - and provide independent confirmation of a few points made on here.

Jonathan Stroud’s ghosts
The ghosts that invade the world of the living are known as Visitors; they come from the Other Side. They are malignant and very dangerous, often deadly. There is an ever-increasing infestation of them, known as the Problem.

Destroying these ghosts is a profession in itself, a service rather like exorcism or pest control, which is where Anthony Lockwood and his fellow agents in his paranormal detection agency Lockwood & Co. come in. 

In their world, the only good ghost is an eradicated ghost.

Distress signals attract predators yet again

A painful incident from last June has given me something to add to the article about distress signals attracting predators and the article about physical damage caused by energy vampires. It also provides a good example of how evil operates by the rulebook.

It happened just after I had become so upset while thinking about the past and the loss of some prospects for the future that I crossed over into the danger zone. I knew very well that it is best to stay at home when feeling this way, but I wanted to get some supplies in first so went on a shopping trip. My distress signals attracted a predator and I was too overwhelmed to be able to defend myself. 

As always, if I had been able to detect a potential attacker and take evasive action I wouldn’t have needed to!

I was on the return journey when someone asked me to help her lift her pushchair off the bus. I reacted automatically; I said, “Of course” and lifted one end. It was extremely heavy, and I soon realised that I had badly injured my lower back. 

My life was sabotaged. It took months before I was back to normal. All my plans for the summer, including some day trips to the seaside that I was really looking forward to, had to be abandoned.

Being mostly housebound once again - this time because of the coronavirus restrictions - has brought it all back. I have been replaying this incident in my mind and think it worth recording on here, not because of new insights and more lessons learned but because there are some familiar elements and it provides further confirmation of existing theories. 

Warning signals seen retrospectively
This woman asked for help. This is not usually necessary: as I have seen many times, people will offer to help get prams, shopping trolleys etc. on or off the bus without being asked. 

She asked me rather than any of the other, more suitable people who were standing around.

She homed in on and spoke to me when I was feeling very under the weather and was in a strange, detached state.

She sounded sour, gloomy and disapproving. She gave me the impression of being under a cloud of negativity.

I now see her as a disconnected person. I have the idea that she was a strategically placed pawn and that this episode was no accident.

Dan Simmons’s wise words about mind vampires

I first mentioned Dan Simmons’s horror story Carrion Comfort in the final article of the series inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story The Parasite.

I did eventually find the copy I wanted, the one with an introduction specially written for the 20th anniversary edition.

Much of what Dan Simmons says about vampires in general in his new introduction is of great interest and relevance; it is both horrific and very familiar; it stirs up very painful memories.

He starts by informing his readers that while blood-drinking vampires of the type portrayed in horror films do not exist in real life, mind vampires certainly do. I think in terms of energy vampires, people who have a negative effect on those around them, but the scenarios and effects are much the same.

“I regret to be the one to inform you, Dracula and his blood-slurping ilk are make-believe.

But mind vampires are real.

Few if any of us get through life without being preyed upon by more than one mind vampire. Even children are not exempt from falling victim to these foul fiends.”

It is probably true that most people will encounter at least one vampire along the way; I would not say even children but especially children, at least vulnerable, defenceless and unprotected ones. Some unfortunate if not doomed children even have vampires for parents.

“Mind vampires feed on violence, but the ultimate violence for them is the imposition of their will over yours. I long ago discovered that such an exercise of will and control of one person over another is a form of violence, and one we can all gain an unholy taste for if we’re allowed to.”

This says it all. The exercising of control of and power over others, overtly or covertly, is a very familiar characteristic of energy vampires. They want their victims to dance to their tune.

August Strindberg and the mystery man

Colin Wilson’s references in The Occult to the Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s autobiographical novel Inferno have inspired many articles. This one describes Strindberg’s involvement with a mysterious man, the artist previously introduced as his ‘former American friend’.

Strindberg generously took this man into his life for a while, only to be met with envy and a refusal to acknowledge his successes. Strindberg changed for the worse, both inwardly and outwardly, during the time that this man was his close and sole companion.

Was this relationship merely one that was typical of the time, the place and the people involved, or were unseen influences at work?

There are certainly a few familiar metaphysical elements in the case.

How it all began

Strindberg tells of how a stranger, an American artist, turned up in a Paris restaurant that he and his circle liked to visit.

Although this man seemed like an active and bold spirit and was like a breath of fresh air, Strindberg experienced some vague feelings of mistrust. He sensed that the confident demeanour was just a façade and all was not well below the surface.

His instincts were correct. Just about everything in this man’s life that could go wrong had gone wrong. He soon approached Strindberg for help:

“One evening the unfortunate man came into my room and asked for permission to remain there a short time. He looked like a lost man, and such in fact he was. His landlord had driven him out of his studio, his grisette had left him, he was head over ears in debt, and his creditors were dunning him; he was insulted in the streets by the supporters of his unpaid models…

Since he was also heavily in debt to the restaurant, he had to go about the streets, hungry. Among other things he confessed that he had taken morphia enough to kill two people, but death apparently did not yet want him.”

In other words, he and his life were in a complete mess.

Sinister and significant elements and scenarios

Previous articles contain many examples of elements, features, games, syndromes and scenarios that I am particularly interested in. Cases and references come from my own or someone else’s personal experience and from fiction or biographical works.

I see them as red flags, warning signs that unseen influences may be at work.

I thought it might be useful to compile a list of some of the most sinister and significant of these elements:  

-People benefitting from convenient and/or suspicious deaths;

-People getting things at other people’s expense;

-People inflicting terrible injuries of various kinds and carrying on as if nothing has happened, adding insult to injury by expecting their victims to play the ‘business as usual’ game too;

-People behaving unprofessionally and out of character;

- People playing the reversal game that is characteristic of evil. For example, behaving as if they were the victim when they are the victimiser and presenting black as white;

-The backfiring scenario, where people do not get what they wanted, planned for and expected because it all goes horribly wrong. They may even get the exact opposite of what they wanted; sometimes they lose what they already had;

-The fifth-rate travesty scenario, when what people get seems to them to be a very cheap copy of what they actually wanted;

-The time when jubilant people think that they are in at the start of something big and exciting, only for a time to come when they look back sadly, realising that that was as good as it got;

-The ‘all avenues closed’ scenario when people are forced onto what seems like the only path available, the only way out. This path often leads to something worse or even to destruction;

-The attack-dog syndrome;

-The sole supplier syndrome;

People of interest with big anomalies in their lives, the ‘good idea’ that results in suffering and the ‘as if’ game deserve a mention too.

When I see these elements in operation, I suspect that there is an energy vampire, a cult, a black occultist or a witch in the case; where relevant, I suspect that psychological black magic is at work.

More minor misfortunes and an unexpected ending

Accounts of bad days, bad decisions and strings of minor misfortunes appear in several previous articles.

There is a little more of the same to report, including a very recent nightmare journey that had an unexpected but very welcome ending.

More electrical malfunctions

Tills have recently behaved strangely when it was my turn to pay. Although they worked for the customer immediately in front of me, one went crazy and had to be reset and the other refused to function at all so the girl on it had to move to another station.

It is interesting that Joyce Collin-Smith says that her friend, the one who could make events turn out to good advantage for herself and her circle, caused problems with electrical apparatus.

Some minor disappointments

It is quite a while since I have had what I think of as a good day. Most of the misfortunes are too petty to report, but a long string of tiny setbacks makes me feel that I am living under a cloud.

On several occasions I have made special a trip to a particular shop I remembered only to find that it had closed down.  I took some unwanted items to my favourite charity shop only to find that they were not accepting donations on that day.

These things have their funny side: I remembered seeing a stall in an indoor shopping centre where they repair watches, so took mine there to have a new battery put in. The watch repair man said he wouldn't do it because it would involve taking the back off and unscrewing things!

These are all very trivial problems; things could be and have been much worse. Not only that: a bad day had a good ending.

Cults, occultists and Stella Gibbons: Part II

Going through Stella Gibbons’s novel The Shadow of a Sorcerer in the light of what I have learned about cults, occultists, energy vampires and other relevant topics since I first read it has provided enough material for a whole series of articles.

I am particularly interested in the connections I can now see between some of the material in this book and material in previous articles about cults, very different books and very different people.

The first article introduced the two main characters and ended with a description of some of the harm Esmé Scarron had done by abusing his powers and knowledge.

The next topics to be covered are the dreadful effect that Scarron’s attempts to influence her have on his chosen disciple Meg Lambert and the cult leader/cult member aspect of their relationship.

Many of the unpleasant symptoms that Meg experiences are very familiar: they are typical of the negative effects that energy vampires and black occultists have on their victims.

The unbearably drab existence

Early on in the book, thinking about the delightful and exciting life that Scarron could offer her makes Meg’s life and future in England appear unendurably drab in comparison. It seems that there will be nothing for her back home but ordinary people and pastimes, ageing morons, a dull colourless existence with no beauty and no sense of romantic excitement and nothing to look forward to.

Many people have had a taste of this feeling, especially ambitious people of ability who feel trapped in a limiting environment and are desperate to escape from a godforsaken place full of deadbeat losers, but in Meg’s case there is something sinister at work.

A meeting and another string of minor misfortunes

I have written several article about days when everything went wrong for me and I experienced some jarring incidents.

I have described some minor misfortunes and unpleasant occurrences, their effects and my ideas about their causes. 

These bad days are exceptional, but they still happen. The latest ‘one of those days’ was yesterday.

The misfortunes

They were very minor and also very typical.

I had left home and was walking towards the bus stop, when the sudden fear that I might not have switched off some plugs came into my mind. The fatal fire in the tower block in June has made me extra careful, so I went back and found that everything was in order. When my resistance is low, as it was at this time, wrong ideas get into my system like germs into a wound.

I went to get some money from the nearest ATM machine. Normally it says, "Please take your card and wait for your money", but this time it just said "Please wait", and I waited and waited and waited.

Eventually, I decided that something must be wrong so I pressed the Cancel button a few times, but nothing happened. I was very worried, and thought I would have to go into the bank first thing next morning and try to sort it out. Suddenly, the machine disgorged my money and card. It was lucky that I was still there to take them. I had trouble with this machine once before – again at a time when I was affected by bad energy.

I went on to pick up some parcels from a shop – I love the ‘Click & Collect’ option! I had intended to get there just before it opened, so I was worried that as I was behind schedule it would be packed with people. I worried unnecessarily. I had checked the opening time online, but actually they didn't open until one hour later so I had to kill some time. Then they couldn't find one of my parcels; they tracked it down eventually though.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s witch Helen Penclosa: Part IV

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novella The Parasite has inspired a series of articles. Part III described Helen Penclosa and her activities in detail. So what more is there to say about this sinister little story? There are still a few features to be highlighted, points to be made and warnings to be repeated.

Going into reverse

One feature in this and other examples of people ignoring red flags and getting carried away by exciting visions of the future is that not only do many of them not get what they want, but it all goes horribly wrong, into reverse even, and they find themselves in a much worse situation. Their ambition, scientific curiosity, gullibility, greed, arrogance, over-estimation of their powers, strength and resistance …whatever the cause of their involvement with negative metaphysical forces, they are lead to disaster.

Austin Gilroy gets the exact opposite of what he hoped for. He foresees a glorious future for himself; he thinks that his forthcoming paper on hypnotism might even get him made a Fellow of the Royal Society.  This will make Agatha accept that the game is worth the candle!  Unfortunately, it all backfires.

Instead of achieving further academic success, he loses his professorship; instead of feeling respect and admiration for him, Agatha feels concern because he looks so worried, worn and ill.

Life becomes a living hell

It is bad enough for Gilroy when he experiences the double consciousness, knowing full well that he is being controlled and made to speak and act against his interests but unable to do anything about it or to resist the compulsion to visit Helen Pensclosa when she summons him remotely; it is even worse when he is completely possessed by her and has no memory of what he has said and done while under her influence.

Knowing that he is being forced to ruin his professional career without even remembering the preposterous things he has said in his lectures is a torment to him.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s witch Helen Penclosa: Part III

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s occult novella The Parasite is a goldmine of supporting material for some of my ideas. It could be used as a teaching aid by people who are interested in informing – and warning - people about some types of unseen influences.

Part I of this series of articles introduced the main characters and outlined the plot; Part II described the effects that Helen Penclosa’s occult practices have on her victims. Part III gives more information about Miss Penclosa and her evil practices.

The source of Helen Penclosa’s powers

Where do Miss Penclosa’s powers come from?

By telling us that Helen Penclosa comes from Trinidad, Conan Doyle suggests that she has been involved with practices such as Voodoo or Obeah. He never states this explicitly, but there can be no other reason for his including this information.

It is a clue; it is a trope of the time; it is similar to saying that she has spent some time in Tibet: readers of the day would infer that she acquired her occult powers in a remote, mysterious and exotic place. It is a cop-out that saves him from trying to explain the inexplicable.

Austin Gilroy thinks that a natural force is at work.

Helen Penclosa could well be a natural witch; her powers could have developed because of her unhappiness, lack of options and inability to obtain what she wants in the normal way.

If the definition of black magic as the illegitimate use of the powers of the subconscious mind for one’s own purposes is accepted, then Miss Penclosa practices black magic.

The exercising of Helen Penclosa’s powers

Helen Penclosa is aware of her powers and uses them deliberately, unlike some of the unconscious witches I have written about.

She goes by the book by asking permission before she hypnotises someone. Agatha Marden says that she would love to be put under the influence!

Arthur Conan Doyle’s witch Helen Penclosa: Part II

The Parasite, a short novel about hypnotism by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, contains much material of interest. Part I introduced the main characters and outlined the plot; Part II will give some more details of the effects that Helen Penclosa’s occult practices have on her victims.

Conan Doyle tells us in this chilling little story how it looks and feels to be controlled by hypnotism, suggestion and even possession by this evil witch and energy vampire.

Under the influence: Agatha Marden

As a demonstration of her power, and proof that she can make people do things that they would never do of their own free will, Helen Penclosa hypnotises Austin Gilroy's young fiancée Agatha, ordering her to break off the engagement.

Agatha visits Gilroy and speaks her piece as commanded. She is not her normal self in any way. She looks pale and constrained. She speaks robotically; she repeats several times that their engagement is at an end.

“Her voice was cold and measured; her manner strangely formal and hard. It seemed to me that she was absolutely resolved not to be drawn into any argument or explanation.“

“…That Agatha, who of all women of my acquaintance has the best balanced mind, had been reduced to a condition of automatism appeared to be certain. A person at a distance had worked her as an engineer on the shore might guide a Brennan torpedo. A second soul had stepped in, as it were, had pushed her own aside, and had seized her nervous mechanism, saying: 'I will work this for half an hour.'" 

This invasion, or possession, is why Conan Doyle calls Miss Penclosa a parasite.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s witch Helen Penclosa: Part I

While doing some research for an article about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s life in Southsea, I discovered that he had written a short novel about occult forces called The Parasite:

“…his dark tale of an evil woman possessed of such hypnotic powers that she is able to induce by remote control not only murder, but passionate love as well, in the mind of her chosen victim.”

From  A Study in Southsea: The Unrevealed Life of Doctor Arthur Conan Doyle by Geoffrey Stavert.

Stavert’s summary made the story sound very interesting indeed: I immediately thought of psychic crime and psychological black magic.

I found The Parasite on Project Gutenberg. The novella, which was first published in 1894, is only four chapters long; the plot is simple and there are only a handful of characters. The language is rather old-fashioned and melodramatic and the story a bit contrived, but I found The Parasite worth reading as a source of inspiration for an article or two. It contains some very familiar elements and provides yet more independent confirmation of some of my ideas.

The characters in summary

The two main characters are Miss Helen Penclosa, the evil woman, and Austin Gilroy, the chosen victim.

Miss Penclosa, who possesses strong hypnotic powers and can project herself into people’s bodies and take command of them, is middle-aged. She is small and frail; she has a pale, peaky face and light brown hair; she has a crippled leg. Her strange, grey-green eyes are both furtive and fierce. 

She is silent and colourless, retiring and lacking presence, except when she talks about and exercises her powers. She is unscrupulous; she has no ethical sense at all; she is evil. Conan Doyle calls her a parasite and a devil woman; I would call her an energy vampire and a witch.

Austin Gilroy is a professor, although he is only 34 years old. Physiology is his field. He is interested only in the material world, and has trained himself to deal only with facts, truth, logic and proof. Yet while he operates on pure reason, he is aware of his real self:

“…by nature I am, unless I deceive myself, a highly psychic man. I was a nervous, sensitive boy, a dreamer, a somnambulist, full of impressions and intuitions. My black hair, my dark eyes, my thin, olive face, my tapering fingers, are all characteristic of my real temperament…”

Two similar painful incidents: curse or coincidence?

Thinking about a fairly recent painful incident has reminded me of something similar that happened a long time ago. 

What these events have in common is both the effect they had on me and the suspected cause:  I was hit where it hurt most and an energy vampire was involved. 

In both cases, administrators behaved unprofessionally and out of character.

The empty bank account
Many years ago, I got a horrible, jarring shock when a letter from my bank manager arrived out of the blue informing me that my account had gone overdrawn, and that while he was not unduly concerned about this he thought that I should be made aware of the problem. 

I was always very careful with my financial affairs so I couldn’t understand how this could have happened - for the first time ever. I was expecting two big cheques from a client; they were overdue but I knew that I had enough money in my account to last until they arrived.

Two positive propositions

Accepting that unseen influences are at work in people’s lives can result in depression - and even paranoia - where some of the negative influences are concerned. Here are some positive ideas to help balance the books.

Reversing the minus sign

A while back, the idea came to me that some of the people who have a very negative effect on others could have an equally positive effect if they would only decide to clean up their act and be a force for good instead of evil.

The more innate power to influence people and events someone has, the greater their potential for either causing damage and destruction or making the world a better place.  The more power they have, the more people they can either save or lead to disaster.

This is similar to being overdrawn at the bank: if the sign were changed from minus to plus, a small deficit would become a small credit but a huge overdraft would become a huge credit balance.

Yet another string of minor incidents

I recently experienced a string of minor misfortunes while out on a shopping trip.There was a time when such incidents would have been very jarring but not any more; I was not affected at all. I even tried to mentally bring some positivity into the atmosphere.

The first incident happened when the bus I was on swept past a bus stop without stopping. A woman who had wanted to get off there became very angry, all the more because the next stop was a fair distance away so she had a long walk back. She swore at the driver.  He said that she should have rung the bell; she insisted that she had rung it. She seemed a bit disturbed and disconnected, and her voice had a strange, unpleasant tone.

The next incident took place in a small supermarket. A woman left her queue to go back and get some item she had forgotten. She took her time, leaving a lot of people waiting. Someone mentioned this, quite politely, to her when she came back – without apologising for the delay - and she took offence and got into an argument with him. Staff had to intervene.

When I was on the bus on the return journey, there was trouble involving a man in a wheelchair who wanted to get off and a passenger who intervened on his behalf. The driver closed the doors to let the ramp down, but she jumped to the wrong conclusion and thought that he was going to move on without letting the man off. She shouted for him to stop. 

It was just a misunderstanding, but the bus driver got annoyed and said, "I'm not blind!" She got annoyed and said there was no need for him to be so rude. As she got off a few stops later, she told the driver that he should not have spoken like that to someone who was just trying to help. 

Soon after that, the bus made a sudden, violent swerve and I was thrown forwards.

A young tourist asked me if she was on the right bus. I tried to help, but it seemed that her English wasn’t good enough for her to understand what I said, despite all my efforts. This was frustrating. I showed her a stop where she could change to a better bus; she produced a map and other papers and said that she knew where she was; I realised that she didn’t really need any help after all. She seemed rather vague. A very minor incident indeed, but I suspect that it was part of the string.

Another recent string of minor misfortunes

I wrote about a bad day I had in a previous post. I have had a few more bad days recently, and I have a good idea what caused them.

I kept walking into and tripping over things at home, giving myself some bruises.

I went out on some errands. I fell very heavily just outside the library: all I did was step on a tiny stone, but it rocked forward, threw me off balance and tipped me right over. I was very shaken; I got some more bruises and I grazed my hands. 

Inside the library, a machine took my reservation money but did not credit my account; luckily the library staff believed me when I said I had paid, and they sorted it out.

I had a jarring shock when my internet connection suddenly stopped working when I was in the middle of something important. I did get it working again, but I had some bad moments.

The worst aspect was feeling depressed, apathetic and just plain terrible: as always, it got worse and worse then slowly wore off.

My normal practice at times such as this is to work backwards and look for an energy vampire. This time, I knew that a possibly stupid action of mine was responsible.

It all started when I saw a post on a consumer forum from someone who had discovered that his name and address details could easily be found online, even though he had opted out of the open electoral register. 

I went on the site he mentioned, and could not resist trying the name of someone I had not seen for a very long time: I went ‘no contact’ by choice as I just couldn’t take any more.

Person of interest: Madeleine L’Engle’s Zachary Grey

Zachary Grey is a character in several young-adult novels by Madeleine L’Engle. Confusingly, he becomes Zachary Gray in the later books.

Madeleine L’Engle is not one of my favourite authors and her books do not inspire me to produce a series of articles, but some aspects of the behaviour of her character Zachary Grey and the destructive effect it has on people around him are relevant to my ideas about energy vampires and unseen influences.

About Zachary Grey

Zachary Grey, often known as Zach, is a bit of a Bad Boy. He is very rich and throws money around. He is moody and troubled; he is wild, reckless, unpredictable and sometimes self-destructive; he likes to hurt and frighten people; his outlook on life is cynical, amoral, nihilistic, negative and pessimistic: he is always saying, “What’s the point?” and wondering whether there is anything worth living for in this lousy world. He sees nothing but doom and disaster ahead. 

There are times when he hates just about everyone: he drives them away then tries to cajole them into staying.

Zach has a weak heart; he knows that he could die at any time and uses this as a weapon to control people: if they don’t do just as he likes he might have a heart attack. He uses hysterical outbursts to manipulate his parents into giving him whatever he wants; they are under his thumb.

Zach has a death wish and courts danger; he habitually does things he knows he shouldn’t do. He is always getting kicked out of schools for smoking and cheating and not turning up for classes. He does this for kicks, because he is bored. He intends to study law just to learn how to get away with things and get the better of and outsmart the phonies who run this lousy world.

Zach believes that money is everything; he has nothing but withering scorn for religion: he thinks that all religious people are phonies; he thinks that people care only about number one and that the only way to get on in the world is to step on people. His goal in life is to have what he wants, do what he wants, go where he wants and get what he wants. 

Zachary Grey is a devil’s advocate.

A recent string of minor misfortunes

I had a bad day recently, the exact opposite of what I expected. 

I had planned a circular walkabout that would combine fresh air, exercise, errands, a treat and a visit to a park. 

Unfortunately, it was more of an endurance test than an enjoyable experience. It was just one thing after another, so I gave in and went home. 

Unfortunately, that was not the end of the misfortunes.

It all started when I went to get some money from the cash machine. When I pressed the button, all I got was my balance on the screen. I felt paranoid, as though I had been cut off from my money. After a few more tries, I realised that the menu text on the screen was misaligned with the buttons. I got my cash out and went on to the library, where I found that my library card wouldn’t go through any of the machines so had to ask the librarian to do everything manually.

I got some takeaway breakfast items. My plan was to eat them in a local public garden. I walked down a steep street and along the park railings. The gate I wanted to use was chained up: there was a lot of construction work going on. I had to walk all the way back to another gate, past all the vans and workmen.

I was sitting on a bench drinking my coffee and reading my library book when I was interrupted by a group of young people who asked me if I would complete a survey. I don't like doing this sort of thing, and I felt jarred by having my concentration broken. The food I bought was not as good as I hoped it would be either. I walked back up the steep street to the main road, which was exhausting. I had intended to walk through a market area and back home, but I had lost all energy and inclination so got a bus back. 

I was getting my entry fob out when a strange man appeared and wanted to come in too. I told him that he should ring the bell of whoever he had come to visit. He didn’t seem to understand and still thought I would let him in, but luckily a friend came along and we both got inside by ourselves. The man was probably ok but it is amazing how these things happen at the wrong time, just when I don't feel up to dealing with them.