Attacks by energy vampires: some details and theories

I am recovering from a recent attack by an energy vampire.

The bad effects are wearing off; I have decided to post the details in the hope that they will be useful to anyone who may have experienced something similar. 

The symptoms lasted for several days: I was continually yawning; I felt very slow and stupid; I was disinclined to do anything except lie around reading and looking for new posts on a forum or two of interest. 

I felt cursed, as if I were under an evil spell. I experienced strange and unpleasant sensations and an inner state that is difficult to convey in words. I felt very depressed; further descriptions that come to mind include feeling desolated, disconnected, doomed, exiled, hopeless, lost, mortally wounded, paralysed, sabotaged and useless. 

I had unpleasant dreams and woke up feeling terrible, sucked dry and fit for nothing.

I missed opportunities to get out in the sunshine because there is no point in just going through the motions while feeling dead inside and unable to enjoy anything. I had also learned the hard way that distress signals attract predators. 

I also had a string of minor accidents. I tripped over a cable and fell heavily, hurting my knee on top of an old injury; I intended to open the lower door on my fridge-freezer and opened the upper one by mistake, banging myself very hard on the forehead; when I did go out I nearly fell down the stairs on the bus. I stupidly walked up several flights of stairs at a station, not even thinking to take the lift or an escalator. This made my knee much worse.

Sir Terry Pratchett R. I. P.

Sir Terry Pratchett has died. There will be no more Discworld novels and no more stories about his witches.

Reading and writing about certain fictional modern-day witches can be depressing and demoralising, especially when they remind us of people who have injured us in real life. Terry Pratchett’s witches provide a pleasant, entertaining and amusing contrast: their sayings and doings lift the spirits of and bring enjoyment to his readers.

I quoted some extracts from his books a while back, and added some thoughts of my own: there is something about his evil elves here and some of his wise words about magic here.

Goodbye Terry, and thank you.

P. S. I saw Terry Pratchett once, and we exchanged brief smiles! 

It was in Hampstead, in north-west London. I was walking past some shops to the bus stop and saw him sitting with someone at a table outside a café. 

His appearance is distinctive and he was a trustee of a charity in the area, so it was definitely him.

Mary Webb’s legacy: curse or coincidence?

Stella Gibbons wrote Cold Comfort Farm as an antidote to and comic parody of a certain type of fiction: the rural novel as written by authors such as Mary Webb and Sheila Kaye-Smith. 

I have never been able to see the attraction of what is known as the ‘Loam and Lovechild School of Fiction’ myself  - not even Thomas Hardy’s books have the power to hold my attention – but when I read in an article I found online while researching Stella Gibbons that Stella once expressed her regret to the writer Michael Pick that she had parodied Mary Webb "because she had such an unhappy life", followed by “This was perhaps oversensitive. Webb had, after all, died five years before the publication of Cold Comfort Farm. Her life, though dogged by illness and depression, was by no means without happiness, and her childhood, compared with Stella's, had been idyllic”, I became curious about Mary Webb and decided to investigate further. 

I read the biographies The Flower of Light and Mary Webb, both by Gladys Mary Coles, and the novel Precious Bane, which is generally considered to be Mary Webb’s masterpiece.  

I found some familiar scenarios in Precious Bane; I decided to produce this article after reading about what happened to Mary Webb’s husband after her death.

Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy: a major unseen influence

Out of all of the many works of Robert A. Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy is the one I like best. 

I first discovered it at the age of 12 or so. This story educated, entertained and inspired me; it sank into my subconscious mind and some years later influenced the course I took in life. I still occasionally go back to it, and it is just as enjoyable and moving now as it was when I first read it.

I like the descriptions of life on Jubbulpore, capital of the Nine Worlds. I feel relieved when Thorby, the young hero, escapes from the regimented, restricted, custom-ridden, ship-bound life of the clannish Free Traders, which is my idea of hell. It is an anomaly that he had more freedom in his previous life as a beggar than he did as a high-ranking member of that closed society. 

I feel for Thorby when he experiences the cold wind of fear, when he feels some sick twinges because people he cares about have gone away forever and when he feels lost once more. 

I envy Thorby his string of benevolent mentors, father figures even. His abilities are recognised and he is educated and rigorously trained accordingly.

Older women are there to help him just when he needs it, and he gets some useful briefings from young people too. He has people to tell him the score, to explain what is happening, to show him how to look at situations objectively and put his life into the context of various societies. 

Defence Against the Dark Arts Part VII: Charlotte Brontë’s Martin Yorke

Of all the characters in all the Brontë sisters’ novels, Martin Yorke, who appears in Charlotte Brontë’s socio-historical novel Shirley, is my favourite.

Shirley (1849) is set in rural Yorkshire in 1811/12 against a background of industrial unrest, of violent opposition to the introduction of machinery in the local textile industry. 

Charlotte Brontë intended Shirley to be a counterpoint to her first novel, Jane Eyre, which was considered to be melodramatic and unrealistic. Shirley was to be political, significant, true to life and, in her own words, “real, cool and solid, as unromantic as a Monday morning.” 

Similarly, Martin Yorke is far from being a dominant, dangerous, glamorous, smouldering, rugged romantic hero like the demonic duo of Heathcliff and Mr Rochester. Martin is nobody’s fantasy ideal man: he is a funny, greedy, clever, mischievous schoolboy who in my opinion is worth more than both those bad Byronic boyos put together. 

Martin Yorke is only a minor character in Shirley, but the scenes I most enjoy in the book are the ones that he appears in. His antics and sayings remind me not only of Rudyard Kipling’s Stalky, but also of people I have known in real life. Charlotte Brontë modelled him on the brother of a close friend of hers.

The Three Hostages: a sinister scenario

I was very young when I first read John Buchan’s thriller The Three Hostages, an adventure story that features Richard Hannay and contains a fascinating mystery to be solved.

At the time, certain expressions that would now be considered ‘politically incorrect’ and offensive did not register, nor did I see anything particularly noteworthy in the horrific mental state of the hostages and the unpleasant, alien conditions in which they were forced to live. At the time, the clues to the hiding places of the hostages and the challenge of finding and freeing them were the most gripping aspects of the story. 

The details of life as lived by privileged, well-connected people were very interesting too. I found the book exciting and informative. I envied Richard Hannay: I wanted that sort of action and lifestyle for myself!

Now, after many years of investigating unseen influences, it is the references to magic, wizards and the stealing of souls, the discussions of psychology and the subconscious mind and the descriptions of hypnotism and mind control that are for me the most significant aspects of the book. 

As his friend and colleague Sandy Arbuthnot says to Richard Hannay:

“…the compulsion of spirit by spirit.  That, I have always believed, is to-day, and ever has been, the true magic.”

There is a lot of general information in The Three Hostages about the sinister and unethical practices mentioned above, and about the attributes, abilities and personality of the kind of man who would make use of them.

Now, what holds my attention above everything else is the effect that these practices have when applied to the hostages, also the details of hostages’ lives while in captivity.  Much of this has relevance to the real world; some of it is also very familiar to me. The resemblances that I can see and the connections that I can make to my own life are very painful to dwell on. 

Nicholas Stuart Gray’s witch: Mother Gothel

The witch Mother Gothel appears in Nicholas Stuart Gray’s story The Stone Cage, which is a re-telling of the Rapunzel fairy tale. Rapunzel is a maiden with very long hair who is kept prisoner by a witch at the top of a tall stone tower.

The book is currently unobtainable: all I could find was the dramatised version of The Stone Cage, which is better than nothing. This play has also been performed under the name The Wrong Side of the Moon.

Mother Gothel as depicted in The Stone Cage is based on a real person - Nicholas Stuart Gray’s mother. 

Mother Gothel is introduced
“She is a witch, in the worst meaning of the word. A creature of malice, egotism and cruelty. She is so interested in herself, that she has little time to spare for anyone else’s feelings or well-being. She considers the world against her, and beneath her. She is absolutely alone, and does not even realise that she minds the fact…Once, long ago, she was beautiful. Now, she would be avoided by anyone with sense…”

More about Mother Gothel – in her own words
“Obey me, crawl to me, cringe, and love me!”

“I do not forgive anything – ever.”

“I have little or no sense of humour. It’s quite fatal to true wickedness.”

This reminds me of something Richard Hannay says in John Buchan’s The Three Hostages: “I saw it as farce… and at the coming of humour the spell died”.  

“It’s best to catch ‘em young…Before their minds open. When they know nothing, except what you choose to tell them. See nothing but what you care to show. When right and wrong are words to juggle with, and black and white is interchangeable...”

This too is familiar: Dominick Medina, the villain of The Three Hostages, wipes the memories of his young captives and fills their minds with his own creations. The mention of black and white reminds me of another of Hannay’s comments: “I felt that I was looking on at an attempt, which the devil is believed to specialise in, to make evil good and good evil...”