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…”

Southsea and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I went on a day trip to Southsea recently. 

The main reason for my visit was to take a look at the place where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had once lived and worked: I had learned that I used to live close to where he had his doctor's practice.

I lived in Southsea during my last few terms at primary school and my first few terms at secondary school.  I went back there once or twice as an adult, but for personal reasons only: I just wanted to lay some ghosts from the past. I didn’t know about the Conan Doyle and Kipling connections at the time. I didn’t know anything about the number 33 either, which by chance is the number of the house that I lived in – and other houses I have connections with.

I have already mentioned that I also lived close to Kipling’s House of Desolation, which is still standing; unfortunately, what might be called Conan Doyle’s House of Success is no longer there.

Conan Doyle’s life in Southsea 
Arthur Conan Doyle came to Southsea at the age of 23 with the intention of establishing a medical practice. He set up as a doctor in what was then No.1 Bush Villas, Elm Grove:

“Victorian doctors lived on the fees they charged their patients, so Conan Doyle researched into the locations of other established doctors in the town before setting up as a GP at No. 1 Bush Villas, near the junction of Elm Grove and King’s Road in Southsea. For the first few months business was slow, but gradually over time Conan Doyle became more well-known as a doctor, advertising his services whenever he could and making sure that his name was mentioned in the newspaper whenever he attended an accident...”

Kathleen Raine, the Destroyer and the Destroyed

The poet Kathleen Raine was born on this day, June 14^th, in 1908. To mark the occasion, here is another article inspired by her autobiographical books.

One thing I noticed immediately is that, unlike many other victims of the creative spirit, Kathleen Raine made attempts to understand the occult forces and unseen influences at work in her life.

She learned from experience and took some responsibility for what happened to her:

“Because I suffered I supposed that he had hurt me… an instinctive reaction, stupid and unjust for most often we hurt ourselves whether by imagining non-existent wrongs or in persistence in some mistake we cannot or will not see…”

She thought about the effect that she had on the people around her and realised that, while she had suffered immensely, she had also caused much suffering to others.  She knew that she had treated her parents cruelly –  in return for what they had done to her – and she also realised that obsessively concentrating on someone can have a damaging effect:

“Perhaps he felt the longing dragging at him…the sense of another’s unwanted thoughts flowing towards one constantly…”

She came to understand that what happens to people in the outer world is often a reflection of what is happening in their inner world:

“… the world continually reflects back to us our inner states…”

“Everything that befalls us has its cause within ourselves… another of those seeming miracles by which a change of inner disposition is followed by a corresponding change in the outward course of events…”

“Our being responds only to that to which it is attuned…”

Much of what she says is independent confirmation of the validity of conclusions that I had already come to and the truth of insights that had come to me.

Rudyard Kipling and the House of Desolation: Part III

Part I describes the abandonment of Rudyard Kipling and his younger sister by their parents. Part II continues the story and ends with his release from what seemed to him like a prison sentence with torture thrown in.

There are still a few questions outstanding and points to be made.

Did Kipling lie about or exaggerate his suffering?

I remember reading somewhere that when Kipling's parents first read the account of his time in Southsea, they tried to get his sister Trix to say that it hadn't been as bad as he said it was. This is what happens in many such cases; people said the same thing to Charlotte Brontë, when actually she had toned down her account of life at the dreadful school.

There is a lot that could be and has been said on this subject. Writers certainly use their imagination to create good stories. For many, what happens in their imagination seems real to them, more real even than what really happened. Some use what happened in real life as just the starting point for building a whole edifice of fiction. Some present occasional incidents as happening frequently and such things as minor criticisms as vicious attacks. This may seem like lying and exaggeration to some people.

However, it is not only a case of what actually happened, but the kind of person it happened to and what the effects were. Some collective-minded, grounded people might be resilient and recover quickly; they might let it all go, put it behind them, forgive and forget and get on with their lives. Others, perhaps more imaginative and sensitive and wide open to subtle energies, may have little insulation or resistance and be permanently affected in the core of their beings. Some people feel everything on an archetypal level; some get bad feelings in overwhelming and concentrated doses, enough for one hundred normal people.

I believe that Rudyard Kipling told the truth about what happened and did not exaggerate the effect it had on him. I also believe that a very different type of boy might have been much less affected and even been treated better. Jane Eyre said much the same thing about herself.