The cult leader in Jonathan Stroud’s Whispering Skull

I find Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co. series well worth reading for the stories alone. Material that inspires commentary is a bonus! 

The article about Stroud's predatory ghosts does not cover everything of interest and relevance in the Lockwood books. There is some material that makes me think of cults, and there are people and other entities who use supernatural powers to make themselves appear to be angels when they are really demons.

This article has something to say about a sinister doctor called Edmund Bickerstaff, who is of particular interest because he has some of the characteristics that are often found in cult leaders.

The sinister Victorian doctor
Dr. Edmund Bickerstaff is a character in The Whispering Skull, the second book in the Lockwood series. He was involved with occult research and experimentation; he pursued forbidden knowledge. After years of unwholesome activities such as grave robbing and necromancy, he was believed to have come to a horrible end in 1877. The fate of his remains was unknown until the present day, when his gravestone is unexpectedly found in London's Kensal Green Cemetery.

Dr. Bickerstaff's ghost is likely to be very dangerous, so Anthony Lockwood and his fellow psychical investigation agents George Cubbins and Lucy Carlyle are retained to supervise the excavation of the grave and deal with the remains. 

Their discoveries and adventures while on the case make fascinating reading, but it is the effect that Dr. Bickerstaff has on people that is most relevant here. 

Dr. Bickerstaff and cult leaders
Cult leaders often promise everything and deliver little or nothing. They can be pied pipers who lead their sleep-walking, spellbound followers to disaster; they can be sirens who lure people to their doom. Dr. Bickerstaff is one such leader. He operated on a relatively small scale when alive, but had a lethal effect on his followers.

Two incidents at the equinox

The article about depression at the autumn equinox describes how Charlotte Brontë suffered badly for a month to six weeks at this time of year. 

I have been feeing under the weather for around two weeks myself. It is worse than it has been in recent years, but nothing like as bad as it got in the distant past. 

While it helps to know that certain unseen influences may be at work, this doesn't stop the feelings of malaise, stagnation, despondency and being unprotected; it doesn't stop approaches from strangers who make me feel uncomfortable either. 

I experienced two such incidents when I went out shopping recently.

The first one happened when I visited a shopping centre some way from where I live. I have been there many times in the past, but I felt confused when I came out of the station. I made a false start or two, then set off down what I soon realised was the wrong road. As I walked past some tables outside a café, a rather weird and witchy older woman with straggly grey hair who was sitting there called out loudly, eagerly and triumphantly, “Hello darling” as if she knew me! 

I am wondering whether I fell into her psychic trap or answered her call and was drawn to that place because my defences were low at the time. The shopping expedition was not a success: the store I planned to visit had closed down and I came home with nothing.

The second incident happened when I was standing in a queue at a big supermarket. Someone just behind me started to comment in an over-friendly manner on the items I had selected; I looked round cautiously and saw that it was a rather weird and witchy older woman with straggly grey hair! The woman on the till was very slow and there were several people waiting in front of me, so I was a captive audience. I just smiled vaguely while she kept talking.  She also said loudly, “Hello darling” to the woman on the till! It was definitely not the same person though.

I am wondering what drew her to my queue and not one of the others. 

A few points about people who join cults

Steven Hassan's best-selling book Combating Cult Mind Control, which is described as a 'Guide to Protection, Rescue, and Recovery from Destructive Cults', is a good starting point for people who want to learn something about cults. First published in 1988, it is still very relevant.

This book contains a lot of useful - not to mention depressing, disturbing, sinister and chilling - information and covers many cult-related topics.

Steven, aka Steve, Hassan is American; he is a former high-level member of the Unification Church or 'Moonies'. Much of what he says about this cult and his life inside it has a much wider application.

This article covers a few points of particular interest that Steve Hassan makes in connection with joining cults.

He says for example that the Moonies justify the use of deception to recruit new members. So do many if not most cult-like organisations. Misleading people, luring them somewhere under false pretences and downright brazen lying are common practices; some examples can be found in this article.

A key point about people who join cults
Steven Hassan makes a very good point here:

“It is important to remember that for the most part, people don't join cults. Culls recruit people.“

This is very true in the majority of cases. Most people who join cults do so only because they were approached and manipulated by unscrupulous members with recruitment targets to meet: they would not have sought out and joined the cult of their own inclination and free will.

Some cults however are very exclusive, at least in the early stages of their existence. They prefer quality to quantity and try to attract rather than target people. They make it difficult to join and they let the would-be members make all the running and prove themselves worthy. Of course, this could be a clever recruitment technique!

Something about Nicholas Stuart Gray's Grimbold's Other World

I recently read Nicholas Stuart Gray's Grimbold's Other World (1963) for the first time. 

This little fantasy book is written in the style of fairy tales; each chapter is followed by a poem. 

I wish that I had encountered this book when I was very young and could read it just for the settings, the stories, the characters and the humour as I did with Nicholas Stuart Gray's Over the Hills to Fabylon: the references to not belonging and the dangers of being involved with magic and other worlds are the main interest now.

Grimbold and Muffler
Grimbold is a black cat who introduces a boy called Muffler, who was found in a hen's nest by some villagers and is 'different', to the night world and its inhabitants.

Muffler has a whole series of adventures in his world and the night world. He is involved with a variety of characters including a sorcerer, talking animals, birds and trees and mythological beings such as dwarves. 

Children will enjoy the stories for their own sake, but adults who are interested in unseen influences may notice some sad and alarming messages.

The quotations speak for themselves – and for the author and others who don't feel at home in this world.

The villagers say this about Muffler:

“We must be gentle, and not let him suffer for being different.”

The narrator makes this depressing – but true - comment:

“This, of course, was not possible. Everyone must suffer who is different.”

Grimbold's Other World contains many warnings about what happens to people who get involved with magic and the night world.

Lucy M. Boston's witch Melanie Powers and Green Knowe revisited

The children's writer Lucy M. Boston, author of the Green Knowe series, has been featured in an article about her birthday and her memoirs. There are brief references to her witch Dr. Melanie Powers in a few other places, and some elements that this evil woman has in common with fellow fictional modern-day witch Miss Heckatty are described in the article about Linwood Sleigh's witches. 

I re-read An Enemy at Green Knowe recently, and, just as happened when I took another look at Beverley Nichols's books about the witch Miss Smith, I found some more material to comment on.

Starting with some coincidences

The main story begins when the boy Ping asks old Mrs Oldknow if she knows anything about a 17th-century man called Piers Madely. She says that this is odd, because she had been thinking about Madely earlier that day!

She tells the disturbing story of the good vicar Piers Madely and the unprepossessing occult scholar, alchemist and necromancer Dr. Vogel, whose evil books and manuscripts were all burned, to Ping and his friend Tolly, who is her great-grandson. The very next day, a letter arrives from a Dr. Melanie D. Powers enquiring about Dr. Vogel's collection!

Before the letter comes:

“The queer thing about Grand's stories," Tolly explained to Ping, "is that bits of them keep coming true now, although they are all so old.“

After the letter comes:

"There you are, Ping!" Tolly exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you part of Grand's stories always come true? She no sooner mentions Dr. Wolfgang Vogel than Dr. Melanie D. Powers comes asking about him."

Perhaps Mrs Oldknow had been thinking about Dr. Vogel because she subconsciously sensed that the letter was coming.

Cults and the cutting of personal connections: Part IV

As mentioned in Part III, the cutting of personal connections between cult members and non-members works both ways: it is not always the members who do the dropping.  

This breaking of bonds can cause problems and dilemmas no matter which side does it. This article covers a few more aspects of this painful subject.

Problems on the cult side
The most obvious problem here is that cult members who are forbidden from associating with their families and friends will not be able to get financial or other forms of support for the cause or movement from them.

One way round this is for the cult to arrange supervised phone calls or meetings. Selected members are told what to say and ask for, and another member listens in or is present to ensure that they follow instructions and stick to the script. This may work, at least for a while, if the family wants contact on any terms.

A compromise solution is to apply the strictest rules and the tightest controls only to hard-core members, the upper levels or the inner circle, with less-dedicated members, supporters and other 'inferiors' free to associate with anyone they want to.

Public relations are another problem. I used to wonder why a particular cult-like organisation would order many of its senior members to stop seeing their families when this would entail making enemies out of former friends, give ammunition to opponents and result in bad publicity that might alienate potential supporters and damage the cause. 

One tactic cults use here is denial. They may insist for example that it isn't true that members are forced to cut all outside relationships. Such blatant lying may work for a while – I fell for some of it myself in the early days – but people now have access to social media, defectors' stories and the Internet so are more educated and less likely to be fooled.

Cults and the cutting of personal connections: Part III

The previous article gives examples of members of cult-like organisations who were ordered to cut their personal connections so that they could dedicate themselves to the cause. There is another angle to broken relationships between members and non-members: sometimes it is the non-members who cut the ties. They may feel that enough is enough when it comes to being treated badly; they may do it to protect themselves. 

From another old post of mine:

“There is another side to this. It could be that it is the family and friends who do the avoiding – or dropping. They may come to hate the pressure to accept the ideology, the recruitment attempts, the lectures and the preaching; they may get tired of being pestered for money while at the same time being told how inferior they are. There may be nothing in in for them.”

They may also not appreciate being frequently stood up or let down by unreliable people: cult members are not their own bosses and are often given errands or sent away somewhere with little notice. 

Someone who has been involved with a cult member may come to understand that they have been cheated, lied to and made a fool of: misrepresentation is common cult practice.

They may feel resentful when they realise that they have been exploited and angry when they discover that they have been tricked and used. For example, they may have been invited somewhere under false pretences just to get the numbers up and make it look as though there are many supporters. 

The cult members know very well that people wouldn't go if they knew the true purpose of and ulterior motive behind an invitation, so they bait the hook with something attractive.

I remember an occasion when people were lured to a venue by the prospect of hearing good music; they got political speeches instead! Some of them got up and walked out in disgust.  

Just as some members decide to leave a cult after a last straw moment, some people decide to stop seeing their member friends after experiencing the final straw.