In the early 1950s, psychologist Leon Festinger came across an item in a local newspaper describing how a cult-like group was predicting the end of the world. According to the article, a woman named Marian Keech was indulging in a spot of automatic writing and claimed that the messages were from aliens. Keech had convinced a small group of 11 followers that there would be a great flood on 21 December 1954, but that they shouldn’t worry because a flying saucer would rescue them just before the disaster.
Festinger wondered what would happen to Keech and her followers when the anticipated flood and flying saucers failed to materialize. To find out, he secretly had several undercover observers infiltrate the group and carefully record every psychological twist and turn. Describing his findings in a book entitled When Prophecy Fails (which gives you a clue as to whether the spacecraft actually arrived), Festinger produced a fascinating insight into the psychology of the cult.12
A few days before the group expected the world to end, Mrs Keech and her followers were buoyant, with one member even baking a large cake depicting the mother ship and bearing the iced message ‘Up in the air!’ On the big day the group were nervous and excited. The aliens had sent several messages to Keech explaining that they would knock on her door at midnight and lead the group to their nearby flying saucer (apparently there was no parking directly outside the house). The aliens had also said that it was vital that no one had any metal on them, and so for several hours before the anticipated visit the group members replaced their belts with string, carefully cut any zippers from their clothing, and ripped out the eyelets from their shoes. Keech’s books of automatic scribbling were then placed in a large shopping bag and everyone waited for the aliens.
Just after midnight it became obvious that the extraterrestrial visitors were a no-show. The group sat in stunned silence and spent the next four hours trying to find an explanation for what had happened. When they failed, Keech began to cry. However, a few hours later she said that she had received another message from the aliens, explaining that the predicted cataclysm had been called off because the group had managed to spread light upon the world. Festinger’s study illustrates how people have a remarkable ability to explain away evidence rather than change their cherished beliefs.
This ‘I have made up my mind, don’t confuse me with the facts’ approach helps their beliefs emerge unscathed through even the most devastating attacks. Only two members of Keech’s group, both of whom were lightly committed to begin with, abandoned their belief in the guru’s writings.
Festinger noticed that rather than walk away with their tails between their legs, many members of the group subsequently became especially eager to spread the word. Prior to the failed prediction the group shunned publicity and only gave interviews grudgingly. Immediately afterwards they contacted the media and began an urgent campaign to spread their message. Festinger explained this curious behaviour by speculating that they were trying to convince themselves that their belief was correct by convincing others, feeling that if lots of people believe in something then clearly there must be something in it.
Eventually the group broke up and everyone went their separate ways. Some took to the road,
travelling from one flying saucer convention to the next spreading the good word. Others returned to their previous lives. Keech became increasingly concerned about attention from law enforcement agencies and went into hiding. After spending several years in Peru, Keech returned to Arizona and continued to claim to be in contact with aliens until her death in 1992.
It would be comforting to think that the type of mind control discussed in this chapter is limited to the somewhat bizarre and esoteric world of cults. Comforting, but wrong. In fact, you frequently encounter exactly the same principles of persuasion in everyday life. Salespeople use the ‘foot in the door’ technique to secure a sale. Politicians attempt to silence dissenting voices and misdirect you away from information that they don’t want you to see. Marketeers make liberal use of the ‘self-justification’ principle, well aware that the more you pay for a product, the more mental hoops you will jump through to justify the purchase. And advertising agencies know that, in the same way that Marian Keech’s followers boosted their own beliefs by trying to convert others, you recommend products to friends and colleagues in an attempt to convince yourself that you made the right decision.
Although the contexts in which the principles operate differ, the psychology is exactly the same. The practitioners of mind control are not restricted to cult leaders and religious sects. Instead, they walk among us on a daily basis.
7. PROPHECY
In which we find out whether Abraham Lincoln really did foresee his own death, learn how to
control our dreams and delve deep into the remarkable world of sleep science.
Aberfan is a small village in South Wales. In the 1960s, many of those living there worked at a nearby colliery that had been built to exploit the large amount of high quality coal in the area.
Although some of the waste from the mining operation had been stored underground, much of it had been piled on the steep hillsides surrounding the village. Throughout October 1966 heavy rain lashed down on the area and seeped into the porous sandstone of the hills. Unfortunately, no one realized that the water was then flowing into several hidden springs and slowly transforming the pit waste into soft slurry.
Just after nine o’clock on the morning of 21 October, the side of the hill subsided and half a million tonnes of debris started to move rapidly towards the village. Although some of the material came to a halt on the lower parts of the hill, much of it slid into Aberfan and smashed into the village school.
Several classrooms were instantly filled with a ten metre deep mass of slurry. The pupils had left the school assembly hall a few moments before, having sung the hymn ‘All things bright and beautiful’, and so were just arriving in their classrooms when the landslide hit. Parents and police rushed to the school and frantically began digging through the rubble. Although a handful of children were pulled out alive during the first hour or so of the rescue effort, no other survivors emerged. One hundred and thirty-nine schoolchildren and five teachers lost their lives in the tragedy.
Psychiatrist John Barker visited the village the day after the landslide.1 Barker had a longstanding interest in the paranormal and wondered whether the extreme nature of events in Aberfan might have caused large numbers of people to experience a premonition about the tragedy. To find out, Barker arranged for the Evening Standard newspaper to ask any readers who thought they had foreseen the Aberfan disaster to get in touch. He received 60 letters from across England and Wales, with over half of the respondents claiming that their apparent premonition had come to them during a dream.
One of the most striking experiences was submitted by the parents of a ten-year-old child who perished in the tragedy. The day before the landslide their daughter described dreaming about trying to go to school, but said that there was ‘no school there’ because ‘something black had come down all over it’. In another example, Mrs M.H., a 54-year-old woman from Barnstaple, said that the night before the tragedy she had dreamed that a group of children were trapped in a rectangular room. In her dream, the end of the room was blocked by several wooden bars and the children were trying to climb over the bars. Mrs M.H. was sufficiently worried by the dream to telephone her son and daughter-in-law, and tell them to take special care of their two small daughters. Another respondent, Mrs G.E. from Sidcup, said that a week before the landslide she had dreamed about a group of screaming children being covered by an avalanche of coal, and two months before the tragedy Mrs S.B. from London had dreamed about a school on a hillside, an avalanche and children losing their lives. And so the list went on.
Barker was impressed with his findings and in 1966 set up the British Premonitions Bureau. The public were asked to submit their alleged premonitions to the Bureau in the hope that Barker would be able to predict, and possibly avert, future tragedies. Unfortunately, his idea didn’t catch on.
Although his Bureau received about a thousand predictions, the bulk of them came from just six people.2 Perhaps the strangest story to emerge from the project came from one of these alleged
‘precogs’, a 44-year-old night telephone operator named Alan Hencher. Hencher usually specialized in predicting air crashes and other major accidents; however, in 1967 he contacted the Bureau to register a far more personal premonition. In what must have been one of the more difficult
conversations in the history of parapsychology, Hencher informed Bureau Chief John Barker that Barker would soon die. His comments proved uncannily accurate, with Barker suddenly passing away the following year, aged just 44. To add irony to injury, Barker had previously written a book entitled Scared To Death , in which he argued that hearing a premonition of your own demise may induce a deep-seated fear that affects the body’s immune system and could result in death. The British Premonitions Bureau closed a few years later due to lack of funds. Apparently, neither Hencher nor any of the other expert precogs foresaw the closure.
Believing that you have seen the future in a dream is surprisingly common, with recent surveys suggesting that around a third of the population experience this phenomenon at some point in their lives. Beliefs like these have been recorded throughout history. The Bible famously describes how Pharaoh dreamed of seven lean cows coming out of a river and eating seven fat cows, and how Joseph interpreted this as the coming of seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine.
The ancient Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero reported having a dream in which he saw ‘a noble-looking youth, let down on a chain of gold from the skies’. When he entered the Capitol the following day he saw Octavius and recognized him as the noble-looking youth from his dreams.
Octavius later went on to succeed Caesar as Emperor of Rome. In more recent times, Abraham Lincoln reportedly dreamed about an assassination two weeks before being shot dead, Mark Twain described a dream in which he saw his brother’s corpse lying in a coffin just a few weeks before his brother was killed in an explosion, and Charles Dickens dreamed of a woman dressed in red called Miss Napier shortly before being visited by a girl wearing a red shawl and introducing herself as Miss Napier.
What could explain these remarkable events? Are people really getting a glimpse of things to come? Can the human psyche really play havoc with the very fabric of time? Is it possible to see tomorrow today?
Throughout history, these questions have taxed the minds of many of the world’s greatest thinkers.
For example, in about 350 BC the classical Greek philosopher Aristotle penned a short text entitled On Prophesying by Dreams . Aristotle’s two-part argument was as simple as it was strange. Having thought about the issue for some time, the great philosopher concluded that only God would be able to send prophetic dreams. However, Aristotle had observed that those reporting the dreams did not appear to be especially upstanding citizens, and often turned out to be rather ‘commonplace persons’.
Figuring that God wouldn’t waste time casting his pearls of wisdom among swine like that, Aristotle concluded that prophetic dreams could be safely dismissed as coincidences. It is an interesting argument, albeit one that is likely to be disputed by both modern scientists and Mrs M.H. from Barn-staple. However, despite over 2,000 years of interest in the mystery of prophetic dreaming, it is only in the last century or so that researchers have managed to solve the puzzle.
Before reading further you might like to make yourself a hot mug of cocoa and snuggle under the covers. We are about to enter the strange world of sleep science.
However, before we begin, let’s have a quick memory test. Take a look at the following list of words and try to remember them.
Lamp Rock Apple Worm Clock
Baby Horse Sword Bird Desk
Many thanks, more about this later. Let’s start.