The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1863

The study behind the phenomena of Morzine, in a way, shall not present any difficulty as we are well aware of the facts and considerations deduced from them after careful study. It is just a matter of reporting them so that anybody can reach those conclusions by analogy on their own. The two events below will still help us further to guide the reader on the right path. The first one was transmitted by Dr. Chaigneau, honorary member of the Parisian Society, president of the Spiritist Society of Saint-Jean d’Angély.

“A family used to make evocations with an unbridled passion, provocted by a Spirit that, as we learned, was very dangerous. It was one of their relatives who had died after bad life as well as mental problems. Under a fictitious name and by providing several proofs, he made beautiful promises and gave advices to fascinate those unsuspecting people, submitting them to his demands and forcing them to the most eccentric actions. Since they were no longer able to satisfy his wishes they came to me asking for advice making it really difficult to us to dissuade them and demonstrate to them that it was a Spirit of the worst kind. We were successful though to the point of having them abstain from the evocations from some time. Since then the obsession changed character: the Spirit would completely control the youngest son, a fourteen year old young man, bringing him to a cataleptic state after which he verbally requested to be entertained, gave orders and threatened people. We advised them to keep absolute silence, which was rigorously observed. The parents would pray and come to us for assistance. Reverence and will power have always given us the upper hand in a matter of minutes. In practical terms it has all ended now. We hope that order may follow disorder in that home. Far from being upset with Spiritism, they believe more than ever before but believe more seriously. They now understand the objective and moral consequences of Spiritism. They all understand that it was a lesson to them. Some believe it was perhaps a deserved punishment.”

This example demonstrates, once more, the inconveniences of carrying out evocations without knowledge of causes and without a serious objective. Thanks to the advice of experience heard by those persons they were able to get rid of a perhaps a terrible enemy. Another not less important teaching stems out of this. To the eyes of people ignorant of Spiritism, the young man would have been seen as a mad person. He would not go without the corresponding treatment which in turn could have developed real insanity in him. With the help of a Spiritist doctor the disease was attacked in its true cause without leaving sequels. The same did not happen in the next event.

An acquaintance that resides in a country town, knowingly hostile to the spiritist ideas, was suddenly taken by a kind of delirium that resulted in him absurd things. Since he was involved with Spiritism, he used to talk about spirits. Those around him were scared, alarmed, and without further investigation called in the doctors who soon declared the man to be mad for the satisfaction of the enemies of Spiritism who wanted to have him taken to a mental health institution.

Everything that we were able to collect about the event demonstrates that the person was momentarily submitted to subjugation perhaps enhanced by certain physical conditions. It was what he thought. He sent us a letter to which we responded. Unfortunately, our letter did not arrive in time and he only much later had he learned about it. “I am so very sorry for not having received your reassuring letter”, he said later. “At the moment it would have helped me a great deal, confirming my thoughts that I was a toy in the hands of an obsession and that would have brought me peace of mind whereas what I constantly heard around me was that I was crazy and I ended up believing in that. Those thoughts tortured me to such an extent that I don’t know what could have happened had they stayed with me any longer.”

Once consulted about it a Spirit responded: – A. This person is not mad but by the way he is being medically treated he could become mad. Even more: they could have him killed. The remedy to his disease is in Spiritism.”

Similar cases have happened and many were arrested as insane without knowing it. It is only an experienced observer in this kind of matter that can appreciate it. Since there are many spiritist doctors these days, it is recommended that people refer to them in such cases. Obsession will one day be listed among pathological causes as it is today just as the action of microscopic organisms whose existence was ignored before the invention of the microscope. People will then realize that neither the showers nor the bloodletting can cure them. A doctor that does not admit it and that only seeks purely material causes is as much inadequate to treat such affections as a blind person is to identify colors.

The second case was reported by one of our corresponding members from Boulogne-Sur-Mer.

“A forty-five-year-old woman, wife of a sailor from this town, has been subjected to the sad domain of subjugation for almost fifteen years. Almost every evening and without exception to the periods of pregnancy she is woken up around midnight, her limbs trembling as if taken by the action of a galvanic battery. She feels her stomach compressed and burning; her brains in furious exaltation, feeling as if pulled from bed and sometimes dragged semi naked outside of the house, forced to run through the fields. She wanders around for two or three hours, only realizing her condition and location at the end of the episode. She cannot pray. When she kneels and try her thoughts are mixed with bizarre and dirty things. She cannot go to any church. She strongly feels like doing it but she is stopped at the door by a barrier that blocks her. Four men unsuccessfully tried to take her inside a church. She screamed that they were killing her, that her chest was smashed. The poor woman fruitlessly tried to commit suicide several times to escape that horrible situation. She drank coffee with dissolved phosphorous; she drank detergent suffering nothing; she threw herself in the waters but every time she would surface again until someone rescued her. Beyond those moments of crisis she is entirely normal and even in those moments she is perfectly aware of her actions and the superior force that acts upon her. The whole neighborhood believes that she is the victim of a curse.”

Subjugation could not be better characterized but through the phenomena that are undoubtedly the works of a Spirit of the worst kind. Will some say that it was Spiritism that attracted the Spirit to her or that disturbed her brains? But nobody spoke of Spiritism fifteen years ago. As a matter of fact, the woman is not mad and what she experiences is not an illusion. Ordinary medicine will only see in these symptoms one of those diseases called “nervous” whose cause is still a mystery. The disease is real but there is always a cause to any effect. Now, what is the first cause? This is a field that can count on the contribution of Spiritism by demonstrating the existence of a new agent in the perispirit and the action of the invisible upon the visible world. We do not generalize and do recognize that in certain cases the cause may be entirely material but there are other cases in which the intervention of a hidden intelligence is evident since by fighting that intelligence the illness is abated while by nothing happens when the supposedly unique material cause is attacked.

The evil spirits show a common characteristic trait, namely their aversion to anything that is related to religion. The majority of the non-obsessed mediums who have received communications from bad spirits have often witnessed their desecration against most sacred things, including laughing at and avoiding prayer as well as showing irritation when God is mentioned.

In the subjugated medium, the Spirit controls about one third of the body and can express thoughts not only through writing but also through gestures and words forced through the medium. Since no spiritist phenomenon may be produced without the mediumistic concurrence we can say that the woman’s experienced mentioned above is a spontaneous, unconscious and involuntary medium. The impossibility of praying and attending a church service comes from the rejection of the Spirit that took control of her because he knows that prayer will set her free.

Instead of one person suppose that we now have ten, twenty, thirty or more in the same region, the same state and there you have the reproduction of what happened in Morzine.

Isn’t that proof positive that these spirits are demons? Call them demons if you want as that label would not surprise them. Don’t you frequently see, however, people that are really bad and that could be called incarnate demons in their own right? Aren’t those who say blasphemous things, deny God, and find pleasure in evilness? Those who rejoice before the suffering of their neighbors? Why then would you expect to have them suddenly transformed in the world of the spirits? The ones you call demons, we call bad spirits with all the bad traits that you wish them to have. The difference, however, is that, in your opinion, demons are fallen angels, perfect beings that became bad and are now eternally devoted to evil and suffering. In our opinion, these are members of a primitive humanity, a kind of underdeveloped savages but to whom the future is not blocked and who will improve as their moral sense develops on them through a series of successive existences, something that seems much more in line with God’s law of progress and justice. Besides we have experience in our favor demonstrating the possibility of betterment and regret of the lowest kind of Spirits and those who are placed in the category of demons. Let us look into a special stage of those Spirits whose study is highly relevant to the current subject matter.

It is well-known that the inferior spirits are under the influence of matter, carrying all kinds of vices and passions from their time on Earth. As a result, these spirits will use these imperfections in subsequent reincarnation to misdirect others. Experience demonstrates that some show sexual deviances which are obscene and lead to or orgies and other mockeries that feed on these imperfections. Here is a question: after death what could have been the category of spirits such as Tiberius, Nero, Claudius, Messalina, Caligula and Heliogabalus? Which kind of obsession could have provoked them? In order to explain such obsession do we need to refer to special creatures that God would have created specially to drive people to evilness?

There are some kinds of obsessions that leave no doubt as to the type of Spirits that produce them. Obsession of those kind gave rise to fables of the incubus and succubus firmly believed by St. Augustine. More than one example could be cited to support this statement.

When the multiple corporeal impressions were studied and the perceptible touches sometimes produced by certain Spirits; when the tastes and tendencies of some of them are known and when the character of certain hysterical phenomena are analyzed, we ask ourselves if they would not play a role in that disease as they do in the obsessive insanity. We have seen it several times followed by unequivocal signs of subjugation.

Let’s now take a look at what happened in Morzine. To begin with let’s start with the location, which is important to the overall story.

Morzine is a commune of Chablais, High Savoy, located eight miles away from Thonon, at one end of the Durance Valley, in the remote Valais of Switzerland, separated by a mountain. Its population counts on about 2,500 souls and besides the main village there are several others spread in the high planes around. It is mostly surrounded by the Alps range but the majority is covered by forests and planted fields up to a considerable height. As a matter of fact, one cannot see permanent ice or snow anywhere there. We were told that the snow persists less there than in the Jura Mountains.

Dr. Constant was sent there by the French government in 1861 and stayed for three months. He portrayed a very unfavorable situation occurring in the region and, based on the assumption that the disease was purely physical, he only sought physical causes for the issues he observed. This was probably the reason that gave him an unfavorable impression of the people and the events.

The illness was a nervous affliction in his opinion, whose primary cause was the physical constitution of the inhabitants, caused by the inhospitable environment and the poor diet and food quality. This situation manifested itself more immediately in the hysterical state of the majority of female patients. Not disputing the existence of the disease, which greatly affect the women, one must say that it also caught men and women at an advanced age. One could not pinpoint the exact cause in the hysteria. What was the cause of hysteria?

We went to visit Morzine and we must say that our observations and the data collected from the local authorities and doctor are somewhat different from those collected by Dr. Constant.

In general , the main village was well built. The houses in the surrounding villages are not exactly hotels but they are not as bad as some of the poorer regions found in France, like in Britany for example, where the peasants live in real shacks.

The population did not seem weakened, in particular, did not seem to have goiter either, as indicated by Dr. Constant. We saw some elementary goiter but nothing pronounced as found in all Marianne women. It is rare to find mentally challenged people there, despite what Dr. Constant said, where on the other side of the mountain in the Valais region there are many of them. With respect to food the region produces more than enough for their own consumption. Although there is no abundance there is no misery either in particular the horrible one found in other regions. There are some places where the peasant population is infinitely worse fed. A remarkable fact is that we did not see a single beggar around. The region offers important resources of wood and rocks but that remains unused due to the lack of logistical transportation. The difficulty in communication is the Achillesheel of the region without which it would be one of the richest of the country. This difficulty can be exemplified by the fact that the postal service of Thonon cannot reach more than 2 miles out of town. Beyond that there is no road but only a trail to the top of the mountain and down to the banks of the Durance River with its furious torrents that cascades down through huge walls of granite, precipitating to its bed in the narrow gorge. For several miles the area is inhospitable. After transposing that stretch the valley becomes calm until Morzine, where it ends. it is difficult to get there, though, and it keeps the visitors away so much so that the region is only visited by hunters, which are strong enough to climb the rocks.

The paths have improved since its annexation. Before that they were only able to be traversed on horseback. People say that the government has plans to extend the road from Thonon to Morzine by the river. It is a difficult job but that will change the region, allowing for the export of their goods.

That is the general description of this region, which is not as unhealthy as pointed out by Dr. Constant. Admitting that the main village of Morzine, located at the end of the valley by the river, is humid. , We must, however, emphasize that the majority of those affected by the disease were from the neighboring villages, located in the higher planes where it is less humid.

If the disease was due to local causes, as pretended by Dr. Constant, such permanent causes should produce permanent effects and the illness would be endemic. just like the intermittent fever of Camargue and the Pontine marshes. If cretinism and goiter are endemic in the Rodano valley and not in the bordering Durance valley, the fact is that there is a permanent cause in one that does not exist in the other. If what is called possession of Morzine is only temporary then its cause is accidental.

Dr. Constant says that his observations did not reveal any supernatural cause. Since he only believes in material causes, it would seem to reason that he can only judge the effects based on the physical rather than an extra-material force? Has he studied the effects of such a force? Does he know its consistence and what are the symptoms that may allow its recognition? No, and since then to him they seem to be what they are not, believing that they are undoubtedly miracles and fantastic apparitions. He saw and described those symptoms but since he does not admit their cause the sought it elsewhere, in the material world where he could not find it.

The patients reported to be tormented by invisible creatures but since he did not see any of these, he concluded that the patients were mad, confirmed by the fact that they sometimes used to say absurd things even to the eyes of the most eager believer in Spirits. To him it was all absurd, though. As a doctor, however, he should know himself that even amidst crazy divagations of insanity there are sometimes glimpses of truth.

He assumed that the population, in general, was taken by superstitious ideas. But what was the surprise in an ignorant and rural population, isolated in the midst of the mountains? What more natural than having a terrified people amplifying the phenomena? Due to the fact that among the reports there were ridiculous comments he concluded that, from his point of view, everything should be ridiculous, not to mention the fact that to the eyes of any one that does not admit the action of the invisible world, all the effects resulting from that action are doomed to be classified as superstitious beliefs.

In order to support his thesis, Dr. Constant supported the reports in the media that asserted that every patient climbed trees that were forty yards tall with the agility of a cat; walked on unyielding branches; lied down with their feet in the air, coming down head first and unharmed. He discussed that at length to demonstrated the impossibility of the phenomenon and to demonstrate that the trees could not be seen from the houses where people supposedly saw the events. [jcm – this sentence does not make sense – need to discuss]

All the effort proved useless as we were told when we were there at the location was that it was not true. It was just a young man who had climbed a tree of normal dimensions and without tricks.

That is how Dr. Constant describes the history and the effects of the disease.

(to be continued in our next issue).

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[1] Refer to the December 1862 and January 1863 issues of the Spiritist Review