It controls our thoughts, our feelings, our instincts, and our dreams.
It is the most complex organ in the body without a doubt.
It has helped us to solve a great many mysteries, yet it jealously guards its own secrets.
To some degree the brain is still a bit of a black box.
Its abilities seem infinite, but many remain untapped.
They are the powers of the mind.
Beyond what is known lies an unexplored world of shadows and phantoms.
A land that knows no limits of time or space.
From the dawn of discovery to the nightfall of catastrophe.
Journey to a universe of the unexplained, the unforeseen, the unbelievable, a place
beyond reality where no question will go unanswered.
A place where myths and legends are all superstition of science.
It's time for our journey to begin.
The enchanted loom, the human brain, so much has been said about it, so little explained.
Knowledge surrounds these library walls, and with these instruments, that knowledge can
be ours.
To the naked eye, the brain is unimpressive.
It weighs less than three pounds, a soft gray-pink organ.
It has been compared to a sponge, a walnut, and yet science stands in awe of it.
From what brain scientists are learning today, by the 22nd century, these products may be
available.
Each ANC proudly announces three new mind alteration devices.
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These three new brain boosters will be available in test markets soon, so have multi-card ready.
EJNC, we do the thinking for you.
Since prehistoric times, the brain has been explored, tested, even surgically examined.
For example, this ancient skull exhibits a hole punched out in a crude operation called
trephening, designed to release pressure trapped by the unyielding bone.
These simple tools were the last word in Peruvian medicine in 2000 BC.
But it was in 600 BC that Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, came to the then
startling conclusion that thought and emotion originated in the brain, not in the heart.
In the Renaissance of the 1400s, Leonardo da Vinci poured melted wax into the brain
ventricles of an ox, then peeled off the tissue to uncover the real shape.
In the 1790s, a pseudoscience called phrenology swept the courts of Europe.
A doctor named Franz Josef believed that the skull's shape had everything to do with personality
traits and aberrations.
He was sadly mistaken.
Inside the brain, various areas do control different parts of our behavior.
Typically speaking, the left hemisphere of the brain processes information in a linear,
sequential, rational mechanism.
And that certainly is one that goes along with the dominant part of our culture.
The right side of the brain often has been devalued because it tends to look at the whole
of things.
There's a more holistic or simultaneous, a more spatial functioning in terms of perceiving
and organizing information.
So more in music and dance and art, some of those capabilities seem to arise more from
the right hemisphere of the brain.
Now neither one can really work alone, but together actually comes the most creative
types of achievement and synthesis that represents the true functioning of the human brain.
So it's the interrelation of the right and left sides of the brain that allow us to perform
the simplest and most complex tasks.
What we see and hear and feel, what we remember, how we recall it, all these things vary depending
on our brains.
If we could perceive the world from another brain's perspective, it would be a very different
place indeed.
The world has been a difficult place for the mentally ill, and for centuries the same made
little effort to understand that insane perspective.
It was not uncommon to warehouse the mentally ill in grim asylums like England's infamous
Bedlam where their inmates were put on display as if in a nightmarish zoo.
Torture was occasionally inflicted upon these misunderstood souls, an ironic treatment considering
that some believe contemporary historical figures suffered from milder forms of mental
illness.
Abraham Lincoln might have been a manic depressive, Adolf Hitler a paranoic, and Van Gogh a psychotic.
What we are finding out is looking at their lives, they had severe disturbances in mood,
unremitting depression sometimes, self-destructive behavior like Van Gogh cutting off his ear,
and it seems very clear that they may have had psychotic symptoms like paranoia and hallucinations
and things like that.
The so-called psychohistory is a very chancy sort of endeavor because you're taking our
own contemporary ideas of psychological explanation and we're applying them to a time when people
thought differently, had different values, lived under different moral and different
ethical and different political and different religious ideas, and then we're trying to
imply that we can understand them, that we know why they acted the way they did.
And today has our perception of mental illness changed?
With recent scientific studies of the brain, we're beginning to see that many of the symptoms
of mental illness are actually expressions of a biochemical dysfunction in the brain,
and that's one of the reasons why one of the exciting frontiers is the development of specific
drugs which can correct biochemical abnormalities.
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strikes.
EGNC, we do the thinking for you.
Scientists have discovered myriads of astonishing facts about the brain, yet overall, these
facts are only pieces of a larger puzzle.
All areas of the picture have been fitted together, but the puzzle is far from complete.
What are some of these facts?
The human brain consists of microscopic cells called neurons, which use electricity and
chemicals to signal to each other in ways that still remain mysterious.
In the adult brain, there are between 10 and 100 billion of these neurons, no one knows
for sure.
It might be easier to count the grains of sand at the beach.
As each neuron connects with at least a thousand others, it almost seems as if every brain
contains more connections than the universe has stars.
How science can use technology to cure, not condemn, people who have suffered damage to
their minds is illustrated by the following story.
I was working as a police officer for the Los Angeles Police Department.
I was in a black and white police car.
My partner was driving the car, and he was driving at a high rate of speed, lost control
of the vehicle, and struck a power pole.
As a result of the accident, I sustained numerous injuries, mostly internal.
I also sustained an injury to my head.
I started doing strange things.
If something went wrong at home, I would get angry.
One night, it was dark outside, maybe 9, 10 o'clock at night.
I got very angry for no real apparent reason.
I just took my gun, and I started walking down the street, just hoping that somebody
would bother me, so that I could take out my aggression on whoever it was.
I felt strongly that she had suffered some kind of brain injury, and in getting the beam
done, it allowed me to identify that there were multiple areas of dysfunction.
The beam is the acronym for brain electrical activity mapping, and this essentially suggests
a machine that allows us to see the electrophysiologic workings of the living brain.
After we have the patient all hooked up to the electrode, we flash the lights and we
do the visual evoke responses, seeing how the brain responds to those flashes of light.
Then we do the auditory evoke response, where we have the patient hear some sounds and see
how their brain responds to that and take a recording of that.
We take all this information together, we don't have to combine the information, but
each of these individual tests give us an idea of brain functioning.
He read the results and he says, Anita, there's something wrong with you, and I was happy
with the fact that there was something wrong, and it wasn't all in my mind.
I wasn't losing my mind, I'm not crazy, I just have a problem, I'm sick.
Accurate diagnosis is only the beginning, for the injured brain demands constant attention
and even then recovery can be slow, but in Anita's case, that recovery has been steady,
her mind becoming her own again.
Of all the marvels the human brain performs, the most wondrous is the most common, accomplished
by children ages seven and younger, the learning of language.
There's something quite wonderful occurring in this quiet classroom, something almost
miraculous.
These children are expanding their minds, learning how to communicate with each other
to express their developing thoughts, but they may be able to learn faster, for breakthroughs
are being made in understanding just how it is that we absorb and express information.
The school system of course is set up to teach the three R's, reading, writing and arithmetic,
and to teach things that are taught in sequences, French one, French two and so on.
The school system is not very well organized to teach the visual perceptual way of thinking.
Betty Edwards believes that it may be possible to trick the brain's different hemispheres
into perfecting skills that seem impossible at first, like drawing.
This is accomplished by misdirection, by turning the subject upside down.
When the person is presented with an unusual situation, here's something upside down, the
normal response is thrown off base.
In normal life, we simply are naming things, we name our friends, that's a chair, that's
a table, that's a pencil and so on, to draw those things one has to make a shift in style
of thinking.
So what we teach is how to use one's own brain differently, to see differently and then we
find that the person can draw.
There's a saying in the art business, if you can teach a person how to see, that person
will be able to draw.
We do not teach drawing at all, we teach seeing.
This is probably a very nice drawing.
If the conclusion that Dr. Edwards is drawing from this research is true, it could have
an enormous impact upon the learning process.
We may be able to absorb and utilize more information than we dreamed possible and this
paints an exciting picture for our future.
Using recent scientific discoveries, we may one day be able to alter our lives in ways
that now seem impossible.
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EGNC, we do the thinking for you.
EGNC now announces Memerall, a memory booster that stops that brain drain on its tracks,
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Memerall now comes in a handy aerosol format, perfect for getting at those pesky tip of
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Just remember, EGNC does the thinking for you.
Much of what we do depends on memory.
Another great mystery of the brain.
Why is it that we suddenly recall a trivial event or a familiar face from long ago and
yet cannot remember the name of someone we met only yesterday?
Every single day, in work or in play, the human brain is called upon to interpret a
galaxy of information, some conscious, some unconscious.
In order to cope with this complicated world, the brain selectively stores data which it
can recall at will, a function called memory.
There are different kinds of memory.
One which we call short-term memory is the ability to learn new information.
Long-term memory is really something of a different sort.
It's the ability to remember information which was learned in the distant past.
As we age, our memory seems to fade.
Why is this so?
The memory of the older person starts to become less efficient.
For one reason, the process breaks down.
The neurons have been there in place for 60 or 70 years and like any mechanical device,
it begins to wear out.
But when the brain begins to malfunction, there are very few tools that we have to help
us understand that.
That is the kind of work that we're trying to do here in the electrophysiology laboratory,
trying to develop new kinds of diagnostic tests which can help us get a window into
the brain and see what might be going wrong with these illnesses.
The electroencephalogram or EEG is a test that has really been around for more than
five decades.
Even back then, we recognized that in certain disease states, there were abnormalities that
became apparent in the EEG tracing.
With the advent of the modern microcomputer, we have a real advantage though in the potential
for real breakthroughs because we can analyze the brain waves by computer.
If slowing is seen diffusely over the entire brain, it can indicate the presence of a global
process, something like Alzheimer's disease, multiple strokes or even a viral infection
of the brain.
The brain can cure itself either by directing a surgeon's hand or by guiding scientists
as they explore the secrets of memory, secrets that are beginning to be uncovered.
This is how some scientists think memory works.
Our senses convert outside stimuli into signals sent to a holding area until the brain decides
how they should be dealt with.
Now, some impressions go straight from temporary storage to short and long term memory.
Most information, however, has to go through a complicated process by which it is categorized
and then filed with previously remembered material.
By the time a human brain is seven years old, it has done something no computer can match.
It has started to ask questions about its purpose and has begun to search for their
answer.
When the human brain reaches the age of seven, it is capable of higher thought of being able
to understand not only the world around it, but itself.
There's an element of the mystical in this.
And past the frontier where scientific thought ends, there's a land where the infinite begins.
So much of our study of the brain, unfortunately, has focused on the diseases and symptoms that
result when the brain doesn't function properly.
What I find most amazing is given the billions of things that can go wrong, how few actually
go wrong.
The British scientist Sherrington gave a beautiful image of the brain, which he called the enchanted
loom.
And there is some notion that perhaps the human brain is really studying itself and
trying to understand itself.
We really don't know what the human brain and mind are capable of.
Computers are something of a help in understanding the brain.
And the brain is far more complex than any computer that we have currently.
I think that we've made tremendous strides in the last decade, and we're going to continue
throughout the rest of this century to gain more and more understanding.
But I think that to really understand how thought actually happens is going to take
us decades would be optimistic.
What makes us unique is the organization and functioning of our brain.
It has to, because this is what separates us from other beings, other animals.
So how the brain is organized and the way it functions somehow or other is the mystery
by which we understand what it is to be a human, to be a being, a human being, to be
who we are.
No doubt most of us would like to change our brains in some way.
This shows us that this will be possible, but the most important discovery was made
long ago.
Inside each of us is the most complicated, mysterious system in the universe.
The human brain.
The more we learn about it, the more in awe we should be.
Secrets and Mysteries presents information based in part on theories and opinions, some
of which are controversial.
The producer's purpose is not to validate any side of an issue, but through the use
of actualities and dramatic recreation relate a possible answer, but not the only answer
to this material.
They use powers of the mind to illuminate the darkness.
I knew that I could see things when I was very, very young, including the death of my
father when I was 14 years old.
Their vision seems infinite, their insights occasionally terrifying.
Everything seemed to explode and the only thing that I could think of was to run for
my life.
They uncover what is buried, reveal what is concealed.
They are psychic detectives.
Beyond what is known lies an unexplored world of shadows and phantoms, a land that knows
no limits of time or space, from the dawn of discovery to the nightfall of catastrophe,
journey to a universe of the unexplained, the unforeseen, the unbelievable, a place
beyond reality where no question will go unanswered, a place where myth and legend are law, superstition
and science.
It's time for our journey to begin.
The argument seems obvious, though the conclusion is fantastic.
The mind can see far beyond what we know to be real.
Knowledge surrounds these library walls and with these instruments that knowledge can
be ours.
The past is entombed in the present.
That is what Joseph Buchanan, an American pioneer of psychical research wrote in 1848.
He was referring to a phenomenon called psychometry, an ability that guides certain gifted individuals
into worlds that most of us can only dream of, a strange land that is home to psychic
detectives.
That home borders upon a land beyond most of our dreams, a strange terrain that can
exist simultaneously with reality.
This woman has been brought to the scene of a ghastly crime.
She has been called as a last resort for somewhere a murderer walks alone, secure in the knowledge
that he has escaped retribution.
She holds in her hand an outwardly innocent object, but it is an object charged with meaning
for this brick struck the killing blow and when it is gripped tightly, the crime lives
again.
This is called psychometry and what she is seeing in her mind's eye is somehow connected
with what she holds in her hand, visions that can point her towards a killer.
These visions are not unique, in fact, they can be found in the most normal of surroundings.
This is the home of Dorothy Allison, a 62-year-old housewife who lives in a typical suburb in
New Jersey in the United States.
Dorothy Allison is normal in almost every way, only she has one ability that makes her
stand out from her neighbors, she has the gift of second sight, a gift recognized the
nation over by police.
Dorothy's been helpful to us because when you get to working on a homicide or a missing
person and you just don't know where else to go, you have to come to Dorothy and she'll
help you out somehow, some way.
I believe that we all are gifted with various talents, some people, kids, mosaic, everybody
is born with gift, special talents, Dorothy was born with the talent of psychic ability.
It is this ability that has brought Dorothy Allison to many crime locations, often as
a last resort by police departments who have exhausted every other avenue of investigation.
For example, in 1980, Dorothy was called to the scene of the Atlanta child murders and
her insight helped break the case.
I cannot explain it, I would say I'm the least informed person about psychic, or psychic
powers or psychic ability, I don't read about it, I don't believe that if you study you
can become a psychic, I believe you either have it or you don't.
In a less enlightened time, Dorothy might have found herself burned at the stake to
care the witch tortured into silence merely because she possessed abilities beyond the
comprehension of her accusers, it is impossible to calculate just how many psychics lost their
lives and suppressed their visions due to ignorance.
One of the first recorded use of psychics in crime detection occurred in 1888, the criminal
Jack the Ripper, a famous Victorian psychic Robert Lees allegedly led police to the home
of a man that many believe was the infamous murderer, a physician William Gull, unfortunately
police refused to take Lees seriously and Gull escaped justice if indeed he was guilty.
Today there are better documented cases that could convince even the most determined skeptic.
The case for the credibility of psychic detection is a strong one and in police files the world
over compelling proof of its accuracy can be found.
Now police are much more sophisticated, computers, detailed chemical analysis, even genetic identification
can be used to gather evidence, but many police departments still employ psychics even though
their successors fly in the face of rational investigation, why because they work and no
police department likes to argue with success.
One psychic with an international reputation is Peter Hurkos, he acquired second sight
through an unfortunate accident, he fell off a ladder hitting his head, when he came to
Hurkos find that he had gained an apparently crystal clear insight into the psychic dimension.
One of our modern era's most brutal and mysterious crimes took place in the United States in
the city of Boston, 13 women were killed by a person known as the Boston Strangler, Peter
Hurkos was there and his visions of the crime and criminal entered his mind in an unusual
way.
Hurkos' mental pictures showed a different man from the person who ultimately confessed
and to this day he maintains that the real killer was allowed to escape, in 1969 Hurkos
was brought to the scene of the infamous Sharon Tate murder, at that time he described the
murder scene, a description that was confirmed when the murderers, a crazed group controlled
by Charles Manson were brought to justice.
To understand these strange visions better we must experience them for ourselves, embark
on a psychic journey and come face to face with a power that may be within us all.
As is so often the case with the paranormal, there are ordinary explanations for many
of these cases, not all police departments are convinced that psychics are effective,
in fact some believe that they're wrong as often as they're right.
Well as far as psychics and police work goes, we have not been able to determine that psychics
are useful investigatively, my impression is that as far as psychics motivations go
that there is a mix of motivations, I think that there are a lot of phonies out there,
no question about it, we've encountered some of them and there's also a very sincere group
who honestly believe that they do have special ability because they've had a vision or a
special kind of dream or a waking nightmare kind of situation, however when you test it
in the laboratory or in real life applied research as we've tried to do here, there
are real questions about translating that into help for the police in real crime cases.
There have been many many skeptics and my answer to them is at least try it and then
if you see a psychic isn't helping then get rid of he, she, whoever it may be and don't
bother with it.
You can tell people things thousands and thousands and thousands of times but you have to experience
it for yourself one time to become a believer.
Belief can strike suddenly and it can lead to some frightening destinations, there are
those who believe that these almost magical abilities lie dormant within us all, trained
psychics have learned to tap these powers but occasionally ordinary people see extraordinary
things and it can turn their lives upside down.
On December 17th 1980 a woman sat listening to the radio, a local nurse had vanished,
that was the beginning.
I had been listening to the radio news all day, I heard prior reports on what was going
on in the neighborhood about the missing nurse and as soon as they said house to house search,
for some reason it was as if I heard she's not in a house, I just saw a visual picture
of an area, it was as clear and as if I were looking at a photograph, a dirt path leading
out and a hill behind it, many thoughts ran through my mind, it was as if I could see
white through shrubbery.
Etta Smith went to the local police with her terrifying vision.
I walked in the front door and saw the desk officer, told him that I wanted to speak to
someone about the missing nurse, he directed me down the hallway which I realized now was
homicide division and he asked me if I thought I could point this area out on a map and I
said I was sure I could.
After leaving the police station Etta became obsessed with what she had witnessed, she
decided to search for the body herself to put her mind to rest and when she arrived
at the site she saw something white, something unspeakable.
I could not tell what I was looking at, as my eyes continued to travel down this form
there was two nurse issues on the feet and at that particular moment I said oh my god,
I said it's got on white nurse issues, it's got to be her.
Her terrible vision was real, she had discovered the body of the missing nurse and the police
had a prime suspect, her name was Etta Smith.
After all the questioning, after me volunteering for a polygraph to prove that I was telling
the truth, at 5.30 a.m. on Thursday morning Van Nuys police officer had me booked for
murder and locked in jail.
Luckily for Etta the real killer confessed and she was released, later filing and winning
a wrongful arrest suit against the police but she has never forgotten the horrible scene
that appeared unbidden in her mind's eye, or the consequences of telling the truth that
some still refuse to believe.
Many people remain skeptical of these psychic powers, they believe a combination of luck,
misidentification and wishful thinking gives psychics their reputation, now let us examine
one case in detail and see for ourselves whether psychic detection is science or coincidence.
Police are extremely skeptical of non-professionals who dabble in their domain, yet Dorothy Allison
has earned their respect, their trust.
Dorothy Allison has been involved in hundreds of cases, some she has helped solve, others
she has not, one of her most tragic stories began on May 15th 1978 when a young girl named
Susan Jacobson went out shopping and never returned, her parents at first were worried
and then frantic.
We had called the police at nine o'clock at night because it was not her routine, Susan
didn't like to be out in the dark, she wasn't home.
After two weeks of total un-success, again no cooperation by anybody in authority, you
start getting desperate, I guess as any parent would.
We got in touch with Dorothy Allison through my sister, she asked me directions how to
get to my house.
When Dorothy first came here she said what is 2562 and I said how in God's name does
she know when my daughter was born, that's my daughter's birthday, February 5th 1962.
I think I was more nervous than Dorothy, I did not know what a psychic was, I really
had no experience with psychics and she walked in, came in, sat at my dining room table,
had a cup of coffee and wanted to know what MAR meant.
When I pictured the area what I saw was the MAR, three letters, MAR, that is all that
I saw at first, I saw the church steeples, I saw a burnt out car, I saw a bit of water
there and I kept smelling oil.
But though the police were convinced that Susan had run away, her father felt differently.
He began to search for the area that Dorothy had envisioned and he soon found a place that
closely matched her description.
With abandoned cars, nearby water, a church steeple and the letters MAR, only the smell
of oil was missing.
I thought we had searched every place and it wasn't until 22 months later that I found
out that during that search I stood six feet from my daughter and never knew it.
Susan's father continued the search.
The police had long since dropped out of the case.
Two years went by and then one afternoon a group of playing children smelled oil and
discovered a half buried industrial drum and inside they found Susan Jacobson.
She was murdered by her boyfriend because she was going to break up with him and I knew
this the day that I was in that house.
For 22 months Dorothy Allison is the one who kept me personally going with her friendship.
She never let me down.
Contacting Dorothy is the best thing that ever happened to me, to my wife and to my
family.
If it wasn't for her, we may today still be searching for my daughter's remains.
Dorothy Allison had seen the truth behind Susan's disappearance and her vision led to
the conviction of the murderer.
People must understand one thing that when I work with a family I get become very, very
close and I always said to myself, I will look for these children as though they were
my own children.
I feel they're family, they're part of me.
There's a personal kind of tragedy that can accompany these psychics on their travels.
They're occasionally dragged to the lower depths of human experience, whether they want
to go or not.
And often their greatest successes are inextricably linked with another's misfortune.
But a positive power does exist inside them, a power that can bring justice to the guilty
and protection to the innocent.
Is there a way that these powers of the mind can be perfected?
Can these abilities ever become a standard tool of law enforcement?
Could these visions make crime obsolete?
The obvious successes of psychic detectives defy all of our definitions of what is possible
and what is not.
There are men and women who seem to have the ability to slip the bounds of our physical
world, allowing them to experience insights that must be acknowledged, if not completely
understood.
Psychics are going to have to play a role in our police department investigations because
we can't solve everything.
I was a skeptic when I first started too.
I cannot convince other police officers that this is the way it is, as simple as that.
You have to find out yourself.
As far as police using psychics, I think they're doing it a lot more now than they've ever
done it.
I think they're taking a chance and saying, well, look, if this works, we will use it.
When I first met Dorothy, it was kind of a strange sequence of events because she came
in and started telling me things about my case that only myself and my partner knew
about.
As far as I'm concerned, this is not the thing that I want to make money on.
To me, it is sacrilegious to take money for the murder of a little child or a missing
child.
I am nothing more than just a housewife or grandmother and that is it.
I've never gone around claiming to be a psychic.
My kids always do that.
They always claim I'm a psychic.
I feel that there are many gifts that are unexplained and it's very possible that this
is one of mine.
What compels these strange visions?
Why does the human mind tell us so much while at the same time denying us the whole truth?
These questions have no easy answers, but the experiences of these men and women are
evidence that these answers can be found.
In the late 1800s, fingerprints were thought to be irrelevant in establishing guilt.
Crime and the art of crime detection has changed all that.
It has taken centuries for these psychic sciences to gain any credibility.
Still, it seems that there are some people who see beyond our physical world, who gaze
into the faces of the innocent and the guilty.
We cannot understand you, but we must respect and thank you.
Great detectives.
Secrets and Mysteries presents information based in part on theories and opinions, some
of which are controversial.
The producer's purpose is not to validate any side of an issue, but through the use
of actualities and dramatic recreation, relate a possible answer, but not the only answer
to this material.
They have been feared, burned, and mostly misunderstood.
We went underground after nine million people were burned, hanged, and tortured.
They can journey into the darkness where good and evil can become one.
It's often been said that the gods of the old become the devils of the new.
In actual fact, witches don't even believe in the devil, let alone worship him.
They were born in an age when magic was a religion, and they live among us today.
They are witches.
To the dawn of discovery, to the nightfall of catastrophe.
Journey to a universe of the unexplained, the unforeseen, the unbelievable.
A place beyond reality, where no question will go unanswered.
A place where myths and legends are all superstitious of science.
It's time for our journey to begin.
You stand at the crossroads between superstition and reality.
You are witches.
Knowledge surrounds these library walls, and with these instruments, that knowledge can be ours.
When some of us imagine a witch, we think of a cloaked hag huddled over a boiling pot filled with unspeakable ingredients, or flying through the night upon a broomstick.
That image, alas, is far from the truth. To discover what a witch really is, we must journey back to an ancient time when magic was a way of life, and the gods battled for the hearts and minds of humanity.
Time is running out. The ways of the old gods were no longer the ways of the people. The wise priests knew that their magic was no longer welcome, so on that last Hallow's Eve, they came to this spot where the moon touched the earth to put their magic to rest.
The secrets that had been spoken loudly so the world could hear would now be whispered, for a new god had risen, and his priests would not tolerate the old ways.
It was somehow appropriate that they should consign their tools to the soil, for the gods had taught them to venerate the ground, the sky, and they would protect the knowledge until the time was right to rise again.
But the whispers would rustle through the dark forests, the silent rivers, the ways of the wicker would never be forgotten. Their beliefs would live on, their descendants known as witches.
Do what thou wilt, and let it hurt none. This is the credo of many modern witches, witches whose rituals take many different forms.
There are four basic kinds of witches, hereditary, traditional, cardinerian, and alexandrian. Hereditary witches have kept the traditions of magic alive through their families for thousands of years, quietly behind closed doors.
Traditional witches pay close attention to preserving historical rituals from Europe, though they can be found the world over.
Cardinerian witches take their name from the studies of Gerald Gardner, an English witch and author who died in 1964.
Another personality-driven cult is the alexandrian, named for a modern English witch who emphasized ceremony and codified ritual.
Because of their persecution, very little about how witchcraft began has been recorded. This shadowy past has done much to perpetuate stereotypes, but as is often the case, those cliches do have some basis in reality.
For example, some witches still use a broomstick during their meetings, called covens, not to fly, but for ceremony.
The broomstick is frequently associated with witches. They were thought to ride through the air on their broomstick going to the Sabbath site.
This is a distortion of what actually happened in the early days. There was a time of year when the village people would go down to the fields, and they would take along with them broomsticks, and they would ride astride them like on a hobby horse.
And as they danced around, they would jump up in the air, and they felt that the higher they jumped, the higher the crops would grow, is what we would call sympathetic magic.
Another popular witch cliché is the cauldron, bubbling with unspeakable ingredients. In actuality, the cauldron has a far more palatable origin.
The cauldron was used in the early days when witches came from miles around to gather at the Sabbath sites to celebrate the main festivals, and they would bring with them the food that they wanted to eat, having traveled some distance, and they would cook it in a big cauldron over a fire set up before getting down to the religious side of things.
This is where the cauldron came to be associated with witches.
The misconceptions surrounding witchcraft are legion, and modern-day witches are attempting to set the record straight.
The most upsetting misconceptions are that witches are Satanists and that we worship Satan or the devil, and witches don't have any Satan or any devils or demons in their belief structure.
People assume that witches are going to do something bad or wrong or hurt them. I have no desire to hurt anybody. That's not part of my life.
Our motto is, as it harm none, do as ye will, witches don't believe in harming any living thing.
Witches look like everybody else looks. They're human beings. They're going to have your general yuppie look, your Gucci skirt, your fashion plate, your dungarees.
Often, many witches who work in the bank will wear black most of the time, and no one really knows the difference because right now it's very fashionable.
Within witchcraft, there are no Ten Commandments. There's no catechism or anything like that. There's just one law, and that law is, and it harm none, do what thou wilt.
This basically means that you can do anything you like as long as you harm no one else, and this is really the only law that we find that we need.
One of the most startling facts about witches is that there are more of them today than ever before.
Their rituals have remained unchanged for thousands of years, though they have adapted to our modern world in occasionally surprising and shocking ways.
These are witches' tools. Innocent in appearance, mysterious in function, they're easily purchased in many places.
They only become powerful when used as ritualistic tools to summon and control powers beyond our wildest dreams or nightmares.
Hail Aradia, goddess of the east, powers of air. We invoke you and call upon you. By the breath that is her spirit, send forth your light.
We are not in medieval Germany, nor hidden in the bowels of some castle in England. No, this is Woodland Hills, California in the United States, and these are modern-day witches.
This coven gathers together often and follows the procedures passed down through the ages.
Here they prepare to consecrate the earth, for this is a time of joining, of becoming, and of singing.
We all come from the goddess, and to her we shall return.
There is so much energy and love that goes around, that comes out of the voices, and even those of us who can't carry a tune to save our lives sound great.
And you just, you feel that love there, in yourself and in your friends. That's what singing does for me anyway.
These arcane ceremonies can take on many different forms, but they all share one thing in common, symbolic magic achieved by archaic ritual empowered by modern-day belief.
The idea of sympathetic magic is that like attracts like, so that, like in our society, we think of money as being green.
If you want to draw money to you, you would use a green candle, or you'd make up a little herbal amulet of herbs that are associated with the monetary planets like Jupiter or something like that.
You'd put those herbs together and sew them up into a green sack that you would carry with you, and that kind of, that kind of thing.
Some modern-day witches argue that ritual needs to adapt to the times, to take on a more contemporary guise.
But as in anything, tradition is hard to cast aside, and to some people the rewards are worth the risks of ridicule.
It's something that brings out the best in me. It's really hard to describe how I feel in circle and how I feel afterwards. It's, it's kind of like runner's high.
Really. Feel it flowing around, through the hands, joined together.
The old ways die hard. Some of the symbols and ceremonies associated with witchcraft have survived virtually unchanged for thousands of years, dating back to an age when magic was a science.
In some ways, magic is a state of mind.
Through the use of objects and symbols such as these, witches can focus their psychic energies upon any target they choose.
These objects are props, if you will, in a strange form of mental theatre.
Now, most modern-day witches consider themselves to be white or good magicians, though black magic can be practiced as well, and these dark practices have done much to cloud mass perception.
Magic can be practiced any time, but on the eight annual days of gathering called sabbats, it can be particularly potent.
One of the most notorious of these sabbats takes place on All Hallows Eve, October 31st. We know that day as Halloween, and mark it by following an ancient tradition.
In medieval times, fearful peasants would place lit candles inside carved gourds to frighten away marauding witches, a habit that has passed down to today's decorative pumpkins.
Black magic, and the fear it inspires, has led to witches being on the defensive for centuries.
That's an understatement when one considers the great witch hunts that took place in the late 1500s and early 1600s.
Many of those unfortunates accused of being witches were actually persecuted for darker reasons.
And the more we understand those reasons, the less chance there is of witch hunts occurring again.
This book, written in medieval times, is called Amaleus Maleficarum, or Witch's Hammer.
It's a step-by-step guide into the world of hysteria. It shows in gruesome detail the ways to extract confessions from accused witches.
And in these trials by torture, there's no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.
In the late 1500s in Europe, a wave of hysteria swept the land.
Organized religion felt that the ways of the wicker were a grave threat to their belief systems,
and the pulpit became a platform for the denunciation and then extermination of anyone suspected of consorting with the old gods.
In Europe, especially during the Middle Ages, when schisms wracked the church, there was a move to purify the church from within.
And there were many investigations, the Inquisition and so forth.
So for centuries in Europe, there had been tremendously brutal witch hunts, and church leaders conducted these.
This went on in England as well.
The New World was not immune to these insanities.
And in 1692, in the town of Salem in Massachusetts in the United States, the worst of the Old World corrupted the New.
There had been incidents of witchcraft in New England for a 50-year period preceding the hysteria of 1692.
But when the hysteria broke out in Salem, it was much more dramatic in terms of numbers and the degree of panic.
This panic began innocently.
A group of bored schoolgirls amused themselves by dabbling in black magic taught to them by a West Indian slave.
This experiment soon got out of control.
In the winter, people were pretty well confined in their homes, and teenagers had very little to do, especially young women.
However, they found some entertainment in talking to Tijuba, who was a West Indian, and in fact she taught them some charms and pretended, I think, to read their futures and so on.
Of course, they were caught and were asked whether they had been signed on, if you will, as Satan's own, and they said yes.
These confessions soon ignited the flame of hysteria, unprecedented in the Americas.
Neighbor turned against neighbor, making ludicrous and unsubstantiated charges that were nevertheless accepted at face value.
Soon the courts were busy trying, torturing, condemning.
When the summer was over, 19 people had been hanged. One man had been crushed to death because he would not speak.
Crushed to death under stones were placed on his chest. They were called firebrands of hell, and because of this they were denied burial.
Their bodies were flung down Gallows Hill and left for animals to devour.
Soon the fever burned itself out. In all, 24 men and women lost their lives.
Salem still remembers its dark past, though some say the full impact of the horror has diminished with time.
I think what I have the most trouble with is the trivialization of injustice.
When you see witch key rings and wall plaques on sale virtually everywhere in Salem, it's a little difficult to swallow.
I suspect, I feel, it's more like selling Indian feathers at Wounded Knee or ashes in vials at Dachau.
I find no humor. I find no eeriness. I find only horror.
Today, witchcraft arises interest and some suppressed fear.
But it is hardly viewed as a direct threat to anyone.
Its converts feel that rather than a threat, it's a powerful force for good.
Literally, it's a threat to the world.
There was a time when magic was taken for granted. Its power accepted in much the same way as we accept electricity.
The world has grown more complex since those innocent times and today, man is detached from the mystic world.
Viewing it has an opposite effect.
The world has grown more complex since those innocent times and today, man is detached from the mystic world.
Viewing it as an object of ridicule, even entertainment.
I think there will always be places where witches are not accepted and I would hope that the places in which witches are accepted would become larger.
Witchcraft, although it's what might be thought of as an ancient religion, is actually very relevant to the present.
It ties in very much with the ecological movement, with the women's rights movement and because of this, it's become very, very popular.
We are people, we are families, we are men and women and children.
The misconceptions go on and on and on and, of course, we take responsibility for that.
And that's what we are trying to do now, help people to understand us so that we are not the disposal for the ills of the earth.
Because if they're looking for evil in us, they're looking in the wrong place.
These men and women, who can so easily sail into the mystic world, are not to be feared, they are to be understood.
For they may have knowledge that can benefit us all, helping us to comprehend the boundaries of our real world a little more fully.
The ancient ways live on. Your gods still exist as long as you believe.
Witches, because of a magical past.
Secrets and mysteries present information based in part on theories and opinions, some of which are controversial.
The producer's purpose is not to validate any side of an issue, but through the use of actualities and dramatic recreation, relate a possible answer, but not the only answer to this material.
Their words hurled in the face of reason.
Yet they have the power to destroy.
Her husband was committed to an insane asylum. Her nine-year-old son was run over by a car.
They can reach beyond time, beyond space, tracking their victim through eternity.
A curse is something that, of course, you cannot prove scientifically, but it destroys you.
They don't require belief. They don't require acceptance. They only demand we obey their evil commands. They are curses.
Beyond what is known lies an unexplored world of shadows and phantoms.
A land that knows no limits of time or space.
From the dawn of discovery to the nightfall of catastrophe, journey to a universe of the unexplained, the unforeseen, the unbelievable.
A place beyond reality where no question will go unanswered.
A place where myths and legends are all superstition of science.
It's time for our journey to begin.
Your icy grip reaches beyond death, beyond life.
The curse, an evil prayer.
Knowledge surrounds these library walls, and with these instruments, that knowledge can be ours.
We've all made declarations of anger, maybe even considered terrible revenge for real or imagined wrongs.
Some of us have even invoked curses, but most of us slowly return to our senses, our anger fading with time.
But what of curses that seem to live on forever?
These words conjure up forces that hover over the real world like evil spirits, spirits that we ignore at our own peril.
This is Hawaii, a land of beauty, a land where time rests and then moves on.
But under the surface of this beauty there is something troubling, a force beyond comprehension, a curse that haunts those who remove stones from this sacred volcano.
Each year, thousands of people send back rocks and letters to the National Park wanting us to dispose of them.
There are many, many people in Hawaii who still believe in the goddess Peli.
Some of my very good friends still believe in the goddess Peli, and I'm not going to say I don't.
Who is the goddess Peli?
Quite simply, she is said to possess this volcano called Manaloa and becomes angry if people desecrate her possession, anger that is said to reach around the world.
This is Cho Pak Lai, one of Hong Kong's foremost Feng Shu experts, and his day-to-day job involves battling with demons and spirits.
Loosely translated, Feng Shu means wind and water, and very few buildings are constructed without obtaining expert advice.
The Chinese believe that the design of a building can determine the fortunes of those who reside within.
A structure out of harmony with the spirits risks a terrible fate, a curse that will affect all who work inside.
And few architects risk building without their advice, and Feng Shu rituals like these are as much a part of construction as laying a foundation.
Is this superstition or prudence?
Around the world in Washington, D.C., in the United States, one of the world's most dangerous and beautiful objects can be found.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people come to this gallery. They stand in awe in front of this display case, for inside there sits a tiny object that has earned a frightening reputation, the Hope Diamond.
There certainly appears to be a lot of stories about a curse that go with the Hope Diamond, and so many people have been affected by it adversely.
Many authors have tried to disprove the curse. I myself am not sure if there's a curse, but everybody that had it has had tremendous problems.
It is said that this glittering gem has driven men and women insane, and on occasion robbed them of their lives.
There just seems to be something about this stone that brings misfortune to its owners, as a glance at its history will attest.
Originally known as the French Blue Diamond, it once weighed over 112 carats and was found in India, when no one can say.
Purchased by the French King Louis XIV in 1668, it was recut to a new shape and configuration of about 67 carats, and was promptly stolen after Louis XVI lost his head in the French Revolution.
It next appeared in London and was purchased by Henry Hope in 1830. It stayed with his family until their fortune was wiped out, and was quickly sold three more times until it came to America in 1911, when it was purchased by a wealthy eccentric Evelyn MacLean.
It stayed in her hands until she was committed to a mental institution.
Is there any truth to these theories that the diamond is cursed, as the glitter and sparkle of the Hope Diamond obscures some dark and mysterious force?
There is no real reasonable explanation for this trail of death and destruction that has accompanied the Hope Diamond in its history.
No other diamond seemingly has had any effect on history, such as this stone.
The Hope Diamond curse is surely just a fantasy. We don't know exactly when it started and how it came about, but it's been embellished over the years.
Well, if you talk to me, I think you will come up with curses foiled again, because I don't really believe in the curses associated with the Hope Diamond.
I will say that whoever owned the diamond had an awful lot of difficulty, whether it was Louis XVI, who was of course beheaded, or his wife Marie Antoinette, who was of course beheaded.
Many people still say that the stone is still cursed, that they've written to the Smithsonian to please bring the diamond back to Mr. Winston, because since we donated in 1958, things in America have gone downhill.
Well, we always thank them for their concern when they write, and we tell them that we don't take the curse seriously.
In and of itself, a 44.5 carat blue diamond is so extremely rare as to make it an important stone, but the fact that the curse, or supposed curse, is on the stone does enhance it tremendously. It doubles its importance to the world.
The curse of the Hope Diamond, if it exists, has been lethal for 400 years, but in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, there may be a curse that has survived 5,000 years.
It began when a boy in his late teens suddenly died from mysterious causes. This boy was no ordinary person. He was a king, and his name was Tutankhamun.
May the cobra on my head spit flames of fire into thy face, and may thy head be in the place of my feet.
That curse was found over the mummy Kapa Aman, a high priest whose tomb was discovered 50 years before Tutankhamun. It describes the fate of anyone rash enough to have disturbed his final resting place. Alas, history has not recorded its accuracy.
But history has illuminated the fates of the men and women who penetrated the gloom of antiquity and brought King Tut out of the darkness.
On November 26, 1922, history was rediscovered and made. On that day, Howard Carter, an American archaeologist, gazed for the first time upon the magnificent tomb of King Tutankhamun, an unparalleled discovery that has left its mark upon the world's imagination.
On that day, Carter's wavering flashlight illuminated the chamber stuffed with treasures that would forever redefine the word priceless. Treasures truly fit for a king.
The search for this tomb had gone on for years and cost many thousands of pounds, and Lord Carnarvon almost withdrew his financial backing. But Carter convinced him to mount one last effort. Both men were rewarded by world fame and a haunting legacy.
Though the tomb was first opened in November, it took three months of painstaking evacuation before Carter was prepared to enter the innermost sanctum. On February 17, 1923, Carter was ready.
Very carefully, he broke the sacred seal, and with Lord Carnarvon by his side, gazed upon the golden riches of the boy king. And almost immediately thereafter, whispers of a curse began, as death seemed to stalk the men and women who were present on that day.
This story came after King Tutankhamun's discovery, when the man called Lord Carnarvon, he was a very rich Englishman, after he visited the tomb, after three years, he was suddenly dead through an unknown disease.
In just six years, disease and accidents claimed 12 men and women, and the curse of King Tut entered modern legend.
Twelve deaths in six years. It's not surprising that almost immediately whispers of a terrible curse began, whispers that have become popular belief. What are the chances that these strange deaths occurred naturally to this unfortunate group of men and women?
When a legend is at stake, it is always difficult to separate fact from fiction, for belief has a way of defying evidence. For example, skeptics have pointed out that while many people visited the newly opened tomb, most did not die mysteriously.
If we look closely at contemporary mortality rates and check the reported cause of death of the more famous victims of the curse, the odds do seem to defy the skeptics. Still, the data remains inconclusive.
Is this proof of a curse or a coincidence? Maybe neither, for the curse of King Tutankhamun may be attributable to something equally mysterious and lethal.
The killer inside the tomb may have been waiting silently for thousands of years, striking without warning, without mercy, but this mysterious killer may finally have an identity.
For me as an Egyptologist, I excavated for the last 20 years, everywhere. If you close this room for 5,000 years, what's going to happen? This room will contain germs that no one can see.
In ancient times, people opened tombs quickly, they get in, then they were hit by germs, always, and they died. But when I excavate now and I find a tomb, which I found 10 years ago, a tomb, I always open it for the fresh air to get in, bad air to go out.
Always advise my assistant, do not shave, because if you shave early in the morning, this would be open for germs to hit you quickly, but if you have a beard, nothing can happen.
I can speak for half an hour about the curse of the pharaohs. The pharaohs sometimes have written curses to the one who will open my tomb.
A Tutankhamun special, from whom came the curse of the pharaohs, said, bless those who will make my name known forever, and those who have excavated his tomb have made his name living forever.
The incredible media pharaoh that accompanied this discovery obscured and then distorted the real story. For example, it is widely believed that a curse was inscribed over the doorway to the tomb, untrue.
Howard Carter, the man most responsible for uncovering the treasures, lived to 1939 when he died of natural causes. If there was a curse, surely he would have been the first to suffer its deadly consequences.
The mystery about the curse of the pharaohs, it's fascinating, made people to believe that if anything happened to someone, it's the curse of the pharaohs. My opinion, there is no curse at all.
The curse comes from us, not from the ancient Egyptians.
Still, the legend of King Tut lives on.
As long as there are people who believe in a curse, it'll seem to have a life of its own. In Haiti, a small country in the Caribbean, belief in curses is a way of life.
In fact, they're an integral part of the local religion, a mysterious and powerful religion known to the world as Voodoo.
The word Voodoo has come to symbolize the mysterious, the dangerous, and the forbidden.
These strange charms are said to have powers of life and death, but recently, science has found an explanation for one of Voodoo's most potent myths.
That myth has a name, Zombie.
Haiti is a land torn apart by contrasts between rich and poor, between myth and reality.
And just underneath the outsider's perspective, a strange religion percolates to its own ancient rhythm, a religion called Voodoo.
Haiti was settled by slaves, the land made fertile by the blood and sweat of their labor.
And Voodoo comes from somewhere deep in their past, some uncharted land, a mysterious belief system that has led to some misconceptions from those not privy to its dark secrets.
There is nothing one has to be afraid regarding Voodoo because you're not going to be harmed or killed.
You have the religion to help you to solve your problems, so Voodoo helps a great deal of people solve their problems.
Curses are an undeniable part of Voodoo, and one of the most feared curses is the command that can turn a man or woman into a zombie.
A curse is real, and there are people who are good at it who can put a curse on someone. For instance, people who do have a big plantation and would like to have zombies to work in those plantations,
they have things to do to make people to become zombies. So those people will work for nothing, and they will not speak, they will not move like any human being.
So curse, you ask me if the curse is real? Yes, it is extremely real.
Recently, an American scientist named Wade Davis exploded some of the myths surrounding zombies and discovered that their genesis was not spiritual, but chemical, a specially mixed potion that can induce a catatonic state.
To make a long story short, what we showed is that the drug that they're using in Haiti was not only theoretically capable of, but we knew for a fact had caused people to appear to be dead even though those people were not dead.
What the zombie drug could do is make someone susceptible to a whole series of psychological pressures. They could make someone appear to be dead, but what creates a zombie was a whole world view and a set of beliefs.
Those beliefs have reverberated throughout Haiti with echoes being heard around the world. Voodoo has come to symbolize a shadow land where anything is possible and everything permitted.
But to those who have studied Voodoo closely, it is sadly misunderstood, with curses a very small part of its existence.
The truth is that Voodoo is a wonderfully benign, legitimate religion, and it's a quintessentially democratic religion because a person not only has direct access to the spirit realm, he actually receives the gods into his body.
The Voodoos say that white man goes to church and speaks about God, we dance in the temple and become God.
And those gods seem to be able to reach out to charm and occasionally enslave the living.
Curses do exist. How they work has led to debate. Is it possible for belief alone to kill, for acceptance to lead to resignation and then death?
Death. Are curses only in our minds?
If curses do exist, they exist in a shadow land caught between conjecture and belief, between myth and imagination.
There seems to be something in the human unconscious that willingly responds to these dark powers of suggestion, meaning that curses may be a result of mind over matter, of unreason over reason.
We're all creatures of habit, and perhaps those habits remain locked away in our minds, a mystic doorway that is the key to understanding what curses are and can be.
Science has proved that the mind is capable of almost anything. Curses can inhabit the mind and perhaps control and destroy it if we allow them to.
We know that curses are created by man and rationalized by man, but it seems they may not have to be obeyed by man, and in that lies hope.
A curse may be a warning, not a verdict.
That power may lie inside us all.
Secrets and Mysteries presents information based in part on theories and opinions, some of which are controversial.
The producer's purpose is not to validate any side of an issue, but through the use of actualities and dramatic recreation, relate a possible answer, but not the only answer to this material.
According to a study taken in the United States, half of its population believed that the universe is inhabited by other intelligent life. The rest of the world cannot be far behind.
The 1950s witnessed a sharp increase in the number of sightings all around the world, and with it more and more evidence that something unusual was happening in our skies.
Even the United States government took notice, beginning an official Air Force investigation called Project Blue Book. Their files soon overflowed with more than 12,000 sightings.
These water beasts may well be the most ancient surviving inhabitants of our planet.
Did I see the monster? I don't know, but I do believe that, you know, I saw, I obviously saw something, and nobody's been able to tell me what I saw, so I think I must have seen the monster.
Stonehenge. That place has become a metaphor for the magnificent, the unfathomable, and the mysterious.
I have the feeling that the people who built it had something very strongly in mind, maybe more than the astronomy and the worship, and I wish to goodness I knew what it was, and maybe I never will.
German scientist Werner von Braun is considered to be the architect of America's space program.
Von Braun and his team took the technology from the German V-2 rocket, which had been created for destruction, and applied it to the development of the chariots that would take man to new worlds.
There's never been an astronaut who got on a spacecraft, whether it was Mercury, Apollo, or even Shuttle, who didn't fully understand the risk involved and who wasn't willing to take him.
The only voyage of the Titanic was surrounded by bad luck that defies belief. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. It was as if she was cursed.
She was cursed. A curse, some say, began when she was launched.
He went up and he came back. He said, there's nothing much. They only struck and I spoke.
This magnificent object is a symbol of genius, of ambition, and of dedication, for it is believed to have taken 30 years to construct, and that construction is not the least of its miracles.
It stands as one of the most prominent monuments for its size and complexity and also its lack of information about it.
To be able to plan and economically accomplish such a large feat for the pharaoh is extraordinary.
This is the Mark of Sasquatch, taken from a set of tracks that covered a five-mile stretch of dense forest.
The depth of each print indicates that whatever made it weighed 800 pounds.
800 pounds.
And there's other, more dramatic evidence.
On a hot afternoon in October, Roger Patterson and a friend were riding through some woods in Northern California.
Suddenly their horses shied. They looked ahead and saw something squatting by the creek.
As the creature ambled away, Patterson took this film, film that has been analyzed, debated, and contested ever since.
And there's another, more dramatic evidence.
On a hot afternoon in October, Roger Patterson and a friend were riding through some woods in Northern California.
As the creature ambled away, Patterson took this film, film that has been analyzed, debated, and contested ever since.
And there's another, more dramatic evidence.
Thank you for watching.