the streets, whipping at the trees around her, turning the green wall into a moving ocean of branches and leaves. A storm was coming; she could see it in the roiling dark clouds above. The frequent and sudden thunderstorms were another unnerving but strangely thrilling aspect of her new Southern life.
She reached home just as the sky opened, and she ran toward the house through pelting rain, soaked but exhilarated.
Up in the study, the cat sat watching in the doorway as Laurel patted her hair dry with a towel and logged on to the Net to learn more about Dr. Leish. She had never heard of him, and she had to admit it was not just the thrill of the unknown; it was the man himself who was mesmerizing. She Googled him (which was cheating, she knew, but she needed the instant gratification), and clicked through several links, skimming eagerly. And all she got was a mystery wrapped in a mystery.
Leish had begun his career as a psychologist with a specialty in hypnotism, but became converted to the study of parapsychology after his experience on the farm in Sussex. He made a name for himself in Europe by investigating haunted houses and lecturing to parapsychology societies, and was a member of the British Society for Psychical Research. He wrote a book specifically about poltergeists, on which he continued to do field investigations into the 1960s.
So was he here at Duke? Laurel wondered. The film had shown footage of the Duke campus, and the shots of Leish testing students with the Zener cards and dice machines in the film certainly looked like photos she’d seen of the Duke lab. She tried Googling “Leish+Duke University,” but found no matches beyond a few articles that mentioned both in general reference to the subject of parapsychology—nothing to indicate he was ever part of the Duke parapsychology lab.
Next she Googled Leish’s book, The Lure of the Poltergeist . It was out of print and going for a staggering $1,800 on Abe Books, when it was even available.
“Well, that’s out,” she murmured wryly.
She returned to clicking through articles online and skimming. As a personality psychologist, she found the whole idea of poltergeists fascinating: that random, inexplicable movements could have a mischievous, teasing quality, even an intention—although surely those qualities were simply projected onto the phenomena by human observers. But that in itself was tantalizing: the psychological projection of human qualities onto inexplicable phenomena.
She was intrigued by Leish’s take on the subject. He’d headed up poltergeist investigations in Europe and reported that poltergeist manifestations almost always increased over the course of an incident—and actually stepped up once outside investigators were on the scene. Leish advanced a theory that a poltergeist was fed by a spiraling group dynamic, that started with the family and then was fed by the expectations of investigators, researchers, even law enforcement officials and the media—in other words, that a poltergeist was actually created by human intention.
A kind of group hypnosis, Laurel thought, or shared madness. There was something that made sense about it, and admittedly, was fascinating.
She clicked onto another article—then her eyes stopped on a phrase:
After Leish’s death in April 1965 …
She sat back in her chair, thinking, So he must have died not long after that film was made.
She felt a curious sense of disappointment, even loss.
She made a notation in her notebook and circled it. After a moment she added a row of question marks as well.
Leish died April 1965
???
She stood from her table and stepped to the window, opening it to let in the cold, wet air. She stood leaning against the sill, watching the rain, and thinking about the maze of boxes.
The initially daunting lack of order to the files had become intriguing. Laurel had a growing suspicion that the chaos had an order of its own, that someone had deliberately scrambled the
She reached home just as the sky opened, and she ran toward the house through pelting rain, soaked but exhilarated.
Up in the study, the cat sat watching in the doorway as Laurel patted her hair dry with a towel and logged on to the Net to learn more about Dr. Leish. She had never heard of him, and she had to admit it was not just the thrill of the unknown; it was the man himself who was mesmerizing. She Googled him (which was cheating, she knew, but she needed the instant gratification), and clicked through several links, skimming eagerly. And all she got was a mystery wrapped in a mystery.
Leish had begun his career as a psychologist with a specialty in hypnotism, but became converted to the study of parapsychology after his experience on the farm in Sussex. He made a name for himself in Europe by investigating haunted houses and lecturing to parapsychology societies, and was a member of the British Society for Psychical Research. He wrote a book specifically about poltergeists, on which he continued to do field investigations into the 1960s.
So was he here at Duke? Laurel wondered. The film had shown footage of the Duke campus, and the shots of Leish testing students with the Zener cards and dice machines in the film certainly looked like photos she’d seen of the Duke lab. She tried Googling “Leish+Duke University,” but found no matches beyond a few articles that mentioned both in general reference to the subject of parapsychology—nothing to indicate he was ever part of the Duke parapsychology lab.
Next she Googled Leish’s book, The Lure of the Poltergeist . It was out of print and going for a staggering $1,800 on Abe Books, when it was even available.
“Well, that’s out,” she murmured wryly.
She returned to clicking through articles online and skimming. As a personality psychologist, she found the whole idea of poltergeists fascinating: that random, inexplicable movements could have a mischievous, teasing quality, even an intention—although surely those qualities were simply projected onto the phenomena by human observers. But that in itself was tantalizing: the psychological projection of human qualities onto inexplicable phenomena.
She was intrigued by Leish’s take on the subject. He’d headed up poltergeist investigations in Europe and reported that poltergeist manifestations almost always increased over the course of an incident—and actually stepped up once outside investigators were on the scene. Leish advanced a theory that a poltergeist was fed by a spiraling group dynamic, that started with the family and then was fed by the expectations of investigators, researchers, even law enforcement officials and the media—in other words, that a poltergeist was actually created by human intention.
A kind of group hypnosis, Laurel thought, or shared madness. There was something that made sense about it, and admittedly, was fascinating.
She clicked onto another article—then her eyes stopped on a phrase:
After Leish’s death in April 1965 …
She sat back in her chair, thinking, So he must have died not long after that film was made.
She felt a curious sense of disappointment, even loss.
She made a notation in her notebook and circled it. After a moment she added a row of question marks as well.
Leish died April 1965
???
She stood from her table and stepped to the window, opening it to let in the cold, wet air. She stood leaning against the sill, watching the rain, and thinking about the maze of boxes.
The initially daunting lack of order to the files had become intriguing. Laurel had a growing suspicion that the chaos had an order of its own, that someone had deliberately scrambled the
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