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IN THIS EPISODE: If I sound different in this episode it’s because it was filmed LIVE on Facebook (Facebook.com/WeirdDarkness) from DeKalb, Illinois at the Dark Art and Oddities Con. I thought you might enjoy hearing something a bit different.
Listen to “#WeirdDarkness LIVE, ON-LOCATION in DeKalb, Illinois – November 23, 2019” on Spreaker.
MENTIONED LINKS AND EPISODES FROM THE CHAMBER OF COMMENTS…
Enochian letters on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian
STORY AND MUSIC CREDITS/SOURCES…
“The Exorcist Serial Killer – Truth or Fiction?” by Troy Taylor: http://bit.ly/2D71jHp
“130 Children Kidnapped – The Truth Behind the Pied Piper of Hamlin” from The Unexplained Mysteries: http://bit.ly/2D4Gyw7
“The Curse of Giles Corey” by William DeLong for All That’s Interesting: http://bit.ly/2qCAwAa
“The Language of the Angels” by Bryan Hill for Ancient Origins: http://bit.ly/2qt0OVD
Background music provided by Shadows Symphony (http://bit.ly/2W6N1xJ)
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“I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.” — John 12:46 *** How to escape eternal darkness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IYmodFKDaM
THE EXORCIST SERIAL KILLER – TRUTH OR FICTION?
On September 14, 1977, the body of Addison Verrill, a film reporter for “Variety,” was found in his Greenwich Village apartment in New York. Initially, police believed he’d been killed because of a robbery that went wrong but as a reporter from the “Village Voice” named Arthur Bell reported, “The TV, tape recorder, typewriter—stuff that a small-time crook could easily dispose of—had not been taken… It was not a break-in crime. Verrill had brought his assailant home or allowed him into the apartment.”
At that time, Greenwich Village was experiencing a string of murders of gay men. A number of bodies of unidentified victims had been found in the Hudson River. They had been dismembered and placed in bags. Had Verrill been a victim of the same killer? Had he been interrupted before his body could be cut up and disposed of?
Then, on September 22, reporter Arthur Bell got a call from an unidentified person who claimed that he had killed Addison Verrill. That call would begin a string of events that created a legend that still surrounds one of the most terrifying films of all time – “The Exorcist.”
The events connected to the call started more than five years earlier, in 1972, when Dr. Barton Lane was performing a procedure called an angiogram in the New York University radiology lab in Manhattan. At that time, an angiogram, a diagnostic test that takes x-ray pictures of blood vessels, was performed with a needle stuck into the patient’s artery. When the needle would hit the artery, a jet of blood would shoot out. Usually, this was all in a day’s work for Dr. Lane, but that day was different. He had a visitor in the lab, who was scouting locations and looking for extras for a movie he was working on. When the visitor, director William Friedkin, saw the impressive spray of blood that resulted from the test, he knew he wanted it featured in his next film — an adaptation of the book, “The Exorcist.”
The filming of “The Exorcist” has long been considered cursed. During production, a series of tragedies occurred with the cast and crew (detailed in my article at this link — https://www.americanhauntingsink.com/was-the-exorcist-cursed ) But there’s another story connected to the film that concerns the radiology technician in the film, Paul Bateson, who is often referred to fans of the film —and even Friedkin himself—as a serial killer. It’s true that Bateson may have killed someone — he was convicted and served time for murder, after all — but whether he was a serial killer actually remains unknown.
You’ll have to decide that for yourself.
After Friedkin witnessed the angiogram, he told Dr. Lane that he wanted to recreate it for his film. He also wanted everyone in the room to appear in the movie. This included Dr. Lane, a nurse named Nancy, and Paul Bateson, a well-liked and talented radiology technician.
In early 1973, Friedkin and his crew returned to the hospital and blocked off the radiology department for two weekends to shoot the scene. Anyone who has seen the film will remember this sequence as being one of the most uncomfortable in the entire movie. It involves Regan (played by Linda Blair) being brought in for brain testing by her mother, Chris McNeill (Ellen Burstyn). Regan is wheeled into an operating room, where Bateson assists in conducting an angiogram. He has some lines in the scene, telling young Regan what he’d actually told a number of patients throughout his career. As he moved Regan onto the table, Bateson said, “Regan can you sit up and scoot over here… a little more. Good.”
The nurse straps Regan down, and Bateson pushes a button that slowly puts her into position. “Regan, I’m just gonna move you down on the table, okay? Just for a short time,” he says. Then, Bateson walks around to her front, lowers the top of her gown and begins to attach wires to her shoulders. “Very sticky,” he jokes with her.
The scene that follows is one of the most disturbing in the movie, likely because it seems so realistic. But when you know the story behind the seemingly friendly technician, though, it becomes even more disturbing.
Jump ahead nearly fives years to the telephone call received by Arthur Bell. The unnamed caller told the reporter that he and Verrill had met at Badlands, a gay bar on Christopher Street. Together, the two drank and did a mixture of drugs, including marihuana, cocaine, and amyl nitrate until about 3:00 a.m., when they left to continue partying at another bar called the Mine Shaft. They left at 5:00 a.m. and went to Verrill’s apartment, where they drank, had sex, and did more drugs until 7:30 a.m.
Then, he told Bell that he got upset because he thought that Verrill had not been reciprocal enough to his intentions and he snapped. “I took a heavy frying pan from the kitchen and knocked Addison out. Then, I went into a drawer on the right side of the kitchen, removed a knife, and stuck it into Addison’s chest.”
During the call, a number of key details about the crime slipped out. Then, at one point, he said, “I’d like to atone but I don’t want to give myself up. I wouldn’t be able to practice again. I’d lose my license.”
When Bell got off the phone, he contacted the police, and detectives confirmed that the caller had known details that only the murderer would, including that he stole Verrill’s MasterCard and that an unidentified white substance on the floor had been Crisco.
Bell was given police protection that night and was told to wait for another call. His phone rang at 11:30 p.m. It was a different caller but this one said that he knew who’d killed Addison Verrill – it was Paul Bateson. Detectives went straight to Bateson’s apartment and found him drunk on the couch. He said that he knew why they had come and pointed to a copy of the “Village Voice” on the floor. Bell’s first story about Verrill was on the front page.
Bateson became agitated when the police took him into custody. He was taken to headquarters, where he was given coffee, cigarettes, and something to eat. After that, he was ready to talk. He had already confessed to Arthur Bell and now he told the same story to the police. He wrote a three-page confession and as far as the police were concerned, the murder was solved.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as smoothly as they planned. At the preliminary hearing, Bateson claimed that his confession was given when he was drunk, and the police had not read him his rights. He now said that he was not the man who called Bell and his story was simply based on what he’d read in the newspaper. He was innocent. But the judge didn’t agree. He ruled that the police had upheld his constitutional rights throughout his arrest and the confession was allowed to be used in court.
The trial did not go in Bateson’s favor. With his confession being used against him, prosecutors also tried to connected Bateson to the murders of six other men, who had been killed and dismembered in Greenwich Village between 1975 and 1977. Prosecutor William Hoyt said that Bateson had bragged to a friend, Richard Ryan, that he’d killed other men. “He told Mr. Ryan that killing is easy, that getting rid of the bodies is the hard part. He said that he cut up his victims and put the parts in plastic garbage bags to dispose of them,” Hoyt said.
And he wasn’t finished. “I would also point out to the Court that the police have evidence, though there is no direct proof, connecting them to this defendant that there were six bodies, torsos of which were found floating in the Hudson River wrapped up in plastic garbage bags,” Hoyt continued. “In all six cases … examiners have said that the person who cut up those bodies was a person who was either a butcher or a person with medical knowledge because of the way the cuts were done.”
Bateson maintained his innocence throughout the trial and was convinced that he would be found not guilty. He wasn’t. The jury returned a guilty verdict and Bateson spoke on his own behalf during sentencing: “I still contend that I am not guilty of the crimes and I am not the person described by Mr. Hoyt at all. I feel a great loss for Mr. Verrill, and I am not at all the type of person as he has described me.”
The judge decided that the six other murders were not relevant to the case, or to Bateson’s sentencing. He sent him to prison for a minimum of 20 years.
Everyone who knew Bateson was shocked by this turn of events. He was an experienced and well-liked technician and had a lot of friends. In time, as the story of the murder and conviction was told and re-told, then mixed with the other murders that prosecutors suspected him of, his story took another turn. Largely, his reputation in the notoriety of “The Exorcist” has to do with anecdotes told by William Friedkin.
In the late ’70s, the news of Bateson’s conviction reached the director, but he rarely discussed the technician by name. However, he did tell this story in an interview in the “Hollywood Reporter”:
“He was a really nice young guy. I remember he wore a leather studded bracelet and he had an earring, which in 1972 was not common in the workplace… Then about four or five years later after the film, I see the front page of the “New York Post” and the “Daily News” and he’s accused of five or six murders. And they were murders in the S&M bars on the west side of Manhattan. His lawyer’s name was in the story. And I called his lawyer and told him who I was and asked him ‘Could I visit with Paul?’ His lawyer said okay. He was at Rikers Island… I went through about eight layers of bureaucracy and I get into his cell where there’s a guy outside, and I’m sitting with him in the cell. He was very cheerful … He said, ‘I remember killing this one guy … I cut him up and I put his body parts in a plastic bag and threw it in the East River.’ Well, this is how they got him. At the bottom of the bag, in very small print that you can’t even read, it said, ‘PROPERTY OF NYU MEDICAL CENTER NEUROPSYCHIATRIC CENTER.’ He said, “That’s the only one I remember but they want me to confess to another five or six.” And I said, ‘what are you going to do?’ He said, ‘Well I’m thinking it over because if I confess to six or seven of these, they’ll lower the sentence.’
According to Friedkin, this conversation with Bateson helped inspire his next film, “Cruising,” starring Al Pacino as a police officer going undercover in New York City to solve the slayings of gay men in the 1970s.
Strangely, though, there are no records indicating that police investigated Bateson’s involvement with the six other murders. There was also nothing in the reports, or the court case, that mentions finding NYU body bags that connected the police to Paul Bateson. Verrill’s body was found in his apartment, not dismembered in the Hudson River. There was also no information about any kind of deal about Bateson’s sentence either.
So, was this information that Bateson told Friedkin true and never reported? Did Friedkin remember it wrong? Or has he added mythology to the film that never really existed?
No one knows. Writer Matt Miller attempted to contact both Friedkin and Paul Bateson, who was released from prison in 2003 but received no response to his queries.
The lore of “The Exorcist” states that there was a serial killer named Paul Bateson – responsible for six murders in the 1970s – who appeared in the film. It turns out that the legend, as we know it, is incorrect. Paul Bateson went to prison for the murder of one man – the other murders are still unsolved.
That means that the man who murdered and dismembered at least six men has never been caught. That might be even scarier than a little girl who is possessed by a demon.
130 CHILDREN KIDNAPPED – THE TRUTH BEHIND THE PIED PIPER OF HAMLIN
On the evening of June 26th, 1284, a large number of children in the town of Hamelin, Saxony, Germany, disappeared. Although this is often seen as a fairy tale, it was in fact a real historical event. While it has been embellished, had multiple elements added, and cleaned up so as not to frighten children, the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin is not a myth.
There are enough independent records contemporary to the time, to establish that something did occur in 1284. The town record records, in 1384, “It has been 100 years since our children left”. There are also multiple accounts of a stained glass window in the church (I’m unsure if this is St. Boniface Minster, or the Marktkirche) appearing around 1300. The church is said to have undergone extensive renovations after a fire in 1660, with the glasswork disappearing, but it is recorded in many accounts and a reconstruction exists today. There’s also an inscription on the “Pied Piper House”, among other sources.
The Luneburg manuscript, dated to 1440, doesn’t mention rats, however they are present in the 1553 chronicle by Hans Zeitlos and most later accounts, including Browning and Grimm.
Most of us must have heard of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, the pipe playing rat-catcher from the popular fairy tale who took away the town’s children as an act of revenge when not paid his dues. Ever wondered whether there is some history behind it?
The Pied Piper of Hamelin, originally called ‘The Children of Hameln’, is a tale from the book Children’s and Household Tales (German: Kinder- und Hausmrchen) written in 1812 by the Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm. The collection of German fairy tales is commonly known in English as Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
The tales were not originally meant for children. They were the documentation of centuries-old Germanic folklores that had till then been spread orally. The fascinating tales revealed much about the old Germanic culture and traditions. As such, they were not the kind of happily-ever-after stories you might expect, but at times, pretty dark.
As many stories carried magical elements and carried morals, they became popular among children and were toned down to suit the young audience. Bits and pieces of bizarre historical events peek out from the original fairy tales and the one on the Pied Piper is no different. The tale shows the importance of good governance and cautions us against dishonest dealings.
The Pied Piper of Hamelin plays out in the Germanic town of Hamelin (now called Hameln) in 1284. The town had been suffering from a severe rat infestation when a man arrived carrying a musical pipe and wearing ‘pied’ or multicoloured clothing. He promised the mayor to rid the town of its rats in exchange for a fee.
The music he played on his pipe attracted all the town’s rats towards him, after which, he led the entranced animals to the Weser River nearby, where they all dove in and drowned.
However, the mayor refused to pay the piper and he went away planning revenge. On June 26, the day of St John and also of St Paul, the piper returned, dressed as a hunter and wearing a red hat. He was playing a different tune.
This time, all the town’s children followed him hypnotised. The piper led them to a mountain cave, and the children were never heard from again. The story notes that the mayor’s grown up daughter was among the children who were lost.
The Grimm story notes that to commemorate the horrific incident, the townspeople put the following inscription on the town hall:
In the year 1284 after the birth of Christ
From Hameln were led away
One hundred thirty children, born at this place
Led away by a piper into a mountain.
The story also notes that “In the year 1572 the mayor had the story portrayed in the church windows. The accompanying inscription has become largely illegible. In addition, a coin was minted in memory of the event.”
The inscription put up by the people on a stained glass church window in the town read, “On the day of John and Paul 130 children in Hamelin went to Calvary and were brought through all kinds of danger to the Koppen mountain and lost.”
Though the stained glass window depicted a group of children along with a motley-clad fellow, the inscription says nothing about a piper. The window seems to have been destroyed by now, though accounts of it still remain.
Moreover, according to the story, a gate was built in the town “272 years after the magician led the 130 children from the city”, on which was inscribed: “Centum ter denos cum magus ab urbe puellos duxerat ante annos CCLXXII condita porta fuit.”
A footnote included in later editions of the original Grimm’s fairy tales said:
Inscription, in gold letters, on a house in Hameln: “In the year 1284 on the Day of John and Paul, the 26th of June, a piper wearing clothes of many colors abducted 130 children, born in Hameln and lost at Calvary on the Koppen.”
The house this footnote speaks of is now known as the Pied Piper House. It is called so because of the inscription on the side and not because the piper lived here. This inscription is similar to the one put on the church window but this one does mention the existence of the piper. The stone facade of the house dates to around 1602, but the house itself is said to be older.
Heinrich of Herferd, a monk, wrote about this incident in the Lneburg Manuscript more than a century after the window had been constructed. He speaks about a man of around 30 who came to the town playing a flute and led away its children.
Scholars and researchers believe that something tragic must have happened in the town of Hamelin for this story to have emerged:
* A common theory is that the children of the town suffered from some sort of epidemic. It has been suggested by historians that the mass grave for the children has been denoted as their site of disappearance
* Since rat infestations were a common story back in the 13th century, the children could have been inflicted with the bubonic plaque or even an early strain of the Black Death. The ‘pied’ clothing of the piper could be an indication of the splotchy skin lesions accompanying the disease. The most supported theory, post historical and epidemiologic arguments, was presented in favour of murine typhus as the predominant Hamelin epidemic
Yet another theory says that the dancing children were exhibiting symptoms of Huntington’s disease, which impairs walking, gait and causes involuntary jerking movements
* So, why weren’t adults infected? This could be explained by the theory that says the incident took place a few decades earlier and the children actually went on an ill fated children’s crusade. Europeans would participate in crusades at the time, following one child with “a vision from God” to go to the said ‘holy land’ and win it for Christendom
* In a colonisation theory, it is said that the children went into the cave and came out on the other side in Transylvania, i.e. they went east to form a colony of their own. Jack David Zipes, a fairy tale scholar, supports this theory with documents showing that someone had come to Hamelin at that time to take in new recruits to colonise parts of Eastern Europe
* William Manchester, in his book, A World Lit Only by Fire, theorised that the piper was a paedophile and murderer who snatched up the children, killed and scattered their mutilated bodies.
THE CURSE OF GILES COREY
Giles Corey was a prosperous farmer with a bit of a dark past. An upright and proud man, he had a few times escaped the punishments of the leaders of Salem, Mass. His relationship with the community was strained and the people of Salem might have wanted revenge, thus the Salem Witch Trials became the perfect cover for getting away with his and his wife, unconventional Martha Corey’s, murder.
Rather than fight for his honor in a court which he felt had already damned him, the proud Corey stood quiet on trial as a witch, a decision which led to a torturous sentence of being crushed to death. Indeed, the cursed fate of Giles Corey also shows that men, not just women, suffered at the Salem Witch Trials.
Giles Corey, a well-to-do farmer, hailed from Northampton, England where he was born in 1621. Sometime after his first marriage to a woman named Margaret, Corey made the three-month journey to America. He settled in Salem town for a while where the couple had a daughter, Deliverance, on Aug. 5, 1658. In 1659 the small family moved to Salem Village to become farmers.
On the outskirts of town, Giles Corey became a prosperous farmer. Farming was important back then, not only for a source of food for individuals but also for storing crops during harsh winters. As such, Corey became an important figure in the community.
Shortly after becoming a farmer, however, Margaret died. Corey married again to Mary Brite in 1664. The two settled into a peaceful farming and church-going life for the next 12 years.
Then, one fateful event forever changed the fortunes of the Coreys.
One day in 1675, Corey discovered that his farmhand, Jacob Goodale, had stolen apples from his storage area. Incensed, the farmer pummeled his farmhand to death with a stick. Corey maintained his worker fell and broke his arm. Authorities disagreed.
Fellow well-to-do farmer in the town, John Proctor, testified in court that he had overheard Corey confess to having beaten Goodale to death. The testimony was enough to convict the farmer but instead of jail time for this church-going, integral man in the community, town leaders agreed to a fine to make amends for Goodale’s death.
But some town leaders disagreed with this assessment and loathed the notion that Corey had just bought his way out of imprisonment. It didn’t help that Corey had twice before this instance been accused and tried for theft. His prodigal past without punishment riled the establishment of Salem as members of the community began to become ever more suspicious of Corey and to think him a man prone to violence who took the law into his own hands.
This would be the farmer’s undoing in 1692 at the height of the witch trial hysteria.
Before the Salem Witch Trials, the town and village divided itself into two main factions. The Putnam faction, led by the affluent and well-respected Putnam family, supported traditional agricultural activities and the village minister, Samuel Parris. The Porter faction, led by the Porter family, touted a more mercantile and industrious way of life in Salem Town.
The Porters were more forward-thinking and more liberal. They also wanted closer associations with Salem Village and strongly opposed the minister Parris. By some accounts, it is believed that this divisive hatred festering between these two factions led directly to the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.
Unfortunately for Giles Corey, the suspect farmer aligned himself with the less conventional Porter faction. When he escaped conviction for his murder in 1676, the Putnam faction was convinced that he had bribed his way to freedom. Indeed, the vengeful Putnams would come calling on Corey soon enough.
Corey’s second wife died in 1684 and six years later, he married yet a third time this time to Martha Panon. She was a widow as well and so the coupling worked was amicable as Martha helped to keep Corey on the straight and narrow. Despite his murder conviction in 1676, Martha and Giles Corey became full members of the church in 1691.
Church records read that:
*****“Giles Corey a man of 80 years of age having been a scandalous person in his former time, and God having in his later time awakened him unto repentance he stood propounded a month, making a confession of such evils as had been observed in him before. He was received into the Church with consent of the brethren.”*****
It seemed the churchgoing section of the community at least was ready to believe that in his old age and with his new wife, Corey was a changed man and could live out his final days in peace. Indeed, even when John Proctor’s house burned down and he accused Corey, little was done to follow up on that claim.
But then in February and March of 1692, the pre-trial examinations of the Salem witches began. Martha and Giles Corey were among the first community members to observe the examinations and Martha, an intelligent and experienced woman, immediately began to doubt the validity of the accusations.
She and Giles attended enough examinations for her to realize that some members of the Putnams in their paranoia and vengeance would seek to discredit Giles based on his previous convictions. As such, Martha hid her husband’s riding saddle so he couldn’t attend any more pre-trials.
Of course, persuading her husband not to attend the trials suggested to many in Salem that Martha was engaged in witchcraft. Even though her precaution made sense, the Putnam faction’s hysteria looked for any excuse to accuse innocent people. It didn’t help that Martha had something of a “checkered sexual past” with an illegitimate son to prove it.
Some of the girls in the Putnam faction began mimicking Martha’s movements and gestures. This led them to say the elderly lady was bewitching them and controlling them and Martha was officially accused of witchcraft and arrested on March 21, 1692.
Scholars speculate that the real reason girls of Salem Village accused Martha of witchcraft was because she changed Giles. Rather than being a violent murderer, Martha convinced her husband to become a god-fearing member of the church for the first time in his life.
The farmer himself testified against his wife. He was caught up in the hysteria as well, but he may not have wanted to get into trouble with the Putnam faction. He said that his cat and ox suddenly fell ill, that he had seen his wife knelt silently by fire as if in prayer, and that it was Martha’s witchcraft to blame.
Less than a month later, Martha’s husband joined her in jail as an accused. Ann Putnam (Jr.), Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, Mary Walcott, and Elizabeth Hubbard, all members of the Putnam faction and all young girls, accused Giles Corey of witchcraft.
Giles Corey’s trial began on April 19, 1692. Rev. Samuel Parris kept the official written records of the trials. Judge Jonathan Corwin accused Corey of perjury and ordered Corey’s hands to be tied behind his back to prevent him from practicing witchcraft in court.
As if putting on a well-rehearsed play, the Putnams may have been taught to mimic Corey’s movements.
From the official written records:
*****“All the afflicted were seized now with fits, and troubled with pinches. Then the court ordered his hands to be tied.
Magistrate: What, is it not enough to act witchcraft at other times, but must you do it now in the face of authority?
Corey: I am a poor creature, and cannot help it.
Upon the motion of his head again, they had their heads and necks afflicted.
Magistrate: Why do you tell such wicked lies against witnesses, that heard you speak after this manner, this very morning?
Corey: I never saw anything but a black hog.”
At his own pre-trial examination, the judge tried to bring up Corey’s accusations against Martha regarding the cat and the ox. Corey refused to bring up that testimony, instead “standing mute.”*****
Thomas Gould testified that Corey said “he knew enough against his wife to do her business,” and the court wanted to know just what that meant. But Corey maintained his innocence, pled guilty, and refused to answer to any questions regarding his prior testimony against his wife.
Indeed, Corey so refused to speak during his trial that the trial never came to an end. He would not be convicted because Corey would later be killed while being tortured by Sheriff Corwin that coming September.
Corey and his wife languished in prison for months awaiting a full trial in September. By the time the court got around to the Coreys, a dozen witnesses prepared to testify against him. Corey had enough of this absurdity. He knew his fate was sealed, no matter what he said, so he continued to say nothing.
He deeded his farming land to his two sons-in-law and then he put on a brave face for what came next. Corey pleaded not guilty to witchcraft in September 1692 but he refused to stand trial. He knew the judge would rule against him anyway because of the witnesses.
Corey’s only goal was to prevent the state from taking his land. That way, his sons-in-law would at least be left alone to prosper. The penalty for standing mute was torture. A judge ordered “peine forte et dure”, a method of torture by which heavier and heavier stones are stacked upon the chest of the accused until they either plea or die.
Corey would never plead guilty. He knew death was his only option now.
Authorities stripped Corey naked and forced him to lay down on the ground. A board was placed on top of him. Then, gradually, large stone weights were added to the board. This happened over the course of two to three days. When the stones started to crush Corey’s body, he cried, “More weight! More weight!” He wanted death to come quickly.
Spectators were either horrified or entranced by this horrific way to die. Robert Calef, who witnessed Corey’s torture, said that “[Corey’s] tongue being prest out of his mouth, the Sheriff with his cane forced it in again when he was dying.”
In other words, the man inflicting this torture amusedly poked Corey’s tongue back into his mouth.
Corey’s death, though painful, was not in vain. His two sons-in-law inherited his land and after Corey’s execution, the people of Salem began to doubt the usefulness of a witch hunt. The gory death led historians to label Corey a martyr. His refusal to plead guilty, according to historians, “gave back fortitude and courage rather than spite and bewilderment.”
The people of Salem would eventually come to their senses, but not before they could hang Corey’s wife Martha to death on Sept. 22, 1692.
Men included in the death toll were John Proctor (the man who testified against Corey at his murder trial), George Burroughs, John Willard, and George Jacobs Sr. Despite the name “witch” in the Salem Witch Trials, men were just as susceptible to the paranoia spawned by the Putnam-Porter feud.
Modern lore claims Corey’s spirit is not at rest. Witnesses say his ghostly apparition haunts Howard Street Cemetery in present-day Salem at night. Legend has it that the white ghost appears right before something bad happens.
In 1914, Corey’s ghost appeared right before the Great Salem Fire. In 1978, he materialized before local sheriff Robert Cahill suffered a rare blood disorder, heart attack, and stroke in the same year. Cahill stated that the two previous sheriffs died of blood disorders or heart-related ailments while in office.
It was the sheriff of Salem who tortured Corey to death. Cahill believes the curse was broken in 1991 when the sheriff’s office moved to Middleton instead of Salem. Perhaps then the spirit of Giles Corey can finally rest after 300 years.
THE LANGUAGE OF THE ANGELS
Enochian is a mysterious language that 16th century occultists John Dee and Edward Kelley recorded in their private journals. They claimed this ‘celestial speech’ allowed magicians and occultists to communicate with angelic realms.
In the year 1581, occultists John Dee and Edward Kelley, claimed to have received communications from angels, who provided them with the foundations of a language with which to communicate with ‘the other side’. This ‘angelic’ language contained its own alphabet, grammar and syntax, which they wrote down in journals. The new language was called “Enochian” and comes from John Dee’s assertion that the Biblical Patriarch Enoch had been the last human to know the language.
Dr. John Dee, who lived from 1527-1609, was an occultist, mathematician, astronomer and astrologer who lived in Mort Lake, West London for most of his life. An educated man who studied at St. John’s College in Cambridge, was eventually accepted into influential circles of the ruling elite and acted as scientific advisor and confidant to Queen Elizabeth I. He is associated with coining the phrase ‘British Empire’. During the early part of his life, Dee had little interest in the supernatural. Later on, he became disillusioned with science and began experimenting with magic and the occult. Dee was looking to discover lost spiritual knowledge and recover the wisdom he believed was hidden in books of antiquity. Among these books was the then-fabled Book of Enoch , which he conceived as being a book describing the magic system used by the Patriarch in the Bible.
The term Enochian comes from the Biblical figure Enoch, who was a source of hidden mystical knowledge and was taken up to heaven. According to Genesis 5:24, he “walked with God” and Hebrews 11:5 states that he “was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death.”
From 1581 to 1585, Dee began performing a long series of magical events. In 1581, at the age of 54, Dee wrote in his personal journal that God had sent “Good Angels” to communicate directly with mankind. By 1582, he was collaborating with fellow occultist and seer Edward Kelley (1555–1597) to communicate with these angels. Hundreds of spirit conversations were recorded, including what they claimed was an angelic language called Enochian, composed of non-English letters. The Enochian Alphabet was revealed to Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley during “scrying sessions”, when various texts and tables were received from angels. Scrying is a technique used by seers, psychics, and sorcerers to foretell the future and involves gazing into a reflective surface to receive messages.
It is documented that Dee and Kelley used certain objects such as a black obsidian mirror and a crystal ball to experience these visions. Dee acted as orator, directing prayers to God and the Archangels for 15 minutes to an hour. Then a scrying stone was placed on a table, and the angels were called to manifest themselves.
Dee and Kelly would watch the stone and record everything they saw and heard. They were told by the angels that the magic would give superhuman powers to its practitioners, change the political structure of Europe, and herald the coming of the Apocalypse.
Dee believed that what he was doing would be of benefit to posterity and documented the information into a series of manuscripts and workbooks. He never described the language used during the sessions as “Enochian” but preferred to call it “Angelical,” the “Celestial Speech,” the “First Language of God-Christ,” and particularly “Adamical,” because he asserted it was used by Adam in the Garden of Eden to name all of God’s creatures.
There are two different versions of the Enochian Alphabet with one script slightly different from other. The first version is found in Dee’s Manuscript, the first five Books of the Mysteries , and the second, and generally more accepted version, is in Liber Loagaeth , the latter being Kelley’s original drawings.
The script is written from right to left, and may include accents. The Enochian letters have English letter equivalents with some of the letter names pronounced as they would be in English, but many are pronounced differently.
The alphabet is used in the practice of Enochian Magic on Angelical or Enochian Keys. They were received through Edward Kelley in 1584, in Krakow, Poland. That year he wrote into his diaries a series of nineteen magical incantations. The Keys comprise 48 poetic verses and correspond to various functions within the Enochian Magic system. They are given in the original Enochian Language, and a Modern English Translation, based on John Dee’s Old English versions.
Due to the loss of parts of John Dee’s original manuscripts, interpretations have arisen regarding the meaning, validity, and authenticity behind the Enochian language.
Some magicians have asserted it is the oldest language in the world, predating all other human languages.
In some circles it is considered among the most powerful strains of magic and is a method of contacting intelligences from other dimensions. Detractors have pointed out that the syntax of Enochian bears a strong resemblance to English, Dee and Kelley’s natural language.
Such similarities include the word luciftias, a term meaning “brightness,” which bears a connection to Lucifer, whose name means Light Bringer.” Londoh, the Enochian word for kingdom, might just represent Dee’s connection to his royal patron, the Queen of England. Computer analysis have also shown Enochian to have a grammatical relationship to English. Texts in the Liber Loagaeth demonstrate phonetic features that do not appear in natural languages. The phonetic features are associated more with glossolalia, or speaking in tongues.
Modern day occultists have found it difficult to reconstruct the Enochian system, although progress has been made by studying the original manuscripts found in Sir Hans Sloane collection. From these studies, various groups and authors have created a functional system of magic.
The Enochian language was picked up and popularized by occultists, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley, Israel Regardie and Anton LaVey, founder of the church of Satan. Many Satanists have even included Enochian Keys in their rituals, some adopting the entire language for use.
The Enochian language was also studied by U.S. rocket scientist Jack Parson of the O.T.O. In 1994 the Enochian letters were used as glyphs to operate the arc angle in the film ‘Stargate’, one year before the US remote viewing program, ‘Stargate’, was made public.
Another aspect of modern Enochian magic is Enochian chess. It is both a game and a divination tool, derived from the original tablets of John Dee. It is a complex system that requires a strong foundation in the study of the Qabalah, Geomancy, Tarot, Alchemy, and Astrology. Many of the original items used by Dee and Kelley can be found in the British Museum in London, England.
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