Going Under

That afternoon, the living room of our Florida ranch house was draped and shadowed. The lights were dim. A candle burned on the coffee table. People spoke in whispers. Expectation snapped in the air. We were about to have a séance.

The group included Spiritualist minister Joe Dickenson, and his wife, Lil; my mother, cool in white linen pants; our hairdresser, Carl, smoking nervously on the couch; and my sixteen-year-old self. We were waiting for Gail Greenberg—a psychic "coach" from New York—to arrive.

We didn't wait long. A moment later, a stocky, short-haired woman dressed in a skirt, blouse, and silk neck scarf bustled into the room and greeted us with breezy aplomb. She dropped a worn leather briefcase on the floor, lit a cigarette, and gave me her order for a Tom Collins. I grabbed a tray from our slate-topped bar and hurried to the kitchen.

Beyond the swinging door, our housekeeper Ann was mixing cocktails; as I paused, she tippled from a pint of gin on the kitchen table.

“Ann. . .”

A guilty look crossed her face and she set the bottle down hurriedly. I gave her a sly smile and she chuckled with relief.

“This day’s got my nerves so janglin’ I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Seems like I just got to have a little drink or I’m not gonna make it.” She gave me her sweet smile again and poured just a little gin into a glass, sipping delicately.

“Mother won’t let me drink or I’d join you,” I said.

“What’s that lady from New York going to do?”

I tried to shrug nonchalantly. “She’s going to make a trance psychic out of Carl. I guess she’s trained a lot of them up North, and when Joe found out she was in town to speak at the Spiritualist Church, he asked her to come and meet Carl.”

“What’s Mr. Carl been doing trance for?” asked Ann.

“He didn’t mean to; it just happened, while we were at Bartie Butcher’s house for a séance last month."

Bartie was a frail, white-haired ex-schoolteacher who could read palms, cards, and the crystal ball. I found her to be amazingly accurate; she foretold the disastrous end to one of my romances; she saw me marrying three times (it’s been two so far); and she said that I would live in England, because she saw a trip and an English crown (I did, and gave birth to my son there).

Her down-to-earth approach and steady ability impressed Mother, leading her to try and acquire similar skills—although my mother's methods were predictably unorthodox. She practiced on the dog races. (Note here: when I was a teen, no one thought twice about greyhound racing or knew of its underbelly of neglect and mistreatment. Fortunately, we're more enlightened now; I've adopted more than one retired racer myself.)

In those early days of her paranormal journey, racing forms flowed over the my mother's bed and lapped against our crossed legs like a sea of paper. Mom liked names like Go Get ‘Em, or Fast Red; I preferred romantic names like Queen’s Ivory or True Love. We'd clutch our forms, with all their scribbled notes, and spend an evening at the track testing our ability to pick dogs via intuition. Sometimes Bartie would go, too, reading winners in the foam of her trackside beer. We did okay, but even after a dog, a color, and a number were chosen at home, Mom would become distracted at the track itself. She'd ask people around her what they thought. She'd look at the bookie's odds. She'd peruse the hounds as they headed for the track and change her mind. So even though it was an intriguing way to develop intuitive accuracy, the theoretical parameters were not always followed. As any kind of clinical trial, it was a bust. This could explain why being a psychic doesn't guarantee success in gambling.

Anyway, as I told Ann on the night of the séance, it was at Bartie’s house that Carl first went into trance.

“Everyone was sitting in a circle in the dark, holding hands, when Carl sat straight up like he was poked and started speaking with someone else’s voice, calling Lucy and telling her he was Douglas, her first husband who’d been dead for ten years.”

Ann gave a little gasp.

“Mother and I were on either side of him, and I didn’t know what to do, but Bartie said not to pull my hand away, so I just had to sit and wait till he was through talking. We told Joe about it and he told Gail. Now she’s down here, that’s all. Let me take those drinks through.”

“I seed a trance once,” said Ann. “A lady in our church did it. Her head throwed back and her eyes rolled up, and there was stuff on her lips. She went into convulsions...and then she started calling out words we couldn’t even understand. The preacher said it was the tongue of God...”

Ann's eyes were like saucers as she placed the drinks on the tray. “Is that what’s going to happen out there tonight?”

“I sure hope not!” I said, and pushed my way through the door.

Ann had good reason to be nervous, I thought. Whenever Joe and Lil visited our house, strange things happened. Like the night they used my bedroom, and I had to sleep with my mother (my stepfather was at sea). In the deep, wee hours, I heard a nearby door swing shut, quite distinctly.

“What was that?” asked Mother, turning over.

“Door shut,” I mumbled, sliding deeper beneath the covers.

“Which door? Turn on the light and see,” she said.

“It was the closet door at the foot of the bed," I replied, "and I’m not getting up and turning the light on, no way.”

“Don’t be silly,” said my mother, nudging me, but I was adamant. With a sigh, she slipped out of the sheets and over to the light switch on the wall.

We both blinked and looked: the closet door was standing open, just as it had been when we went to bed. The house was silent, except for Joe’s snores coming from my room down the hall.

“Well, it must have been the bedroom door, then,” said Mother.

“Nope. It was already closed. I did it myself,” I told her.

"Then what was it?"

I snorted. "You ask? It was Joe. Spooky stuff always happens when he's around."

The next day, Ann answered the front door and let in a lady who said nothing, but walked down the hallway and disappeared. When I got home from school she was in the laundry room, clutching our cross-eyed male Siamese to her broad breast in an effort to feel protected. I told this tale to Mother, who tried to soothe Ann's fears.

“Now Ann," she said, "what are you afraid of? These are just people who have passed over to the Other Side.”

Ann rolled her dark eyes and shook her head. “One night, when I was getting ready for bed, the spirit of my aunt appeared and when I asked her what did she want, she grabbed me by the neck. I liked to choke to death.”

Mother made a sound of disbelief.

“I think you just imagined that part. Spirits can’t hurt you.”

Ann stuck out her chin. “Maybe not, but even if they can't, they’re sure going to make me hurt myself! You tell the Reverend to take his haunts with him next time he goes.”

Personally, I think it was a wonder that Ann continued to work for us—much less agree to be in the house during a séance! Now, perspiring with the tension and eeriness of the occasion, she took another sip of gin and patted her forehead with a handkerchief. I grabbed the drinks tray and hustled back to our guests...

Everyone had fallen silent. Gail’s dark eyes were sweeping the room.

“Now who,” she said, swishing back her hair with a plump hand, “is the new psychic in this house? Who is going to go into trance tonight?”

I was a bit surprised, because I thought she was there for Carl. So was this just a bit of showmanship to relax him into thinking he had a choice? Did I imagine it, or did her glance snag on me as I stood there, tray in hand?

Not me, I whispered. I’m not the one. But a sudden compulsion washed over me, like standing on the edge of a building and feeling the urge to fall off, even as your hands grip the railing with sweaty intensity.

Since Mother and I had begun exploring paranormal phenomena, I'd discovered my own innate sense of intuition. Several experiences—such as catching glimpses of people who weren’t there, or hearing doors shut that hadn’t shut, or feeling my neck hairs rise to an unknown breath—had dimmed my enthusiasm. But I knew the potential lurked right beneath the surface, like a shark circling in dark waters. I could be a psychic if I wanted to, I thought. It was that, combined with a compulsive honesty from my parochial schooldays, which prompted my sudden desire to step forward and be called upon to perform.

Gail’s gaze lingered on me a moment longer. Don’t try to hide from me! her frown seemed to say. Just then, Joe Dickenson’s bulky outline moved between Gail and I like a solar eclipse, breaking the spell and freeing me to move forward and hand out the drinks. She took her Tom Collins from the tray with an impatient swipe.

“There he is, there’s the young man you want, Gail,” Joe wheezed. He gestured at Carl on the couch. Pale, slender, with a wispy pompadour hair-do, Carl blinked nervously at Gail as she walked over and sat down on the cushion next to him.

“I’ve trained a lot of psychics in my time, young man. Just relax and stop acting as if I were going to bite,” she cooed.

I was reminded of a thin, skittish sheep being driven by an oversized sheepdog. Carl’s face had that white-rimmed, sheep-like kind of stare, too, as if he were trying to assess his chances for bolting. After everyone finished their drinks, Gail clapped her hands and called for attention. She turned off all the living room lights, leaving only the candle and a bulb in the hallway to throw slanted highlights on her heavy face. The candle flickered as the air conditioning kicked on. I saw Ann creep quietly into the room and take a chair. She had a drink in her hand.

After a pause, Gail’s strong New York voice rose in the first bars of the hymn, I Come To the Garden. The hair rose on the back of my neck. Joe’s rumbling bass joined in, and the quavering tones of his wife, Lil. My mother’s clear soprano sounded from the other side of the room. Not knowing the words, I tried to hum along.

Gail was trying to get Carl to relax and enter what she called a "preliminary light trance stage". I thought anyone who could get Carl to stop shaking and flicking ashes would be ahead of the game, but gradually—with her help—his breathing slowed and the silence in the room deepened. He leaned back into the sofa and closed his eyes. Then, something strange started to happen. First there was a thickness in the air, as if it was soft and spongy. I had the perception of increasing energy, as if everyone there was a drop of water that, together, was forming a pool. I also felt a sensation of something being pulled from my nostrils and fingertips.

“Ectoplasm,” murmured Joe from the darkness, and my heart beat fast. Ectoplasm was the substance frequently seen around trance mediums, especially during a materialization. Theoretically, it was drawn from the medium and others participating in the event. It had been photographed on occasion, showing up as a wispy, whitish halo encircling the medium’s face and body, sometimes transforming their features.

Gail was talking in a low, even, voice. “Carl, you are going deeper and deeper into a trance state,” she said. “You are completely and deeply relaxed. Your limbs are heavy. You cannot move your feet. . .”

Watching someone go into a trance always reminded me uncomfortably of watching someone drown; they stopped struggling, went slack, and opened their mouths. Another person’s voice came out of them, someone who claimed to be the medium’s “guide.” They were usually native American or Hindu or even Atlantean; I always wondered why there weren’t any car mechanics from Akron, or dry cleaners from Boston.

The guide would act as sort of a metaphysical bellboy, someone who went back and forth, fetching information, advice, or other people to speak during the trance. As if the afterlife were a big hotel lobby. Joe Dickenson had a small Pawnee girl named Lucy as his guide; it was weird to hear a high, female voice coming out of his oversized frame. Even weirder were the buzzing noises, like gnats, that hung around his ears. They sounded like a radio left on low in another room, but Joe could always translate what they said.

At this point, Carl had laid his head back on the sofa and was appropriately loose in the jaw. Gail was still intoning instructions. “Your body is heavy and sleepy, but your mind is light, weightless. . . It moves up and away from your body and takes you wherever you want to go. Go with your mind, Carl. Let it take you. . . What do you see? Where are you, Carl?”

 “I’m above a city,” Carl replied. “I’m above mountains, and a city. There are white buildings below. It’s early morning, the sun is just coming up. I can see its glow on the buildings. The earth on the mountains is green. It’s not here. Not now. Far away…” His voice dwindled and the heavy breathing returned.

“Good, Carl, very good,” soothed Gail. “Is there someone in that city who wants to be your guide, Carl? Is there someone who wants to speak to us?” She turned to the crowded silent room. “He should find one main guide, a spirit who will always start his trance off.” She turned back to Carl and waited, but he remained mute, supine, breathing in and out. 

“Is there someone who wishes to speak to us?” Gail’s voice became imperious. “Does someone wish to speak?”

“Yes!” came the answer, sudden and loud as a thunderclap. “I will speak!”

Ann put a hand to her mouth. I could see the whites of her eyes in the darkness, and my own clutching fear made me feel as if I were suffocating. Sweat ran from my hairline and I could hear the sharp intake of my own breath.

Gail Greenberg whirled to face the opposite end of the couch. There in the shadows, eyes closed and head back, was my mother. The voice was coming from her.