Haunted Crime Scenes: The Psychology of Narrative

Source: K. Ramsland

I help to organize an annual exercise that gathers a team of paranormalists and forensics personnel to determine whether paranormal methods can effectively supplement forensic investigation. Each has issues with the other, but there can be surprises for both.

We do this in Gettysburg over a weekend. I set up the crime scene with mannequins and evidence, based on an actual unsolved case. We present the basic facts and demonstrate where there are holes.

This year, we set up the infamous Hall-Mills double homicide from 1922 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Edward Hall was the minister of a prominent church there, and Eleanor Mills sang in the choir. Both were married and they'd been carrying on an affair about which both spouses (and other church members) were aware. I wrote the full story here, but for the exercise, we offered a summary, with photographs, maps, and diagrams.

The bodies were posed on a lover’s lane, side-by-side, with their feet pointing towards a crab apple tree. Hall’s right hand was under Mill’s shoulder and neck; her left hand was on his right thigh. Shot once in the head, he was still wearing his glasses, and his hat covered his face. His wallet lay nearby, and his business card was propped against his foot. Mills had a scarf wrapped around her neck. She’d been shot three times, and her throat was deeply cut. A pile of love letters from her to Hall lay between the bodies. Time of death was estimated to have been 36 hours earlier. A soil analysis said they’d been killed where they were found, but it was forensically incomplete.

Mills’ husband had an alibi, but Hall’s wife, Frances, and her brothers did not. They were cleared after a high-profile trial four years later, although many still believe they’re guilty. Less obvious suspects include people on the periphery of the case, such as church members with an emotional stake in the victims. There was a network of spies who reported back to Frances, whose motives were not altogether protective. Lies, deflections and red herrings made this anything but a straightforward investigation.

For the exercise, we provided a list of witnesses and suspects, as well as describing odd aspects of the crime. For example, why would a doctor perform no autopsy but check Eleanor’s womb to see if she were pregnant? (He totally missed that her tongue and vocal chords had been cut out.)

It’s not possible in a brief blog to go over all of the items, but there are a number of potential scenarios. Some evidence picked up at the scene had been overlooked for leads. On the other hand, the bodies had lain in place for while, and people who'd rendezvoused in the area could have dropped those items. Hall’s watch was missing, although the witness who found the bodies said she’d seen it.

And on it goes. It’s a complex case, great for a long weekend’s discussion. I added some basic profiling methods and warned about the seduction of logic: using logic to fill holes can produce a satisfying feeling of closure, but that doesn’t make the end result true. I also described some cognitive issues that investigators face, like threshold diagnosis and tunnel vision.

We sent the three groups into separate locations, with each using a different paranormal technique. Then they would come back together to see if the gathered info added up. I’m the skeptic, mostly because I’ve seen how easy it is to get caught up in a story and anticipate what “must” have happened. It’s a psychological drive, always present and hard to resist. Where corroborating evidence is lacking, who can challenge such narratives? So, I mostly watch for something unusual to occur.

Three of us who were leading the exercise formed a fourth group, because we wanted to try automatic writing. A word about this technique:

Automatic channeling has a long history, with records primarily from the nineteenth century, when spiritualists had called themselves “transmitters” or “recorders.” Typically, aspiring automatic writers hold a pencil to paper (or use some similar instrument, including a paintbrush or keyboard). In a passive dissociated state, as they tell it, they allow an outside force to use their hand to produce an image or message. They might invoke a trance for the best means of transmission, but they can also receive messages during a waking state.

Some writers use a guide and might start with prompts or specific queries, such as “What is your name?” or “Can you tell us what happened to you?” The protocol is to refrain from watching what gets written to avoid influencing it with one’s personal judgment or interpretation. The writer’s arm or hand might feel a tingling sensation. It might even lift into the air.

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Skeptics dismiss the results of automatic transmission, or psychography, as a manifestation of the person’s subconscious, but some writers have insisted it could not have come from them – especially when they produced writing in a language they’ve never learned. Some auto-writers have reportedly produced whole books. One woman in Brazil claimed to have penned over 400.

There actually was an attempt to scientifically support these claims, published in 2012 in PLOS One that involved ten psychographers. Half had more than 40 years of experience and the other half had 10-20 years. As each subject performed exercises of both automatic and normal writing, researchers monitored their brain activity with single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT).

During the episodes of automatic writing, the highly experienced psychographers showed lower levels of brainwave activity in six distinct areas of the brain. This wasn’t true for the other group. The researchers concluded that while the five experienced subjects produced automatic writing, they were not “merely” relaxed. Something else was going on. The researchers did not identify a paranormal source as this “something else,” but they did state that these auto-writers were legit. Still, the sample size was too small to conclude anything definitive, and the researchers proposed that the subject receive more study. As far as I know, no one has done so.

This method works best with a group of three or more, as conjoined energy seems to be an effective facilitator. Each person starts with the same equipment, say, a pencil and tablet. They sit around the same table and place their transmission instruments in the center. Then – and this is important – each selects a pencil that belongs to someone else. Supposedly, this shifts the energy. During the session, the facilitator tells the participants how long they will be writing and then urges them to mentally ask a question for which they want an answer. The question directs their attention and opens them up.

In our group, a medium performed the automatic writing. She delivered notes from both Eleanor and Frances, each with its own tone and style. Consistent with her story, Eleanor justified her affair with Hall and claimed she loved him. “He was the love of my life…. We had to be together. We had to enjoy our lives… No one was to be hurt…. He lifted me up. Why can I not love be happy…" However, she would not tell us who had killed her. "You want answers I do not have. That matter not at all.”

Hence, my skepticism. It’s pretty typical for those at the heart of a mystery to give up no real information. To my mind, this undermines the claims of actual contact with a deceased person. If they can communicate at all, they can tell me what happened.

Frances Hall’s note was pretty much the same. She despised Eleanor for ruining her life and stealing her husband. “The hussy deserved what she got. I did not hurt her –I knew it would come. I am blameless! I am above this!”

Maybe. Again, nothing gained that would convince a cop or the courts.

Still, it was a fascinating process. More interesting was that all of the groups derived scenarios that had elements in common that had not been suggested in any public documents.

The item that had prevented investigators in 1922 from exploring the leads they'd generated was the so-called scientific soil analysis. But any analysis that fails to find body fluids besides blood in the amount of soil examined suggests a serious lack of forensics. If this analysis was faulty, the victims could have been killed elsewhere (probably close, though) and brought to the spot. Certainly, they were posed, so someone handled them.

The groups all thought that Frances had organized the hit and Mills’ husband and others were involved. Some thought Frances had paid the doctor to open Eleanor’s womb in order to cover it up if she were pregnant. The physician was unable to explain why he’d done this act, which makes it suspicious, since he did not perform an autopsy.

The groups also disagreed on several significant aspects, just like anyone without paranormal means arguing the case. The exercise was more successful as a paranormal convergence than an investigative aid. It’s difficult to form narratives without the pressure of psychological processes that rely on expectation and cultural story frames. I saw more support for the influence of narrative drive than for a resolution to this century-old mystery. And the feedback affirmed that they'd been aware of this and had tried not to let it control the process.

We solved nothing, but we gained things to think about regarding this incident that other authors hadn't previously addressed.