Chapter One
FROM PROMS TO CELLS The Psychic World of Stephen King Carrie Firestarter The Dead Zone Hearts in Atlantis Cell The Green Mile
They were silent. There was a kind of haunted avidity about them, and that feeling was back in the air, that breathless sense of some enormous, spinning power barely held in check. -Cell
It All Started with Carrie
Any discussion of Stephen King novels and psychic powers must begin with Carrie (Doubleday, 1974), his first published book. It was with Carrie that King established himself as the premier novelist of the supernatural, the dark, and the bizarre. Story aside for the moment, the novel itself displayed King''s ability to write from unusual perspectives. He gave us slants of Carrie, the main character, from multiple viewpoints, newspaper clippings, and expert testimony. The dormant supernatural gifts of Carrie, a high schooler entering puberty, are brought to full force when she becomes enraged at the tauntings and cruelty of her classmates. King wrote about Carrie as if she truly existed, yet we never peer inside Carrie deeply enough to see accounts of her powerful supernatural forces fully from her perspective. Rather, we see Carrie as if she is drawn by everyone who remembers and analyzes her youth.
Carrie became incredibly famous when the movie by the same name was released in 1976, with Sissy Spacek playing the lead role. She was eerie, petite, and not even close to being as grotesque as the Carrie of the novel. In the book, Carrie is overweight, has pimples, and is washed out and terribly plain. Her mother is a raving psychoreligious, psychosexual lunatic who keeps her poor daughter locked in a closet, forced to pray and read the Bible. Carrie is not allowed to wear pretty dresses, go to parties, or even talk to girls who dare to lounge on their lawns in bathing suits and laugh. Carrie is imprisoned throughout her childhood and her early teenage years by the insane woman who is her mother. By the end of the novel, we realize that Carrie''s mother possibly knew of her daughter''s latent supernatural powers and, hence, wanted to protect the world from her and from any potential offspring. After all, Carrie''s grandmother also had the power to move objects telekinetically and to make "things happen." Why inflict another Carrie-type child upon the world? Carrie alone is capable of destroying an entire town and nearly all of its inhabitants.
Carrie grows up surrounded by votive church candles and a shrine to the martyr St. Sebastian. Rather than listening to rock-and-roll music, Carrie hears her mother wailing and shrieking about religion and sin and how horrible it is to be inherently, innately female. To be born female is an unforgivable sin. Any form of sexual expression, even simply having the body parts, is enough to condemn a young girl to hell forever.
Many people are bullied as teenagers or, at minimum, feel like outsiders. They are too fat or too ugly or too dumb. Or maybe they just aren''t popular enough to feel comfortable inside their own skin. With the power to destroy their tormentors, would they do it?
Carrie holds off for as long as possible. She endures more than most of us are forced to endure as teenagers. She lives our worst nightmares, and then some. It is to her credit that she doesn''t use her supernatural powers until she reaches her breaking point. But when Carrie breaks, so does the world. And here, we see Stephen King at his best: when someone with the power to destroy the world breaks.
So how does Carrie reach a breaking point and unleash her powers? And just what are her powers, and how possible, in reality, are they?
Teenage Sue Snell feels guilty about making fun of and torturing Carrie along with all of the other kids at school. She is essentially kind and good-hearted, and she wants to make things better for poor Carrie. So Sue asks her boyfriend, Tommy Ross, to take Carrie to the senior prom. Carrie is tentative at first, thinking it all a big joke when Tommy asks her to accompany him, but she can''t resist an offer to fit in and be part of the crowd, to finally be treated as if she matters just a little. So Carrie, thrilled at her great fortune, accepts Tommy''s invitation. Of course, she must battle her mother just to wear a dress or go to the dance, but she persists, thinking it may be her one chance to lead a normal life, if only for one night.
Things do not go well, to put it mildly.
Chris Hargenson, one of the most popular and beautiful girls in the school, and one of Carrie''s main tormentors, arranges for a bucket of pig''s blood to drop on Carrie the very moment Carrie is falsely crowned prom queen. As Carrie stands on the stage, smiling and happy with the crown perched on her head, the bucket looms above her, ready to drop in a moment. And so it does drop, drenching Carrie in blood.
Carrie snaps. She telekinetically locks all the doors leading from the school. She uses her mind to turn on killer sprinkler systems, as well as to launch killer fires. She destroys everything and anything, yet never moves an inch from the stage. Her mind does all the work for her.
With nearly everyone dead and the high school in flames, Carrie finally walks home and washes the pig''s blood from her face, neck, arms, and body. Her mother greets her with, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and then lunges with a knife in hopes of killing her evil, sinful daughter. Carrie crucifies her mother with kitchen utensils, then destroys the house.
Carrie''s supernatural powers are no longer dormant. She has learned to use and control her powers to get what she wants and, most important, to get people to leave her alone. In this way, Carrie is similar to the 1973 film The Exorcist, in which a young girl''s body is possessed by a force she cannot understand or control. Carrie is also possessed by powers she cannot understand or control. In both The Exorcist and Carrie, the young girl is both a victim and a monster.
The film Carrie was a huge hit when it was released in 1976. The sale of the paperback rights for the book enabled Stephen King to give up his previous jobs and concentrate completely on writing. It was one of those rare instances where one book hitting it big changed the author''s entire life. Its success spawned a horde of imitators, movies with similar plots but without the same emotional punch that King''s book provided. Still, Carrie relied heavily on that which had come before. It was not the first book, fiction or nonfiction, that dealt with psi-talents, nor would it be the last. In the next few sections, we''ll take a brief but in-depth look at some of Carrie''s ancestors and see how they might have provided inspiration for King''s masterwork.
Carrie''s Ancestors in Fact
Parapsychology is the study of the evidence of mental awareness or influence of external objects without interaction from known physical means. Most objects of study fall within the realm of "mind-to-mind" influence (such as extrasensory perception and telepathy), "mind-to-environment" influence (such as psychokinesis), and "environment-to-mind" activities (such as hauntings). Collectively, these three categories of abilities are often referred to as psionics.
Needless to say, the scientific validity of parapsychology research is a matter of frequent dispute and criticism. Among scientists, such fields are known as pseudoscience, which, by definition, has been refuted by numerous rigorous scientific studies.
Anecdotal reports of psychic phenomena have appeared in every culture since the dawn of history up to the present day. Historically, the existence of such phenomena was commonly accepted even among the highly intelligent. Many early scientists expressed interest in such phenomena.
With the advent of the scientific revolution in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and led by the British Royal Society, a distinction came to be made between "natural philosophers" (later to be termed scientists in 1834) and other philosophers. Many of the natural philosophers, including Newton, believed in various types of Renaissance magic, such as alchemy.
Following the scientific revolution was a period known as the Enlightenment. This movement advocated rationality as a means to establish an authoritative system of ethics, aesthetics, and knowledge. During this period, it was proposed for the first time that life should be ruled by reason as opposed to dogma or tradition. The basic view of the world was that the universe worked as a mechanistic, deterministic system that could be studied until everything about it was known through calculation, reason, and observation. Because of this belief, the existence or the activity of deities or supernatural agents was ignored. The Enlightenment was the beginning of the verbal war between people who believed in psychic phenomena and those who thought it was all nonsense.
Mesmerism
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), a Viennese physician, considered himself a man of the Enlightenment. At the time, electricity and magnetism were thought of as invisible "fluids." Mesmer believed that he had discovered a third type of natural fluid, which he called animal magnetism. Mesmer believed that animal magnetism, if used properly, could heal various ailments without healers resorting to the supernatural. He developed a technique that he termed mesmerism. This technique, which produced an altered state of mind, we now call hypnotism. One important discovery that Mesmer made was that during mesmerism, a few people exhibited what he called "higher phenomena," such as apparent clairvoyance. The most famous person who exhibited this talent was the psychic Edgar Cayce, who entered trances in which he could communicate "in his mind" with an individual anywhere in the world.
Mesmerism never caught on with scientists. In 1784, two studies were authorized by the French Royal Society of Medicine and the French Academy of Sciences. Both groups investigated mesmerism and issued negative reports. One scientist who was associated with mesmerism, Baron Carl Reichenbach (he became famous for his discovery of paraffin fuels), developed a vitalist theory of the Odic force (a vital spark or "soul" radiating from all life) to explain parapsychological phenomena.
Mediums
By the 1850s, mesmerism had run its course. Due in part to changing attitudes in religion, however, the feats of people in mesmeric trances continued to generate a lot of attention. Mesmerism became the foundation for mediums of the newly started spiritualist movement, whose followers claimed to contact the spirits of the dead. By the end of the era, mediums were flourishing throughout all the major cities of Europe.
Unfortunately, most accounts of mediums and psychics left much to be desired. Take, for example, the case of Daniel Dunglas Home, one of the most famous physical mediums of the nineteenth century.
According to popular accounts of Home''s life, he was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1833. In 1842, he moved with his family to the United States. As a teenager living with an aunt, he discovered that he possessed the gift to move furniture in the house with just his mind. After being reassured by ministers that his mental powers were a gift to be shared, Home began holding s?ances. According to people who attended these events, knocking noises were heard, furniture levitated, and an accordion locked in a cabinet played by itself.
In 1852, Home became famous for levitating himself at his s?ances. In 1855, he returned to England and later toured Europe and Russia. Reports at the time say that he was able to levitate tables so high in the air that he was able to walk under them. Home was accused by many skeptics of being a fraud, but according to newspaper stories of the time, no one ever proved that his psychic gifts weren''t real. The same stories reported that while many scientists claimed that Home was merely an excellent stage illusionist, no one could demonstrate how he performed his psychic feats. He died from tuberculosis in 1886.
Home''s incredible feats, if true, would classify him as a real-life Carrie. But, as pointed out by the psychic debunker James Randi, Home''s claims were merely embellished lies told to a naive public and newspapers looking for sensational headlines. As a teenager, Home was thrown out of school for "demonstrating poltergeist activity" to his fellow students. His s?ances were performed only to believing audiences, and, despite reports to the contrary, he was exposed as faking illusions numerous times. Most likely, the mysterious accordion music was in reality the sound of a harmonica hidden in Home''s mouth.
Fraudulent psychics like Home flourished in Europe and the United States during the nineteenth century. Faced with a world swiftly being explained by science, many religious people clung to any supernatural aspect of life that seemed possible-until science invaded the psychic world.
Using Science to Validate Psychic Phenomena
The basic concept for a learned, scientific society to study psychic phenomena began with the spiritualist E. Dawson Rogers, who hoped to gain a new kind of respectability for spiritualism. The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in London in 1882. By 1887, eight members of the British Royal Society served on its council. Many spiritualists left the SPR soon after its founding, however, due to differing priorities and skeptical attitudes within the SPR toward mediums. Nevertheless, the SPR continued to research psychic events, publishing its findings in its yearly proceedings. Similar societies were soon started in most other countries in Europe, as well as the American SPR in the United States. The British SPR remained the most respected and skeptical of all these societies.
Most early SPR research involved testing famous mediums and others who claimed to control psychic "gifts." The society also performed some experiments involving cards and dice. Still, the field of psychic research did not gain a measure of respectability until R. A. Fisher and other scientists developed statistical methods for studying psychic events. It was around that time that the name parapsychology replaced psychic research.
Perhaps the best-known parapsychology experiments were conducted by J. B. Rhine and his associates at Duke University, beginning in 1927. Rhine used the distinctive ESP cards of Karl Zener. The Rhine tests involved much more systematic experiments than those conducted by the SPR. Also, Rhine used average, ordinary people instead of mediums or people who claimed to have gifted abilities, and he used statistical methods to analyze his results.
Rhine published the story of his experiments and their results in his book Extra Sensory Perception (1934), which popularized the term ESP. Equally influential was Rhine''s second book on the Duke experiments, New Frontiers of the Mind (1937). Rhine helped to form the first long-term university laboratory devoted to parapsychology in the Duke University Laboratory. It later became the independent Rhine Research Center. He also helped to found the Journal of Parapsychology in 1937, which remains one of the most respected journals in the field today.
Inspired at least in part by Rhine''s experiments, the U.S. government has conducted a number of investigations into parapsychology. Perhaps the most famous of these is Project Stargate, conducted by the CIA and the Defense Department in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These experiments involved the ESP talent known as "remote viewing," where the test subject can telepathically see a scene from hundreds of miles away. As of yet, none of these government projects has yielded any significant results-at least, none that have ever been made public. We introduce the idea of using humans with psi powers as secret government agents later in this chapter when discussing Stephen King''s novel Firestarter.
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Excerpted from The Science of Stephen Kingby Lois H. Gresh Robert Weinberg Copyright © 2007 by Lois H. Gresh. Excerpted by permission.
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