A Canadian Indian Levitation

     I began this blog with the intention of rescuing "lost" or "forgotten" reports of the paranormal: accounts, apparently genuine, squirreled away in old books or magazines which the rest of the world has passed by. This story certainly fits that category. It has also been my philosophy that, although you should never accept anything until it has been bolstered by a second report, you should not reject anything just because it is fantastic or unbelievable. There is always the slight possibility that it is part of a rare but genuine phenomenon, and one day a second example will arrive. But it you have rejected the first, then the evidence will not accumulate. This story also fits that category. I don't know what to make of it, except that it should be recorded for posterity's sake.

     The author and witness was a Mr. E. J. Henham, at the time an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company at their Grand Rapids station on Great Saskatchewan, and he claims to have recorded the event in his "scrappy diary" for 22 August 1893. There were three white men present. One was the factor, the author was the second, and the third was a man who came down with a load of furs. To quote Mr. Henham:

I have never met a more original character than was old Joe Beveridge: I give his actual name, as he isn't in the least likely to see these lines, and if he does - well, he has tried to take me down before today. He was a big and very hairy man, always dressed disreputably. All Indians he despised most heartily, and he never lost an opportunity of letting them know it. His conversation was very funny to listen to, but impossible to reproduce, as divested of its profanity there wouldn't be much left.

      At the same time there were three groups of Indians present: the normal residents, another group who settled in for summer fishing, and a large group they called the "Beavers", who arrived about August, and immediately began their religious ceremonies. In the late afternoon of 22 August Joe dragged the author off to the "Beaver" encampment, where the men were dancing furiously, and some of the younger men were going through their spirit quest by being hung up by ropes through skewers passed through the muscles of their chests - a scene which will be familiar to those who have watched the movie, A Man Called Horse.

      Joe gave the name of Aaron to one of the more prominent medicine men, and began badgering him. The author goes into details. Eventually, they moved off and sat under a tree to watch the proceedings until it began to grow dark, upon which they were joined by two others: the factor (Henham's boss) and the boatman who had brought Joe to them. After a while the scene became weird, as fires were lit in the nearby forest, while brightly burning torches were waved about and the warriors danced furiously. Presently, a great circle was formed, while the dancers yelled and leapt around an inert object in the centre. Sighting "Aaron", Joe barged through, not without resistance, only to discover that the Indians were attempting to drive out an evil spirit from a young man in the final stages of "consumption" i.e. tuberculosis. The other three white men dragged their uncouth companion back.

     Of course, the poor fellow died. Joe started loudly putting in his two cents' worth, and Aaron pronounced that it was the presence of the white men which caused the ritual to fail. Joe protested - loudly and volubly. Aaron told him the white man did not know everything. When Joe objected, Aaron proposed a contest. He told him he could bring his (Joe's) body into a state of being perfectly submissive to his (Aaron's) will. Joe bet a bottle of whisky he couldn't.

      He got Joe to lie down, whereupon Aaron knelt and began flapping his hands up and down. Joe swore, but his voice rapidly became more feeble and jerky. The medicine man started dancing around him, and his companions joined in. The author now describes, in intricate detail, how the men, the women, and the children all followed separate routines, dancing, jumping, singing, drumming, and yelling in a ritual with which they must have been intimately familiar. The three white onlookers were deeply impressed. The fourth, the centre of the ritual, lay unconscious. In the midst of all this, the medicine man pulled the bottle of whisky from Joe's coat. The author commented that, up to this point, everything they had witnessed could have been explained by mesmerism i.e. hypnosis. But not what came next.

     The circle parted so that they could get a better view of the proceedings. The Indians were still slowly circling their companion, their torches held so low they almost touched the ground. But the three whites could have sworn that none of them came within five yards. Then -

     The body of Joe Beveridge was gradually rising from the ground!

      He was as rigid as a bar or iron, and ascended very slowly - not with jerks, but with a regular, silent movement, until he had attained a height of about 3ft. above the ground, and here he stopped and hung, without a quiver or a motion, on his bed of air, outraging, as it seemed to our practical minds, all the laws of gravitation.

      Had it not been for our natural terror of the supernatural I'm sure we would have all laughed heartily - as we did so, as a matter of fact, afterwards, when we were chaffing Joe about his conquest. There was no getting away from that fact that he presented a most comical appearance as he hung there, with his ragged old coattails hanging down and stirring faintly in the breeze. His hands were rigid at his sides, as though they had been bound there, and his entire body was as straight and stiff as a length of board.

     The torches flickered out, Joe slowly descended to the ground, and Aaron brought him back to consciousness. But his companions were never able to convince him that he had been levitated while unconscious.

      Well, that's the story, make of it what you wish. I have written about levitation in my post of February 2018. It appears to be a spontaneous response to certain alternative states of consciousness. Some claims exist of people deliberately levitating themselves, but the evidence is not strong. However, this is the only claim I have heard of levitation being induced by a third party. The fact that it was produced by members of a primitive tribe is all the more perplexing. I would have been more comfortable with the story if it were set in India or Tibet. But what are the alternatives?

      Trickery? Admittedly, the lighting was not the best. Nevertheless, if trickery occurred, it would seem that the whole tribe must have been involved. Also, although western illusionists are vastly superior to those of primitive societies, levitation is one of the hardest illusions to pull off. It requires an elaborate stage set-up and the co-operation of the one being levitated. Most of us will have watched a stage magician apparently levitating his female assistant. He moves a hoop around to show that there are no wires, but most of the girl's body is covered by a sheet, and a curtain hangs behind the two participants. These are important in order to hide the equivalent of a forklift which does the actual lifting. Nothing like this could have been present here.

       The author is making it up? Not all of it, of course; the details provided - only hinted at here - indicate that he is describing a genuine ritual. But he could have made up the ending. He needn't have. Ending it where Joe Beveridge finished up in an hypnotic sleep would have been good enough for most stories. If he did want to add a bit more, he could have claimed that the medicine man left his victim with some disease, or turned his hair white, or something similar which would be more appropriate to a tale of sorcery. Levitation is the last thing one would expect to be invented. Nevertheless, people do make up stories for motives which are inscrutable to outsiders, so I wouldn't rule it out.

      It is interesting that he began the story by stating that the experience was not especially novel, and that other travellers had told him they had witnessed the very same thing. If that is true, then there ought to be some other "lost" accounts floating around somewhere.

     

Reference: E. J. Henham (Aug. 1901), 'The conquest of .... Joe Beveridge', The Wide World Magazine 7:438-442. This can be found at https://archive.org/details/wideworldmagazin07londuoft .