1

The fine British paranormal scholar Colin Wilson has pointed out that there is no single theory that explains the paranormal.

The only known East Aurora, NY, paranormal scholar–Winfield, author of this article–has been overheard to say that he could come up with a theory about ghosts, at least… if you could just leave out religious and Native American-related apparitions. After time, experience, and thought, I have come to believe that I do have such a theory, even including those two topics. A development of that outlook can wait for another day. For this one, let’s focus on an apparition-sighting in East Aurora that could well be interpreted in some quarters as a miracle.

Religious miracles in general are mind-boggling. One senses that they belong to some aspect of the paranormal, most likely that of psychic phenomena, but of what sort I can’t tell you. They are surely classifiable as paranormal, at least to someone not in the belief-system of the religion apparently concerned. I mean that with all respect. To a devout Christian, the weeping portrait of a saint has a direct interpretation. To a Hindu, the same precipitation out of a statue of Ganesh might have a related one. When valid as psi phenomena, such effects would probably be classified as poltergeist displays, hence some form of PK (mind over matter), likely connected to the collective force of a potential community of human minds.

The trick is, though, that at least the Christian cases that have been studied closely seem to behave unto their own laws, lacking even the consistency of an already irregular field, psychic phenomena. This statue drips colored water, and that one blood. This weeps wine, that one brine. Left to the imagination, of course, is how an effigy could produce fluids in any form; but the sheer inconsistency of the matter seems to reward the skeptics (materialists). At least it helps them drown disagreement with decibels.

Christian miracles seem to overlap most closely with the general paranormal in the matter of apparitions.

Let’s talk apparitions–ghosts. Some look likelier than others to actually be what they are interpreted to be. But since only the rare apparition stops to explain itself to the witnesses–and cases like these are not uncontested–ahem–I don’t think we can say what any individual apparition has on its “mind.” (Even in its 1880s infancy, parapsychology was well past the idea that apparitions–ghosts–are likely to be “spirits.” Tell that to TAPS.) Even if an apparition the reader–yes, you–observed declaimed long enough to give you a lost Gospel, there would be little agreement in others as to exactly what it was.

Remember the hooting and hollering that greeted Mormon founder Joseph Smith and his own telegraphic seraph, Moroni, the escalated spirit of an ancient American sage. While I am convinced that the Palmyra prophet had some sort of visionary experience and that it could possibly have been something like what he says of it, the legitimacy of the origin of the Mormon faith is not everywhere accepted. And the witness experience was up to Smith’s interpretation, and everything that followed to that of those who followed him.

There are some powerful cases, particularly those involving mass witnesses, that seem persuasive evidences of something far beyond the average ghost. A group sighting like those at Fatima (Portugal, 1917) comes to mind. But in so many other cases, the interpretation of the ghost/apparition is all up to the witnesses, and the impression the experience makes is due to the context. If you have ever interviewed eyewitnesses closely you will know how faint, quick, and ambiguous most ghostly images are. Many ghosts could be the images of almost anything. I found myself thinking about this situation pretty hard when I was doing the research and interviews for Supernatural Saratoga (2009).

Springs and fountains are so often associated with saints and Marian apparitions. Saratoga Springs, NY, is saturated with them. I came across so many reports of what were interpreted as fairly typical “Woman in White” ghosts in the watery parks of Saratoga Springs, and there were folkloric explanations for only a few of them. To contemporary witnesses, they seemed just ghosts. I wondered how many of the Saratoga ones could have been taken to be the Mother of Miracles in a different place and time.

It goes like this. Someone in Saratoga Spa Park reports a blurry pale form by the Coesa Spring in 1995 and everyone thinks of it as the after-death apparition of a grieving settler-era widow. By a natural spot in Europe in the thirteenth century, the same experience might be taken for an appearance of the Virgin Mary. We might find today an impressive shrine still on the very spot, and maybe even a religious order devoted to the memory. One wonders what to make of a Christ-sighting in a bar. This tale from one of my favorite pubs, Tony Rome’s Globe Hotel, seems to cross the line. All I can say to you is, Take it as it is.

2

In the 1970s Alvin Reid was a cook at the Gow School. As it’s told to me, he was a partier. He loved nothing better than a daytime job with few responsibilities and a night of rocking out with his rowdy pals, all over East Aurora… a town that loves to party. The Lanes, the Roycroft, the Ice House, Wallenwein’s… Reid’s heyday was a little before my pub-crawling days, most of which come from the early 80s and my first years at The Gow School. (It was a rite of passage for young teachers.) I might never have laid eyes on him. The Globe–then a biker bar–may have been his favorite.

One night in the early 70s Al Reid cavorted with his cupworthy cronies a few feet from the bar of the Globe. The spot may be imagined right now, a body-length west of the mirror and the whiskey-rack, and somewhere about the middle of today’s indoor space north and south. We gather that Reid was sharing some kind of a laugh when he called to the bartender to set him up again. Then, when his beverage had surely been delivered, he half-turned and reached between the bodies for it. Something made him turn all the way and look.

Standing between him and his beer in a very prayerful pose was a fairly young man in a long white robe and an aura of the unreal. His beard was brown and wispy, and his doe-colored hair was rock-star long. His gentle eyes, looking right into Reid’s, held in them a most disappointed look. Mixed with the shock of seeing anyone who looked like the day’s stereotypical image of his Savior was that of seeing anyone at all in that exact space seconds after he had seen it last. The Globe was packed solid. Moving even a couple of feet near the bar was an adventure, and, in those days, done gingerly. A stray elbow was likely to set up an altercation.

In a second or two, hallowed by the power, the image was gone, and the sound and scene around him came back to Al Reid. He was convinced that the Son of his maker had come for him alone, and the experience left him gaping. Little did he know it then, but he’d ordered the last beer he would ever buy. The last he would ever drink was already within him.

Al Reid went out, found the Lord, and became one of the most pious people anyone had ever known. He was also one of the more industrious–and successful. Before long he founded a church in Orchard Park, NY, and it grew. Today the Full Gospel Tabernacle on Southwestern Boulevard is a major-league operation. Drive by and look at it someday. It is huge and active, and the son of the Reverend Reid carries it on today.

© 2011 Mason Winfield