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A Gathering of Ghosts
While E.T. calls home, Ghostbuster Bill Murray should call Robin Skelton.
Skelton, a practicing witch in Oak Bay, has just co-written A Gathering of Ghosts (Western Producer Prairie $22.95), a casebook of hauntings and attempted exorcisms undertaken with Jean Kozocari.
Kozocari, who conducts seances, can trace her family's involvement with witchcraft to the 15th century.
Skelton, author of over 70 books, recently testified as an expert witness at Victoria's highly publicized 100 Huntley Street/witchcraft trial (resulting in a legal distinction being made between Satanism and witchcraft).
"Most hauntings can be explained," says Skelton, "once the necessary research has been done." In the opening chapter of A Gathering of Ghosts the so-called 'hanging judge' of the Cariboo, Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie, inexplicably appears in a Polaroid photo taken in 1978. This photo is taken on property originally inhabited by Begbie, who died in 1894. An exorcism is held, with appropriate incantations. But despite the best efforts of Skelton and Kozocari, Begbie holds his ghostly ground.
"What explanation is there?"' writes Skelton. "One suggestion is that a vortex may have been created by the confluence of ley lines, those lines of electro-magnetic force on the earth's surface that, in combination, create the earth's own magnetic field."
A Gathering of Ghosts and a previous Skelton book, The Practice of Witchcraft, are both receiving publication in England.
Meanwhile Skelton has two more new books this fall, Celtic Contraries (Syracuse University Press) and A Portrait of my Father (Sono Nis $9.95).
The latter book is an affectionate and humourous memoir of Skelton's somewhat eccentric and bookish father, a schoolmaster in a small Yorkshire village.
[BCBW Winter 1989]
Skelton, a practicing witch in Oak Bay, has just co-written A Gathering of Ghosts (Western Producer Prairie $22.95), a casebook of hauntings and attempted exorcisms undertaken with Jean Kozocari.
Kozocari, who conducts seances, can trace her family's involvement with witchcraft to the 15th century.
Skelton, author of over 70 books, recently testified as an expert witness at Victoria's highly publicized 100 Huntley Street/witchcraft trial (resulting in a legal distinction being made between Satanism and witchcraft).
"Most hauntings can be explained," says Skelton, "once the necessary research has been done." In the opening chapter of A Gathering of Ghosts the so-called 'hanging judge' of the Cariboo, Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie, inexplicably appears in a Polaroid photo taken in 1978. This photo is taken on property originally inhabited by Begbie, who died in 1894. An exorcism is held, with appropriate incantations. But despite the best efforts of Skelton and Kozocari, Begbie holds his ghostly ground.
"What explanation is there?"' writes Skelton. "One suggestion is that a vortex may have been created by the confluence of ley lines, those lines of electro-magnetic force on the earth's surface that, in combination, create the earth's own magnetic field."
A Gathering of Ghosts and a previous Skelton book, The Practice of Witchcraft, are both receiving publication in England.
Meanwhile Skelton has two more new books this fall, Celtic Contraries (Syracuse University Press) and A Portrait of my Father (Sono Nis $9.95).
The latter book is an affectionate and humourous memoir of Skelton's somewhat eccentric and bookish father, a schoolmaster in a small Yorkshire village.
[BCBW Winter 1989]
Submitted on October 25, 2004 in By David.
