(Read: ~16 minutes)
When Dr. Gaston Billingsgate first started studying Rosa at DOPS, he followed a predetermined regimen of testing and evaluation under close supervision by his superiors. The tests and their applications varied, aiming for unpredictability, but all were structured to determine the accuracy of claims made by the study subjects. Simple tasks involved guessing numbers, letters or shapes on the back of a card. Intricate tests consisted of detailed questions meant to probe past life memories. Researchers coded and indexed every answer, then designed new tests to cross-reference and re-evaluate the data in a manner consistent with scientific investigation.
Gaston’s work with Rosa progressed for the first few years in Charlottesville uninterrupted, undisturbed and productive. Regarding his side hustle, he successfully produced enough LSD to test theories about programming the human biocomputer on himself. Whispers circulated about Connie starting her own side hustled distributing his excess product among a close group of friends around the college town.
As for Rosa, everyone assumed she was a typical kid. Except for the folks at DOPS, no one was aware of her visits there at all. When mother and daughter first arrived in town, silence and secrecy formed the basis of Letitia’s behavior towards Rosa’s gifts. In turn, Rosa followed her mother’s lead by keeping her abilities hidden from classmates and teachers.
After the conversation with Madame Rouge, Letitia’s attitude evolved and she left the decision to work in the reading room up to Rosa, who jumped with excitement about the offer. She insisted on telling Dr. Gaston about Madame Rouge and he took the information in stride. The Director of DOPS furiously demanded Gaston put his foot down and tell “the subject” not to associate with such a person, claiming the strip mall psychic cast doubt on their entire effort to date and tainted future results.
Honoring the promise he made years before, Gaston refused. If Rosa wanted to spend time with Madame Rouge, so be it. Neither he nor DOPS controlled her life, especially since the child’s mother backed the decision. Besides, Gaston believed the challenges posed by the fortune teller’s influence also created opportunities for study. When this argument failed to sway the director, Gaston simply refused to intervene. When the director threatened to fire him, Gaston reminded his boss about who talked Rosa and Letitia into coming in the first place, warning neither accepted orders gracefully and might decide not to cooperate anymore if DOPS tried to get in the way of their decision. Ultimately, the director backed off, Rosa’s talent was irreplaceable.
The director reigned Gaston in after his stand of defiance, giving him far less leeway in terms of how to get the most out of his remaining time with Rosa. From a scientific point of view, Gaston’s boss raised valid concerns about Madame Rouge’s influence on Rosa. Despite the mystic’s insistence she didn’t need tricks, certain tools and techniques proved useful during readings to gather bits of information. Then she connected the dots and filled in the gaps, supplementing her presentation with insight no one else knew, maybe not even the client, not consciously. She mastered Madame Rouge’s tools, or tricks, depending on your perspective.
Gaston understood this. He saw Rosa’s confidence in reading people and situations increase along with her exposure to Madame Rouge. While his boss at DOPS worried about tainted experiments, Gaston looked at Madam Rouge’s involvement as a chance to learn, and she indirectly taught him the tricks of the trade along with Rosa. In the process, he compiled an impressive library of fraudulent mystic techniques, meant mostly to separate people from their money. He began to practice with friends, honing his skills and becoming a believable fake medium in his own right, able to spot most tactics Rosa brought into his lab, courtesy of Madame Rouge. And when Rosa exhibited a skill he couldn’t explain, he scoured his library of psychic phenomena for the answer, usually finding a starting point to figure out the trick and then design controls to thwart any future use.
In this way, a game developed between Rosa and Dr. Gaston based on how long she fooled him before he caught on to the ruse. The balance of the contest never shifted dramatically in either direction, since both Rosa and Dr. Gaston proved apt pupils of Madame Rouge, one directly and one indirectly. During the process, both grew more confident in Rosa’s actual abilities while sorting through common deceptions and eliminating tricks as the mechanism of Rosa’s unexplained insights.
Debunkers of paranormal phenomena explain away psychic phenomena with the term Barnum Effect, named after the circus showman’s famous cold reading. The theory contends psychics and mediums benefit from speaking in broad terms and making generalizations with a high chance of applying to someone in the audience, these are so-called hits. Making generic statements sound personal is the key to successfully working a crowd and convincing them of your psychic gifts.
The spirits are talking about a person here tonight who’s struggling to balance family needs and their job, this person also hides personal doubts about the direction of their life. The mystic might summon another spirit and receive additional messages about even more audience members. Now, I’m picking up more information from the other side. There’s someone with a loved one that is ill, a parent or sibling, a friend perhaps, the vision is hazy, or maybe in an accident of some kind. This person is extremely worried for them.
Large percentages of the population will hear a description of themselves in such broad statements. An effective medium can employ the tactic without anyone noticing. But even without tricks, Rosa spoke about specific details of strangers’ lives, not just her own. Her list of statements, later verified through research and conversations, grew to hundreds of pages. Don’t mistake Gaston’s confusion about Rosa’s capabilities with wonderment. He still believed the child’s powerful mind contained the answers and seeing unexplainable phenomena firsthand made him almost desperate to explain his observations. After racking his brain for ways to get inside Rosa’s head, he decided on hypnosis.
Gaston’s interest in hypnosis came from Dr. Lilly, who identified hypnosis as the only suitable substitute for LSD in terms of programming the human biocomputer. Hypnosis is similar to LSD by opening and extracting the source programs and metaprograms of the human biocomputer creating our sense of self. Gaston believed a few people possess extraordinary, rather than paranormal abilities. Formulating reasonable explanations for their abilities requires combining the scientific process of observation and duplication with the principles of biocomputers. Science alone can’t explain the magical, existential feeling stirred by an inspirational sunset. Discoveries now illuminate where chemicals flow and patterns of electrical pathways, which parts activate, but not the beauty of the process. Inability to provide meaning to our experiences exposes the incompleteness of the scientific method to explain love, loneliness, courage and rage.
Biocomputer theories promised to bridge the glaring gap between knowledge and meaning by applying the scientific process to existential questions. Using programming principles, Gaston designed a series of experiments for a hypnotized Rosa, meant to get at her first and still strongest connection, Lise Trèhot. Recognizing the bond manifested beyond a personality issue, Gaston intended to build upon Dr. Lilly’s description of inner and outer realities. He wondered if and how the interlock extended outside of Rosa’s mind. Gaston hoped to understand the origin of Rosa’s awareness of Lise Tréhot and the disparate identities forming her connected reality. Gaston recognized we share truth amongst individuals and his work with Rosa made him wonder how deep and wide the connections ran and whether life and death limited our shared reality at all.
Gaston had a problem, DOPS prohibits hypnosis. While the technique may open up areas of investigation due to a loss of inhibition, people under hypnosis also become highly suggestible. Typical prompts like go back to another time and think of a different place may be the actual source of hypnotically evoked memories and personalities. The official position of DOPS on past life experiences encountered during hypnosis states nearly all are as entirely imaginary as dreams. Notice the stipulation nearly all. You can guess the identity of the outlier from the norm.
Gaston sensed his time with Rosa slipping away, the time under his care and under his influence. A feeling the universe won’t be denied nagged at him, so he never sought the director’s approval to use hypnosis, better to seek forgiveness than ask for permission. The technique was the only suitable mental lubricant to use on a young teenager, and the only way to get to the root of Rosa’s abilities in their remaining time together. If Rosa connected to divergent parts of the universe, if her interlock formed a structure transcending our reality through space and time, hypnosis could help her mind search itself for the most meaningful attachments.
Only one session with hypnosis ever took place. Gaston brought the idea up with Rosa by invoking her time at the reading room with Madame Rouge.
“You’ve seen her hypnotize people?” he asked.
Rosa nodded. Madame Rouge used hypnosis all the time to help people open up and unlock repressed memories, emotions and trauma. For many years, this proved a point of contention with her parents who followed the teachings of the adventist Ellen White. Her writings frequently described devils using hypnosis to fool humanity. She traced the practice back to the Garden of Eden when Satan hypnotized Adam and Eve into doing evil, and tried to tempt Christ the same way. She attacked claims of scientific and medical uses of hypnotism, writing, Cut away from yourselves everything that savors of hypnotism, the science by which satanic agencies work.
Dr. Gaston and Madame Rouge saw eye to eye on several accounts. Both believed in Rosa’s extraordinary capabilities, despite presuming different sources. They also agreed on the usefulness of hypnosis.
“Does Madame Rouge use a prop like this?” He held up an old pocket watch with a chain, which he then dropped into Rosa’s hand.
“She uses a crystal hung from a velvet string,” Rosa answered.
“How?” Gaston asked, taking notes on a pad of paper.
Rosa swung the watch side to side. “Performance plays a part. People focus on the crystal or the watch instead of being hypnotized. Madame Rouge says a prop isn’t necessary, just the sound of her voice and a few choice words, soothing yet direct, inviting people to relax and open their mind. The hypnotized actually put themselves into a trance.”
Rosa looked down at the watch again. Pressing on the top, near the chain, she popped the face cover open, revealing the clock face.
“There’s writing on the inside of the face cover, in French. Do you understand what the inscription says?” Gaston asked.
Rosa shook her head no.
“Yes, you do. You’ve spoken French to me.”
“Just when…” Rosa’s voice trailed off, she looked down at her toes and avoided eye contact with Dr. Gaston.
“When you’re annoyed?” Gaston finished her sentence. “I’m fascinated by how you can speak French under those circumstances.”
“Me too,” Rosa whispered.
“Using hypnosis will help us reveal what’s going on,” Gaston explained to Rosa. “What do you think? Willing to try with me, together?”
She wrinkled her nose, looked at the floor, uncertain.
“It’s OK to say no,” he affirmed gently. “It’s up to you.”
“Of course it is,” the confident teen laughed. “So tell me why you want to do this.”
“To learn about Lise Trèhot. To explore how you’re connected and how you’re not. You want to know, too.”
After a pause to think, she sighed, “I do. Let’s see what happens.”
Gaston didn’t waste any time and began to ease Rosa into a hypnotic state.
“Close your eyes, Rosa. Today, let’s speak French. Listen to the sound of my voice and relax. Clear your thoughts for a moment and relax. Let go of the here and now and relax. Follow wherever your thoughts lead. Relax and follow. Are you relaxed, Rosa?”
“Yes.”
“Will you answer my questions?”
“Sure,” she answered.
“Open your eyes again, Rosa. Look at the watch. What does the inscription say, Rosa?”
She shook her head.
“Does Lise know? Can you ask her?”
“Ask her yourself.”
“Is she here?”
“She’s always with me. I’m always with her. We’re always together,” Rosa said.
“What connects you?”
“We were created together, now we’re in pieces. I’m a piece of her. She’s a piece of me, always.”
“Find out what Lise thinks,” Gaston prompted the teenager.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Go ahead and ask her if you want.”
Gaston began to speak in French to Lise. “Lise, je vous parle. Voulez-vous parler avec moi?”
Rosa didn’t reply.
Gaston asked about the message on the watch. “Lise, quel est le message sur la montre?”
Rosa turned the old pocket watch over in her hand. The oil from countless thumbprints darkened the brass case at the center. The date engraved on the outside faded years ago, worn away by a cherished life in a pocket.
Gaston recited the inscription by memory.“Nous serons toujours ensemble,.” Then he asked what the phrase meant. “Lise, qu’est-ce que cela signifie?”
This time, in response to the question, Rosa clicked open the pocket watch and began to speak in French about love. “L’amour est éternel.”
“Pourquoi?” Gaston asked why.
Their conversation continued in French.
“Your grandfather knows,” Rosa remarked while caressing the metal casing. “The watch belonged to him after all, a gift from his bride on their wedding day.”
Then she smiled and touched Gaston’s hand.
“Your grandparents are in love,” she cooed. “So lucky.”
Gaston nodded at the sentiment, always stone-faced during his sessions with Rosa. He avoided giving Rosa any clues through his body language, not wanting to reveal she scored a major hit in regards to the watch.
“What else do you see?” Gaston asked.
Rosa, still channeling Lise and speaking in French, claimed to see a small picture taken on his grandparents’ wedding day, faded yellow by time. She described perfectly the only picture Gaston owned of them, which he never showed or talked about to anyone.
Despite his emotional attachment to the subject matter, Gaston maintained his stoic expression to throw her off the scent. He dismissed her reading, chiding the predictability and hackneyed sentiments, watches are common wedding gifts, everyone takes wedding photos, reasonable guesses based on a logical assumption.
Rosa sat silent again and looked at Gaston. The intensity of her gaze made him fidget in his chair. He almost broke the awkward silence when Rosa continued.
“Stop feeling guilty.”
Gaston didn’t react.
When Gaston was studying for his doctorate, his grandmother fell down the stairs in her home and broke a hip. Several days later, recovering from surgery in the hospital, unexpected complications suddenly took her life. None of her family was in the room when she passed, only a team of doctors and nurses trying desperately to save her.
Gaston never told anyone he felt guilty for not visiting her before she passed.
Rosa continued with another detail about his grandmother. “She wasn’t afraid.”
Suddenly, Gaston struggled to limit his emotional response and he felt a tear well up in the corners of his eyes. His cheeks flushed as he thought about his grandmother dying with people pushing and pressing on her, but no one to hold her hand and tell her they loved her.
“She’s glad you took it, the watch. Your grandmother says you’re just like him, smart and independent, hard workers. The watch suits you.”
Indeed, he took the watch the day of his grandmother’s funeral without telling anyone in the family. The final insight hit too close to home and Gaston’s emotions got the better of him. He stood up and left the room without bringing Rosa out of her trance. For the next several days, she spoke only in French as a result. Word of the lingering effects of Gaston’s experiment on Rosa reached his boss, who ordered Gaston to stop using hypnosis or find another job.
The promising researcher chose to stay though the decision signaled the beginning of the end of his time with Rosa. Gaston bristled under the prohibition once he saw the usefulness of hypnosis and continued to voice frustration at what he considered unnecessary rules blocking their progress.
As for Rosa, she drifted away from what Gaston and DOPS offered and began skipping their sessions in favor of spending time with Madame Rouge, or just being a teenager and hanging out with friends. With Rosa increasingly out of the picture, Gaston became expendable and DOPS let his contract expire without renewal. At the time, leadership explained the decision away, blaming state-mandated budget cuts. Neither he nor Rosa ever set foot in DOPS again.
Gaston’s boss at DOPS saw the pair headed in unsatisfactory directions, Gaston’s emerging eccentricities and Rosa’s new-found tricks, and facilitated their departure. He subsequently issued a poignant statement reiterating hypnosis doesn’t belong alongside the scientific method. He noted his disapproval of those who charge fees to conduct hypnotic regression while making fraudulent claims and promises he labeled commercial exploitation. He reiterated his concern for the risk of fraud, misuse and abuse brought by applying hypnosis without appropriate caution. Recalling Rosa’s hypnotic experience with Dr. Gaston, the director’s letter warned the subjects of hypnosis may remain in dangerous altered mental states for days after attempted past-life regression. The director also disavows tools used by Madame Rouge, including spirit boards and automatic writing. The statement warns these kinds of devices earned both shady reputations in the hands of skilled manipulators and untouchable pedigrees in the eyes of the manipulated. He labeled this phenomenon a cycle of deception and self-deception.
Despite washing their hands of the matter, the director stopped short of denying Rosa’s capabilities, saying, in rare instances, paranormal processes may be involved.
The director implies most past life experiences and psychic phenomena lack any merit, not all.
And again, we obviously can deduce who he meant in the rare legit instances, meaning the director saw fascinating evidence of Rosa’s gifts that defied explanation. He passed away a few years before my involvement, so I never got to ask him myself. A friend of his related a conversation with the director about Rosa. While knocking back a few drinks down on The Corner, the director discussed Rosa’s past life experiences and psychic ability.
For a while, he believed Gaston and DOPS could prove Rosa was the real deal. Then along came the strip mall psychic after which he considered all the research tainted. Above all else, a scientist must validate and trust their data before sharing. Since he deemed Gaston’s research unreliable, he intended to squelch knowledge about Rosa Bix and her time at DOPS. Later, after the booze kicked in, he admitted his personal and professional opinions diverged, what he believed versus what he could prove. He believed in Rosa’s talents. Also, the human spirit exists and persists.
Arlo Gust 