Reviewed by Tom Ruffles
The ‘mammoth’ of the title does not refer to the book (a modest 128 pages) nor to the poltergeist episode it describes, which lasted for just a couple of weeks, but to a Californian mountain. Despite the brevity of both the event and the book, Jenny Ashford and Tom Ross have put together an interesting account, followed by a balanced discussion. Tom Ross was directly involved in the incident, which took place in December 1982, when he was 13. He had gone on a break to a condominium in a ski resort at Mammoth Lakes with his aunt Lois, his uncle Red and cousin Wes over the Christmas period. The condo was owned by an oil company for which Tom’s mother worked but she was unable to accompany them. He was close to his uncle and aunt, but less so it would seem to Wes who although the same age as Tom was deaf and absorbed in his own world, which mainly consisted of playing computer games.
Even before they arrived Tom was feeling apprehensive about the place, the journey putting him in mind of The Shining (which had appeared a couple of years before and which surprisingly he had seen). Their strange experience began immediately upon arrival, with a heavy oppressive atmosphere, and rapidly became stranger, with objects moved around, including in an organised way that suggested intelligence, coldness, breezes, a feeling of being watched, a blue luminescent haze, writing (the word ‘go’ marked on a window with a plastic bread tie), the TV turning itself on, banging, damage to the front door, and most impressively the moving of a massively heavy bunk bed. There was often a playfulness about these acts, but cumulatively they were distressing because the degree of force and the ultimate intention were unknown.
In order to be able to converse about the matter without alarming anyone overhearing them, the group, working on the assumption that they were dealing with a deceased person, christened the force in the apartment ‘The Blost’, a word rhyming with ‘ghost’ but meaningless in itself. After a while, however, they noticed that Tom seemed to be the focus, and this contention was supported after they left the resort and activity followed them back to Lois and Red’s place where a couple of neighbours were witnesses to small-scale events, including a peripatetic cheese knife.
Tom came to the conclusion that he was playing some role when he realised he could predict when an object would move. Yet that realisation somehow broke the spell because when he attempted to move something mentally, not only did that not happen, but the poltergeist activity abruptly ceased. The turning point was moving from an unsettling fear that some intelligence ‘out there’ was reading his mind to an understanding that he was the agent, able to cause the disturbance with his mind. At the time his parents had split up and he did not get on with his mother’s boyfriend. By his own admission he was highly-strung. On top of all that he would have been going through puberty. He fits the profile of a poltergeist focus quite well.
This idea that the poltergeist was not some external intelligence but was the result of recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis (RSPK) on Tom’s part was reinforced by a later incident when he was in the army and had a peculiar out-of-body experience linked to a physical but unintended effect on a microwave and a fridge in the room. It is described in great detail, with Tom looking down on the scene, his perceptions radically distorted. There was a witness who panicked when he thought Tom had died, but he was deeply hostile about what had happened because of his religious convictions so Tom was not able to ask him about the episode. On the surface it was dissimilar to what happened at Mammoth Lakes (for a start he was feeling relaxed rather than stressed, and was aware of his role as the originator as it was occurring) but it suggested that he had some ability to affect his environment which was able to manifest spontaneously.
The second half examines what happened in 1982 in the light of the broader psychical research literature. Tom laments the current state of serious poltergeist research despite the glut of films, television programmes and popular books on the paranormal. In order to understand what happened to him, he has to go back to older cases, notably Enfield and Don Decker, the ‘Stroudsburg Rain Man’, a case which happened shortly after his own, to draw out commonalities and differences. Concluding chapters briefly cover speculative scientific evidence for the paranormal and a sceptical perspective, plus there is a decent bibliography.
So how useful is this as a case study? Even assuming that the witnesses are sincere, relying on memories across such a lengthy period is always a problem. Ashford interviewed the family but there are no contemporary notes. Unsurprisingly the distance has led to discrepancies in memories and Ashford has taken ‘artistic licence in order to make the narrative timeline flow better and to try to integrate the witnesses’ versions where they differ in minor ways.’ This tweaking may be minor, as she indicates, but it is still unfortunate when an investigator uses ‘artistic licence’ to smooth inconsistencies. She may have remained faithful to the spirit of the story as related, but it is not completely accurate.
The lapse in time means that the authors can present no third-party testimony. They did get some limited verbal corroboration of peculiar occurrences from a family who shared the accommodation for part of the time, the owners having double-booked; and employees of the ski rental shop said that there had been paranormal activity in the area in which the condo was situated. A similar enquiry to the complex’s administration office elicited such a quick firm ‘no’ that that was odd in itself. The company driver who took them to the bus station saw a swinging light and remarked that he had seen things like that at Mammoth Lakes before. How the possibility of a haunting squares with the RSPK interpretation is left unexplored.
There is too a danger in writing about relatives and those with whom one is intimate (Jenny and Tom are in a relationship). The possibility of self-censorship in addressing possibly embarrassing aspects has to be borne in mind by the reader when making an assessment. For example, Wes is a shadowy figure, either denying that anything odd is happening, or simply ignoring it, immersed in his games. But he was the same age as Tom, and if puberty was a factor he could have been more involved than he might want to acknowledge, or even appreciate. His connection is suggested by the fact that something odd happened to him at night when he was asleep which Lois found alarming: on the first night he was pale and breathing so shallowly that she at first had thought he might have died, and he adopted a peculiar sleeping posture. Possibly he was as disengaged as the book suggests and played no part, but we cannot know for sure: it could be that he was a contributory factor, necessary though not sufficient to generate activity, but his possible influence was not examined out of deference to him and his parents. Nor are we told if there were any tensions in Lois and Red’s relationships, or between Red and Wes – presumably Red was Wes’s stepfather as he was 28 at the time, a fact only mentioned in passing.
What is said to have happened was intensely dramatic, but the family members do not seem to have been traumatised, even if they were unnerved at the time. There is much talk about them being snowed in, Overlook-style, but the roads were clear enough for them to visit a local restaurant, and good enough for the other family who shared the condo to make it. Admittedly the Greyhound bus did not run every day, but they could have cut their break short. Instead they stayed on for the entirety of their booking, even though what was happening to Wes at night must have been scary, and despite claiming to be so weary and frightened that by the end of it they were all sleeping in the living room, in their clothes with the light on.
The authors’ sincerity is palpable, but we are dealing with memories that are well over 30 years old with no independent verification. Ultimately there is no way to say with certainty what went on and what it all meant. Whether we are looking at collaborative yarn-spinning, a discarnate entity with considerable power, or significant PK on the part of Tom, possibly with unconscious contributions from other family members, is an open question. As Tom argues, the poltergeist issue needs a great deal more research.
Since writing The Mammoth Mountain Poltergeist Jenny Ashford has written about another case, The Rochdale Poltergeist, with Steve Mera.