The Glowing Ball: A (True) Halloween Story

Halloween was my favorite holiday as a child and the chilly autumn nights with the thought of ghosts and goblins roaming the land still hold a fascination for me. Originally, October 31st was celebrated by the Celts as the last day of the year since it signaled the end of harvest time. As ritual Anthropologists have long argued, the in-between (or "liminal") space between two structures -- such as the end of one year and the beginning of the next -- is often accompanied by rites of celebration, fear, and even disorder. Hence, ghosts and goblins. (When Christian groups moved into the Celtic area of Europe, they tried to take the focus away by naming November 1st " All Hallow's Day" and Samhain became "All Hallow's Eve" -- or "Halloween.")

The ritual history aside, this is a time for spooky stories, and there's a great (and true!) one in my family involving my wife Jeanette and her father, Ron. The story begins on a clear, warm summer night in the early 1990s when Jeanette was just a teenager. After her parents had gone to bed, she settled in to watch some late-night television. With the darkness of the room and the lateness of the hour, she felt as though she and the flickering screen were the only ones in the whole house. Even so, Jeanette began to perceive that, despite the seeming emptiness of the house, she was not alone. While the hair on the back of her neck stood and her heartbeat thudded in her chest, she began to see a ball of light hovering in the upper corner of the living room picture window. It was bright white, to the point of having a cold, bluish tint. According to Jeanette, it looked something like this:

A slight glimmer shivered through this sphere of light and it began to move, slowly and deliberately, across the exterior of the window. As Jeanette watched in silent shock, questions rippled through her mind. Could it be a car headlight from the distant road? Could it be someone holding a flashlight, possibly looking for a way in? Instantly, though, she knew the answers to each question: the light was too bright, close, and slow-moving to come from a car, and too high in the air to be a flashlight from a person. Seconds seemed to become an eternity as Jeanette sat on the couch staring at the light until she began to feel as though it was staring at her, almost as if it wanted to tell her something. As difficult as it was to believe, she felt as though the glowing ball was intelligent and purposeful. It wanted something.

Sheer terror finally imbued Jeanette’s limbs with strength and she overcame the paralysis of fear to race headlong back to her room and hide under the covers of her bed. Whether due to fear or disbelief, she said nothing the next morning of her experience, nor did she broach the subject for years afterward. The tale of what she saw that night did not surface until years later, when she was home from college visiting her family. After a night of reminiscing, she suddenly found herself describing the glowing ball, how deliberately and slowly it moved, of how it seemed purposeful, thoughtful, and, not least of all, frightening. She partly expected her parents to laugh or smile or perhaps make a joke. Instead, once the story was over, her father Ron looked a little pale. It turned out that he, too, had a tale to tell.

It happened when Ron was also a teenager. Alone in his room one night, he felt as though something was watching him, even staring at him. As he turned, there inside the room with him was a glowing ball of pure, white light. It hovered above, looking – he, too, felt as though it was looking – down at him like a beaming, glaring eye. After a moment of indecision, Ron ran from the room and raced outside to look up toward his window. He had been on the second floor and wondered if something outside was casting the light into his room. From below, though, he could see no source, no explanation for the sphere of light, nor could he think of any reason why it had appeared. By the time he returned up the stairs to peer cautiously into his room, it was dark inside. The glowing ball had gone.

As a teenager, Ron was also hesitant at first to talk about what he had seen. Would anyone believe him? Would his friends laugh at him? Could it all have just been his imagination? Time went by and Ron stopped thinking about his strange encounter.

A few years later, Ron and some of his friends were visiting an older man who claimed to possess psychic powers. Amid questions about the future, both in general and particular to each of the young, the supposed psychic suddenly turned to Ron and said, “You’ve been visited, haven’t you?” Taken aback, Ron could only furl his brow and squint at first. The psychic continued, “Something came to you, didn’t it?” Ron then related the story, about seeing the sphere of light floating in his room, the feeling of being watched, and the unlikelihood of an outside light creating the glowing ball. “That was a spirit,” the psychic concluded. “It came to you to tell you something. It has a message for you, and it will come back some day in the future.” After Ron was finished, he and Jeanette sat dumbfounded, wondering if, years apart, they had actually seen the same – well, they didn’t know what to call it. An entity? A spirit? An apparition? With so much unknown, they decided to label the experience and the story in a descriptive way, simply calling it “the glowing ball.”

There is a fair amount of paranormal literature out there on "glowing balls," or "orbs" as they are frequently called. One body of thought claims they are spirits and that the size and color are significant to the identity and disposition of the entity. Sometimes the orbs are enormous and fly through the air, as a sighting a year ago from Siberia claims in the video below.

Of course, there are plenty of potential non-paranormal explanations. For orbs that appear in photographs, lens or camera problems can account for the images. (Check out these orbs caught in photos to see if you agree.) In other cases, people have suggested that ball lightning could explain mysterious glowing orbs, though in some ways ball lightning is just as mysterious.

Whatever you think accounts for such sightings, I'm still brought back to the shared experience of Jeanette and Ron. What could it have been? The spookiest part of the whole tale, to me anyway, is how the experience passed from father to daughter. I wonder sometimes, as I say good-night to our boys, will it come back and visit the next generation?

Happy Halloween!

The New Epics, Part 4: Iron Maiden

Welcome to the last post in this series in which I have made arguments for various books to be considered "new epics." I stretched the usual definition a little by arguing for a fantasy series (Lord of the Rings), a children's series (Harry Potter), and a graphic novel (Marvel's Civil War). In this post, I stretch the bounds even further by arguing for the body of work of a musical act which I have mentioned in my blogs before: Iron Maiden.

Though there are other acts I will briefly mention, I'm focusing on Iron Maiden for how well they fit the criteria set out in previous posts:

1.) The work(s) must possess scope, depth, and/or creative ambition.
2.) There should be a persistent cultural influence on other creative works.
3.) It should interact with and draw upon previous creative works.
4.) The work(s) must comment on the dilemma of being human.

Some of the other acts or, specifically, musical albums that might fit this definition include the following. First, the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a concept album that -- in a very post-modern move -- has the band imagine themselves at the concert of another band, which is actually them playing other roles. (You can even see this on the album cover: the brightly colored quartet is the Beatles dressed as Sgt. Pepper's band, while directly to the left of them are..the Beatles.)

Second, in the early 1990s, Billy Joel released what would turn out to be his last album of original pop-rock material. What is unique about the album, called River of Dreams, is that the songs are arranged in the order they were written, showing the artist's evolution of thought during a difficult period in his life: The songs start out with anger and frustration and eventually become more thoughtful and accepting.

Finally, an even more recent album, the rock/punk opera American Idiot by Green Day deserve an honorable mention for taking the genre of punk to the next level.

When I think of "music" and "epic," Iron Maiden is the band that comes immediately to my mind.
With songs like "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (13+ minutes in length), "Sign of the Cross" (11+ minutes), and "Empire of the Clouds" (18+ minutes), Iron Maiden's career has been defined largely by what you might call "heavy metal symphonies" - songs with multiple movements, melodies, and complex key changes. Among Iron Maiden fandom, these songs are even referred to as their "epics." Led Zeppelin has "Stairway to Heaven," Metallica has "Master of Puppets," and Green Day has "Jesus of Suburbia," but none have equaled Iron Maiden's ability at producing intricate, towering musical masterpieces. As such, their influence is undeniable.

The topics of their songs also display a fascinating commentary on a wide variety of cultural sources. They have based works on mythologies ("Powerslave" - Egypt; "The Isle of Avalon" - Celtic; "The Flight of Icarus" - Greek; "The Book of Souls" - Mayan), literature ("Murders in the Rue Morgue," "Stranger in a Strange Land," "Brave New World"), science fiction ("Out of the Silent Planet," "To Tame a Land"), World War II ("Aces High," "Where Eagles Dare"), World War I ("Paschendale"), the Crimean War ("The Trooper"), religious history ("Montsegur," "For the Greater Good of God") and the occult ("Dance of Death," "Revelations," "The Number of the Beast"). The diversity of topics there is perhaps owed to the band's richness of interests. Recently, I read Bruce Dickinson's (the lead singer) autobiography and learned that he nearly went to graduate school to study History, is a talented fencer, and has a commercial pilot's license. (He even flies the band's plane on tour.)

The lyrics and topics of the band's works consistently delve into the murky depths of the human condition, fulfilling the fourth criterion. As just a few examples, "The Thin Line Between Love and Hate," the closing track from the album Brave New World, considers the duality present in all human psychology and how quickly one can turn from good to bad or vice versa. "The Prisoner", though based on the BBC television program of the same name, is a metaphor for anyone yearning for freedom or release from bad situations and circumstances. Finally, one of their most famous songs, "Hallowed be thy Name," puts the listener in the place of someone being led to the gallows and you realize that, since mortality is universal, how that individual is facing that moment is instructive to how we all must someday face death.

My current favorite Iron Maiden epic (at 11 minutes in length) is "When the Wild Wind Blows," a parable (based on a British graphic novel) about how fear and suspicion can twist a person's outlook. A clip to the song is below, if you have a spare 11 minutes.

My all-time favorite Iron Maiden song, though, is "Powerslave." Rather like "Hallowed by thy Name," it deals with mortality, but from the perspective of an Egyptian Pharaoh who was once attended by innumerable slaves, but now at the end of his life must come to terms that he himself is a slave, to the power of death. The clip is below, and surely you can budget a little more than 7 minutes for that, can't you?

While considering any of these songs or the band itself as "epic" might seem like the most egregious abuse of the concept, let's recall the original traditional definition of the term: "a long narrative poem in elevated style recounting the deeds of a legendary or historical hero." These were often sung, I'd add, meaning Iron Maiden's lyrics and musics about all of these topics might be the closest things to "epics" (according to the old-school definition) that I have considered over these many weeks.

As one last reflection on this subject after these many weeks, not long ago I was in my basement lifting weights, listening to The Number of the Beast. I first got that cd in the Fall of 1992, when I was having a very tough time as a freshman in high school. Those memories came back as I listened to the songs and remembered how they had motivated me to push through. Things did get better for me (and they've periodically gotten worse then better then worse then better, as is the way of life) and having the music as reference point was very comforting, even cathartic. I think that is what "epics" are meant to do.

Throughout these weeks, the works I've put out for consideration have been ones I connect with personally. In fact, someone could say, "Well, geez, Michael, you just self-indulgently chose to talk about stuff you liked!" To that I would reply, "Welcome to my blog." But seriously, I encourage every reader to sit and think about his/her own definition of "epic" and maybe write out a list, across genres, of what you would consider "epic."  I'd be delighted to see what some of you think.

That's all for this series. I hope you enjoyed it! Next time, in honor of the upcoming Halloween holiday, I will have a ghost story to share from my very own family. Spooky, huh?

Until then, take care.

The New Epics, Part 3: Marvel's "Civil War"

As the third part of my series on the "new epics," I'm going to focus on the graphic novel Civil War from Marvel.

Last time, we looked at Harry Potter. To remind everyone, here is the criteria I've been using to set the parameters of "epic":

1.) The work(s) must possess scope, depth, and/or creative ambition.
2.) There should be a persistent cultural influence on other creative works.
3.) It should interact with and draw upon previous creative works.
4.) The work(s) must comment on the dilemma of being human.

There are many graphic novels that could fit this definition, and I'm going to list some runners-up toward the end, but I'll highlight Civil War in this post due the complexity of its political message, the wide number of characters involved, and the depth of the philosophical issues it evokes. As a fairly obvious comment on the cultural climate of America immediately post-9/11, the series also makes a substantive -- and ambitious -- connection to real historical events.

There has been a sequel - with which I am much less familiar -- and, of course, the 2016 movie Captain America: Civil War, that has only a tenuous connection to the graphic novel. Other significant comic crossover events preceded Civil War (such as 1984's Secret Wars) but those did not dip as deeply into the philosophical or political.

For those unfamiliar with the story, an accident involving rookie (and cavalier) superheroes results in the deaths of hundreds of civilians, especially schoolchildren, and the government demands that everyone with superpowers register and work for law enforcement. Heroes take sides for and against this registration act: Iron Man heads up the forces of law and order who support the act, while Captain America leads a group of rebels. Calamitous and bloody confrontations between the two groups become inevitable.

Though villains play a slight role in the story, the main conflict resides between characters otherwise classified as "heroes," making it plain that this is a tale of a society tearing itself apart from within. This is a perfect metaphor for the political climate that has obtained in the United States since (at least) September 11th. Broader than that, in their arguments for their beliefs, Iron Man and Captain America put classic philosophical schools into relief. By asserting that the Registration Act is just because it protects the greatest number of people at the lesser cost of civil liberties, Iron Man becomes a spokesperson for the ethical theory known as utilitarianism. Captain America, on the other hand, argues that the consequences are irrelevant and that Freedom is a good that should never be exchanged for any sort of perceived benefit, situating him firmly in the Kantian deontological camp.

The tagline for the series was, "Whose side are you on?" Indeed, how one answers that question might suggest which philosophical school he/she most closely fits. The series admirably muddies the waters, though, as it progresses as heroes switch sides, both groups commit heinous acts, and there is compromise of respective codes of ethics. The epic is thus a parable not just for the tension between freedom and security in our society, but also how, as any conflict deepens, even those of good conscience can descend to barbarism. Thousands of years ago, Aeschylus is supposed to have said, "In war, the first casualty is truth." Marvel's Civil War may be a perfect illustration of that maxim.

Therefore, for its incisive political and philosophical commentary, I nominate Marvel's Civil War as a "new epic." Other graphic novels could have made the cut in my estimation, particularly two Batman stories. Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns was an epoch-changing contribution to the comic world, and gave us an unforgettable portrayal of a older (not to mention even more brutal) Batman. (Plus, the Batman/Superman fight in the last section makes infinitely more sense than what you get in the film Batman vs. Superman.)

For its fascinating exploration of the psychological contrasts and overlaps between Batman and his arch-villain the Joker, Alan Moore's The Killing Joke has to at least be mentioned. Students from my 2016 "Evil in the Myth and Literature of World Religions" might remember this book from the syllabus.

Finally, I want to mention a multi-part comic story that was originally printed in the 1960s. I first encountered it in the mid-1980s as part of a Marvel retrospective series called Marvel Saga. It is the tale of the Fantastic Four's first encounter with the space god "Galactus," who eats worlds for sustenance.

Spanning three issues, the Fantastic Four's bid to stop Galactus is only successful with an even heftier dose of their usual heroics, plus the intervention of the other demi-god like beings, the Watcher and the Silver Surfer. This rebellion against the will of a practically divine tyrant has shades of Prometheus against Zeus, or the Buddha against Mara, tapping into a timeless human impulse to test our mettle against even the most powerful entities and seemingly intractable boundaries.

Next time, in the last edition of this series, I stretch the discussion even further by entertaining if certain works of music, or even particular bands themselves, are worthy of the title "epic."

Until then, take care.

The New Epics. Part 2: Harry Potter

Welcome to part two of my series on "epics." For this entry, I submit that a certain wizarding saga from the last twenty-five years deserves to be called epic: Harry Potter.

My family have been fans of the books for a while. Which entry is my favorite? You'll find out below. Even if you are not a fan of these books, you must admit there is something special in the series. These qualities become even more evident with the use of the criteria I employed in the last post (on The Lord of the Rings) for reassessing the category of "epic." Those points again were:

1.) The work(s) must possess scope, depth, and/or creative ambition.
2.) There should be a persistent cultural influence on other creative works.
3.) It should interact with and draw upon previous creative works.
4.) The work(s) must comment on the dilemma of being human.

It is pretty clear that Harry Potter fits these criteria, but let's go through each of them. All seven books (totaling more than 4,200 pages) form an intricate sub-world of magic-endowed people and beings. The relationships between characters go back generations and the people themselves behave in convincingly three-dimensional ways. There is an entirely new sport ("quidditch"), a wizarding language, and a plot that takes seven books to come to fruition. This is certainly a saga of scope, depth, and ambition that author Rowling has composed.

One also need not look far for the book series' impact on popular culture. Some have argued that, due to the fracturing of societies into "micro-niches," Harry Potter may be the last genuine global popular phenomenon. That, of course, remains to be seen. For the time being, though, a writer at the Stanford Daily believes that one day we will be reading Harry Potter alongside Antigone, The Great Gatsby, and the Iliad.

Besides obvious cultural influence, the Harry Potter saga draws on cultural touchstones from the past. Rowling puts in references to classical mythology (the three-headed dog, centaurs) and other traditions of the world (the snake nagini). The most obvious corollary with other epics, though, is the template of the "hero's journey" (the schematic of which is often attributed to Joseph Campbell). The individual is called, unexpectedly, into an adventure, must assemble allies and friends, overcome challenges, and protect a community. It's a standard sort of plotline found across the world and Harry Potter is obviously far more complicated than this rendition, but the basic elements are there and connect the story to traditions from around the globe.

Where I find Harry Potter most compelling, though, is in its human element. The characters reflect classic archetypes (the hero on a quest, the old mentor, the zany sidekick, the ruthless villain, etc.) but each is a fully realized and, at times, unpredictable person. Even the good characters do things that frustrate and upset me, just as real people would. The series does not shy away from showing people as quite flawed.

Entire books have been written on the ethical and philosophical themes of the series. (Also, did you know that there's a group that uses the Potter series as the basis for a modern Lectio Divina practice?) Out of all the possible topics, one that has always stuck with me is the dynamic between Harry and Voldemort. Their lives parallel one another, becoming more and more entwined as time passes. Each is an orphan, each is recognized as the most powerful wizard of his generation, and after the events of Goblet of Fire, they share the same blood. Yet, Voldemort (whose name means "flight from death" in French, giving just one example of the fascinating name etymologies Rowling employs) fixates on control and fear, both in others and, unbeknownst to himself, his own. Harry, on the other hand, chooses friendship, trust, and love. While Voldemort and his vision achieves ascendancy not once but twice, both times it falters, showing that while evil power may dominate for a time, due to its own inherent insecurity, it cannot persist.

I've loved Harry Potter for a long time, but over vacation we listened to The Order of the Phoenix on tape during the car ride.

This may be my favorite volume of the epic since it illustrates lessons I've taken to heart, and ones I hope my sons do, too. In this book of the series, we see how otherwise good people can make terrible, obstinate mistakes. Harry doesn't listen to his friends' counsel, with tragic consequences, though the entire situation is arguably set in motion by Dumbledore's paternalistic mistrust that Harry can't handle certain crucial pieces of information. Beyond that, there is the additional message of resilience: Harry knows irrefutably that Voldemort has returned, but the majority refuse to believe it and systematically harass, taunt, and smear him. Still, he persists, even at great cost, because he knows he's right. That is a lesson for any age.

Given its exquisite mastery of language (on multiple levels), connection to ancient mythic/religious themes, and central humanity, it's clear that Harry Potter deserves a place among the "new epics." Next time, I'll go even further beyond the usual understanding of "epic" to highlight some graphic novels that I believe also meet the criteria.

Until then, take care.