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Life between Life – Dr Joel Whitton and Joe Fisher

The question of inner conflict was much more difficult to answer. Assertive and purposeful in her professional dealings, Jenny was exceedingly shy and easily intimidated in a situation of social intimacy. Although she had never been treated by a psychiatrist or even her family doctor for any sort of emotional problem, her demeanour suggested that she was paralysed with anxiety. It was clear to Dr Whitton that if she was indeed torn by inner conflict, that conflict was deeply repressed.

Several hour-long sessions were needed to elicit the most basic information about her life. Apparently unable to relate specific details, she talked discursively about a miserable childhood. As a teenager, she had felt so depressed and misunderstood that she had worked at three jobs just to get herself out of the house. But conflict? 'No, not really,' said Jenny.

Dr Whitton was aware that such a reaction was typical of those who are raised in severely brutalizing environments; they are emotionally repressed and complain rarely, if at all, about their treatment. In his book The Borderline Syndromes, Michael H. Stone, MD, describes a 'subtle form of thought disorder' in patients who have been violently abused during childhood. He writes: 'Feelings are not remembered, or cannot be labelled properly, or are extinguished before they reach a state of conscious awareness.' So why did the PK lady deliberately, if unconsciously, make blood flow on her living-room wall on April 10?

Dr Whitton had observed many patients who, following the unconscious dictates of decisions made during the inter-life, have precipitated drastic or spectacular events which led them to search out the origin of their difficulties. Perhaps the blood-splashed wall was an example of what has been dubbed 'anniversary phenomena'. That is to say, the PK manifestation could have been produced on a date redolent with traumatic significance for the patient.

Unaware of any personal anniversary of emotional import, Jenny couldn't confirm this hypothesis. Instead she whispered with all the reticence of confession: 'I got pregnant last summer. I went for an abortion - nobody knew about it.' Dr Whitton applied himself to this revelation with all the zeal of a detective hounding a solitary but very promising lead. He appreciated at once that Jenny's abortion had left her severely oppressed by guilt. Further, he discovered that even though she cared passionately for mentally retarded children and taught parenting skills to handicapped adults, Jenny was terrified of having a baby. He noted that her lost child was conceived on June 23, 1979 - an easily retrievable date because that was the only time Jenny had engaged in sexual intercourse over many years.

Dr Whitton calculated that this should have meant all being well, a delivery in early April. The records of Jenny's attending gynaecologist at Toronto General Hospital provided explicitly, the confirmation he was seeking. If the baby had survived, its birth would have been expected on April 10, 1980 - the very day that blood had first appeared on Jenny's wall. At this point, Jenny revealed another PK incident with obvious links to her pregnancy. The previous year, in her apartment laden with greenery, she had been tending a plant called Helxine soleirolii, better known as 'baby's-tears'.

For no apparent reason, this delicate but vibrantly healthy plant shrivelled and died sometime during the early hours of September 2, shortly before she was admitted to hospital for the abortion. In hospital, an examination revealed that an abortion was no longer necessary as the foetus she was carrying had died three days earlier. That's when Jenny remembered the 'baby's-tears' – the plant had dramatically withered and turned brown at the same time her embryonic child had ceased to be. This spontaneous abortion - known, clinically, as a 'missed abortion'- was not unusual, such miscarriages occurring in at least ten to twenty per cent of all pregnancies. Psychologically, however, the psychokinetic activity linked with Jenny's womb indicated extraordinary emotional intensity as well as supercharged psychic ability.