FT383 17PHOTO
S: ALAN MJURDIEABOVE:The abandoned village of Liminaria.
LEFT: An evil eye charm doubles as akey ring.manifestations and seeing its‘Grey Lady’.
With hindsight I wish I had re-read
Lawson before setting out to the village of
Megalachori. The villagewas reached after
a pleasant sea frontwalk of just over half an
hour. Arriving at a particular family taverna
(which I shall not identify here) Iwas soon
served coffee by an elderlyAgistri couple
and their English-speaking daughter.
On expressing my interest in local
history and lore, the family were initially
most helpful andexpansive, telling me how
after being mine and quarry in classical
times, the islandwas virtually abandoned
until the late mediæval period. Thena
community came over from neighbouring
islands and established the first settlement
at the nearby village of Liminaria. Lifewas
hard and made increasingly precarious
by repeatedraids from pirates seeking
loot and captives. Consequently, in the
1820s the original villagewas dismantled
down to its foundations, with the villagers
abandoning the coastal areas and heading
into the interior of the island where they
camouflaged their new houses and
churches.
Predictably, mention of pirates prompts
fantasies of buried treasure(all so far
undiscovered) and even a wildly unhistorical
story that the infamous Mediterranean
pirate and admiral Barbarossa (c. 1471-
1546) is buried in a local well!
Talk of the deserted settlement provided
a good opening to discussing ghosts.
The old village site is reputedly haunted,
with visitors complaining of a brooding
atmosphere and a sense of beingwatched.
Another haunted place is a chapel along the
road to Aponissos, where the voices of the
dead can be heard on certain nights,“So
people say”.
This all seemedvery promising, and
by this stage I had been joined by some
English-speaking friends and part-time
residents who knowAgistri very well.With
conversation and beverages flowing ever
more freely, Iwas induced to start making
some hand-written notes. And in this I failed
to follow the advice provided by Lawson over
a centuryago.
As Lawson observed himself, “The
formal interview with paper and pencil is in
my opinion a mistake... The peasant who
honestly believes the superstitions and
scrupulously observed the customs which
he may happen to speak is silenced at once
by the sight of the note-book”. It vindicates
advice Iwas givenyears ago about
collecting ghost stories from elderly villagers
in rural East Anglia, “Ifyou want to buya
pig, talk about the weather”. But the really
sensitive issue proved to be the evil eye.
On mention of this my previously
communicative hosts clammed up. The
convivial atmosphere evaporated in an
instant and I saw a look of profound unease
and growing resentment crossing the face
of the elderly mother. Thiswas at once
picked up by her daughter who suddenly
snapped “They know nothing!” and making
it clear if her parents did, itwas certainly
not to be shared with me. Sensing that this
sudden reversal and souring of the previous
communicative atmosphere heralded even
more negative reactions and upset for
everyone, I abandoned my enquiries, quickly
moving conversation to more mundane
subjects. The previous good humour slowly
returned and I did not broach paranormal
topicsagain.
In one sense Iwas not surprised; one has
to accept such moments when collecting
any kind of oral testimony. Over many
years I have become used to witnesses
who change or alter their stories (both in
legal and psychical research contexts) or
witnesses who subsequently no longer
remember or even deny the entirety of their
original statements. These are some ofthe occupational hazards ofgathering oral
evidence of any sort.With folklore collection,
there is a time and a place for everything,
and local nuances arevery important.
Beliefs which confer on the human eye
some dangerous quality that strikes out
and works an injury upon any person or
inanimate object standing in view are not
confined to Greece but were declared as
thriving throughout the world in the middle of
the last century (see the popular survey by
Edward Gifford,TheEvil Eye,1958).
In Greece the idea of an evil eyewas
magnified to grotesque and apocalyptic
levels by investigator AngelosTanagras in
1929, clothed in the jargon of psychical
research.Tanagras proposed that apparent
precognitionwas to beexplained as
a slowly acting form of psychokinesis,
“an unsuspected factor, terrible and
chiefly unconscious, which depends on
our mysterious subconscious and acts
according to our unavowed impulses,
appears toexert a ‘fatal’ influence
upon lives and destinies” (In his book
Le Destin et La Chance,translated into
English asPsychophysical Elements in
ParapsychologicalTraditions, 1967). Under
this model an individualwanting something
to happen, mentally pictures it and then
‘foresees’ it happening, then unconsciously
causes it,rather as in science fiction films
such asForbidden Planet(1956) andThe
MedusaTo uch (1978). Thus, premonitions
are fulfilled by PK acting on other brains
or on physicalsystems, a precognised
road orrailway accident is realised by the
dreamer who through PK tampers with the
steering gear, engine or brain of the driver,
triggering the accident.Tanagras termed