Could you wear a killer's cardigan?

This is one of many provocative questions raised in a book I read recently by Bruce M. Hood called Supersense: Why We Believe The Unbelievable, published in 2008 by HarperOne. Hood is chair of the Cognitive Development Center in the Experimental Psychology Department at the University of Bristol.

In his public lectures, he says he often does an experiment where he passes a fountain pen around the audience that he pretends once belonged to Albert Einstein. "The reverence and awe towards this object is palpable," he says. "Everyone wants to hold it. Touching the pen makes them feel good."

Then he produces a cardigan and asks who would be willing to put it on. Usually at least a third of the people in the audience volunteer to do so, until he reveals (another pretence) that it once belonged to Fred West, a well-known English serial killer. Immediately most of the hands go down and people visibly recoil from those who adamantly keep their hands up. "Typically they are male and determined to demonstrate their rational control," he says. "Or they suspect, rightly, that I was lying about the owner of the cardigan."

Paul Rozin, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who specializes in research on the unusual topic of the origin, evolution and meaning of disgust, confirms that "more people would rather wear a cardigan that has been dropped in dog faeces and then washed than one that has also been cleaned and worn by a murderer."

Hood asks in his book, "How and why should a cardigan come to represent the negative association with a killer? If I had chosen a knife or noose, the association account would have been adequate. A cardigan is not an item usually linked to murderers. It is something that offers warmth and comfort." He concludes that "The Fred West cardigan stunt triggers mostly a sense of spiritual, not physical, contamination. You can't wash away such contamination as though it were dirt."

He goes on to explore in his book the many types of 'supersense' humans have. It's a great read but, since he doesn't  have any awareness of etheric and astral imprints, he concludes in the end that "supernatural thinking is simply the natural consequence of failing to match our intuitions with the true reality of the world." He comes very close at times to recognizing that objects can have an energetic as well as physical component but never actually accepts it, in spite of the overwhelming evidence in his studies of so many people innately believing it to be true.

My perception, after years of energy sensing objects of all kinds, is that laundering clothing removes all imprints. So putting on Fred West's freshly laundered cardigan presents no problem at all energetically.

However, if it hasn't been washed, that's a completely different matter. Particularly if he wore it frequently and even more so if he wore it recently, it will be saturated with his imprints. This will have an energetic effect on any wearer, as people intuitively know. And as I explain in the Clutter and Feng Shui Symbology chapter of the new edition of my Clear Your Clutter book, if a person knows the history of an item and has a negative association with it, then just the sight of it will evoke those feelings and no amount of Space Clearing will change that. So if someone knows it is Fred West's cardigan, even if it has been laundered a hundred times, they are likely to feel energetically contaminated if they come into contact with it even though they haven't been.

I love questions like this because they illustrate so clearly something we all know and feel, but most people don't know why.

Further reading: Does Space Clearing really clear imprints?

Copyright © Karen Kingston, 2009

Comments

Lisa K.

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Karen, does dry cleaning work to remove energy imprints? In our area environmentally friendly dry cleaning companies are quickly replacing the traditional chemical methods. Some items, like wool suits and fancy dresses such as wedding gowns, can't be washed with water. Thank you, LK

Wednesday 09 September 2009, 23:25

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Cherry

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Quote: In his public lectures, he says he often does an experiment where he passes a fountain pen around the audience that he pretends once belonged to Albert Einstein. "The reverence and awe towards this object is palpable," he says. "Everyone wants to hold it. Touching the pen makes them feel good."

What if this fountain pen, which he claimed belonged to Einstein, actually belonged to Fred West? Would the people touching the pen instinctively feel the negative energy from the pen as belonging to West even though they were told it belonged to Einstein? Or would they still ooh and ahh over it, wanting to touch it, to get closer to Einstein, when in fact they were really getting closer to West?

The only thing this experiment proved is that people will believe anything they are told. Nobody wanted to wear a killer's cardigan. But if he hadn't told them it belonged to West, people would have worn it without any hesitation and they wouldn't have been any the wiser for it. Maybe a few people you can count on one hand would have gotten the heebee jeebee's but the vast majority of people do not have this sixth sense.

Saturday 26 September 2009, 21:19

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Gail

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If a person knew that a cardigan was worn by someone who murdered, they might wonder whether it was worn while the actual crime was committed and would feel uncomfortable with that thought.

It's like when you buy something and the sales person wasn't friendly, you can never really enjoy the thing that you bought because you'd always remember the bad feelings at the point of sale.

Monday 28 September 2009, 09:28

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