Meantime curiosity seekers descended upon Stuart. A local author wanted to write a novel about him. Representatives from national magazines rang the front door bell. The family was up in arms. Stuart was once again driven indoors, and sat brooding in the attic room, staring at the treasured possessions of this strange person Antoinette, and feeling that ten years of his life had been stolen from him, and he was now a hopeless misfit, driven to antagonizing everyone he knew.
No doubt the family received a great deal of unwelcome mail. On the other hand, communication in that day and age was not what it is now. Whatever the case, a package from the Talamasca reached Stuart in late 1916, containing two well-known books about such cases of “possession,” along with a letter from us informing him that we had a good deal of knowledge about such things and would be very glad to talk to him about it, and about others who had experienced the same thing.
Stuart at once fired off a reply. He met with our representative Louis Daly in Dallas in the summer of 1917, and gratefully agreed to go with us to London. Dr. Townsend, at first deeply concerned, was finally won over by Louis, who assured him that our approach to such things was entirely scholarly, and at last Stuart came to us on September 1, 1917.
He was received into the order as a novice the following year, and he remained with us from then on.
His first project of course was a thorough study of his own case, and a study of every other known case of possession on record. His conclusion finally, and that of the other Talamasca scholars assigned to this area of research, was that he indeed had been possessed by the spirit of a dead woman.
He believed then and ever after that the spirit of Antoinette Fielding could have been driven out of him, if anyone knowledgeable had been consulted, even a Catholic priest. For though the Catholic Church holds that such cases are purely demonic-which we do not-there is no doubt that their techniques for exorcising such alien presences do work.
For the next five years Stuart did nothing but investigate past cases of possession the world over. He interviewed victims by the dozens, taking voluminous notes.
He came to the conclusion long held by the Talamasca that there are a great variety of entities who engage in possession. Some may be ghosts; some may be entities who were never human; some may be “other personalities” within the host. But he remained convinced that Antoinette Fielding had been a real human being, and that like many such ghosts, she had not known or understood that she was dead.
In 1920 he went to Paris to find evidence of Antoinette Fielding. He was unable to discover anything at all. But the few bits of information about the dead Louisa Fielding did fit with what Antoinette had written about her mother. Time, however, had long ago erased any real trace of these persons. And Stuart remained forever dissatisfied on this account.
In late 1920 he resigned himself to the fact that he might never know who Antoinette was, and then he turned to active fieldwork on behalf of the Talamasca. He went out with Louis Daly to intervene in cases of possession, carrying out with Daly a form of exorcism which Daly used very effectively to drive such alien presences out of the victim-host.
Daly was very impressed with Stuart Townsend. He became Stuart’s mentor, and Stuart was throughout these years noted for his compassion, patience, and effectiveness in this field. Not even Daly could comfort the victims afterwards the way Stuart could do it. After all, Stuart had been there. Stuart knew.
Stuart worked in this field tirelessly until 1929, reading the File on the Mayfair Witches only when a busy schedule allowed. Then he made his plea to the council and won.
At that point in time, Stuart was thirty-five. He stood six feet tall, had ash-blond hair and dark gray eyes. He was lean of build and had a light complexion. He tended to dress elegantly, and was one of those Americans who deeply admires English manners and ways of doing things, and aspires to imitate them. He was an attractive young man. But his greatest appeal to friends and acquaintances was a sort of boyish spontaneity and innocence. Stuart was really missing ten years of his life, and he never got them back.
He was capable at times of impetuousness, and of flying off the handle, of getting furious when he encountered even small obstacles to his plans. But he controlled this very well when he was in the field; and when he threw a tantrum in the Motherhouse he could always be brought round.
He was also capable of falling deeply and passionately in love, which he did with Helen Kreis, a member of the Talamasca who died in an auto accident in 1924. He grieved excessively and even dangerously for Helen for two years after her death.
What happened between him and Stella Mayfair we may never know. But it is possible to conjecture that she was the only other love of his life.
I should like to add my personal opinion here that Stuart Townsend never should have been sent to New Orleans. It was not only that he was too emotionally involved with Stella; it was that he lacked experience in this particular field.
In his novitiate, he had dealt with various kinds of psychic phenomena; and undoubtedly he read widely in the occult all his life. He discussed a great variety of cases with other members of the order. And he did spend some time with Arthur Langtry.
But he did not really know anything about witches, per se. And like so many of our members who have dealt only with hauntings, possessions, or reincarnation, he simply did not know what witches can do.
He did not understand that the strongest manifestations of discarnate entities come through mortal witches. There are even some suggestions that he thought the Talamasca was being archaic and silly in calling these women witches. And it is very likely that though he accepted the seventeenth-century descriptions of Deborah Mayfair and her daughter Charlotte, he could not “relate” this material to a clever, fashionable twentieth-century “jazz baby” like Stella, who seemed to be beckoning to him across the Atlantic with a smile and a wink.
Of course the Talamasca encounters a certain amount of incredulity in all new workers in the witchcraft field. The same holds true for the investigation of vampires. More than one member of the order has had to see these creatures in action before he or she could believe in them. But the solution to that problem is to introduce our members to fieldwork under the guidance of experienced persons, and in cases which do not involve direct contact.
To send an inexperienced man like Townsend to make contact with the Mayfair Witches is like sending a little child directly to hell to interview the devil.
In sum Stuart Townsend went off to New Orleans unprepared and unwarned. And with all due respect to those who governed the order in 1929, I do not believe that such a thing would happen today.
Lastly, let me add that Stuart Townsend, to the best of our knowledge, possessed no extraordinary powers. He wasn’t “psychic,” as they say. So he had no extrasensory weapons at his command when he confronted the foe, whom he did not even perceive to be a foe.
Stuart’s disappearance was reported to the New Orleans police on July 25, 1929. This was a full month after his arrival in New Orleans. The Talamasca had tried to reach him by telegram and by phone. Irwin Dandrich had tried to find him but in vain. The St. Charles Hotel, from which Stuart claimed to have written his only letter from New Orleans, denied ever having such a person registered. No one remembered such a person ever having been there.