The Case of Baby M

This casefile was compiled by Alva Keel through witness interviews and observations conducted by SQ.

      This case is a complicated one, an intricately woven narrative of several occurrences coming together to form one story. I will start at the beginning.
      Mr. Callan came into my office one day to tell me that he felt he was being haunted by Tommy Ferguson. He'd had the vision of Tommy at his funeral, then again a few months later, and finally, he had seen the child four times in the span of two weeks. Each time, Tommy looked more haggard than he ever had, with deeply sunken eyes, pale skin, and purple lips. Mr. Callan feared the boy may be in some kind of spiritual trouble. I tried to calm his anguish by telling him that communication between the living and the dead is complicated; it must pass through various dimensions and states of consciousness before it reaches the living, and so, it often comes out distorted. Still, Mr. Callan felt troubled by these visions; he thought Tommy must have something to tell him.
      That same day, a man named Mr. Baker came into the office and hired us to debunk a television medium he thought was a fraud. His daughter Veronica had been killed by a drunk driver two years prior. His wife, Mrs. Baker, had been unable to accept the death until she appeared on the Into the Light program with medium Jason Herlock, where he seemed to make contact with Veronica. Mr. Baker was afraid his wife's faith would be affected by this reading she'd obtained from Mr. Herlock, that she would leave their church; he felt if we could prove to her that Jason Herlock could not communicate with the dead, her faith in God would be restored. We agreed to take the case.
      We procured tickets and sat in the audience of a typical Into the Light episode, having no idea how extraordinary this particular episode would prove to be. Both Mr. Callan and I observed from the start that Mr. Herlock seemed to fish for responses from the people he read; he would say very general things, such as, "I'm getting an injury in the head or torso area," which is a very common area for fatal injuries, and once he'd obtained a response, would lead people toward certain replies. He worked off "hits" (positive responses) and ignored the information that people confirmed as being wrong.
      While we watched the taping of this program, Mr. Herlock said he was picking up a "D or T name," of a child who had died at the age of ten or eleven. This could be a perfect opportunity for our group to be read, so I told Mr. Callan to ask if Jason Herlock could be referring to Tommy. He did ask, but Mr. Herlock said no, and reached out to touch Mr. Callan on the shoulder. He immediately jerked back, as if he'd touched a hot stove. The audience noticed something was strange in this reaction; they began to whisper amongst themselves. Jason Herlock almost seemed to be in a trance as he said the following (I have paraphrased it here): "Paul... first you'll see the saint, then the fisherman, and then you'll see the red T floating, and that's when it happens." Mr. Callan wrote these items down, in case they proved to be important.
      A few seconds later, Jason Herlock collapsed.
      Within days, Mr. Callan took a friend's child to the park; we will call this child Baby M to protect both his and his mother's privacy. They were playing with a toy boat in the creek when a homeless man asked Mr. Callan for change. He gave him a dollar, then turned to look at a plaque near some plants - these plants were identified as Saint Andrew's Cross. Next, he saw a man sitting on a bench with a fishing pole. Finally, Mr. Callan observed a boy take off his red T-shirt and toss it into the creek, where it floated. Everything Jason Herlock had said had come true. Looking across the water, Mr. Callan spotted Tommy once again, merely standing and staring sadly at him. When he turned to attend to Baby M again, the child was gone.
      The police were alerted immediately, but Baby M had disappeared from the park. I arrived to see if there was something I could do to help. Mr. Callan told me how Mr. Herlock's predictions had come true just before the child was taken. We both thought it would then be a good idea for myself to speak with Mr. Herlock again; perhaps he could provide further information on the kidnapping.
      I was allowed a conference with Jason Herlock, at which he admitted to me that he was a fraud, that he simply fished for responses, as we had thought. He claimed nothing like what had happened when he touched Mr. Callan had ever happened to him before. I asked him if he could do this again, to see if he would pick up any new information about Baby M, but he refused at first. Mr. Herlock stated that he had felt such anguish when he touched Mr. Callan's shoulder that he did not know how Mr. Callan was "walking around with that kind of pain" because it felt like the agony of all the world. He feared that if he returned to that level of pain, it would kill him.
      In the meantime, the police received a lead by taking a man's fingerprints off a trash can. This man turned out to be a paroled sex offender, and the homeless man that Mr. Callan had seen. It was possible that he had taken Baby M. The thought that a child molester had kidnapped this child worried Mr. Callan to the point that he was willing to do just about anything to find him. He took it upon himself to spread out a white sheet and cut his hand open, bleeding onto it, to see if his blood would spell anything. (See Hemography.) Perhaps it would provide a clue. I walked in on him performing this experiment, but the blood did not spell any words.
      Afterwards, Mr. Callan finally told me about the other three possible "God is Nowhere" people (see file G., Chad). He surmised that maybe one of these people had taken Baby M to hurt him. I thought this was far-fetched from the start. One thing was true, though - Tommy had also been there, when the child was taken. Maybe Tommy had been trying to warn him.
      Mr. Herlock finally agreed to see us, and to touch Mr. Callan again. He experienced another dramatic reaction, almost collapsing once more, but was able to get his bearings and tell us what he had seen. He had beheld a vision of Mr. Callan lying in a bathtub full of icy water. This reminded Mr. Callan of an experiment he'd seen performed years before while in seminary where an associate achieved an altered state of existence through lowering the body temperature and using certain drugs. He felt that if he also achieved this altered state, he could speak directly to Tommy and ask him what he knew.
      The police found the homeless man, searched him, and discovered that he did not have Baby M. We were losing hope that the child would be recovered alive unless we tried something drastic.
      We recreated the details from Mr. Callan's seminary experience exactly, and Mr. Callan was able to reach this altered state of existence. He saw Tommy there. Tommy told him that he was not haunting Mr. Callan, that he indeed wanted to move on, but Mr. Callan had been holding onto him so tenaciously that he could not leave the mortal plain. In effect, Mr. Callan was haunting him. After promising that he would work on letting Tommy go, Mr. Callan asked what the boy knew about the disappearance of Baby M. Tommy said that Baby M had not been taken by a sex offender, but by a sad woman who had also lost a child she cared about, like Mr. Callan had lost him.
      As soon as possible, we passed this information on to the mother of Baby M. Mr. Callan told the police that he thought the kidnapper was a grieving mother who had lost her own child, and was using Baby M to replace him. Baby M's mother agreed to try this lead. Soon, we received word that a woman from Trenton, New Jersey, had witnessed her own child being struck and killed by a car only ten days before; she had disappeared soon after, and her credit card had been used at a local motel. The police rushed to this motel where they found Baby M with this woman, the child safe and happy. She had been feeding him cereal, allowing him to watch cartoons, and telling him she loved him for hours. We could not be more overjoyed with this turn of events.
      Within days, Jason Herlock quit the Into the Light show and admitted publicly that he was a fraud. Mr. Baker, our client, couldn't be happier with these developments; truthfully, it is what was best for all involved. A man in Pennsylvania with a great deal of experience in helping psychics come to terms with what they can do has agreed to help Mr. Herlock develop his newly discovered abilities. Perhaps he was not a true fraud after all.
      This case is closed.

For related files, please see: Callan, Paul; G., Chad; F., Tommy; Hemography

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