So Supernatural - MYSTICAL: Netta Fornario

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

In November 1929, a woman named Netta Fornario was found dead on the mystical island of Iona, Scotland. She was naked except for a black cloak with insignia, suggesting perhaps something occult was responsible for her death.

In most cases we've covered on this show, the victims of paranormal events are just that, victims. People going about their day not expecting the supernatural to just show up on their doorstep. Netta Fornerio was not one of those people. In 1929, she visited the Scottish island of Iona, specifically in search of the island's spiritual healing powers. But weeks later, she wound up dead. And the circumstances surrounding her demise point to something much darker than a vacation gone wrong. This is Supernatural, and I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, we're looking at a woman named Netta Fornerio. In 1929, she was found dead on the island of Iona,

and it's possible that she was the victim of a secret occult society. We'll have more on Netta after this. Our story begins in 1929 on the island of Iona, off the western coast of Scotland. Iona is super tiny, about one and a half miles wide and three miles long, and it's pretty antiquated, even by early 20th century standards. There aren't any roads or electricity or telephones, and there's only a hundred or so inhabitants, most of them farmers. But the island is known throughout the United Kingdom as a mystical place. Over 1500

years earlier, Saint Columba was said to have discovered a hill on Iona where he would communicate with fairies. The island is also rumored to be a place of spiritual healing or rest for the soul. And mystics claim the veil between the natural world and the spiritual world is at its thinnest on Iona. So people come from all over the UK to either pay tribute to Columba or seek out the island's spiritual properties. At first, Netta Fornerio seems no different from most tourists on Iona. When she arrives in the fall of 1929, she's 33 years old, from London, and she's something of a bohemian eccentric. Her eyes are deeply colored, she wears her black hair in two long braids, and she's dressed in this deliberately

out-of-style way, like handmade clothing, bright colors, stacks and stacks of silver jewelry. When Netta arrives, she goes straight to the home of the McRae family. It's unclear whether she'd made arrangements beforehand, but there were only a hundred inhabitants on Iona, so not a lot of places to stay, and the McCrays are used to having borders. It seems like Netta plans to stay a while. She's brought a ton of luggage with her, including small pieces of furniture, and she claims to have arrived on the island with a female friend, but strangely, the McCrays never meet this person. In any case, Netta spends most of her first days on the island holed up in her room, writing page after page of what the McCrays assume is poetry. When she does venture out, she spends hours exploring Iona's moorlands and shores and studying its rocks.

As the days go by, the McCrays get to know Netta just a little bit better. She tells them she's involved in telepathic healing as a profession, and she mentions that she believes she's been to Iona before, in a previous reincarnation. So, okay, she's a little far out there. Still, the McCrays aren't worried. Netta's definitely not their first visitor, and they're used to eccentric folks passing through. But as the weeks go by, things get stranger. For one, Netta keeps two oil lamps in her room, burning all night long,

and she doesn't wake up until well past 11 in the morning. And according to the McCray's son, who's about 12 at the time, Netta's taken a special interest in Fairy Hill, that place where Columba supposedly communicated with fairies. I'm not sure what Netta does on Fairy Hill, but she'll spend hours at a time there, sometimes in the freezing cold. And when she gets home, she goes into these long meditative trances. The McCrays aren't sure what to make of these trances, but as the weeks go by, they seem to get

worse. Netta starts rambling about visions and messages from a spiritual realm, and her speech becomes increasingly rapid and incoherent. She also refuses to draw the curtains in her room because she claims that she can see the faces of her previous patients in the clouds. At this point, the family is a little spooked. Like, Netta isn't just some free spirit. For all they know, she could have a mental health condition. The McCrays even suggest calling a doctor, but Netta tells them lucidly not to be alarmed. Then she insists that under no circumstances should they call a doctor, even if a trance lasts longer than a week. She basically says this happens all the time and that she's got everything under control. And from what I can tell, the family just kind of goes along with it.

Like, Netta's an adult, so as long as she's not harming herself or anyone else, they'll leave her alone. But one Sunday morning in November, things take a turn for the worse. Netta comes downstairs before dawn, so way earlier than normal, and she's acting hysterical. She insists that she needs to leave the island immediately. And when the McRays ask why, Netta claims that she's being attacked. Now, she won't say who is attacking her, but she says she's hearing messages from beyond the veil,

and she babbles on about a rudderless trip in the sky. So nothing she's saying makes any sense, and the McCrays can't help but notice that Netta doesn't even look like herself. Her skin is unnaturally pale, as if something scared the color right out of her, and her hair is hanging all loose and frizzy over her shoulders instead of its usual braids. And strangest of all, Netta's silver jewelry has blackened seemingly overnight. The family tries to calm Netta down. They understand that she wants to leave, but it's the Sabbath. The ferry doesn't run that day. She'll have to wait till Monday. But Netta won't hear of it. She marches upstairs, packs all of her belongings, and insists on dragging all of her

luggage out to the docks. And then she sits down in the freezing cold and just waits and waits for a boat that isn't coming. After a few hours, Netta gives up and heads back to the McRae farm. As far as I know, she doesn't say anything. She just goes straight to her room and locks herself in for the afternoon. When she reemerges that evening, Netta's a totally different person. She's calm, but like in a way that's more resigned and passive than totally healthy. And she informs Mrs. McRae that she's changed her mind about going home. So everyone's kind of like, well, okay, that was weird, but they're just hoping the worst is over.

The next morning, the McRae's daughter heads upstairs to check on Netta, but as soon as she reaches the door, things seem off. There's a burning smell coming from Netta's room, and there's no answer when the daughter knocks, so she opens the door. The fireplace is filled with charred papers and pamphlets, which explains the smell, but Mrs. McRae's daughter can't make out what's written on them. One of the oil lights is still burning but the covers have been stripped off the pillows making it seem like Netta had never slept that night and Netta herself is nowhere to be found. But it's not like she packed up and went back to the docks because her clothes, her luggage, her typewriter, all of it is still right there. And Netta's watch, rings, and hairpins are organized neatly on the dressing

table. So by all appearances, she just stepped out for some air. But given yesterday's events, something just doesn't feel right about all of this. So by noon, when Netta still hasn't returned, the McCrays put a call out to the rest of the island and organize a search party. Iona has roughly 2,000 acres of land and incredibly rocky coasts, so finding a missing person is doable, but it's not that easy. And by evening, there's still no sign of Netta. It's getting so cold that the search party is unable to continue, so at some point they call it a night. The next morning, there's still no sign of Netta. She never came home, so the islanders decide they'll investigate the peat bogs, which are about

two miles from the village. As they're looking around, one of the collies begins to bark. The dog drags the search party through a desolate area until they reach Fairy Hill on the other side. And what they find is incredibly disturbing. We'll investigate Netta's death right after this. Now back to the story. When the search party gets to Fairy Hill, they discover Netta's dead body lying face up. Her limbs are spread in the shape of a pentagram, and she's completely naked except for a long black cloak with some sort of occult insignia embroidered on it. There's a silver cross pendant hanging from her neck, but instead of its usual silver, it's tarnished, completely black. And underneath her body, carved in the turf, is an outline of a cross.

Netta's clutching a steel knife in her hand, so for all we know, she cut the cross into the ground and laid down on top of it before she died. But her feet are all torn up, making it seem like she'd been running from something. And most accounts say that her torso was covered in these tiny, almost cat-like scratches, as though something clawed her. And then, most troublesome of all, is her face. It's frozen in an expression of absolute terror. The islanders have no idea what to make of this, except that it's horrible.

And in the following days, some people report seeing a man in a black coat on the day of Netta's disappearance. Others say they've noticed flashing blue lights in the area. But the connection between these things and Netta's death just isn't clear. And when doctors come to investigate, they can't even figure out how Netta died because there aren't any fatal wounds. Some accounts list her death as heart failure, and others say it was exposure to the elements, but these are just best guesses. Newspapers do mention that the police found packets of disturbing letters among Netta's possessions, but we don't know exactly what they say, and as far as I can tell, no one tracks down Netta's female friend who she claimed to have arrived on the island with. With no solid leads, the police are at a loss. And a few days after Netta's death,

the McCrays build a small memorial for her on Ferry Hill. There's even a tombstone erected in one of the island's cemeteries. However, it's not clear whether Netta was buried there or if relatives came to collect her body. But we do know that Netta had family back in London. Her father was a doctor of Italian origin and her mother was a native Brit. And at some point after Netta's death, the family's housekeeper, Miss Varney, is tracked down. Miss Varney claims that she received a letter from Netta just two days before she died. And in it, Netta says, quote, do not be surprised if you don't hear from me for a very long time. I have a terrible

healing case on, end quote. No one knows what she meant by that, but Miss Varney confirms that many of Netta's eccentricities existed long before she came to Iona. She said Netta was known to go into very long trances and that unlike her father, she didn't believe in orthodox medicine. She was way more interested in theosophy and spiritual medicine, so much so that Netta was a member of an occult society in London known as Alpha et Omega. No one really investigates whether this group has anything to do with Netta's demise, but a year later, a former member named Dion Fortune comes forward. She just heard about Netta's death and she thinks she knows what happened. To understand Dion's theory, we have to go back almost 40 years to the establishment

of Alpha et Omega's predecessor, an occult society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It's founded around 1887 by a British Freemason and occultist named Samuel Liddell McGregor Mathers. And as Samuel sets up his society, he meets a beautiful 22-year-old named Moina Bergson. Moina has a reputation in occult circles for being an especially gifted clairvoyant, so she and Samuel hit it off. Three years later, they marry. Moina basically becomes Samuel's partner in establishing the Golden Dawn, which fuses teachings from Jewish Kabbalah, astrology, alchemy, and Egyptian mysticism. With Moina's help, the group gathers hundreds of members and establishes multiple temples across Great Britain. But as the years

go by, Samuel clashes with the other leaders in the group. In 1903, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn falls apart, but Samuel and Moina aren't ready to give up. So they create a new offshoot called Alpha et Omega, which is basically identical to their old society. And over the next 15 years, their group grows, but at a much slower pace. Then in 1918, Samuel dies, leaving Moina to control the entire organization herself. And this is where Netta's friend Dion comes in.

Dion joins a Scottish branch of Alpha at Omega in 1919, the year after Samuel's death. At this point, she's probably in her like early 20s, but Dion believes she had psychic powers since she was a teen. So a magical society dedicated to the occult and spiritual development is a perfect fit for her. She does so well that by 1920, Dion transfers to a London temple where she can work directly under Moina. And according to Dion, Moina is super impressed with her. Dion's enthusiastic and hard-working, all the things you'd want in a young initiate. But it doesn't take long for Dion to realize that Moina isn't really doing anything to mentor her, or anyone for that matter. Like in most of the group's lectures,

members are only given bare-bones information, and when it comes to actual ceremonies and rituals, they're essentially left to figure stuff out on their own. So over time, Dion proposes that the Alpha and Omega rethink their teaching processes and lay out clearer guidelines. She says it will help the group attract new members. At first, Moina is totally down because she likes the sound of more followers and more power. And it works. The group picks up a little more speed, taking on new members like Netta, who likely joined sometime in the mid-1920s. Meanwhile, Dion's own strength as a clairvoyant and her influence in Alpha et Omega grows. She starts writing treatises, publishing books, and gaining more attention, to the point that Moina gets jealous. She basically sees Dion as

a threat to her empire, so Moina has her expelled. At this point, Dion's basically like, cool, I don't really like your society anyways, and she goes off to write a series of articles for the Occult Review detailing the abuses prevalent in occult fraternities. She didn't specify which order she was writing about, but we can probably assume it had to do with her experience in Alpha at Omega. Dion even decides to form her own order called the Fraternity of the Inner Light. But as months go by, she notices something is off with her astral plane. This is basically the spiritual world, a metaphysical space that can be spiritually accessed through things like rituals and chanting and symbols. It's where occult members go during their practice, and Dion has been there plenty of

times. But not long after leaving Alpha at Omega, Dion notices a vague sense of uneasiness each time she enters the astral plane. She also starts getting these spontaneous psychic visions during her everyday life, like the astral plane will just randomly pop into her consciousness despite all her training not to mix the two. Which, if there's one rule about the astral plane, it's that you keep it separate from your everyday life because you don't want to get to the point where you can't figure out which is which. These spontaneous visions go on for some time, which really disturbs Dion. She describes feeling a definite sense of menace and antagonism.

According to her, the faces of demons would infiltrate her astral plane. And in the physical world, Dion and her colleagues noticed foul-smelling black cats everywhere. Even their neighbors noticed them hanging around. Now, all of this sounds a little crazy, but Dion swears it's what happened to her. And she starts to suspect that it could be the result of some sort of black magic working against her. So she attempts an exorcism and it works, sort of. It really only gets rid of the cats. In any case, Dion's symptoms get worse as the spring equinox approaches. So this is probably around 1928, the year before Netta's death. The equinox is said to be a time when the veil between the physical and the spiritual realm is very thin, and many occultists will travel to the astral plane and even hold meetings there. In light of everything that's been happening to her, Dion

initially decides she's going to sit this one out and avoid visiting the astral plane for a while. But for some reason or another, she's eventually obligated to go. She takes every precaution she can to protect herself, even gathering a group of close colleagues to watch over her physical body. Then, Dion puts herself into a trance. But as soon as she passes through the veil to the astral plane, she's attacked by none other than her former mentor, Moina Mathers herself. Coming up, Dion battles against Moina.

Now back to our story. As soon as Dion Fortune crosses into the astral plane, Moina Mathers appears before her, dressed in full occult insignia robes. She allegedly tells Dion that she's no longer allowed to access the astral paths. It's like Moina thinks she's the guardian of the spiritual plane, which Dion tells her she's not. But no sooner has Dion said this than she feels her entire body lurch. It's as if she's been thrown up into the air, tossed around, and then dropped from a great height. When Dion finds her bearings, she realizes she's back in her physical consciousness. So she's basically been ejected from the astral plane. She's in a completely different corner of the room than when she started her trance,

and the whole place looks like it's been bombed. I mean, the furniture is all tossed about. But Dion refuses to let Moina win, so she re-enters the astral plane again. She doesn't give too many details on what happens here, but supposedly after some sort of struggle, Dion wins. When she comes back to the physical world, her body is incredibly sore, and Dion notices that her torso is covered in these small cat-like scratches, as if she's been physically, not just spiritually, attacked. Now, all of this sounds like it's something out of a Harry Potter book, I know, but after this incident, Dion talks to friends and acquaintances in occult circles, and she learns that she's not the only one with this sort of experience. Supposedly, Moina has been launching attacks against several people. She's basically doing it to anyone she had a grudge against or simply dislikes.

Some occultists have even noticed scratches all over their physical body following an attack from Moina, which is why, when Dion hears about Netta's death and the scratches on her torso, she can only assume one thing. It had to have been an attack by Moina Mathers. And okay, I know this sounds pretty far-fetched, an occult leader going after one of her underlings on the astral plane. But according to Dion, Netta exhibited classic signs of a psychic attack. Victims might experience fear. I mean, the kind that could keep them up all night with two oil lamps burning, coupled with a sense of nervous exhaustion. They might even feel like there's a weight on their chest or sense some sort of unseen presence. And when you think about how exhausted and disturbed Netta

seemed in the days leading up to her death, and the fact that she literally told the McCrays that she was being attacked, it actually makes a lot of sense. Of course, this is all wild speculation, but if you believe that humans can access a spiritual realm, Dion's theory really adds up. Except for one part. The timing. Moina Mathers died in July of 1928, so a few months after her attack on Dion, but over a year before Netta's death. So if she did somehow mess with Netta's mind on the astral plane, Moina had to have done it from beyond the grave. At which point we've entered into full-blown speculation territory. Like, who's to say what psychics may or may not be capable of after they die? I mean, I certainly have no idea.

But the explanation for Netta's behavior could be slightly different than some beyond the grave attack. It might have more to do with her own inability to separate the spiritual world from the physical world. Because remember, that's always this one fear for people who involve themselves in the astral plane. If they aren't careful or they don't have the proper training, they could lose track of which world is which. In fact, a 2017 study on Buddhist practices reports that there can be some very scary repercussions for meditative trances. People can experience hyper arousal, fear, panic, insomnia, and increased sensory sensitivity as a result of their practice. This can sometimes lead to dissociation with their own bodies, which, if you think about it,

makes sense. The closer one gets to the spiritual world, the more disconnected they might feel from the physical world. In other words, there's a thin line between spiritual connection and going absolutely insane. Netta showed all the signs of a possible psychological disorder resulting from her practice. She exhibited incoherent speech, hallucinations, delusions. So it's very possible that the more she visited the astral plane to heal herself, the more she lost touch with reality, to the point that she was running around naked with a dagger. But whether you believe Netta was going crazy from too much meditation or that she really was the victim of a psychic attack, none of it answers why she physically died. Still, there is one possible theory for that, and it has to do

with sulfur. In mystical practices, sulfur is thought to draw out negative energy from the physical and spiritual planes. It's even used in rituals to banish dark spirits. So if someone thinks they're under psychic attack, they might use sulfur as a means of defense. In fact, the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn had a ritual involving sulfur in which a member would move through what is commonly known as the Dark Night of the Soul, essentially forcing them to reckon with the deepest, darkest parts of the mind. So it's definitely possible that Netta was taught to use sulfur in this way. Now, I'm not sure whether Netta had sulfur powder or crystals among her possessions on Iona, but we do know that her

jewelry became black and tarnished, which, you guessed it, happens in the presence of sulfur. So here's what might have taken place. On the night of her death, Netta is in a very dark place spiritually. She strips naked in her room, dresses in her cloak and cross necklace, and burns sulfur as part of a cleansing ritual. But when she still can't banish whatever dark force she thinks is attacking her, she runs outside to the one place on the island where she thinks that she might find help, Fairy Hill. At this point, Netta's disoriented by sulfur dioxide fumes. She's anxious and possibly experiencing visions from the astral plane, and she's brought a knife to perform some other ritual. When she gets to the hill, she makes small scratches on her own torso,

cuts a cross into the turf, and lies down, hoping this will save her. In her last minutes, Netta feels the weight of something on her chest attacking her. Maybe she even has a vision of her former teacher, Moina Mathers, assaulting her in the astral plane. Then, Netta has a heart attack and her body goes limp. Now, that's just one theory. Some think Netta was having a full-blown psychotic break when she went out to Fairy Hill and that this led to some form of cardiac arrest. Others believe that she was so out of it that she literally froze to death. And it could be any of these series, or none of them at all. Like, what if Netta was actually running from something, like a wild animal or even a human?

I mean, for all we know, the reports of a man in a black coat could have been a clue about some sort of murder. Maybe Netta met up with someone she knew from the occult and they administered poison or scared her to death somehow. Or maybe her elusive travel buddy had something to do with it. Then there are those strange blue lights people reported in the days leading up to her death. Did they belong to some sort of UFO? Or were there actual fairies involved somehow? Like, obviously, that's as crazy as it gets, but everything about this story is just so far-fetched to begin with

that at a certain point, anything seems possible. For all we know, the answers could be buried inside Netta's coffin. But whether that's in an Iona cemetery, somewhere in London, or someplace else, I'll let you do the digging. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. To hear more stories hosted by me,

check out Crime Junkie and all Audiochuck originals.