Latest / De Leeslampjes / Patrick Bernauw over zijn jeugd en live synchroniciteit

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Patrick Bernauw over zijn jeugd en live synchroniciteit · De Leeslampjes

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hello, dear book lovers. I am Arno Olieslagers, and I
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: think that our Dutch-speaking authors are getting too little attention.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Their exciting, touching and sometimes life-changing stories earn more. That's
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: why I let every episode shine the light on another author.
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  Speaker 1: Because no one likes to be in the dark, we
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  Speaker 1: all know that in the meantime. In this episode again,
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  Speaker 1: Patrick Bernoull. Because such a rich, full career is of
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: course not to be taken in one episode. So we
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: just go on where we stopped the last time. Music
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  Speaker 1: We might do that by going back to where your
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  Speaker 1: writing talent comes from, or where your passion for writing
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  Speaker 1: came from. You were born in 1962, if I'm not mistaken,
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  Speaker 1: in Aalst. You have a fascination for magical stories. Where
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  Speaker 1: does that come from? I was told that your grandfather
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  Speaker 1: was involved. Well, that's what I think myself.
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  Speaker 2: We are now sitting at home. Later we were in
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  Speaker 2: the art house. But now we are at my home.
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  Speaker 2: This is a house that my grandfather built. My grandfather
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  Speaker 2: was my hero. He was more or less illiterate. He
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  Speaker 2: always went to school behind the fence until he was 14. Only, yes,
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  Speaker 2: he was a screenwriter, Timmerman, and he put houses all
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  Speaker 2: around him. And I was here, in this house, on
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  Speaker 2: the edge of Erembodegem and Afligem, so on the border
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  Speaker 2: of East Flanders and Brabant. Yes, I spent a lot
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  Speaker 2: of holidays there, a lot of weekends too. I was
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  Speaker 2: here very much, my grandfather could also We went for
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  Speaker 2: a walk here in the area. And look, if you
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  Speaker 2: go further here, this is the Brussels railway, and then
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  Speaker 2: you see a cable track pulling into the forest. And
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  Speaker 2: that was the Galgenstraatje. And if you walk a little further,
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  Speaker 2: you come to the Duivelsputten. The Duivelsputten, where does that
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  Speaker 2: name come from? Well, since the early Middle Ages, the
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  Speaker 2: abbey of Aflichem, the Paters, with people who worked for them,
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  Speaker 2: built stone caves out of the white sandstone, with which
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  Speaker 2: I don't know how many churches and cathedrals were built,
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  Speaker 2: from here to France, to the Netherlands. They were dug
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  Speaker 2: up here. And that's where large holes in the ground arose.
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  Speaker 2: You can always see the level differences where we used
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  Speaker 2: to have those excavations. And yes, sometimes it's really a ravine.
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  Speaker 2: It looks like a ravine. And that is the heart
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  Speaker 2: of the Devil's Pit. There will be people falling into
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  Speaker 2: it from time to time. When it rains, it's murky
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  Speaker 2: down there. And they say, yes, that's the devil who
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  Speaker 2: has become jealous. because all those stones for the holy
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  Speaker 2: building work and so he pulled the people into it.
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  Speaker 2: Another explanation could be, but that was my explanation.
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  Speaker 1: And those are stories that you pitch.
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  Speaker 2: And yes, the Galgenstraatje, ah yes, why is it called
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  Speaker 2: that Galgenstraatje? Because there was a Galgen there. And yes,
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  Speaker 2: later I went deeper into it. And it turned out
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  Speaker 2: to be true. So here is the border of the
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  Speaker 2: Vlaanderen Graveyard, where the Galgenstraat is located. And then the
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  Speaker 2: less well-known criminals, or the less severe criminals, they tied
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  Speaker 2: him up as far away as possible, at the border
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  Speaker 2: of an area. The real showmen, Jan de Lichte, for example,
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  Speaker 2: had to be raided on the big market of Aalst,
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  Speaker 2: of course. A lot of people had to come and
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  Speaker 2: look at it. That happened there. But the less well-known
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  Speaker 2: members of the gang were tied to it. And what
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  Speaker 2: did they do? They let it hang for a while.
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  Speaker 1: To create fear among the rest of the people.
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  Speaker 2: And then they threw the remains in those wells. From there,
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  Speaker 2: devil's wells. That's a different etymological explanation. But if you
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  Speaker 2: go any further, past those pigeonholes, and then you are
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  Speaker 2: in Brabant, in the area of Afligem, then you come
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  Speaker 2: across a height, a hill, because that is also called
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  Speaker 2: the Boekhoutberg, but that is actually a hill, and there
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  Speaker 2: you have another higher hill, and that is called the Galgenberg.
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  Speaker 2: And there stood the Galgenberg of the Duke of Brabant.
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  Speaker 2: So all those pigeons were also thrown into those pigeonholes.
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  Speaker 2: That's why those stories, when you hear them, they speak
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  Speaker 2: so much to your imagination as a child. And then, actually,
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  Speaker 2: the slap on the bonfire, back there, here, behind my...
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  Speaker 2: We have a very long garden. And there are some
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  Speaker 2: fields behind it. And then you come across an old
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  Speaker 2: carousel that runs through the woods, also along those davels.
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  Speaker 2: And that's actually a whole piece of an old Romanian herbarium.
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  Speaker 2: One of the great Romanian herbariums. A little further it's
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  Speaker 2: also called the Roman road, because that's the road. And
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  Speaker 2: according to Petjen, but that's also a very apocryphal story,
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  Speaker 2: we walked along that road and he knew that the
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  Speaker 2: Romans used to live here, but for the rest he
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  Speaker 2: didn't know anything about it. And then he said, we
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  Speaker 2: came to those pigeon huts and then for example someone
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  Speaker 2: drove a large car tire of a truck there. And
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  Speaker 2: then he said, look, that's a wheel of the postman's carriage.
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  Speaker 2: Because the postman's carriage, in the time of the gang
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  Speaker 2: of Jan de Lichten, came here over that railway. That's
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  Speaker 2: really true, they used it. And the gang of Jan
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  Speaker 2: de Lichten sat here behind the trees. When they came
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  Speaker 2: past that postman's carriage in that ravine, they jumped from
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  Speaker 2: behind those trees, shot them on them and then they
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  Speaker 2: robbed those people. That is completely in the image of
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  Speaker 2: my pet. Jan de Ligthoff's gang has never committed a robbery.
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  Speaker 2: But for me it was very clear, there is still
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  Speaker 2: a bandage of that postman in that pigeon pen. That's
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  Speaker 2: how it came about. He had many other stories. And
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  Speaker 2: I think that my connection to the historical mystery But
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  Speaker 2: also to sagas and legends, that all comes from there.
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  Speaker 1: That's where it was born, so to speak. I also
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  Speaker 1: wrote a book about it, eventually.
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  Speaker 2: From Halgenberg to Duivelspit. And at the time we made
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  Speaker 2: city games, murder games. So this is actually a GPS
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  Speaker 2: game too. At the time you could play with the GPS.
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  Speaker 2: At certain points, where we also took pictures of, you
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  Speaker 2: could perform all kinds of tasks to a certain... You
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  Speaker 2: have to know, the goal of this was the Cthulhu,
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  Speaker 2: which is such a monstrous being, from the stories of
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  Speaker 2: Howard Phillips Lovecraft. There is a whole myth about the
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  Speaker 2: stories that Lovecraft wrote in his time, made up of
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  Speaker 2: a whole mythology of terrible beings, extraterrestrial beings, who had
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  Speaker 2: come to Earth and who were often sunk in a
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  Speaker 2: kind of winter sleep, and where people with black art
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  Speaker 2: and so on, and with curses, could wake up again
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  Speaker 2: with all kinds of enormous consequences. And there are many
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  Speaker 2: writers who have worked out those myths further, in American, English,
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  Speaker 2: but also here with us. And we have also said, look,
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  Speaker 2: that devil's spit, Ah, he is directly connected to hell,
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  Speaker 2: we already know that from the inferno, that interests me.
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  Speaker 1: Indeed, indeed, yes.
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  Speaker 2: There are also a lot of fairy tales about that,
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  Speaker 2: that you can still hear those knotted criminals around ghosts,
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  Speaker 2: that you can hear their souls, because those are souls
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  Speaker 2: that do not come into heaven, that they have become dwarfs,
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  Speaker 2: And sometimes people are also locked up by those two
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  Speaker 2: lights in that fog. From the summer, the fog is
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  Speaker 2: completely dry. Yes, because of the heat. So what was
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  Speaker 2: the intention? People had to, with the GPS, here in
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  Speaker 2: the area, it was a walk from an hour to
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  Speaker 2: an hour and a half. But then they had to
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  Speaker 2: look for all kinds of geocache conditions. and perform all
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  Speaker 2: kinds of exercises in order to finally, with musical notes
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  Speaker 2: that they found, to debut a murmuring formula, to sing
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  Speaker 2: live to the devil, in order to create that monster,
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  Speaker 2: that identity of a long time ago to wake up
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  Speaker 2: from his winter sleep and to take care of all
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  Speaker 2: kinds of spooky phenomena, to put him back to sleep.
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  Speaker 1: And everyone survived that? Of the people who did that?
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  Speaker 2: In my knowledge, that always worked. Because, yes, we did
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  Speaker 2: make sure that it worked. Because, yes, we had thought
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  Speaker 2: up those formulas ourselves, of course. And we played that too.
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  Speaker 2: I played it very often, but also with actors that
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  Speaker 2: we still use, who then show up and tell of everything.
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  Speaker 2: And I then, with my students, also from literary creation
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  Speaker 2: at the time, these are stories from a devilish triangle,
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  Speaker 2: we then actually made this book with all the stories
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  Speaker 2: in that universe, in fact. There is also a carousel
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  Speaker 2: on it. Yes, this is the carousel. He dives into it,
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  Speaker 2: I've seen that as a child. And when you sit
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  Speaker 2: on it, you are pushed out of it and you
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  Speaker 2: enter a different dimension. Where you don't want to be.
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  Speaker 1: Are those things you really believe in? No. No, okay.
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  Speaker 1: But I think... No, but the mysticism, or that there
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  Speaker 1: are souls, if you're so fascinated by hell and conditions.
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  Speaker 2: I honestly think that if we die, it's done. There's
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  Speaker 2: nothing left. We come from nothingness and go back to nothingness.
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  Speaker 2: But as long as there's something... As long as there
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  Speaker 2: is something for us, and as long as we are alive,
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  Speaker 2: we have to make the most of it. And nice stories...
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  Speaker 2: are part of it.
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  Speaker 1: Are part of it.
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  Speaker 2: When it comes to mystical things, there is only one
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  Speaker 2: issue that I cannot explain, where I have looked for explanations,
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  Speaker 2: but still have not found them. And then we're in
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  Speaker 2: the area of synchronicity. But that's something completely different.
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  Speaker 1: That's what we stopped with in the previous episode. Maybe
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  Speaker 1: you can go a little deeper into that now?
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  Speaker 2: Well, that's not a bad idea.
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  Speaker 1: Why are you interested in that? How did you end
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  Speaker 1: up there? You wrote a whole book about it. It's
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  Speaker 1: one of your last books, I think.
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  Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. I wrote a sort of creative autobiography. It's
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  Speaker 2: called Magical Realist in Mysterious Belgium. Why? Because I'm a
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  Speaker 2: magical realist. It's a flow in art, but for me
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  Speaker 2: it's more than a flow in art. For me it's
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  Speaker 2: also a way of life. So I am someone else's
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  Speaker 2: atheist or Catholic, as far as there are any, or
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  Speaker 2: a Muslim or something, and I am a magician-realist. Voilà.
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  Speaker 2: What does that mean? Well, that has everything to do
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  Speaker 2: with synchronicity. And with my conviction that our life in
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  Speaker 2: the imagination can be as tangible and concrete as our
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  Speaker 2: physical life. And that those two can run through each other.
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  Speaker 2: And I believe, because that is also a matter of belief,
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  Speaker 2: it is half and half science.
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  Speaker 1: You create memories, they say, or you turn them in
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  Speaker 1: your head into something that is not reality. That is
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  Speaker 1: one of those things.
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  Speaker 2: I also open this book with one of those memories,
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  Speaker 2: about the last tram. Here, we'll have to take a
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  Speaker 2: look at it later, there is a sort of, it
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  Speaker 2: looks like a dried-out riverbed. But in fact, behind here,
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  Speaker 2: a tram line has run. between Brussels and Ghent. And
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  Speaker 2: I had a very vivid memory. I was sitting on
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  Speaker 2: the arm of my grandfather, or grandmother, I don't remember,
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  Speaker 2: but it doesn't matter. They were all standing behind me.
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  Speaker 2: And my parents were standing behind me, at the garden.
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  Speaker 2: And there was a white dog with a black eye.
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  Speaker 2: And he was jumping and barking. And it must have
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  Speaker 2: been summer, high summer, Augustus, because behind that there was
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  Speaker 2: a grain field, and that grain field looked yellow, it
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  Speaker 2: was a shining summer day. And I see that tram
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  Speaker 2: passing by, and behind that, from behind that tram, there
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  Speaker 2: are people waving at us, we wave at those people,
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  Speaker 2: and someone says, look, that is now the last tram.
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  Speaker 2: That's my memory. And very often, when people came here, then...
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: for an interview or something like that. So I told
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  Speaker 2: that story. And then I took them with me to
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  Speaker 2: the backyard to show them the tram line, the dried
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: out riverbed. And at a certain point I also told
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  Speaker 2: that story to a scientist. And he looked at me
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  Speaker 2: like that and asked me, Patrick, how old are you?
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  Speaker 2: I said, yes, I'm 62. He said, it can't be
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  Speaker 2: that you have seen that last tram ride, that you
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  Speaker 2: still have a memory of it, because that last tram
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  Speaker 2: passed here in 1963. And as a child of one year...
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  Speaker 2: It's almost impossible to remember anything. So now, I probably.
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  Speaker 1: Put that memory together with stories from my parents and.
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  Speaker 2: My grandparents, who would have seen it, from photos. where
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  Speaker 2: I took a picture of a dog. And sometimes there
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  Speaker 2: are pictures of us standing in the back of the garden.
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  Speaker 2: The strange thing is that I've never taken a picture
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  Speaker 2: of the last tram, because that was a historic moment,
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  Speaker 2: that there is no picture of that. But I've made
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  Speaker 2: it up. But for me, until that moment, that was reality.
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  Speaker 2: And that was real, and that was an emotional truth.
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  Speaker 2: While that was probably completely missed. That's just the essence
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  Speaker 2: of what I write, what I want to look for.
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  Speaker 2: On the one hand, knowing what our imagination does with everything,
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  Speaker 2: that it recreates that in emotional realities very often, but
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  Speaker 2: that they do not necessarily have anything to do with
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  Speaker 2: the truth or reality. And yet they are real for us,
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  Speaker 2: until the moment that it is unleashed.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, but your memory will not be changed. You will
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  Speaker 1: still feel it.
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  Speaker 2: That feeling, that emotion, is still the same. That nostalgia
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  Speaker 2: and that beautiful golden summer day. And everything that goes
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  Speaker 2: with it, that is one of the moments of happiness.
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  Speaker 2: I thought from my earliest childhood, maybe my oldest memory,
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  Speaker 2: I thought, but look. That's not true. That's also magical
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  Speaker 2: realism for me. And that is the influence that imagination
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: has on reality, that interaction, and we also underestimate that.
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  Speaker 2: What is becoming an enormous problem in the news now,
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: and a growing problem, is fake news. These are deepfakes.
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  Speaker 2: In America, there is no longer one reality. It is
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: the reality of the MAGA movement and Trump, who are
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: completely different. These are alternative facts, they say. And the
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: rest of the world sees something different. But those people,
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: those real supporters of Trump, believe that this is reality.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: And that is enormously dangerous, because you are going to
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: take action on the basis of Lies, fictions, fictions. I've
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: always tried to show these mechanisms. Look, this is how
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: it works. This is how history works. We think that...
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  Speaker 2: In Ghent, the castle there, in the centre of Ghent.
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  Speaker 1: From Gravensteen.
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  Speaker 2: From Gravensteen. That it's a construction that dates back to
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  Speaker 2: the Middle Ages. That's not true at all. There's almost
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  Speaker 2: nothing left of what once existed in the Middle Ages.
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  Speaker 2: The Gravensteen is a 19th-century construction made according to the
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: model of Hendrik Consciance, the writer, who saw a castle
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  Speaker 2: in the Romantic period. And that image, which is a
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: fictitious image, mostly rebuilt. And there is almost nothing authentic
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: from the Middle Ages. Ages. It is true that at
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: that place the Count of Flanders used to walk around.
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  Speaker 2: And that there was a castle there. But that is
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  Speaker 2: magical realism. I'm rushing through. Yes, but....
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  Speaker 1: I have to introduce you.
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  Speaker 2: The core of that matter, because then we come to synchronicity.
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  Speaker 2: When I was 14 or 15 years old, I got
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: to know the work of Hubert Lampolleri. I talked about
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: it last time. In De Komst van Jochem Stiller, his
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: most famous book, synchronicity plays a role. That is a coincidence.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: that is so incredibly coincidental that you think it can't
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: be a coincidence. And yes, the concept of synchronicity was invented,
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  Speaker 2: if I may say so, by Carl Gustav Jung. He
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: was a student of Freud, a psychologist, a psychiatrist. And
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: at a certain point he had someone with him in
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  Speaker 2: psychotherapy And she talks about a dream, about a beetle,
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: a beetle that appears in her dream. And the window
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: is open, it's summer too, and at that moment someone
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  Speaker 2: comes in. And then you have the feeling, oh, there's
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  Speaker 2: more behind this. This must be a kind of sign.
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  Speaker 2: I now have a great example of this. much more.
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: And in synchronicity, that principle played a role in that
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: novel about the coming of Jochem Stiller. And that interested
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: me a lot, so I started looking up things and
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: reading about it, at a certain point when I still
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: thought I was going to study something, but I stopped
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: studying things because I was writing too much. But then
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: I thought I'm going to study psychology at the university.
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  Speaker 2: That was one possibility. History was another. I finally did
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: one year per person communication and it hit me so
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: hard that I gave up. But I deepened myself in that.
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  Speaker 2: But I had no experience with that myself. Until that moment.
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  Speaker 2: And that's crucial. I talked about it later. The book
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  Speaker 2: that was crucial for me as a youth book It's
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: about the wrath of the righteous. And the book that
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: was crucial for me, also as an author for adults,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: because that's where I really found my thing, was Mysteries
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: of the Land of God. I wrote it at the
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: same time. And I still remember that with Mysteries of
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: the Land of God I was... I had created a
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: whole theory about the Ketter influence of the Lamb of
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: God and about the Graal and the Templars and the
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  Speaker 2: Nazis that had to do with it. I had all
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: of that. I also talked about that last time. But
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: I didn't really have a clue. But well, okay. And
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: at the same time I was working on that youth
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: book in which I wanted to tell an exciting detective
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: story about the robbery. And I thought, okay, I write
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: that story, I make use of the dossier of the
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: just judges, I do all kinds of things with the
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: young people, and at that moment there were so many
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: interesting mountain places that I actually didn't worry about it.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: I narrate that story and I take one of those
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: interesting mountain places and I give it my own twist.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: One of those interesting mountain places was... In the Simbabwean
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: cathedral itself, there is a certain Dominus Vigilia Aita buried.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: And that is Lord Vigilius Aita, who was actually a bishop.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: And he has a tombstone there. And if you shorten that, D-V-A,
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: but in Latin the V and the U are the
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: same letters, D-U-A. And the thief of the righteous judges,
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Arsène Goudertier, or rather the suspected perpetrator, who can't have
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: done it alone, he must have had people around him
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: who helped him, sent reprimands and signed them with DUA.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: And at a certain moment, one thought, ah, that's a
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: reference to the mountain place. Only that can't be the
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: mountain place. Because there is a huge cover stone on it,
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: which is so heavy that you would have to... I
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: don't know what... Machines.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: The conditions that light it up, yes.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: But I thought, something in that heart, that there was
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: a crack in it, or I don't know what. I
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: find something and I use that.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: So, that's where I am. My two books are almost finished.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: But I don't have a lock yet. Not for one
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: and not for the other. And... I said that I
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: am constantly looking for information that can help me write
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: my historical mysteries. So I am constantly searching, also in
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: book antiquaries, then there were still several here in Aalst,
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: in the bad ones of course, for old books about
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: my subjects. And I go to Aalst, in that period,
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: to Fred Stripwinkel, and that was where they mainly sold strips,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: videos too. But also a limited supply of second-hand books.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: And I'm not looking for something, because I was probably
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: going to buy strips there, I think. But anyway, I
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: stand there on that pole and I see this booklet.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Above a stack. And this is... Yes, you can still
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: read it now. Yes.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: I also have it at home. My grandfather, he passed
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: away a few months ago, and he had a lot
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: of books in his closet, and that's a whole series
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: of those books. I have about 10 or 15 of them,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: and that goes in between.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: This is an example of synchronicity now. But this is
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: also the secret of the double wall. Yes. by Valère
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: de Pauw, a Flemish writer who was quite successful. He
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: appeared in the sixties. It's about the just judges. Valère
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: de Pauw says that they are hidden in the double
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: wall of a Gensherenhuis. He uses the whole case of
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: the robbery. He describes it in a detective novel, based
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: on facts. But his workplace is also fiction. He doesn't
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: say anything else about it. I had already read that book.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: I saw it in the library in Haast. I thought
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: that was very interesting, and I thought, if I'm going
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: to give lectures soon, then that's one of the books
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: I can show. If people ask me where I got
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: the information from, well, from there. And then I can
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: really show it. Because there was also a whole... I
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: was also a journalist from Eerdebouw, so there was a
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: whole dossier about the judiciary with facts. I take that book.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: There is plastic around it. And there is, with a pen,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: 99 francs written on it. So that is... 2,5 euro
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: at the time. I don't open it, because I already
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: know what's in it. So I take that book with me.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: I pay 99 francs first, and then I take that
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: book with me. I let it hang around here at
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: home for a while, because I already knew what was
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: in it.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to... To show it to the people.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: To show it to the people. Until a certain moment
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: that I open it anyway. And then I see this. Empty.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, yes. This.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: There's nothing written on any page.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: No.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: That's a very empty book.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: Yes. A book like this is called a dummy. Yes.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: That's English. That means stupid. That's probably about people who
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: pay 99 francs... For a book that has nothing in it.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: For a book that has nothing in it.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Yes. My other standard joke is, I can still write
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: a lot.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: But dummy is also another word for model. Yes. And, yes,
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: at the same time, publishers make... dummies of almost all
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: books to see if the paper is good or not
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: even if we wanted to do a promotion action for
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: one and the same book and we wanted to put
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: it in the shelf then they would turn yellow quickly
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: because those books were there for a long time I
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: can sell them to someone but I use dummies for
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: that and I had bought a dummy of the secret
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: of the double wall a book about the just judges
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: but there is something written in it, I played wrong
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: In the very beginning, the girl is 18 years old.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: You can deduce that from the text. She started with this.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: Did you use the diary? January 1st, 1970.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Therioden was part of the municipality of Erembodegem in the 60s.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Now it's a neighborhood in Halter after the fusion. But
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: it started on 1 January 1970. A girl from this
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: area with a kind of poetic diary. It was all
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Flower Power and Che Guevara and Make Love Not War
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: and whatever it was. But yes, that had nothing to
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: do with the just judges. There was such a fuss
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: about it, about a double wall.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: And then she stopped at a given moment.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: And here she stopped.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: And do you know who that is?
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: Yes. I found that book. At that moment I immediately knew,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: I have my lock. This is a coincidence. I'm still
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: looking for a lock. And now, by chance, the lock
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: is in my hands. Because I, as a writer, in
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: the book Where Did It Happen, need a final piece
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: about that mountain place. In a novel for young people,
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: a detective novel, I can choose such a mountain place.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: In a seriously intended essay, I have to be able
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: to stuff that mountain place a bit. And yes, it
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: is a book that has a motto in which it
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: is also said that it is about facts and fiction
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: all the time. The history as we know it may
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: not be the real history. The best lies, say Bage
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: and Lee and Lincoln, are those of The Holy Blood
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: and The Holy Grail, on which Dan Brown has based himself.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: The best lies are often distortions or questions of the truth. So,
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: I think, look, here a sheet has been torn out,
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: you can't see that behind the.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Camera, but can you see it?
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: No, but yes, indeed. And here some lines have been drawn. Yes.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: So it suddenly stopped there, but, and then I go on,
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: and then I come here.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: At the end, yes. What is that, do you think?
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: Yes. What is that? There are four lines. with points
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: and numbers. Numbers are never higher than 5. Stabilization is 55.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: And that is then 5 and 5. 11, yes, 11,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: but indeed there is no 6 in between.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: No, this is a code. This is a code of
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: the kind that Arsène Goudertier would have used if possible.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: Because he was a fan of Arsène Lupin, the gentleman gangster.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: who also did paintings in a certain book, like Guy Creuze,
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: and always left a riddle in the place of the crime,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: that looked like this, if the police succeeded in solving it,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: they would be led to the mountain place. So this
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: seems to be a joke, but it is a fact.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: Arsène Goudertier was a fan of the books of Arsène Lupin.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: He made notes in that one book, And he uses
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: a kind of numerical code, or he experiments with it
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: at a certain moment. Okay. If you crack this code...
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: I already knew she had to crack it, because it
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: was in that book by Arsène Lupin. You have to
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: replace the numbers by decimals. A is 1, E is 2,
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: I is 3, O is 4, U is 5. And
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: you have to replace the points with decimals. Well, after
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: many fives and sixes and... with a long thought process,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: and with a rhyme book, and what do I know
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: all about, all possible outputs, then I come under Sint Baafs,
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: that can also be Orgel Sint Baafs, or something with
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: a pie behind it, or with a horse behind it,
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: or a horse behind it, but under Sint Baafs can
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: also be. Is it a short day? The second rule.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: In the front yard, or in the signage. The third rule,
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: where cows and birds come together. Or live together. Or
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: a bullet, instead of a bird. But you take.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: What comes out for you, of course.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: The last one is very clear, in the double wall.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: This is the secret of the double wall. And there
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: it says, if you replace it all. Under its base
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: is the courtyard, where cows and birds come together in
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: the double wall. Beneath Sint-Baafs, south of Sint-Baafs, is the Koestraat.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: The Koestraat was the street of the bankers. Arsène Goedertier
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: was a Swiss agent. He had his own café in
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: that street, Café Mokka, in the Koestraat. In the 90s,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: when I speak of it, that café still existed. Not anymore.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Now there is a clothing store, And it comes together
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: at a crossroads with the Vogelmarkt and the Korte Dagsteg.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Under Sint Maas, south of Sint Maas, is the Korte Dagsteg,
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: where cows and birds come together, Koeestraat-Vogelmarkt, in the double wall.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: In that place, there is a house that dates back
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: to the 19th century. but that in the time of
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: the brothers van Eyck, the painters of the Lamgots, there
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: would have been a stone from where they actually let
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: their eyes rest on Ghent, painted a certain city face.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: Because they couldn't paint the entire Lamgots in Mazeik, or
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: wherever they stayed. Because that had to be transported to Ghent,
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: to the Symbaas Cathedral, that just couldn't be done. So
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: you had to do it in place. At the beginning
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: of the 19th century, a few German art historians said
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: that they undoubtedly worked here in that old stone and
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: painted their Lambrusque there. That had become obsolete, it had
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: to be demolished, and architect Minard, from the Minard School
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: in Ghent, a famous architect in those days, So he
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: took up a gentleman's apartment there, divided into a few
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: apartments that were connected. And that's known in Ghent as
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: the house of the Van Eyck brothers. Their portraits are
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: also in medallion form, attached to the ceiling and so on.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Everyone knows that's the house of the Van Eyck brothers.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: And that points to Café Moka, the original café of
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: Arsène Goudertier. And that's where that panel would be on
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: the double wall. The last one, this is all true.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: I found that book. That diary was in there. But
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: that last one.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: Did you write in it?
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: People always asked me when I told them about it,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: and then I said, I can with my hand on
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: my heart declare, I don't. It was my wife. If
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: you play a game, you have to play it right.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: For me, the emotional gut feeling, the emotional reality, for me,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: Arsène Goudertier, gave that panel, the righteous judges, in the
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: double wall between Café Mokka and the house of the
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: Van Eyck brothers. It was a joke maker, it was
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: a mythomaniac. There were works there at the time. The
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: house of the Van Eyck brothers, there are a few
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: other reasons why it would be noted as a mountain place.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: I thought, I was already so far that for my
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: youth book I would probably choose this mountain range. I
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: had thought the same, that had never come to mind.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: But yes, if you write a children's book, you can
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: do that. You don't need proof for that. If you
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: write a fairly serious book for adults, that is about
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: how facts become fiction and vice versa. And that's about
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: imagination and reality that is actually magically realistic. But then
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: you need a little more reality. Now, that existed. It
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: is synchronicity that gave me this book in hand. And
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: actually it is something, I won't say something above that,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: because I don't really believe in that.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, but.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: That says, do something with it.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: And I have... The first years I always played that
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: game I always kept it full, but with a smile.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: And I always said, you know, that's the theme of
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: that book. The best lies are always distortions of the truth.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: But I had proof. People believed that. All the newspapers
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: were full of it. And my wife, of course... That's when.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: They were going to demolish the café.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: It's also true. At a certain point, there's a camera
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: crew from the Netherlands. And they heard about it. And
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: they come here to me. And they say, can we
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: make a report about it? In the end, together with
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: other historical mysteries around the world... That was Roel Oostra.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: And we went to Ghent to film there, in that house.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: And there was a gerund who took care of the
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: house of the brothers Van Eyck. It was a children's
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: clothing store, Kid Cool. And I arrived there, and he said,
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: no way, huh? A week before, I was at Luc Appermond,
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: who had a talk show on VTM. I sat there
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: with that book and told that story. All those people
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: went to that place. I called the girl from the diary.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: Have you ever found them?
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: We also called.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: The newspapers here. Reality and fiction start to flow through
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: each other. I was in Luc at the time. That
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: immediately gives the oddness of that kind of thing. Together
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: with a belly dancer, who was also completely tenuous there.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Together with a parachutist who had fallen out of a
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: helicopter and survived that. And they told me something weird.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: And then I told them my weird story. And then
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: you're a week away from a famous Flemish guy. And
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: we left with the camera crew. But in the meantime,
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: I don't know how many people were there.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: They all came in and weren't interested. They wanted to
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: go upstairs in children's clothing. They said, no, you're not
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: coming in, because it's going to get worse. In the meantime,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: I'm no longer allowed in the Simbaafs. Because I say...
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: the Langostische Ketters Kunstwerk. Yes, but that was that synchronicity.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: It was the first time that happened. For me, that synchronicity,
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: and I experienced that for the second time, always takes
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: place in the context of a creative process. Where I
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: was at the beginning, I'm on a dead end, I
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: can't go any further, and then something happens, and suddenly
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: Later on, we started to provoke that. Together with a
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: couple of my students, we started making black-out poetry. And
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: we saw that if we make black-out poetry now, and
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: we are really working hard on it, then things happen
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: that go along with it. And the remarkable thing was,
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: the answer is yes. We have, together with one of
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: my students, Mie, because she only has a stage name,
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: we are really, if I make the appointment, we are
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: going to make a piece of black-out poetry every day.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: You make one, I make one. And we have a community,
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: a padlet, that's what it's called, where we post it.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: And then we wait for what happens. Within the shortest time,
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: the craziest things happen.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: I think I know what I'm going to say, because
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: it's also written in your book, I think.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: So I'm curious. Yes, but that's the end of it,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: I would say. People who want to know that should
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: read Magical Realist in Mysterious Belgium.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Still available everywhere.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, and that's also the most recent. But I want
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: one of those beginning periods. Because... For me, in my
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: personal development in the first years, my career as a
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: writer was, on the one hand, mysteriously of the Langodse
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: and the righteous judges, enormously important. But a second, enormously
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: important point is everything I've written, also three books, of
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: which two together with Guy Didelay, around the murder of
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: Albert I. And in fact, that all started by Léonie
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: van den Dijk, the director of Onkerzele. From my collection
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: of special stories in Belgium, I had found material, a book,
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: in which she wrote a chapter about paranormal conditions in Belgium,
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: by Emile de Rammhout, A Human Without Borders. And yes,
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: that made me think directly Something I experienced as a child,
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: I was 10 years old and I was here with
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: my grandparents, but we went to watch TV with my aunt,
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: the sister of my grandmother, who lived down here. Every
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: Saturday we went to watch TV together. There was a
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: program called Echo. It was a kind of TV-magazine with
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Jan van Rompuy. And at that moment, in 1972, he
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: was standing at the Kerkhof van Onkerzele with his camera crew,
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: because they were going to bury someone there. Leonie van
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: den Dijk. She died in 1949, 23 years earlier. And
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: before her death, she had made a prediction that her
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: body would not go into unbinding. And she had done
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: all kinds of other strange tours, but now we wanted
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: to see how that prediction had come out. And... It was.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: A kind of true scripture then, or something?
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, with visions, but very much from the Catholic faith.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: And I still remember... But you know, you have to.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: Be careful with your memories.
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: I still remember how the camera zooms in on a
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: lot of people. There is a music in it that
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: I found very impressive. Later I found out that it
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: was the DSI-ray from Mozart. But I didn't know that
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: until I was 10 years old. And the camera zooms
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: in on a well. And it's open in the ground.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: And you find a white cloth. But it had to
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: be a pink dress, it had to be white too,
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: because it was black-white television. That's the same stupid joke
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: I always make. And the camera goes upstairs, and she
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: finds a face. It wasn't a pretty face. Leonie van
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: Dijk was quite old when she died. And there was
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: only one tooth left when she died. And you could
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: see that very well, because her mouth was wide open, because.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: They really showed it to us.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's true.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: She lay there for 23 years and then... Yes, and she.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Turned out to be indeed... There was a doctor who
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: took care of her. And he took that cheek here.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: And he said, look, that meat is still soft. So
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: the prediction had come out, her prediction, that she would
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: not go to an abortion.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: But that's not possible. I've done some research, also because
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: I was dealing with the body, not in real life,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: but for the story, and after ten years, there are
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: only bones left.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: There are exceptions. So it could be that... And we're
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: not talking about balsams, it's not balsam, treated like pharaohs
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: or mummified. But there are... Sometimes, for example, Arsenicum. It
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: was used as a medicine in certain doses, and in
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: other doses it is a poison. It is even said
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: that Napoleon died of an arsenicum poisoning. We are not
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: 100% sure, but in any case, from the town of
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: Sint-Helena to Paris to put it there, I don't know
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: how many years after his death, it also turned out
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: to be intact. And sometimes it can be the composition
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: of the soil that keeps a body more or less intact, preserved.
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: That was also, well, the skin was not really smooth anymore,
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: but it was not gone, there was still skin, but
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: we call that soaking. But well, Guy and I had
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: written a book together, our first book together, De Schat
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: van Orval. And it was so well received that we,
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: I don't remember if it was with him or me,
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: that we were brainstorming about what our next book could be.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: And I tell him that story, where I had already
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: done some research in the context of my mysterious Belgian circumstances,
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: and where I had found some information about it. It
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: turned out that Leonie van den Dijk had a very
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: tough life when all this happened. She also had nine children,
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: of which a few died as well. Her husband let
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: her sit there because she drank a lot and in
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: 1933 she suddenly appeared. of the Virgin Mary. That was
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: a rage in Belgium at that time. She was the
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: only one who saw that. The Virgin Mary only said
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: general places There were 10,000 people there every Sunday, when
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: the Virgin Mary saw her at the church. But no
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: one saw anything. Until at a certain point in December 1933,
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: something happens, something that you find in a lot of newspapers,
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: and that a lot of different people have seen. We
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: would now call it a UFO phenomenon. But UFOs were
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: not yet invented in her time. And that was a
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: light-sending disc that ran twice around the church tower of Onkerzeele.
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: And then it made a curve and disappeared behind a fence.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: And people saw it all and they called it a
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: solar miracle. And they also smell like roses. I always
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: see marshmallows sitting there with a dustpan. But it's very strange.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: That's a hallucination, a mass hallucination. But anyway. Because she
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: received so much criticism and people laughed at her. They said,
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: the Virgin Mary is there. And she's a fraud. Nelf
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: van Gerersbergen was a socialist. So she... She certainly laughed
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: with her. She then went back to her small workman's
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: house and started making predictions. She predicted the end of
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: the world for 1975. We already know that. But she
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: also predicted the murder of King Albert. She predicted the
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: death of King Astrid in 1935. She predicted the outbreak
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: of the Second World War. A number of other things.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: And really, one at a time, the Second World War
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: will break out. It really turned out as you said.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, more or less. It's always, how should I call it,
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: it's visions. She sees things happening and then you have
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: to conclude.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: From there, ah, it's about that.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: She saw King Albert on a rock and she saw
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: someone pushing him down. That can't be true, because it
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: can't be from the rots, as I explained. Because he
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: had only one connection.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: But there was a research on what he said.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: People from Parket left me to go to Amsterdam to
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: see what he had seen here. All we know about
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: the predictions, we actually know since her excavation. Because the
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: moment she retreats, there is an Aalstenaar named Gustav Schelling.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: That's her confidant. She becomes a kind of secretary. And
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: she dictates all her visions to him. And all her predictions.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: And also what happens around her. And how she thinks
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: the world is in order. And she writes, in fact,
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: a kind of biography about Leonie van den Dijk. At
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: the moment when her last prediction is, I will not
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: go into detail, and to prove to you that all
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: my other predictions and visions are true, I will give
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: you a sign and then you will know that the
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: time has come to dig me up, and then you
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: will dig me up and you will see, my prediction
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: has come true, so the rest is also true. That
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: was the background. So he notes it all down. In 1972,
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: that's the story, he takes a picture of the grave.
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: When he develops it at home, a blueish shadow appears
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: to hang over it. Exactly, the Magmario or something like that.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: And he thinks this is the sign. He asks permission
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: to go to the excavation, because he can't just do that.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: He gets it. It is excavated. That film, Echo, by
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: Jan van Rompuy, is part of it. It's proof. They
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: say it's a miracle. We know 100% for sure that
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: there is a committee, Leonie van den Dijk, that was
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: already set up when she was still alive. And they
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: actually want to explain it to her, to make Van
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: Onkerzeele a kind of Lourdes in the small, so that they,
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: with the museum and candles they can sell, and free water... Yes,
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: and also, she has, with all the misery that people
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: would go through, she has cried bitter tears, and those
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: tears have changed into pearls, and you can also buy them. So,
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: all those kinds of things. We know that. So, you
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: have to ask enormous questions there. Also, at the excavation
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: in 1972, Gustav Schelling publishes But that's on stencils, and
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: that's only a hundred copies, with a book that he
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: made with all his predictions in it. And that will
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: then be sold to her believers, to trusted people, to
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: the committee, but on a very small amount. We all
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: know that. I also have contact with... Not yet with
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: the Leonie van den Dijk committee, but I did some research.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: Guy starts doing research in the archive of the Gazette
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: of Antwerp. It's clear to us that if we want
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: to write a book about Leonie van den Dijk... At first,
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: we thought of an essay, a non-fiction book, like Mysteries
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: of the Lamgotsdereen. A very special story. about mysterious Belgium,
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: but for adults and non-fiction. If we want to write that,
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: then we have to get one of those copies to
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: see how we can get a biography about Leonie van
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: Dijk if we don't have that book. We looked for
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: a library, that has never been in a library. I
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: already know Gustav Schelling, because he went from Aalst in
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: the telephone book. Eventually, we don't find it. And eventually
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: we say to each other, and that was on a Thursday,
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: it won't work, because we don't find that book. So
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: we give it up, we're going to do something else.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: And the day after, on Friday, there is a party
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: of the Davidsons, the publishing house where both of our
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: youth books appeared. And I'm standing there at the buffet,
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: that's in Brussels, I'm standing there at the buffet, behind
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: the man who distributes our books in the bookstore. He
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: has a firm, and I know that man, he's from Denderleeuw,
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: that's close by. I know that by chance, because we've
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: seen each other before and spoken to each other. And
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: you know how it goes, you're standing in the buffet,
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: behind each other, small talk, and I'm like, how's it
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: going in Denderleeuw? That's close by. Oh yes, good, says Tim,
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: but yes, you may or may not know that, but
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: I was actually born in Gerersbergen. I say, ah, do
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: you know Leonie van den Dijk, then? Crazy way, huh?
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: Ah yes, we've been busy with that. Oh boy, says he,
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: I have such a thick book of it to read
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: on the attic, because my father was really crazy about it.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: The day after that, I went to Jacques Van Mello,
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: And this is Gustav Schelling's book.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: You copied it.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, all copied. The stencils. 400 pages of stencils. All copied.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: So we could write our book. That synchronicity is a coincidence.
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: But there must be a meaning behind it. That's why
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: it's called a meaningful coincidence. And that's what kept me
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: going since the early 90s, following my active writer's life
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: in a very positive way, because that's why I was
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: at peace. Ah yes, I don't find anything. Just wait
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: a bit.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: It will come.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: It must only be urgent enough. It's like in a
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: movie or something, you have to go to a dramatic climax.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: Everything is lost. And then suddenly it's there.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: And then it comes. Good, very interesting Patrick. But we
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: are now going far over our time. So I think
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: it's a good idea that we make three episodes instead
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: of two. So we're going to close here. Do you
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: want to listen to the television career of you, where
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about it in the third part?
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: Then you have to listen to the next episode.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: Okay.