Leonard Cohen and MKULTRA - Military Mind Control at McGill and Columbia

Then he said he had an appointment somewhere and needed to take a bath. I offered to leave. He said: no, just sit here for a few minutes in case the phone rings. He got in the bath, I sat in the kitchen, and sure enough, the phone rings. It’s Hazel, the woman next door. I tell her Leonard is in the bath, and to please call back in a few minutes, which she does. At this point, the story becomes a bit extraordinary. I am standing a few feet from the phone, and I can hear Hazel shouting. I can’t make out what she’s saying, but she is screaming what appears to be verbal abuse, and Leonard, who has his ear to the phone, becomes rigid and just listens. The screaming goes on for, maybe, half a minute during which he does not move, does not respond, or react. When the screaming stops, he says “OK” and hangs up. The phone rings again; he picks it up. More of the same shouting. Once again, he listens without affect, without moving, and says “OK.” Then he hangs up, turns to me, and in a blank tone says “You’d better go now.” Which I do.

Later that night, there is a meeting in his front room. I happen to walk by, and unusually, the blinds are up and I see Leonard, encircled by the people I thought of as his “cult followers.” He is speaking to them, gesturing dramatic. I only get a glimpse of this meeting as I pass the window, but my snapshot impression is that he is asking for their help in some difficult matter that is causing him great anxiety.

And sure enough, half an hour later, I get a phone call, from a woman called Birgit, whom I know quite well, but consider to be a fairly hardcore Cohen groupie. She has come from the meeting. She arrives as I’m cooking supper, sits in my kitchen, and goes straight to the point. I have to move from the neighbourhood, she says, and stop harassing Leonard Cohen. I’m, well, stunned. It’s the first time anyone has spoken to me in two years about how I came to be living next door. The first time anyone has suggested it might be a problem. But I’m not stupid. I’m quite aware that my presence in the neighbourhood has caused concern for certain people. The fact, however, is that I am there as the result of a peculiar coincidence. That there is no way I could have found this apartment on my own – I’m there, and I can’t really explain how it happens, in a city of 1 million people, I manage to move in next door to Leonard Cohen – it just happened. That’s it, that’s all.

I also knew, back then and today, that nobody in Cohen’s circle believed this. And neither do I, to this day, really understand how things like that happen. But that day, he had invited me over, as if letting bygones be bygones, and it had appeared, for about an hour, that relations were back to normal – until Hazel called, that is, and shouted into the phone, and he went numb.

And who called the meeting? And what was it about? No explanation was ever given. Another cult member, Charlie, phoned me the next day and invited me across the street to his place, for tea. We sat in silence. I didn’t feel like talking until someone explained to me what was going on on that block.

No one ever did.

These were separate “alters” that might not have known of each other’s existence. The alter that addressed the meeting did not recall having phoned me that day, and may not have recalled the two phone calls that came from Hazel – which was when they “switched” –