Twenty years ago this week, during Epiphany, I ventured to Gheel, Belgium and committed myself into the world’s largest open-air insane asylum.
Here is an account of that adventure, part of the Surreal Bounce Odd-yssey.
In early January, northern Europe is a picture of gloom: Shades of grey laden with moisture. Rain, drizzle, and fog—a clammy dankness that never quits. Which, of course, is the best kind of weather for exploring a landmark of taboo. This would be our most ambitious venture yet—to the very heart of insanity.
My gang of lunacy-seekers—Van Stein, Floater and Jimmy—pray as our prop plane wages war with three levels of cloud over the English Channel and thumps uneasily into Antwerp airport, where we rent a car and drive to the local Radisson Hotel.
That’s because there are no hotels in Gheel, 25 miles to the east.
Gheel, population of 30,000, is not about tourism.
Its business is psychiatry.
For centuries, pilgrims with mental disorders have traveled to Gheel to pray at a shrine for Dymphna, the patron saint of lunatics. It was believed (and still is) that Dymphna’s powers of intercession can cure mental illness.
Many such pilgrims, healed or not, took up residence—and the town evolved into a thriving, open-air loony bin. Those who know about Gheel’s Family Care System of Mental Patients—whereby Belgium’s mentally-disordered and sanity-challenged are fostered into local families—think of it as the world’s most humane way of looking after the chronically insane.
We roll along the N19 through flat, Flemish countryside, minds stimulated by unusual shop frontage signs: Twilight Zone (a lamp shop) and Comit (our own ideas of reference playing tricks on us…). Arrows beckon us into an ancient market square, dominated by St. Amand’s Cathedral.
After parking we hoof around the Gothic cathedral. Its doors are locked tighter than a maximum security ward. A sign suggests that closure is this cathedral’s natural state from October through March.
Walking across the square, we puzzle over gaining access to Dymphna’s relics, a quaint term for bones. Dymphna’s relics have been carefully preserved for 14 centuries. If you are nuts, these old bones are the Holy Grail.
An elderly man on a bicycle cycles up and gapes as us as if we’d lost our minds. “Do you speak English?” I say. “We need to get into the cathedral.”
“I am the president,” says the grinning, disheveled man. “I have a key!” He gets off his bike and pats himself down, searching his pants pockets, then his jacket pockets, then his waist pockets. “Where is the key?” he asks himself. He shrugs. “I am the president,” he repeats, mounting his bicycle.
The president (ps)cycles off.
We huddle, take a quick poll and decide unanimously that the old man is one of Gheel’s patients.
But minutes later he reappears, cycling toward where we commiserate.
He kickstands his bike, triumphantly holds up a key—and unlocks the cathedral door. “I am the president of the church!” he proudly announces.
“What are the odds of the president of the church cycling by just when we arrive?” Van Stein whispers to me. “And opening it just for us?”
“Ideas of reference,” I remind him.
The president, whose name is Joseph, hits the lights and tours us around his baroque cathedral, which partly celebrates Dymphna. With Jimmy’s digital camera, Joseph takes our photograph standing around the altar. When we view it moments later, Van Stein gasps. “Look!” he points at a round white ball that looks like a full moon. “An orb!”
“A what?” I ask.
“It’s an orb!”
“What’s an orb?”
“Orbs are balls of transparent light, believed to be spirits or angels or aliens. They sometimes turn up in photographs taken at haunted places. Look, it’s posing with us!”
I turn to Joseph. “Where are Dymphna’s relics?”
“Ah,” says the president. “They are not here.”
“Not here?” says Van Stein. “Then where?”
“Dymphnakerk.”
Who-what-where?
It is another church, Dymphna Church, a quarter-mile away, in the older part of town.
However, in President Joseph’s opinion, Dymphnakerk, Gheel’s first place of worship (circa 1100) is less significant than his House of God. “You cannot go inside Dymphnakirk,” sniffs Joseph. “It is closed until May. And the man who runs it, he will not open for you like I do.”
Joseph begrudgingly gives us directions, believing, doubtless, we’ve lost our marbles. Why else would we be in Gheel this time of year (or any time)?
We roll to where centrum once existed—old centrum—before St. Amand’s was constructed.
Dymphnakerk is so gloomy and austere, it makes the other place look like Bloomingdales the day after Thanksgiving. In winter, this cathedral is not about life. It is about death, not least because it towers over a vast graveyard where, by day, bone-grinders create space for a new generation of Gheelists.
A notice on the door confirms that we should return four months hence—perhaps on St. Dymphna Day, May 15th, should we fancy a parade and community feast.
Indeed, our quandary requires refreshment. The choice of an eatery obvious: Tavern Van Gogh, on Market Square. (It becomes our headquarters, to the amusement of two countermen, who whisper to each other in chuckles whenever our merry band of lunacy-seekers straggle in.)
I order sautéed foie gras with sliced apples and walnuts, and strong white beer—12 percent alcohol—brewed by Trappist monks.
Gheelicious.
Three children enter, costumed as kings. They beeline for our table, sing a strange song, and hit us up for spare change. An Epiphany tradition.
Night descends fast as we stroll Gheel’s quiet streets—almost no one out and about but us—past barren fir trees haphazardly strapped to every lamppost. Even more disconcerting is a life-size bronze sculpture of a family of five, stark naked, genitals on full display. Right outside St. Amand’s Cathedral.
Nearby, a penis-shaped dildo has been shoved onto the steeple of a street sign pointing toward Dymphnakerk.
We come upon a shop whose display window features naked mannequins.
And then another shop displaying naked mannequins.
Other shop windows display lace lingerie in black and red. Gheel’s version of Christmas decorations to compensate for the absence of ornaments on trees?
Gheel has numerous pharmacies. But not enough, apparently: Many sidewalk vending machines dispense condoms.
To prevent inbreeding of the mentally insane?
With such sexual therapy at play, no wonder surreal Gheel seems so calm. Noticeably absent: Any sign of police, despite suspicious characters (us) prowling the streets—and Van Stein having orb-gasms whenever he consults his camera and finds a proliferating family of spirit light-balls.
As we prepare to return to Antwerp, Van Stein suggests a Dymphnakerk drive-by to check exterior lighting.
None.
But the church’s side door is open!
We jump out and bolt into the dark cathedral.
In a far corner, two elderly women are taking communion. We remain quiet in the shadows; when they finish I follow the pastor into his small office. “I have come from far away to see your church,” I say.
“How far?” He peers over my shoulder at the others.
“America. Where are the relics?”
“Relics?” he asks. “What do you mean, relics?”
“Dymphna’s bones.”
He hesitates a moment, then nods grimly. “This way.” The pastor, whose name is Joseph, just like the president of St. Amand’s, leads me to a gated area near the altar, which houses an ornate silver reliquary. “The relics are up there.”
Beneath the reliquary is a gold-gilt triptych with nine panels that storyboard the Dymphna legend:
She was born in Ireland in during the Merovingian period—very early in the seventh century--the daughter of a pagan king named Damon and a mother who converted to Christianity to ensure Dymphna would be educated under the tutelage of a priest named Gerebern.
Dymphna’s beautiful mother died suddenly. Her father, inconsolable, fell into what today we would call clinical depression. Courtiers worried that their king’s mental health would further deteriorate unless he took another wife, so they urged him to do so. Damon dispatched envoys around Ireland to find a woman as beautiful as the wife he’d lost. When they returned empty-handed, a deranged notion struck the lustful king. Hmmm, my fourteen year-old daughter, Dymphna-–she looks exactly the same as her mother…
Dymphna was horrified by her father’s proposal. Each time she refused his advances, the king’s rage grew worse. Gerebern, the priest, was also perplexed by this situation, and he plotted an escape for them both.
With assistance from the court jester, Dymphna and Gerebern crossed the English Channel by boat and sailed up the River Schelde to Antwerp. Feeling unsafe near a waterway, they made their way inland to Zammel, a small settlement of about fifteen houses and a well six miles from what would later become Gheel.
When King Damon realized his daughter and her pesky priest had duped him, he went nuts. (Also, he no longer had a court jester to help him see the lighter side.)
With a small army of warriors in three boats, the king set sail in search of Dymphna. How did he know where to go? For two months Damon followed the money. Dymphna and Gerebern recklessly left a trail of their native coins as payment for services rendered enroute to a new life abroad. The final tip came from a woman at an inn called The Kettle, in a village called Westerlo. She pointed out the direction Dymphna had taken. (Legend suggests arthritis cut in immediately, for the woman’s arm remained rigidly outstretched for the rest of her life.)
When Dymphna and Gerebern learned the king and his warriors were near, they fled Zammel. But not fast enough. The king caught up with them six miles away.
Blaming the couple’s misadventure on Gerebern, Damon slew the priest without further ado (no trial necessary). Then he asked his daughter one last time: “Will you marry me?”
Dymphna declined.
Damon commanded his warriors to execute his daughter. Not one stepped forward. So the crazed king raised his mighty sword and severed Dymphna’s head with one blow. (No one knows what he did to the court jester.) Adding insult to murder and mayhem, Damon and his warriors left the scene without bothering to bury their victims.
Zammel’s citizens were greatly distressed by the carnage they found at the scene. They interred Dymphna and Gerebern at the very spot they were slain.
Word of what happened that tragic day in 621 A.D. traveled around Europe. Within a few hundred years (word traveled slow back then), the burial site became a shrine for mentally disordered pilgrims. They discovered that if they prayed at Dymphna’s burial site, prayed to her relics (bones), their mental illnesses gave way to sanity. (It sure beat an Abilify/Zoloft cocktail.) After notching up a few such miracles, Dymphna qualified for sainthood.
A whole town grew up around it. The town of Gheel.
Today, a marble statue marks this site—diagonally opposite Dymphnakerk: Demented Damon, under the influence of a demon, poised to decapitate Dymphna—martyred for her morality.
Over dinner in Antwerp, we order Joseph Cote de Rhone in honor of our new friends at St. Amand’s and Dymphnakerk.
Next morning. it is Jimmy who agitates from sleep deprivation. “I was visited last night,” he whispers during breakfast of sliced ham, cheese and sweet rolls.
“One of the chambermaids?” asks Floater.
“No. Dymphna. She woke me up. I think she tried to tell me she was victimized by holy robbers.”
“A Gheelization!” hoots Van Stein. “But I thought she was victimized by her father.”
Jimmy shakes his head. “Her relics.”
“Spit it out,” I say.
Jimmy scratches his head, trying to make sense of the visitation. “Dymphna gave me a history lesson: Centuries ago, relics meant pilgrims, and pilgrims meant money. Relics attracted tourism and commerce. They also attracted relic skulduggery—that’s where the word comes from—holy robbers, dispatched by other rulers to acquire relics to improve their own tourism.”
“Dymphna told you all that?”
Jimmy nods. “And more. She told me that a holy robber visited Gheel in 1627 looking for her relics. He realized he couldn’t steal any, because they were guarded so well. But he managed to acquire a few of her bones by bribing the Prior of Dymphnakerk, a priest named Bloem. The holy robber planned to take them to Xanten.”
“Where’s that?”
“Dymphna told me Xanten is an ancient Roman town 75 miles from here, in Germany. The priest Gerebern’s relics were dug up in Gheel a thousand years ago and taken to Xanten. The diocese of Xanten wanted Dymphna, too, for their cathedral. But the holy robber got scared after a couple of Bloem’s canons saw money change hands and complained to Bishop Zoesius and…”
“Is all this true?” demands Van Stein.
Jimmy shrugs. “It’s what Dymphna told me. The holy robber thought he was going to get ambushed on his return to Xanten. So he…?”
“Buried the relics?”
“And never came back for them.” Jimmy plucks a hand-scrawled map from his back pocket. “Dymphna needs closure. She wants me to find her lost bones. You guys in?”
For Dymphna-maniacs like us, it was a no-brainer.