The History of the Psychic Nosebleed

March 4th, 2007

Filed under: Comics, Medicine

ScannersThere’s been some debate over the earliest appearance of the “psychic nosebleed.” The first reference I’m aware is not from a comic book, but instead from David Cronenberg’s movie Scanners.

Here’s two quick quotes from the film:

I, I must remind you that the, uh, scanning experience is usually a painful one, sometimes resulting in nosebleeds, earaches, stomach cramps, nausea.

and

Cameron: [sees that Kim has had a nosebleed] What happened?
Kim: I was scanned. The woman in the waiting room…
Cameron: She scanned you?
Kim: No, not her. Her child. Her unborn child scanned me.

Scanners is from 1981. Somebody once suggested Stephen King’s Firestarter, published in 1980, but I couldn’t find any occurrences of any sort of psychic bleeding when I read the book. Maybe they meant the movie, which was released in 1984, but I haven’t seen it and Scanners predates it.

For now, I’m going to consider Scanners the earliest psychic nosebleed unless anyone can show me an earlier example.

For comic books, the first example I’m aware of is from the X-Men graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson, published in 1982, just one year behind Scanners.

For monthly comics, the earliest psychic nosebleed I’ve run across is Adventures of Superman #427 (April 1987) by Wolfman and Ordway, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there are earlier examples.

nosebleed zenAll previous Psychic Nosebleed Zen posts

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10 Responses to “ The History of the Psychic Nosebleed ”

  1. Dawn
    March 4th, 2007 at 2:32 pm

    Rogert Ebert mentions that the father gets a nosebleed each time he uses his psychic abilities
    but I haven’t seen the movie. The link: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19840101/REVIEWS/401010335/1023

    I think that father gets migraines when he uses psychic ability in King’s book.

    I’m curious to see whether anyone can find a more recent instance. Can the psychic nosebleed come from any fictional source?
    For instance, magazine stories or TV shows?

  2. c rose
    March 4th, 2007 at 7:02 pm

    1978’s ‘The Fury’ loosely based on the John Farris novel had people bleeding all over the place due to psychic activity. From noses, eyes, fingernails (iirc). But (again, iirc) those were the normals doing the bleeding, not the psychics under strain. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that movie for all the details.

  3. Matthew E
    March 5th, 2007 at 8:41 am

    I was one of the people who suggested ‘Firestarter’. I meant the book, as I haven’t seen the movie. I’ll check it out and see if I can find an exact reference for you.

  4. The Tensor
    March 5th, 2007 at 7:55 pm

    This web page says, of the psychic nosebleed, “This trope may have been born with the film adaptation of Stephen King’s Firestarter, where it was used in place of the original book’s far-less-visible ‘tiny cerebral hemorrhages’.” Since the movie version of Firestarter came out three years after Scanners, Cronenberg can still claim prior art.

  5. The Tensor
    March 5th, 2007 at 8:52 pm

    Aha! Try this example on for size. It’s from Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War. The main characters, futuristic soldiers on their first mission, have just accidentally killed some alien herbivores. They’re puzzling over the bodies’ lack of any apparent sensory organs when suddenly someone notices that one of their comrades, Ho, died at the same moment as the animals:

    “Massive cerebral hemorrhage. No…” He watched the dials. “No…warning, no indication of anything out of the ordinary; blood pressure up, pulse up, but normal under the circumstances…nothing to…indicate—” He reached down and popped her suit. Her fine oriental features were distorted in a horrible grimace, both gums showing. Sticky fluid ran from under her collapsed eyelids, and a trickle of blood still dripped from each ear. Doc Wilson closed the suit back up.

    “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s as if a bomb went off in her skull.”

    “Oh, fuck,” Rogers said, “she was Rhine-sensitive, wasn’t she.”

    “That’s right,” Cortez sounded thoughtful. “All right, everybody listen up. Platoon leaders, check your platoons and see if anybody’s missing, or hurt. Anybody else in seventh?”

    “I…I’ve got a splitting headache, Sarge,” Lucky said.

    Four others had bad headaches. One of them affirmed that he was slightly Rhine-sensitive. The others didn’t know. (pp. 46-47)

    OK, it’s an ear-bleed rather than a nose-bleed, but I think you’ll agree that this is the same fictional medical phenomenon. This novel was published in 1974. In fact, it was serialized in Analog starting in June of 1972, though I can’t verify that this passage occurs in the magazine version.

  6. Scott
    March 5th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
    Official Comment

    Here’s what I can find in Firestarter:

    “Well, he’s overdone it before and wound up in bed. He’s doing something to his brain . . . God knows what. Giving himself pinprick hemorrhages, maybe. It could be a progressive thing. The computer figures there’s slightly better than a one-in-four chance he’s dead, either of a heart attack or, more probably, a stroke.”

    AND

    Suppose the push had come back. That was no universal cure-all; he of all people knew that. He could give a lot of little pushes or three or four wallopers before he tipped himself over. He might get to Charlie, but he didn’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting them out of here. All he would succeed in doing was pushing himself into the grave via a brain hemorrhage (and as he thought of this, his fingers went automatically to his face, where the numb spots had been).

  7. Steve
    March 12th, 2007 at 5:52 am

    Google book search offers this tantalising snippet:

    “… Siberia consider children who bleed at the nose or mouth to be destined by the gods to the profession of shamanism.”

    The Origin of the Inequality of the Social Classes by Gunnar Landtman (1938)

  8. mike
    March 31st, 2007 at 10:14 pm

    butterfly effect anyone

  9. Bob Mozark
    May 7th, 2007 at 6:06 pm

    I linked your posting to the Wikipedia article on Scanners & an unidentified poster
    has since come along and identified an earlier movie with a psychic nosebleed.

    It is The Fury (1978). “psychic-induced nosebleed that quickly progresses
    into bleeding from the eyes and ears.

    See: http://www.terrortrap.com/supernatural70s/fury/“

  10. Prisonbreak Season Opener | Rey's A Point
    September 1st, 2008 at 11:22 pm

    [...] Michael tries to telepathically read into the future and has a nosebleed. [...]

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