tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46082876184121958362024-03-18T02:48:33.987-07:00Malcolm's Musings: AnomaliesIf you keep your eyes and your mind open, you will find that the paranormal, the miraculous, the simply inexplicable, not only happen, but are not even uncommon. So, to complement my Cryptozoology blog, I have set aside this one for items outside the scientific paradigm. Except for the first post (September 2011), which describes my own experiences, every post is provided with a reference. My aim has been to alert you to otherwise forgotten stories, in case they form part of a pattern.Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.comBlogger102125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-89880062804229069852024-03-14T15:09:00.000-07:002024-03-15T01:44:13.294-07:00Why You Should Follow Your Dream I'm getting addicted to the game show, <i>Deal or No Deal</i> (Australia) on Channel 10, and have only just watched Episode 34, which aired on Wednesday 13 March 2024. For those unfamiliar with the game, there are 22 boxes, each of which denotes a prize ranging from 50c to $100,000. First of all, you will be asked to pick a box, which you hope will denote the $100,000. It remains unopened until the end of the show. If you make no deals, you get the prize. You then get to pick one box after another, and you see various prizes disappear from the screen. At intervals, the banker will offer you a "deal" ie an amount of money less than the maximum. Most people eventually accept a deal, because the choice is between money in the hand, and the possibility of winning a lot or winning very little. For example, last week there were only two boxes left on the screen. One denoted 50c and the other $100,000. The contestant accepted a deal of $50,001. He would have been a fool not to.<div> Well, on Episode 34 a woman called Kim Boucher picked box 17, because she said she had dreamed about that number. Eventually, when there were still four boxes in play, she accepted a deal of $11,890. Guess what! No 17 denoted $100,000. She should have followed her dream.</div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-79344350775365004822024-02-08T16:27:00.000-08:002024-02-08T16:27:05.608-08:00Balloons of the Fairies? In 2017 the <a href="https://www.fairyist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/The-Fairy-Census-2014-2017-1.pdf" target="_blank">new fairy census</a> was published containing 500 alleged encounters with these remarkable entities. Five years have passed, and now a <a href="https://www.fairyist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Fairy-Census2FINAL.pdf" target="_blank">second fairy census</a> is available, also containing 500 entries, starting from number 501. Although I haven't performed a statistical analysis, my impression is that the second census contains more dubious material. It seems that the site has been brought to the attention of more people who are uncritical, who see things out of the corner of their eyes, or in the penumbra surrounding sleep, or in altered states of awareness, or who have strange, visionary, New Age type ideas. And I am still puzzled that so many adults remember encounters when they were children as genuine. I'm not saying that children may not be more psychically aware than adults. It is just that, if I had seen a real fairy when I was a little boy, I'm sure that by now I would have convinced myself that I had been mistaken, or had imagined it.<div> Unless, of course, the experience was as vivid as these.<span><a name='more'></a></span><div> This case is No. 80 in the First Census. The lady herself is talking about an experience she had one morning in her back yard in London when she was less than ten years old in the 1950s.</div></div><div><blockquote>This has haunted me for always. I swear it was not a dream. I was in the back garden. My mother was hanging clothes on the washing line, and a sort of wicker-basket affair with a balloon on top came down by my side, but not landing on the garden path. I was rather frightened but stood there with one eye on my mother, who had not seen it. Inside were some small people, but one older man dressed in grey trousers, I remember, a grey top hat and black jacket. He had silver hair and it was curly and long, and the gist of it was that I was to ‘go away with them’. I refused of course, but gosh, he was so persistent. But the whole contraption flew off. I ran to my mother and told her what had happened, and she took it for what most people would take it for, childish excess. It has bothered me all my life, because this was no dream, it took place, and everything was solid. English was spoken, and I consider it a really strange episode indeed.’ I can’t say this was a fairy experience at all, but the size of this being seems to make me feel it might be classed in this particular category. It was no angel. I felt it wanted to do mischief. This was not a friendly experience at all.’ I believe anything is possible in this world. Our daily vision is a tunnel-vision one. But I’m afraid I cannot give you an answer, in truth, as to what fairies are.’ ‘I really know this happened, and I remember telling my mother immediately. She was about twenty feet away from me, and did not see anything, but she did take notice of my state of fear.’ ‘I would swear that this truly happened and was not a dream or any sort of imagination. I cannot recollect reading anything before or after with any illustration of such a strangeness in it either. A wonderful mystery! I wonder what would have happened then, had I said ‘Yes’…</blockquote><p> Perhaps we can find the answer to that by looking at case No. 525 in the Second Census. This allegedly happened in Dorset, England in the 1980s, and again a girl was involved.</p><blockquote>‘It was sunset, and the sun was coming down. The sunset was spectacular. I was up the farm ‘doing the jobs’ (feeding the birds, checking the enclosures, driving birds in and <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">shutting them up for the night) on my own. I would have been nine, ten, eleven –</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">that sort of age. Late primary. I was unhappy, which wasn’t unusual. The sunset</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">looked like a bright world hanging in the sky and I looked at it and wished for escape.</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">And instead of looking away I carried on looking until a bright light came from the</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">sky and turned into a sort of elaborate hot air balloon full of tall, elegant, bejewelled</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">beings with peacock blue skin and shimmering golden hair. I was a well-read child,</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I’d read my Nesbit and Farjeon, so I knew exactly the risks I was taking when I spoke</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">to them, went into their ship, and read a book they gave me, and ate their food, and I</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">didn’t care. At the same time I had an awareness, like a shadow, of myself standing</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">still in the field as the sun went down. The quality of the experience was not like a</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">daydream, more like a really loud noise, coming from somewhere else, that drowned</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">out everything else. There was music, but it was like a single chord playing</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">continuously. I remember being offered some sort of choice, suggesting they came in</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">response to my original wish, of a single, proper escape, or the ability to escape</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">whenever I wanted, but always having to come back. I took the second choice, and</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">although they said they had given me something – the ability to escape – it felt more</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">like something had been taken from me. I was returned to the field </span><i><span style="mso-ansi-font-style: italic; mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">via </span></i><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">a pretty rope</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">ladder, and the craft flew back into the last threads of the sunset, becoming a light,</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">then nothing. I did see/hear/feel other things as I grew up, and even as an adult, but</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">nothing with the absolute elaborate beauty, grandeur and narrative compulsion of</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">this experience. I felt the compulsion both to share the story and to keep it a secret</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">so I wrote up a slightly elaborated version for a free writing exercise at school.</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">While</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I was writing it the same sense of harmonious compulsion came over me and I was</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">unable to stop writing until the end of the story, writing through my break and part</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">of another lesson.’ ‘Tall, slender. Hair shades of gold, clothing long robes in dense</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">bright colours with an iridescent sheen, scattered with pearly jewels, small gems and</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">sparkle. Very, very beautiful. Peacock blue skin, with an iridescent sheen to it. They</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">kept their expressions quite muted, and spoke without moving their eyes. They</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">looked amused/aloof/interested/speculative. They moved with a sort of painful</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">grace.’ ‘A single glorious chord playing really loudly and continuously, which made it</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">hard to think, and kept you focussed on the experience. The memory of that noise</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">itself is weirdly compelling.’ ‘People spoke of strange things happening in the village</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">certainly – the field I was in was called *** Field and was a bit weird.’ Why do you</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">think your experience was a fairy experience, as opposed to a ghost or an alien or an</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">angel or some other type of anomalous experience? ‘Good question. Later, in my</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">teens, when I read the right books (!) I noticed the similarity of my experience to</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">alien abduction accounts. But I think it is essentially a Fairy experience. It happens in</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">response to a wish. It involves a transaction. The experience is one of joyful</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">compulsion. It is marked with music, beauty and wonder. It answers a need.’ What</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">are fairies? ‘I genuinely don’t know.’ ‘I think that part of what came out of my</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">experience was the ability to believe/experience something, and at the same time not</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">believe/experience.</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">While</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">I was writing it the same sense of harmonious compulsion came over me and I was</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">unable to stop writing until the end of the story, writing through my break and part</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">of another lesson.’ ‘Tall, slender. Hair shades of gold, clothing long robes in dense</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">bright colours with an iridescent sheen, scattered with pearly jewels, small gems and</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">sparkle. Very, very beautiful. Peacock blue skin, with an iridescent sheen to it. They</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">kept their expressions quite muted, and spoke without moving their eyes. They</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">looked amused/aloof/interested/speculative. They moved with a sort of painful</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">grace.’ ‘A single glorious chord playing really loudly and continuously, which made it</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">hard to think, and kept you focussed on the experience. The memory of that noise</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">itself is weirdly compelling.’ ‘People spoke of strange things happening in the village</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">certainly – the field I was in was called *** Field and was a bit weird.’ Why do you</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">think your experience was a fairy experience, as opposed to a ghost or an alien or an</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">angel or some other type of anomalous experience? ‘Good question. Later, in my</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">teens, when I read the right books (!) I noticed the similarity of my experience to</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">alien abduction accounts. But I think it is essentially a Fairy experience. It happens in</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">response to a wish. It involves a transaction. The experience is one of joyful</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">compulsion. It is marked with music, beauty and wonder. It answers a need.’ What</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">are fairies? ‘I genuinely don’t know.’ ‘I think that part of what came out of my</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">experience was the ability to believe/experience something, and at the same time not</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">believe/experience</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">it. I think this was both important to me developmentally, and</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">helped me manage things in my life and about my own sensory experience which</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"> </span><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';">might otherwise have been much more difficult.’</span></span></blockquote><p> So there you have it. Is this story true? We have only one person's word, and my mind rebel against it. On the other hand, it is unwise to throw out some item of evidence just because it sounds bizarre. Perhaps something to confirm it will come along later. In the meantime, all I can say is that, if any such offer were made to you, I would advise against taking it. Tradition is clear that the Fair Folk are <i>dangerous</i>. Even if they are not specifically malevolent, they still march to a different drum. If nothing else, you may find that a year or so has passed by when you return home.</p><p> Dr Beachcomber has written an <a href="https://www.strangehistory.net/2024/02/05/the-wood-diva/ " target="_blank">interesting post</a> on another subject: people wandering the woods in different parts of the world and meeting a beautiful human sized fairy woman.</p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="mso-font-kerning: 1.0000pt; mso-spacerun: 'yes';"></span></span></div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-68241996184462880212024-01-06T22:20:00.000-08:002024-01-06T22:20:48.062-08:00In the Jungle: Serpents, Sorcery, and Salvation The drunk throws away the empty bottle, the smoker discards the empty packet, but a <a href="https://malcolmshumour.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/confessions-of-bibliomaniac.html" target="_blank">book addict</a> never throws away anything. Thus it is that I still have many of the books I read and enjoyed fifty years ago, and since my backlog of reading material is almost finished, I have had the chance to read and enjoy them once again. One of these was <i>Mitsinari, twenty-one years among the Papuans</i> by André Dupeyrat (translated by Erik and Denyse deMauny for Beacon Books, 1957). A version was published in the US as <i><a href="https://archive.org/details/savagepapuamissi00dupe/mode/2up" target="_blank">Savage Papua</a></i>. Some of the events he recorded were quite unforgettable, and ten years ago <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-visit-from-wer-cassowary.html" target="_blank">I shared with you</a> his story of the man who apparently turned himself into a cassowary. However, on rereading it, I came across other very strange happenings.<span><a name='more'></a></span><div> To set the picture, Fr. Dupeyrat was a Belgium priest who came to Papua in 1930 as a missionary. Papua is the southern half of what is now the independent nation of Papua New Guinea, but at the time it was administered by Australia as a Crown Colony. The original Roman Catholic mission station was at Yule Island, approximately 100 km up the coast north west from the capital of Port Moresby, and most of Fr. Dupeyrat's activities were involved among the Fuyugé people in the jungles and mountains of the interior. There violence, superstition, and disease had held sway for thousands of years.</div><div> In this stronghold of mountains and jungles, the central mission station was Fané-les-Roses (French for "faded the roses"), with Cour-des-Anges ("court of the angels") in the Dilava Valley being another, and in this vast area, for most of his sojourn, Fr. Dupeyrat was the sole missionary and, indeed, the sole white man. Once, he had just returned to the former centre from a lengthy expedition when his catechist, Severiano rushed in with bad news from Cour-des-Anges. The Devil, he said, was once more taking charge of their valley. The sorcerers had returned from a trip to the coast, bringing back new and more potent magic items, and were insisting that the people renounce Christianity, and return to their pagan ways - <i>or else</i>.</div><div> In less than an hour he was heading down the trails into the Dilava Valley, arriving four hours later, soaked with sweat and caked with mud, at Cour-des-Anges, only to find the entire population out waiting for him. Tired, and with hardly any idea what to say, he became a tirade against their backsliding, and ending with the following challenge:</div><blockquote><div>But this is what I proclaim before you all: I am going into all the villages, those of the tribes in the mountains and those of the tribes in the valleys. I shall spend a day and a night in each village, and in each I shall celebrate a mass and pronounce the exorcism of St Michael, to drive away all evil spirits from your fields, your homes, and your hearts. ... If, during my voyage, the sorcerers succeed in causing me to die, so be it, I am not the emissary of the true God, I am wrong, and they are right. But if hey fail to kill me, it is they who are wrong and you will never listen to them again ... I have spoken. Now, go ... Tomorrow at dawn, the people of Kodighé and Ilidé will come for confession and holy mass ...</div></blockquote><div> But when he was in his hut, the full significance of what he had said struck him. He must have been crazy! He had thrown down the gauntlet to his spiritual enemies. They would try to destroy him.</div><div> The next day, as he approached the first village on his circuit, he was attacked by a poisonous snake on the trail, but managed to kill it. Poisonous snakes are by no means uncommon in the jungle, but are rarely encountered, and even more rarely do they make unprovoked attacks on humans. Then he started thinking about what he had learned about sorcerers on the coast. Somehow or other, they have learned how to tame the dangerous reptiles, and he knew one fellow who kept two wrapped around his head in a kind of turban. The story was that, when a sorcerer wanted to get rid of an enemy, he first acquired a piece of his clothing, which would be impregnated with his scent. He then stuffed the cloth and the snake into a container, sealed it, and left it for several days without food for several days. The impatient snake would then take out its frustrations by biting the cloth. Next, the sorcerer would pound the container with a stick, driving the snake into a frenzy, and later hold the container over a fire. The poor snake would now connect the smell of the cloth with its misfortunes. It then remained only for the witchdoctor to release the snake on the approach of his victim, and the reptile would charge forth to bite him. Had someone attempted the same trick on him? If so, it would be possible to kill him without alerting the colonial authorities.</div><div> Even so, when he reached the next village, Avole he entered the hut the villagers had made for me on his previous visit, where he flung himself on the floor, unbuttoned his shirt to the air, and closed his eyes. Suddenly, he was awakened by the yells of his audience. He looked up.</div><blockquote><div>[Less] than two feet from my face, the head of a snake swayed slowly to and fro. Instantly, I sized up the situation; the snake was at least six feet long, as thick as a man's arm, and gunmetal-grey in colour, with a reddish stripe running from the large, flattened head to the tail: it was, in fact, one of the worst reptiles in the country! . . . The lower part of its body was still wrapped around the central roof beam, but I could see its scales gleaming in a faint undulation. It was on the move! Slowly and inexorably, its venomous jaws came near my face.</div></blockquote><div> Praying to his guardian angel, he shammed death. The serpent fell down and slithered off him. He describes in vivid detail its movements over his prostrate body. As soon as it was gone, he leapt up, grabbed his staff, and killed it.</div><div> In the next five villages he was attacked by snakes. He found them in his blankets, in his spare shirts, and even in the instruments he carried to celebrate mass. He had never seen so many poisonous snakes in his life. In the final village, he was stretched out at rest when two snakes started climbing up the stakes supporting his hammock, just above his head. But again he managed to kill them, and the prestige of the witchdoctors was broken.</div><div> </div><div> In the following chapter he described his experience with a witchdoctor who appeared to have turned himself into a cassowary. However, I have <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-visit-from-wer-cassowary.html" target="_blank">already shared</a> it with you. Instead, I shall skip to the following chapter, where he described an amazing experience towards the end of his first year in the country. At that time he was still learning the language, and the ropes, under the tutelage of the chief missionary, whom he refers to as the <i>curé</i>. The latter had taken him on a circuit of the villages in his domain, and considering this meant trekking through jungle and mountains over appalling terrain, you will appreciate that this represented a rugged introduction to his official duties.</div><div> They were negotiating a jungle trail, the three porters in front, with Dupreyrat next, followed by the <i>curé</i> and two converts. Miles from any village, they came to a fork in the trail. The porters took the left hand fork. For reasons he could not explain, Dupeyrat took the right; he felt compelled to do so. The others called him back. He continued on his own, and at last the <i>curé</i> decided to follow him, still grumbling.</div><div> All at once, Dupeyrat came upon a tiny hut made of leaves by the side of the track. Peering inside, he saw in the darkness a very old Papuan, naked, wrinkled and filthy, and lying on a pile of branches. The old man muttered something which the new missionary failed to understand. Just then, the <i>curé</i> arrived, and made his own inspection. The old man came from a pagan village near Inaye, where they were going, and had been left to die, as was their custom.</div><blockquote><div> "They carried him into the forest to die. He was becoming too much of a burden for his family in the village. He's already been here at least days, without food or attention. This hut was to be his grave. As soon as he saw me leaning over him, he said, 'I have been waiting for you . . . Baptize me, so that I may go to God our Father.' You realize, however, that he couldn't have known of our arrival. No doubt he had heard something of God - he probably came to Inaye during one of my earlier visits there. But I never noticed him, and no one spoke to me. Poor old fellow! He's clearly sincere . . . I tell you, the angels must have led us here!"</div></blockquote><div> So while the <i>curé </i>was giving the old man his first and last instructions, Dupeyrat prepared some beef tea for him, before giving one of his first baptisms in the country. The old man passed away in the <i>curé</i>'s arms less than a quarter of an hour later, his face bathed in a radiant smile.</div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-80096500048771881962023-09-06T15:34:00.001-07:002023-09-06T15:34:28.883-07:00An Advantage in Being Struck by Lightning Edwin E. Robinson, 62 of Falmouth, Maine was bald, blind, and deaf. His baldness, I presume, was natural, but his other disabilities were the result of a brain injury in 1971, when the truck he was driving jacknifed on an icy bridge. He wore a hearing aid and learned Braille. Then, on 4 June 1980, something happened. He was looking for a pet chicken in his back yard during a thunderstorm, and was struck by lightning.<span><a name='more'></a></span><div> Much to his amazement, when he came to, he found he could see the wall plaque which his granddaughters had given him. After that, his sight and his hearing gradually improved. The two granddaughters had been born after his accident, and for the first time he was able to see them. His ophthalmologist confirmed the effect, but was unable to provide an explanation. One presumes the lightning bolt rejiggled his brain back to the way it was before the accident.<div> Later that month he travelled to New York to make a guest appearance on ABC's <i>Good Morning, America</i>. That same day his scalp began to feel funny. He ran his hand over it, and it felt like whiskers growing on the top of his head. A week later the hair was still growing. His family doctor also confirmed it, but again, could provide no explanation.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Reference:</b> I got this information from the journal of the now defunct Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, <i>Pursuit</i> 13(3): p 119 (Summer 1980) and 13(4): p 177 (Fall 1980). However, the original reports came from a United Press International dispatch in <i>The Star-Ledger</i> (NJ), 10 June, 1980, and an AP dispatch in the same newspaper of 4 July 1980.</div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-15571144444554161652023-04-22T23:23:00.002-07:002023-04-22T23:23:50.191-07:00The Little Boy and the Little Visitor<div style="text-align: left;"> Do you remember having a weird experience - I mean a really weird experience - when you were young - and I mean really young? If you do, how do you remember it now? Do you remember it as a real event, or have you convinced yourself that it must have been a dream, an hallucination, or a misinterpretation of something you didn't understand at the time? It would be comforting if you could so convince yourself. The reason I am asking this is that I am increasingly coming upon people who claim to have encountered as adults what, for lack of a better name, can be called "fairies". But the striking thing is that many others claim to have had such encounters as small children, and yet believe they really did happen.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> Such is the case of a man who calls himself only "John". Most of us can remember hardly anything before the age of three, and possess only fragmentary memories of our lives before school. However, John remembers that, when he was three years old, he was plagued by a tiny, terrifying bedtime visitor. To his incomplete memories he has added what his parents told him he had told them at the time, and the fact that they themselves used to hear voices emanating from his room at night. Whether all this was a strange pychological phenomenon or - perish the thought! - something paranormal, it deserves wider distribution. This article originally appeared in the <i>Fairy Investigation Newsletter 16, New Series</i> (June 2022), and is republished with the permission of the author, John and the editor, Simon Young.<span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - </div><div style="text-align: center;">Meeting Bonnie</div><div><div style="text-align: center;">by John</div><div><div> When I was three there was a little man about three and a half inches who came into my room each night... He frightened me. I still remember a few of the nights quite clearly, especially one night when he brought another little person with him. Some other information about the visits I had, I got from my mother as I used to complain to her about this fellow, when I was little. While it was all quite real and I was not asleep. For many years I put it off as just a childhood hallucination. However, there were some things about the encounter that make me now think it may have been real.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheG7VH5wgbXanRXanr1cXwg1Kg3kKQSf0o-gw5C9y_10Qm9fnX1Ol6gAaXppb7ULyc945LGaStz9HXX3akHeZ1FORiTGf0cD03IEOQq68ONotJI6TGBR_-OvLXjFzueVjCkJ-U8_jZ8CT3p1eDNQ0bOtvIT7ASPkGOTDKEbqcTEVbhyIdRYUQG_Pa-/s2741/IMG_0070.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2741" data-original-width="2380" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheG7VH5wgbXanRXanr1cXwg1Kg3kKQSf0o-gw5C9y_10Qm9fnX1Ol6gAaXppb7ULyc945LGaStz9HXX3akHeZ1FORiTGf0cD03IEOQq68ONotJI6TGBR_-OvLXjFzueVjCkJ-U8_jZ8CT3p1eDNQ0bOtvIT7ASPkGOTDKEbqcTEVbhyIdRYUQG_Pa-/s320/IMG_0070.jpg" width="278" /></a></div><br /> I was born and raised in Canada…. We are of English, Scottish stock and a dash of Nordic blood in us as our Scottish ancestors come from the area where the Vikings and Scots interbred and the last name of those ancestors were names of those that mixed. My life was divided up into sections because we moved so often throughout the province of Ontario, in Canada; because of this it has been very easy for me to remember what I was doing at each stage and age of my life. I can remember eating in my highchair; my father feeding me baby food…. I can remember my sippy cup; it was blue with a white top. The first four years of my life were spent in the same house where I encountered two little men; one who told me his name was Bonnie. My parents told me that as soon as they had moved into this house, they would hear voices in my room at night (keep in mind my parents were not into hocus pocus stuff; they are very meat and potato type people and always had their feet on the ground.) At the time, my mother attended the Anglican Church and my father was member of the Presbyterian Church; both of which, during the 1950s had become quite mainstream and not fanatical. I share all this information to make clear the atmosphere of the family’s outlook on spiritual things. Anyway, my parents would take me out of my crib and put me in between them in their own bed, because the voices, coming from my room, frightened them. It would only be a couple more years, when I was three, that Bonnie would start coming into my room at night. I believe there are six aspects of my encounter with the little men that make me believe they may have been real and not just some childhood imagination.</div><div><br /></div>1. I was very, very afraid of the one man; the main one who came to see me, in my bedroom at night… in fact, he was the only one who came with the exception of ONE time when he brought another little person to see me.</div></div><p>2. Bonnie was about three and a half inches tall… His eyes bothered me; they had very high ridges around them. His head was slightly elongated. No pointed ears…. no elf hat. He seemed to have long sideburns (something odd for 1959 even Elvis’ sideburns were not like these back in the 50s). If I had seen any cartoon or picture in a story book, of an elf or fairy, then it doesn’t seem to make sense that I wouldn’t see pointed ears, on this fellow, if this man was really just my imagination. While it was dark in my room, with the door only slightly open allowing some light from the hall to come in, his skin seemed to be darker than mine… Almost a greyish or bluish brown colour but not too dark… His skin was light enough that I could see his facial features including the ridges on his eyes that, for whatever reason, seemed to bother me.</p><p>3. The man told me his name or at least told me what he was. I don’t recall the night he told me, but my mother informed me that I told her the man’s name was Bonnie. There are two problems with this name; until very recently, when I decided to do some research on the name, Bonnie, I had always thought that Bonnie was a girl’s name, but I now know that it is also a boys’ name… But, I didn’t know anyone with that name when I was three and as far as I know, and as far as my mother knew; our family didn’t know anyone by that name, either. Also, I can remember when I was three and had a hard time saying the words, television and telephone… I can remember trying very hard to pronounce them, and just couldn’t get them right. I have often wondered if this little man told me he was a Brownie and I couldn’t say the word correctly and so, my mother thought I said Bonnie. Again, I don’t remember the night the little man told me this, but my mother told me that was the name I gave her, when I was telling her about him. I actually do have some memories of the guy, but I don’t remember him telling me his name; I got that information from my mother.</p><p>4. At night I would pretend I was asleep because I was so afraid of him. I could feel him jump up and grab my blanket and I could feel him climb up the side of my bed; I could feel the little tugs on the blanket. This doesn’t seem like something a three-year-old mind would create if it was just his imagination… How would a boy that age know that a tugging feeling would be felt if something was climbing the side of the bed? It may be possible, but I just find this a bit odd to conceive. Also, the tugs seemed to indicate that it was a hard climb for him…. He didn’t climb fast… it wasn’t overly slow, but as an adult, and having at one time been rather fit, when I think back to his climbing, it seems as if it was an effort for him to climb up.</p><p>5. If I pretended to sleep, then Bonnie would walk upon my pillow; I could feel him walking on it and then he would tell me he knew I was awake. If I didn’t move and didn’t say anything, then he would pull one of my hairs, which of course, hurt me, and then I would either lift my head up and brace myself on the bed with my forearms or I would sit up all the way, cross legged on my bed. Most of the time he would just say nasty things to me, about how bad I was. I guess a Freudian psychiatrist would have a field day with that, perhaps suggesting that Bonnie was nothing more than an imaginary projection of the forming super-ego of a young three year old child. Anyway, Bonnie would tell me that he had been watching me throughout the day and he said that he thought I was a stupid boy and he would point out when he felt I had been bad and tell me he should hurt me as a punishment.</p><p>6. This is the most important point that makes me think he was real. (For some reason, I remember this night more clearly than any other…) On one occasion Bonnie brought another little man with him. But, the other man was almost a full inch TALLER than Bonnie. Bonnie told the other little man that I was the boy he had been talking about. Bonnie then started to tell me what a little brat I was and that he should punish me. The other little fellow then said to Bonnie; ‘Leave him alone…. stop scaring him!’ Then, Bonnie turned to him and shouted for him to, ‘Shut up…!!!’ Bonnie then went on to tell the other little man that he (Bonnie) wasn’t doing anything wrong. TWO things about this night make me believe that Bonnie had to be real. (1) I was shocked that Bonnie, being smaller, was yelling at the other little man, and that the other little man, even though he was much bigger, seemed to be afraid of Bonnie, because, after Bonnie yelled at him, the other man backed off and didn’t say any more and actually seemed intimidated by Bonnie. The other man didn’t interrupt any more even though Bonnie continued to try to scare me. I don’t think small children consider it normal for a smaller person to be able to boss around a larger person. Sure, once we get older and have more life experience, we come into contact with smaller people who are quite aggressive or assertive and who do boss around larger people… but, I just don’t think my three-year-old mind would have thought that way. (2) Also, there was the morality aspect to what they were saying; First, the other fellow tells Bonnie to leave me alone and not to scare me. This seems like a moral judgement. Also, Bonnie defensively but assertively replies that he isn’t doing anything ‘wrong’. Again, this speaks of moral values…. It just seems odd to me that my three-year-old mind would think these two fellows would debate the right or wrongness of Bonnie’s act… Rather, I would think that if this was really just my super-ego forming, that it would have focused solely on my behaviour and not that of Bonnie, who was a super-ego projected manifestation. Well, my story might not be that great, but it has puzzled me my whole life.</p><p>Perhaps I should add that my parents told me that I was a very well behaved child and so, that also makes me doubt that Bonnie was a manifestation of a developing super-ego; it is not like my parents had to keep disciplining me.... thanks.</p><p>Editor [Simon Young]: I asked John, now aged sixty-four, about his adult life. I was interested to see whether he had had other supernatural experiences.</p><p>I worked part time as Christian pastor for many years… and was always drawn to the more mystical aspect of the religion. My story of Bonnie is the only real strange story from my childhood, however, when I grew up, and especially throughout my twenties and early to mid thirties, I actually encountered a fair bit of poltergeist activity; enough that it frightened me, even as a Christian minister. I ended up contacting a professor, back when I was around twenty-nine…. Sorry, I cannot recall his name, but suspect I could find it, if I tried. He was some sort of investigator of poltergeist activity – he thought it was psychic energy, but I didn’t buy that for some reasons I won’t go into, right now. Why I bring this up, is that on three occasions, at different locations, the poltergeist activity would focus on me and no one else. Others witnessed what happened, but it never happened to them. Secondly, I have worked with the poor and the homeless in Canada, for decades. But, what got me interested in the homeless was two things; (1) I felt sorry for them… but also, (2) they tend to come up to me, even if I am in a crowd of people… They will push right through everyone else and come up to me and ask for money or help. Friends who know me and have walked around with on the streets, find it fascinating when they see this happen. So, I have always wondered if I gave off some sort of signal; you know, some body language (in the case of the homeless) or some energy (in the case of the poltergeist) that attracts both. One more thing. Shortly after my father died, he started coming to me in dreams; this is odd, because my father and I were not close later in life… He told me that my mother was in trouble and that the man she was seeing was going to hurt her. In one of the dreams, I realized I was dreaming and I told my father, in the dream, that he should go into my mother’s dream and tell her. He told me that he tried to but that she couldn’t hear him… He said he tried everyone in my family and I was the only one who could see and hear him in my dreams. Again, like Bonnie, I have no idea if what I experienced in the dream was real, but what I do know, is that I called up my sister to see if my mother was in fact, dating someone. I wasn’t close to either of my parents – they had become fundamentalist Christians many years earlier and I remained an Anglican… they thought I was going to Hell and basically stopped talking with me and so, I had no idea what my mother was doing. Turns out my mother had just began dating a man from her fundamentalist church. I did NOT contact my mother, to tell her about my dream, as I felt she would just think I was nuts. Sure enough, the man she was seeing, told her to sell her house and they used the money to travel throughout the USA… when she ran out of money, they came back to Canada and the man went back to his ex-wife. My mother’s pastor found out about this and made the two of them stand up in their church and confess their sins and repent. I don’t agree with what my mother did, but I would never go to a church that made me do that, if I screwed up.</p>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-26729878496600811782022-11-09T12:14:00.001-08:002023-03-10T20:36:31.350-08:00The Turtle and the Shark Once upon a time, on the West Samoan island of Tutuila, by the village of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaitogi" target="_blank">Vaitogi</a>, lived a woman called Fonoea, old and blind, with her little granddaughter. One day, having been neglected during a famine, she announced that she was going to commit suicide. But, she added, if they ever wanted to see her again, they should go to the cliffs and call for her. Of course, they took no notice. However, she got her granddaughter to lead her to the cliff, whence they both jumped in. At that point, she was turned into a large turtle, and the little girl into a small shark. The villagers were horrified, of course, but they remembered her promise, and so they called upon her in song to came back. And she did. Even since then, whenever they summon her, the turtle and shark will return.<div> That is a famous Samoan legend. You will easily find it if you do a web search, even on the Wikipedia. It was first recorded by a missionary in 1884, who treated it as a pagan superstition. But is it?<span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div> Fast forward to the early 1950s. For eight years E. J. Edwards had been the principal of a theological college on the neighbouring island of Malua when he first heard about it. One of his students from Tutuila told him how he had visited Vaitogi [pronounced <i>vy-tong-ee</i>] with a party of fellow students. Having heard the story from the villagers, they asked to see a demonstration. The following day they went out with a party of men, women, and children, and not for a minute did they expect to witness it. But they did. When the children chanted a strange song, a turtle and young shark appeared in the heavy sea below. They saw them with their own eyes.</div><div> That inspired Mr. Edwards to research the story, and having found the 1884 report, he made a visit to Vaitogi with a party of students. Then followed the usual ceremonies of speeches and the presentation of food with which visitors are normally welcomed in Polynesia. Eventually, he raised the issue of the turtle and the shark. The eyes of the village chiefs lit up, and when he asked if he could watch a demonstration, they enthusiastically agreed. He was taken aback. He had expected co-operation, but also evasions and reservations. Instead, when he asked when would be a convenient time, they immediately answered, "Now!"</div><div> So as they called the children, and the whole party set off towards the cliff, he kept thinking there must be a snag somewhere. Perhaps in the end one of the chiefs would apologize and say that the tide or the weather was wrong. The weather was fine, and almost cloudless, and the waves 30 feet [9 metres] below rolling in to thunder against the rocks. The crowd began singing in dirge-like monotone. Suddenly, less than a minute later, they stopped, and called out, "They're coming!" There was a great amber turtle heading towards the shore, and circling around it, a very young shark. The hair began to rise on the back of his neck.</div><div> One must admit that it would be uncanny for a wild sea creature to immediately appear when summoned, but accompanied by a vastly different companion .... Yet there was more.</div><div></div><blockquote><div> The singers called upon the turtle to dance. "Apa, apa laumei - dance, dance, turtle," they cried, and in complete bewilderment, I watched the turtle begin to undulate on the water in a sort of reptilian hula-hula. Then the people requested the turtle to raise its flippers - and again it responded. Lying on the surface of the sea in the brilliant sunlight, the turtle raised its flippers high out of the water.</div><div> While the villagers kept on singing the turtle kept diving and returning in a seemingly tireless display of aquatic acrobatics, while the shark swam to and fro a little farther out. Then, abruptly, the singing stopped and the creatures disappeared as suddenly as they had come. Once more the ocean was undisturbed and empty.</div></blockquote><div></div><div> Looking for a "logical explanation", Mr Edwards asked if they ever fed them. No. Did they call them up regularly? No, only now and then. When the people were out fishing, did they ever see them? No. They only came when called. The chief then told him that, during the war, some U.S. marines used to get the children to call them up regularly, upon which they would shoot at them, or pepper them with stones. The two creatures, quite sensibly, decided to stay away after that, but now that they were respected, they were coming back.</div><div> The following day, he was talking to "one of the ablest and most intelligent of the young Samoan leaders," who informed him that the turtle and shark were not real, but spirits.</div><div> In various places there exist individuals with a plausible claim of having occult power over certain wild animals. Such was the African <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-strange-power-of-ant-whisperer.html" target="_blank">ant whisperer</a>, which I documented six years ago. In that essay I also documented how the ability of the shark callers of New Ireland is waning. The <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-man-who-could-summons-porpoises.html" target="_blank">porpoise callers</a> of Kiribati no longer ply their trade. However, this particular skill appears to be still going strong. In early 2009 or 2008 a group of students from Brigham Young University went to Samoa to make a documentary and, lo and behold! they <a href="https://news.byu.edu/news/student-documentary-shows-footage-legend-coming-true" target="_blank">watched the summoning</a> of the turtle and shark.</div><div> I wonder how long this will last. Eventually, this skill will also die out, and one day the world will assume that such things never happened.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Reference:</b> E.J. Edwards, 'The Dancing Turtle', <i>The Wide World</i>, pp 232-5, Sept. 1956 in Australia, Aug. 1956 elsewhere.</div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-74943812779070310152022-02-09T22:34:00.002-08:002022-12-15T18:01:27.311-08:00The Unholy Alliance "If this is 'all in the mind', then all I can say is the mind is a very fertile field." That was a comment made to me by a missionary in Papua New Guinea about some of the bizarre effects of sorcery and folk religions he had noticed in his work. Well, the mind is a very fertile field, and outside the western world it often manifests in strange culture bound syndromes. <i>Koro</i>, for example, is a mental disorder which causes Chinese and Southeast Asian men to imagine that their penises are retracting into their bodies. Malays run <i>amok</i>. In much of the Muslim world women find themselves possessed by what they call <i>zar</i> spirits, but the syndrome in not necessarily seen as pathological, because many of them make quite a bit of money out of it, just like spiritualists over here. Just the same, one wonders how far the 'fertile field' theory can be stressed before we wonder whether something alien has sprouted there.<span><a name='more'></a></span><div> In Burma the minor gods and nature spirits are known as <i>nat</i>s, and this includes the area in the north inhabited by the Kachin peoples. In 1938, a British colonial official wrote about his fifteen years among them "in my youth", which I take to mean the early part of last century. But it was a particular murder trial which we are interested in.</div><div></div><blockquote><div> The spirit associated with murder is the Sawa <i>nat</i>, which is believed to take possession of its victims, causing them to kill right and left. This <i>nat</i>, by the way, is supposed to be very difficult to get rid of; people afflicted must be prepared to sacrifice all their belongings before they can hope to be freed from the murderous obsession.</div><div> An old man of seventy, said to be possessed of this evil spirit, took his gun, thrust it through the crevice of his son's hut, and shot his little grand-daughter, aged six. When examined in Court he declared that he did not remember killing the girl, but everyone was so positive about it that he supposed he must have done so!</div><div> During the trial the ancient was suddenly seized with convulsions, shaking his hand-cuffs and kicking at his chains in [a] most violent fashion for about half-an-hour. This in itself was strange enough, considering his weak and emaciated state; but he also kept singing a Kachin saga, which ceased abruptly the fit passed. When he came to himself again he was unable to account for his behaviour, except to plead that it must have been due to the Sawa <i>nat</i>.</div><div> We tried to convince ourselves that the whole performance was just play-acting, but the grave countenances of the Kachin witnesses made it clear that they, at least, believed in and sympathised with the sufferer. After several more attacks, the trial was suspended and the accused sent for medical observation. The doctor's verdict was that he was suffering from some curious form of epilepsy.</div></blockquote><div></div><div><b>Reference:</b> M. E. Yaw Yone, 'Among the Kachins', <i>The Wide World Magazine</i>, July 1938, pp 243-8, at 246-7</div><div> Now, obviously, we cannot draw any conclusions about the nature and origin of the old man's condition without full details about the trial, as well as a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation, along with knowledge of his previous history. But it is surely disturbing that having a person go into a fugue state and murder someone should be taken for granted in a culture, and frequent enough for the condition to have a name. I reported the story because you are unlikely to ever see it elsewhere, and because it leads into something I want to discuss in detail: in a culture such as this, it is highly likely that many people are involved in what I call the Unholy Alliance: attempts by humans to deal with spirits, whether real or imaginary. Whether the outcome is slotted into the psychological or paranormal pigeon hole, ample evidence exists from our own society that such practices do not end well.</div><div> Take something often seen as trivial: the ouija board. There are two reasons for not getting involved. The first is that, in the vast majority of cases, it is a load of old rubbish. You end up corresponding with your subconscious mind, and bringing out of its basement items which should have stayed there. The second is, if anything, even more compelling: there is a slight chance that it is <i>not </i>a load of old rubbish. After all, there is no reason to experiment with them unless you consider there is a chance they might be genuine. But if you open the portal, who knows what might walk through? There is no guarantee that the beings "out there" are all benign, and I've never heard of anyone contacting angels in this fashion.</div><div> Ex-Professor Michael Swords, one of America's most prominent ufologists, once decided to <a href="https://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/search/label/Ouija" target="_blank">look into the subject</a>.</div><div><blockquote>So off to the internet I went. I found about 1000 cases where people were reporting their experiences. I used the first 500 that I found to make a crude study. The weight of the statistics told [to my view] a strong story: OUI-JA experiences started out childishly and fun, turned odd and a bit creepy, then turned dark. The majority of the persons reporting said that the experiences were negative and were not going "back in". A third said that the board was constantly into a morbid death theme and almost a quarter said that they themselves were given death threats. The most stunning element to me was the 40% reporting of poltergeist-like activities ultimately breaking out.</blockquote></div><div> It gets worse if one deliberately seeks out darker spirits. "Catherine", a West Virginian housewife, was a good Christian woman. But she hadn't always been. To her psychiatrist she eventually admitted that in her youth she had joined with two female friends to form a small "witches' coven", and they pledged loyalty to the devil. They had even offered several aborted foetuses for ritual use, but the psychiatrist thought it best not to ask where they came from. Now, many years after renouncing the group, and despite having no prior history of mental illness, she was suffering symptoms she interpreted as demonic attacks. She would receive mental messages causing great pain, especially in the ears, but an E.N.T. specialist could detect no abnormality. She saw dark, shadowy shapes she interpreted as spirits. An interesting symptom was that her hearing was perfect for everything except religious references. She could easily hear about mundane things, but when the psychiatrist asked her, "Have you given up trusting in God's help?", her reply was "Trusting <i>what</i>?" After more of this, the psychiatrist returned with a colleague, and this time they gave her written questions. Again, she had no problem answering them, but when she got to the questions about praying or attending mass, she asked why they had given her blank pieces of paper. Sometimes she would go into "possession" type trances. And yes, she also occasionally displayed ESP. None of this fits any known syndrome. If this is 'all in the mind', then the mind is a very fertile field.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwCDKLzHKR4TaDDkyvcN65KBQ9aA2hz7lUtv-fcMy5ByppiRD7hLQ2WVZt6De6U0rVfr-SmyS-xpNflHEOzwnwFsVMnMd9Vo0glN66QUuulbWx3WJETJD-drXBXSHSTJWOGW17xsDFZzXftLoRngbpXvwor-f7lnwbPF9EwmpiG3KMu-348JGilHQ-=s320" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="213" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjwCDKLzHKR4TaDDkyvcN65KBQ9aA2hz7lUtv-fcMy5ByppiRD7hLQ2WVZt6De6U0rVfr-SmyS-xpNflHEOzwnwFsVMnMd9Vo0glN66QUuulbWx3WJETJD-drXBXSHSTJWOGW17xsDFZzXftLoRngbpXvwor-f7lnwbPF9EwmpiG3KMu-348JGilHQ-" width="213" /></a></div> The above case history came from Richard Gallagher's book, <i>Demonic Foes: my twenty-five years as a psychiatrist investigating possessions, diabolic attacks, and the paranormal</i> (2020). <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/01/as-a-psychiatrist-i-diagnose-mental-illness-and-sometimes-demonic-possession/" target="_blank">Dr. Gallagher</a> is no credulous lightweight. He trained at Yale, and is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at New York Medical College. The book comes with a foreword by Dr. Joseph T. English, also a professor at the same college, and Past Present of the American Psychiatric Association. The book contains a chapter detailing the mental illnesses which might be confused with possession, and another about false memories and the "Satanic abuse" moral panic of the 1980s. The author emphasized that demonic possession is extremely rare. In all his clinical practice, he had never had a patient walk in suffering from the condition, although a number were deluded enough to think so. All the cases he considered genuine were referred to him by exorcists or, in a few instances, contacted him directly after reading an article he wrote.</div><div> So how did he get involved in the field in the first place? Simply by having a leading U.S. exorcist, whom he calls "Father Jacques" come to him, asking him to assess a woman who had travelled 2,000 miles to see him (Jacques) because she believed she was suffering from demonic oppression, or attacks. The doctor told him he was sceptical. The priest replied that was a good thing.</div><div> "Maria" was a pious Mexican woman without any prior history of mental illness, but she had a problem: while in bed she would be punched and buffeted by an invisible something, and had the bruises to prove it. Her husband told of his dismay at watching his wife being attacked without any ability to help her. A thorough psychiatric assessment found nothing wrong with her mental condition. A battery of tests revealed no physical explanation for the bruises. But, as it turned out, the problem was eventually solved by deliverance prayers. If this is 'all in the mind', then all I can say is the mind is a very fertile field. As I explained in my post about the <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-english-werewolf.html" target="_blank">English werewolf</a>, when a person is perfectly normal except for something which bears no resemblance to any recognized disorder, calling it a mental illness is just a label masquerading as an explanation. It simply means "We don't know the cause, but it is assumed to be internal." What if it isn't?</div><div> Over the years, Dr Gallagher learned the difference between demonic oppression, like Maria's, and possession, when the victim goes into a trance-like state and an evil personality emerges. He noted how often there had been a past history of the unholy alliance. But how do we know it's not 'all in the mind'? Well, for a start, some are out of proportion to any putative solution. Take <a href="http://www.castleofspirits.com/ghoststories/stories17/June2017_5.html" target="_blank">this case</a>, for example, where a small child suffered attacks of blows and deep scratches, while his elder brother saw a dark shape in the room. However, the attacks ceased when a priest baptized the victim, who reacted with pain to the imposition of holy water. And remember, the child was too young to understand the ritual. Furthermore, exorcists list three elements they consider signs of "genuine" possession: paranormal phenomena, hidden knowledge eg ESP, and xenoglossy, the ability to speak in languages not previously studied. 11½ years ago I reported about a <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com/2012/08/when-devil-talks-in-tongues.html" target="_blank">case in England</a> which ticked all three boxes. There was poltergeist activity, and the possessed's alternate personality was able to reveal knowledge of the visitor's past, and to converse with the exorcist in Swazi.</div><div> Dr Gallagher referred to an incident when an exorcist of Bulgarian background found himself been spoken to by the demon/alternate personality in his own language. How many Americans speak Bulgarian? Some of the Roman Catholic exorcists use the Latin ritual which, among other things, should ensure that the patient is not being subject to suggestion. However, he witnessed an exorcism where the patient responded to every Latin sentence. I need to remind you that this is not what is known as cryptoamnesia. Under hypnosis, or other altered states of consciousness, a person can remember phrases he had heard in the past repeated in a foreign language. But that is very different from knowing the vocabulary and grammar of the language in order to converse in it.</div><div> Then there was the case of Julia, the "Satanic Queen". Dr Gallagher has <a href="https://www.sott.net/article/151935-Among-the-Many-Counterfeits-a-Case-of-Demonic-Possession" target="_blank">previously described</a> her exorcism, but there was a lot more to it than that.</div><div> For a start, the night before she and Fr. Jacques arrived, the doctor's two cats, which usually get on very well, suddenly went berserk and started fighting like, well, Kilkenny cats. Coincidence? But the first thing "Julia" said on arrival was, "How'd you like those cats last night?" It transpired that something similar happened in the home of another psychologist. Fr. Jacques then explained to him that Julia was a "high priestess" of a Satanic cult, and had allegedly been granted "special abilities" by her Satanic master, and the cult had threatened him directly.</div><div> Dr. Gallagher explained that he was not her therapist, but an unpaid consultant for Fr. Jacques. Over the following months, she told Dr. Gallagher her story in a calm, balanced manner. She was firmly committed to her cult, but lately she had been possessed. She would "space out" and a voice would come out of her, but she remembered nothing about it. She told her cult that she was attempting to infiltrate the church, because they were against her seeing an exorcist. You may notice a certain problem here. "Catherine" might be compared to a person who, in her youth, had got involved with a criminal gang, and now the gang was trying to recruit her again. But Julia was more like a gang member who was still committed to the criminal underworld, but wanted protection by the police from the high level criminals. The prognosis was not good.</div><div> She had been baptized a Roman Catholic, but never took religion seriously. A priest had once sexually molested her. She eventually fell in love with Daniel, the leader of the coven. He appeared to be one of those high testosterone "bad boys" who often attract weak women. She became "Queen Lilith", and described sex orgies and black masses. She was "the cult's main breeder", because she could get pregnant easily, after which a physician's assistant would perform an abortion, and they would use the foetuses in dark ceremonies. Only now she feared she was losing her breeding ability, and her hold over Daniel, and she feared the cult. It is hard to imagine that anyone could report such things calmly, and I suspect a certain repressed conscience was involved.</div><div> Once she told the doctor that she "saw" Fr. Jacques walking along the beach, and described his clothing in detail. The doctor immediately contacted the priest by mobile phone, and it turned out to be completely accurate. She claimed special gifts: ESP and the ability to control things - like cats. Just the same, these don't sound to me like terribly exciting gifts for which to bargain your soul.</div><div> At one point, the priest and the doctor were driving with Julia in the back seat, when suddenly, a deep, raspy voice issued from the back: "Leave her alone, you f***g monkey priest. She is <i>ours</i>. We we will never let her go." Julia's face was vacant, but her fists were clenched, but the voice was coming from her mouth, and continued in the same manner for ten minutes. When it was over, she remembered nothing of it. The disturbing thing was that, some time later, when the doctor called Fr. Jacques, the same voice interrupted the phone, hissing, "We said <i>leave her alone, you f***g priest.</i> She belongs to <i>us</i>, not you. You'll be <i>sorry</i>." He asked Fr. Jacques if he had also heard the voice, and was told that the same thing had happened several times. Now, you must agree that, although it is always possible that Julia's fugue state was a manifestation of her subconscious, it is a bit difficult to use that explanation for a voice over the phone.</div><div> Did you know that, in the United States, an exorcism cannot proceed unless the patient signs a waiver confirming that it is voluntary, and that it is a spiritual exercise? Julia's last exorcism lasted just over two hours. Eight persons were present: two exorcists, two nuns, one of them a nurse, a laywoman and three strong laymen. In the exorcism of a woman, the attendant women are the ones required to hold her arms and feet. Julia went into a trance, and the demon or whatever continued the whole time with a barrage of insults, as well as groans and raucous, animal-like noises. She spoke in several languages unknown to her in her conscious state, including articulate Latin. She struggled with furious strength, and writhed in pain at the sprinkling of holy water, although in earlier assessments she had not reacted to tap water. Then, for half an hour, she levitated a foot from her chair, and the witnesses felt she would have risen to the ceiling if they hadn't held her down. Dr. Gallagher claimed to have heard of 15 contemporary cases of levitation, and I have <a href="http://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2018/02/levitating-saints-and-others.html " target="_blank">previously described</a> levitation by Christian mystics. At one point, the room turned cold, as it often does during poltergeist activity, and then stifling hot.</div><div> There is much more involved. Sadly, Julia never renounced the unholy alliance, and so was never released from its bondage. At their last interview she told Dr. Gallagher that she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He concluded by saying that, although doubtful, he hoped she was still alive somewhere. However, I greatly fear she is now beyond all help, either human or divine.</div><div> </div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-5281879346611157442021-10-18T15:52:00.001-07:002021-10-18T15:52:45.995-07:00Interview re "Apparitions" Recently, I was approached by Wendy Garrett in Kansas, who interviewedme for 40 minutes by telephone about my recent book, <i><a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com/2021/09/a-new-book-on-apparitions.html" target="_blank">Apparitions</a></i>. You can now access the podcast at <a href="https://audioboom.com/posts/7960496-malcolm-smith-10-17-21-aussie-fortean-blogger-writer-researcher-apparitions-paranormal" target="_blank">https://audioboom.com/posts/7960496-malcolm-smith-10-17-21-aussie-fortean-blogger-writer-researcher-apparitions-paranormal</a>. I hope you find it interesting, if only to listen to the two quite different accents. (I might add, it was a little disturbing to hear myself talking, because you never hear your own voice the way other people do.)<div> One thing I found interesting was Wendy's account of her own experience at 11.57. She was weeding the garden when she heard an invisible choir chanting something like, "Mother, bring us rain". Then a cloud passed over, there was a short sprinkle of rain, and the voices stopped. I have no explanation for that.</div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-15596400098807892912021-09-16T18:38:00.004-07:002021-11-26T12:21:10.668-08:00A New Book on Apparitions I started this blog with the aim of collecting reports which were in danger of being forgotten, in the hope that, in the aggregate, they might form a pattern. Well, I have now managed to see some sort of pattern - one of which I wasn't aware initially - so I have now collected it into a book. It is called <i>Apparitions: tulpas, ghosts, fairies, and even stranger things</i>, and it is available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle e-book form. Much of it has already been published, but a whole lot more is new: collated from both nineteenth and twentieth century sources. With 213 endnotes, it is fully documented.<span><a name='more'></a></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiE4LhMAVsx84o6nx0rPbOL8xhIZSFnk94dWBBVQhkPFw60jU5AiqVdgb_HzsO1rqwd1eTqeW049eY0dJJ7shKRTrQa5mii9QYD1tB5JIpYbsI02g8Jo3sgzCC_bdtOEvTgJzPeEvmfhE/s2048/Apparitions.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1359" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiE4LhMAVsx84o6nx0rPbOL8xhIZSFnk94dWBBVQhkPFw60jU5AiqVdgb_HzsO1rqwd1eTqeW049eY0dJJ7shKRTrQa5mii9QYD1tB5JIpYbsI02g8Jo3sgzCC_bdtOEvTgJzPeEvmfhE/w265-h400/Apparitions.jpg" width="265" /></a></div> And here it is: decorated with the image of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall, the ghost photograph most likely to be genuine.<div> Although "apparition" is often used as a synonym for "ghost", as the subtitle reveals, I discovered that ghosts are only one variety of apparition, and not even the weirdest. There is a parallel world of non-material beings which is only occasionally perceptible to us. They have an objective reality; they are not "all in the mind", but the mind is how we normally perceive them.</div><div> Part I deals with matters most people never hear about: apparitions of both real entities and imaginary ones which can be shown to have been induced by the mental processes of third parties. Then I go on to apparitions of living persons - almost always without their own awareness.</div><div> Part II deals with the undead. First there are the well documented cases of the dying seeing and conversing with deceased friends and relatives, including some they did not know were deceased. In some cases, the third parties attending the death bed also saw them. From there it moves to the more conventional ghosts. But one chapter involves the astounding, but nevertheless fully attested, case of a ghost seeking - nay, demanding - the prayers of the living for his release. I also attempt to outline the parameters of the phenomenon. Thus, for example, it is strange that ghosts bear the shape of the original body, but even stranger that they are always clothed (do clothes have souls?) - but not in the bedclothes in which most of them would have died. I also noted many cases where a ghost could be seen by one person but not another, but I was unable to discover the same thing with ghostly sounds.</div><div> Part III concerns the "little people" - what people would normally think of as elves or fairies. This was a subject I took a great deal of time coming to terms with. Nevertheless, the phenomenon appears to be worldwide, with so many independent testimonies that it became difficult to ignore, although impossible to explain.</div><div> Finally, Part IV deals with the "twilight zone". Here I do a quick run-through of very, very strange apparitions: merfolk, winged entities, creatures with the faces of cats or dogs, walking stick figures, and the like. I have no explanation for these, but there are so many testimonies, it is hard to reject them all. Fortunately, most of these appear to be indifferent to human beings, but I include a chapter of entities which are clearly malignant, even demonic, but some, thankfully, which might be angelic.</div><div> I urge you to acquire the book and judge for yourself. If nothing else, it will be an eye opener.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Addendum:</b> In October 2021, I was interviewed by Wendy Garrett of Wendy's Coffeehouse about this book, and this blog in general. You can find the podcast - it is 39 minutes and 54 seconds in length - at <a href="https://audioboom.com/posts/7960496-malcolm-smith-10-17-21-aussie-fortean-blogger-writer-researcher-apparitions-paranormal" target="_blank">https://audioboom.com/posts/7960496-malcolm-smith-10-17-21-aussie-fortean-blogger-writer-researcher-apparitions-paranormal</a></div><div>There is also a review by a member of the British Society for Psychical Research.</div><div><a href="https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/apparitions-tulpas-ghosts-fairies-and-even-stranger-things-malcolm-smith" target="_blank">https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/apparitions-tulpas-ghosts-fairies-and-even-stranger-things-malcolm-smith</a> (Since then, I have corrected all the typographic errors the reviewer mentioned.)<br /></div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-43837931822036730232020-10-16T21:31:00.000-07:002020-10-16T21:31:10.223-07:00The Dream That Led to Murder There are so many anecdotes of accurate premonitions of danger, either waking or dreaming, that we must accept this form of ESP as one of our evolved survival strategies. A strong premonition of this sort commonly induces the percipient to alter his behaviour in order to avoid the danger. But what if there are serious consequences of such an action? What if cancelling your plane flight at the last moment means losing both the fare and the cost of your holiday? What if your boss insists you make the journey? Worse still, how do you know that attempting to avoid the danger won't make it come true?<span><a name='more'></a></span><div> The blog of Professor emeritus Michael Swords - bless him! - put me onto a fascinating book by Catherine Crowe published in 1850 entitled, <i><a href="https://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2009/12/catherine-crowe-and-battle-for-mind-and.html" target="_blank">The Night-Side of Nature</a>. </i> You can read or download it <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54532" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://archive.org/search.php?query=night%20side%20of%20nature" target="_blank">here</a>. So far, I am only in the first few chapters, but already it is full of revealing anecdotes.</div><div> Thus, chapter 5, or "Warnings" tells of Dr W., who dreamed that he was called to a patient several miles away, and while he was crossing a moor on horseback, he was attacked by a bull. Only by locating a spot inaccessible to the bull was he able to escape, and there he remained until some people discovered his plight and rescued him. The next morning, he received a summons from that very patient. "What an unusual coincidence!" he thought. But as he was crossing the moor - lo and behold! - there was a bull, the last thing you would expect on the commons. Need I say more? The action played out exactly as per the dream, and it was only because of the dream that he was able to find the safe site where he spent four hours held up. Obviously, if you receive a warning dream, it is a good idea to heed it.</div><div> Or is it? The most disturbing story was one she culled from a newspaper, although she did not provide a citation, only the text. Although the original story came from Germany, I presume she was quoting a Scottish newspaper, because of the use of the term, "baillie" for a certain type of municipal official. A Hamburg locksmith called Claude Soller was approached by his apprentice, who related his dream of the previous night. He had been murdered on the road to Bergsdorff, a small town about two hours' journey away. (This is presumably different from the modern town of Bergsdorf, which is a long way off.)</div><div> We must imagine a frightened lad in his late teens. The locksmith scoffed at his worries. It was only a dream, after all. And to demonstrate his contempt for the idea, he immediately gave him a mission to Bergsdorff. Soller's brother-in-law lived there, and since he (Soller) owed him 140 rixdollars - which was no doubt a lot of money in those days - the apprentice was to take them to him. The poor boy begged and complained, but to no avail, so at 11 am, off he went.</div><div> Halfway to his destination, he came to the village of Billwaerder (now Billwerder, an outer suburb of Hamburg), where the terror of his dream took hold of him. Seeing the "baillie" supervising some workmen, he told him of his dream and implored him, because he was carrying money, to allow one of the workmen to accompany him through a small wood <i>en route</i>. The baillie was happy to oblige.</div><div> Next day some peasants brought in the corpse of the apprentice, his throat cut, along with the blood-stained reaping hook found next to the body. The baillie immediately recognized it as the instrument he had given to his workman to trim the willow: the same workman he had appointed to be the apprentice's guide. It just goes to show you should never contemplate murder if you are completely stupid. The workman confessed, and admitted it was the apprentice's story of his dream which had put the idea into his head.</div><div> There is a common motif in fiction whereby attempting to outwit a prophesy actually causes its fulfilment, but in real life, a premonition of danger usually allows the recipient to avoid it. However, in this case, the murder would never have taken place if the victim hadn't dreamed about it, and then talked about the dream. Of course, it could have been just be a coincidence: a bad dream with no psychic overtones, but which inspired two people to act it out. I hope so, because if it wasn't, it raises disturbing questions about causation, free will, and destiny.</div><div> Anyhow, if I ever have a premonition, I hope it is about a plane crash, because my cancelling will not cause it to crash. At least, I hope it won't.</div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-31184530960692662992020-09-17T13:34:00.002-07:002020-11-28T16:42:00.831-08:00"Just One of Those Things" Here's something I'm sure we're all familiar with: an item, usually a small one, inexplicably goes missing. Some time later it turns up in a place where it has no right to be or, even more puzzling, appears staring you in the face in an area which had already been thoroughly searched. Mostly we can put it down to absent mindedness, or some such "rational" explanation, but sometimes it is harder to explain. When we bought a second hand car, I purchased a logbook, which stayed in the glove box when I wasn't writing in it. Two weeks later it disappeared. I bought a replacement, and that one also vanished after six weeks. I wasn't game to tempt fate a third time but, six or seven years later, we collected the car from its twice yearly service, and discovered that the mechanics had left both logbooks, not obviously dirty or damaged, on the front seat. Obviously, they had been discovered in some nook of the car. How did they get there from the glove box? How come it happened twice? And why weren't they found earlier? Just the same, I am not (yet) prepared to invoke a paranormal explanation. It was "just one of those things". However, some other incidents are more difficult to dismiss.<span><a name='more'></a></span><div> Take, for instance, the experience of <a href="https://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2020/07/summa-faeryologica-part-ten.html" target="_blank">Prof. Michael Swords</a>. He used to empty his pockets every night and place the objects - nearly always the same, and always including his watch - on a space by the sink. One morning, the watch wasn't there. No amount of searching and backtracking could locate it. Finally, after five days without a watch, he purchased a new one, and placed it with the other items that night. The next morning, not only was the new watch there, but the old one had come back. (Have you noticed how missing items tend to reappear just after their absence ceases to be an inconvenience?) Not only that, but a <a href="https://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2012/11/trickster-strike.html" target="_blank">friend of his</a> had a pair of scissors disappear and be replaced by a different pair, only to return later.</div><div> So these things represent a genuine paranormal phenomenon. There is a website called "<a href="http://realityshifters.com/pages/yourstories.html" target="_blank">Reality Shifters</a>" about it, while the <i>Fortean Times</i> magazine calls it "pixilation", and readers told many stories about how they used to successfully ask for the items back. I suggested <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com/2016/08/on-pixilation-and-poltergeists.html" target="_blank">elsewhere</a> that this custom might inadvertently encourage the phenomenon.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYKFHT-aWnqMZWKklS6lZBKHnV5aNpSDq7YBGtnvmOHchatAwnFqQoHhEBDc2YxBkGQtR_nybkkxiZi3HCt_cKc7BwngnJUksS_NJ_I6cajuYZoOKqBggU8G28e2LBpYOHn9KhKekDM40/s218/Jott.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="142" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYKFHT-aWnqMZWKklS6lZBKHnV5aNpSDq7YBGtnvmOHchatAwnFqQoHhEBDc2YxBkGQtR_nybkkxiZi3HCt_cKc7BwngnJUksS_NJ_I6cajuYZoOKqBggU8G28e2LBpYOHn9KhKekDM40/w208-h320/Jott.jpg" width="208" /></a></div><br /> Mary Rose Barrington, a prominent member of the (British) Society for Psychical Research, labels it "JOTT", for "just one of those things", and has written <a href="https://www.anomalistbooks.com/book.cfm?id=102" target="_blank">a book</a> about it. The case histories she provides are quite extraordinary, so I shall list only a few.</div><div> <b>[1]</b> This case was unusual in that it was documented by a series of correspondence. Prof. BSM was living in a house in rural Somerset, the nearest neighbour being half a mile away. The children were at school. His elderly uncle was resting in bed. His wife was asleep in the garden, well secluded from the outside world, but when she woke up, there was an unopened letter on her lap, addressed to a Miss X in the West of London.</div><div> When she showed it to her husband at tea time, they opened it, and discovered it had been written a month earlier (where had it been in the interval?) from a London University college library demanding the return of a certain book. Well, they corresponded with the college, and returned the letter. Later, the Professor realised that, although he had made copies of all their correspondence, he didn't have a photocopy of the original letter to Miss X, so he wrote to the library requesting a copy. The one he received was not the original, but a copy of the <i>second </i>letter demanding the return of the book. When he brought this to the attention of the library, they searched and searched, and discovered that their copy of the original letter had disappeared.</div><div> This is something you may wish to consider the next time a letter from or to you is "lost in the mail".</div><div><br /></div><div> <b>[9]</b> A small child chewed a gramophone record and tossed into the air - where it promptly vanished! Five years later, it returned, complete with tooth marks. As the author said, "This is surely too bizarre for anyone to make up with an expectation of being believed."</div><div><br /></div><div> <b>[36]</b> This is especially weird, as it apparently involves a ghost. A month after she had lost her husband, ERC lost a bracelet given to her by her late husband, so that afternoon she and a friend searched for it thoroughly, including "every inch of the ground between the car and the front door." Before going to bed she addressed (?prayed to) her late husband aloud, asking him to find the bracelet. That evening her daughter was out on a date. At 1 a.m. she and her boyfriend burst into the bedroom to report that they had <i>both</i> seen her husband looking out through the kitchen window.</div><div> To cut a long story short, at 6 o'clock, when it was barely daylight, she decided to take her dog for a walk. When she returned about 9, lo and behold! there was the bracelet just below the milk bottles. The milkman insisted he had never seen it. It hadn't been there when ERC had left at 6, and certainly not when she and her friend had combed the whole area the previous afternoon.</div><div><br /></div><div> <b>[47]</b> A Frank Drucker was holding a special stamp between thumb and forefinger as he crossed the floor to stick it on an envelope. While both his eyes and fingers were fixed on it, it <i>dematerialised </i>- and, of course, was never seen again.</div><div><br /></div><div> <b>[59]</b> From your own experience, you probably know that keys are popular items to go wandering. This case was written down within 24 hours of its occurrence. Maurice Grosse's wife lost her handbag, so they had to replace the lock on the door - ditto the keys. Removing the old keys from the keyrings was a real trial; Maurice had to use pliers to keep the spring-loaded plunger open. He then put the old lock and the spare old keys in a special box. The very next day, his wife noticed a new key on her keyring. Another one was found in the box with the old lock and, yes, they did fit the old lock. But they weren't the old keys; they were brand new. Not only that, they bore the name and telephone number of a locksmith the family had never used. Further investigations revealed that the locksmith had ceased making this sort of key at least two years before.</div><div><br /></div><div> <b>[66]</b> Dr Alan Mayne once picked up a pale green apple in order to eat it, only to have it slip from his fingers. He heard it strike the floor, but then it disappeared. Much later, he was finishing dinner with a retired physicist in the latter's kitchen, when a <i>wizened</i> green apple suddenly appeared at eye level and fell softly onto his plate. (Readers may remember I wrote <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/how-can-solid-objects-appear-out-of.html" target="_blank">an article</a> about objects which materialise out of nowhere.) </div><div><br /></div><div> <b>[75]</b> Finally, she provides examples of what she calls "oddjotts", which defy the laws of nature as we know them. In this case, a woman entered her bathroom, locked it from the inside, and hung her dressing gown on the back of the door. When she emerged from the shower, it was missing, only to turn up at the foot of the stairs. The implication was that it must have passed through the locked door.</div><div><br /></div><div> The book is essentially two books in one. The second half is an attempt at an explanation. It takes us through a grand tour of psychic phenomena, and ends up with a bizarre theory-of-everything which turns out to be pantheism dressed up in scientific language. It may be a vast edifice built on a slim, shaky foundation, but the exposition of paranormal phenomena is well worth the read, and it appears the psychical research of a century or more ago was more rigorous than it is usually given credit for.</div><div> Finally, I would like to throw into the melée another anecdote. I must emphasize that I am NOT proposing this as a blanket explanation for the phenomenon of <i>jott</i>, but it deserves a mention. It is case number 267 of the <a href="http://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2018/01/results-of-new-fairy-census.html " target="_blank">second fairy census</a>, and concerns a woman from Illinois.</div><blockquote><div>Some friends came from the city for the weekend and the lady brought with her a pattern and fabric so I could help make [a] dress for a party. One of the items was a long zipper and when it came time to put the zipper in, it had gone missing. She drove into a nearby town and bought another and the dress was finished. A couple of days after they had gone I was in my parlor and I looked up from what I was doing to see a wee man about eighteen inches high. He had brown skin and a very odd looking face. His hair was black and tousled like the hair of a baby. His eyes reminded me of apple seeds. And in his hand was the missing zipper. 'HEY' I called out and in that instant, he was gone and the zipper was lying stretched flat on the floor in the doorway. . . . I saw the little fellow clearly one other time while she [her toddler daughter] was playing with him.</div></blockquote>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-52012696093337230632020-07-11T04:45:00.002-07:002021-08-13T18:04:04.400-07:00A Famous Family's Fairies A wonderful thing, the internet! So many old books and documents are now online. I first read this story in one of Janet Bord's books, and even she had to rely on a secondary source. However, it took me just an hour one night to run the original source to earth. The information this times comes from a highly respectable source: the Rev. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Baring-Gould" target="_blank">Sabine Baring-Gould</a> (1834 - 1924), clergyman, archaeologist, folklorist, novelist, short story writer, and father of fifteen. These days he is remembered mostly as the author of "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and <i>Curious Myths of the Middle Ages</i>, but in his time he was up there with Andrew Lang, Thomas Carlyle, and other prominent Victorian men of letters. And in 1890 he wrote <i>In Troubadour-Land, a ramble in Provence and Languedoc</i>. The relevant pages are 65 and 66 because he had travelled there both as an adult and as a child, so after describing an area known as the Crau, he introduced a childhood anecdote.<span><a name='more'></a></span><div></div><blockquote><div> When I was a child of five years <i>[1839] </i>my father's carriage with post horses was crossing the Crau. It was in summer. I sat on the box with my father and looked at the postilions. Presently I saw a number of little figures of men with peaked caps running about the horses and making attempts to scramble up them. I said something about what I saw, whereupon my father stopped the carriage and put me inside with my mother. The heat of the sun on my head, he concluded, had produced these illusions. For some time I continued to see these dwarfs running among the pebbles of the Crau, jumping over tufts of grass, or careering along the road by the carriage side, making faces at me. But gradually their number decreased, and I failed finally to see any more.</div><div> One June day in the year 1884, one of my boys, then aged eight<i> [most likely Julian, born 1877]</i>, was picking gooseberries in the fruit garden at home, when, standing between the bushes, he saw a little man of his own height, with a brown peaked cap, a red jacket, and green breeches. He had black hair and whiskers and beard. He looked angrily at the boy and said something. The child was frightened, ran indoors and told his elder brother <i>[Edward, born 1871] </i>and sister. They brought him to me, and his elder brother repeated the story, but purposely varied the description of the apparition, so as to see whether the lad held to the same account, but the child at once corrected him, and told me his story, which his brother informed me agreed exactly with what in his alarm, he had first told. The little boy was looking white, and frightened. Again a case of sun on the head. </div><div> Now for another. A lady whom I know very well indeed, and who never deviated from the truth in her life—save when she swore at the altar to honour and obey me—was walking one day, when a girl of thirteen, beside a quickset hedge; her brother was on the other side. I believe they were looking for birds' nests. All at once she saw a little man dressed entirely in green, with jacket, breeches, and high peaked hat, seated in the hedge, staring at her. She was paralysed with terror for a moment, then recovering herself, she called to her brother to come round and see the little green man. When he arrived the dwarf had disappeared. <i>[Grace Baring-Gould née Taylor, 1850 -1916. This would have been at Horbury, West Yorkshire in 1863, the year before she met him.]</i></div><div> Now these are funny stories, and are to be explained by the fact that the sun was hot on the head. But it does not strike me that the explanation is wholly satisfactory. <i>Why</i> should the sun on the head superinduce visions of kobolds? Is it because other people have suffered from a hot sun, and that the hot sun reproduces year after year the same phenomenon, that the fable of little men, pixies, gnomes, brownies, fairies, leprechauns is to be found everywhere? Or—is it possible that there is such a little creation only visible to man when he is subject to certain influences? Sir Charles Isham, of Lamport, has collected a good deal of evidence of a similar nature. I do not venture to express an opinion one way or another. I can remember still, with vividness, the impression produced on me by what I saw that hot day on the Crau, when but a child of five years; but I cannot for the life of me explain it satisfactorily to myself.</div></blockquote><div><div> Needless to say, he had reason to have reservations about the sun hypothesis. Ask the people of California and Florida. Indeed, ask me, because I have lived all but ten of my 71 years in a subtropical capital. The hot sun does not cause you to "see things". And if it did, what you saw would not be limited to the faery realm.</div><div> In any case, here we have a prominent person, with nothing to gain by it, telling a fantastic story. Although he was a clergyman, he saw no religious significance in it. Indeed, it would be more appropriate for someone like Sir Charles Isham, who was a spiritualist, and started the garden gnome craze. Baring-Gould admitted that he did not understand the experience, but he did not make a big deal of it. It was just something sandwiched in the middle of an account of other matters. I can't see any reason to doubt that he was telling the truth as he saw it.</div><div> But we are also presented with two features common to these experiences: they happened to children, but they were remembered vividly as real events when they became adults. Note also that the son was a blood relation of the other two witnessess. Does susceptibility to seeing such otherwise invisible beings run in the family?</div><div> And one wonders how many other such stories are "out there", but remain hidden in more obscure publications.</div> </div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-53187812142549071512020-06-22T15:40:00.000-07:002021-08-13T18:04:12.435-07:00The Pixie on the Plane If you have been following this blog from its inception, you will probably be aware that, over the decade, I have gradually come to the conclusion that there really is something to sightings of the "little people", even if it is not possible to accept the whole of the fairy mythology. (If you want further information, see <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/search/label/fairies" target="_blank">here</a>.) However, there is one place I never expected to find them.<div> In 1995 a then British police officer, John Hanson got interested in UFOs. After being joined by Dawn Holloway, they began a project of producing a comprehensive history of the the phenomenon. It is an indication of the immensity of the subject that they ended up with a series of ten (yes, ten) volumes entitled, <i><a href="http://www.hauntedskies.co.uk/" target="_blank">Haunted Skies</a>.</i> And it must have been sometime in 2008 or 2009 that they received a communication from a retired headteacher on the Isle of Wight, who had an incredible story to tell.<span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div> His name was William Davis, born 7 May 1923, and former RAF Pilot/Navigator Sergeant, serial number 1805619. During the Second World War, many imperial pilots were trained in Canada under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. (In my thirty years with the Australian Department of Veterans' Affairs, I remember many files stamped, "E.A.T.S. Case" for "Empire Air Training Scheme", because they held dual eligibility.) In Sgt. Davis' case, he was posted to the Gimli RAF Base in Manitoba. It was 10 December 1944, and he had completed a two hour 45 minutes' flight on board an Anson V aircraft, in order to gain his "wings". Avro Anson aeroplanes, it is important to note, possessed a propeller on either wing, but none in front. There, at the end of his flight, he was waiting for the lights at the control tower to come on, and, naturally, was constantly checking both the instrument panel and the horizon. Let us now hear it in his own words:</div><div></div><blockquote><div> "I noticed what looked like two curious bumps, one either side of the nose of the aircraft, like tiny exhaust pipes, although the nose itself was empty. I decided to carry out a proper check when I landed and dismissed it from my mind. Suddenly, my eyes flashed back again to the nose. The 'exhausts' had begun to move. They now looked like hands. I thought this cannot be happening and checked to see if it wasn't some kind of reflection. Then a small entity, resembling a pixie, or elf - the ones associated with folklore, appeared outside the aircraft, a few feet from where I sat. I thought this cannot be happening and pinched my thigh hard and tried to think what checks I could carry out inside the aircraft.</div><div> I will never forget its pinkish face - European in nature, with a thick, short trimmed beard, close cut, covering its features, reminding me of an old English Naval seaman, dressed in some sort of green garb, height approximately 18in tall, apparently watching something in the sky to my left, moving slowly in a nonchalant manner - as if walking around the estate. I was close enough to see instead of fingers, he had what looked like little exhaust stubs, no thumbs, and pointed shoes made of velvet or some such material, rather than leather. He began to stroll towards me and was no more than 12-15in way, when something appeared to catch his eye. By this time I was shouting and gesticulating through the window, trying to attract his attention, but then realised he was unlikely to hear me because of the sound of the aircraft engines. "I had the impression he could not see me at all and was probably unaware of my existence. After about 30 seconds he sat down, looked below, gave a slight lift with his hand on the side and pushed himself off the nose before disappearing from view."</div></blockquote><div> The strange shape of the fingers is an unusual twist which is unlikely to have been invented. I don't know the significance of the second set of quotation marks in the above text; I suspect it is an editorial oversight. It is not stated whether it formed part of a letter or an interview. Both Bill and his son were interviewed. He told them that when he landed, he was exhilarated, but when he related his experience his comrades burst out laughing. I can't imagine why! Just the same, the next day a senior flying instructor visited him and informed him that he wasn't the only pilot to have had the experience.</div><div> In a letter sent in October 2009, he said, "I still think we will eventually get to the bottom of these sightings and what's behind them." Not in our lifetimes, I'm prepared to bet!</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Reference:</b> John Hanson and Dawn Holloway, <i>Haunted Skies</i>, vol. 1, pp 44 - 45</div><div>I was alerted to this by Kandinsky01, one of the commentators on Michael Swords "<a href="https://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-recent-popular-case-big-jump-forward.html" target="_blank">Big Study</a>".</div><div></div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-58621809677905250902020-05-27T22:38:00.001-07:002022-06-23T22:01:47.323-07:00When Weirdness Came to Sydney Why would anyone go to the press and tell a story that made no sense whatsoever? Experience shows that deliberately seeking to make yourself a laughing stock is one of the rarest of human motives. For a bit of fun? Hoaxes like that follow a pattern. Usually they are inspired by something strange already published - say a bigfoot or a flying saucer. That is the impetus for some smart Alec to come up with a tall tale on the same topic. The idea is to produce something halfway plausible - something which will be published - so that you can sit around with your friends, laugh, and disclaim: "Would you believe? They actually fell for that baloney!" But producing something completely over the top out of the blue is usually not on the agenda. In any case, after three years, when everything has been forgotten, it is unlikely that somebody completely different will go to a different newspaper and relate a story arguably similar.<div> Or perhaps something which made no sense really did visit Sydney, Australia half a century ago.<span><a name='more'></a></span></div><div> If you look up Narrabeen Lagoon, or Narrabeen Lakes on Google Earth you will see that it is situated at the far north of Sydney next to a national park. The area was even less built up back on 3 April 1968, when Mrs Mabel Walsh was driving next to it along the Wakehurst Parkway with her nephew, John, heading for the beach at Newport. It was about a quarter past one in the afternoon, and they both happened to see a strange creature standing in shallow water. As Mrs Walsh was quoted in the <i>Sun</i> of 5 April:</div><blockquote> "It was a bit over 4 feet <span style="background-color: white;"><i>[120 cm]</i></span> tall, with dark grey, tough leathery skin, like an elephant's. It had small front legs and walked on its hind legs which were thick and round like an elephant's. It ambled out of the lake and ran into the scrub. It had a strange shuffling walk, but was quite fast. It shocked me. It was a peculiar looking thing. I've never seen anything like it. We saw it only for a few seconds. I stopped the car, but had to wait for traffic to pass before I could back up. But the thing had gone. We were in a hurry. We wanted to have a swim.Then I had to get John to the airport and go home for tea before going to gemology classes. I didn't have time to call anyone to check on it. I didn't notice a tail or ears, but it had small eyes and smaller front legs or arms. It's head reminded me of an anteater's. Its trunk was rigid, squared off at the end and stuck down and out at an angle."</blockquote><div> Not something you'd make up, is it? I took this report from a typed 1976 catalogue of Australian CE3 cases by Bill Chalker and Keith Basterfield, the country's most prominent ufologists. They agree that there was no actual connection between the creature and any UFO, except that there were a rash of minor UFO sightings around Sydney a fortnight later. </div><div> They also cited another Sydney newspaper, the <i>Sunday Mirror</i> of 25 April 1971. A woman was awoken by a terrible gurgling sound, but saw nothing. However, two fishermen were out in a boat when they saw, by the light of a kerosene lamp, a grey being with a trunk like an elephant's, which was walking on the water with its back legs.</div><div> So there you have it! But I can't leave this story without adding a bit of whimsy. In Germany there exists a pulp science fiction series called <i>Perry Rhodan</i>, which has been published in 66-page booklets, a new one being churned out every week since 1961. Here is the cover of the issue for the last week in June 1996 ie a quarter of a century after the second Sydney visitation, which I picked up in a town called Graben-Süd. Do you think the author or artist knew something?</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQmxyP8W4bm8Yp5Ew-sTIvUmh1Te2Vyg1dNMRe_AuO0LqzpF2ZsVTbbDds0boP6UCzjmNPpQwcjhNudAXgZTcRQuAlsIhuAPLfFDAivpIv4JCfq2-vnGinVWrhyphenhyphenkNQK7a-OTeaDtBzwqc/"><img border="0" data-original-height="5104" data-original-width="3605" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQmxyP8W4bm8Yp5Ew-sTIvUmh1Te2Vyg1dNMRe_AuO0LqzpF2ZsVTbbDds0boP6UCzjmNPpQwcjhNudAXgZTcRQuAlsIhuAPLfFDAivpIv4JCfq2-vnGinVWrhyphenhyphenkNQK7a-OTeaDtBzwqc/w452-h640/Perry+Rhodan+1826.jpg" width="452" /></a></div><div><br /></div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-39414865722826178832019-10-06T17:54:00.002-07:002024-02-01T03:21:39.162-08:00Introducing a New UFO Novel<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I can't believe it," he said. "We've actually seen a flying saucer crash in front of our eyes."</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2IK_QE7pZvwPrZe4C9pS-NgDG-FXxgL32tpCc_A4AdE26tayoIHWzCUG3koveGBhQ55SNPJaxaBsgEUkd4D4wX_WBUTLzUMJ9UyrKH6nIOKjyLZJbnJJipsXofwPQK41kK_-F7OR5ewc/s1600/Stranger+from+the+Stars.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="324" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2IK_QE7pZvwPrZe4C9pS-NgDG-FXxgL32tpCc_A4AdE26tayoIHWzCUG3koveGBhQ55SNPJaxaBsgEUkd4D4wX_WBUTLzUMJ9UyrKH6nIOKjyLZJbnJJipsXofwPQK41kK_-F7OR5ewc/s320/Stranger+from+the+Stars.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
Everything else in this blog concerns events which the witnesses claimed genuinely happened. But this is different. It is my first science fiction novel.<br />
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Ever since my teenage years - approximately 55 years - I have been following the UFO scene, and I have become fully conversant with its many facets. I know what flying saucers are supposed to look like, and how they move. I am also familiar with the wide varieties of occupants observed in or near them, and even the weapons they are known to use.<br />
It will come as a surprise to most people that the interiors have been reported innumerable times, and by people's whose memories did not require hypnosis to be revealed. The descriptions are consistent: in every single case they describe light diffusing the room without any obvious source, and doors for which no visible join in the wall is evident. Over the decades, too, other bizarre phenomena have been frequently reported: truncated light beams, beings levitated on light beams, humanoid occupants passing through walls to give just a short list.<br />
I had long held the intention, therefore, of producing a UFO novel which would be authentic - one for which it would be possible to say: This might have happened; all the phenomena described are known to be real.<br />
The central theme is simple, but I don't think it has been explored before. A group of bushwalkers, or hikers, are alone in the wilderness, when they happen to witness the crash of a flying saucer. On inspection, they discover, to their amazement, that the alien pilot is still alive, but injured. What would you do in such circumstances? They feel they have no choice but to treat him like a human casualty, construct a makeshift splint and stretcher, and carry him to civilisation. They do so with mixed emotions; one is excited, one is terrified, another is full of compassion for the injured alien, and so forth. But soon they discover that there are Others interested in the alien - and of their motives and technology they know nothing.<br />
The novel is self-published through Kindle Direct Publishing. Yes, I know the cover is crappy, but I am not prepared to hire a professional artist. It can be ordered through Amazon in whatever country you are in, and comes in two versions: a paperback and a Kindle e-book. The former I hope will eventually filter into bookstores and libraries. As for the latter, it costs the same as a large coffee, and if you don't possess a Kindle e-reader, the app can still be downloaded for an Ipad (tablet), PC, or phone. Amazon will also allow you to look inside the novel, if you are doubtful about my narrative skills.<br />
Let me know what you think. If you like it, tell all your friends, and write a review. We first-time novelists need all the help we can get.</div><div> <b>PS </b>I note that a reviewer has now described it as "a gripping and imaginative tale".<br />
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Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-58247479928601787192019-05-16T15:33:00.000-07:002019-05-16T15:33:05.113-07:00"Don't Go to Jersey!" On Maundy Thursday, 1899, the ferry, S.S. <i>Stella</i> departed Southampton with 190 passengers and crew, bound for the Channel Islands. They never arrived. Just after 4 p.m., in a heavy fog, it hit the Casquets Rocks. Within ten minutes, it went down, taking at least 77 persons with it. But one man was not present, for he had been forewarned by The Voice in the night.<br />
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[A]n experience which was related by the late Reverend Charles H. Kelly, who was at the time President of the Methodist conference and was, according to custom, expected to spend a week conducting special services in the Channel Islands.<br />
The night before he should have left London he heard a voice three times in the night say: "Don't go to Jersey!" He was perplexed as it was quite an audible voice that he heard, but it was his first experience of the supernatural. He decided at first to pay no heed to the warning, but his sister from Torquay sent him a telegram following a dream she had. When he arrived at Waterloo Station he felt so troubled that he decided not to travel after all.<br />
In one of the station's waiting-rooms he wrote a letter and gave it to the guard to hand to the steward of the <em>Stella</em> who was to be as asked to post it immediately the ship reached the Channel Islands.<br />
That night the <em>Stella</em> was wrecked on the Casquet Rocks. . . .<br />
On the Monday the Reverend Kelly whose life had been so wonderfully spared went to Jersey and told the people about his extraordinary experience.</blockquote>
That came from pp 83-4 of <i>Henry Francis Lyte and the Story of "Abide With Me"</i> by Henry James Garland, Torch Publishing, undated, but probably 1955 or 1956. (In case you are wondering about the connection, apparently a concert singer sang the hymn, among others, during the crisis, and Kelly selected it for all his services in the Channel Isles.)<br />
It is not clear when Rev. Kelly "related" the experience. It was probably not to Garland himself, but it most likely came out during the official investigations and press reports of the time. See <a href="http://www.jakesimpkin.org/ArticlesResearch/tabid/84/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/4/SS-Stella-Disaster.aspx" target="_blank">here</a> for an a detailed account of the sinking, and the bibliography.<br />
Nevertheless, Rev. Garland did receive a large number of letters while researching the effect of the hymn on ordinary people. Many involved the supernatural, but the ones I found really strange were the accounts of the hymn being heard sung by invisible, presumably angelic choirs. Not all of them could be easily written off as subjective.<br />
However, a story which ties in with the first one was told to Rev. Garland directly by a miner who was also a Methodist local preacher. I shall take it from pp 119-120.<br />
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The author was a guest of a miner named Paxton when conducting some evangelistic services in the heart of the Rhondda valley. This man had a wife and family or six children. At that time the wages were very low; men were mostly on piece work and had to toil hard to get a living wage. On one occasion Paxton was at work on a narrow seam of coal which meant he had to work lying on his side. After working hard for two hours a voice said "Take a rest." This is a saying in the pits among the men, when they think one of their number is working too hard. He answered: "Get on with your own job, mate. I cannot afford to waste time."<br />
About a quarter of an hour later, the same appeal was made. Again he replied: "I cannot take it easy, I have a wife and family to keep." Half an hour later, again the voice called: "Bill, take a rest." He thought he would do so, having been hard at it for so long. Walking some distance from the working he found a suitable spot where he could sit down and meditate. The thought suddenly came to him that he was some hundred yards away from any other man at work whose voice he could hear. As he was trying to solve the problem he heard a rumble. He ran for his life, the pit caved in and buried his tools for ever.<br />
Had he not moved he would have been either instantly killed or buried alive. Every morning as he had left for the mine he had prayed: "I need Thy presence every passing hour." [a line from the hymn]</blockquote>
Such experiences are by no means unique. Readers of this blog may remember two other people who later became clergymen - <a href="http://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2017/02/another-voice-in-dark.html" target="_blank">Peter Marshall</a> and an anonymous <a href="http://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/%20/2014/07/a-voice-out-of-nowhere.html" target="_blank">Yorkshire vicar</a> - were also saved from death by The Voice.<br />
One of the most common accounts of ESP involve sudden premonitions of disaster out of the blue. Can it occasionally manifest itself as an external voice? In any case, the moral is clear: if you hear The Voice, you had better take notice.Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-33851653312666775862019-04-09T18:09:00.000-07:002019-08-10T17:53:32.347-07:00The Witches Who Failed to Fly It is, of course, well established that the Great Witch Craze of the 16th and 17th centuries, stretching even into the 18th, represented a resurgence of pre-Christian superstitions. They had once been ignored and mocked, but were now being taken seriously. However, I didn't realise just how ancient these beliefs were until I reread Apuleius' second century novel, <i>The Golden Ass</i>. There, the author describes how he watched a Thessalian witch strip naked, rub herself with a magic ointment, and promptly turn into an owl. That was very similar to what witches were accused of doing 13 or 14 centuries later! Some were even trying it out themselves!<br />
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For that start, let us dispose of a few misconceptions, because the Great Witch Craze has left us with a false idea of normative witchcraft beliefs. During the Middle Ages people did not live in fear of witches; they were just one more type of criminal to worry about, and not necessarily the most common. As for the church, its most common response was to condemn the belief. The Council of Frankfurt in 794 decreed the death penalty for anybody who practiced the "heathen custom" of burning witches. In the same century, St Boniface, the great English missionary to the Germans, declared that when a person became a Christian he gave up the belief in witches and werewolves. In 829 St Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, wrote a book criticizing popular superstitions, such as the idea that witches could produce bad weather, while the eleventh century laws of King Colomon of Hungary simply stated that witches did not exist.</div>
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Of course, Hungary was a newly Christianised country. Like an eastward moving tide, Christianity had swept over the Germans in the eighth century, the Czechs and Slovaks in the Ninth, the Poles in the tenth, and the Hungarians, Scandinavians, Finns and Russians in the eleventh, with the Lithuanians holding out until the fourteenth. And that is the point: while there was still a border with paganism, the church recognized witchcraft beliefs for what they were: heathen superstitions. But they never completely went away.</div>
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Not only that, but on the fringe of every community you would find the wise woman, the cunning man, the witchdoctor (a native English term before it got applied to savages): people to whom one would go to find lost property, acquire love potions, good luck, or bountiful crops, as well as simple herbal remedies which might really work. They were not terribly popular with the church, but unless they were suspected of harming someone - of using black, as opposed to white magic - the law would not touch them. Indeed, even during the Great Witch Craze, three quarters of those accused of witchcraft in England were acquitted!</div>
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These days, of course, Dr Margaret Murray's theory that witchcraft represented a special cult, an "old religion" predating the classic civilisation, and somehow existing underground for a couple of thousand years throughout the whole of Europe, has rightly been discredited by serious scholars. Nevertheless, common sense should tell us that, wherever people believe in witchcraft, there will be some who will attempt to practice it.</div>
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The <i>Canon Episcopi</i>, which probably dates from an earlier tenth century document, refers to:</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
... certain wicked women, turned back toward Satan, seduced by demonic illusions and phantasms, believe of themselves and profess to ride upon certain beasts in the nighttime hours, with Diana, the Goddess of the Pagans, (or with Herodias) and an innumerable multitude of women, and to traverse great spaces of earth in the silence of the dead of night, and to be subject to her laws as of a Lady, and on fixed nights be called to her service...</blockquote>
The canon did not say they had made a pact with Satan, only that they were deluded by him, and their nocturnal rides were interpreted as dreams or visions, rather than any physical reality. The church was to banish them, not otherwise punish them, for they were involved in heathen practices. But doesn't this idea of a nocturnal flight bear some similarity with Apuleius' tale of a witch turning herself into an owl? Especially when it involved a magic ointment.<br />
Of course, we all know that witches were supposed to ride broomsticks. But what is not so well known is something that runs through the witchcraft trials like a red ribbon: the broomstick or staff was rubbed with a special ointment, as was the witch's naked body. All right, so this was a common popular belief, but did anyone actually try it?<br />
In 1545 a married couple in Lorraine were accused of witchcraft, and confessed to burning grain, killing livestock, and sucking the blood of children when put to torture. Well, they would, wouldn't they? More to the point, among their possessions was found a jar half full of a stinking green unguent with which they were alleged to have used to anoint themselves, and which turned out to be a concoction of hemlock, nightshade, henbane, and mandrake. Andrés Laguna, the personal physician of Pope Julius III, managed to acquire a canister of it. Probably, however, the good doctor did not know that these herbs contain hallucinogens such as atropine, hyoscyamine, and scopolamine, and that they can be absorbed through the intact skin.<br />
Later, in the city of Metz, he had to treat a hangman's wife who was suffering from chronic insomnia because of an obsession with her husband's suspected infidelity. Everything else having failed, Dr Laguna decided he might as well try the ointment. Having been anointed from head to toe, she suddenly passed out, her eyes still wide open. Much to his alarm, nothing he could do would wake her up for another thirty-six hours, and her first words were: "Why do you wake me up at such an inopportune time? I was surrounded by all the pleasures and delights of the world", and she boasted of cuckolding her husband with a younger man. Whether this put an end to her insomnia was not recorded.<br />
A colleague of Galileo, a certain Giovanni Porta, suspected that the witches' claimed flight to the sabbat was merely an hallucination induced by their ointment. While he was investigating this theory, an old woman offered to provide an answer. Although she ordered all of the witnesses out of the room, they were able to watch through cracks in the door as she stripped off her rags, rubbed herself over with an ointment, and fell into a deep sleep. So deep was her slumber, in fact, that even "quite a flogging" could not wake up. When she finally regained consciousness, they were able to point to her bruises as proof that she had been in the room all along, but she still insisted tenaciously that she had crossed seas and mountains to obtain her answers.<br />
These are thus first hand accounts. Let's now proceed to some second hand ones. Bartolommeo Spina, in a book published in 1523, referred to an event "within the lifetime of those who are now alive". A certain witch used to boast of flying on journeys to visit the devil, so "the illustrious Prince N.", got her to perform a demonstration in the presence of a multitude of nobles. She anointed herself several times with the ointment, but - surprise! surprise! - nothing happened.<br />
Spina was also told by Dominus Augustinus de Turre of Bergamo, "the most cultivated physician of his time", that during his studies at Padua in his youth, he once came home about midnight. No-one answered when he knocked on the door, so he was forced to enter via an upstairs window. At last, he discovered his maid in her room, supine on the floor, stark naked, and wrapped in a slumber too deep for arousal. In the morning, she confessed that she had been carried off on the witches' journey. He would have sworn she had been sound asleep all night!<br />
Finally, we come to a 1692 publication by Johannes Nider. His teacher told him about a priest who came across an old woman who claimed to make nocturnal flights to revels with Diana and other women. So the story is third hand, but isn't it interesting that she talked of visiting Diana, rather than the devil? Nothing he could say to her would convince her she was deluded, so he asked to be present, with other witnesses, when she made her next flight. She agreed.<br />
Taking a large bowl used for kneading dough, she placed it on the top of a stool, then stepped into it and sat down. Then, to the accompaniment of incantations, she rubbed an ointment on herself, lay her head back, and promptly fell asleep. So vivid were her dreams, that she cried out, flailed around with her hands, and fell out, injuring her head. "For Heaven's sake, where are you?" cried the priest. "You were not with Diana and as will be attested by these present, you never left this bowl." It appears she was convinced.<br />
Far be it from me to suggest that these incidents were typical. The vast majority of victims of the witch craze were guilty of merely being old, demanding, and eccentric, with the occasional witchdoctor thrown in, and a few people who were genuinely deranged. Just the same, the witch craze seems to have destroyed a subculture which had flourished since at least Roman times: one which used hallucinogenic ointments in the pursuit of bogus nighttime flights and revels.<br />
I might add that, in the twentieth and late nineteenth century, a couple of scholars had experimented with the alleged witch's ointment, and produced similar hallucinations. <i>Don't try this at home!</i><br />
<i><br /></i><b>Reference:</b> The original citations are in Michael J. Harner , 'The role of hallucinogenic plants in European witchcraft", pp 125-150 <b>in</b> the 1976 reprint of <i>Hallucinogens and Shamanism</i>, Michael J. Harner, editor (1973), Oxford University Press </div>
Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-68061526231097946832019-02-11T13:10:00.004-08:002021-05-27T03:58:53.092-07:00Ron Quinn and the Little People of New York State In 1936 a certain Miss Lampeter wrote to <i>John O'London's Weekly</i> asking, in effect, whether anyone had seen fairies, because his area of Wales a number of people had claimed to have done so. Funny about that! For the next few months the magazine found itself publishing letters from people who claimed the experience. If you are interested, you can read them <a href="http://www.fairyist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Johm-O-London.pdf" target="_blank">here</a> (PDF 158 KB). Similarly, in 1989 Ron Quinn wrote in a weekly paper in upstate New York about his encounter with a little man in 1942, and gave them his name and address. He asked if anybody had had a similar experience. Funny about that! As you have probably guessed by now, over the coming weeks, dozens of letters arrived in his box.<br />
<a name='more'></a> This, then is a review of Ron Quinn's book, <i>Little People.</i><br />
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<i> </i>First of all, his own experience. It happened in August 1942, when he was ten years old, and holidaying in the Mongaup Valley of upper New York State. Having broken some minor infraction, he had been sent back to the cabin for an hour while the other children played. Just then he heard a tapping on the window. There, standing on the ledge outside, tapping the glass with his walking stick, was a little man of the apparent age of 50, but only a foot high.<br />
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"The odd little guy wore a small, crumpled hat, dark in color. A short, gray beard covered the lower part of his face. From beneath his hat, silky hair cascaded down to his narrow shoulders, covering his ears. His shirt was gray and somewhat tightfitting around his upper body. The sleeves were very baggy, and his trousers ended near his knees. Something resembling a belt encircled his wide waist. His boots, also gray, were soft in appearance, ending near the knees."</blockquote>
He was smiling, and his eyes were full of friendship. Although only ten, Quinn knew this was theoretically impossible, but the little man had all the characteristics of a living being, right down to a shadow. He beckoned to the boy, who opened the window and slowly reached his hand towards him. The little man stepped back, looked him over and, still smiling, jumped down and scampered into the trees. Of course, the other children laughed at him when he told the story, but he knew it had really happened. The little man had left a tiny footprint in the moist ground.<br />
The remainder of the book consists of 30 stories, in no particular order, of brief encounters related by his correspondents.<br />
The first one, Ch. 2, had clearly passed through many hands before it reached him, because it was set in the 1830s and concerned a trapper, a gentle giant called Big Bob McCain. Having been known as a teller of tall tales, and an exaggerator of the truth, he was naturally disbelieved when he insisted this experience was absolutely true. He found a little man no more than two feet high caught by the leg in one of his traps. He was screaming in pain and fear but, to Big Bob's amazement, when he set him free, his leg was undamaged, and he was essentially weightless in the big man's hands. On running away, the little fellow allegedly left his hat behind, which Bob kept as proof of the event. The author commented - and I concur - that he had never ever heard of another case of one of these little men being touched by a human, or of being weightless.<br />
Ch. 19 is set in the early 1800s, and concerns a frontiersman called Patrick who entered deep into a cave and came across a great throng of little people dancing. This, of course, is simply a modern take on a traditional legend about a visit to fairyland, and no credence should be given to it.<br />
Indeed, my major criticism of the author is that he rarely identifies the informant. If the old man who witnessed three little men arguing in a foreign language in 1976 told the author himself, he must have been 89 years old when he did so. Perhaps he was. One story was told by the witness's daughter, and another by the niece who was present at the time, but did not witness the encounter. Chapter 25 is definitely hearsay. On the other hand, in one case it was specifically stated that the witness told it to Quinn face to face. All in all, I suspect the witnesses were the informants unless stated otherwise.<br />
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<b>Typical Encounters</b><br />
Since 30 accounts are involved, it is best to start with the typical features before we go on to the more unusual cases. Typically, the account involves a brief, but nevertheless unambiguous encounter decades - often the better part of a lifetime - ago. This is itself rather strange. Wouldn't you expect a more even spread across the decades? If people were making it up, wouldn't you expect many of them to place their story in the recent past?<br />
With one or two exceptions, the beings ranged from one to two feet in height, and nearly all were male. The author indeed commented on this: where are all the little women? They appeared to be Caucasian, and their clothing certainly was, albeit somewhat unusual. None of them, for instance, were described as tiny Amerindians. Apart from one who was described as extremely ugly, they were all essentially human in shape, only tiny. They appeared solid; there was no transparency, and none - repeat none - possessed wings. The wide variety of shapes and sizes reported in the <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/what-sort-of-people-see-fairies.html" target="_blank">first</a> and <a href="http://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2018/01/results-of-new-fairy-census.html" target="_blank">second</a> fairy census were missing. Interestingly, nos. 330 to 341 of the second census came from New York State, and they did provide more variety.<br />
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<b>Flesh and Blood?</b><br />
Of course, these beings cannot be flesh and blood. I've explained <a href="http://malcolmsscifi.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/tom-thumb-and-traits-of-tininess.html" target="_blank">elsewhere</a> why a breeding population of tiny intelligent beings of the same proportions as human beings would be biologically impossible. And even if they were possible, they would still require a visible community providing food and making clothing. Nevertheless, there were a number of cases which definitely sounded like solid biological entities. In one case, a little man three feet high fell onto the roof of a couple's car, and was taken for a wild ride. I am not sure, however, that this was not a genuine human dwarf. Much smaller was the little blighter who stole fruit from a picnic, and another who purloined eggs from a henhouse. Such actions are not unknown in the fairy tradition, but seem to be absent from what might be called the "census" encounters. One witness watched a little man save another one from drowning. Another witness saw a tiny man exit a derelict house, under the floor of which he discovered a cubby hole which the mannikin had apparently converted into a home. Another found a little man using his barn as a home, with some fruit and a small mustard jar filled with water. Yet another witness claimed to have surprised a little man fishing and, when the latter ran away, took the miniature rod and line as evidence. The author was shown a photograph of it. And, of course, there was the little weightless wonder caught in Big Bob's trap.<br />
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<b>High Strangeness</b><br />
<b> </b>Most of the encounters were rather banal - well, once you accept the premise of people one or two foot high. However, some of them were decidedly weird.<br />
Take, for instance, chapter 6, in which a little girl of five, lost in the woods, met two small "dolls" with shiny green clothing, small hats, and wavy silver hair down to their shoulders. She asked them if they knew where her aunt's house was, and they motioned her to follow them. The interesting thing was, as dusk approached, little balls of blinking coloured lights appeared around them. Even more amazing, the three of them inexplicably went faster. In later years, she would described it as similar to the way a movie is speeded up. What strange things for a five year old to report!<br />
Ch. 7 tells of an experience in 1933, when the witness was boy of ten. (If he reported it in 1989, he would have been 66 at the time, which is not so old.) In the Catskills, he saw a bird he could not identify: about 18 inches high, black, with a long beak. Then he noticed a string in its beak, like reins on a horse. It went into the bush, and came out with a little man on its back, and as it flew away he saw how the mannikin's weight made it difficult for it to gain height. (Big Bob would have been surprised.)<br />
The story in Ch. 16 may well be second hand, for it happened to an adult in 1929. Walking home at night, he saw a light in the undergrowth. There was a dome shaped, yellow-green, translucent light measuring four feet across and 18 inches high. Just then, two little men a foot high slowly materialised out of the light. When they saw him, they jumped back into it, and the light disappeared. The man marked the spot with several rocks, and a week later he found the grass slowly dying. Quinn wondered whether this was how "they" enter our reality.<br />
Ch. 13: In 1939 a teenaged boy found a perfectly formed wooden door about a foot wide and 18 inches high in the face of a rock. He knocked, and a little man peaked out. Needless to say, he returned to the same rock many times, but the door was absent. This sort of story, of course, is not unknown in fairy folklore.<br />
But in the whole catalogue of weirdness, nothing beats the stories of the phantom zones in Chapters 14 and 17. The first happened on 29 June 1977. Ned was a bushwalker well familiar with this part of the Catskills. This time, however, he felt a strange tingling sensation as he walked past a rock formation, and he gradually found himself in a landscape quite different from how he remembered it. By a strange waterfall were four little people playing haunting music on flutes, so he took photos. He walked back for about an hour, felt the tingling sensation, and the mysterious landscape vanished. Although he felt he had been gone for three hours, his watch showed only 30 minutes. This, I might add, is the reverse of the time compression in the fairy folklore, where a short period in fairyland equals a long time on earth. And the photos? They came out, except the ones of the little people appeared only as greenish, out-of-focus shadows.<br />
Then there was Dave's experience in Washington State in the 1950s. Strolling around the familiar Neversink Reservoir, he noticed a fog bank hanging over the water. He came to an ornate bridge he's never seen before, about three foot wide, and crossed it to a 6-acre island which had never been there before. In the fog he saw strange animals and trees, plus three bearded men with long silky hair and long white robes, who were only three feet high. When he recrossed the bridge, both the mist and the bridge disappeared. Between two familiar mountains rose a third mountain, which had never been there before. Then both mountain and island vanished. A doctor was also said to have had a similar experience at Lake Washington. Quinn ends the chapter with a pertinent question:<br />
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What if Dave hadn't made it off the island before it vanished? Would he have been listed as just another missing person? If so, where would Dave be today?</blockquote>
Of course, you will no doubt be aware that visits to a parallel reality have been a common theme in science fiction/fantasy since the days of H. G. Wells. Just the same, isn't it strange that stories of two such visits were recorded by a single researcher? Not only that, but in Chapter 7 of her 1997 book, <i>Fairies, real encounters with little people</i>, Janet Bord recorded two instances of visits to such phantom zones, although no fairies were involved. Both were published in <i>Fate</i> magazine, but appear to have been independent, because one was told in 1956 and the other in 1982. I don't know what to make of these strange stories, except that it reinforces my opinion that we should never throw out any report, no matter how weird. You never know if a similar one will come along to join it in the file.<div> See <a href="https://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2009/11/man-who-found-door-in-world.html" target="_blank">another such story</a> recorded by Prof. Michael Swords. The witness's brother recounted the event in more detail <a href="http://www.ufobc.ca/Reports/StrangeAnomaly.htm" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<b>Irrelevant Stories</b><br />
As I've said before, people who have a strange experience are likely to tell it to anyone who will take it seriously, even if it is irrelevant to the matter at hand. Chapters 27 to 29 have nothing to do with little people. In the first one, a woman sent a letter anonymously telling how twice the key to a heavy trunk disappeared, only to be discovered years later right under the trunk, even though not even a sheet of paper could be forced beneath it. The next chapter tells of a boy who walked out of the house one winter and saw the giant disembodied head of a bearded man floating above the trees nearby. Finally, the events in Ch. 29 sound like urban folklore; they concern people who just vanished very close to their companions. But for the last one, where a boy was approaching his parents' truck was visible one second and missing the next, the author claims to have be personally acquainted with the stepfather. These are all very strange, but no little people were involved.<br />
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<b>Faulty Memories?</b><br />
Haven't we all had the experience of seeing a picture or a scene, or listening to a song, after a long interval, and finding it was somewhat different from how we remembered it? Some events are so dramatic they stick permanently in our memory. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that your memory is not a DVD player. Every time you access it, you have to reassemble it, with the possibility that it will lose or gain something in the process. Often, our memories adjust to how we would have preferred the event to have occurred - particularly when it involves conflict with other people.<br />
The stories in this book are generally decades old. One must assume that some of the details have become scrambled. But what about the core experience?<br />
Suppose you briefly notice something big in the forest. Was it a bigfoot? Or something strange in the sky: a flying saucer, perhaps? If your mind is that way inclined, your memory can focus, and perhaps elaborate, on those features which would tend to support the hypothesis, while forgetting those which did not. Eventually you will be able to convince yourself you really saw a bigfoot or flying saucer, but your memory is really "fake news". A more banal solution may have been available.<br />
Now let's look at the simple experience in Chapter 3. It happened in the evening 41 years before the story was told. A family noticed rustling in the underbush and shadows, and then a boy saw a little man a foot high. He described the clothing. His mother saw it too. An easy case of faulty memory, you might say.<br />
But stop and think: the reason a person might imagine he had seen a bigfoot or flying saucer is that these are, so to speak, respectable things to see, even if he did not believe in them at first. But little men are not. Nobody's supposed to see such things. If one were seen, the tendency would be to rationalise it as something else. In fact, in one case the witnesses initially thought they were looking at a doll - until it moved. And most of the encounters took place in daylight, reasonably close up. What could possibly be mistaken for a little man tapping at a window?<br />
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<b>Hoaxes?</b><br />
Well, they must be, mustn't they? if you regard little people as impossible. Just the same, a theory - such as the non-existence of something - is not very strong if it relies on labeling as a liar anyone who provides contrary evidence. Of course, there are some people who will do anything for their 15 minutes of fame, even if it makes them look silly. However, the most common motives for hoaxes are fun and profit. As far as I am aware, none of the alleged witnesses were paid for their stories, so we can scratch the second motive. As for fun, the whole idea is to make the tale outrageous enough for a lot of people to see it is a joke, and you and your friends can chuckle among yourselves about how you got a lot of gulls to take you seriously.<br />
Naturally, this works best if your story sees the light in a magazine or newspaper. When gulling a stranger, it is best to do it face to face, so that you can see him nodding affirmatively as you feed him baloney. You don't get the same kick out of writing to a stranger, whose reaction you cannot gauge - especially if you write anonymously, or with just your first name, as some of them did. Also, it's not much fun writing to a stranger and telling him, in effect, I had an experience similar to yours. You have to ham it up.<br />
I myself have had experiences with false stories in the cryptozoology field. In 1960 a Brisbane newspaper asked if anyone had seen "monsters", and the next thing you knew they were inundated with outrageous, over-the-top, tall-as-a-pinnacle tall tales. But when I wrote <i>Bunyips and Bigfoots</i>, and later set up my cryptozoology blog, I received lots of reports to the effect: I had an experience just like the ones you described; not a single over-the-top story among them. Some of them were even disappointed when I suggested a mundane explanation. To be fair, though, I think a few of the accounts other investigators have collected bear the ring of untruth.<br />
Moral of the story: you can't catch every hoax, but most of them are pretty obvious. Also, as the author twice put it: some of them may be bogus, but if only one is genuine, then something strange in going on.<br />
There is, of course, a final possibility, which I don't consider very likely, but is nevertheless theoretically possible. Perhaps the whole book is fiction, the output of Mr Quinn's own imagination. If so, he didn't do a good job. As I said before, the stories are related in no particular order, and do not lead anywhere. Also, there are those three irrelevant chapters. Besides, if you want to make money, it would be better to invent stories about bigfoot or flying saucers. More people would be likely to buy it.</div>Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-85169332818840758922018-11-20T02:31:00.001-08:002019-08-07T21:42:28.416-07:00Traitors to the Human Race<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
"The love of money", said Phocylides, "is the mother of all evils" - a maxim which was to become proverbial in the ancient world, being changed to the "metropolis of all evils" by Democritus, and the "root of all evils" by St. Paul.</div>
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Greed for money and, as we shall see, for power can be a strong solvent of a person's morality. Thirty pieces of silver was enough to buy Judas Iscariot's treachery, and a long list could be made of those who turned traitor for the sake for pay. Greed can also dissolve the critical faculty. No-one would possibly fall for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam#Implementation" target="_blank">Nigerian scam</a>, for instance, if the prospect of enormous riches hadn't blinded him to the extreme improbability of the proposal. However, it takes a massive combination of baseness and stupidity to fall for a project which is both evil and utterly ridiculous, and one can must grant a certain grudging respect to a con artist who realised it would actually work.</div>
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Austrian Karl Mekis, born 1911, was the prime mover. Having served as an SS or Gestapo officer during the war, he had occupied the post-war years with such escapades as counterfeiting, smuggling, and illegal firearm possession, resulting in several sentences beginning in 1947. When his long suffering wife finally left him, he decided that was the last straw, and booked a one way passage to South America. When, in 1955, he encountered Franz Weber-Richter in Santiago, Chile he recognized a fellow spirit, and outlined to him his plans for the biggest con yet: Project Venus.</div>
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According to their account, they had been approached by inhabitants of the planet Venus (Venusians? <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/venerean" target="_blank">Venereans</a>?) who had been worried about the inhabitants of Earth since 1640, especially since it was now likely we would be disturbing them with our rockets. Their solution was radical: they were going to invade earth and conquer it. However, it was clear that the invasion would be rendered easier in the presence of local assistance. In other words, what they needed were quislings, collaborators: people who would be prepared to rule the planet on their behalf. Weber-Richter was taken up and given a special eighteen month training course before being designated as President of the Supreme World Republic. The lesser position of Security Commissioner of the Supreme Government was left to Mekis: all he got was a three-month emergency course in spacecraft.</div>
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Remember: at that time the interior of Venus was still a mystery. I still have a children's book published in 1959 outlining three theories: that the surface of Venus was one vast desert (correct, as it turned out), that it was one vast sea, and that it was more like a primeval earth, with both land and seas, and a tropical climate. The number of science fiction stories based on the last two themes were legion. Remember, too, that the flying saucer era had just started, including a "flap" of UFOs over Washington, DC in 1952. George Adamski had just made his running with his tales of meeting with Venusians in flying saucers. Thus, the background story didn't then sound quite so ridiculous as it does now. Nevertheless, one would think that prospective quislings would have requested some sort of evidence - some Venusian artifact, for example - because they were going to be asked to pay for the privilege of being traitors.</div>
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In any case, within a short time, our heroes began printing a vast quantity of "official" Venusian documents: passports, identity cards, certificates of appointment, and a huge 630-page tome entitled,<i> The Constitution of the World Republic of Venus</i>. In a way, this might be considered a Venusian counterpart to Karl's Marx's <i>Capital</i>: a public blueprint of how they were going to take over. You may remember that this was at the height of the Cold War, and it has been proved, beyond the slightest question of doubt, that the Soviet Union had infiltrated its agents into every nook and cranny of government, the media, the arts, and the counter-espionage services. But at least the Soviet Union never had the gall to advertise openly for traitors, and the fact that the Venusians were doing just that, and the governments of the world were taking no notice, might have given a few people food for thought.</div>
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"Seeking: financial adviser to the civilian government of the Venusian world". "Venusian World Republic. The applicant is called for work for a senior official from Venus after the invasion of earth". These were the sorts of ads which soon appeared throughout the German-speaking world, not only in the sci-fi and ufology magazines, but in the mainstream press. They received hundreds of replies.</div>
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Thus, for example, Helmuth Mille, a factory worker in Austria, paid the equivalent of $24 as a display of his <em>bona fides</em> for a future clerical position in the Republic of Venus Civil Service. For $100 Bavarian innkeeper, Herr Freschner, an ardent fan of science fiction and flying saucers, was appointed Adviser for Economic Affairs (Food and Consumer Goods) under the future Venusian overlords. Such sums were not to be sneezed at. At today's prices, they must be multiplied by a factor of 15 to equal their purchasing power at the time, and since the standard of living was lower then, by a factor of 30 to equal the working time required to earn them.</div>
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That was not all. Inspired, no doubt, by the Nazi <em>Lebensborn</em> project, the con men announced the formation of "love camps", where human women would interbreed with Venusian men to produce a hybrid master race. Lots of single females signed up, and paid up. They must have been really dissatisfied with the available males of their own species!</div>
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By 1960 the Chilean police were starting to snoop around Project Venus, so Mekis and Weber-Richter decided to move to Rome. But first they sent off telegrams to their clients: "The planned invasion of the world deferred. Inadequate financial support. Send all you can save." Without questioning why the Venusians would need earthly money, Herr Frechner telegraphed off approximately $650.</div>
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Mekis and Weber-Richter were now ensconced in the palazzo of Duchess Elena Caffarelli on the Via Condotti. A 22-year-old Salzburg girl, Annemarie Baumann was happy to work as their secretary for nothing but food, lodging, and a bit of pocket money, because they had related their encounters with the Venusians in such engaging detail, and she was promised a great Venusian leader as her future lover. All told, according to my information, then managed to milk their potential collaborators of $120,000. Again, feel free to multiply it by 15 or 30 in order to establish its modern value.</div>
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How, you may ask, could so many people - there must have been a couple of thousand - be so stupid? One is tempted to draw comparisons with crackpot religious movements - like the Order of the Solar Temple, which was responsible for a number of mass suicides in the 1990s. However, on closer examination, the similarities are not so strong. Most new religions are small, and soon die. Those which reach anything like a significant size are usually deviations from an older, more venerable religion, and piggy back on its prestige. They also tend to be promulgated by charismatic preachers on a one-to-one basis, rather than from a distance by means of ads, brochures, and telegrams. The Solar Temple appears to have been an exception, but it presented as a secret society, and thus appealed to those with a desire to belong to an inner circle blessed with esoteric knowledge and power. Also, all cults, even the Solar Temple, offer a meaning of life and supernatural benefits beyond just money and status. No, victims of the Project Venus scam appear to have been simply blinded by greed for power.</div>
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Nevertheless, one has to admire the dastardly duo for pulling off a stunt which nobody but they would have thought could succeed. One wonders how they would have turned out if they'd used their talents for honest work. However, the trouble with cons is that inevitably they fail to deliver. When was this wretched invasion fleet going to turn up? The designated date was set for 1st July 1960, the landing site the Tempelhof Airport at Berlin. Alas! At the last minute, President Urun, the leader of the fleet, was struck down by a Venusian illness, and his successor, Ase was forced to postpone the invasion - just as D-Day would have been postponed, I suppose, if Eisenhower had taken sick. Two of his earthly collaborators went to the police.</div>
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Think about it! Yiddish has a term, <i>chutzpah</i> for outrageous, bare-faced effrontery: the type that causes a man who kills his mother and father to beg for leniency on the grounds that he is an orphan. Likewise, although these despicable quislings were preparing to sell out their planet and species to invaders from outer space, now they were coming, cap in hand, pleading for human justice. "Please, your honour," you hear them say, "we paid good money so that we could lord it over the likes of you, but you're still in charge, and we're still nobodies, so will you kindly do something about it?"</div>
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Just then, for some unknown reason, Karl Mekis, travelling on a Chilean passport with a made-up name, decided to visit his native Austria. Bad mistake! The law was waiting. The wheels of justice also, regrettably, sometimes grind slowly, but in December 1962 the press and public gathered around for a grand comedy: the trial of the Security Commissioner of the Supreme World Republic of Venus. The judge (Europe does not have juries) could not suppress his laughter. Several of the subpoenaed witnesses gave evidence grudgingly, more embarrassed, I suspect, at being revealed as complete fools than as being traitors. Playing his role to the finish, Mekis warned the judge that the Venusians would avenge him when they finally arrived. But the judge decided to take the chance, and sentenced him to five years' hard labour. On appeal, it was reduced to four years, and with time already spent, he was out on 3 September 1964, and passed into obscurity.</div>
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As far as I am aware, Weber-Richter never faced justice. But then again, neither did his victims who, by all objective standards, were more reprehensible. He, after all, was a mere con man, but they were traitors to the human race. By all rights, they should have been put up against a wall and shot.</div>
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<strong>References:</strong> Summaries were found in the <em>Australian UFO Review</em>, No. 10 (Dec 1969), pp 42-43, as well as <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/ufologist52/Home/artiklar/artiklar-1991-1995/-chauffoer-soekes-till-tjaensteman-fraan-venus-" target="_blank">this Swedish article</a>, and this contemporary <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-43159684.html" target="_blank">German article</a>. (Use the translation facility for each.)</div>
Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-66111282339385705082018-08-12T14:07:00.002-07:002021-08-13T18:04:58.822-07:00Elves in the Andes ? Overlooked books are often sources of anomalies which are easily lost to our collective memory. Thus, a couple of Sundays ago, a friend of mine called Trevor casually referred to what he labelled the "leprechauns" of South America. Readers of this blog will be aware that I no longer automatically scoff at such stories. (Why, this time last year I was translating newspaper articles about a <a href="http://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2017/08/a-plague-of-goblins-in-argentina.html" target="_blank">plague of goblins</a> in Argentina.) Trevor mentioned how they had been seen by Brian Fawcett (1906-1984), the younger son of the explorer, Percy Fawcett, who disappeared in the Amazon jungle, almost certainly murdered by Indians, while searching for the Lost City of Z. Now, Trevor has provided extracts from Brian Fawcett's 1958 book, <i>Ruins in the Sky</i>, relating to his time working on the Peruvian railways, and the events took place near what was then the highest railway station in the world. The relevant extract is from pages 65 and 66.<br />
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A check-up of car inspectors' stock in Galera kept me up there close under the snows at the summit of the main line one winter evening at dusk. A blizzard was raging, the fallen snow reflecting a weird light from the still luminous sky. I was emerging from an inspection of used brake shoes scattered along beside the track inside the Galera tunnel when a little human figure accompanied by an animal of some kind moved across the mouth, ten yards ahead of me. They were partially silhouetted against the light, but something of their detail was visible; and I see in a letter to my mother describing the event that the figure was that of a little man 2 feet high with slit eyes and dressed like 'Robinson Crusoe'. The animal with him resembled a large rat or stoat, about the size of a cat, but my glimpse was brief, for the little man saw me and made off. Tracks in the snow were mere holes and told me nothing.<br />
A few days later, at Anticona<span style="color: #783f04;"> [11° 35' S, 76° 11' W]</span> - our highest point - I wandered from the train while waiting for a meet with another train. Ragged mist blotted out the surrounding peaks and gave only slight visibility from time to time at ground level, but in a moment of partial clearness I caught a glimpse of two of these 'Robinson Crusoe' mannikins with their rat-like companions beside a small pool amongst the rocks. It was for a second only, and then the mist obscured them.<br />
The Indians who work in the mines above Ticlio<span style="color: #7f6000;"> [same as Anticona]</span> will tell you - once you have won their confidence - that certain of the adits of the old Spanish diggings are haunted by <i>muquis </i><span style="color: #783f04;">[pronounced <i>moo-kees</i>]</span>, which from their description I take to be similar to the 'knocker' of the Cornish miner. No one could ever relate to me a first-hand experience of seeing one of these Muquis, but any amount of hearsay cases were forthcoming, and the general opinion was that the little men were well disposed if not molested, often indicating by the knocking of their picks where rich seams of mineral were to be found. Where my little figures muquis? If so, their tracks in the snow were anything but ghostly.</blockquote>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muki_(mythology)" target="_blank">Here</a> is an article about the popular beliefs concerning muquis.<br />
Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-80787401740131496602018-06-12T15:47:00.000-07:002018-06-12T15:47:53.548-07:00Weird Happenings at the Battle of Acoma<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px; orphans: 2; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">
God, gold, and glory should have been the motto of the Spanish conquistadors. Possessed of an inordinate greed for wealth and power, combined with a hypocritical, but nevertheless sincere, religious zeal, they cut a swathe of cruelty and plunder through Central and South America. In the pursuit of these goals they were prepared to endure any hardship, and face any odds. Though their crimes were execrable, their deeds were nevertheless some of the most heroic ever recorded. This story is about the<span> </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoma_Massacre" target="_blank">Massacre at Acoma</a> in January 1599, but more particularly some very strange incidents at its climax.</div>
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The main events can be briefly summarised. Inspired by a pipe dream of gold, silver, and pearls which could be had for the taking (not, of course, for the working), Juan de Oñate led an expedition into what is now New Mexico in 1598. It is important to note that the expedition included special notaries whose task it was to keep a precise record of the expedition. I mention this to point out that what is about to be described is not some legend created many years after the event. It must also be understood that they were not the first Spaniards to have communication with the Indians, and interpreters were also available.</div>
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Having established a settlement at San Juan de los Caballeros (St. John of the Knights), he invited the heads of all local pueblos for a festival, essentially to notify them that they were now his subjects. For their benefit, the colonists put on a play, a bullfight, a mounted tournament, and a sham battle enacting the old wars between the Spanish and the Moors. Interestingly enough, the chief of Acoma did not attend, but he did send spies, and they noted, in watching the sham battle, that no-one was killed by the firearms. Were they, perhaps, harmless after all?</div>
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The following month, Governor Oñate led a party westward to check out the rumoured pearls of the Pacific coast. A month after that, his nephew, Juan de Zaldívar headed off to join him, and when they reached Acoma, they requested food, which they were promised if they ascended to the top of the mesa the following morning.</div>
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Acoma stood atop a sandstone mesa 400 feet high, accessible only partway by a narrow trail, with the final accent only by means of toeholds cut into the rock. At the summit, they discovered that it was not one rock, but two, split by a deep chasm. Zaldívar ordered his men to separate and collect food. Suddenly, a scream rang out from the chief, and the Indians fell upon them with every weapon available. The battle raged for three hours, at the end of which 13 Spaniards were dead, and only four survived to regain their comrades left at the bottom.</div>
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Probably Oñate would have been incensed at the pueblo rejecting his authority in any case, but this was treachery! They swore bloody revenge. The Governor himself, on the urging of his followers, remained in San Juan, but a punitive expedition of 70 soldiers was organized under the command of Vicente de Zaldívar, the brother of the murdered Juan. By command, all the men confessed their sins and received absolution, except for one "abandoned wretch", who refused any dealings with the sacrament. They marched out on 12 January 1599. Acoma being ten days' march away, there was no way for those at home to know how the expedition was faring. Then, on the 24th a strange visitor arrived. I shall quote the words of historian, Paul Horgan.</div>
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Late in the afternoon of that day, a small, ancient Indian woman, all bone and folded skin, asked to see the Governor. She came with an air of circumstance proper to one so old and so used to the respect given to old age by her people. The Governor received her.</div>
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Yes? he said.</div>
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There, she replied, westward, far, that flat country, and that great high rock that rose straight up from it, with a pueblo on top.</div>
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Yes, Acoma, what then?</div>
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War and battle, around and around and around, men striving against each other, beating, so, and stabbing, so, and killing.</div>
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Yes, yes?</div>
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Some with swords.</div>
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Yes, soldiers?</div>
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Some with arrows.</div>
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Indians. And then?</div>
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The air full of power and fury. One, two, three days of this. The rock was wide and the struggle flowed back and forward upon it. There was death everywhere. In the sky there came something - a vision in light. Then up, waving upwards, smoke entered the whole air. And then it all ended.</div>
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When? When did it all end?</div>
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Today. Just today. The war was over.</div>
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Over? But who was victorious?</div>
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Swords. The soldiers were victorious.</div>
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The Governor thanked her and let her go. But who was she? And where did she come from? Certainly not Acoma, for that was ten days' march away by fit men. But he was to learn the truth of it nine days later when the quartermaster rode in with two prisoners, and a remarkable story.</div>
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The morning after their arrival at the foot of the mesa, Vicente sent the larger part of his men against one end of the mesa while himself leading eleven men under cover to scale the other end - where he managed to secure a foothold, after fighting off 400 wild Indians.</div>
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On the second morning, the soldiers from the plain swarmed up onto the mesa. Now began a ferocious battle, which involved such actions as a beam being thrown across the chasm, soldiers using it as a bridge and then drawing it after them. When it was seen that their forces were cut in two, a Captain de Villagrá took a running jump across the chasm and threw the piece of timber back. The "abandoned wretch" who had refused to confess his sins before setting out was accidentally hit by a musket ball. Recognizing his eternal danger, he staggered down the cliffside to the plain, just in time to blurt out his sins, which were no doubt numerous, to the chaplain before dying.</div>
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On the third day, the Indians elders suddenly approached with tears in their eyes offering to surrender. They had known they were beaten, they explained, when they saw a great warrior with a long white beard (Indians are beardless) and a fiery sword, riding a white charger in the sky above the invading army, attended by a beautiful woman in a blue robe and crowned with stars. The soldiers were dumbfounded. It must have been their patron saint, St James of Compostela, and the Virgin Mary herself!</div>
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500 prisoners were led back to San Juan to be tried for rebellion. Enslaving the Indians was against the law, but not penal servitude for a set time. Every prisoner over the age of twelve was sentenced to twenty years servitude, with the men over twenty-five receiving the additional penalty of having the right foot amputated. However, as it turned out, this punishment was inflicted on only twenty-four.</div>
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But what really puzzles me is the mysterious old woman who announced the outcome of the battle long before the news could possibly have arrived, and the vision of saints at the battle. Now, people of that period had a tendency to place supernatural interpretations on natural events. A chaplain of Cortes claimed to have seen St James on a grey horse before one of the engagements with the enemy, although the chronicler of the invasion, Bernal Diaz thought it looked more like a certain fellow soldier, Francesco de Morla. The trouble is, at Acoma it was the Indians who claimed to have seen the vision, not the Spanish, and it was in the sky, not on the ground. Perhaps their descriptions of the vision gained something in translation, and morphed into the traditional aspect of the saints in Spanish iconography. Still, it is all very mysterious.</div>
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Just the same, I find it hard to believe the the Saviour's apostle and mother would looked with anything but horror at the atrocities being committed in their names. I am pleased to say that a similar horror was felt by some of their contemporaries, for the cruelty to the inhabitants of Acoma was included in the indictment of Oñate when he was eventually brought to trial in Mexico.</div>
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<b>Reference:</b> Paul Horgan (1963),<span> </span><i>Conquistadors in North America</i>, Macmillan. His source appears to have been George Hammond and Agapito Rey (editors),<span> </span><i>Don Juan Oñate, coloniser of New Mexico, 1595 - 1628</i>, University of New Mexico Press, 1953, a collection of original documents.</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-45852714630995084002018-05-11T03:49:00.004-07:002023-05-16T01:27:57.380-07:00Goblins, Shadows, and Unholy Things I regard the paranormal as a big jigsaw puzzle, of which most of the pieces are missing, and the major aim of this blog is to collect and present some of those pieces which are in danger of being overlooked or lost. For this reason, I do not normally report items which have appeared on somebody else's website. Nevertheless, I make an exception when the item is quite at variance with the normal theme of the website, and is in danger of being lost among the other details. Thus, the story of the <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/the-psychics-of-ape-canyon.html" target="_blank">psychics of Ape Canyon</a> came from the <a href="http://www.bigfootencounters.com/" target="_blank">Bigfoot Encounters</a> website. Likewise, the tale of the <a href="http://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2017/03/tiny-craft-tiny-pilots.html" target="_blank">miniature flying cyclist</a> was discovered in the <a href="http://www.castleofspirits.com/" target="_blank">Castle of Spirits</a> website, which contains literally hundreds of first hand testimonies of ghostly encounters. Nevertheless, a few of them are not what you might call run-of-the-mill ghost stories. Let's have a look at a few.<br />
<a name='more'></a><b><br /></b>
<b>Goblins</b><br />
We shall start with a Texan woman who bears the same name as that prolific writer of folk songs, limericks, and jokes: Anonymous, and <a href="http://www.castleofspirits.com/ghoststories/stories10/April2010_7.html" target="_blank">her account</a> of the strange events on a long dirt road on which her house was situated. At eight o'clock one morning she went for a walk down the road with her three sons, aged 3, 5, and 12 respectively, only to be stopped about twenty yards from the house by a woman running into the middle of the road.<br />
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She looked odd with a red hooded cloak from head to her bare feet and crazed hair. Her face was painted black with what appeared to be mud and she had about four obedient pit bulls by her side sitting at attention watching as she began acting very oddly. Now mind you it is August in Texas and the closest house for at least ten miles was our own, not to mention the Texas heat and this lady is wearing a full length hooded long sleeve cloak.
She suddenly started chanting and sort of jumping around while holding this sort of branch waving it over her shoulders. I just couldn't stop looking at her and without a thought I called out to her if perhaps she had had an accident in the area and needed some help. She only then raised her eyes to look our way but only to my children and lifted her hand with a smile motioning for my boys to approach her.</blockquote>
The family retreated to their house. Now, admittedly, this sounds rather odd, but the woman may well have been a flesh-and-blood human being with flesh-and-blood pets. As I have explained <a href="https://www.blogger.com/malcolmsquirks.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/amazing-what-you-see-in-outback.html" target="_blank">elsewhere</a>, behaviour which seems completely bizarre may have a quite logical explanation if you know the back story. In this case, I suspect she knew something, and was performing a ritual. It was what happened when the family took a walk later in the day that was really weird. Her youngest son's sandal fell off. Then -<br />
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As I bent down to pick up Manny's sandal I turned quickly when my five year old began to scream one of those hysterical cries for help that make a mother’s blood run to ice.
When I saw his pale face I noticed he was also urinating on himself. I turned toward the direction he was fixed on to have a look at the source and there they were. I would never in my wildest believe a soul had I not been there but sure enough. There about twenty feet or so on the side of the road were four small people about two and a half foot tall. One of them was about two foot at the most and they were drinking from the puddles of water that collected during the last rain fall. Then I noticed another one but he was much bigger than the four and he wore all black. He seemed to be a sort of watch out or care-giver as he did not participate in the splashing and drinking. The others were all dressed in white handmade type clothing and wore hats that were pointy like a garden gnome.
They were speaking and what appeared like joking and the entire time not once did they look at us until the big one did. I gave a shout from amazement. Then the big one grabbed up the smallest of them onto his shoulders and spoke to the others to go towards the tall grass. Not one word came from any of us as we watched them walk and disappear into the grass. Since then I have seen them on several occasions around my home just watching me although I am scared I am also equally curious as to what they are.
They do however cause a little mischief from time to time it is never anything serious only like they want my attention.</blockquote>
Readers of this blog will be aware that such entities are by no means unique, although they are not normally seen drinking from puddles. But before it is permitted to lead into the next story, a small digression might be in order. Readers will also no doubt be aware of the many sightings of humanoids in connection with flying saucers. However, the earliest of the major ufology organizations, N.I.C.A.P. initially discarded all such reports, judging them too fantastic to be taken seriously. (UFOs were presumably expected to be unpiloted.) The moral of the story: in studying the Big Jigsaw Puzzle, never throw away any piece, no matter how weird. Put it to the side. If it really doesn't belong to the picture, it will stay on the outer, but if it does belong, eventually a similar piece will come by to connect with it.<br />
Eight months later, the same witness returned with a <a href="http://www.castleofspirits.com/ghoststories/stories10/December2010_7.html" target="_blank">follow-up story</a> which was truly terrifying. This time she wrote under her own name, Jennifer Lozano. It began with the little people watching her. She went to bed, and in the next morning she found a mass of tiny muddy footprints on the lawn and patio. I shall now quote her own words of what happened next.<br />
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Later that night I was sitting on the sofa with my kids and I caught a quick flash of something run past the large windows in the front of our home. I decided it had to of been one of the many stray dogs in the area and continued watching the movie. It was not even a minute later that I began to feel like something was looking at me. It was nothing like the times I had seen them this was a very evil feeling. I was filled with fear and didn’t want to look but I made myself and what I saw made me give a silent scream and I swear my entire body felt like a bucket of ice was just poured on me.
There hovering about three feet off the ground was a little person but this time his eyes were huge and glowing like a cat's. The worst part though was the horrible smile on its face. His mouth was very wide and went from his ear to his other ear and was opened in an evil smile type laugh showing off rows of shark like teeth. I didn’t hear him out loud but it was more like he was putting it in my head and I could hear his laughing and chanting in some strange words that I had never heard of before.
I began to close my eyes at this point and prayed for God to help me and to protect my children form whatever this thing was. When I opened my eyes I was sure he would be gone but he was still there and he was laughing even harder at me. I got up and led my kids to the back room to watch the television in there. At this point I was so afraid that this thing was going to find a way into my home and I did not need a psychic to tell me that it wanted to hurt us.<br />
When it was time for bed a few hours later I had calmed down and was doing a great job of convincing myself that I had seen something else and my eyes were just playing off lights of something. I laid down in bed and just as I began to get comfy I hear something hit my roof hard. Then it sounded like something running across the roof and went quiet. I asked my husband if he had heard it and he nodded that he did and motioned for me to be quiet so we could hear. A few minutes later we were sure it was a small animal until we heard what sounded like evil laughter coming from the air vent that leads to our attic. It began to make scratching sounds on the ceiling and it would whisper my name. This continued all night until around four in the morning and then it would just stop.
I went through this every night for about five days and in the meantime my husband had went up into the attic to inspect for animals or birds or any kinds of hole that something could get inside but he found nothing.<br />
Then after the fifth night it got worse. I fell asleep that night and I was happy to have not heard a peep when I got awakened by something sitting on my chest and choking me. I couldn’t scream for help and I was sure I was going to die. I could smell this thing and feel its skin on mine. It smelled like something does when it is dead and has been lying in the summer heat for a few days.
When I realized how strong it was I began to realize that I had no chance of getting it off me and so desperate I began thinking about Jesus and I got an image in my head of him on the cross. At that very moment the thing let go of me for a moment and had a look of pure horror. It began to move backward like someone had just pressed the rewind button on a movie. It went back all the way to my bedroom door and then just stood there for what seemed like twenty minutes staring at mean with a look on its face that was indescribable. It looked just like it had every time I had seen it but this time it was completely naked and had no form of anatomy and its skin looked to be burned all over. At this point I was able to move again and gathered up all my courage and quickly sat up and turned for the lamp beside my bed. When I looked back it was gone but there was a black spot on the floor where it had been. I got up and as I looked closer I realized it was completely burned and still very hot to the touch on the area where it had stood.<br />
I ran over to my husband and he woke up easily which made me angry how he could not have heard or felt anything at all. I showed him the carpet and he looked at me and said, ’Oh my god Jennifer, what happened to your neck?’ Now before he had said anything I hadn't even noticed any burning or pain at all but as I looked in the mirror I was horrified and I just could not believe how I had not noticed it before. There were deep burns on either side of my neck and were beginning to become painful. Now I’m not sure if it was in my mind since I was seeing it for the first time but I became uncontrollable and was shaking with fear.
The next day I went to a local clinic in town and the doctor said it was third degree burns and asked me how in the world had I manage to get burned on the neck in such a pattern that looked a lot like hand prints to him. I had nothing to say and I sure as hell was not gone tell him the truth.</blockquote>
With this in mind, let us go back to the most popular, and arguably the most fantastic entry in this blog: the <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/attempted-abduction-by-gnomes.html" target="_blank">Attempted Abduction by Gnomes</a>. Do I believe it? I have been in communication with the witness since that date, and she appears sincere and sensible. What is certain is that she has been telling the same story without variation on several forums for well over a decade, without any of the embellishments typical of the hoaxer or mentally deranged. She is also adamant in her determination not to be identified. Altogether, her behaviour is consistent with someone honestly trying to come to terms with a baffling experience.<br />
Also, we now have a new piece of the jigsaw puzzle in the experience of the brother of <a href="http://www.castleofspirits.com/ghoststories/stories11/October2011_12.html" target="_blank">another informant</a> who wishes to remain anonymous. This person appears to have been a paranormal magnet, and according to the informant, he was near tears when relating what happened to him at the age of five or eight. He used to be visited at night by a "shadow man", who so terrified him that he would sleep with nun chucks and a baseball bat.<br />
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One night he didn’t have the bat and nun chucks and his feet were uncovered. He wasn’t sure if it was due to him tossing and turning, or if something uncovered him. He woke up to a lot of little shadow people surrounding him. They were about a couple of feet tall. They tied a rope around his neck and pulled him out of the bed and through the house. The front door was open, and he couldn’t scream or anything. He was grabbing on to anything and everything trying to stop these little evil people. He saw the rope already leading out the door. He found a pair of scissors and cut the rope. He ran into his mom’s room and fell asleep in her bed. When he woke up the next morning he had an imprint of a rope around his neck. Mom had asked him how he got the rope imprint around his neck. He told her, but she never believed him.</blockquote>
What are we supposed to make of that? The "rope" couldn't have been physical, because it wasn't on his neck in the morning. But what about the imprint? Could it have been a nightmare so terrifying that it left a psychosomatic mark? Has anyone ever heard of such a psychosomatic effect? The fact that he experienced other paranormal phenomena might suggest that this was another example. What would have happened to him, or the woman attacked by gnomes, if they had succeeded? Is there any record of people vanishing from their bedrooms during the night, never to be seen again?<br />
<br />
Another thing: most of the contributors to the Castle of Spirits appear to be adults, as you would expect. Nevertheless, although I haven't made any count, I have gained the distinct impression that the number of teenagers, or adults describing their childhood experiences, are over-represented. Then again, children are greatly over-represented in <a href="http://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2018/01/results-of-new-fairy-census.html" target="_blank">percipients of fairies</a>. Furthermore, there are many references to children talking to, or about, entities invisible to their parents, and animals reacting to things their owners cannot see. Are you beginning to notice a trend?<br />
<a href="http://www.castleofspirits.com/ghoststories/stories17/October2017_4.html" target="_blank">Here</a> is how 55-year-old John described what happened to him in Kentucky when he was aged 15. He had experienced a strange growling in the upstairs bedroom before, one day, deciding to sneak one of his mother's cigarettes and smoke it in the old barn.<br />
<blockquote>
I walked in and began to feel creeped out but lit my smoke. I had my back against the inside so I was in the barn about 10 feet or so looking out the old barn doors. That's when I heard a voice that sounded a lot like the growling voice from the bedroom. It sounded like it was coming from the top of the barn in the corner. It was daylight so I could see very well. I swear this is true the voice said, 'So you think you’re something don’t you?’
I felt the chills and the hair rise up on the back of my neck with my eyes watering I had to turn and look. I saw a winged large muscular figure of some kind of being. It blended in with the old reddish brown barn color. When we met eyes it left its perch with one leap and a flap. I began to run as fast as my 15 yr. old legs could make me. I could feel it getting closer to me as I got closer to the house for a second I thought it was going to pick me up, but I yelled for my mother and jumped on the back porch as the flying demon thing swooped up. I was still alive!!
After I told the family what I experienced we decided to move and did so very fast. A few years later the house burned to the ground. I’m a 55 year old man and still can’t shake the terror when I think about it.</blockquote>
<b>Shadows</b><br />
A lot of the stories involve shadow figures. To be fair, although such things may make your flesh crawl, there need not be anything sinister about them. By this time we should be familiar with apparitions which are visible to one person but not another, and those which are not visible to anyone, but can only be heard. Perhaps the entities can only manifest in that manner or, which is probably the same thing, our psychic senses are only capable of apprehending them like that. This would appear to be confirmed by an Englishwoman called Caroline Spencer, who <a href="http://www.castleofspirits.com/ghoststories/stories10/May2010_11.html" target="_blank">writes</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But lately, I sometimes see a small shadow on top of the stairs when it's late at night. However it's not always a shadow. Its sometimes occurs as a figure of a small girl. You can briefly see what she's wearing and looks like a long dress and a dirty white shirt over the top.
</blockquote>
But, some are still really weird - like <a href="http://www.castleofspirits.com/ghoststories/stories11/November2011_6.html" target="_blank">this one</a>, by a woman (? girl) called Alysen.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
My good friend, Faryn just moved into a house in Spokane, Washington. She was text messaging me last night, 11-10-11, when she said to me, "Alysen! There’s something in my room!!!"<br />
Now at first I did not believe her, thinking it was just a prank she was pulling on me, but I was proven to be very wrong. I challenged her and told her to tell me what it looked like. It was a little dark figure huddled in the corner of her room. She also added that her cat was looking at the mysterious figure as well, and by that point I asked her to send me a photo of the "thing in the corner". She replied with a picture of a little black glowing figure, around a foot and a half tall, slumped over in the corner which was off to the side of her bed. It resembled to me to be a stuffed gorilla or a pair of black boots, but she said she owned neither object.<br />
I asked for, once again, a photo, but this time a close-up of it. I got another photo, an enhanced image of the first one, it appeared to have a visible left ear. She picked up a piece of candy, and attempted to throw the candy at the thing. She did so, and then she frantically text messaged me saying "It vanished! It vanished!!" Then, she told me she had thrown the piece of candy, and right as it hit the huddled figure it let out a screech, like the one one hears when one drags their fingernails on a chalkboard, and disappeared, making the candy hit the wall in back of it.
After this occurrence, her cat, Baby, was staring out her open door, looking towards the direction of noises coming from the hallway. Let me note that she was home alone at the time of the occurrence.</blockquote>
<b>Unholy Things</b><br />
<b> </b>We'll start off with <a href="http://www.castleofspirits.com/ghoststories/stories17/June2017_5.html" target="_blank">this story</a> by another person called Anonymous, this time from Texas.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I was about three or four years old but my older brother confirmed my suspicions when I noticed small bruises or scratches that appeared over night. My bedroom door was usually locked but he said that whenever he went to check on the pups my door would open quietly and he would see a dark figure disappear into my room. By the time he was on his way back I was sitting up in bed crying for our mom and saying I was hurt. They would check my body and sure enough there were bruises and scratches covering my back. One was so deep that by the time it healed it was just a giant cross shaped scar on my back.<br />
It got worse when it was just me and my brother. I could be in the living room and recovering from that night’s attack and I would be shoved onto the hardwood floor on my back. I looked up and there was a demon shaped figure leaning over me. I screamed for my brother and continued to point and scream until he got there. He looked up to where I was pointing and said there was nothing there. But there was something there and I could not stop crying.<br />
My parents hired a priest to come and cleanse the house and at the same time he baptized me. When he flipped me over to look at the marks on my back he poured holy water on it. I sat in his lap and was screaming for him to stop the burning. When it was over the air in our house felt lighter and I personally felt better. It is an memory I will probably carry to my death. I still have nightmares about the attacks and what I had seen.
</blockquote>
What sort of mundane explanation can be provided for this? Perhaps multiple nightmares with psychosomatic references (is there any evidence for such things?), cured by a ritual he was too young to understand? As with so many of these explanations, it requires results out of all proportion to the alleged stimuli. And what about the "dark figure" seen by his brother?<br />
<br />
<i>Be afraid. Be very afraid.</i><br />
How would you like to think that <i>They</i> are waiting for you to take your last earthly breath? For this, we shall leave the Castle of Spirits and go to the <a href="http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/whats-your-best-108202.html" target="_blank">All Nurses</a> noticeboard, where a member asked for nursing ghost stories and received more than 2,500 responses. Most of these were, so to speak, "normal" ghost stories, but some with quite different. Like the very first response:<br />
<blockquote>
The best I have heard is from a nurse who said that one night she was floated to oncology at the hospital she used to work at. She was given a patient who was passing away and had been unconscious for several days. At one point during the night the nurse went into the room and the patient was at the top of the bed and looked at her and said, "Don't let them take me!", the nurse was freaked out and asked her who was going to take her, and she said that black thing up there and pointed up in the air. This patient died within minutes.</blockquote>
<a href="http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/whats-your-best-108202-page4.html" target="_blank">No. 51</a> was reply to this from another nurse.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A nurse who is a friend of mine told me about a patient she had that had been sick for a while, and she had gone into the patient's room to get her vital signs, and the patient was lifted off the bed just a few inches, and she said that there was a black shadow that covered the room and as the patient died it was like the shadow left the room, and a very cold, even spookey draft followed. She says, and I believe, that you can tell a patient has either gone to heaven or the devil himself has come to claim his soul. Nursing gives you a totally different look on death and the higher power.</blockquote>
Rather like in the movie, <i>Ghost</i>.<br />
All right, these are second hand stories. However, <a href="http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/whats-your-best-108202.html" target="_blank">No. 4</a> claims to be first hand.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
One night I was caring for a dying male patient. He was scared and I spent quite some time with him, trying to calm and reassure him. Eventually he calmed and I left the bedside and went over to the nurses' station which was about 15 feet away. As I sat down I glanced over to him and there was a black shape standing over the bed, looking down at the patient. I was terrified, and am sure it was something evil.</blockquote>
The final one <a href="http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/whats-your-best-108202-page6.html" target="_blank">(No. 77)</a> was from a South African nurse working in California.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Another instance, there was a patient who was terminally ill with liver cancer in a private room. I was working days but the night shift people said they hated going into the room because something would blow on the back of their necks and shadows would move where shadows shouldn't be. The man was a Christian, as was his wife, and his wife said she saw this black presence descend above him and his breathing would become labored. She asked myself and a friend to pray for her which we gladly did being Christians ourselves. We anointed and blessed the room and prayed with the family and asked the Lord to seal the room. From that time on the room was filled with peace and love and the man breathed so much more easier. People had no more problems with going in there. This gentle little man eventually passed away, but it was in a place of peace and love.</blockquote>
Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-63906130164952971762018-04-11T19:02:00.000-07:002024-03-17T23:43:57.470-07:00When the Floor Gaped Open One of the interesting aspects of anomalies is that sometimes the really unusual, rare phenomena - so rare that they are usually overlooked - can be well documented. Thus, the case of the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/unconscious-ventriloquism-the-unsolved-mystery-of-the-zaragoza-goblin" target="_blank">talking stovepipe</a> was meticulously investigated by the police and other city officials, not to mention the crowds which gathered round. Similarly, the room that forced people to <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/walk-on-your-hands.html" target="_blank">walk on their hands</a> was investigated on the orders of the local magistrate. And the terrifying experience of a couple in Bristol in 1873 had its day in court.<br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
It was established in court that Thomas B. Cumpston, 26 and his wife, Anne Martha Cumpston, of Virginia Road, Leeds "occupied good positions in Leeds" and were of irreproachable character. They had arrived in Bristol on 8 December, and booked into the Victoria Hotel. Yet in the small hours of that night (now 9 December), they were arrested for disorderly behaviour at the railway station. Both were in their nightclothes, and Mr Cumpston had fired a pistol. (Up until 1920 there was <a href="http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2007/02/gun_law_and_com.html" target="_blank">virtually no restriction</a> on owning a hand gun the UK.)<br />
Mr Cumpston was extremely agitated, and they told a story which made no sense at all, so it was off to the lockup with them, and the next day they were brought before the magistrates' court. Even then, the the young man was still so agitated he had difficulty expressing himself.<br />
Anne Cumpston gave evidence that, early in the evening, they had been assailed by loud noises, but that the landlady, Mrs Tongue had reassured them. That same landlady gave evidence that she had also heard the sounds, but could not properly describe them. When, about 3 or 4 in the morning the noises began again, they leaped out of bed onto the floor, which appeared to give way. They heard either voices repeating their own exclamations, or else their own voices were echoing strangely. Suddenly, the floor gaped open, and Mr Cumpston started to fall in, only to be dragged out by his wife. That was too much; they both jumped out of the window and fled to the railway station, looking for a policeman.<br />
Her evidence was essentially the same as husband had originally given to the arresting police officer. The police, naturally, investigated their room and found nothing amiss. In their opinion, the couple had suffered a "collective hallucination".<br />
This, of course, is what we used to call a "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claytons" target="_blank">Claytons</a> explanation": the explanation you give when you are not giving an explanation. Under normal circumstances, the fact that two people see the same thing is taken as evidence that they are <i>not</i> hallucinating. But is there really such a thing as a "collective hallucination"?<br />
Well, yes and no. I <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/phantom-leopards-and-collective.html" target="_blank">previously described</a> situations where groups of people, under intense emotional stimuli, can be induced to see simple things which aren't there. But this is obviously not such a case. Likewise, there happens to be a rare psychiatric condition called <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1559622/" target="_blank">folie á deux</a>, in which two people share the same delusion. The requisite circumstances are that one is emotionally dominant over the other, and that they are socially isolated ie they don't get feedback from the real world. But a delusion is not an hallucination; it's a false belief. In a few cases, where schizophrenia is involved, hallucinations may be shared, but these are auditory, not visual hallucinations. Genuinely psychotic people normally "hear things" rather than "see things". The dramatic "hallucination" described here is more likely to result from sleep deprivation or psychedelic drugs. And, of course, such hallucinations aren't shared.<br />
No! Let us accept that what happened to the Cumpstons remains unexplained, and go on to a couple of other cases. In the 1940s, the Rev. Dr. A. T. P. Byles, vicar of Yealmpton, Devon, together with his wife, happened to find a hole about a yard wide in the path in the churchyard. When he threw a stone down it, it appeared to hit stonework. The fact that they needed to throw a stone implies it was too deep to see the bottom. They hurried back to fetch planks to cover it, but when they returned, it had gone!<br />
Very strange, indeed, but fairly benign. But more recently a student nurse had a similar experience to the Cumpstons'. She was having a cup of tea in her room about 8 a.m. when a hole suddenly appeared in the floor of her room. It took up most of the floor, and the edges looked like rock. She couldn't see the bottom. To add to her amazement, a voice told her to jump in, but she decided against it, and the hole vanished.<br />
<br />
What does it all mean? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in his alter ego of Sherlock Holmes, said that it was a bad idea to speculate until you have all the facts. In the present cases, this doesn't leave us very far to go. One could argue, of course, that since the events are impossible, the witnesses must have been making them up for no apparent reason, despite the fact that they are separated by decades and miles, and at least one couple must have been very good actors.<br />
If we assume they did happen, then the most comfortable speculation is that they really were hallucinations - some sort of psychic delusion imposed by some sort of external agency - and that the floor or ground did not really open up.<br />
The most frightening suggestion - and fantasy novelists would have a field day with it - is that holes to another reality really did open up. Where did they lead to? And have other people, unrecorded, disappeared into them? People go missing permanently all the time. I know that Conan Doyle himself was puzzled by a case of a man who set out with his family for a short stroll, then returned to the house to fetch something he had forgotten, <i>and was never seen again.</i><br />
<br />
<b>References:</b> The account of the Cumpstons is taken from chapter 18 of <i>Lo!</i> (1931) by Charles Fort who, with his usual precision, cited the London <i>Times </i>of 11 Dec 1873 for the arrest, and the <i>Bristol Daily Post</i> of 10 December for the report of the court hearing. As I was writing this, I noticed that "Undine" has provided the <a href="http://strangeco.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/newspaper-clipping-of-day_8.html" target="_blank">full text</a> of the <i>Times</i> article, while another blogger has provided the text from <a href="http://www.therealityfiles.com/an-early-example-of-reality-shift/" target="_blank">both papers</a>.<br />
I have not been able to fully access the <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/" target="_blank">British Newspaper Archive</a> site, but I notice that the story was also published in several other newspapers, notably the <i>York Herald of </i>13 December, the <i>Manchester Evening News</i> of 10 December, the <i>Birmingham Daily Post</i> of 11 December, and the <i>Southern Reporter</i> (Selkirkshire, Scotland) of 18 December.<br />
The other two cases were related by Janet Bord in <i>Fairies, real encounters with little people</i> (1997), and she gave references.<br />
<br />Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-1700281462642638442018-03-08T21:13:00.001-08:002023-12-08T21:56:35.308-08:00How Can Anyone Live Without Eating? I had already planned to write this article in this month, and only later realised how timely it would be. Right now we are in the midst of Lent and, as we shall see, some people take it to a whole new level.<br />
In A. J. Cronin's novel, <i>The Keys of the Kingdom</i> there is a nine day wonder when a girl is alleged to be living without food, and the congregation consider it a miracle until the priest discovers that she is being fed surreptitiously. But what can we think when there is strong evidence that things like that have actually taken place?<br />
<a name='more'></a> The technical term is <i>inedia</i>, which is Latin for "non-eating", <i>ed-</i> being the Latin equivalent of "eat", following Grimm's Law that a Latin <i>d</i> becomes a <i>t</i> in Germanic languages such as English.<br />
It need have nothing to do with religion. In <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/hallucinations-in-comas.html" target="_blank">my article</a> on hallucinations in comas, I mentioned the case of Anne Jeffries of Cornwall who, in 1645, fell unconscious and reported being taken into fairyland. Much of her story was told by Moses Pitt, the son of her employer, who also described her psychic healing practices after the event, and the following <a href="http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/prwe/prwe340.htm" target="_blank">crucial comment</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>She forsook eating our victuals, and was fed by these fairies from that harvest time to the next Christmas day;</i> upon which day she came to our table and said, because it was that day, she would eat some roast beef with us, the which she did--I myself being then at the table.</blockquote>
Harvest time in Cornwall is <a href="https://thisissallybell.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/harvest-in-cornwall/" target="_blank">September</a>, so if the story is accurate, she was being fed by the fairies for three months. Apparently, she gave Moses a piece of their bread, which he claimed was the most delicious he had ever tasted, before or after. Not only that, but when she was arrested on a charge of witchcraft (of which she was eventually acquitted), she was put in prison for several months without any food - or ill effects.<br />
All right, Mr Pitt's account was written fifty years after the events, so we are justified in being skeptical. The trouble is, according to <a href="https://deadbutdreaming.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/the-faerie-abduction-of-anne-jefferies/" target="_blank">another source</a>,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
a 1647 document containing correspondence from the mayor (now held in the Clarendon manuscripts archive) confirms Anne’s presence in the gaol and that she was deprived of food for several months without any apparent detriment to her health. </blockquote>
With this bizarre story behind us, let us return to our old friend, Herbert Thurston. Chapters 15 and 16 of his book, <i><a href="https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.7290" target="_blank">The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism</a></i> are entitled, "The Mystic as Hunger-Striker" and "Living Without Eating", and, as usual, he is at pains to establish the accuracy of the information. It is interesting, also, to note that, with few exceptions, all the cases cited are women. Perhaps we men can't live without eating.<br />
Fr. Thurston records allegations of late medieval mystics going without food for years: St. Lidwina, 28 years, Elizabeth von Reute, 15 years, among others, and Nicholas von Flüe (an exception to the all girls' club), 19 years. However, as he provided no further information, presumably he considered the evidence insufficient. The same cannot be said for one of the most famous and influential nuns of the middle ages, St Catherine of Siena (1347-84). Here we have the accounts of her confessors, intimate friends, and disciples, collected within a short time of her death. After she began to take communion daily, no further food was required by her and, in fact, her body rejected normal food. From September 1372 until Lent the following year, she was able to take only the smallest quantity of food, and for 55 days, from Easter Sunday to Ascension, none at all, although her activity for good works never ceased.<br />
It is important to remember that, in a convent, nuns live in one another's pockets. Also, they follow a strict routine of communal prayer and activities. In other words, it would be rather difficult for one to sneak food for private consumption, in either her normal or altered state of consciousness, without being caught out. Catherine, in fact, was surrounded by a coterie of young devotees who watched her constantly. Instead of catching her at eating, they caught her out <i>pretending</i> to eat.<br />
The last brings us to another issue: nuns (and monks) are under vows of obedience. Her family and friends were so dismayed by her inedia that her confessor ordered her, under obedience, to take daily food. She tried, but invariably she brought it up again. Catherine's fame was such that 400 of her letters to various important people throughout Europe have been preserved, and in one of them she related how she used to pray to God to allow her to live like others, should it be His will, and she attempted to eat once or twice every day, but without success.<br />
One could go on and on with these records. Another St Catherine, this time of Genoa (1447-1510) used to go almost without any food at all for 30 days every Advent and 40 in Lent for 20 years, and during these fasts she was just as vigorous and active as at other times. Under obedience she attempted to take food, but her stomach rejected it.<br />
Ever on the alert for possible mundane explanations, Fr. Thurston referred to experiments in which it was established that, provided the subject is warm, and kept supplied with water, it is possible to abstain from food for 30 days without necessarily incurring significant harm, but fasts of 40 or 50 days are dangerous, and close to the limits of human endurance.<br />
<br />
Instead of examining further cases of simple religious inedia, let us move to situations where the subject is bedridden and physically incapable of taking food for herself. In the chapter on stigmata, Thurston relates the appalling story of Maria Domenica Lazzeri (1815 -1848). I note that a campaign for her beatification commenced in 1943, but during her lifetime she was considered essentially as an invalid, who was known to be religious, but with no reputation for exceptional holiness.<br />
At the age of 13 she suffered a severe grief reaction on the death of her father, as well as what appears to have been an hysteric illness with convulsions. In 1833 she went into a catatonic fit, after which she hardly ever left her bed. In 1834 a Dr Dei Cloche was called in to treat her.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
He gives a description of her extraordinary aversion to food and of the strange hyperaesthesia which manifested itself in all her senses. She could not endure anything but the most subdued light. The slightest pressure on her abdomen caused her the most intense pain. When she consented reluctantly at his request to allow a small fragment of sugar to be placed upon her tongue, she at once had an attack which lasted twenty minutes, in the course of which the fit of vomiting was so violent that she almost choked. Already for some weeks she had taken next to no nourishment at all, <i>and from the 10th of April, 1834, until her death it seems that she neither ate nor drank.</i> [emphasis added]</blockquote>
Her clinical condition was dreadful. She could endure neither light, scents, or noise. She could speak only faintly, and with difficulty. If anyone approached her without precautions, she would suffer trembling or convulsions. Although she took no nourishment, she was not emaciated. When, in 1837, she began to experience stigmata ie bleeding in the area of Jesus' wounds, Dr Dei Cloche, who was now head of an important hospital in Trent, paid her another visit. Her condition was unchanged. His description of her sufferings is terrible to read. Even taking her pulse caused her distress.<br />
Personally, I cannot see the poor girl as anything but the victim of a terrible psychosomatic disorder. No doubt malnutrition would have contributed to her death, but just the same, 14 years is a jolly long time for someone to go without food or water. It hardly need be pointed out that a person in her physical condition would be in no state to get up and sneak food on the side, even as a sleepwalker. If her family were feeding her - and her visceral rejection of food was obvious to the doctor - there would have been no reason for them to deny it. They would have gained nothing from the deception, either in monetary or social value. They were not trying to prove anything. Their relative was already severely disabled even without inedia. Even if they had pretensions of extreme holiness on her behalf - and they didn't - that would have been satisfied with her stigmata, which occurred three years <i>after </i>the commencement of inedia.<br />
<br />
Completely unrelated was the case of a Scottish lass, Janet McLeod, which was recorded in the <i>Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society</i> in 1767. At the ages of 15, 19, and 28 successive "epileptic" seizures left her a complete invalid, her legs bent up under her body.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[On] Whit-Sunday, 1763, her jaw became fast locked. Her father with a knife forced it open enough to introduce a little thin gruel or whey, but it all, or nearly all, ran out again. From this time, for more than four years, it is stated that she took no food and lost all desire for it, except that on two occasions her jaws for a while relaxed and she asked for water. All the normal excretory processes were suspended, except, of course, from the lungs and skin. The doctor who reports the case declares that when he saw her the girl was not at all emaciated. [Thurston's summary]</blockquote>
In some attempts to open her jaws, two of her lower incisors were knocked out. Some food could be forced in, but it always leaked out of the sides, or was brought up by retching. Nevertheless, the same doctor returned five years later, to find that she was sometimes able to swallow a little oat cake through the gap in her teeth, and two years later her jaws relaxed enough for a more or less normal life to be followed.<br />
It must be emphasized that the story was confirmed by other witnesses of standing in the community. Also, no ulterior motives could be detected. The family asked and received nothing. Their distress was obvious. They were highly regarded in the neighbourhood, and had strict religious principles. And this was Scotland, remember. The religion was Presbyterianism. Inedia, and other Roman Catholic rigmarole would have cut no ice over there.<br />
<br />
There is no space here to list all the other examples provided of invalids existing for long periods without food in the age before intravenous drips and tubal feeding. As I mentioned <a href="http://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2017/09/sugar-out-of-nowhere.html" target="_blank">previously</a>, Thurston's investigations were so thorough that, in order to do them justice, large sections would have to be cited almost verbatim. But it is clear that, fraud and poor investigation to the side, inedia is a genuine phenomenon. I just have no way to explain it.Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4608287618412195836.post-84974461661221971912018-02-10T17:30:00.003-08:002024-01-20T20:10:05.237-08:00Levitating Saints - and Others During my visit to Bhutan, one of my travel companions made a reference to levitation practised in Tibetan monasteries, and I commented that I wouldn't rule it out. "I'm glad you don't reject it," said our host (or our guide, I forget which).<br />
"In our society," I replied, "it occurs among two different types of people: Christian mystics, and the demon possessed."<br />
<a name='more'></a> So let's start from the beginning: Tibet. I have previously referred to Alexandra David-Néel's book, <i>Magic and Mystery in Tibet</i> (1929). This intrepid lady explorer immersed herself in the culture and mystical practices of this mysterious kingdom, but was careful to make a distinction between what she saw and what she merely heard about. She witnessed events best understood as representing <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/telepathy-anyone.html" target="_blank">telepathy</a>, she learned how to raise her body temperature, and she managed to produce a <i><a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/on-tulpas-guardian-angels-and-figments.html" target="_blank">tulpa</a></i>, or visible hallucination. What she did not see was levitation, but she was told the theory:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Amongst these exercises the following one enjoys the greatest favour amongst those many Tibetan ascetics who are not of an especially intellectual type.<br />
The student sits cross-legged on a large and thick cushion. He inhales slowly and for a long time, just as if he wanted to fill his body with air. Then, holding his breath, he jumps up with legs crossed, without using his hands and falls back on his cushion, still remaining in the same position. He repeats that exercise a number of times during each period of practice. Some lamas succeed in jumping very high in that way. Some women train themselves in the same manner.<br />
As one can easily believe the object of this exercise is not acrobatic jumping. According to Tibetans, the body of those who drill themselves for years, by that method, becomes exceedingly light; nearly without weight. These men, they say, are able to sit on an ear of barley without bending its stalk or to stand on the top of a heap of grain without displacing any of it. In fact the aim is levitation. [Chapter 6]</blockquote>
Whether the historic Buddha would have approved is a moot question. One of the anecdotes about him was how he met an ascetic who told him how, after twenty years of various rituals and meditation, he had been able to walk on water. "You poor fellow," the Buddha is said to have exclaimed, "to have wasted so much of your life, when a ferryman would be willing to take you across for a few annas!"<br />
Be that as it may, Madame David-Néel heard of a test whereby a monk was placed in a pit equal to his height in depth, and topped by a sort of cupola of equal height. The candidate was expected to levitate out of the hole in the top of the cupola. Khampas told her that such feats had been performed in their country, but she never saw it herself. It would be interesting if a disinterested Westerner could witness such a performance under control conditions, because in an <a href="http://davidmcgonigal.com.au/_travelstories/nav_R_ts_as_dl.html" target="_blank">interview</a> the Dalai Lama said he had never personally seen anyone levitate. He did, however, mention that an elderly nun had told him of seeing, in her youth, two monks fly from the top of a mountain to the other side of the valley - although he wondered whether she had not been hallucinating. If the head of the religion, who studied its teachings deeply, and is in contact with others of the same quality, cannot confirm it, it is no harm in the rest of us being skeptical.<br />
<br />
Some of the early spiritualists were alleged to have levitated. Daniel Dunglas Home, in particular, was recorded to have levitated out a window and into an adjoining room. However, Houdini, in his book, <i>A Magician Among the Spirits</i> stated categorically that he would have been able to perform the same trick under the same circumstances, and issued a challenge to that effect. It would be tedious to examine every claim of this nature, but it cannot be denied that widespread fraud was a feature of a great many séances and, in any case, their paranormal feats were typically performed under conditions of their own choosing, under poor lighting, before sympathetic, and usually uncritical audiences.<br />
I am open to further evidence, of course, but I do not think a very good case exists for <i>voluntary</i> levitation. Involuntary levitation, on the other hand, is another matter.<br />
<br />
<i>Demon Possession</i>. Those who watched the 1973 movie, <i>The Exorcist</i> may remember the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsU1kv2erGo" target="_blank">scene</a> of possessed girl being levitated off the bed. This did not happen in the <a href="https://www.dreadcentral.com/news/464510/the-real-life-case-that-inspired-the-exorcist-is-even-more-remarkable-than-fiction/" target="_blank">case history</a> which inspired the book, (the boy's real name is said to have been <a href="https://allthatsinteresting.com/roland-doe-the-exorcist-true-story" target="_blank">Roland Hunkeler</a>), although it is reported that a priest, while seated on a chair, was moved across the room. In the 2012 <a href="https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2014/01/25/the-disposession-of-latoya-ammons/4892553/" target="_blank">"possession" case</a> in Gary, Indiana, a girl really was levitated off her bed, and a boy was seen to walk backwards up a wall.<br />
Again, we can take the case of <a href="https://www.sott.net/article/151935-Among-the-Many-Counterfeits-a-Case-of-Demonic-Possession" target="_blank">"Julia"</a>, as recorded by the psychiatrist, Dr Richard Gallagher. Julia used to fall into trances during which an evil personality emerged. It would be easy to write her symptoms off as simply a dissociative disorder, except that she exhibited ESP and involuntary psychokinesis ie poltergeist phenomena. In particular, according to Dr Gallagher:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Remarkably, for about 30 minutes, she actually levitated about half a foot in the air.</blockquote>
I shall admit, however, that when I made the statement in Bhutan, I was thinking of the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090714035558/http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/gaslight/amherst.htm" target="_blank">Great Amherst Mystery</a> in Nova Scotia, 1878-9, which was really a poltergeist infestation. Rereading the evidence, I see that the entire body and limbs of 19-year-old Esther Cox, the focus of the phenomenon, were several times seen to visibly swell up and then, after several loud reports, just as suddenly deflate. But she was not levitated. Just the same, there have been occasional poltergeist cases in which children have been levitated.<br />
The phenomenon is therefore rather complex, but the vast majority of cases involve:<br />
<br />
<i>Christian Mystics</i>. What is mysticism? In English, unlike some other languages, we make no distinction between knowing a fact and knowing a person. A mystic seeks to know God in the second sense through a personal, emotional bonding. At its lowest level it can be considered commonplace, even normal, for even the irreligious recognize that a "religious experience" is more than just an acceptance of doctrine. But what we are here concerned about is the sort of altered state of consciousness <a href="https://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132078267/neurotheology-where-religion-and-science-collide" target="_blank">investigated</a> by neurologist, Dr Andrew Newberg, in which the mystic experiences a union, or oneness, with God and the universe linked, in the case of a Christian, with the sense of overwhelming love. In its deepest state, he will cease to be aware of his physical surroundings. Needless to say, "ecstasy", to use the theological term, is more likely to be experienced by monks or nuns who spend many hours in prayer and meditation, rather than someone, however pious, who must deal with the problems of the world, such as a parish priest or pastor, or layman.<br />
Although only a tiny proportion of them have been recorded as levitating, their situation is quite different to that of alleged levitating mediums. The latter deliberately performed it before sympathetic audiences, typically under poor light, in conditions under their control. The saints seen to levitate did so spontaneously, normally under good lighting conditions and, significantly, they did not desire the "gift", and as often as not, requested silence on the part of any witnesses, for public adulation was an enemy to humility.<br />
Levitation, as far as I am aware, was not included in the many highly imaginative legends of the saints common during the Middle Ages, but references to it start to appear in the 12th and 13th centuries. The first incident may have been with the kindly and gentle soul known as St. Francis of Assisi (1181/2 - 1226), who may also have been the first to introduce the <a href="https://www.blogger.com/"><span id="goog_2045396215"></span>Christmas crib<span id="goog_2045396216"></span></a>, and the first prominent person to display the stigmata.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Blessed Francis, one day while he was in fervent prayer, was seen by the friars raised above the ground with his whole body, his arms extended heavenward: and a bright cloud enveloped him.</blockquote>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4xA8b8qKRn8-UGubPbsTJ02j27jJLGp-aOQhkx_tyd1h2VUU2YnInEweWsuN5UeUo8t8ANMgPlpw_tUPw2HAl3ZWyJJXo9sBMiHkZArteoo2y9zRxAbYvMLhgVQPn6TzD0Hakn8TTIhU/s1600/IMG_0003.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4xA8b8qKRn8-UGubPbsTJ02j27jJLGp-aOQhkx_tyd1h2VUU2YnInEweWsuN5UeUo8t8ANMgPlpw_tUPw2HAl3ZWyJJXo9sBMiHkZArteoo2y9zRxAbYvMLhgVQPn6TzD0Hakn8TTIhU/s320/IMG_0003.jpg" width="296" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Giotto's mural in the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Well, so said his official biographer, St. Bonaventura in the <em>Legenda </em><i>Major,</i> written in 1261. To be sure, an earlier biography in 1245 makes no mention of such events, and by 1320 the stories had grown in the telling such that he was being frequently levitated to the height of a beech tree, or even almost completely out of sight.<br />
My feeling is that, if this story were unique, it might be dismissed as a pious legend. However, since levitation does not appear to have been included in earlier legends of the saints, and since there are well documented later cases, I think we might let it pass.<br />
It is possible that his claim to have been the first saintly levitator might have to pass to <a href="https://churchpop.com/2016/01/18/christina-the-astonishing-indestructible-woman/" target="_blank">Christine the Astounding</a> (c 1150 - 1224), who was known to have practised extraordinary austerities. Her career is said to have commenced after she suffered a seizure in her early 20s, and woke up at her own funeral, having been granted a guided tour of purgatory. In an <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2016/01/hallucinations-in-comas.html" target="_blank">earlier article</a>, I recorded several cases of people experiencing detailed hallucinations while in comas, so this account cannot be airily dismissed. Just the same, I note that it is supposed to have occurred "sometime in her early 20s", which implies that the exact date was not recorded. This casts a bit of doubt on the subject. In any case, when she woke up, she is said to have levitated almost to the ceiling. However, as this is the only case I know of where the levitator was not in an altered state of consciousness, I would prefer to see the full documentation before I would accept it. (It may, for instance, be a garbled account of an out-of-the-body experience during a near death experience.)<br />
The situation becomes a lot more certain when we leave the period of manuscripts and enter the age of the printed word. Here it is possible to follow a paper trail right back to the eyewitnesses, many of whom were interrogated during the investigations for canonisation.<br />
Take the case of St Bernadino Realino (1530-1616). At the inquiry held in 1621, a Signor Tobias da Ponte deposed under oath that, about 1608, he had come to seek spiritual advice from the priest. While seated in the lobby, he noticed that the door of the priest's room was slightly open, and a radiant light was streaming through. Was there a fire inside? he thought. Peeking inside, he was amazed to see Bernadino at prayer, rapt in ecstasy, his eyes closed and his body lifted four palms, or 75 cm, above the floor. Having given the evidence, he was asked by the investigator whether he was sure the light wasn't an hallucination, a fancy of the brain, or simply the sun's rays. (That's another thing: preternatural light, often from the face of the ecstatic, is another well attested phenomenon of mysticism.) No way! da Ponte affirmed; the rays were like those from a blacksmith's forge, and he saw the saint raised off the ground as clearly as he saw the interrogator. The latter then admonished him not to exaggerate, for a saint requires no exaggeration. Again, da Ponte insisted he was reporting the absolute truth. A third time he was questioned, but he stuck to his evidence. So don't ever imagine these phenomena have not been thoroughly investigated.<br />
Of course, the one everyone speaks about with respect to levitation is Joseph of Copertino (1603-1663), for the details of whose life I am indebted to the biography by Fr. Angelo Pastrovicchi. Admittedly, it was written in 1753, at the time of his beatification, but it was based on the official documentation prepared from eye-witness accounts taken a just a few years after his death.<br />
Personally, I was not impressed by Joseph the man. The view of monasticism common at his time (and still today?) was that, if simplicity is good, then self-denial is better, and self-torture best. Thus, he used to coat his food with a sauce so foul-tasting that no-one else could swallow it. He fasted seven times a year for forty days each, and wore a heavy chain around his waist (but not heavy enough to keep him on the ground).<br />
Also, although his kindness and virtue were widely acknowledged, he appears to have been one of those people who are so heavenly minded they are of no earthly use. He was forever suddenly going into raptures. In 1645, when he was stationed in Assisi, the High Admiral of Castille and his wife came to see him, with their numerous retinue. However, as Joseph entered the church to meet them, his eyes suddenly alighted on a statue of the Immaculate Conception on the altar. Immediately, he went into ecstasy, flew twelve paces over the heads of the company to the foot of the statue, remained there in prayer for some time, then gave his customary shriek and flew back to his cell.<br />
The devout Princess Mary of Savoy frequently witnessed his ecstasies in Assisi - not always involving levitation, admittedly. Once, in his private chapel, she saw him hover three palms from the floor while elevating the host, or communion bread. Another time, after mass, she watched him fly onto the altar and remain there in ecstasy.<br />
At Naples, at the command of the Inquisition, he said mass at the church of St Gregory of Armenia, belonging to the nuns of St. Ligorio. Suddenly, while he was engaged in private prayer in a corner, he let out a cry, then flew up to the altar, where he stood, bending over the flowers and candles with his arms outstretched like a cross, till the nuns cried out that he would catch fire. But, giving another shriek, he returned to the centre of the church.<br />
On his first visit to Rome, he was led by the Father General to meet Pope Urban VIII. Upon kissing the Pope's foot, he went into ecstasy and was raised aloft. But his last six years were spent at Osimo, where his fellow religious frequently witnessed his levitations, a very lengthy one of which occurred at the last time he celebrated mass, a month before his death. The very day before his death, when he heard the bell announcing the approach of the viaticum, or communion for the sick, he rose from his bed and flew from the door of his room to the stair above his chapel. All these events, I need to remind you, were attested under oath just a few years later.<br />
Joseph's levitations were famous in his own lifetime, and seventy were recorded in the acts of his beatification. The sheer number should be sufficient to overcome any legitimate skepticism over any individual instance. And needless to say, it doesn't matter if it happened seventy times, or just once, whether he levitated ten feet or ten inches, it is still a violation of the laws of nature as we know them.<br />
The way so people write, you would think he was the only levitator. Far from it! Let us consult <i>The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism</i> by Herbert Thurston. In a previous <a href="http://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2017/09/sugar-out-of-nowhere.html" target="_blank">essay</a> I related how it contains a massive amount of documentation on anomalies you will not read about elsewhere. It can be downloaded at the <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.gov.ignca.7290" target="_blank">Archive website</a> and, furthermore, you can purchase paperbacks and even Kindle editions from Amazon, and I would highly recommend you do so.<br />
Thurston commenced with levitation for the obvious reason, as he pointed out, that whereas a medical miracle requires certification from a medical practitioner, you don't need much in the way of qualifications to tell whether a person's feet are off the floor. Such were those who, on several occasions witnessed the "rapture" of Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582). Once, when she was prioress, she was on her knees about to take communion, when she was carried into the air by an irresistible force. She mentioned this particular incident in her autobiography (Thurston had access to the facsimile of her manuscript in Spanish), where she explained how she was completely unable to resist it, although she was both frightened by the act of being suspended, and distressed at the idea of the talk it would provoke. She also reported that after such events she felt buoyant, as if her feet were not touching the ground. Note that she was completely aware of her surroundings during levitation.<br />
Among those who have not been declared saints (yet), the "Blue Nun", Mary of Jesus of Ágreda (1602-1665) made such efforts to resist levitation that she vomited blood, but unlike Teresa, she lost awareness of her surroundings. According to Bishop Samaniego, who knew her well:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The raptures of the servant of God were of this nature. The body was entirely bereft of the use of the senses, as if it were dead, and it was without feeling if violence was done to it; it was raised a little above the ground and as light as if it had no weight of its own, so much so that like a feather it could be moved by a puff of breath, even from a distance. . . . She frequently remained in this state of ecstasy for two or even for three hours.</blockquote>
Space forbids a full description of all the case histories Thurston examined, not to mention his assessment of the documentation. Indeed, even he was limited by space to recording only a couple of dozen, which he followed by a list of twenty-two others, admitting that even that was hardly comprehensive. Nevertheless, there is one further case I feel deserves discussion.<br />
Mary Magdalene de'Pazzi (1566 - 1607), like quite a few others of these mystics, had an unusual psychological profile. Once, while in ecstasy, she shouted at the top of her voice in answer to a question, and commented to a bystander, "They can't hear me down there; it's too far off." In other words, she imagined she was in the air when she wasn't. Nevertheless, she possessed a rather loose relationship with gravity. If St Teresa felt buoyant after her levitations, then de'Pazzi, according to her confessor, Fr. Cepari, was known to move around the convent with incredible swiftness, negotiating stairs with such speed and agility that it seemed her feet hardly touched the floor. In 1532 she ran into the choir and leapt up to a cornice to take down a crucifix there. The cornice was approximately 30 feet or 9 metres above the floor.<br />
The reason I mention this is because, although Madame David-Néel failed to witness any levitation while she was in Tibet, but she did witness <em>lunggom</em> runners, who were able to run at extraordinary speed for long periods of time, in a state of deep trance. One she watched close up seemed to proceed by bounds, with the elasticity of a ball. Another one she saw while not running was wrapped in heavy chains to weigh himself down, because the exercises these runners practise is supposed to make them light, although I suspect it is more a case of the power of the mind over the body. But it was not recorded that they could jump nine metres in the air.<br />
<br />
What can be made of this phenomenon? It appears to be an unplanned by-product of the altered state of consciousness. What about the levitation of non-mystics? Thurston adopted a more favourable attitude towards séances they I am prepared to, but we cannot deny the Batcheldor and "Philip" experiments, which I discussed in passing in an <a href="https://malcolmsanomalies.blogspot.com.au/2016/08/on-pixilation-and-poltergeists.html" target="_blank">earlier essay</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Basically, in the 1960s a psychologist called Kenneth Batcheldor gathered a group of experimenters to recreate a classic séance, and discovered they could cause the table, not only to tilt, but to levitate and move around the room. Building on this the following decade, a team led by Iris Owen set about conjuring an imaginary ghost called "Philip". And to make sure that the experiment wasn't marred by a real ghost, they agreed upon a life story which contained contradictions. The upshot was the production of typical spiritualist rapping and tapping, which were most pronounced for questions for which the team had already agreed on the answers, whether true or false. More to the point, spectacular "poltergeist" movements of the tables and chairs also occurred - right under an array of TV cameras and the eyes of scholars.</blockquote>
And, as Thurston commented, if a table can be levitated, so can a human being (well, a small one). Most poltergeist levitations are of small to medium sized objects, but some can be quite big. Some strange natural force is being activated in some mysterious manner. That it can be harnessed by an advanced science should be of no surprise to anyone dipping into the literature on alien abductions, or even simple CE3s.<br />
I would be interested to know more about the demographics. Accessibility of documents and the languages involved has restricted these investigations to Roman Catholic countries. However, there remains a long tradition of mysticism in eastern Christianity. Are there any documented cases of levitation in (say) the great monastery complex of Mt. Athos in Greece? Also, Tibetan tradition notwithstanding, I am unaware of well attested levitation by non-Christian mystics, although I would not rule it out. Or perhaps their form of mysticism is different.<br />
This is not ancient history. Thurston undertook his investigations between 1919 and 1938, and the most recent example he could find occurred in the last decade of the nineteenth century. By and large, however, my impression is that the phenomena began in the twelfth century, reached its peak in the sixteenth and seventeenth, and has been petering out since then. Are there trends or fashions even in the paranormal?Malcolm Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00672612354161787023noreply@blogger.com1