The 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?

"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.

A 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. Sabine Baring-Gould (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 Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, 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 In Troubadour-Land, a ramble in Provence and Languedoc. 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.

The 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 here.) However, there is one place I never expected to find them.

     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, Haunted Skies. 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.

When 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.

     Or perhaps something which made no sense really did visit Sydney, Australia half a century ago.