My body, myself?

A  SCATTER OF FAMOUS  DOPPELGÄNGERS

One of the most mysterious phenomena from the fringe of the so-called "normal" human experience is the appearance of one's look-alike, also - and better - known by the German name of Doppelgänger (pronounced: dopple-GEHN-gehr).

There is an old belief still going around that supposedly everyone has a "double" or a look-alike somewhere in the world. The concept of the doppelgänger is a more sinister variant of this belief, in that the "double" isn't thought to be a real physical person but a sort of ghostly Self of the person, often interpreted as a harbinger of death of that person.

The term itself - doppelgänger - first appears in the German novel Siebenkäs (here is an online English translation), published in 1796/97 by Jean Paul. But there seems to be little doubt that the writer was merely harnessing the poetic potential of a belief that was much older than his work.

The exact origins of this belief may be difficult to determine, but it does seem to be ancient. It appears in the concept of the vardøger (Norwegian) or the etiäinen (Finnish), in Northern European folklore, for example. The main characteristic of this concept is that the apparition (or, sometimes, sounds associated with the person in question) is a predecessor of the person in question, seen arriving or performing any given activity before the real person is seen doing the same things. (A typical case is the well-known story about Emilie Sagée.)

There are many stories about doppelgängers or seemingly related apparitions. Abraham Lincoln reportedly saw a ghostly double of his own image in the mirror, which he interpreted as a presage of both his re-election and his untimely death before the end of the second term as the president of the USA. 
According to his wife (who was, incidentally, the creator of Frankenstein), so did Percy Bysshe Shelley, also shortly before his death. 
Even Elizabeth I of England and Catherine the Great of Russia reportedly saw their own doubles (and feisty Catherine even had hers shot - not that it helped much).

But there is one famous sighting that stands out, not only because it was not followed by the death of the "original", but because it appears to have been a genuine glimpse into what was the "future" of the person who saw it: Johann Wolfgang Goethe.

Goethe's testimony is all the more interesting in this context because he was in possession of a prodigiously perceptive and analytical mind, producing ground-breaking research in various fields, such as optical phenomena.

Here is what Goethe wrote in his autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit, published in 1811 (the following excerpt is from the English translation by John Oxenford):

I now rode along the foot-path toward Drusenheim, and here one of the most singular forebodings took possession of me. I saw, not with the eyes of the body, but with those of the mind, my own figure coming toward me, on horseback, and on the same road, attired in a dress which I had never worn, — it was pike-gray, with somewhat of gold. As soon as I shook myself out of this dream, the figure had entirely disappeared. It is strange, however, that, eight years afterward, I found myself on the very road, to pay one more visit to Frederica, in the dress of which I had dreamed, and which I wore, not from choice, but by accident. However, it may be with matters of this kind generally, this strange illusion in some measure calmed me at the moment of parting. The pain of quitting for ever noble Alsace, with all I had gained in it, was softened; and, having at last escaped the excitement of a farewell, I, on a peaceful and quiet journey, pretty well regained my self-possession.

It is typical of Goethe, ever the scientist, to try and explain this vision.
But as reassuring as this explanation may have been to him... is that really what happened? How would he explain the sighting of very specific clothes that he had never seen before and was to wear eight years later?

And, of course, there have been many later attempts to explain this sort of perceptual anomaly. However, the most scientific-sounding explanations are often the most treacherous ones, precisely because they sound "sensible". For one thing, they tend to omit any aspect of the phenomenon that doesn't fit into the proposed theory; also, they tend to blur the difference between cause and effect. (Such is the case with the recent experiments with stimulation of the temporo-parietal lobes, to which we will return in the future. See, for example, Is it the fault lines' fault?)

The "eye of the mind", of which Goethe speaks, does not necessarily reside in the brain.
As a matter of fact, the mind itself does not seem to reside in the brain (the brain being more of a processor - not a generator).

But more on that on some future occasion.


Meanwhile, don't miss the posts listed below (one of which will lead you to a complete book - an old one, from way before the internet, when writers on the "paranormal" knew how to research and readers (ironically!) were not as gullible - or ignorant? - as all too many netizens are today. 

I would also recommend reading this article by L. David Leiter:

The Vardøgr, Perhaps Another Indicator of the Non-Locality of Consciousness





IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS: 
The Other One
The Disappearing (and Reappearing) Tibetan
The Scream



If you want to report a perceived dimensional anomaly, please do, but read this first.

Into thin air?

Exactly two hundred years ago today something strange is said to have happened in Perleberg, Germany.

It was the year 1809, and a young British diplomat, Benjamin Bathurst, was returning from an important diplomatic mission to Austria. On November 25th, around noon, he stopped at the small town of Perleberg, precisely half-way between Berlin and Hamburg, in Prussia.

At the Posthaus (it was exactly what it sounds like: a post house) he ordered a new set of horses and then he went to the nearby "White Swan" inn (Zum weißen Schwan, later the Hoffmanns Hotel), to eat and rest.

Around 9 p.m that evening, Bathurst was ready to continue his journey. Standing outside the post house, he was watching his luggage being loaded onto the carriage. Then, he is said to have "walked around the horses" - and disappeared. Just like that: into thin air.

The post house, the inn and other buildings around were searched, as were the nearby woods and marshes, and the river was dragged, all to no avail. Not even the reward offered for any information leading to him helped: Bathurst was never found.

At least that is how the story goes - and it is certainly one of the better known stories about "unexplained disappearances". It has captured the imagination of thousands; and while it may not have been a time slip, at least three authors certainly thought it was - or they made it into one (one each, that is):

Avram Davidson wrote about Bathurst in Masters of the Maze.

Australian author Bertram Chandler wrote about it in his 1964 story Into the Alternate Universe: Contraband from Otherspace.
The third story featuring the elusive Mr. Bathurst, by H. Beam Piper, is conveniently available to you right now, free of charge.

An old postcard of the main square in Perleberg

It seems, however, that Bathurst's disappearance might be considerably less intriguing than the vox populi has made it to be in the past two centuries.

The purpose of the British diplomat's mission had been to convince Austria to join the war against Napoleon. (The highly sensitive and dangerous nature of his enterprise is indicated by the fact that Bathurst was travelling under an assumed name and identity: as a German merchant, by the name of Koch.)
Indeed, French agents were suspected early on to have had a hand in Bathurst's disappearance; but Napoleon swore on his honour that he had nothing to do with it.

Here's what Charles Loy Fort has to say about it:

"He walked around the horses.

Upon November 25th, 1809, Benjamin Bathurst, returning from Vienna, where, at the Court of the Emperor Francis, he had been representing the British Government, was in the small town of Perleberg, Germany. In the presence of his valet and his secretary, he was examining horses, which were to carry [198/199] his coach over more of his journey back to England. Under observation, he walked around to the other side of the horses. He vanished, For details, see the Cornhill Magazine, 55-279.

I have not told much of the disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst, because so many accounts are easily available; but the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, in Historic Oddities, tells of a circumstance that is not findable in all other accounts that I have read. It is that, upon Jan. 23rd, 1810, in a Hamburg newspaper, appeared a paragraph, telling that Bathurst was safe and well, his friends having received a letter from him. But his friends had received no such letter. Wondering as to the origin of this paragraph, and the reason for it, Baring-Gould asks: "Was it inserted to make the authorities abandon the search?" Was it an inquiry-stopper? is the way I word this. Some writers have thought that, for political reasons, at the instigation of Napoleon Bonaparte, Bathurst was abducted. Bonaparte went to the trouble to deny that this was so."

That may have been so. Nevertheless, in 1990 the investigator Mike Dash undertook a re-investigation of the case, and discovered that parts of Bathurst's clothing were found in the woods in the same year of his disappearance; and in 1852, human remains were found in the cellar of a local mason's house. It was evident that the dead man had been murdered. Furthermore, Mr. Bathurst's sister even went to Germany, to identify the remains...
Thanks to this wonderfully convenient extra you can read all about it here.

(Interestingly, even Bathurst's date of birth seems to have undergone a process of curious "disinformation" through the years: according to Dash, he was born in September; according to all the other sources freely available on the internet - AKA Wikipedia and all the others who borrow its information - he was born in March, either the 14th or the 18th.
Go figure.
Myself, I'll go with The Peerage, where his date of birth is entered as March 14th, 1784.)

Whatever the truth, Bathurst's disappearance remains a mystery.
And to honour its longevity, the town of Perleberg is going to unveil a commemorative plaque at the old Posthaus, in a special ceremony that is to take place on November 28th, followed by the opening of an exhibition to mark the occasion.

What I find most interesting of all - and somewhat, strangely, endearing - is that even 20 years after Dash's recapitulation of the real course of the search for Bathurst, the old version of the diplomat's disappearance is still making the rounds, unabated, with barely a mention of the evidence pointing to possible - even highly likely - murder.*

People simply love unsolved mysteries - and it's the unsolved part that they love most of all.

And why not?
They may not even know it themselves, but there is a nugget of ancient wisdom in such an attitude. More than wisdom: it's the obscure awareness that even the most (seemingly) explicable events contain a core of mystery that is linked to our deepest yearnings; that, in its heart of hearts, even the known and the mundane is - like ourselves, each and every one of us - still and forever an enigma.

For the human heart and mind, the "inexplicable" is the signpost pointing towards the transcendental.


* LATER EDIT:
I have just found a rather good account of this story that does mention the evidence. Clearly it was written by somebody who likes to think, rather than just copy and paste old stories, like so many other "paranormal" blog- and webmasters.


IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:

The Vanishing Point (about a famous but equally fictitious disappearance)

Vanished in Vermont (about a cluster of real disappearances, one of them possibly not entirely "paranormal")



If you want to report a perceived dimensional anomaly, please do, but read this first.

What Everett REALLY said... and what he didn't

Somebody once told me that the average child today (meaning the "today" of maybe twenty years ago) knows more about medicine than the average physician of the 17th century. I am not sure that is entirely true (and even less so today "today", with rampant functional illiteracy); but undoubtedly something similar could be said about the common knowledge of physics today.
 
Of course I am not talking about solid technical knowledge; but certainly the terms "quantum", "multiverse" and "parallel" (as in: universes) seem to be on everyone's lips lately.
(I am surprised there aren't any ads for quantum detergents, quantum blenders, parallel-universe stain removers that shift your stains into an alternate reality... It's probably just a matter of time.)

And it's no wonder. Quantum physics really has revolutionised the "mainstream" view about the nature of time-space - even before its actual findings could be properly verified. And one of its most revolutionary concepts is the "Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics", as it was called by its direct intellectual progenitor, Hugh Everett, III.
 
Published in 1957, in Nature (see the cover below), it has spawned and fuelled countless speculations and science fiction scenarios - but also inklings of new paths in our perception of the universe and of our interaction with all there is.

If you are interested in Everett's actual theory, you're in for a treat. Here is a fascinating collection of original documents (compiled by the journalist and Everett's biographer, Peter Byrne), including Everett's dissertation, so you can read it for yourself. Or you can read the more accessible but no less important "Amoeba Metaphor". 

(By the way, you can also read about the scientist's son and his "quest" for his distant father. And here is a veritable text fest, courtesy of Nature and its various authors, commenting on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Everett's seminal article.)
 
However, many - probably most - of the people who now speak of "parallel universes" with such ease and apparent familiarity, never read a word of what Everett actually wrote.
 
So, what is the reason for the mass appeal of this theory? 
 
The perceived end of a one and only, finite "fate", of course. 
The glimpse of endless possibilities. 
The hope that what was not but could have been - is. All we have to do is observe it.
 
That's the underlying assumption. (And how valid - or simply compelling, on a human level - this assumption is, we'll see at the end of this post.)
 
But here's the catch: "observation" seems to imply consciousness - our consciousness. And Everett, apparently, never said anything about the role of human consciousness. He simply wasn't interested in it.
 
This may sound bizarre, considering that "observing" sounds like an action of human (or human-like) consciousness.
Here's what Byrne says about it:

Everett, like all good physicists, did not give theories of consciousness any magical powers in quantum mechanics. Because of the intractability of the measurement problem and several other similar paradoxes in quantum mechanics, some people, especially philosophers, have been attracted to the idea that human consciousness collapses the wave function. That human consciousness is the major actor in the universe, and that without human consciousness, the universe would not exist. Physicists like Everett who are materialist and realist thought that was bunk. They think human consciousness is a quantum-mechanical system like any other quantum-mechanical system.

  
This may be a very good description of what the author perceives to be the predominant state of mind among physicists... with one major flaw.

Let's rewind the passage:

Everett, like all good physicists, did not give theories of consciousness any magical powers in quantum mechanics.

Wrong.

Here is what one physicist whose fame vastly surpasses Everett's replied to a journalist's question about the role of consciousness in the physical universe:

Q: “Do you think that consciousness can be explained in terms of matter?”

A: “No, I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.

Thus spoke Max Planck, the actual father of quantum mechanics.

Naturally, fame does not necessarily imply quality - but in Planck's case, any doubt about his ability as a physicist would be ridiculous to the point of outrage - worse, to the point of madness.
 
It's just one example, but it is an example worth hundreds of minor names. 
And among our contemporary physicists Michio Kaku, for example, doesn't sound opposed to the concept of consciousness as an intervening factor, either. Here's what Kaku says, in this must-read interview:

"Consciousness is one of the great problems facing science. Most scientists cannot even define it, let alone explain it."

 
Is it possible that Everett really was all that oblivious to the depth and implications of this question?

Knowing a few physicists as I do, I'll venture an opinion: Yes, it is possible. 
But that still doesn't necessarily mean that he - he, specifically - was.
 
Assuming Everett discussed this concept with his family (I mean, in depth), then the most eloquent, revealing - and poignant - "circumstantial" evidence of his conception is to be found in the farewell note that his daughter, Elizabeth, left behind when she committed suicide, in 1982:

"I am going to join dad in a parallel world," she wrote.

Consciousness and Matter - a post scriptum

Last night's post produced an unexpected flurry of emails (not all of them - but many - appreciative of the theory presented, especially because the author's thesis implies a specific method of "transcendental meditation" and the somewhat controversial figure of Maharishi), so I thought it might be a good idea to put this subject to rest - temporarily - by adding the following passage from a website (Truth About TM) that those of you who found last night's post interesting might find even more interesting:


Erwin Schrodinger, who received the Nobel prize for his development of the Schrodinger equation, the most widely used mathematical tool in quantum theory, put it this way, “Mind has erected the objective outside world of the natural philosopher out of its own stuff” (Schrodinger, 1958/1967, p.131)....The reason why our sentient, percipient and thinking ego is met nowhere within our scientific world picture can easily be indicated in seven words: because it is itself that world picture” (ibid, p.138). Supporting this view, modern neuroscience recognizes that size, shape, color, texture, visibility, and all other qualities of an object of experience are not uniquely determined by the external world but are features of subjective experience (Farwell, 1996; Farwell & Farwell, 1995).

Schodinger also argued for the primacy of consciousness from an analysis of volitional action: “So let us see whether we cannot draw the correct, non-contradictory conclusion from the following two premises:
“(i) My body functions as a pure mechanism according to the Laws of Nature.
“(ii) Yet, I know, by incontrovertible direct experience, that I am directing its motions, of which I foresee the effects, that may be fateful and all-important, in which case I feel and take responsibility for them.
“The only possible inference from these two facts is, I think, that I—I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say, every conscious mind that has ever said or felt ‘I,’,—am the person, if any, who controls the ‘motion of the atoms’ according to the Laws of Nature.” (Schrodinger, 1944, pp. 92-93, quoted in Farwell, 1996).

The conclusion from quantum mechanics is that our perceptual reality of the material world as well as our voluntary action upon that world is not structured “out there” but is structured “in here” in the mind. The apparent stability of the observed world and the high degree of agreement that is achieved between observers is because the most fundamental level of consciousness where perception is constructed, transcendental consciousness, is universal and eternally non-changing, infinitely stable.

(You'll find the articles and books referenced in this passage on the website.)

ANYTHING is possible

Jesus replied, “Why do you say ‘if you can’?
Anything is possible for someone who has faith!”
(Mr 9:23)

This doesn't really belong here - or does it? - but being familiar with the "profile" and the personal inclinations of many readers who like to ponder about the mysteries of time and space, like I (and the rest of us "forget-me-nots") do, I feel the following might be of interest to many of you out there.

[...] By functioning from the level of unbounded consciousness that is the source of creation, one can potentially do anything, no matter how "impossible". Again, the Conscious Unified Field showed that we can indeed consciously choose to manifest phenomena that are improbable enough to be labeled "impossible" in the Materialist Paradigm. Since there is in the world of quantum mechanics a finite probability of anything happening at any time or place, the reality brought to light in the Conscious Unified Field Experiment has the potential to provide the experience that literally anything is possible.

Do you have a dream that moves you deeply? If so, your dream moves you deeply for a reason, and you can move nature deeply in the same way. The Conscious Unified Field Experiment showed that nature responds to our inner desires and intentions in "impossible" ways. If there is a single take-home message [...] it is that you can create the life you want. You can manifest your dream, no matter how impossible it may seem. If you have a dream, go for it. Go for what you really want, not just what you know you can get. The resources at your command are truly infinite. Anything is possible."


The passage above is from what I consider to be one of the most underrated books on the mysteries of consciousness and its interaction with matter (the spawn of time/space) published in recent times:

(A few words about its author, Dr. Larry Farwell.)

And there are more of such underrated gems to come.
Stay tuned. :)




A final word from your blog mistress:

You are feeling GREAT right now, right...?
Tomorrow you may still feel some afterglow.
And the day after tomorrow some petty annoyance will make you "face reality" and forget all about this.

That's what happens every time. Doesn't it?
And then you wonder why such philosophies "don't work"?

My friend, fortify yourself in advance.
Resolve NOW to ignore your own upcoming doubts.
Resolve NOW to ignore them day after day.

And THEN see what happens.

Your future, online

Is it possible to see the "future"?
My strictly personal experience tells me, yes, it is possible; and the possible reason why this is possible is that the so-called future - as the so-called past - isn't "where" we usually expect it to be.

But whatever the truth - IF there is a single and absolute, "objective" truth - people will go on trying to peep into what lies "ahead". Some use Tarot cards, other coffee grounds or tea leaves, still others resort to "psychics". And since the advent of the internet, there are also online "oracles" available. Some of these are well known, others are hidden gems. And here are two of the hidden gems that I plucked from - where else? - Cynthia Sue Larson's website. Both are based on the notion of synchronicity, introduced by Carl Gustav Jung.

Odyssey of Life Oracle

Simple, unpretentious - and it actually makes sense.
(Whether it really "works" or not is difficult to gauge, but at least it makes sense.)

The Synchronic Divination Book

This unusual oracle is a relatively recent addition to the online presentation of the Federation of Damanhur, an extraordinary "country" that you may have heard about (and if you haven't, go visit it now).

For those who prefer Tarot cards, here is a website that we like when we're too lazy to pick up card with our own fingers...

Byzant

And by the way, feel free to come back and comment how they worked for you!
(Needless to say, we wish you nothing but health, riches and fabulous dark, tall strangers in your future... ;-))

Where have all the good socks gone?

This peculiar "anomaly" you surely know - or know of, at the very least: you put a pair of socks in the washing machine and only one sock reemerges. You go back and palpate the raspy entrails of the washing machine drum, as deftly as a gynecologist, to find the sock: nothing.
You look around the floor to see where the sock might have fallen out of the bundle of freshly washed clothes: nothing. You go back and search the washing/drying machine once more, this time taking care to look under and all around the machine. Nothing.
Then, months later, the sock reappears in the pantry or behind some remote radiator, in a place where you would never expect to find it - sometimes even in the same space where you keep your washing machine.

By Motorenmano

I must admit this has never happened to me, although I have seen it happen to other people (and certainly heard about it). What's more it seems to be an epidemic! (For details see the bottom of this post.)
And so, I have always thought this "phenomenon" must be simply the consequence of careless handling: it's very easy for a small thing like a sock to get stuck in some other piece of clothing or linen. Think about it: why socks, and why in the washing/drying machine? You don't hear about T-shirts or sheets disappearing in the gargantuan jaws of washing machines: it's always socks or, occasionally, some other small clothing item. People are a notoriously inattentive species. Aren't they? Aren't we?

Well, yes.
But that doesn't explain the sudden disappearance - sometimes followed (a long time later) by the inexplicable reappearance - of all sorts of inanimate objects even at times when attention, or the lack thereof, clearly wasn't the issue.

I for one have long suspected there must be an itinerant black hole on the loose in my home, sometimes invading my handbags, like a stowaway, to displace itself around town.

I have seen a contact lens (several times; I'll be returning to them in some later post) fall to the floor and somehow disappear while in full view.

In the past ten years or so, several of my clothing items have disappeared from my home even though nobody had access to the space where they were kept, there was no robbery (and they were not valuable anyway, except sentimentally, to me), I have never lent my clothes to anyone, and I know for a fact, beyond any doubt, that I would not have parted with them voluntarily (i.e. I did not give or throw them away); nor am I afflicted by any type of temporary amnesia. Those clothes never left the apartment except on me - and yet they are gone.


What's more, this condition seems to be contagious.
About two years ago, I suddenly developed an intense craving for Barilla tortellini. So I went to a store and bought them. I did buy a few other things, too, but the pasta was my main point of interest. At the checkout counter I put it in the shopping bag first, then the rest of the things I bought, before returning home to have a good plateful of tortellini.

The shopping bag had no tears or holes in it; I had no physical contact whatsoever with anyone during my short journey home, so nobody could have stolen them; the bag of tortellini could not have fallen out without my hearing it happen.
And yet, when I came home, the tortellini were nowhere to be found.
Two years later I still haven't found them.

(But then, pasta is notoriously misbehaved. For a supernatural adventure involving spaghetti see here.)

Another item I am still missing is an eyelash mascara, brand new. It disappeared on the day it was bought, from a little plastic bag that had no tears or holes through which the mascara could have slipped; furthermore, the little bag with the mascara was tucked within another, bigger bag. (It also would have made a noise if it fell out, and I heard none.)

A hypothetical mascara-loving pickpocket's intervention is out of the question, since s/he would have had to not only bump into me or make very close contact with me, but would have had to worm his or her grubby hand through a scatter of other objects that were also in the bag at the moment, all the way down to the bottom of the bag where the mascara was. But no other items were missing. And I had no close contact with anyone on my way home, anyway.

Taken from here.

But sometimes wayward objects do reappear. Such was the case with a pair of sunglasses my mother had bought for me years ago.

I use contact lenses, so my eyes are somewhat more sensitive to bright light than they would be in normal circumstances. Which is why I always use sunglasses in the summer and whenever there is bright light outside.

So I was understandably distraught when one summer's day a few years ago I could not find my sunglasses anywhere. (I had two other pairs of sunglasses, but the rims were not of the right colour for me to use them with the predominant colour of the clothes I was wearing that summer.)

At the time I used mostly one handbag, and while it was relatively big, I always found whatever I was looking for in a matter of seconds rather than minutes. Furthermore, I always put my glasses in the main compartment, so I never had to even look for them: I simply felt around the bag with my hand and retrieved them.
Until one day I could not find them anywhere.

I was sure I must have lost them, but could not figure out where.
The next time I visited my mum I told her about the sunglasses, and she looked for them around her home. She didn't find them.

I could have bought another pair, of course; but I was sentimentally attached to those sunglasses; and I hate shopping more than words can express. (Yes, you remember correctly: I am a woman. :)

Anyway, to make a long - three weeks long - story short, one day, as I was walking down the stairs in front of my mother's home, I opened my handbag to take out my wallet... and there were the sunglasses, their golden clasps shining in the sun. I went back and asked my mother had she found them and put them in my handbag. She was surprised - no, she didn't - and she laughed.

So did I.
What else could I have done?

And by the way, about a year later, it happened again - with the same pair of sunglasses. This time, they went missing for only a few days. And wherever they were, they must have decided they had a better time with me, because they returned on their own accord...

I am sure something similar has happened to many of you out there.
But I am also sure that many of such occurrences really are just a matter of inattentiveness. I am not posting these stories to encourage anyone to immediately jump to the conclusion that a dimensional anomaly or some paranormal activity must have taken place, if they can't find something that "should" have been where expected.
Remember: people can be remarkably absent-minded.

Also, if you are taking any pills, be aware that some can produce amnesia as a side effect. (The sleep-inducing substance called zolpidem, sold in the USA under the name of Ambien, is notorious for producing amnesia. People have been known to raid their fridges at night, or make midnight calls to people they would otherwise never dare calling - and most dangerously of all, to take extra doses of the medication - and not remember it the next day.)

In short, be sure to exclude all possible "logical" explanations before attributing any odd occurrence to something anomalous. And not just because it makes sense, but because not doing so diminishes the value of truly extra-ordinary experiences.

Anyway, here is a treat for all of you who are hoping to find a lost object: a few tips from one of our favourite writers on the subject, Cynthia Sue Larson:

Top Six Tips for Finding Lost Things

But if your main concern are socks and their fate, here is a foundation that is working towards the welfare of all socks, big or small, black or white, old or new. I am sure they would appreciate your help.

The Lost Sock Foundation

If you want to report a missing sock - or any other type of perceived dimensional anomaly :-) - please do, but read this first. 

Schrödinger's cat on my doorstep

Time for a personal confession...
I use the word "confession" because, unlike the other personal experiences I have reported so far (which came uninvited), the event I am about to describe seems to have been directly related to something I did - or tried to do. And it is an activity that is often best left unmentioned, unless you are willing to risk being considered a kook. A mad(wo)man. A lunatic. Someone who is not to be trusted with the simplest tasks in life... You get the picture.

The outward appearance of the event was anything but spectacular; if you're expecting the time-shift equivalent of some "mother ship" appearing, you're in for an anticlimax, to put it mildly.

Still, it boggles the mind.
And while I usually don't mind letting go of my (rational) mind, there is something about this event that makes me want to keep silent about it.
Hence the term "confession".
(And don't be surprised if I later change my mind about publishing this and take the post down.)

Something odd happened on the evening of July 23, 2008.
It had been a breathtakingly beautiful summer day, with all the colours burning bright in the sunlight that filtered through dark grey stormy clouds. (There had been a storm the previous night, and there was another coming later that day.)

I had been out for a coffee with a relative of mine. It had been a most interesting meeting: we had a conversation that, I feel, directly pertains to what I am about to describe, but would rather withhold it, for fear of "tainting" the thought process (and possibly even clouding the memory itself). Let me just say that it was a conversation about a dream that might indicate that dreams perhaps could be more than just "processing" of our daily rubbish (garbage, if you're an American ;) - that perhaps they sometimes could be a very real meeting point of different levels of Reality.

As I was coming home that evening, maybe ten or twenty metres from my doorstep, I suddenly saw my neighbour's cat. It was sitting by the rubbish bin, looking at me.

There aren't many cats loose around my neighbourhood; in fact, that was the only cat I ever saw in my street.
And this cat had a very distinctive appearance. Its fur had a colouring and pattern that I hadn't seen on any other cat; and most of all, it had a very visible patch of discolouration around its nose, the consequence of a disease he had had years before.

My heart leapt when I saw him.
I slowly approached him.
He didn't move; he just kept looking at me.
"Is that you?" I asked him, calling his name.
If he ever replied, I didn't hear or understand him. But then, there was no need for a reply: I could see quite clearly it was him.

It was my neighbour's cat - who had died two years before.

I stood there looking at him for a while; and then I slowly walked away and into my home.
The next day I didn't see him. Or the next.
I did see his (former) "owner" a few days later, and I inquired - as breezily and "by the way" as I could - about his cat. Oh yes, it had died. How did he know for sure? Because he saw him die. Did he get another one? No, no way - too much trouble. "I thought I had seen him," I finally added. Didn't he see a cat just like his around lately? No.

I know what I saw.
Maybe the man, for some obscure reason, didn't tell me the truth: maybe he did not see him die, so he could not know for sure that the cat was dead.
But that was the only time I saw the "late" cat (who had been quite elderly at the time of his purported death) in more than two years, ever since I had stopped seeing him around and later learned he was dead.

Until a few days ago.
It was late in the evening and I was returning home.
When I walked past my neighbour's door, I saw the cat again, sitting where it had been the last time I saw him.

This time, I walked even closer to him, to have a good look at him: yes, it was him. There was his unmistakable patch around the nose. And he seemed to know me.


I know I said I wouldn't talk... but now I think I might as well admit to you openly (after all, you already suspected I was a kook, right?) that the first time, on July 23, 2008 - or rather, the night before - I had been doing an "exercise", the aim of which was to switch to a different timeline.

It certainly resulted in an occipital headache that defies description. No industry-strength pills could relieve it - and that's saying something, considering that: a) I hardly ever get headaches, and b) an aspirin is usually enough to dispel my headaches.

Then, later that day, when I met with my relative, she told me about a dream that she could not get out of her mind: it had been a "Technicolor" dream (something that, in her own words, never happened to her, as she only dreams in "black & white"); it felt as vivid as any present reality; in her dream she was perfectly aware of the obvious change between the waking reality as she remembered it and the (also "waking") reality of the dream.

I am not usually interested in dreams, but this time I was impressed.
I didn't tell her (but she may find out now) that while she was sleeping I had been suffering the mother of all headaches, after having tried to "immerse" myself completely - mind AND body - in a different timeline: a timeline that corresponded exactly to what she had dreamed.

Did this have anything to do with the cat?
I don't know. I just felt it had to be mentioned, considering that both events were highly unusual, to put it conservatively.

What baffles me is this: IF (and it is a big "if") my mind-forcing the boundaries of time/space had somehow provoked the apparition of that cat... what was it that made it appear a few days ago? My mind frame and activity had been totally different from what they were on July 22/23, 2008.


I may be editing - or just removing - this entry in a while.
But in case you just like reading about phantom cats - nah, let's call them Schrödinger's cats :) - here's a short mention of a similar event.

The Chronovisor

People have been obsessed with the idea of a time machine ever since H. G. Wells wrote his classic novel. Perhaps even longer than that: since the beginning of... well, machines.

But did you know there already is - or was - a supposedly functional time machine?
To be precise, a machine that allegedly shows and photographs the past.

Certainly its alleged inventor was a real person: Father Pellegrino Ernetti* - a Catholic priest, no less.

Father Ernetti - who was an exorcist, among other things - may (or may not) have been a kook; but he was also a serious scientific researcher. He was a highly respected authority on archaic, pre-polyphonic music.

Ernetti was apparently also very interested in physics (some say he actually had a degree in quantum physics), and his curiosity knew no boundaries, especially after a curious incident that is said to have happened on September 15, 1952, in Milan.

Ernetti was trying to filter harmonics out of Gregorian chants, in the company of the renowned physician and psychologist, Father Agostino Gemelli. (The famous teaching hospital in Rome is named after him.)

At one point during the work the two men apparently heard the voice of Gemelli's late father speaking to them on the wire recorder they were using. (Gemelli - a noted skeptic - later confirmed this incident).

This propelled Ernetti's research into the present timespace location of sounds and sights that seem "gone", a thing of the past, to us. His quest led him to speculation about the possibilities of constructing a machine that would capture the sights of the past: a chronovisor (literally, a "time-seer").

Later Ernetti claimed that in the 1950s he had contacted some of the most prominent physicists of the time - Enrico Fermi and Wernher von Braun, among others - and that they had actually produced such a machine.

But the story gets weirder.

Ernetti claimed that in January (12-14) of 1956 the team managed to produce "live" images of Christ's crucifixion, in 36 A.D. - and they had a photograph to prove it!

The photo in question was published on May 2nd, 1972, in the Italian weekly La Domenica del Corriere.







Does it look unconvincing or just plain awkward to you?
I don't blame you.
To me, it looks like a painted statue - and not a terribly accomplished one, at that.

And that's exactly what it turned out to be: the copy of an image of a sculpture kept in the sanctuary of Collevalenza, a 1931 work by the Spanish sculptor Cullot Valera. 


(EDIT: There may be some confusion regarding the date of the sculpture. I haven't had the time to research it more in depth, so, for the time being, I will simply refer you to the comment below this entry.)


And this is precisely what makes this story so utterly strange.

Had Ernetti been an unsophisticated (and dishonest!) third-rate kook, nobody would even remember this story anymore.

But Ernetti was a highly educated man.

Furthermore, not one of the people who knew him ever doubted his personal integrity.

Why, then, did he allow such a preposterously obvious hoax to come out and smear his name?
Surely it would have been easy to make up a plausible excuse for not presenting any photographic "evidence". Of course most people would not have believed him - but at least it would save him from the ridicule that ensued.

Be that as it may, the Chronovisor is said to be kept in the vaults of the Vatican.

And, by the way, there is a book about it.

Father Ernetti's Chronovisor:
The Creation and Disappearance of the World's First Time Machine

(There should be a hyperlinked book cover visible above. If you cannot see it, try viewing the page in a different browser. And I am sorry for the inconvenience. Blogger has been having A LOT of issues lately, and I am this close to switching to a different blog publisher.)

I really wish I could recommend it, but I am not sure I can.
It is a translation - and, arguably, an adaptation - from the German original.
I haven't read the original, but I doubt it would make that much difference.


You see, the problem with this book is not (only) in the language, the unnecessary - typically journalistic - hyperboles and stereotypes ("There is no city in the world more beautiful than Venice, and no view in Venice is more beautiful than sunrise from the basilica and the Benedictine abbey on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore"... Oh really?), but in the organisation and treatment of the material itself. It goes in all directions, with digressions that have nothing whatsoever to do with the subject itself.

And there is more: the American translation has an "appendix" that does not contribute to the quality of the book. It seems the editors (of the American translation, interestingly - not of the German original) received a purported unsolicited "confession" by an unnamed distant relative of Father Ernetti's, who claims the priest confessed to him on his deathbed that he had made the whole thing up - but that "it is possible" for such a contraption to work.

Let me tell you: as a journalist and as a reader I do not approve of such appendices - especially since their authenticity is absolutely impossible to establish. It is neither ethical nor stylistically elegant.

But, sure enough, some webmasters and other online scribblers (yes, of course I am an online scribbler, too ;)) who lack a discerning mind are now quoting said "confession" as if it were the gospel truth.

It isn't.
For what it's worth, personally I do not really believe that the Chronovisor ever worked (although I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out it did); and it is painfully obvious to anyone that the "Christ's photo" was nothing but an awkward fake.
But that doesn't mean I am going to rely on other possible fakes to make up my mind.

And I do think such a thing as Ernetti's chronovisor could be possible.
What's more, there seems to be a group of Russian scientists who are, if you'll forgive the pun, looking into it.

Whatever you think - and I hope you do think - never forget to be a healthy skeptic.
Which, contrary to popular opinion, means keeping an open mind at all times.


(For another version of this story go here.)

IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS:

Chrononauts, or What the Bleep Do THEY Know?

***

* A totally and utterly and disgustingly irrelevant bit of trivia: Father Ernetti was born at the exact same point in time - on the same day of the same year (October 13, 1925) - as the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher. :)