Ten ways to travel through Time

Unfortunately, all of them involve machinery of some type.
Which is not only inconvenient, but it disregards the role of consciousness in timespace perception.


Of course, many mainstream scientists, starting with Hugh Everett, disregarded consciousness altogether. And where did that get us? We have LOTS of theories, but few tangible results that we know of.


On the other hand, it is perfectly understandable that science based on 18th century mechanistic positivism would not have the resources - the ideological infrastructure, so to speak - properly to research the "abstraction", the utter mess, that is human consciousness as an instrument of timespace processing.


But there is no denying that consciousness determines, filters in or out, and shapes practically everything that we perceive.
Why deny - or ignore - its role in timespace perception?
It's not a scientific approach at all.


Still, if you are interested in gadget-based "time travel", go here and knock yourself out. :)

THE SECRET TRUTH ABOUT TIME TRAVEL

The article also includes a list of ten countries which supposedly have active "time control research programs", with India leading the flock.

A strange bird over Copiapó

The Other One

Bilocation is a phenomenon that has always fascinated me.
How can a person be seen at two (or, heavens forbid, more!) locations at the same time?

Some explain it with "astral travel".
But this explanation does not make sense when the "original" is fully awake and conscious and engaged in perfectly mundane activities at the time.

Is it a matter of perception?
Clearly.
But clearly there is something for the others to perceive.
There have been numerous cases where there were plenty of witnesses attesting the vision of a person who was known - and also witnessed by others - to be at a different location at the time.

Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, the famous and controversial Capuchin monk, is just one such example.
And of course, there are many stories regarding the weird phenomenon of the Doppelgänger.

One of the most famous such cases is the story of Emélie (often spelled Emilie) Sagée, the French-born school teacher from Livonia (an ancient land, today divided between Latvia and Estonia), whose strange case was described by Robert Dale Owen in the first edition of his book Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1860).

The events supposedly took place in 1845 - 1846, at a boarding school called Neuwelcke (or perhaps situated in a place of that name), around "a mile and a half from Wolmar" (Valmiera, in Latvian).

Here's a short version of the account, copied verbatim (and gratefully) from here:

Most of her students in 1846 and 1846 often witnessed Sagee’s doppelganger. The double would often mimic the young woman’s movements, be very active while Sagee remained motionless, and appear healthy during times that Sagee was known to be ill.

One time, all the students in the school saw Emilie Sagee working in the school’s gardens at the same time that they could see her sitting in a chair in the room with them! When two of the more courageous students attempted to interact with the image in the chair, they discovered an “odd resistance in the air surrounding it.”
Ms. Sagee never did see her own double.

She didn't, but she did feel increasingly faint - or so the story goes.
And it is an interesting story. Dale Owen heard it from Julie von Guldenstubbé, the second daughter of the then famous Baron von Guldenstubbé (more about him below), who was one of Sagée's pupils and purportedly had witnessed the phenomenon herself.

The ruins of a castle in Valmiera (Wolmar, in German)*
Borrowed from this lovely website.

If you're interested in this topic, you were probably familiar with this story. But you may not have read the original account of it.

Well, now you can.
Here it is, free of charge, thanks to the Internet Archive.

Why a Livonian school-teacher lost her situation

(yes, she was kicked out, on top of everything)

I find this book particularly valuable because it includes the author's tentative explanations and thoughts about such spacetime - or perception? - anomalies.

So, make sure you read the entire book, when you can, not just this story.
(And notice the quality of the language, of sheer literacy, compared to today's books on the subject - not to mention internet postings on various forums.)

However, after perusing the various editions of the book (there were eight of them, I believe, from 1860 to 1891), there is an interesting question lingering in my mind: why is this story to be found in the first edition only?

There is no answer implicit in this question.
I have no idea.

I have no doubts about Mr. Dale Owen's personal integrity - judging by his writing, he strikes me as an intellectually honest man - yet I cannot help but think, was perhaps his witness found to be less than reliable?

The Guldenstubbés were an interesting lot. The Baron himself was an eminent "spiritist", a passionate adherent of spirit-summoning and "direct writing", which was quite in vogue at the time. (You can read about his vision of a "ghost in the tower" here.)

Surely Dale Owen was not only aware of this - it is probably why he got in contact with him and his daughter in the first place - but clearly thought there was good reason to consider the Baron's daughter a reliable witness.
(A thought occurred to me while reading about the Guldenstubbés: is it possible that it was Miss Julie only who saw the teacher's "double" and the other girls thought they did, too?
This sort of contagion is by no means as extraordinary as it may sound.
However, it was just a thought. If you read the story carefully, it seems clear that there was more to it than mere "contagion".)

Or was something else amiss?

We may never know.
But it doesn't really matter, because the question here is: can such things be?
And there have been simply too many well documented cases to dismiss their existence.

For a tentative explanation I'll refer you to a section in the same Dale Owen's book, with a highly telling title, "The Counterpart Appears Where the Thoughts or the Affections Are?" (p. 857/858, immediately following the account of Emélie Sagée's double).

As for Padre Pio, according to the website above, "the closest he ever came to an explanation of bilocation was to say that it occurred 'by an extension of his personality'."


You'll find many other similar accounts in the book.
If you like literary fiction of the sort, read Dostoyevsky's The Double (you can do it right now and free of charge).
But if you prefer visual information, then skip the various video sites, overflowing with spurious material, and aim straight for art: rent Krzystof Kieslowski's unforgettable film The Double Life of Veronique - and enjoy.

* This structure has nothing whatsoever to do with the story itself, but it is such a wonderfully evocative photo (oh, those clouds!) that I just had to include it.  
I tried to locate the erstwhile "Pensionat Neuwelcke", but all to no avail. All I found out was that "Neuwelcke" would be Melbarži, in Latvian. There are at least two of those, and neither is "a mile and a half from Wolmar".


IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE: My body, myself?




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

Diagonally parked in a parallel universe

If there ever was a photo that deserved this (overused but still moderately funny) caption, it is this one:

(Originally published here, unoriginally reposted here.)

I have very little doubt -considerably less than 0.000000000000000 % (and I am being generous)- that it is a hoax.

But it's FUN.
Which is why I am letting the appropriate software and other pertinent analysis to others.
(If I had any doubts it was a hoax, I would gladly invest a lot of time to do it myself!)

Besides, we've been sort of otherwise engaged lately, in case you haven't noticed the conspicuous absence of posts.

We do think about out readers. A lot. (Even when they are not complaining.)
It's just that we subscribe to the idea that nothing often is better than just anything.

Not to mention the deleterious effect that writing about such stuff can have on experiencing the stuff.
It's more serious a problem than it sounds.

But more on that some other time.

Would Time by any other name still stink the same?

A wordy intermezzo

One of the things I love the most about my life is that it occasionally produces short, electric word storms that get me going.
(They get other people going, too, although not necessarily in the same direction.)

Here's a snippet of one such impromptu exchange that happened as I was standing on a terrace with an acquaintance of mine who is a physicist, on August 10th, the notte di San Lorenzo, when Saint Lawrence sheds tears - AKA comets - and wishes come true.

I must have had a secret wish for a rambling conversation about time, because that certainly came true.

The beginning of the conversation is intentionally omitted.
You're welcome to insert one of your own making.

HE: You mean, our perception of time?

ME: Time is nothing but perception. You of all people should know that.
And maybe that's just it. We name it as if it were something outside, a force of nature or something, when in reality it's all on the inside. All of it.

HE: Not all of it.

ME: All of it. And I know everyone is supposed to sort of know that, but intellectual grasp is one thing and true knowledge, conviction, is another. If time were used as a name for a perception, almost sense-like, like smell, sight, touch, maybe that would make Time easier to grasp. And maybe even manipulate.

HE (silent, staring at me):

You just gave me an idea.

You just gave me an idea.

(It's not an editing error; I gave him an idea twice. Or maybe he thought I did not understand the first time.)



I wish I could say he dramatically stormed out and ended up producing something that will be on all news channels. Or at least in Nature magazine.
But he didn't. He stayed for pizza and apple beer, and even watched part of Australia's Next Top Model (a rerun) on TV with me.

Still, he said I gave him an idea.
Let's just hope it's about physics.

Just a reminder

On this day, 109 years ago,
two lucky women embarked on a journey like no other.

Versailles, by Dont Techno.

Moving house

The following report comes from a reader called simply Barbara.
She does not wish to be identified any further. (Which is perfectly OK.)
It is posted here verbatim, with only a link inserted, to refer you back to a post she mentioned.

In their own words...

This happened maybe four years ago, in summer time. I don't recall any other details, as it was a long time ago. But after reading the post about the house in England that keeps appearing and disappearing I remembered this event that baffled me at the time.

About two miles from my former home (I lived in a city) there is a tall woody hill with an inn at the top that many people like to visit on weekends and after work to chill out. There is only one road leading up there from the direction of the city (where I lived), although there is another road on the other side of the hill.

I used to go there from time to time because it's close and offers a very nice panoramic view of the city.

On this particular day I drove there with a couple of family members and a friend.

As we were nearing the beginning of the slope, just before the road starts going uphill, I noticed a tiny oldfashioned cottage on the left side of the road. It was very tiny, with whitewashed (but dirty) walls and a straw roof.
This sort of building was very common here centuries ago, but nowadays it's very difficult to find a cottage like that.

Th cottage was standing alone on top of a small grassy hill, just above the modern housing development sprawling on both sides of the road. It looked old and abandoned.

I was very surprised because I didn't remember seeing it before, and enchanted to see a cottage like that and I thought to myself it would be a perfect "retreat" for me to do my writing and stuff. I also remember thinking it was a ridiculous idea considering it was so close to my home, but I really liked it. I rememebr thinking I would have to ask a relative of mine who is a lawyer how to go about it.

Later that day, on our way back home, I didn't remember to look because I was engrossed in a conversation we were having.

But I did remember to look the next time we went there, maybe two months later.

The cottage wasn't there!

I remember thinking it was sooo typical! Every time I like something, a product or a service, whatever, they discontinue it or it becomes unavailable to me. It happens all the time, with makeup, with perfume, with TV shows I like.
But I was especially sad that the cottage had been torn down because it was so unique.

Maybe three or four months later we went to the hill again to have a "twilight drink" (like a "night cap", only it wasn't night yet :)). On our way there I didn't even bother to look for the place where the cottage had stood. Besides, we were talking, so I only remembered it just as we were passing the spot where I had seen it, so I didn't really look.

But as we were driving home I was sitting in the back looking through the car window on my right side... and there was the cottage again!

I asked the person who was driving if he could stop, but it was really impossible (too much traffic).

When I got home I called that relative who was a lawyer and asked her if she could take a picture of that cottage the next time she goes to the hill (because she used to go there often, whereas I have a disability that prevents me from walking for any length of time and I do not own a car).

She could not recall any such cottage (and she lived nearby), so I gave her a precise description of the site.

The next time we talked she said she saw no such cottage. She described to me the surrounding houses, and the description fit the place I had seen, only there was no cottage.

I don't know what to make of this. There is only one road leading up the slope, the road we took. You simply cannot take any other road because there is no other road.

Also, the distance is very short, comparatively, so it's not like there are a lot of such roadside grassy slopes. In fact there is only one, with modern houses below - and that solitary cottage was standing high on the slope, above the houses. It was extremely distinctive - the only house with a straw roof I've seen here! - so there's no way I confused it with some other house.

Also, it was not a prefabricated structure that could be taken down and reassembled again (not to mention that it looked old and abandoned).

I don't live in that city anymore and I don't visit the hill. The few people that I mentioned it to and were familiar with the place didn't seem to recall any such cottage.

I have no idea what that was.

But I do know what I saw.... Twice!

Cottage, by Proama.

Thank you very much, Barbara.
Personally I find such inconspicuously placed events fascinating and even poetic, in an odd sort of way.

And by the way (no pun intended ;)), I gather you hadn't read the story about a certain hill at the time of your writing... or you would count yourself lucky that the hill itself was there. :)


IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE: 
The Long Way Home
Have You Seen This House?




About the image:

Such a beautiful story deserves a beautiful picture. This one, we thought, was beautiful, even though the structure is just a wooden shack, not a brick and mortar (and straw) cottage, like the one that Barbara saw.

We did not ask for permission to insert it here, but it certainly wasn't because of lack of respect towards the author.

You can see the picture here, and the author's gallery if you click the link beneath the picture.




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

Mind fields: are "ghosts" glimpses of parallel worlds?

A reader called Val B. wrote in to ask do we think 'ghosts' are glimpses of other dimensions, say of parallel worlds or alternate realities, as it were.

Apparently it was this post that triggered your question, Val.
I am glad. Because in that post we broach - ever so lightly and superficially - the question of the nature of "ghosts" (expounded also in this post).

Personally I find "ghost" to be a catch-all term that catches precisely nothing.
In all too many people it seems to be an automatic response (never a good thing, not in my book) to all sorts of unexpected or "illogical" apparitions.
Even worse, underlying there seems to be a deeply rooted but mindless preconception that "ghosts" are: a) dead people, who b) ended, usually tragically, in c) the place where the apparition occurs.

Really?
How do we know that?

We don't.

I understand the need by many people to feel there is an existence beyond death. Who wouldn't?

But such apparitions rarely prove - or disprove, for that matter - anything of the sort.
Besides... I firmly believe that the truth, and only the truth, does set us free.
And stereotypical thinking - jumping to conclusions - is by definition removed from the truth. It disregards the truth, whatever it may be. Even worse, it disregards the need to quest for truth.

It would be interesting and very useful to compile a classification of different types of apparitions.
In fact, am sure it's been done, but I have yet to find a good compilation of the sort.
However, they can be roughly divided in two main categories: apparitions where perception seems to be unilateral; and apparitions where perception seems to be mutual.

There are a number of instances that would certainly seem to indicate that certain apparitions are glimpses of perfectly ordinary, banal moments in a long-since-deceased person's life.


What's puzzling about such cases, if you think about it, is that the vision isn't reciprocal. In other words, the "apparition" doesn't seem to notice the person who can see her or him.

Then, there are cases - they seem to be much rarer - where the vision is, or seems to be, reciprocal. (Here is one such case.)


Regarding the first type (which could be further subdivided into various categories), I am increasingly leaning towards the tentative conclusion that there probably is an all-pervading "medium" - something akin to what the ancients called aether - that absorbs and automatically records everything that takes place, reflecting it back when the circumstances are right.
(Or perhaps everything is there all the time, but we can only occasionally catch a glimpse of it.)

Everything, every single molecule of our physical (and possibly para-physical) world, seems to be composed of this mysterious film-like subtle substance, or somehow partaking in it.

That could explain visions such as the Roman legion marching endlessly through a cellar in York. That was clearly a vision - not a recreation of that event. In other words, it was like a tape playing on TV - not a reoccurrence of an ancient occurrence.
How do we know?
Because the lower part of the legs and the feet of the soldiers were not visible.
They were following a road, the level of which was in those days much lower than today.

In other cases, it seems as if the individual memory of a person, long gone, is the source of visions. It is as if it created a field of experience - or, more accurately, as if it projected its own field of experience remembered for others to, literally, step in.

Still other apparitions, especially recurring and unchanging visions (i.e. the various "white ladies", "grey ladies", etc.), may be the result of cumulative collective imaging (which is not exactly the same as imagining). In other words, they may be externalised mental "growths", fed by the collective mind of their environment, including the mind fields of those who have long since died.


But it's the "mutual" apparitions that puzzle me.
In such cases one could speculatively surmise that a two-way glimpse of parallel timelines is taking place.
If all time is happening all the time - only our minds are adapted to a "tunnel vision" that helps us remain relatively stable in an endless, timeless ocean of apparent chaos - then it's not outside the realm of possibility that occasionally the "veil" should part for a few instants, perhaps ruffled by the breeze of some unusual electromagnetic activity influencing our brain and our mind, affording a mutual view of what is, only perceived by two individual (i.e. limited) minds as two different points in spacetime.
And that might be true even for the realm of what could have been.
(Ask Michio Kaku - or almost any of the authors featured in the side bar - to explain it to you. :))


Final conclusion?
None can be made at this point, by anyone - except, maybe, to conclude that we know nothing about the nature of the world and of our very lives, and should proceed accordingly.


And isn't that a gloriously liberating acknowledgement? :)



P.S. I can tell this post is going to be SO edited in the future.
So please, do come back at a later time.

Is it the fault lines' fault?

Every serious discussion about more or less verified "paranormal" events ends - and sometimes starts - with the big question: what causes these events? What triggers them?

One of the episodes of the series "Ghosthunters" (the 1996 British programme, not the uber-silly USA series started in 2004), mentioned in a previous post, for example, presents an interesting (if necessarily tentative) explanation of apparitions in the Severn Valley, in England. (It is the episode called, appropriately, "Spectres of the Severn".) Namely, that the apparitions purportedly witnessed by many people in said valley are to be blamed on the terrain itself, more precisely on the effect of the fault lines that run across the valley and the geomagnetic activity that they produce.

Personally, I am quite inclined to believe it. What else but magnetic or electric currents of some description could trigger such unusual visions? After all, everything around us, including our brains (which, I believe, house only a small portion of our Mind - a gate to it, if you will), is electricity - patterns of energy, receptive to all kinds of impulses from the greater "net" into which they are woven and from which they emerge.

Furthermore, I've always been intrigued by the apparent fact (which probably is no such thing, just a firmly anchored subjective impression) that there are countries or lands where reports about "paranormal" events - and that includes folk legends - seem to be more bountiful than elsewhere, notably Great Britain and Japan. (A typical - and typically shortsighted - reponse to such musings is: "Well, they are probably more prone to belief in such things than people elsewhere". Well, if that is so - why is it so?)

I used to suspect that it may have something to do with the vast expanses of water surrounding both of these countries. Water, after all, is among the best conductors of electricity there are.

And it may be so. But the theory that it might be the shifts of tectonic plates activity that affect the neural system is no less fitting. Japan, for example, is criss-crossed by fault lines, being a hotspot for earthquakes.

Whatever the precise cause, I have little doubt that the specific geomagnetic pattern of each place potentially has a measurable effect on the neural system of living beings, perhaps triggering unusual insights into the realities of timespace.

What I find somewhat silly, however, is the often simplistically reductionist view of such interaction.

By now almost everyone - certainly everyone reading this, I dare say - will be familiar with the various experiments involving artificial stimulation of the brain by magnetic and electrical impulses, conducted in the past two decades or so. By stimulating certain areas of the brain (the temporal lobes) researchers were able to trigger what seemed like "mystical" or "paranormal" experiences in the test subjects.

Here is a good compendium of such work by Michael Persinger, a well-known researcher in this field.

Spirituality and the Brain

What I find oddly shortsighted is the failure by many researchers and interpreters of such experiments to realise that identifying the spot in the brain where reaction takes place, and even replicating such an experience by artificial stimulation, does not automatically identify the source of said experiences in the "wild".

(Furthermore, these experiments are not as reproducible as many reports would have you believe. See, for example, the cutely if somewhat annoyingly titled article Electrical Brainstorms Busted as Source of Ghosts.)

In fact, this type of research fails to answer even the simplest questions. Because it's one thing to poke the brain with a wire (if they can be simplistic, so can I), and another to be walking about and suddenly be confronted with, say, the sounds of singing coming out of nowhere (or take practically any experience described in this blog).

Yes, a geomagnetic or electrical impulse of some description is messing with my brain.
But how? Why then and there? Where is it coming from?
Why do some people - people from all walks of life, sometimes a priori skeptical about such phenomena, and often quite oblivious to the possibility of such a thing happening - witness certain events and others don't?

And most importantly: why do "established" (i.e. repeated over time) anomalies always appear in more or less the same shape or form to all those who witness them, even though they knew nothing about them beforehand (or about each other)?

It is the same question as the one raised by so called "hallucinations".
Yes, they may appear under the influence of some substance... but does that necessarily mean that it is the substance that produces them?
(And we're not talking about delirium tremens, so there's no need to banalise the discussion by dragging it in.)

Or does it perhaps mean that the substance has made the person simply more susceptible to see what actually is there, but unseen in ordinary circumstances?

(This is the question raised by an articulate young clinical psychologist in the episode Spectres of the Severn, above. By the way, this man became a clinical psychologist because of a "paranormal" experience he had had years earlier, along with a few friends of his. It is described in the first episode of the series, Ripples in Time.)


Anyway, if you want to explore such anomalies and their possible sources "scientifically", here's a gadget you don't want to miss:

MADS

And here is a good comprehensive introduction to "paranormal" phenomena:

And finally, to end this on a lighter (?) note - being summer and all - here's an "unscientific" but fun and unpretentious - and ultimately potentially useful - article on fault lines, or "ley lines", and their connection to "paranormal" phenomena, written by someone who had been researching them for more than two decades.

Ley-Lines and their Connection to the UFO

For the record and in the name of intellectual honesty:

In the past few years I have developed a singular distaste for anything involving the terms "UFO" or "alien" and "abduction" in a single sentence.

Which is all the more pity, from my viewpoint, because I vividly remember the soft glow of a gentle, smiling awe that I felt as a child (and even later) whenever I witnessed something extra-ordinary in the skies. And I have seen, more than once, things that definitely appeared to be: a) artificial objects; b) flying, or airborne, to be more precise; and c) unidentified (not just by me).

Were they of extra-terrestrial origin, even if they turned out to be some sort of never-seen-before aircraft?
I honestly don't know.

But I certainly can understand the fascination that UFO hold for so many people.

So, it is not that I dismiss - certainly not entirely - the possibility of (presumably extraterrestrial?) "aliens" descending upon us and abducting unsuspecting citizens, for whatever purpose.
It's just that, faced with the avalanche of dubious reports and intepretations of such experiences, I feel I cannot be bothered with them anymore. I've grown tired of them.

Nevertheless, I decided to include the link above because it gives a good, easy-to-understand account of the phenomenon we're talking about here.
I may add others in the future.


IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:
No mere flesh and blood



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

No mere flesh and blood

Today marks the 61st anniversary of the death of Frank Smythe.
(And the interesting thing is I decided to write this entry yesterday, before finding out - just now - that it was the anniversary of his death. Serendipity!)

Smythe was a great mountaineer, one of those rare individuals who thrive on the most extreme challenges.
He was also one of the relatively few mountaineers who openly admitted to have witnessed things that transcend our usual human experience of this world.

Here is one of Smythe's experiences, as described in J. H. Brennan's oft-quoted book Time Travel: A New Perspective (p. 53).

Frank L. Smythe describes how he entered a grassy hollow near Glen Glomach in the Scottish hills and experienced a time slip. He saw a small group of weary men, women, and children stagger into an ambush laid by men wielding spears, axes and clubs. In the resultant massacre, every last member of the group was slaughtered. Smythe was so horrified he ran from the scene.

The interesting thing about this account - it happened in 1940 - is that Smythe was a mountaineer, not an historian [unlike Arnold Toynbee whose experiences are discussed immediately previously in Brennan's book]. He had no particular interest in or knowledge of the spot where the time slip occurred. He did do some research into the area, but only afterwards, as a result of his experience. On the debit side, Smythe was never able to confirm his experience. He discovered two massacres had happened at the spot, but the clothing and weaponry did not match his vision.

The history of mankind being what it is - exceedingly prolific in blood and gore -, it is not at all surprising that not every single massacre would be properly recorded.

But even if it were... what would the confirmation of an event matching Smythe's description tell us? Is there something at that spot, near Glen Glomach - some fault, some "ley line", some source of electromagnetic activity - that would occasionally obliterate the single vision of linear time that is characteristic of our human experience?

View from the Glen Elchaig track towards Glen Glomach
© Copyright Peter Van den Bossche. Taken from here.

Be that as it may, this was not the only odd sight that Smythe witnessed.
Here is a very interesting account of what is, I suspect, all too easily dismissed as the result of oxygen deprivation or whatever.

On June 1 1933, Frank Smythe was as high as anyone had ever climbed. But it would be another 20 years before anyone would stand on the summit [of the Sagarmatha AKA Chomolungma AKA Mt. Everest]. Exhausted after two nights in the so-called "death zone" and emaciated by weeks at high altitude, he began his descent to Camp Six at 27,400ft, where fellow climber Eric Shipton, too ill to climb, lay in a tiny tent waiting for him.
As he made his way down, he began to hallucinate - he was climbing without oxygen - and he had an overpowering feeling that someone was with him. It was so strong, that when he stopped, he divided his mint cake and turned to offer half to his "companion".
Later, he noticed two dark, bulbous objects hovering above him. One had "what looked like squat, underdeveloped wings, whilst the other had a beak-like protuberance like the spout of a teakettle. They distinctly pulsated... as though they possessed some horrible quality of life."
Smythe collected himself enough to do a mental check, naming each of the peaks around him. Then he looked back. The things hadn't moved. A mist drifted in front of them, and, when it cleared, they had vanished.

(From the article "The last 1,000 ft are not for mere flesh and blood", by Simon Smythe, published in The Telegraph, April 8th, 2003.)

Oxygen deprivation?
It is a facile explanation, and in reality says nothing - certainly not about the event itself.

Frank L. Smythe died on June 27th, 1949, in New Delhi.
He was two weeks shy of his 49th birthday.

Wherever he is, I hope he is enjoying himself.


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

Wotton Hatch Revisited

A comment and a promise from Josh, a kindly visitor to this blog, reminded us of an old favourite that has been covered here in late 2008. All the material for that entry was gleaned from books, most especially from Brennan's Time Travel: A New Perspective, so we only included data that were available in those sources.

But early today, thanks to insomnia and the full moon that kept me happily awake, I found myself watching TV in the early hours of the morning, when an old programme I had totally forgotten about came on: Ghost Hunters. 
As I sat watching it, I suddenly remembered that an episode of that series covered the Wotton Hatch incident, among others. I could not remember the title (the first and so far last time I had watched it was in 1996 or 1997), but it didn't take me long to find it.

It is the episode called Ripples in Time. (And it covers not only the Wotton Hatch incident, but starts with another one of our favourites: C. G. Jung's "time slip".)

The "Mr and Mrs Allan" from our post were really a well-known bookshop owner, Eric Barton, and his wife, Irina. And there is much, much more additional - and more importantly, first hand! - information about the whole incident.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, you can watch it here.

EDIT: The link seems to have gone dead.
For the time being, you can see the video here (part I).

EDIT (4. I. 2013): Watch it here... while you can.






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

The Long Way Home

One of the most fascinating types of timespace anomaly is a sudden loss of orientation due to a seeming change in the environment the subject is quite familiar with. In other words: you're looking for a familiar house (or a road, or some other landmark) - and it suddenly isn't there. Or it is completely changed. The next time you look, it is there again, back to its old self.

It is also one of the easiest targets for self-styled skeptics, who are all too happy to simply wave off such events as evidence of some brain malfunction (usually, and utterly unscientifically, left unidentified), even when there is no evidence that would point to the likelihood of such an event in any given subject. Just because something could happen, it doesn't follow that it did happen.

Such things - as all events, really - should be studied individually, if we ever hope to understand their origins and dynamics.

Here is a real story of such an event. It happened in Tagawa (Fukuoka), Japan, around 1950 - 1955, to the mother of a dear friend of ours, called Seika.

It is perhaps important to note that the person to whom it happened - the mother - is known to be an extremely rational and no-nonsense person, not given to flights of fancy... and that's putting it mildly. No, really.

At the time of this event she was a young schoolgirl, perhaps 10-15 years old (probably while she was still in elementary school, according to Seika).

Here is her story.


Mother visited one of her girl friends, just like many school girls do. Probably before dinner time (or before it got dark), she decided to go home.

She was all too familiar with the area but suddenly she couldn't find a road. It's not that she forgot how to get home - there was no road where there should have been one. I suppose she found herself standing on a country field with no road.

She decided to think she'd been fooled by the 'fox' or 'racoon dog'. She went back to her friend's house and told them what happened. They let her stay there overnight.

The next morning, she found the road and went home. I remember sensing her 'pride' when I heard her talk about it. (That she wasn't fooled - that she was smart enough to go back and wait till the road appeared again.)

Awarded, 2009.

Japanese folklore, rich in "ghosts" and other so-called paranormal phenomena, has a preferred culprit in such cases: kitsune, "the Fox".

But I don't think too much should be read into the attribution of this type of anomaly to "the Fox". I suspect said "fox" is just an umbrella mythic figure that serves as a pop explanation for anything that trascends the ordinary experience of life.
It should be mentioned, however, that its attributed action often seems to be illusion-inducing.
And this could be significant.

Anyway, stories like this one can be found practically all over the world (but it's not often that one can find a reliable almost-first-hand source).
Here is a very interesting story from 1941, which, however, sadly lacks the geographic coordinates one would like to see.

Two points seem to stand out as possibly related: the "squeaking" pillar or whatever it was, and the military airfield that is mentioned in passing. Because of the anonymised nature of the account we can't know where it happened. But could it be that at the time of this event, in 1941, there were some sort of experiments being conducted by the military in the vicinity? After all, this was precisely the time when World War II precipitated the development of the radar and other such devices.

Just something to ponder about.
It is certainly much more rational and "logical" than just dimissing it - dismissing everything and anything that transcends the usual experience of our sorely limited senses - as fancy.


IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS: Moving House

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

The End of Time?

Ye of little patience: another story - another "exclusive", no less :) - is planned for later this week (up until and including Sunday).


Meanwhile, we've been pondering about the nature of time ad nauseam. Naturally, it never leads anywhere; or if it does, there is no way to confirm the validity of such insights. But if you're anything like us here, you know musings about the nature of time are as irresistible as they are (or can be) maddening.


So, why not muse upon it in the company of a book that proposes there is no "time" at all?


It's not a particularly recent one - in fact, it's ten years old - but then good work doesn't have an expiration date. I am referring to Julian Barbour's book The End of Time.

And since you can borrow it from any good library - as I would recommend - this post can't even be construed as advertising. Be warned, however, that once you've read it - and if you're truly interested in the curiosities of what we call "time" - you might be tempted to keep a copy forever.
I know I was. And I did. (Relax: not the library copy!)


Here's Barbour's angle, in a nutshell:

The main aim is to introduce a definite way of thinking about instants of time without having to suppose that they belong to something that flows relentlessly forward. I regard instants of time as real things, identifying them with possible instantaneous arrangements of all the things in the universe. They are configurations of the universe. In themselves, these configurations are perfectly static and timeless. But how and why can something static and timeless be experienced as intensely dynamic and temporal?"

So, it's all instants. Everything is NOW, in Barbour's opinion. Those individual "frames" in the seeming continuum of a lifetime, any lifetime, are the single core, the essence, of what our true four-dimensional experience is.; the rest is memory and/or imagination (and a very creative one, but I digress.)


Yes, I bet you already suspected that much.
But you might want to read about it from a physicist's perspective.
To whet your appetite or get a sense whether you'd like it at all, you can read this illuminating review here.


Or you can watch this Dutch video (23 minutes), about which Barbour says it has done "a remarkably good job of explaining the ideas of The End of Time in a non-technical way".


>


AFTERTHOUGHTS

Here are a few "dummy" questions that the interviewer should have asked, in our opinion, but either didn't or they were edited out.

* If there is no place for continuity of any sort, were all things created instantly in all their states and potentialities (and even their non-state opposites)? In other words, is a person created as a newborn, an adult, an old person, all at once?

That's what I get it from this interview, and that's what I've been suspecting for a long while now.
And if this is so, what is it that propels our perception to experience the seeming "arrow" of development always in the same direction, from young to old, from "cause" to "effect"?


But the most essential question, in my opinion, is the following:

* Throughout the programme, Barbour uses - inevitably, of course - time-bound (and time-shaped) language: he "came" to the conclusion, he "will" take a snapshot - and so forth.


Isn't "time" ultimately simply a name for our experience of continuity (illusory or not) between all these discrete instants?


I certainly think so; and if this is so, then the true nature of "time" is really a moot point, however interesting. In other words, if we are never going to experience it in any other way, why should we even care what the true nature of "time" is?


But is it so?
Are we really doomed to experience "time" as we normally do - in a linear fashion? (And the many entries in this very blog seem to attest that we do not experience it linearly at all, ahem, times.)


This sub-question seems to me particularly interesting because it would indicate, regardless of the answer (positive or negative), the sort of mechanism that dictates such perception - and which perhaps could be transcended.


Theoretical physics can be great fun and certainly a great exercise for the abstract mind. But unless it is also useful in a meaningful, existential way, it is mostly an exercise in futility.


Still, it is a great work that makes you think about such things.

Up in smoke

On March 28th (or thereabouts) something must have gone haywire somewhere - wherever the "normality" of our days is fashioned and tailored.

I remember that day because something odd happened to me that afternoon.
As a matter of fact, it was just a reprise of a situation - a seemingly blatant anomaly, to put it mildly - already described in one of the earlier posts.
(And you can amuse yourself to death trying to guess which one it was, because I am not going to tell. :))

Furthermore, I overheard a couple of people in a shop nearby talking about "weirdness".
No Marian apparitions, no gnomes hopping around, not even a UFO sighting, nothing like that - just things not being quite "right" and people being unusually "forgetful". (That was the explanation I overheard.)

And then, a few hours ago, I received an interesting message from a person, regarding that same date.
(I did not enquire after that specific date, and only told her about my own experience after she had volunteered the following story.)
I asked her if I could publish this here, and she agreed, provided I do not mention her by name.
So, here is the translation of the message - well, most of it.

(By the way, the following event, whatever it was, took place on the shores of Lake Lugano, not far from the Italian-Swiss border, in case anyone is keeping track.)

***

That evening I was working late, as usually. I was reviewing a project that was due the next afternoon.
Around 22:00 I grabbed a cigarette from the pack that was lying on the little coffee table next to my desk (where I always keep my cigarettes). The pack was half full (or half empty, ha! :)) because I had bought it that same day. I didn't count the cigarettes, but the pack was definitely well stocked enough to last me through the night and well into the afternoon.

Maybe half an hour later I took two antihistamine pills (100 mg in total), as I do every day, and went on with my work.

Shortly before midnight, maybe a quarter to 24:00, I reached for another cigarette.
The pack was not on the table.
It did strike me as odd, somewhat, because I naturally thought it had fallen off the table or something, but didn't remember hearing the thump that I should have heard when it hit the floor. (It doesn't matter how engrossed I am my work, I do always remain alert.)

So I looked around and then under the coffee table to retrieve the pack. But the cigarettes were not there.
I was somewhat alarmed because it meant that evidently I had placed it somewhere else, and it's so uncharacteristic of me, and I was worried my work would reflect this unusual absence of mind. But my work had been going smoothly and I could not notice any decline in quality in the text.

I got up and searched for the pack. At this point I was circling around that table like a buzzard!
OK, so the pack wasn't anywhere near the table. I could not imagine where could it be, so I just looked around my studio (which is quite small and minimalistically furnished). I could not find it.

At this point I was really upset, but not so much because of the nicotine deprivation or whatever. I just could not understand where could it be.
So I tried the old fashioned method: retrace your steps.
And then... and then the really weird thing happened. I discovered that I could not, for the life of me, remember what I had been doing for the past twenty minutes or so.

This was so odd I just could not go on with my work. I tried hard to remember but all I could recall were vague, disjointed fragments of me working and watching the TV at some point (which is strange because I was much too busy working).

But the strangest thing of all, and I am not sure I can really describe it well, was the fact that up until the moment when I reached for that second cigarette and did not find the pack I didn't feel anything being out of the ordinary. I was simply working, nothing special, no concentration problems, nothing.

Anyway, I ended up tearing the house apart to find the pack. I looked EVERYWHERE, even in the bathroom (where I never smoke) - even in the fridge!
There are maybe four or five pieces of furniture in that studio, and I searched it as thoroughly as humanly possible. I even searched the rubbish bin, and also the pockets of garments that I hadn't worn in months.
But I never found the pack.
I am writing this four days later because I still haven't found it.

And I still can't shake the feeling that there is a gap in my memory of that evening, like an impenetrable thick haze (or fragments of a broken mirror, oddly enough - that's what it reminds me of), and that I cannot access whatever happened during it, no matter how hard I try.

Now, I know that antihistamines can cause short term memory problems. But you see, I have been taking these pills forever and never had anything like this happen to me.
And I know I did not - I could not - unknowingly smoke all the cigarettes!
They would have turned up in my ashtray, wouldn't they? (And I only have one.)
And I would have found the empty box, anyway.

I also know I did not go out because the alarm was still on (I have to switch it off before going out), and nobody had come to my door inquiring, as they would have if the alarm had gone off (even if I somehow had become temporarily deaf or just oblivious to it).

By the way, the work turned out quite well. Certainly nothing abnormal there, or the people paying for it would have said something.

You know, I think this weirdness is contagious.
I think I'll stop frequenting this blog! ;-)

***

I know this particular buzzard well enough to attest that she is not a liar, or a mentally deranged person, or a drug abuser, or an alcoholic - or indeed an ignorant wretch with a tenuous grasp of the basic laws of physics as we know them. And her pranks (which she does love to pull) are of a different kind altogether. Her word is as good as gold.

As a matter of fact, I had something vaguely similar happen to me at least once.
(And certainly more than once, if you count my personal "black hole".)

I cannot know what happened here, and wouldn't dream of trying to explain it, even though I am confident it's all just a matter of perfectly natural para-physics, rather than a personal psychological/awareness issue. In other words, the laws of physics "as we know them" might be problematic because we don't really know all that much about the wider context in which they seem to function - and, occasionally, malfunction.


P.S. This story is not an April Fool's joke.
I know because I checked. :-)

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

Intermezzo: Haunting Performances

What the average man calls Death,
I believe to be merely the beginning of Life itself.
We simply live beyond the shell.
We emerge from out of it's [sic!] narrow confines like a chrysalis.
Why call it Death?
Or, if we call it Death,
why surround it with dark fears and sick imaginings?
I'm not afraid of the Unknown.

From an entry in Rudolph Valentino's diary
(or so I am told, I haven't read it)

As has been explained in another entry or two, we don't "do" ghost stories here. Well... in principle.


Tonight, in honour of the upcoming Oscar night - an event that means absolutely nothing to me or to anyone in our team (with the possible exception of Lynx, who'll be watching the event for its fashion value) - I decided to make an exception and offer you a link to a brand new compilation of (sometimes first-hand) accounts about the "ghosts" that purportedly roam the hallowed halls of Hollywood and its water holes. Not because we don't have any "time slippage" stories to tell (one, especially, has our collective fingertips itching!), but because those that we do have deserve more time and attention than any of us have at this moment.

Besides, it's a very good excuse to point you to the very interesting and entertaining website that hosts it.

So, grab your favourite snack and click away!

Ten Oscar-related ghost stories from Hollywood

If you liked the stories above, then there is a good chance you'll like the book (by the same author, Laurie Jacobson), too:

Hollywood Haunted: A Ghostly Tour of Filmland

If not, you can try another book on the same subject (by Tom Ogden):

Haunted Hollywood:
Tinseltown Terrors, Filmdom Phantoms, and Movieland Mayhem

And if you like reading about theatre "ghosts", don't miss this story, featuring none other than Ingmar Bergman: CURTAIN, PLEASE!

I wish the Olympic games - another event that rates 0,00 on my scale of interest (and it's because I like sports) - had such an entertaining collection of otherworldly stories.
Then again, after this year's tragically eventful edition, they might see the need to create one...