The Last of the Romans

The Romans conquered half the world in their time. Everybody knows (or should know) that. 

But the more I read the more it appears they weren't content with simply securing the glory (such as it was) of Rome for a thousand years, give or take a hundred. They're still there.

Still where?

In York, for example. And in a region of England called the Norfolk Broads, with particular attachment to Wroxham, the "Capital of the Broads".

I learned about the ongoing Roman occupation of the Broads from Colin Wilson's Mysteries which is an almost inexhaustible mine of juicy data. According to his meticulous endnotes, Wilson learned about it from (or at least refers to) the book Unsolved Mysteries: a Collection of Weird Problems (From the Past), published by Valentine Dyall, the actor, in 1954.

But there is extensive mention of Wroxham in a much more recent book, Mysteries and Secrets of Time (2007), by Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe. Most accounts about this mysterious site available on the internet seem to refer to this latter book. 

And it is a highly interesting book, enticing, intelligently written, endlessly fascinating.

However, it has, in our opinion, one major flaw. It has no reference notes. Which means that we can only relate what supposedly happened there by using borrowed words and interpretations. None of the literary sources mentioned in the book is available (or even mentioned, for that matter) online; and at least one personality discussed as a first-hand witness is strangely missing from The Peerage and other sources where one would expect him to be listed. (But the online availability of many archival resources still is very limited, of course.) And because there are no reference notes, we don't even know where those sources are available.

And what if the authors relied on Dyall's book, as Wilson did?

None of us has read Dyall's book (it's been out of print since the 1950s), but a quick check of said book's reliability reveals there is some cause for worry. Apparently at least one person (Francis Clive-Ross, a respected publisher on the "occult" and a critical thinker) deemed it to be  "so heavily fictionalised as to be historically virtually useless".

It's not that we do not believe the authors. Perish the thought. But I, for one, have read Borges - in fact, I am more than a little Borgesian myself - so you will excuse me if I do not jump on this succulent bone of a mystery as enthusiastically as I normally would. Show me the sources, then I'll jump.

So, does that mean there will be no story at all - just the rambling intro about books and Borges? That's it?

No. It is simply a caveat that the story that follows - or rather snippets of stories - will be told relying on other people's accounts of what allegedly happened to other people, with no readily available sources for you to study them yourself. 

If you're OK with that, read on.

Apparently there is an army of what appear to be Roman soldiers - from ancient Rome - to be seen around the lake of Wroxham Broad.

As far as we can deduce from the books above, the earliest preserved mention of a possible anomaly in those waters seems to be the report by a Benjamin Curtiss, published in The Archives of the Northfolk, in 1603.

Mr. Curtiss and two friends of his were getting wet "in the great Broad of Wroxham, near unto Hoveton St. John" (see map below).

They were swimming across the lake when "strangely enough we felt our feet touch the bottom". That would have been strange because the water was usually much deeper there - from 12 to 14 feet, according to Curtiss.

Next thing they knew, they found themselves surrounded by an arena - an amphitheatre - with seats and all. The water had disappeared from beneath their feet; and they were themselves dressed as Roman officers. "What is more astonishing still," writes Mr. Curtiss, they were not surprised at all; in fact, they felt quite accustomed to it all. (Yet I did not wonder...)

Assuming all of the above really happened as described, it certainly opens a fascinating problem. 

There seems never to have been a Roman amphitheatre at the location of Curtiss' swim - as far as we know. (But that could very well change in the future.)
If so, that would mean - as the Fanthorpes noted in their book - that Curtiss and his friends displaced themselves not only in time but in space, thereby violating the laws of the world as presented by the Minkowski equations (see We'll always have Paris... or whatever it was for this strange apparent phenomenon). 

If so, my guess would be they entered somebody's memory field.

View Larger Map

According to Curtiss' description, the part where they saw the Roman arena emerge from the lake would have been the upper part of the lake as seen on the map above. They were swimming from the river bank, on your right side, towards Hoveton, on the upper left side of the map. (You can enlarge or navigate the map from within this post.)
And BTW... what IS that islet on the NW side of the lake, connected with the shore? If natural, it has an awfully strange shape; if it's not natural, why was it built in that shape?

Fast forward to April 16, 1709, when the report by the Rev. Thomas Josiah Penston of an odd picnic is said to have been published in The Gentleman's Gazette.

Rev. Penston and his friends were having a picnic by "a beautiful lake in Norfolk, about eleven miles from the ancient city of Norwich", when they were rudely interrupted by a procession of no less than 700 or 800 Roman horsemen, followed by several hundreds of men in chains. The noisy parade, complete with trumpeters and drummers, included ballistic machines, prancing stallions and lions. At the lakeside they vanished, says Penston.

But that was not the last of the Romans.

In 1829, Lord Percival Durand abruptly met a "curious old man" while he was on his yacht, Amaryllis, near the eastern entrance of the same lake. 

There follows a sentence in the Fanthorpes' book that I find exceedingly puzzling:

"The weird old fellow who appeared to Percival Durand's yachting party on July 21, 1829, claimed to be Flavius Mantus, the Custos rotulorum..."

Claimed to be? He spoke to them?

Apparently. Not only that but he warned them that they were trespassing!

The incident was completed by the apparition of the same old amphitheatre in all its glory.

Incidentally, there appears to be a strangely worded poem, The Legend of the Lake, "attributed to Calvert" and published in the early 18th century, we're told.

While through the trees of yonder lake,

There comes a cavalcade of horsemen near.

Gaze not upon these Romans, friends,

For fear their eyes may meet with thine.

Stand back, well back, and let them pass...

(The poem continues, but in a nutshell: they're dead.)

If you think the poem is weird, wait until you read this news item that was allegedly published in Day's Chronicles of East Anglia, in 1825:

The Royal Progress of Carausius ... has passed... through the village of Wroxham... on its way from Brancaster.

(I don't know about you, but the last part cracked me up. It still does. :))

Unfortunately, there is no mention of what has been omitted and substituted by the suspension points. Usually it is the irrelevant - or perhaps overly lengthy - parts that are excised in this fashion.

But what piece of information could be irrelevant to such a weirdly anachronistic report?

We simply cannot tell.

More on the unending Roman occupation of Britain in one of the next posts. Stay tuned.

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

Fasten your seatbelts, the Time vortex is coming

Well, according to this website it is, so don't blame us if you happen to file your taxes too late.

Apparently there is a "time vortex" hovering above Antarctica; and not just any time vortex, but a huge and deadly time vortex - the consequence of some unidentified (and possibly unidentifiable) technology, that may or may not be of terrestrial origin.

Supposedly a spy satellite discovered an ancient man-made structure or apparatus under the ice of Antartica, exactly ten years ago, back in April 2001. The news was "quashed", they say, but an excavation project was started by the USA military, to which other countries objected - formally, no less, which normally means through official channels. Rather startlingly, "an aide to Nicole Fontaine" - the latter was the president of the EU at the time - allegedly issued the following statement:

"If it's something the US military has constructed down there, then they're violating the international Antarctic Treaty. If not, then it's something that's at least 12,000 years old, which is how long ice has covered Antarctica. That would make it the oldest man-made structure on the planet. The Pentagon should heed the calls of Congress and release whatever it's hiding."

However, said "aide to Nicole Fontaine" remains nameless (as far as we know), hence fairly suspect.

It appears that the USA military hauled a giant earth borer, Subterrene (that's original... but hey, at least they didn't call it Spot or Sparky) to the Antarctica, specifically to a secret USA base there.

Subterrene, the giant earth borer

Thereupon followed "a mysterious medical emergency that forced an evacuation of unnamed personnel during the depths of the Antarctic winter" (I may be totally wrong - haven't checked this yet - but wasn't that the woman who discovered she had breast cancer?) and an "unusual" earthquake. Supposedly its epicentre was right where the ancient structure had been spotted.

Then, in November 2002, after much hectic activity in the area and magnetic anomalies galore, a California TV crew filming in the Antarctic went missing.

After more bizarre events, the scientists on Antarctica allegedly "witnessed the creation of a time vortex". They became aware of a "spinning gray fog" which spiralled overhead, apparently displacing clouds and air currents. (This according to an alleged statement by a physicist who was there, Mariann McLein.)

The vortex did not disperse. Instead it ate the weather balloon they sent up to investigate it.

After a few minutes, the team decided to retrieve the balloon. After much effort, they did. And - here comes the climax - the chronometer attached to it read: January 27, 1965.

My guess would be that something messed up the chronometer all right - but it doesn't necessarily follow that, somewhere in that vortex or anywhere near it, was January 27th, 1965. 

Nor is the website to which I am referring claiming that it was. My tongue-in-cheek notwithstanding, it is a very well written article, so I'll borrow their conclusion:

If indeed a magnetic time vortex is appearing and disappearing over Antarctica--and if the phenomena [sic] is not natural, but generated by some unknown technology deep under the icecap--it may reveal the physics of time and could potentially allow control of the past, and by implication the future.

The size and location of the alleged "time vortex" on March 20, 2011.  

Taken from here.

So, if this was published before it becomes news, and the Time vortex really is there and operational... perhaps this will never become news? :-)

The only way we can determine that is by checking whether this article was intended as an April Fools' joke. If it was, then there is definitely a time vortex fidgeting with our time(s)!

P.S. Don't forget to come back, because I can tell this is going to be SOOO edited in the next few days!

P.P.S. Let the record show that other members of this team are opposing my tone (even though it's quite benevolent!).

"Must you be so cynical?" asked one of them.

Yes, I must. Somebody has to be, unless we want legitimate wonders to be diluted by a deluge of fake ones.

And nobody would be more willing or eager to admit the error of my ways than myself.


ADDENDUM (September 9, 2011):

Yes, finally - here's the edit I promised.
Of course, it's highly probable you won't like it... unless you're a fan of finding your path by the light of the truth, instead of being bogmired in a morass of fiction or deceptive half-truths.

Here are my preliminary findings so far.

* Mariann McLein may very well be a USA physicist, as claimed, but it seems somewhat odd that her name should appear only in search results that lead to this "time vortex" story. No bibliography, no resume, no nothing... She appears in versions of this very story only.
It may be too hasty of me, but I have concluded that: a) either she is not a particularly prominent - hence credible - member of the physicists' community; or b) she does not exist at all.
If you have evidence to the contrary, by all means, send it to us, please.

* The second discovery is as dismal as it is amusing (and I am kicking myself as I type this, for not having searched the web before writing this entry in the first place).
Judging by the date of this article, the story above was first reported no later (but probably sooner) than January 2004. It is seven years old at least.
Why did it only make a splash now? (I know, I know: it's the time vortex's fault.)
Worst of all, it appears that it originally appeared on the English Pravda website.
Need I say more?

Possibly.
I just can't think of anything else to say right now.
If and when I do, I'll be back.

On the bright side, however, at least the article mentions a few people, like Nikolai A. Kozyrev, or Lavrentiy Beria himself, whose identity has been firmly established, and we have history - in the latter's case a very bloody one - to prove it.

It is an interesting article, I'll give it that. It is much more interesting than this rant, that's for sure.
Go ahead and read it. You probably won't be sorry.
Here's a teaser:

A tragedy occurred on August 30, 1989: an extremely strong explosion sounded at the Institute's branch office on the Anjou islands. The explosion destroyed not only the experimental module of 780 tons but also the archipelago itself that covered the area of 2 square kilometers.

According to one of the versions of the tragedy, the module with three experimenters collided with a large object, probably an asteroid, in the parallel world or heading toward the parallel world. Having lost its propulsion system, the module probably remained in the parallel world.

The last record made in the framework of the experiment and kept at the Institute archives says:

"We are dying but keep on conducting the experiment. It is very dark here; we see all objects become double, our hands and legs are transparent, we can see veins and bones through the skin. The oxygen supply will be enough for 43 hours, the life support system is seriously damaged. Our best regards to the families and friends!"

Then the transmission suddenly stopped...

 I told you it was interesting.
Too bad it was published in English Pravda.

Yet I did not wonder

 "... but I was beginning to feel as though we were walking in a dream".

Another Garden, Another Time

One would expect a person to be very confused, perhaps even alarmed, when experiencing a "time slip", an incongruous displacement in time(space).

Yet often that seems not to be the case. There are cases where an odd state of acceptance seems to overcome the "slipper" at the time of the experience.

I find that particularly interesting and somewhat - if still mysteriously - revealing of the mechanisms underlying (mis)perception of timespace.

Among the stories posted here, two are very explicit about this oddly calm state of mind.

Here, what struck me first was the mild blue light that filled the room; yet I did not wonder about this at all. I did not try to account for its source, and so the wonder of this light without any visible source did not trouble me.

The Ultimate Tourist 

Remarkably, Dr Moon seems not at the time to have been either alarmed or even mildly surprised by the changed scenery, by the quite oddly dressed man approaching his or the fact that his car was missing. What preoccupied him was the thought of Lord Carson's prescription. He simply turned away, without any concern, to go back into the house.

Out of Mind?

 

Now think: aren't you yourself familiar with such an all-accepting state of mind?

Of course you are. You react like that quite often - in your dreams.

The most extraordinary things can happen, yet you accept them because you know - in your dream - why they make perfect sense, or are for some other reason acceptable to you.

Dreams are a mystery, to be sure. For one thing, there are various kinds of dreams - sub- and superconscious expressions of your Self, wish-fulfillment dreams, even prophetic dreams, etc. - seemingly unrelated to each other.

The one thing that unites them is the brain wave frequency: the Theta rhythm. In other words, the frequency range between 4 and 7 Hz of electromagnetic waves propelled by your neurons. (Think of your neurons - there are billions of them - as the keepers of your brain's electrical powerhouse.)
 The usual waking state wave frequency, the Alpha rhythm, falls in the range of 8 - 12 Hz. (You can read more about brain wave frequencies here.)

Am I implying that these people were somehow dreaming awake?

No, certainly not in the usual sense of this term, by which the dream images are "unreal", as distinctly separate from the waking "reality". But then, we must keep in mind that dreams themselves, even after centuries of exploration, remain a mystery. There is no one theory that explains them all.

Which also means that some of the dream images may very well be "real"; it's just the plane of that reality that escapes our daily wakeful reasoning.

Theta brain waves can be induced by various methods. This is not the time (and perhaps not the place) to discuss those methods. But certainly it is conceivable that some source of electromagnetic activity extraneous to the brain could provoke them. (Which is why the data listed at the bottom of this page are so important!)

It is also perfectly conceivable that the waking mind, by its own resources, can slip into the Theta rhythm. (After all, various meditation techniques can produce just that.)

Of one thing I am certain: these images are not hallucinations or dreams, again in the usual sense of the term. They appear to be simply glimpses of the surrounding, ever-present greater Reality that the waking mind usually keeps from us.

We will be writing more about this in one of the next posts, where we'll discuss the "markers of Time's undoing".

The vision in Fotheringhay church

There is a fascinating - and now quite famous - story in Colin Wilson's wonderful book Mysteries, about a woman who was able to peek beyond the current "veil" of Time. And the cause of this seems to have been the shock provoked by an accident.

She was Jane O'Neill, an English school-teacher, who had been rattled by the sight of a traffic accident, after which she took some time off work to regain her spirits.

It was during this period of convalescence that she and the friend with whom she was staying visited a church in Fotheringhay (or Fotheringay, which appears to be more correct), the village famous for the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1587 (although I remain unconvinced that this gruesome historical fact absolutely must have something to do with what follows).