Wot strange wordes thou speke... AGAIN and AGAIN

Well, well...

While checking the status of links in old posts, as we do from time to time, I was suddenly confronted this morning with the following account from the BBC H2G2 website.

We don't normally post entire stories from other websites, but in this case we'll do an exception.

Before reading it, you may want to scroll all the way down and read the words we've marked in orange...

Watch your computer! It may be haunted!
Nearly all industry relies on computers of some sort to do their work. The computer is a revolution - if you want to get somewhere in life, get a computer! Everyone is using them now, - even Ghosts, it would seem.

In May 1988 Alice, a cleaner working in an architect's office, was about to start her shift when she noticed one of the staff computers had been left switched on. She didn't know much herself about computers, but knew it was on from the flickering screen. She stepped closer to the flickering screen but realised it wasn't part of her job and if she switched it off, she may get in trouble as unsaved information might be on there.

The next night she noticed that the same computer still with the same flickering screen was on again, but still ignored it. She made a mental note to ask a higher staff member, when she could, if there was any reason for its late night activity. When she asked Rob, an architect who worked there, he replied that it shouldn't be on. All computers and machinery are shut off after work. The only electricity being used should be the lights and vacuum cleaners!

So, Alice the cleaner remembered what Rob had told her as she went about her nightly cleaning work and, as she came up to room 1b, the office where the computer was, she walked in and reached for the plug. She went to switch it off by the mains but... there was no plug inserted! That was the only wall socket in the small office, so she followed the cords from the back. There was one leading to the keyboard, one leading to the printer and when she eventually found the thick black mains cord, she followed the cable to the mains plug. She startingly came across the machine's plug... not in the mains socket! Confused, she made another mental note to ask about this strange machine.

She made her way for the door and, looking back, she noticed a typed message on the screen, 'Hello'. Now she was even more confused, thinking she must be dreaming, but tripped by the mop bucket and felt it, so she assured herself she wasn't. The next day at closing time, she bumped into Rob, about to leave the building, when she remembered what had happened. She told him

'I Don't know much about computers myself, but I know they're not meant to work when they're switched off!'

Confused, Rob asked what she was referring to, so she explained what happened the last night with the computer in office 1b. He told her this shouldn't Happen; she was right, so he stayed back and watched the computer, and was startled to find that at precisely 9:18PM on May 11th 1988, the screen flicked itself on and displayed this message: 'Thou!'.

This made Rob sit up from his coffee and pay more attention to the computer. 'Thou!' it repeated. Suddenly, it changed its 'tune'...

'Thou hathe comited a grate cryme.'
Confused, Rob wondered what it meant.

'Thou art a godly man who hathe fanciful woman'

Rob smiled.
...'Who Dwelth in myne home' it continued.
'twas a grate cryme to hathe stolen myne home'

So, just think next time you wonder why Does that monitor light stay on for just a few seconds long after I switch off my computer by the mains?...

True Story.

Deja vu?
If not, clearly, you have not read our last post...

Wot strange wordes thou speke...

Forget John Titor (oh, you already have? never mind, then) - meet Tomas AKA Lukas.

But first let us preface this by an open statement that we do not really believe this story. Of course it is not the only story published here that we have doubts about; it's just that in this case the odds of the story being genuine are even slimmer than in other highly dubious cases.

Still, it is a reported "time travel" case - or rather, a case of transchronological communication (is that a word? - well, now it is) - so there is no reason to exclude it from this florilegium of dimensional oddities.

It was November 1984, and schoolteacher Ken Webster, living in Meadow Cottage, in Dodleston, England, had brought home a computer that he had borrowed from the school where he worked.

A few days later, upon his return home - after having left the computer on - he was greeted by the following message appearing on the screen:

Wot strange wordes thou speke, 

although I muste confess that I hath also bene ill schooled...

(Believe it or not, this was not the usual computer lingo back in 1984.)

But there was more:

Thou art goodly man who hath fanciful woman 
who dwel in my home...

'twas a great cryme to hath bribed myne house.

Apparently the computer was channelling the mind or spirit of an earlier dweller of Webster's home - or rather, of the inhabitant of a house that had once stood on the site of Meadow Cottage.

The computer-literate spirit introduced himself as Tomas Harden, from 16th century Dodleston.

You can read all of his communications in this fascinating article about Instrumental Transcommunication, by Ernst Senkowski.

Word must have spread in the Yonderworld about Ken's hospitality, because on February 16th, 1985, another old-timer popped in through the overtaxed computer. His name was Lukas Wainman, he wrote, and he had a lot to say about Chester, among other places.

A photo of Lukas' computer-generated message across the ages.

Taken from here.

There are several online websites carrying this story. I know you won't be sorry if you visit this lengthy and highly interesting article by Dr. Adrian Klein and Dr. Robert Neil Boyd, about Suppressing Time Constraints. There is much in it that I don't agree with, but it certainly is extraordinarily interesting.

However, if you are interested in this story, then Ken Webster's own book about it, The Vertical Plane (1989), is a must.

I haven't read it - it appears to be extremely rare - but here are a few excerpts, via this website.

'What would you do if something very strange and bewildering happened to you; something uninvited yet benign; something which happened over and over again and which involved your friends, lover and colleagues? Would you want people to know ? Would you want help in understanding it ? Yes, yes! But my experience suggests you would be wasting your time.

I was living with `D' (my girlfriend) and, for a short period, Nicola (a college friend) in Meadow Cottage, a small terraced house in the village of Dodleston, near Chester. Beginning in the Autumn of 1984, a series of poltergeist events took place, focused on the kitchen area, including the stacking of objects, noises, marks on the walls and `thrown' objects. Although we did not know it at the time, poltergeist events are relatively frequently reported `anomalous' phenomena and are, frankly, rather tedious and disruptive over a period of time.

What made this different was the appearance of `direct' communications in hand written form and, unusually, other communications mediated through a primitive computer. Personal computers were only just appearing in 1984 and, as a school teacher, I had access to primitive BBC `B' computers at school. These machines had around 32k of memory, a word processor on an installed chip and the only means of saving files was to a 5.25" floppy disk on an external drive. No networking, no modem, definitely no Internet. [Judging by this mention of the internet, these words, apparently spoken or written by Ken Webster himself, most definitely aren't from his 1989 book.]

One evening, the computer was accidentally left on and, on our return, there was a `message', a poem of sorts. It was treated as a joke of course, but saved to disk anyway. The computer returned to school and we to our sporadic poltergeist events. A different machine, borrowed on another occasion resulted, unexpectedly, in another communication. This time the language had an archaic flavour, seemingly of 17th century Elizabethan English. It wasn't right, linguistically as my colleague Peter Trinder pointed out but the tone was threatening and we felt the joke was now in bad taste.

Setting out, deliberately, to try and catch the hoax meant borrowing yet another computer, checking the disk for preloaded material, checking the house was secure and leaving the computer in the kitchen as before. Another message appeared in the same quirky `mock Tudor' style. In a matter of fact way, over a coffee, a friend suggested, well, replying ... and the results were surprising.

The reply was met with a further response and the two-way communications began in earnest. At the same time Peter Trinder's language investigations into the language style pointed up a coherence and subtlety which was not easily dismissed. But they were not perfect and in one message soon to become notorious in following investigations Peter felt particularly uncomfortable both with the history and the language.

We increased our efforts to uncover any deception; but there was a positive side effect of the computer in the kitchen ... it seemed to calm the `poltergeist' activity. Over a period of around 16 months, other associated phenomena included altered states of consciousness for D and evidence of other communicators (besides the main communicator, one Tomas Harden). Some of these other communications were unreadable (their messages were child-like nonsense and often angry); others were coherent but seemed completely contemporary and designed to unsettle. Not all messages were on the computer; they appeared on paper that was lying around, the walls or the floor. Some messages seemed unfinished unsigned as if the writer had been disturbed.'

Admit it: it's a fun story.

And, I must say, judging by the excerpts, Ken's book must be highly entertaining, too. I mean this sincerely, with no double meaning anywhere. 

I am more than ready to believe that he did not perpetrate a hoax.

Someone else did.

But, in the name of intellectual honesty and spiritual freedom, I am also as happy as ever to admit that: 

a) anything is possible; 

and 

b) I know nothing.

ADDENDUM: see the next post.

That strange feeling...

An interesting comment by a kindly visitor to our blog, Kev (see the previous post), mentioning "eerie half forgotten memories of childhood like a person a place or a TV show, music. Things that were but also never were" (our emphasis) made us realise that such feelings have never been explicitly discussed here.

If you have such feelings yourself, there is a text that offers a tentative explanation of such feelings, fragments of dream-like memories, and fleeting shadows of a vision. As a matter of fact, the text has been the subject of an entry in this very blog, but it is likely that many have missed it.

It is a long text, and beautifully written, by Philip K. Dick. 

It is not science fiction (although it does mention it).
And it is not for readers afflicted with a short attention span.

But most of the people who are seriously interested in the topics discussed here probably are unlikely to suffer from it.

Here's the part that might be of interest to those harbouring the feelings described by Kev:

I submit to you that such alterations, the creation or selection of such so-called "alternate presents," is continually taking place. The very fact that we can conceptually deal with this notion -- that is, entertain it as an idea -- is a first step in discerning such processes themselves. But I doubt if we will ever be able in any real fashion to demonstrate, to scientifically prove, that such lateral change processes do occur. Probably all we would have to go on would be vestiges of memory, fleeting impressions, dreams, nebulous intuitions that somehow things had been different in some way -- and not long ago but now. We might reflexively reach for a light switch in the bathroom only to discover that it was -- always had been -- in another place entirely. We might reach for the air vent in our car where there was no air vent -- a reflex left over from a previous present, still active at a subcortical level. We might dream of people and places we had never seen as vividly as if we had seen them, actually known them. But we would not know what to make of this, assuming we took time to ponder it at all. One very pronounced impression would probably occur to us, to many of us, again and again, and always without explanation: the acute, absolute sensation that we had done once before what we were just about to do now, that we so to speak lived a particular moment or situation previously -- but in what sense could it be called "previously," since only the present, not the past, was evidently involved? We would have the overwhelming impression that we were reliving the present, perhaps in precisely the same way, hearing the same words, saying the same words. . . I submit that these impressions are valid and significant, and I will even say this: Such an impression is a clue that at some past time point a variable was changed -- reprogrammed, as it were -- and that, because of this, an alternate world branched off, became actualized instead of the prior one, and that in fact, in literal fact, we are once more living this particular segment of linear time. A breaching, a tinkering, a change had been made, but not in our present -- had been made in our past. Evidently such an alteration would have a peculiar effect on those persons involved; they would, so to speak, be moved back one square or several squares on the board game that constitutes our reality. Conceivably this could happen any number of times, affecting any number of people, as alternative variables were reprogrammed. We would have to go live out each reprogramming along the subsequent linear time axis, but to the Programmer, whom we call God -- to him the results of the reprogramming would be apparent at once. We are within time and he is not. Thus, too, this might account for the sensation people get of having lived past lives. They may well have, but not in the past; previous lives, rather, in the present. In perhaps an unending repeated and repeated present, like a great clock dial in which grand clock hands sweep out the same circumference forever, with all of us carried along unknowingly, yet dimly suspecting.

Do not miss the rest of it.
Science fiction sometimes can come closer to science than to fiction.