As promised, here is another story from our reader Renata.
This you gotta hear. ;)
This you gotta hear. ;)
Ok, this is another thing that happened to me, also in Germany, but the year was 2008.
This is the strangest thing that's ever happened to me and I am so glad I have a witness so I know it wasn't my mind playing tricks on me.
I went to Germany for the first time back then to practice my German with my German class. We were a bunch of people from Mexico staying at some hostel in some small town in Thüringen [Weimar].
We had been there for 3 weeks already and this is the kind of place (well, I guess most hostels are like that) where you can cook your stuff in the kitchen and then you're supposed to wash the dishes and all that. I mean, it's nothing like a hotel or something like that, in case you're not familiar with hostels.
The radio was always on in that kitchen and there was always a man talking in German about politics and stuff ALL THE TIME. We, of course, didn't pay attention to that.
That was our very last day in this town, we were staying in a building that had been built on the XVII century, it was very old.
That day, me and a friend were doing the dishes in the kitchen, listening to the same radio station, the German man talking and talking and talking when suddenly something strange happened.
Suddenly we both heard what it seemd to be STATIC, the German man's voice was gone and then we heard the strangest thing ever.
It was a jingle that we had never heard before BUT this is the strange thing about it:
1)the jingle was in SPANISH, our mother tongue
2) the voices sounded to me like voices from long time ago, don't know how to explain, the melody and everything, sounded like something from the 50s
3) we realized this was a jingle from OUR COUNTRY! since the very last word they sang was the name of a city in Mexico, the city of "Monterrey" (we're not from this city, though).
The jingle said something about "your memories' station".
When the jingle was over the static was gone and the German man was back. He didn't mention anything about what we just had heard, like nothing had really happened. Me and my friend stared at each other and we were like DID YOU HEAR THAT?? omg, we didn't know how to explain it.
The weirdest thing is that I don't think we actually cared very much about it after that. We forgot about it, maybe talked it over with some friends and then just forgot about it. (Now I wonder why we forgot about it, I mean, it wasn't something normal AT ALL).
Well, the years passed and last February I was surfing the net when, by complete accident, I found a jingle on youtube. Yeah. IT IS the same one!
This is the link:
I could remember it as soon as I heard it again. It was the same melody, the same old-fashioned voices, the word "recuerdo" (memory) and the name of the city of Monterrey.
I did some research and this was indeed a very popular radio station in this city back in the 50s and 60s but it's no longer on the air, according to some friends I have in Monterrey. It hasn't been on the air for a couple of decades now.
So WHY ON EARTH did we hear this thing in a faraway country like Germany? Why did we hear something from our country, and from the past, when we were just doing the dishes? And nobody else seemed to have heard it.
I have friends in Germany that don't understand what happened either, cause of course, they say there is no reason why such a jingle would be heard in their country. I agree.
This has got to be one of the most endearing stories ever published here. :)
I don't know why, but stories about sounds that appear to be coming from the past always get to me. (Perhaps because I had an inexplicable event featuring singing once.)
Based on this and the previous story, I could speculate that Renata has the uncanny ability to conjure up images and sounds removed in time/space.
How?
What am I - Einstein?
But it isn't as implausible as it may appear. After all, there is some evidence that visions perhaps can be shared. (See The Ultimate Tourist and We'll always have Paris... or whatever that was.)
Why not auditory events too?
But why a jingle she had never heard before, so she couldn't have cared for it?
Again, no idea. I have no insight into the inner workings of the cosmic jukebox. :)
Just thinking aloud here.
Maybe there had been some other person in that building, perhaps someone from Monterrey or someone who loved that jingle, who kept remembering that tune. And we all know that old walls - apparently - can "remember" things... :)
Or... I have no idea.
And that is, I suspect, what we love the most about such events, don't we?
The fact that we don't know. Faced with the mystery of the universe, we rejoice in our unknowing. Because it gives us hope that we are wrong about our fears, after all, and that perhaps even the wildest of our wildest dreams can come true.
P.S. I love that jingle.
Please, mister speaker, could you tell me what time it is....?
Thank you very much!
Priceless. :)
Oh, and in case you're wondering, it was 12:49.
On which date of which year, that's what I'd like to know!
I don't know why, but stories about sounds that appear to be coming from the past always get to me. (Perhaps because I had an inexplicable event featuring singing once.)
Based on this and the previous story, I could speculate that Renata has the uncanny ability to conjure up images and sounds removed in time/space.
How?
What am I - Einstein?
But it isn't as implausible as it may appear. After all, there is some evidence that visions perhaps can be shared. (See The Ultimate Tourist and We'll always have Paris... or whatever that was.)
Why not auditory events too?
But why a jingle she had never heard before, so she couldn't have cared for it?
Again, no idea. I have no insight into the inner workings of the cosmic jukebox. :)
Just thinking aloud here.
Maybe there had been some other person in that building, perhaps someone from Monterrey or someone who loved that jingle, who kept remembering that tune. And we all know that old walls - apparently - can "remember" things... :)
Or... I have no idea.
And that is, I suspect, what we love the most about such events, don't we?
The fact that we don't know. Faced with the mystery of the universe, we rejoice in our unknowing. Because it gives us hope that we are wrong about our fears, after all, and that perhaps even the wildest of our wildest dreams can come true.
P.S. I love that jingle.
Please, mister speaker, could you tell me what time it is....?
Thank you very much!
Priceless. :)
On which date of which year, that's what I'd like to know!
19 comments:
it IS a weird story, isn't it?! I will never understand what happened!! But thanks for posting it, it's certainly something I like to share!
Not at all, thank YOU.
I am sure many others will enjoy this story.
(BTW; Renata... do you ever sleep?!
Just kidding. :-))
Which town in Thüringen was it??
Haha yes I do sleep a lot :)
and the town was Weimar!
Thank you, Renata. :)
Did you read this, anonymous guest?
Weimar!
One of the loveliest - and historically most important - towns in Germany.
Thx :)
"What am I - Einstein?"
You're Zweistein, hun, everyone knows that. :)
Considering I come from a family of Franken-steins, I'd say this is a huge step up. :-)
(This is the sort of comment that you get when your family and friends get wind that you're running a blog... :))
Really interesting... I love stories like this, they give me another piece of this never ending jigsaw to play around with.
I sometimes speculate wildly, that perhaps we all get the chance to experience a few weird events during our lives, and that we either ignore them, or we become interested in them.
A few breadcrumbs on the trail, some tiny little oddities to nag at us... Lol.
"I sometimes speculate wildly, that perhaps we all get the chance to experience a few weird events during our lives, and that we either ignore them, or we become interested in them. "
You are very right. I can see you live up to your nick. :-)
I think so, too.
And one thing I've noticed in the years I've been conducting my own informal research of such events is that an astonishing amount of people have experienced weirdness of this sort - even people you'd (superficially) never think they would experience something like that.
My nickname... Lol, curse and a blessing, but hey, I like being an individual.
Yeah, one of my other directors at work suffered congestive heart failure over a few years back over a weekend. I remember coming back to work after the weekend, and was shocked to find out, that he had only just pulled through late on the Sunday night, and was seriously ill.
Last year when we were talking he admitted to me - in private - that he had an out of body experience during the episode, and gave me a few more details. He's not the sort of guy to talk about this stuff, but it just shows, that everybody has em, just some keep quiet.
I have noticed that we have an amazing ability to suppress, or repress stuff, so that it doesn't come into our awareness, until we are able to deal with it.
When I had my ghost/hypnopompic experience in 2007, I'll admit that I burst into tears shortly after the incident. Because it felt like a very frightening door had been opened on my cosy little world, and all I wanted to do was close it again.
Very interesting! Thanks.
Care to describe your own experience more in detail?
I am sure many would be interested in reading it.
(But I totally understand if you'd rather not.)
No problem, I don’t mind sharing my experience, here’s the story, which I've already documented…
On the evening of Tuesday 11th September 2007, whilst living in a brand new 3rd floor flat, at Stockton-upon-Tees in the UK, I awoke in the dark in the middle of the night, to see a full colour, moving image of an unknown 45-55 y/o black male, from just below the shoulders upwards.
He wore a green hat with a 3-4 inch brim which was a bit misshapen pulled down on his head, and from the back, the same green coloured material which went right up to his neck. It looked shiny or wet where light reflected from it’s folds. I thought it looked a bit like leather or rubberised material.
The image was in absolutely exquisite detail and incredible brilliant colour, as if the sun was shining on him (rather like an actor picked out by a spotlight on a darkened stage). More real than real, I could see every hair on the back of his head, his rough shaven appearance, and the strong shadows which fell across his head and face from the hat.
The apparition stood in front of the top set of south facing crane hoist doors, and if the hoist doors had been open, the angle of the strong shadows cast from his hat across his face would have implied that it was around 11:00am on a bright sunny morning.
The image lasted for more than a few seconds, and started with the back of the males head towards me, then slowly he turned his head round towards me, until he was staring right at me.
I kept looking away from him, in the hope he would just disappear! Moving my eyes left, away from the spot where the full colour 'moving' image had formed, I clearly retained a faded after-image on my retina, which was the same shape as the original image I had seen (similar to the after-image you see when you look away from a bright TV screen in a darkened room). What is strange, is that I was also aware of some type of 'fixed' area in my peripheral vision, this was in the position of the original full colour image, and did not move about, when I moved my eyes left.
When I moved my focus back to the 'fixed' area, effectively overlapping it with the faded image, the original image jumped back into brilliant full colour. I was able to move my eyes left and right several times, to verify this effect, before the image finally faded away.
I initially dismissed the idea of it being an apparition/ghost, because the building was brand new and we were high up on the 3rd floor, and at the time I was also a complete sceptic on the subject of ghosts. However my partner did some research and discovered, that our building had been designed and positioned to recreate the exact appearance of a much older listed building originally built on the site around 1770-80, a tannery, on the corner of Norton Green. I was able to find an original photograph of the tannery at the local library, complete with crane hoist doors on each level, which have been recreated in the new building.
We did turn up some old photos of tanners, one of which included a guy with some sort of leather protection fastened around his upper chest, over his shoulders and up to his neck. Presumably for protecting these areas from something, perhaps carrying wet hides over their shoulder, who knows? However we believe the green shiny material was probably leather.
We were also able to find a record of the baptism of an “…adult Negro…” in the local Church at Norton on the 24 Feb 1769, which confirmed that there were black males living and presumably working in the area before the tannery was established. Ironically this particular guy had chosen the name of 'John Green'?
I remain open minded as to whether my experience was just a hypnopompic hallucination, or whether it was an apparition. However, despite the 'hallucination' label these experiences have been given, I've seen no particularly satisfying explanation as to why the fully formed, full colour, type hypnopompic experience, is also overwhelmingly of people or animals, and very rarely of inanimate everyday objects.
My pet theory is that I was picking-up, what somebody else was seeing in the past. That I was in effect, seeing through the viewer/broadcasters eyes. In this case the apparition was obscured from the shoulders down, and I can imagine that this area of the building would have been filled with bales of leather, or raw hides, that would have obscured the lower part of his body from the viewer.
So there you have it...
Thank you very much.
I consider this a precious addition to the stories compiled here.
Enjoy the weirdness of this wondrous world. ;)
"My pet theory is that I was picking-up, what somebody else was seeing in the past. That I was in effect, seeing through the viewer/broadcasters eyes."
That would be my theory, too.
It certainly is the one that makes the most sense.
(For those who haven't read them, there are two stories here - at least two - that seem to indicate some sort of tapping into another person's memory: the Versailles incident and Ivan Sanderson's experience. Jung's experience at Ravenna also comes to mind, if for different reasons.)
As for "hallucinations"... I think I wrote about this - very cursorily - in the story "No mere flesh and blood", about Frank Smythe's experiences.
Some can be explained as delirium tremens or some other sort of psychosomatic response - but in all to many cases the question imposes itself: are "hallucinations" perhaps visions of things that really ARE there all the time but are blocked by our conscious mind?
Fascinating stuff.
Thank you again!
Oh, and one more thing: thank you very much for providing the precise date and location. :)
No problem... :-)
The crux point of the experience for me, was when I moved my eyes left - away from the apparition - I was puzzled by the after-image on my retina whilst at the same time, there was a destinct lack of colour/brightness in the periphery of my vision.
How can something be a hallucination, but leave an after-image on your retina? ...and how can colour/brightness of the image appear and disappear depending on how you are aligned?
Just recently I stumbled upon http://www.ghuth.com/ who has an interesting new theory about our vision, which seems like it might have the potential to provide an explanation
"How can something be a hallucination, but leave an after-image on your retina?"
Very good question.
My guess would be, it can't.
The same goes for visibility dependent on alignment.
And an EXTRA thanks for the link to that website. Very interesting!
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