When Time Goes Crazy

We depend on time to be consistent, but its not always so dependable.

IN THE MOVIE Star Trek: Generations, Captains Kirk and Picard join forces to fight Dr. Soran, a madman who viewed time as his enemy. Picard, however, came to see time as a companion that accompanies us on our journeys through life.

Throughout the many experiences of our lives, we regard time in both ways: as a kind of enemy when we’re late for something or eager for something to happen; but on an everyday basis as something we can rely on. One thing follows another, cause and effect, twenty-four hours in a day.

Every once in awhile, however, time seems to go haywire, gets fouled up in a glitch, moves impossibly fast or impossibly slow. Is it time itself that gets screwed up? Or is it just our perception of it? Consider these reports from people who suspect that the flow of time (or the flow of their lives through it) went mysteriously wrong.

TIME MOVED TOO SLOWLY

Don and his wife had their encounter with missing time in the Nevada desert in 1997. They were driving their small, three-cylinder Geo Metro to Laughlin, Nevada from San Diego, California. “We took the back way to Laughlin on 8 East through the desert to 95 North,” says Don. “Around dusk, our windshield had a rather large collection of bugs, so we pulled into the only gas station at Vidal Junction to clean the glass.”

As they pulled into the mini mart station, Don noticed a seedy looking character at the pumps staring at him and his wife. He had greasy hair, a disco shirt and a leather vest, and was driving a beat up, early ’70s Toronado. Don quickly cleaned his windows and got back in his car. The greasy dude was still staring at them.

Darkness was quickly approaching as Don pulled back onto 95N, hoping the creepy stranger would not follow them. But he did. “Immediately, I had a bad feeling,” says Don, “knowing that in the lonely desert there are bandits who prey on tourists, nudging their car, then robbing them after they pull over for a fender bender.”

Don knew his Geo Metro was no match for the stranger’s aging muscle car, but tried to outrun him anyway. Even managing to reach 80 mph, the stranger stayed on his tail. Don and his wife began to get frightened. “I told my wife to get the gun out of our backpack we travel with for protection.”

But then something weird happened. “A split second later, with no turn offs, we were suddenly alone on the highway,” Don remembers. “No greasy dude, no one but oncoming traffic miles ahead. A few minutes later we were at 95N and Hwy 40 in Needles. But it was 7:00 p.m. when we left Vidal Junction, and Interstate 40 is fifty-five miles north of there. Now it was only 7:20 p.m. Somehow we’d made the entire fifty-five miles in twenty minutes! No Geo Metro can fly like that. We would have had to go at least 130 mph or more on a two-lane that twists through some mountains. The other strange thing was we had a strange floating feeling just as the other car disappeared.”

TIME MOVED TOO QUICKLY

Two years later, in August 1999, Kim and her husband also had a weird experience near Laughlin, Nevada. Instead of their trip taking a far shorter time than it should have, it took inexplicably longer. “I was following my husband home from Las Vegas to Kingman, near Laughlin,” Kim says. “He was on his Harley and I was following in my car. We had made this trip several times before and knew exactly how long it took to reach home from the Hoover Dam – one-and-a-half hours.”

The weirdness began with their perception of the weather. “My husband swears it was raining in the distance and lightning was so close he could almost feel the electricity,” Kim says. “I swear it was dry as a bone. Also, I had a hard time keeping up as he was going very fast around the corners. I could see him in the distance, and suddenly there were a lot of cars ahead of me and behind him. I thought that was odd since there was a mountain up one side and a sheer cliff down the other. There was nowhere for those cars to have come from. Oddly enough, as soon as I thought that was weird for them to be there, they were gone.

“It seemed as though the trip was taking forever and I was getting really tired. When we arrived home, I thought it was really late and so did my husband. We looked at the clock and the one-and-a-half hour trip had taken over four hours! We are afraid of what happened to us during that missing time.”

MISSING TIME AND A BROKEN CLUTCH

John and his wife also seem to have experienced a serious amount of missing time, and their car was also physically affected. “It was about 10 a.m. when my wife and I departed home in our jeep heading toward the local mall,” reports John. “This was a trip we had undertaken a hundred times before. The entire event would normally take about three hours and we would be back home around 1 p.m. The drive to the mall takes about ten minutes.”

John parked in their usual area, and he and his wife went into the mall to shop. “As we departed the mall, we both looked at each other and we both felt that something was just not right,” John says. “First, for some unknown reason, I had parked the vehicle in an unfamiliar area of the mall, a parking area that I had never used before. Then when we entered the vehicle, it would not start. Finally, when it did start, the clutch would not engage, like it was loose or broken. We noticed the sun was setting! I looked at my watch and noticed it had stopped. I looked at the clock display on my dashboard and it read 5:30 p.m.!

“My wife and I still can’t figure out how we lost almost five hours of our lives. We did nothing unusual or out of routine. And I don’t understand how a brand new vehicle gets a broken clutch while sitting in a parking lot.”

OUT OF TIME AND PLACE

Such instance of missing time can be quite confusing and stressful, especially when it occurs among other people who are unaffected. Consider the case of a young medical student we’ll call Jim. One weekend he was at the beach with several of his friends from medical school. They had arrived together at the hotel where they would stay, and Jim didn’t really pay attention to the hotel’s name or its location. They left their luggage and went off for some beers, walking.

Jim recalls that he was walking behind the others, talking to one of his friends at around 2 p.m. Quite suddenly he found himself at the beach, and it was already very dark. His first reaction was confusion, as he knew he was lost, followed by anger, sure that his mates were playing a joke on him. He tried to figure out where he was, walked a little bit, but the beach was deserted.

When he finally made it to the town, he hired a cab. Because he did not know the name of the hotel, it took them two more hours to find it. When Jim went into the room, he was sharing with his friends, he was very upset and said clearly that their joke was not funny. As he demanded them to reimburse him his cab fare, he noticed the puzzled expressions on everyone’s faces, as if they were seeing a ghost. One of them said, “Where the hell have you been? We have been to the police, to every hospital, and we have looked for you for ages!” They were very upset.

Apparently, what for Jim had been a blink of an eye, for the others was actually five hours. To this day, none of them can explain how Jim “disappeared” while talking to his friends and appeared at a different place… and where he actually was during those five hours.

PORTAL TO A FUTURE SOCIETY

As if such experiences aren’t weird enough, sometimes they get even weirder. On these occasions, people seem to slip not only through time, but also into other dimensions of reality. One night Ben was walking with a friend on a dirt trail between the closely connected towns of Hurley, Wisconsin and Ironwood, Michigan.

“We were half way to his house,” Ben recalls, “when suddenly I was standing outside a huge skyscraper building in what I, for some reason, believe to be Detroit. I entered the building and there was a lady with platinum blonde hair. Her clothes didn’t look odd or anything. She told me that I was on time for my appointment, so I followed her to an elevator. We stepped inside and she pushed the button for the fifty-third floor.

“When we got out of the elevator, I followed her to an office. The walls and the floor were done in a decorative business-like way. We got to the door and she told me to go in and sit down. When I went into the office, it looked huge. I don’t think I have ever seen a view so panoramic and beautiful as that one. A man told me to sit. He then started to tell me that they – they meaning the company or something – were happy that I had joined and I would be a perfect fit.

“All of a sudden, I was in a good-sized hallway with about fifty other people, standing in a military-type line. We all had the same blue and black uniforms on and were marching toward a big open garage-style door.”

Suddenly it all ended, and Ben was back in Ironwood, kneeling on the ground by some bushes. “My friend asked me what was wrong,” Ben says. “I asked how long I had been kneeling and he said just for a couple of seconds.”

GARDEN OF THE FIFTH DIMENSION

James also believes he glanced into an alternate reality. James loved to garden, and when he moved into a three-bedroom house complete with a 150-ft. garden, he hardly made time for anything else. “After planting some new borders,” he says, “I proceeded to my den for a quick cup of tea and a snack. The den itself was very small and had one window and a small gap near the roof for spying out of.

“When I proceeded to take a peek out of this hole, I was amazed at what I saw: There was a small pond and beautiful palm trees surrounding it. The dull light green lawn of my garden was replaced with lush, dark green grass, and it was tremendously sunny! The shed was already on the property when I bought it, but the previous owner – a middle-aged man who never went in there – said he had no need for it, so he left it. It was about 10-20 years old and in great condition.

“Could it be that this shed is some sort of portal, depicting another place on this earth? The garden itself had not changed when I took a look out the normal window. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to take a look at that paradise-like place even when I look out the gap… although I’d be eager to see if people on the other side can see me!”

The Tunguska Mystery

“I was sitting on the porch of the house at the trading station, looking north. Suddenly, in the north… the sky was split in two, and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire. I felt a great heat, as if my shirt had caught fire. At that moment, there was a bang in the sky, and a mighty crash. I was thrown twenty feet from the porch. The earth trembled.”

Dialogue from some asteroid impact movie? An excerpt from a science fiction novel? A witness to the test of a nuclear explosion? The witness is real, but the event was not the test of an atomic or nuclear device. And it certainly wasn’t fiction.

This incredible event, related by this Russian witness, took place on the morning of June 30, 1908 in a remote area of Siberia called Tunguska. And exactly what happened there is still unknown. There are several theories as to what caused the great explosion in the sparsely populated forest at 62 degrees north latitude, but there is no definitive proof for any of them. And now, 100 years later, the debate about the Tunguska event continues.

DEVASTATING EFFECTS

Whatever happened, the resulting devastation was enormous. A fireball as bright as the sun was seen streaking across the sky. Observers 300 miles away heard deafening bangs. Trees were flattened in a radial pattern over an area of 850 square miles. Seismic vibrations were recorded by instruments as far away as 600 miles. Fires burned for weeks. Forty miles from ground zero, people were thrown to the ground and knocked unconscious. One man was hurled into a tree and killed. Scientists examining the area calculated that the explosion was equivalent to 40 megatons of TNT – 1,000 times the force of the atomic bomb released on Hiroshima in 1945. Yet there was no crater or any other clear evidence for what exploded.

Other, more enigmatic effects were recorded:

• disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field
• a local geomagnetic storm
• a reversal of soil magnetization
• an electromagnetic pulse, similar to what would be created by a nuclear explosion
• aurora displays before and after the event
• unusually bright nights seen before and after the event
• genetic mutations in plants and animals
• accelerated growth of plants afterward
• radiation-like burns and deaths of exposed people.

SO WHAT HAPPENED?

The theories put forth to account for the Tunguska event range from the scientifically plausible to the ridiculous to the intriguing. They included:

• A fragmentary asteroid or meteorite that exploded in the atmosphere.
• The nucleus of a comet that likewise exploded in the atmosphere.
• An unusual tectonic event.
• Methane gas explosion.
• A tiny black hole that entered the Earth’s atmosphere from outer space and imploded.
• A chunk of antimatter that reacted with the matter of our planet.
• A crashed UFO, the propulsion drive of which exploded.
• A deliberate attack by extraterrestrials.
• An errant, 2,000-year-old Japanese nuclear spacecraft returning home… but missing the runway
• The result of a test of Nikola Tesla’s wireless power transmitter.

Again, there’s no definitive proof for any of these ideas, but let’s consider each.

Asteroid – This and the comet theory are favored by scientists, of course – mainly because they can’t conceive of any other explanation. I’d have to agree that it’s the most likely. But because there is no crater and little debris, there’s only circumstantial evidence. Numerous expeditions to the area have found little or no evidence for an asteroid.

Before Tunguska, scientists rarely considered that an asteroid would explode in the atmosphere before striking the ground. Yet, because there is no crater, they reason, that must be what happened. So where are all the fragments of the asteroid that they estimate must have weighed some 100,000 tons? Vaporized, they say – pulverized into dust and tiny gravel. The only fragments found thus far have been tiny glass nodules embedded in the fallen trees, which are consistent in makeup with stony asteroid fragments that have been super-heated.

Comet – This is another prevailing theory today – that it was a 100,000-ton fragment of Encke’s Comet. Since there is little debris, the explosion might be consistent with a comet, which generally is a loose mixture of stone and ice. Upon explosion, very little debris would remain as evidence. Ironically, it is the very lack of evidence that boosts the credibility of the comet theory.

An unusual tectonic event – Andrei Yu. Ol’khovatov, a Russian scientist, has recently come up with the interesting, plausible theory that Tunguska was “a geophysical event, associated with tectonic processes” – a powerful earthquake, the enormous pressures of which also resulted in the recorded atmospheric effects.

Methane gas explosion – This theory is being championed by Wolfgang Kundt, a physicist at Bonn University in Germany. He suggests that as much as 10 million tons of methane gas from deep within the planet’s crust could have erupted in a terrific explosion. Kundt believes there is evidence of a similar eruption on the Blake Ridge on the seabed off Norway.

Black hole – This idea isn’t taken very seriously by mainstream scientists, simply because it’s not known whether such small black holes even exist. And if they did, what the result would be upon one entering our atmosphere is completely unknown.

Antimatter – This idea is also readily dismissed, since it is unlikely that antimatter would be able to transverse space and reach our planet without already encountering some matter and annihilating.

Crashed UFO – There’s no evidence whatever of this idea, of course. No fragments of the spacecraft or piece of an alien’s intergalactic map. If it were the explosion of the UFO’s propulsion system – nuclear or whatever – it might have vaporized all traces of the ship, but come on….

Extraterrestrial attack – If they were going to attack, why would they choose an unpopulated region, unless their intelligence was bad? Or unless it was meant as just a warning. And it it was just a warning, where was the follow-up or contact?

2,000-year-old Japanese nuclear spacecraft – Too silly to even consider.

Nikola Tesla’s experiment – Granted, this idea is far more unlikely than an asteroid or comet strike, but I find it quite a bit more interesting. A lot of myth has grown around the mysterious, dark and temperamental figure of Tesla. Although known as the discoverer of the principals of alternating current and other inventions, he is also credited in some quarters with far more notorious inventions, including a death ray. Some say the controversial HAARP array in Alaska is a continuation of Tesla’s experiments that used electricity to create super weapons. The Tunguska event, they say, was the result of a test of such a weapon – a test that didn’t go exactly as planned.

THE TESLA CONNECTION

Oliver Nichelson has a very interesting web site entitled, “Tesla’s Wireless Power Transmitter and the Tunguska Explosion of 1908″ that advocates this theory, with some very compelling information about the background and secret experiments of the Serbian-born American inventor. “Tesla’s writings have many references to the use of his wireless power transmission technology as a directed energy weapon,” says Nichelson. “The Tunguska explosion of 1908 may have been a test firing of Tesla’s energy weapon.”

Nichelson details many of the experiments with electricity conducted by Tesla in many areas of the United States. He relates one such experiment at his Colorado Springs laboratory where he erected a 200-foot pole topped by a large copper sphere that discharged lighting bolts up to 135 feet long. “People along the streets were amazed to see sparks jumping between their feet and the ground,” Nichelson writes. “Flames of electricity would spring from a tap when anyone turned them on for a drink of water. Light bulbs within 100 feet of the experimental tower glowed when they were turned off.”

Nichelson then chronicles the evolution of Tesla’s method of the wireless transmission of electrical energy, and how it led up to the secret test in 1908. Apparently, Tesla had proved that directed electrical energy could be used as a beneficial or destructive force. “Beset by financial problems and spurned by the scientific establishment, Tesla was in a desperate situation by mid-decade… and, according to Tesla’s biographers, he suffered an emotional collapse. In order to make a final effort to have his grand scheme recognized, he may have tried one high-power test of his transmitter to show off its destructive potential. This would have been in 1908.”

In fact, perhaps Tesla was confessing in 1915 when he wrote: “It is perfectly practical to transmit electrical energy without wires and produce destructive effects at a distance. I have already constructed a wireless transmitter which makes this possible. But when unavoidable [it] may be used to destroy property and life. The art is already so far developed that the great destructive effects can be produced at any point on the globe, defined beforehand with great accuracy.”

The Tesla experiment might also account for the enigmatic aspects of the Tunguska event, according to Nichelson: the lack of a crater; the disturbances in the planet’s magnetic field; the odd glow in the sky seen before and after the event; the radiation-like burns; and the electromagnetic pulse.

The test, however, may not have been a complete success, says Nichelson. Tesla may have been aiming for the completely uninhabited region of the north pole. He may have overshot his target.

RESEARCH CONTINUES

In 2008, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the event, Russian scientists gathered in Moscow on June 26-28. Using the latest in computer technology and other methods, they hoped to get a clearer understanding of what really happened that day.

Why is it important to study Tunguska? Because it may have been the most recent occurrence of a major meteor or comet impact on our planet. If it had struck over a major city instead of an isolated forest, hundreds of thousands of people would have been killed. For example, if the explosion had happened to strike the planet just 4 hours and 47 minutes later (because of the Earth’s rotation), it would have wiped out St. Petersburg, which was the Russian capital at that time.

Tunguska serves as a grim reminder that the threat from outer space is always with us.

What You Need To Know About… Psychometry

What is Psychometry?

Psychometry is a psychic ability in which a person can sense or “read” the history of an object by touching it. Such a person can receive impressions from an object by holding it in his/her hands or, perhaps, touching it to the forehead. Such impressions can be perceived as images, sounds, smells, tastes – even emotions.

Psychometry is a form of scrying – a psychic way of “seeing” something that is not ordinarily seeable. Some people can scry using a crystal ball, black glass or even the surface of water. With psychometry, this extraordinary vision is available through touch.

For example, a person who has psychometric abilities – a psychometrist – can hold an antiqueglove and be able to tell something about the history of that glove, about the person who owned it, about the experiences that person had while in the possession of that glove. The psychic may be able to sense what the person was like, what they did and even how they died. Perhaps most important, the psychic can sense how the person felt – the emotions of the person at a particular time. Emotions especially, it seems, are most strongly “recorded” in the object.

The psychic may not be able to do this with all objects at all times and, as with all psychic abilities, accuracy can vary, but the ability is available to the psychic.

A Brief History

“Psychometry” as a term was coined by Joseph R. Buchanan in 1842 (from the Greek words psyche, meaning “soul,” and metron, meaning “measure.”) Buchanan, an American professor of physiology, was one of the first people to experiment with psychometry. Using his students as subjects, he placed various drugs in glass vials, and then asked the students to identify the drugs merely by holding the vials. Their success rate was more than chance, and he published the results in his book, Journal of Man. To explain the phenomenon, Buchanan theorized that all objects have “souls” that retain a memory.

Intrigued and inspired by Buchanan’s work, American professor of geology William F. Denton conducted experiments to see if psychometry would work with his geological specimens. In 1854, he enlisted the help of his sister, Ann Denton Cridge. The professor wrapped his specimens in cloth so Ann could not see even what type they were. She then placed the wrapped package to her forehead and was able to accurately describe the specimens through vivid mental images she was receiving.

From 1919 to 1922, Gustav Pagenstecher, a German doctor and psychical researcher, discovered psychometric abilities in one of his patients, Maria Reyes de Zierold. While holding an object, Maria could place herself in a trance and be able to state facts about the object’s past and present, describing sights, sounds, smells and other feelings about the object’s “experience” in the world. Pagenstecher’s theory was that a psychometrist could tune in to the experiential “vibrations” condensed in the object.

How Does It Work?

Of Buchanan’s “souls” and Pagenstecher’s “vibrations,” the vibration theory is the one getting the most serious attention from researchers. “Psychics say the information is conveyed to them,” writes Rosemary Ellen Guiley in Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience, “through vibrations imbued into the objects by emotions and actions in the past.”

These vibrations are not just some New Age concept, they have a scientific basis as well.

In his book The Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot says that psychometric abilities “suggest that the past is not lost, but still exists in some form accessible to human perception.” With the scientific knowledge that all matter on a subatomic level exists essentially as vibrations, Talbot asserts that consciousness and reality exist in a kind of hologram that contains a record of the past, present and future; psychometrics may be able to tap into that record. All actions, Talbot says, “instead of fading into oblivion, [remain] recorded in the cosmic hologram and can always be accessed once again.”

Yet other psychical researchers think the information about an object’s past is recorded in its aura – the field of energy surrounding every object. According to an article at The Mystica: “The connection between psychometry and auras is based on the theory that the human mind radiates an aura in all directions, and around the entire body which impresses everything within its orbit. All objects, no matter how solid they appear, are porous containing small or even minute holes. These minute crevices in the object’s surface collect minute fragments of the mental aura of the person possessing the object. Since the brain generates the aura then something worn near the head would transmit better vibrations.”

“Psychometry – Psychic Gifts Explained” likens the ability to a tape recorder, since our bodies give off magnetic energy fields. “If an object has been passed on down the family, it will contain information about its previous owners. The psychic can then be thought of as a tape player, playing back the information stored on the object.”

 

Mario Varvoglis, Ph.D. at “PSI Explorer” believes that psychometry is a special form of clairvoyance. “The individual performing the psychometry,” he writes, “may gain psychic impressions directly from the person to whom the object belongs (through telepathy) or may clairvoyantly learn about past or present events in the life of the person. The object may simply serve as a kind of focusing device which keeps the mind from wandering off in irrelevant directions.”

Amazing Examples

Stefan Ossowiecki – This Russian-born psychic is one of the most famous psychometrists. Ossowiecki claimed to be able to see people’s auras and to move objects through psychokinesis. His psychic gifts enabled this chemical engineer to locate lost objects and missing people, and he assisted in several criminal investigations. In 1935, he participated in a test of his psychometric powers – a test devised by a wealthy Hungarian named Dionizy Jonky that involved a sealed package. Jonky stipulated that this test was to be conducted eight years after his death. (Jonky and Ossowiecki did not know each other.) First, 14 photographs of men were placed in front of Ossowiecki, one of which was of Jonky. Ossowiecki picked out the correct photo. Next, Ossowiecki accurately described many details of Jonky’s life and correctly identified the man who held the package for the past eight years. Finally, Ossowiecki was presented with the sealed package Jonky had prepared before his death. Ossowiecki touched the package and concentrated. “Volcanic minerals,” he said. “There is something here that pulls me to other worlds, to another planet.” Oddly, he also sensed sugar. Inside the package was a meteorite encased in a candy wrapper.

In later experiments, Ossowiecki performed remarkable psychometric feats with archeological objects – a kind of psychic archeology. These tests were conducted by Stanislaw Poniatowski, a professor of enthology at the University of Warsaw who could verify the accuracy of what Ossowiecki “saw.” While holding a 10,000-year-old piece of flint, Ossowiecki was able to describe in amazing detail the lives of the prehistoric people who made it. In other tests he provided similar descriptions of people who lived as long ago as 300,000 years. Some of the information he provided was not even known by experts at the time, but confirmed by discoveries years later!

Ossowiecki described his visions as being like a motion picture that he could watch, pause, rewind and fast-forward – like a videotape or DVD!

George McMullen – McMullen, a carpenter and wilderness guide, became aware of his psychic abilities as a young boy when he correctly predicted the motorcycle death of a neighbor. As an adult in 1971, he agreed to a series of psychometric tests conducted by educator J. Norman Emerson. Emerson was an expert in the history of the Iroquois nation. He handed McMullen a non-descript fragment of a clay cylinder. McMullen not only identified it as part of a ceremonial pipe, but also described in detail how it was made and used, going so far as to draw an accurate picture of the complete object, decorations and all.

Over two years, Emerson took McMullen to various Iroquois sites in Canada where McMullen was able to provide highly detailed information about the lives of the Native Americans who lived there. He said he could actually hear them talking – and apparently understood what they were saying. Language, it seems, is not a boundary in this cosmic record. Over the years, he assisted many archeologists around the world with their research, giving correct information about prehistoric Canada, ancient Egypt and the Middle East – details that were confirmed by subsequent research.

Gerard Croiset – In the late 1930s and into the ’40s, Croiset gained a reputation as a psychic detective using his powers of psychometry. Police departments in his native Netherlands and other European countries sought his help in solving some of their most bewildering cases. In one noted instance, he was even asked to help in the search for a missing four-year-old girl from Brooklyn, New York. Without leaving Holland, Croiset was given a photo of the girl, a map of New York City and a piece of her clothing. He correctly described that she was dead, the location of her body and the man who murdered her. His information led police to the girl’s body and to the murderer, who was convicted of the crime.

How You Can Do It

Although some believe that psychometry is controlled by spiritual beings, most researchers suspect that it is a natural ability of the human mind. Michael Talbot agrees, saying that “the holographic idea suggests that the talent is latent in all of us.”

Here’s how you can try it yourself:

1. Choose a location that is quiet and as free of noises and distractions as possible.
2. Sit in a relaxed position with your eyes closed. Rest your hands in your lap with your palms facing up.
3. With your eyes remaining closed, ask someone to place an object in your hands. (The person should not say anything; in fact, it’s best if there are several people in the room and you don’t know who the person is giving you the object.) Preferably, the object should be something the person has had in his/her possession for a long time. (Many researchers believe that objects made of metal are best, theorizing that they have a better “memory.”)
4. Be still… as images and feelings come into your mind, speak them aloud. Don’t try to process the impressions you get. Say whatever you see, hear, feel or otherwise sense as you hold the object.
5. Don’t judge your impressions. These impressions may be strange and meaningless to you, but they might be of significance to the owner of the object. Also, some impressions will be vague and others might be quite detailed. Don’t edit – speak them all.

“The more you try, the better you will become,” says Psychometry – Psychic Gifts Explained. “You should start to see better results as your mind becomes used to ’seeing’ the information. But you can progress; at first you will be pleased to pick up on things correctly, but the next stage is to follow the pictures or feelings. There may a lot more information that you can obtain.”

Don’t worry too much about your rate of accuracy either, especially at first. Keep in mind that even the most renowned psychometrists have an accuracy rate of 80 to 90 percent; that is, they are inaccurate 10 to 20 percent of the time.

“The important thing is to be confident that you will gain accurate psychic impressions when you handle the object,” says Mario Varvoglis at PSI Explorer. “It’s also important not to try to figure out likely histories of the object, not to analyze and interpret your impressions to find if they make sense. It’s better to simply observe all the impressions that come into your mind and describe them without clinging to them and without trying to control them. Often the most unexpected images are likely to be most correct.”

Philip Wrenn a Paranormal Expert

Paranormal expert and Parapsychologist Philip Wrenn

I’ve met Philip Wrenn twice now an it seems he’s making a bigger impact each time, hes an acclaimed paranormal expert and forthcoming parapsychologist. He’s currently representing The Paranormal Research and Study Organisation in the field. The BBC has recently published this article that provides more of an insight into a day with a paranormal researcher.

I started by asking Philip what made him so interested in the paranormal. “I became interested in the paranormal at a young age, my grandmother passed away when I was between 6 to 7 years old. She’d been rather ill before and the hospital had sent her home at her request as there was nothing they could really do for her. She was pretty much bed ridden from then on. After she hadpassed away me and my mother were cleaning out the hall away of some belongings. I remember looking across into the room where she’d been laying just a day before. An I recall seeing her laying there, she was smiling at me, as if she’d been there all along. I believed that perhaps she’d returned to say good bye to me. As I never got to say bye properly.”
After the brief introduction we then packed for a trip to of a former Merseyside shipyard where there had been reports of some interesting paranormal activity. The hour journey gave me some needed to learn more about Philip, I asked Philip how he became involved in this line of work. “Well when I got older my interests grew and a few years ago I began contributing to many Paranormal groups and organisations with analyse and opinions. After I left college I got a call from PRSO offering me a part time position, in time that grew to be there I am now.”

Once we got to our destination we was greeted by the owner of the shipyard who wants to convert it for retail, commercial and residential use. The area is a 140-acre site which at one time was one of the biggest shipyards in the world for 170 years, but the paranormal events centres on an office block built in the 1960s, which is now being used by its owners, Reddington Finance.

“Quite a lot of times, when I’ve been sitting here at the desk, I can sometimes see something black and menacing in the corner of my eye. I‘ve had things fly at me from across the room.”

His daughter, Amy, says she regularly finds unusual marking on the wall, like a type of writing but with strange characters.

She said: “Almost every morning when we come in there’s normally a new marking or character. We‘ve wiped them off but, what ever it is doesn’t seem to like that. Because then we have things thrown at us, or important things go missing like keys or bank statements.”

After setting up some technical equipment Philip began conducting some tests, I asked Philip if he’d ever seen a ghost.
“I’ve seen things that could be considered as ghosts, though, I think that ghosts and haunting can be very personal things.” I asked if he thought we’d find anything today.
“It‘s unlikely however the substance that the markings on the wall are made out of could pose interesting.”

Philip collected a sample which according to his reading on his portable chemical analysis machine where made from wood charcoal. However the surrounding area did not reveal any charcoal.

Some readings were taken in the corridor that Mr Lloyd had mentioned, as I was in the hall I did feel a slight eeriness about it. It was a narrow long hall, barely high enough to stand upright in. Philip gathered some readings with his custom PKE which he stated would be reviewed at the lab.

We spent roughly about two hours conducting readings however apart from the eerie feelings and inexplicable cold chills I did not really experience anything paranormal. That was up until we began to leave the building. We gathered the equipment and began to leave, Philip spoke privately to Mr Lloyd on his request about the situation, as he was doing so I looked across and down the hall we’d been previously standing in. An I saw what could only be described as a mysterious dark shape hover passed. I felt a paralysing chill enter my body, not wanting to over react, I stepped outside and waited for Philip to finish his conversation.

On the way back to I told Philip about the black shaped I saw, he did not seem to be over surprised, however he regretted that I had not told him while we was still at the building. He asked me if I now believed in ghosts, I had to think, I now understood what he meant by it being a very personal experience. The experience had changed my opinion, an its made me more open minded about this type of research. I asked Philip if he believe in ghosts, he said “I can‘t say, to be a good investigator it means I need to keep an open mind, but also not take everything at heart. I have to remain in-between.”
Article By Jeff Dixon

Hail of Stones from Nowhere

They rain down on houses and people with no earthly explanation.

THE CATALOG OF unexplained events includes many strange instances of stones falling from the sky – or somewhere. Showers of stones, often from clear skies and in areas where rockslides from mountains cannot be blamed. Hails of stones pummeling rooftops and people, often causing damage and injury. Investigations of these events usually end with unnerved victims and with officials scratching their heads in puzzlement or, out of desperation, inventing “explanations” that are sometimes as outlandish as the events themselves.

Reports of this particular type of mystery go back centuries and come from all over the world. One of the earliest written accounts was by Robert Kirk in 1690, who attributed the throwing of “great stons” to subterranean inhabitants that he called the “invisible wights.” And an unexplained stone-throwing incident that took place in New Hampshire was recorded in a pamphlet entitled “Lithobolia, or the Stone-throwing Devil,” published in London in 1698.

In some of these bizarre cases, the rain of stones occurs in connection with other paranormal phenomena, such as a haunting or poltergeist activity. In the famous Bell Witch haunting of 1817, which included a host of strange goings-on, neighbors of the beleaguered Bells were pelted with stones thrown by an unseen entity.

The phenomenon is defined by the inability of investigators to identify any assailants or vandals, and usually by the lack of any motive for such an assault. So the questions arise: Where do these phantom stones come from? Who or what is responsible for throwing or dropping them? Are there natural explanations for the phenomenon? Consider these remarkable cases and draw your own conclusions:

• Harrisonville, Ohio, 1901 - The stone attack on this small village began on the Sunday afternoon of October 13 when, as the Buffalo Express reported, “a small boulder came crashing through the window of Zach Dye’s house.” No culprit could be found around the isolated house… and this was just the beginning. The next day, dozens of stones rained down in the heart of the village, breaking windows and striking citizens. Were mischievous kids to blame? The next day, all of the male children of the village were gathered together (how could girls do such a thing?), and stones fell for a third day. None of the villagers could detect where the stones were coming from.

• Sumatra, 1903 - W. G. Grottendieck wrote about how small black stones, hot to the touch, came raining down in his bedroom as 1 a.m. The most bizarre aspect of this case is that the stones seemed to come through the roof without making holes in it, and they fell, he said, in a motion that was slower than would be normal.

• Marcinelle, Belgium, 1913 - For four days in January one house was besieged by an invisible stone thrower with remarkable accuracy. Police officers began to watch the house in an attempt to catch the vandal, but one wrote in his report: “I have seen a stone arriving in the middle of a large window-pane and then came others in spiral round the first point of impact…. I even saw, in another window, a projectile caught in the fragments of the glass of the first hole it made, and subsequently ejected by another passing through the same point.” No stone-thrower was ever seen, although an estimated 300 stones struck the house.

• Ardeche, France, 1921 - Most of these events are short-lived, lasting only a few days at most. But beginning in September, a farmhouse in France was victimized for four months. The stones dropped at all hours of the day, sometimes striking the family’s children and a clergyman who was called in to investigate. In this case, apples were also thrown and, again, with inhuman accuracy: apples came speeding in through small holes in the shudders made by previous apples.

• Sumatra, 1928 - One of the most astonishing cases was experienced and reported by the renowned paranormal investigator Ivan T. Sanderson. While sitting on the veranda of an estate house as a guest one evening, a shiny black pebble dropped onto the veranda out of nowhere. Dozens more followed. Sanderson, who was familiar with the phenomenon, tried an experiment. He ordered the stones gathered up and marked with chalk, paint or whatever else could be used. They then threw the stones back out randomly into the garden and shrubbery. “We must have thrown over a dozen such marked stones,” Sanderson wrote. “Within a minute they were all back! Nobody, with a powerful flashlight or super-eyesight, could have found those little stones in that tangled mess… and thrown them back on to the veranda. Yet, they came back, all duly marked by us!”

• Oakland, California, 1943 - In August of that year, Mrs. Irene Fellows finally called the police after two weeks of stones pelting her house at various times of the day. At first skeptical, the police inquiry became serious when their investigation clearly identified the pockmarks of the falling stones on Mrs. Fellows’ roof and walls, and by the litter of stones on her lawn. Mrs. Fellows and members of her family were frequently hit by the stones, although to no serious injury. The thorough police investigation could offer no explanation for the stones, which seemed to materialize out of nothingness.

• Brooklyn, Wellington, New Zealand, 1963 - Stones and apples are one thing, but what about money? Why would a vandal throw money? On March 24, a guest house was inexplicably battered by a hail of stones and a few coins. Police were called and unsuccessfully searched for the perpetrator of the assault, which lasted for seven hours. Windows were smashed and people were struck, but none injured. The coins included New Zealand pennies and a large copper coin. The mysterious attack occurred again for two more nights, then stopped.

• Skaneateles, New York, 1973 - Most often, a particular house is the target for this phenomenon, but in this highly unusual case, two fisherman became the victims of the falling stones – a paranormal storm that followed wherever they went! The rain of pebbles began as they were finishing their fishing expedition and followed them as they made their way to their car. The shower ceased for a while, then resumed when they stopped briefly on their way home. Deciding they needed a drink, they went to a bar, and when they came out some time later, the rain of pebbles began again. As they were about to go their separate ways in their hometown of Liverpool (about 25 miles northeast of Skaneateles), the little stones dropped on them one last time.

• Arizona, 1983 - The attack on the Berkbigler family began in September, just as they moved into their new home. Large rocks crashed down on the house every night, usually between the hours of 5:30 and 7:00 p.m. The local sheriff’s department could determine no assailant, even with helicopter surveillance. The authorities became reluctant to visit the Berkbigler home when they too were struck by the falling rocks. This went on for weeks, culminating on December 4 while two newspaper reporters were interviewing the family. Rocks slammed into the side door of the house for two hours. What’s most mysterious here is that to strike this door, the rocks had to pass through the garage where a van was parked, through a narrow two-foot space.

This is just a small sampling of the hundreds of such cases that have taken place over the last century. There is no easy explanation for these rains of rocks and stones. Something supernatural is most definitely taking place, and most researchers theorize that it is a form of poltergeist phenomena – a physical manifestation caused most likely by the minds (or powerful electromagnetic brain activity) of the victims themselves. But this meager explanation poses more questions than it answers, especially in the cases in which the very physical stones seem to materialize out of thin air.

5 Monsters You Never Heard Of

From jungle walruses to gigantic worms, these nightmarish creatures are lurking.

BIGFOOT, NESSIE, MOTHMAN, even the dinosaur-like mokele-mbembe have become as familiar to us as wooly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. The difference is that the first group might still be hanging around out there somewhere.

emela-ntoouka

There are many other crypto-creatures whose names might not be so familiar to you, however. And as we go through our list, you’ll notice that most of them share a trait in common: they have been reported by native tribes in remote, mostly unexplored parts of the world. This fact raises these possibilities as to the reality of their existence:

• They are merely folklore of the tribespeople.
• They are modern-day creatures known to science, but as yet unidentified.
• They are species as yet unknown to science.
• They are species known to science but thought to be extinct, such as creatures from the dinosaur era.

It’s that last possibility that whets our appetite, of course, because it certainly is feasible that a prehistoric animal could have survived in these dense, tropical areas, protected from human civilization.

The only way to find out which of these possibilities is true for any of these creatures is to mount expeditions to these isolated pockets of jungle and swamp and document evidence. Such expeditions have taken place, in some cases, but came up empty-handed. (Naturally, if they were successful, these creatures wouldn’t be listed in 5 Monsters You Never Heard Of – they’d be big news.)

BURU

If it existed at all, this swamp-dwelling monster may have only recently died out. Local tribes of the Apa Tani Valley and the Jiro Valley in northern Assam, India, claimed to have seen this large, crocodile-like monster many times over the years. They described it as measuring between 11 and 13 feet long with a long snout, four limbs, and 5-foot-long tail. Unlike a crocodile, however, the buru did not have scales, but rather was smooth with blue and white coloration. Natives testified that it would occasionally lift its head out of the water and let out a bellow that could be heard over great distances.

After many run-ins with the creature, the natives deliberately set out to destroy the creature by draining its swamp habitat. The last one may have died sometime in the early 1940s, although some natives believe it only retreated underground. An expedition sponsored by London’s Daily Mail in 1948 proved fruitless, although it came away convinced that the natives were quite sincere in their belief in its existence.

Cryptozoologist Dr. Karl Shukar, after examining all the available evidence, surmised that the buru might have been a species of giant lungfish.

DINGONEK

A walrus-like creature in the heart of Africa? Such is the description of the dingonek by John Alfred Jordan, an explorer who actually shot at this unidentified monster in the River Maggori in Kenya in 1907. Jordan claimed this scale-covered creature was a big as 18 feet long and had reptilian claws, a spotted back, long tail, and a big head out of which grew large, curved, walrus-like tusks.

Natives of the area further described it as having a scorpion-like tail and reported that it would kill any hippos, crocodiles, or human fisherman that dared encroach on its territory.

This sounds like a fantasy creature, but consider this: At the Brackfontein Ridge in South Africa is a cave painting of an unknown creature that fits the description of the dingonek, right down to its walrus-like tusks.

EMELA-NTOUKA

Emela-ntouka literally means “elephant killer,” aptly named by natives of the Republic of Congo who have seen this swamp-dwelling monster attack and disembowel elephants that cross its path. The instrument of this disembowelment is a large, ivory or bone horn on the animal’s head, leading to speculation that the emela-ntoouka might be a surviving relative of the triceratops or styracosaurus.

This is a nasty, vicious creature, according to the natives, who further described it as having a red-brown color, massive legs, and the ability to hide totally submerged beneath the water. Interestingly, its attack on elephants seems only to be defensive or territorial, since the monsters don’t eat the elephants. They seem to be plant-eaters.

KONGAMATO

Pterodactyl-like flying monsters are said to have been sighted in modern-day Southwestern United States. The kongamato is the African version of this dinosaur-era holdover, reportedly seen in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Although not as large as pterodactyls known from fossils – 4- to 7-foot wingspans compared to as large as 33-foot wingspans – the kongamato resembles the prehistoric creature in virtually every other respect: a long, tapered jaw filled with sharp teeth, bat-like membranous wings, and an overall lizard-like appearance.

Some researchers think the kongamato could in fact be a large species of bat. However, in 1923, explorer Frank Melland heard of this creature while traveling through Zambia. Intrigued, he showed illustrations of a pterodactyl to the locals, and “every native present immediately and unhesitatingly picked out and identified it as a kongamato.”

MINHOCÃO

Let us leave the African continent now and travel to South America, where there have been reports not of a dinosaur-like creature but (perhaps more disturbingly) of a giant worm. Witnesses in Uruguay and southern Brazil describe the monster as looking like a gigantic armor-plated slug. Imagine a black slug as big as 14 feet long with a snout like a pig’s and two tentacles poking out of its head. Some reports have it as long as 75 feet! Normally living underground, the minhocão occasionally surfaces, leaving deep trenched in its wake.

Most scientists think its length has been exaggerated and suggest that the minhocão could either be: an unknown species of horned viper; a glyptodont, a giant relative of the armadillo, thought to be extinct; or an outsized caecilian, a subterranean worm-like amphibian.

Those are good guesses. But we know what the minhocão really is. Like the other creatures profiled in this article, they are the living, breathing monsters that hide in the damp, dark shadowy corners of our planet.

Phantom Hitchhikers

Unnerving tales of hitchhikers who vanish into thin air.

ONE OF THE most persistent and entertaining types of ghost stories is that of the phantom or vanishing hitchhiker. It’s also one of the most chilling because, if true,it brings ghosts in very close contact with mortals. More disconcerting still, the stories depict the specters as looking, acting, and sounding like living people – even physically interacting with the unsuspecting drivers who pick them up.

The basic story usually goes something like this: a weary driver traveling at night picks up a strange hitchhiker, drops him or her off at some destination, then somehow later finds out that the hitchhiker had in fact died months or years earlier – often on that very same date. Like many “true” ghost stories, tales of phantom hitchhikers are difficult to verify, and are most often relegated to the category of urban legend or folklore. But there are many such stories, and it’s up to you whether or not you believe any of them. Here are a few:

The Dancing Ghost

This story has many of the classic elements. It takes place in Tompkinsville, Kentucky.Two young men are on their way to a dance when they spot a girl their age walking along the road in a party dress. They stop and ask if she’d like to attend the dance with them. She accepts and spends the evening dancing with them. When the dance is finished, the young men offer to take her home and she insists they drop her off at a certain spot. They agree, and since it is raining, one of the boys gives her his coat, saying he will pick it up from her later. As she requests, they drop her off at a house on Meshack Road. A few days later, the boy returns to the house to retrieve his coat… but is told by the woman at the house that the girl he describes sounds like her daughter, who died in an accident on that road. When the boy visits her grave at the cemetery, his coat is laying beside her tombstone.

The Girl on the Side of the Road

“The Vanishing Hitchhiker” relates the story of one Dr. Eckersall who, while driving home from a country club dance, picks up a lovely young girl dressed in a sheer evening gown. She climbs into the back seat of the car, because his front passenger seat is crowded with golf clubs, and gives him an address to take her to. As he arrives at the address, he turns to speak to her – and she is gone. The curious doctor rings the doorbell of the address given to him by the mysterious girl. A gray-haired man answers the door and reveals that the girl was his daughter who died in a car accident nearly two years ago. A very similar story is known as The Greensboro Hitchhiker.

The Basketball Player

It’s a winter evening in Oklahoma in 1965. Mae Doria, driving to her sister’s house from Tulsa to Pryor, sees a boy of about 11 or 12 hitchhiking on the side of the road. She stops for him, he gets into the front seat along side of her, and they make idle chatter as they make their way down Highway 20. In their conversation, the boy says that he’s a basketball player for a local school, and Mae reckons that indeed he has the height and build of an athlete. She also notices that he is not wearing a jacket of any kind, despite the fact that it’s winter. And the boy seemed to have no particular destination in mind. He points to a culvert on the side of the road and asks to be let out there. Mae is puzzled because there are no houses or lights anywhere in sight. Before she can even pull over, however, the youth simply vanishes from the car. Mae immediately stops the car, gets out, and looks around, but there is no sign of the boy. Mae later learns in a chance conversation with a utility worker that the same phantom hitchhiker was first picked up at the same spot in 1936 – 29 years earlier!

Resurrection Mary

The story of Resurrection Mary is considered one of “the most famous ghosts in Chicagoland.”The story begins on another winter night in 1934 when a young girl was killed in an auto accident while on her way home from the O. Henry Ballroom on Archer Avenue in Justice, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. Five years later, in 1939, a cab driver picks up a young girl in a white gown on Archer Avenue. She sits in the front seat and instructs him to drive north on Archer. After driving a short distance, she suddenly tells him to stop… and simply vanishes from the cab. The cab is stopped in front of Resurrection Cemetery, where the girl is buried. According to a 1977 account, a woman may have seen Mary locked inside the iron fence of the cemetery. Reportedly, the metal bars bore the imprints of her hands. According to the Northwest Indiana Society of Ghost Research, the girl’s name was actually Elizabeth Wilson, and the cemetery she’s buried in is actually called Ross Cemetery.

The Flapper Ghost

The ghost of an attractive young Jewish girl dressed in the fashion of the Roaring ’20s (hence the “Flapper Ghost”) is said to hitch rides on Des Plaines Avenue in Chicago. According to the story, during the 1930s, she would appear at the Melody Mill Ballroom, looking quite alive and human and dancing with the young men. She would ask for a ride home, then ask to be dropped off at the Jewish Waldheim Cemetery, saying she lived in the caretaker’s house. The girl would then dash into the cemetery and vanish among the tombstones. One of the last reported sightings of this ghost was in 1979 when she was spotted by the police walking from the Ballroom toward the cemetery, where she again disappeared.

The Smoking Ghost

On a night in February, 1951, a British officer stops for a fellow soldier hitchhiking on the road. The stranger is dressed in a Royal Air Force uniform, and after he gets into the car with the officer, asks if he can bum a cigarette. The officer gives him one of his Camels and a lighter with which to light it. With his peripheral vision, the officer sees the flash of the lighter, but then turning his head is astonished to see that his passenger has vanished into thin air. Only the cigarette lighter remains on the seat.

Hitchhike Annie

During the 1940s, a young girl is a white dress is said to be seen hitchhiking on Calvary Drive in St. Louis. The pretty girl with pale complexion and long dark hair would tell the drivers who picked her up that her car broke down or was otherwise stranded. Just as they pass Bellefontaine Cemetery, the girl, who has become known as Annie, would vanish from the car.

Sometimes a Bus Will Do

If you can’t hitchhike, why not take the bus? This seems to be the attitude of a ghost in the Evergreen Park community of Chicago. A beautiful young girl has on several occasions been picked up by drivers. She asks to be taken to a section of Evergreen Park. As they approach Evergreen Cemetery, she simply vanishes from the car. On many other occasions, however, she has been seen waiting at a bus stop across from the cemetery. On one occasion she actually got on the bus and, not surprisingly, did not pay the fare. When the bus driver approached her for the money, she disappeared before his eyes.

The Grandmother

C.B. Colby tells the the story of the “Hitchhiker to Montgomery” in which two businessmen on their way to Montgomery, Alabama, stop for a little old lady in a lavender dress walking on the side of the road in the middle of the night. She tells them she is going to see her daughter and granddaughter, and they offer to drive her to the next town. On the way, she proudly tells them all about her children and grandchildren, their names, where they live, and so on. After a while, the men become engrossed in their own business conversation, and when they reach their destination, the old woman has vanished from the back seat. Fearing the worst, the men retrace their route, but do not find the woman anywhere. Finally, recalling the daughter’s name, they go to her house in Montgomery to report what might have been a horrible accident. The men identify her from photos in the woman’s house. But as it happens, the old woman was buried just three years ago that day.

The Ghost of Highway 36

Sometimes, it seems, these phantom hitchhikers don’t always ask for rides – they just take them. In the mid-1980s, a woman named Roxie was driving along Highway 36 near Edmonton, Alberta when she was astonished to see a spirit suddenly sitting in the passenger seat next to her. “I realized he wasn’t flesh and blood, but, needless to say, I was scared. He appeared in shades of black, gray and white, as if a black and white movie was being projected into my car.” His attire, she said, from from the previous decade and she was able to describe him clearly: black turtleneck, black pants, leather boots, blond chin-length hair. He turned, smiled at her with a small wave of his hand… and disappeared.

Amazing Predictions

From “non-psychic” people, both famous and ordinary

Nostradamus… Edgar Cayce… Mother Shipton… Jeanne Dixon… we’ve heard time and again of their remarkable prophecies and predictions. Yet prophecies aren’t restricted to the prophets and psychics. Astonishing and eerily accurate predictions have also come from unexpected sources – famous and ordinary people alike.

As evidenced by these fascinating examples, in the right time and place, under the correct circumstances, even those who previously have demonstrated no psychic ability are somehow able to tap into the mysterious dimension of time to see the future.

The Farmhand Prophet

One unlikely seer was a young man by the name of Robert Nixon, who worked as a plowboy in the county of Cheshire, England in the late 15th century. Because he rarely spoke, and usually babbled incomprehensibly when he did, Nixon was thought to be mentally retarded. When he seemed to predict the ascension of Henry VII to the throne, he was brought before the new king, who was impressed by this simple farm worker’s apparent clairvoyance. Most astonishing, however, was Nixon’s prediction of his own death: he prophesied that he would starve to death in the royal palace. The king thought this absurd, as he was able to provide great banquets to the lad, and ordered that Nixon could eat anything, anytime he desired.

There came a day when King Henry had to travel and left Nixon in the care of a trusted officer. Feeling responsible for this unusual young man’s protection, the officer locked him in the king’s closet. As it would happen, this officer was also called away from London, forgetting to leave instructions for caring for Nixon… as well as the key to the closet. Nixon starved to death.

Cyrano: The Nose Knows

The name of Cyrano de Bergerac is known today as the long-nosed, sword-wielding 17th century character of books, plays and film. He was indeed a real person, a French writer and scholar who also made some remarkable predictions about future technology, including:

voyages to the moon
travel by rocket propulsion
houses that could be moved to follow seasonable weather (today’s RVs)
machines that could record and play back the human voice
light bulbs
One more idea of de Bergerac’s, which has yet to be verified, is recognizable to those who are familiar with such writers of today as Erich von Däniken, Zecharia Sitchin and others: that the gods of myth and legend were actually extraterrestrials.

Mark Twain’s Prophetic Dream
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known better by his pen name Mark Twain, is still considered one of the greatest American writers. And although many of his writings and famed quotations poke fun at the folly of men, he seemed to have a mystical side as well. It is well known, for example, that he predicted the circumstances of his own death: he was born in 1835 when Halley’s Comet was visible and said that he came in with Halley and would go out with Halley. Sure enough, he died in 1910 when the comet was again visible.

Lesser known, however, is a dream that he had in the late 1850s, which came true in acute detail. He experienced an unusually vivid dream in which he saw the body of his brother Henry lying dead in a metal coffin in his sister’s sitting room. The coffin was supported by two chairs, and upon his brother’s still chest was a bouquet of flowers with one red rose in its center.

It was just a few weeks later that Henry died as the result of injuries sustained in a boat accident. Appearing at the wake, Twain found his brother’s body just as he had seen it in the dream: in a metal coffin supported by two chairs. Missing only were the flowers. Just then, a woman entered the room and placed on Henry’s chest a bouquet – with a single red rose in the center.

The Scottish Earthquake

Earthquakes of any notable magnitude are quite rare in Great Britain, so it’s unlikely that Edward Pearson would have been taken seriously by anyone. Pearson was traveling by train from Iverness to Perth in Scotland, the first leg of his trip to London. He was going there, he told authorities, to warn the Prime Minister of a devastating earthquake that he knew was going to strike Glasgow.

But Pearson never got any further than Perth, as he was arrested on the train for not having a ticket. Although a local newspaper reported the story of this “unemployed Welsh prophet,” who would have really listened to him? Three weeks later, the earthquake struck, damaging buildings in Glasgow and other regions of Scotland.

Fortunate Policy

Jaime Castell was killed in a freak automobile accident. The Spanish hotel executive was driving home one evening when a car speeding in the opposite direction swerved off the road, jumped over the median barrier, flipped over and landed upside-down on top of Castell’s car, killing him instantly. The insurance company readily and without question paid the $100,000 policy to Castell’s pregnant wife.

The freak nature of Castell’s death gave the insurance company no cause to question that it was an accident, even though Castell had suddenly purchased the policy just a few weeks earlier. The reason? A voice in a dream told him that he would never see his unborn child, and he was convinced that he would soon die.

Time Storms in The Matrix

Incredible but true accounts of rips in the matrix of time and reality

The more we learn about the nature of reality, the more mysterious it seems. Fantasies like The Matrix films propose that life as we know it on this planet is nothing more than a highly complex computer simulation generated and imposed on our minds by sophisticated machines. Yet we might not have movies like The Matrix if it weren’t for the discovery of the perplexing but apparently real nature of the world on a subatomic level. On this quantum level, if I understand it correctly, matter seems to exist as both particles and waves – or the potential to be either – and how it ultimately behaves is determined by observation.

This is a highly complex subject and well beyond the scope and depth of this article, but it may be that reality at a subatomic (or quantum) level may be determined by our own consciousness. Not all scientists quite agree with that conclusion, but it is a possibility. (As far as I know, there are no firm conclusions about quantum reality, only theories.) The bottom line is, the universe may be a set of probabilities and the world we experience day-to-day is just the most probable.

This notion leads to the concept of multiple universes (or dimensions) created by other probabilities, time travel and other mind-bending ideas. So as fantastic as The Matrix may be, reality may be far stranger.

Glowing Clouds, the Oz Factor and Strange Phenomena

One aspect of that strangeness is covered with great intelligence and forthrightness in Jenny Randles’ book Time Storms: Amazing Evidence for Time Warps, Space Rifts, and Time Travel. In it, she makes a convincing case that time travel is not only possible, but that it may be taking place regularly around the world.

Randles lays the groundwork for such a possibility by explaining the current scientific thinking about quantum physics and the nature of time in layman’s terms. Her explanations are clear and pretty easy to understand, which is quite a feat for such a complicated subject. And the reason for laying this groundwork is to offer a possible explanation for the many highly strange (can we call them paranormal?) experiences people have had that seem to indicate tears, warps or leaps in the fabric of time.

These fascinating anecdotes, which Randles has collected from all over the world, are the meat of the book. And they all have one common element: a peculiar energy cloud that can transport people and very often their vehicles into some unknown dimension. The result for these people can be missing time (from just minutes to days), disorientation (what Randles calls the “Oz Factor”), teleporation over impossible distances, electronic failure, gravity anomalies and other phenomena. These peculiar, glowing clouds — time storms — just may be an explanation for a variety of paranormal phenomena, including ghosts, spirits, synchonicity, deja vu, UFOs and what is thought of as alien abductions.

Randles suggests that none of this is paranormal at all, but that these time storms are just a scientific reality that we do not understand yet.

Here are just a few of the true accounts from Time Storms:

• Putre, Chile, 1977 – At 3:50 a.m. on April 24, during army training exercises, a guard saw two fuzzy violet lights descending from the mountain and heading their way. At 4:15 a.m., Corporal Armando Valdez set out into the dark to investigate them. He returned 15 minutes later, but from the opposite direction in which he set out. He seemed to be in a kind of trance, muttering, “You do not know who we are or where we come from.” Inexplicably, the corporal had several days growth of beard, and his watch had stopped at 4:15 – but showed a date of April 30!
• Oxford, Maine, 1975 – At 3 a.m. on October 27, David Stephens, 21, and an 18-year-old friend were in a wooded area when they heard a strange sound. They got in their car to go investigate, and the vehicle was soon enveloped in a colored glow. There was a blink in reality and the two instantly found themselves about a mile away with the car pointing in the opposite direction. They subsequently suffered various physical abnormalities, including severe disorientation.
• Somerset, England, 1974 – On July 28, Peter Williamson was having a barbecue in his backyard garden, which was interrupted by a heavy electrical storm. His dog, spooked by the threatening atmosphere, cowered under a tree. Peter went to rescue the animal. There was a bright flash – and Peter vanished into thin air! Police were called and a thorough investigation and search were conducted, without success. At 8 a.m., three days later, Peter was found in some nearby bushes with one foot in a pond – as if he had just appeared there out of nowhere.
• Linhares, Brazil, 1981 – On April 20, Jorge Ramos, who was a representative for a chemical company, left his home at 6 p.m. to travel a few miles to a meeting. He never arrived. His Volkswagon was found on a side road a few miles from his home; the key was still in the ignition and all his business and personal effects were in the car. Police investigations could not account for what happened to Jorge or where he was. Five days later, his wife received a frantic call from Jorge. He said that while driving his car he was covered in a strange white glow after which he found himself in a dreamy, floating state. He came to standing by an unfamiliar road and sought help. To his shock, he discovered that the date was now April 25 – and he was 600 miles from home!

This is just a small sampling of the many true accounts offered in Randles’ book, and she says there are many, many others she did not include. The time storm phenomenon seems to happen with some regularity, and many might never be reported.

Is there any hard evidence for these bizarre occurrences? Randles points to an incident that took place in Florida in which a time storm may have been captured on videotape! In 1996 at 11:16 p.m., surveillance cameras were routinely monitoring and taping the area around a small factory. The videotape reveals what happened: As a worker approached one of the gates, a fuzzy white glow appeared and covered the area where the man was standing. There was brief electrical interference to the cameras, but when they cleared, the man had disappeared. One hour and 50 minutes later, the cameras recorded his sudden reappearance. He was on all fours, violently ill and suffered a two-hour gap in his memory.

This will undoubtedly be one of the most fascinating books you’ll ever read, presented without nonsense and in a scientific frame of mind. In my view, as entertaining and thought provoking as The Matrix films are, they are notnearly as engaging as the incidents described in Time Storms. This stuff really happens.

Vanished! Unexplained Disappearances

There one second… and gone the next. Strange cases of unsolved disappearances, from common folk to aristocrats to entire villages!

History is peppered with intriguing tales of people who, for all intents and purposes, inexplicably vanish from the face of the earth without a trace. These stories – some of the most fascinating in the annals of the unexplained – vary from being well-documented to having the flavor of mere legend and folklore. But they are all fascinating because they force us to question the solidity of our existence. Where did these vanished people go? A time portal? Another dimension? Into a UFO? Consider those chilling possibilities as you read these amazing reports:

The Bennington Triangle

Between 1920 and 1950, Bennington, Vermont was the site of several completely unexplained disappearances:

• On December 1, 1949, Mr. Tetford vanished from a crowded bus. Tetford was on his way home to Bennington from a trip to St. Albans, Vermont. Tetford, an ex-soldier who lived in the Soldier’s Home in Bennington, was sitting on the bus with 14 other passengers. They all testified to seeing him there, sleeping in his seat. When the bus reached its destination, however, Tetford was gone, although his belongings were still on the luggage rack and a bus timetable lay open on his empty seat. Tetford has never returned or been found.
• On December 1, 1946, an 18-year-old student named Paula Welden vanished while taking a walk. Welden was walking along the Long Trail into Glastenbury Mountain. She was seen by a middle-aged couple that was strolling about 100 yards behind her. They lost sight of her when she followed the trail around a rocky outcropping, but when they rounded the outcropping themselves, she was nowhere to be seen. Welden has not been seen nor heard from since.
• In mid-October, 1950, 8-year old Paul Jepson disappeared from a farm. Paul’s mother, who earned a living as an animal caretaker, left her small son happily playing near a pig sty while she tended to the animals. A short time later, she returned to find him missing. An extensive search of the area proved fruitless.
• For more information, see Vanishing Point.

The Vanished Cripple

Owen Parfitt had been paralyzed by a massive stroke. In June, 1763 in Shepton Mallet, England, Parfitt sat outside his sister’s home, as was often his habit on warm evenings. Virtually unable to move, the 60-year-old man sat quietly is his nightshirt upon his folded greatcoat. Across the road was a farm where workers were finishing their workday by pooking the hay. At about 7 p.m., Parfitt’s sister, Susannah, went outside with a neighbor to help Parfitt move back into the house, as a storm was approaching. But he was gone. Only his folded greatcoat upon which he sat remained. Investigations of this mysterious disappearance were carried out as late as 1933, but no trace or clues to Parfitt’s fate were ever uncovered.

The Disappearing Diplomat

British diplomat Benjamin Bathurst vanished into thin air in 1809. Bathurst was returning to Hamburg with a companion after a mission to the Austrian court. Along the way, they had stopped for dinner at an inn in the town of Perelberg. Upon finishing the meal, they returned to their waiting horse-drawn coach. Bathurst’s companion watched as the diplomat stepped over to the front of the coach to examine to horses – and simply vanished without a trace.

Time Tunnel

In 1975, a man named Jackson Wright was driving with his wife from New Jersey to New York City. This required them to travel through the Lincoln Tunnel. According to Wright, who was driving, once through the tunnel he pulled the car over to wipe the windshield of condensation. His wife Martha volunteered to clean off the back window so they could more readily resume their trip. When Wright turned around, his wife was gone. He neither heard nor saw anything unusual take place, and a subsequent investigation could find no evidence of foul play. Martha Wright had just disappeared.

The Mysterious Cloud

Three soldiers claimed to be witnesses to the bizarre disappearance of an entire battalion in 1915. They finally came forward with the strange story 50 years after the infamous Gallipoli campaign of WWI. The three members of a New Zealand field company said they watched from a clear vantage point as a battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment marched up a hillside in Suvla Bay, Turkey. The hill was shrouded in a low-lying cloud that the English soldiers marched straight into without hesitation. They never came out. After the last of the battalion had entered the cloud, it slowly lifted off the hillside to join other clouds in the sky. When the war was over, figuring the battalion had been captured and held prisoner, the British government demanded that Turkey return them. The Turks insisted, however, that it had neither captured not made contact with these English soldiers.

The Stonehenge Disappearance

The mysterious standing stones of Stonehenge in England was the site of an amazing disappearance in August, 1971. At this time Stonehenge was not yet protected from the public, and on this particular night, a group of “hippies” decided to pitch tents in the center of the circle and spend the night. They built a campfire, lit several joints of pot and sat around smoking and signing. Their campout was abruptly interrupted at about 2 a.m. by a severe thunder storm that quickly blew in over Salisbury Plain. Bright bolts of lightning crashed down on the area, striking area trees and even the standing stones themselves. Two witnesses, a farmer and a policeman, said that the stones of the ancient monument lit up with an eerie blue light that was so intense that they had to avert their eyes. They heard screams from the campers and the two witnesses rushed to the scene expecting to find injured – or even dead – campers. To their surprise, they found no one. All that remained within the circle of stones were several smoldering tent pegs and the drowned remains of a campfire. The hippies themselves were gone without a trace.