The dangers of conf(abu)lation

I am serving you yet another P.S.
But if you are interested in the "dead again - alive again" phenomenon (whatever it is), it may be worth the few seconds of your time that it's going to take.

There is another thread discussing "dead celebrities who are now alive" over on ATS. (See the link in the post above, in the section regarding Karen Carpenter. I am not giving it here simply because I think the entire thread, save for two or three messages, is - to be blunt - unworthy of your attention and mine. I mean, seriously: now there are people "explaining" this apparent anomaly as being the consequence of - take a deep breath now... ... - cloning.)

Amidst all the "chaff" there is a single interesting - albeit not the least surprising - indication of what is going on in many, perhaps most, cases:

A person thought s/he had heard that Joanne Woodward, a fantastic actress and wife of the late Paul Newman, had died many years ago - drowned, to be precise.

Another person pointed out that it was Natalie Wood - wife of Robert Wagner - who drowned, back in 1981, during a yachting trip that included Christopher Walken.

Have you noticed anything particular about the names of the people involved in these two accounts?

That's right: they all start with W, or include this visually very prominent letter.
So, what we have here is a classic case of conflation (which, of course, is NOT the same as confabulation, a far more annoying, and potentially dangerous, phenomenon that only harms the endeavours - and the reputation - of those who are striving to explore genuine mysteries).

Oh, BTW: you may be glad to read that - amazingly! - the person who thought it was Woodward who had drowned (only to be "alive again" in recent times) conceded that was what happened.
I know I am.

The truth of the world is mysterious enough as it is.
We don't need more "chaff" to confound it.
Intellectual honesty is the way to go... wherever it is that we are going.

Out of mind?

Oh, to be in England - the magic country of wandering houses and wayward hills and flights across time ...

Just as I thought I had read most of the most interesting "time slip" stories taking place in the United Kingdom, I was reminded of another one - of two, actually. (And yet a third one, for good measure.)

It's a story about a vision purportedly witnessed by Dr E. G. Moon, a supposedly "very down-to-earth" Scottish physician, on a certain day in 1935 when he visited one of his patients, the famous Lord Carson, at his home at Cleve Court (Isle of Thanet).

Now, this particular house is said to be haunted.
But what is said to have happened to Dr Moon doesn't appear to be a "haunting" proper. (And what is a "haunting" - or a "ghost", for that matter - anyway? For a few of my thoughts on the subject, see here.)

I found this story here, and since it is uncommonly well written, I think it would be best to let the author of the original text speak:

In 1935 Dr EG Moon, a very down-to-earth Scots Physician with a practice in Broadstairs, was at Minster in Thanet visiting his patient, Lord Carson, who lived at Cleve Court, a haunted house referred to elsewhere in the section. After talking to Carson, the doctor left his patient and made his way downstairs into the hallway. His mind was very clearly occupied at the time with the instructions he had given the nurse about the prescription he had left for Carson. At the front door Dr Moon hesitated, wondering whether to go back upstairs to have another word with the nurse.

It was at this point that the doctor noted that his car was no longer where he had left it in the driveway. In fact, it had been parked alongside a thick yew hedge and that, too, was missing. Even the drive down which he had driven from the main road was now nothing but a muddy track, and a man was coming towards him.

The newcomer on the scene, only thirty yards from Dr Moon, was rather oddly dressed wearing an old-fashioned coat with several capes around his shoulders. And he wore a top hat of the kind seen in the previous century. As he walked he smacked a switch against his riding boots. Over his shoulder he carried a long-barrelled gun. He stared hard at Moon. And the doctor registered the fact that the man coming towards him might have looked more at home in the 19th century.

Remarkably, Dr Moon seems not at the time to have been either alarmed or even mildly surprised by the changed scenery, by the quite oddly dressed man approaching his or the fact that his car was missing. What preoccupied him was the thought of Lord Carson's prescription. He simply turned away, without any concern, to go back into the house. But he did quite casually take one more look at the scene he was leaving. And now, as if by magic, the car was back where it had been and the yew hedge too. The drive was no longer a muddy track. And the man had also disappeared, back one assumes to the previous century. And it was only now that Dr Moon realised that something odd, something decidedly odd, had occurred.

All of this took seconds and so there is every reason to understand why Dr Moon did not immediately go out into the driveway to see where his missing car was. For the same reason it is understandable why he did not speak to the man dressed like a farm bailiff of the past. Dr Moon was drawn into some kind of accepting, hallucinatory state. When he came to - for that seems to be the best way of describing his return to his own time - he described to Lady Carson what he thought had occurred. He was anxious, however, that no word of if should come out in his lifetime for fear that his patients would begin to question his judgement. It was only after his death that the story was revealed.**

Now, this is a fascinating story as it is. But it's this little bit what makes it even more interesting, to my eyes:

"Dr Moon was drawn into some kind of accepting, hallucinatory state".

He seems to have been in some sort of trance, an almost hypnotic state, similar (at least I understand it that way) to the state of mind one often encounters in dreams: the weirdest things seem not only somehow "normal", but often we simply know (during the dream only), why they make sense, why they should be so. This, I believe, is the Theta "state of mind" (actually, a brain wave rhythm).

Salvador Dalí, The Apparition of the Face of Aphrodite of Cnide in a Landscape (1981)

And, luckily for us, we seem to have another story - from the very same region (and found on the same website) - pointing to the very same phenomenon, whatever it is that induces this strange state of receptiveness.

It is the account of a woman called Charlotte Warburton, who is said to have had a "time slip" on June 18, 1968, on Calverley Road, in the English town of Tunbridge Wells (Kent).

You can read the account here. I shall only point out the similarly unquestioning state of mind that she seems to have experienced - because I believe it is the key to such phenomena.

Was it an external factor, something from outside, what caused these experiences?

A third account - not strictly a "time slip" -, about a girl called Naomi Fuller (read it on the same page as the two accounts above) would seem to suggest that there is something about the area itself that, under certain (as yet undetermined) circumstances, switches a susceptible mind into a Theta-like state, which then makes it possible to perceive usually non-observable realities.

But if that were the case, wouldn't there be many more reports of such experiences? After all, timidity or fear of ridicule can only explain so much.

On the other hand, of course, there places, all over the world, where such experiences (be it "hauntings", "ghosts" or whatever one might call them) are reported quite often. Of couse, it is virtually impossible to establish how many reports are genuine, and from those that are, how many were "fed" by self-suggestion, by expectation.

Anyway, such places deserve - and often get - a thorough in situ individual investigation. (However, many seem to show unusually high electromagnetic activity. More on that some other time.)

For those who would fancy having a look at the planetary configuration of Mrs Warburton's purported "time slip", I even made an astrological chart. (Not knowing the exact time of the purported sighting, only that it was "morning", I entered 10 a.m.)

(If you find anything interesting in it, do let me know. ;))

Be it as it may, I think there is little doubt that it is the individual's susceptibility that makes such things happen.

But if you think I am politely alluding to so-called "hallucinations", you couldn't be more wrong. Apparently, there can be shared visions of things normally unseen (this blog is full of such accounts; I would especially recommend reading the entries about Jung, the Andersons and, of course, about the legendary Misses Moberly and Jourdain) - and not all of them can be satisfactorily explained away as either lies or "folie a deux".

So, judging by such accounts, it would be relatively safe to assume that, at certain locations and under certain (undetermined) influences, an external local force (or interplay of forces) is capable of inducing or triggering perception of otherwise unobservable realities external to the observer - and judging by the accounts of odd or uncharacteristic receptivity accompanying these visions, it would be safe to surmise that the mind is perhaps on a Theta-like "wavelength" at the time of the experience.

More on that on a future occasion.



* Unfortunately, it is not entirely clear who the author of the text(s) is. According to the Credits, it could be either W. H. Johnson or John Haverson (or both).

** I have yet to unearth the original source of this account.

The scream

This happened to me approximately three years ago, on a seemingly ordinary evening of a seemingly ordinary day.

There is a short underground passageway under a city street (not an avenue, nothing particularly wide, just an ordinary two-way street) near my former home that I used to cross every day for many years (until two and a half years ago, when I moved). I was so familiar with it that I could walk through it blind-folded, if necessary.

The early evening that I am talking about I was walking towards the stairs that lead down, into the underground passage. There were two or three girls hanging around the entrance to the staircase. Nothing extraordinary so far.

When I was about 15 metres or so from the entrance, suddenly a blood-curdling scream came out of the passageway. The girls obviously heard it too, because they all turned around and looked towards the stairs, to see who would emerge or what would transpire.

What immediately struck me as strange was the fact that, after the scream, NOTHING, no sound whatsoever, was heard - and this is a passageway where the echo of every single step resonates right to the top of the stairs.

That worried me: I was afraid that I would find somebody lying there - and I didn't even have my cell phone with me (to call for the ambulance, if needed). The girls just stood there, as if frozen, and watched me descend the stairs.

But there was something else that I also found very unusual: unless the person who screamed had been alone all the while, I should have heard the steps of whoever made her (it sounded like a woman) scream like that, even if that person was going in the opposite direction.

Moreover, I should have seen that person emerge on either side of the passage. The passageway is not a very long one - there was time enough for me to see him/her come out on either side while I was still walking towards the stairs.

But I didn't see anyone coming out - and I didn't hear anything.
That worried me even more. As I descended the fifteen or so stairs that lead underground, I braced myself for a possibly unpleasant encounter (cursing myself all the while for having left the phone at home).

There was nobody in the passage.
It was completely deserted, and no steps were audible anywhere. There was no sign of any unusual going-on anywhere; and certainly no sound.

As you can probably gather at this point, I only mentioned the girls because they were my only "witnesses", my only proof - to myself - that they had heard it, too, and from the very same direction. (There was no other place around from which an echoing sound like that could have come, anyway.)

I have tried to reconstruct the event, going as far as making a friend of mine take off his shoes in the underground passage and run (because such a swift disappearance from the place would only be possible with almost preternaturally speedy running), while I positioned myself in more or less the same place where I had been when I heard the scream (i.e. above ground, a few metres from the entrance to the staircase): even when he was barefoot - and we live in an urban environment where nobody has been seen barefoot in public for hundreds of years, I would imagine - I still could hear the clapping sound of his running feet from where I was standing, above ground.

To this day I have not been able to solve the puzzle of that scream. And I am only posting it here because - for all I know - it might have been a spacial/temporal distortion of some kind. Certainly I can't think of any plausible ordinarily "logical" explanation for it. Still, I am keeping my mind open.

But I have read about similar events since. One is too elaborate to explain it in detail here; and another one bears only a partial similarity. You can read about it here:

Heard accident before it happened

Edvard Munch, The Scream, cca 1893-1910 (here digitally altered).

It looks like a human, but it shouldn't be there...

... and the answer that immediately seems to spring to mind is: what is a GHOST!*

I am somewhat reluctant to include these musings here, since this blog is not supposed to be about »ghosts« - and there are many, many genuine time/space displacement stories waiting for their turn to be told here.
And since "ghost" stories transcend the usual perceived boundaries of every single time/space continuum – AKA the present – it is somewhat tricky to discuss them here, in this space dedicated to perceived time/space anomalies. Because once the floodgates are open, this space could soon outgrow its carefully trimmed hedges and burst into the anarchy of (yet another!) generically »paranormal« blog. (The fact that the blog mistress is para-normal should be more than enough, for the time being...)

But it occurs to me that we don't really know what so-called »ghosts« really are. And I don't think they can even be lumped together into a single category, however broad.

I love a good – let me emphasise that: GOOD – ghost story. Who doesn't?

But there really aren't all that many around – good ones, I mean.
(On the other hand, there are quite a few very good ones that aren't »around«, because the world has simply not heard of them yet.)

I don't know about you, but I've always found it somewhat irritating that so many people – even documentary film-makers and such – jump to conclusions regarding the nature and origins of apparitions and other para-physical phenomena indicating a sort of human presence.
Whenever the presence of such a phenomenon is established, it is followed – and, usually, preceded – by stories of somebody living and/or dying in the place that is »haunted«, often without any evidence that the apparition is in fact linked with the specific person(s) who supposedly lived and/or died in the house.

In short, among those who give any credence to the phenomenon at all, ghosts seem to be widely identified with »wandering souls«; they are thought to be ex-people, if you'll excuse the pythonesque allusion, who for some reason couldn't »rest in peace«.

And what irritates me the most is precisely the absence of questions – of questioning - regarding the actual origins of such apparitions.

And yet, some apparitions are clearly not the result of »tormented« spirits. Such is the famous case of the Roman regiment – complete with a mule or horse – that is said to have been seen (in 1953, by one Harry Martindale) marching through a cellar of the Treasurer's House in York (England).

The soldiers were said to have a haggard, disheveled – tired? – appearance, which would be in no way unusual, considering their occupation. (The appearance of the mule is not described in detail.)

More unusually, however, the lowest part of their bodies, from the knees down, seemed to have vanished.

Were they victims of a shin-worshiping tribe or something? Maybe the local women craved their footwear and the soldiers wouldn't part with it?

Hardly: as I said, they appeared to be marching – in perfect silence - through the cellar, only the lower part of their legs was unseen. And we do know there was a Roman road leading through that future cellar – and that the street level was a feet or two lower than the level of the ground today.

Here is a good (if short) account of the story (from The Independent):

(And here is an entry about Roman structures in non-haunted cellars from a wonderful history blog, with some humourous comments, one of which includes an allusion to this story: WHAT YOU CAN FIND IN CELLARS.)

But even the most pedestrian programmes about "haunted" places can yield surprisingly productive thoughts.

I was (semi)watching a programme about »ghosts« on the TV the other day.

Semi-watching TV is they key word here; with the »corner« of your eye you can sometimes catch more than you would normally. And with the »corner« of your mind, you can sometimes catch thoughts that might not occur to you normally. (Of course, being sleep-deprived helps, too...)

There was talk of a certain room in a certain hotel that is supposedly »haunted« (and there are many such hotel rooms across the world). Purportedly, people often see "shadows" or "grey" apparitions of people wandering through the room before disappearing as suddenly as they appeared.

So far, so good... but wouldn't you know: immediately the team proceeded to investigate whether somebody died in that room.

Why?

What IF some of the localised, i.e. space-specific, »apparitions« and other, non-visual manifestations of a human »presence« are really the effect of that person's (the ghost-to-be) mental revisiting (remembering, if you will, only with more intensity than usually) the spaces that were important to them – from within their own timeline? Or, perhaps more accurately, across time.

(Or maybe the place wasn't even all that important to them; maybe their thought - or their "astral body", as many like to call it - simply wandered into their room because of some random mental association?)

Could this explain appearances such as the one Ingmar Bergman reportedly witnessed in a theatre?

I for one have the distinct impression that all times really DO exist all at once.
(But more on that some other time. Besides, there is a wonderful collection of books listed at the bottom of this page that discuss just that. You don't have to buy them - borrow them, and I am sure at least one or two of them will be worth your while.)

I hear you: it is rather thankless to offer a theory that cannot be supported by evidence and is, furthermore, based on another unsupported theory...

But thinking is fun. ;)

So... what do you think?

* For those who are not familiar with American pop culture, this unusual form of expressing an answer refers to a very popular quiz show called "Jeopardy".

Vanished in Vermont

In my previous entry, I mentioned a series of apparent disappearances that were reported to have happened in or around Bennington, Vermont, USA, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. From among those disappearances, the case of Paula Welden who vanished on December 1, 1946, is often presented as being the most "mysterious" of them all. It certainly was the most widely discussed of the cases - and with good reason. But after reading Paul Begg's detailed account of the story (taken from his book Into Thin Air), I have the feeling that Paula Welden's case was more likely a "perfect crime" than any sort of "paranormal" event.

You can read about it here - including a very precise timeline of the events leading to her disappearance - and make up your own mind.

Unlike James Telford (see the previous entry) - who disappeared three years to the day after Paula's disappearance - the actual existence and identity of Paula Welden (or Weldon) is established beyond doubt. She was the daughter of a well-to-do family, her father being a well-known designer of fancy household utensils; and she was eighteen - "neither a child not yet an adult", as Begg puts it very well. And, as many adolescents on the threshold of adulthood, she had certain psychological "issues" (not to mention probably raging hormones) - nothing out of the ordinary (but what is "ordinary", in the first place?), but perhaps enough for her thoughts and plans to have been far beyond what those close to her might have suspected. She could have been leading a "double life". If that is so - and we may never find out - there is no way of ruling out an unpredictable drastic reaction from whomever she was involved with.

Perfect crimes do exist.
But was Paula Welden's disappearance one of them?
You tell me.

Be it as it may, a scenario based on a "double life" seems unlikely in the cases of the other people who went missing in and around Bennington, Vermont - although their individual circumstances may not preclude foul play. The only thing they seem to have in common is the season of their disappearance: all of the people who went missing in Vermont during the years 1946 - 1950 disappeared in the months of October, November, or early December.

From among them, the most mysterious - along with Mr. Telford's alleged disappearance - is the case of Frieda Langer, 53, who disappeared on October 28, 1950 (two weeks after the alleged disappearance of small boy, Paul Jepson, 8, who is said to have vanished on October 12, 1950).

Frieda was on a hiking trip with her cousin, Herbert Elsner. According to him, Frieda fell into a stream and told her cousin to wait for her as she ran off the half mile back to their family's camping site to change into dry clothes. He waited, but she did not return... ever.
Elsner went to the camping site to inquire after her, and found out that, if she did arrive, the other family members (I have not yet established how many were there, or their identity) had not seen her. In fact, nobody saw Frieda again... until May 12, 1951, when her body was found in an open area where it should not have been missed during the extensive searches (on the day of the disappearance and then on November 5, 7, 11 and 12 of the same year, involving more than 300 military, police, firemen and volunteers).
Even more disturbingly, according to some accounts, the body is said to have looked very "fresh", as if she had just passed away "from fright".

Frieda is said to have been quite familiar with the area; and the camping site was only a few hundred metres from the stream into which she is said to have fallen. And apparently there is little doubt that the search for her was thorough indeed.

One of the - seemingly - most rational explanations for the "Bennington triangle" disappearances is that the people who vanished accidentally fell into wells.
That would - again, seemingly - explain why the disappearances only happened in the autumn/winter months: the time when the woods are covered with fallen leaves.
But it does not explain the reappearance of Frieda Langer's body - or the fact that, after 1950, the vanishings stopped.

Was there a serial killer, as some suggested?
Considering the evidence, such a theory seems highly unlikely.

Or were there some other forces at play?

There was some mention of a huge rock in the area that the local native American population, so it was said, diligently avoided... But I am yet to find the origin of the mention or the "legend" itself (when I do, I'll post it here).

Whatever it was, it stopped after Langer's disappearance, in the autumn of 1950.
People investigating - or just snooping around - the area ever since are yet to experience anything out of the ordinary.

Or so they say...

Here is a Bennington-related entry from a lovely blog that seems to indicate that the... ehm, spirits of Vermont may not yet be as restful as they are claimed to be. ;)

The Disappearing Drunkard

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