Where have all the good socks gone?

This peculiar "anomaly" you surely know - or know of, at the very least: you put a pair of socks in the washing machine and only one sock reemerges. You go back and palpate the raspy entrails of the washing machine drum, as deftly as a gynecologist, to find the sock: nothing.
You look around the floor to see where the sock might have fallen out of the bundle of freshly washed clothes: nothing. You go back and search the washing/drying machine once more, this time taking care to look under and all around the machine. Nothing.
Then, months later, the sock reappears in the pantry or behind some remote radiator, in a place where you would never expect to find it - sometimes even in the same space where you keep your washing machine.

By Motorenmano

I must admit this has never happened to me, although I have seen it happen to other people (and certainly heard about it). What's more it seems to be an epidemic! (For details see the bottom of this post.)
And so, I have always thought this "phenomenon" must be simply the consequence of careless handling: it's very easy for a small thing like a sock to get stuck in some other piece of clothing or linen. Think about it: why socks, and why in the washing/drying machine? You don't hear about T-shirts or sheets disappearing in the gargantuan jaws of washing machines: it's always socks or, occasionally, some other small clothing item. People are a notoriously inattentive species. Aren't they? Aren't we?

Well, yes.
But that doesn't explain the sudden disappearance - sometimes followed (a long time later) by the inexplicable reappearance - of all sorts of inanimate objects even at times when attention, or the lack thereof, clearly wasn't the issue.

I for one have long suspected there must be an itinerant black hole on the loose in my home, sometimes invading my handbags, like a stowaway, to displace itself around town.

I have seen a contact lens (several times; I'll be returning to them in some later post) fall to the floor and somehow disappear while in full view.

In the past ten years or so, several of my clothing items have disappeared from my home even though nobody had access to the space where they were kept, there was no robbery (and they were not valuable anyway, except sentimentally, to me), I have never lent my clothes to anyone, and I know for a fact, beyond any doubt, that I would not have parted with them voluntarily (i.e. I did not give or throw them away); nor am I afflicted by any type of temporary amnesia. Those clothes never left the apartment except on me - and yet they are gone.


What's more, this condition seems to be contagious.
About two years ago, I suddenly developed an intense craving for Barilla tortellini. So I went to a store and bought them. I did buy a few other things, too, but the pasta was my main point of interest. At the checkout counter I put it in the shopping bag first, then the rest of the things I bought, before returning home to have a good plateful of tortellini.
The shopping bag had no tears or holes in it; I had no physical contact whatsoever with anyone during my short journey home, so nobody could have stolen them; the bag of tortellini could not have fallen out without my hearing it happen.
And yet, when I came home, the tortellini were nowhere to be found.
Two years later I still haven't found them.

(But then, pasta is notoriously misbehaved. For a supernatural adventure involving spaghetti see here.)

Another item I am still missing is an eyelash mascara, brand new. It disappeared on the day it was bought, from a little plastic bag that had no tears or holes through which the mascara could have slipped; furthermore, the little bag with the mascara was tucked within another, bigger bag. (It also would have made a noise if it fell out, and I heard none.)
A hypothetical mascara-loving pickpocket's intervention is out of the question, since s/he would have had to not only bump into me or make very close contact with me, but would have had to worm his or her grubby hand through a scatter of other objects that were also in the bag at the moment, all the way down to the bottom of the bag where the mascara was. But no other items were missing. And I had no close contact with anyone on my way home, anyway.

Taken from here.

But sometimes wayward objects do reappear. Such was the case with a pair of sunglasses my mother had bought for me years ago.

I use contact lenses, so my eyes are somewhat more sensitive to bright light than they would be in normal circumstances. Which is why I always use sunglasses in the summer and whenever there is bright light outside.
So I was understandably distraught when one summer's day a few years ago I could not find my sunglasses anywhere. (I had two other pairs of sunglasses, but the rims were not of the right colour for me to use them with the predominant colour of the clothes I was wearing that summer.)
At the time I used mostly one handbag, and while it was relatively big, I always found whatever I was looking for in a matter of seconds rather than minutes. Furthermore, I always put my glasses in the main compartment, so I never had to even look for them: I simply felt around the bag with my hand and retrieved them.
Until one day I could not find them anywhere.

I was sure I must have lost them, but could not figure out where.
The next time I visited my mum I told her about the sunglasses, and she looked for them around her home. She didn't find them.

I could have bought another pair, of course; but I was sentimentally attached to those sunglasses; and I hate shopping more than words can express. (Yes, you remember correctly: I am a woman. :)

Anyway, to make a long - three weeks long - story short, one day, as I was walking down the stairs in front of my mother's home, I opened my handbag to take out my wallet... and there were the sunglasses, their golden clasps shining in the sun. I went back and asked my mother had she found them and put them in my handbag. She was surprised - no, she didn't - and she laughed.

So did I.
What else could I have done?

And by the way, about a year later, it happened again - with the same pair of sunglasses. This time, they went missing for only a few days. And wherever they were, they must have decided they had a better time with me, because they returned on their own accord...

I am sure something similar has happened to many of you out there.
But I am also sure that many of such occurrences really are just a matter of inattentiveness. I am not posting these stories to encourage anyone to immediately jump to the conclusion that a dimensional anomaly or some paranormal activity must have taken place, if they can't find something that "should" have been where expected.
Remember: people can be remarkably absent-minded.

Also, if you are taking any pills, be aware that some can produce amnesia as a side effect. (The sleep-inducing substance called zolpidem, sold in the USA under the name of Ambien, is notorious for producing amnesia. People have been known to raid their fridges at night, or make midnight calls to people they would otherwise never dare calling - and most dangerously of all, to take extra doses of the medication - and not remember it the next day.)

In short, be sure to exclude all possible "logical" explanations before attributing any odd occurrence to something anomalous. And not just because it makes sense, but because not doing so diminishes the value of truly extra-ordinary experiences.

Anyway, here is a treat for all of you who are hoping to find a lost object: a few tips from one of our favourite writers on the subject, Cynthia Sue Larson:

Top Six Tips for Finding Lost Things

But if your main concern are socks and their fate, here is a foundation that is working towards the welfare of all socks, big or small, black or white, old or new. I am sure they would appreciate your help.

The Lost Sock Foundation

Schrödinger's cat on my doorstep

Time for a personal confession...
I use the word "confession" because, unlike the other personal experiences I have reported so far (which came uninvited), the event I am about to describe seems to have been directly related to something I did - or tried to do. And it is an activity that is often best left unmentioned, unless you are willing to risk being considered a kook. A mad(wo)man. A lunatic. Someone who is not to be trusted with the simplest tasks in life... You get the picture.

The outward appearance of the event was anything but spectacular; if you're expecting the time-shift equivalent of some "mother ship" appearing, you're in for an anticlimax, to put it mildly.

Still, it boggles the mind.
And while I usually don't mind letting go of my (rational) mind, there is something about this event that makes me want to keep silent about it.
Hence the term "confession".
(And don't be surprised if I later change my mind about publishing this and take the post down.)

Something odd happened on the evening of July 23, 2008.
It had been a breathtakingly beautiful summer day, with all the colours burning bright in the sunlight that filtered through dark grey stormy clouds. (There had been a storm the previous night, and there was another coming later that day.)

I had been out for a coffee with a relative of mine. It had been a most interesting meeting: we had a conversation that, I feel, directly pertains to what I am about to describe, but would rather withhold it, for fear of "tainting" the thought process (and possibly even clouding the memory itself). Let me just say that it was a conversation about a dream that might indicate that dreams perhaps could be more than just "processing" of our daily rubbish (garbage, if you're an American ;) - that perhaps they sometimes could be a very real meeting point of different levels of Reality.

As I was coming home that evening, maybe ten or twenty metres from my doorstep, I suddenly saw my neighbour's cat. It was sitting by the rubbish bin, looking at me.

There aren't many cats loose around my neighbourhood; in fact, that was the only cat I ever saw in my street.
And this cat had a very distinctive appearance. Its fur had a colouring and pattern that I hadn't seen on any other cat; and most of all, it had a very visible patch of discolouration around its nose, the consequence of a disease he had had years before.

My heart leapt when I saw him.
I slowly approached him.
He didn't move; he just kept looking at me.
"Is that you?" I asked him, calling his name.
If he ever replied, I didn't hear or understand him. But then, there was no need for a reply: I could see quite clearly it was him.

It was my neighbour's cat - who had died two years before.

I stood there looking at him for a while; and then I slowly walked away and into my home.
The next day I didn't see him. Or the next.
I did see his (former) "owner" a few days later, and I inquired - as breezily and "by the way" as I could - about his cat. Oh yes, it had died. How did he know for sure? Because he saw him die. Did he get another one? No, no way - too much trouble. "I thought I had seen him," I finally added. Didn't he see a cat just like his around lately? No.

I know what I saw.
Maybe the man, for some obscure reason, didn't tell me the truth: maybe he did not see him die, so he could not know for sure that the cat was dead.
But that was the only time I saw the "late" cat (who had been quite elderly at the time of his purported death) in more than two years, ever since I had stopped seeing him around and later learned he was dead.

Until a few days ago.
It was late in the evening and I was returning home.
When I walked past my neighbour's door, I saw the cat again, sitting where it had been the last time I saw him.

This time, I walked even closer to him, to have a good look at him: yes, it was him. There was his unmistakable patch around the nose. And he seemed to know me.


I know I said I wouldn't talk... but now I think I might as well admit to you openly (after all, you already suspected I was a kook, right?) that the first time, on July 23, 2008 - or rather, the night before - I had been doing an "exercise", the aim of which was to switch to a different timeline.

It certainly resulted in an occipital headache that defies description. No industry-strength pills could relieve it - and that's saying something, considering that: a) I hardly ever get headaches, and b) an aspirin is usually enough to dispel my headaches.

Then, later that day, when I met with my relative, she told me about a dream that she could not get out of her mind: it had been a "Technicolor" dream (something that, in her own words, never happened to her, as she only dreams in "black & white"); it felt as vivid as any present reality; in her dream she was perfectly aware of the obvious change between the waking reality as she remembered it and the (also "waking") reality of the dream.

I am not usually interested in dreams, but this time I was impressed.
I didn't tell her (but she may find out now) that while she was sleeping I had been suffering the mother of all headaches, after having tried to "immerse" myself completely - mind AND body - in a different timeline: a timeline that corresponded exactly to what she had dreamed.

Did this have anything to do with the cat?
I don't know. I just felt it had to be mentioned, considering that both events were highly unusual, to put it conservatively.

What baffles me is this: IF (and it is a big "if") my mind-forcing the boundaries of time/space had somehow provoked the apparition of that cat... what was it that made it appear a few days ago? My mind frame and activity had been totally different from what they were on July 22/23, 2008.


I may be editing - or just removing - this entry in a while.
But in case you just like reading about phantom cats - nah, let's call them Schrödinger's cats :) - here's a short mention of a similar event.

The Chronovisor

People have been obsessed with the idea of a time machine ever since H. G. Wells wrote his classic novel. Perhaps even longer than that: since the beginning of... well, machines.

But did you know there already is - or was - a supposedly functional time machine?
To be precise, a machine that allegedly shows and photographs the past.

Certainly its alleged inventor was a real person: Father Pellegrino Ernetti* - a Catholic priest, no less.

Father Ernetti - who was an exorcist, among other things - may (or may not) have been a kook; but he was also a serious scientific researcher. He was a highly respected authority on archaic, pre-polyphonic music.

Ernetti was apparently also very interested in physics (some say he actually had a degree in quantum physics), and his curiosity knew no boundaries, especially after a curious incident that is said to have happened on September 15, 1952, in Milan.

Ernetti was trying to filter harmonics out of Gregorian chants, in the company of the renowned physician and psychologist, Father Agostino Gemelli. (The famous teaching hospital in Rome is named after him.)

At one point during the work, the two men apparently heard the voice of Gemelli's late father speaking to them on the wire recorder they were using. (Gemelli - a noted skeptic - later confirmed this incident).

This propelled Ernetti's research into the present timespace location of sounds and sights that seem "gone", a thing of the past, to us. His quest led him to speculation about the possibilities of constructing a machine that would capture the sights of the past: a chronovisor (literally, a "time-seer").

Later, Ernetti claimed that in the 1950s he had contacted some of the most prominent physicists of the time - Enrico Fermi and Werner von Braun, among others - and that they had actually produced such a machine.

But the story gets weirder.

Ernetti claimed that in January (12-14) of 1956, the team managed to produce "live" images of Christ's crucifixion, in 36 A.D. - and they had a photograph to prove it!

The photo in question was published on May 2nd, 1972, in the Italian weekly La Domenica del Corriere.







Does it look unconvincing or just plain awkward to you?
I don't blame you.
To me, it looks like a painted statue - and not a terribly accomplished one, at that.

And that's exactly what it turned out to be: the copy of an image of a sculpture kept in the sanctuary of Collevalenza, a 1931 work by the Spanish sculptor Cullot Valera.

And this is precisely what makes this story so utterly strange.

If Ernetti were an unsophisticated (and dishonest!) third-rate kook, nobody would even remember this story anymore.

But Ernetti was a highly educated man.

Furthermore, not one of the people who knew him ever doubted his personal integrity.

Why, then, did he allow such a preposterously obvious hoax to come out and smear his name?
Surely it would have been easy to make up a plausible excuse for not presenting any photographic "evidence". Of course most people would not have believed him - but at least it would save him from the ridicule that ensued.

Be that as it may, the Chronovisor is said to be kept in the vaults of the Vatican.

And, by the way, there is a book about it.

Father Ernetti's Chronovisor:
The Creation and Disappearance of the World's First Time Machine

(There should be a hyperlinked book cover visible above. If you cannot see it, try viewing the page in a different browser. And I am sorry for the inconvenience. Blogger has been having A LOT of issues lately, and I am this close to switching to a different blog publisher.)

I really wish I could recommend it, but I am not sure I can.
It is a translation - and, arguably, an adaptation - from the German original.
I haven't read the original, but I doubt it would make that much difference.
You see, the problem with this book is not (only) in the language, the unnecessary - typically journalistic - hyperboles and stereotypes ("There is no city in the world more beautiful than Venice, and no view in Venice is more beautiful than sunrise from the basilica and the Benedictine abbey on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore"... Oh really?), but in the organisation and treatment of the material itself. It goes in all directions, with digressions that have nothing whatsoever to do with the subject itself.

And there is more: the American translation has an "appendix" that does not contribute to the quality of the book. It seems the editors (of the American translation, interestingly - not of the German original) received a purported unsolicited "confession" by an unnamed distant relative of Father Ernetti's, who claims the priest confessed to him on his deathbed that he had made the whole thing up - but that "it is possible" for such a contraption to work.

Let me tell you: as a journalist and as a reader I do not approve of such appendices - especially since their authenticity is absolutely impossible to establish. It is neither ethical nor stylistically elegant.

But, sure enough, some webmasters and other online scribblers (yes, of course I am an online scribbler, too ;)) who lack a discerning mind are now quoting said "confession" as if it were the gospel truth.

It isn't.
For what it's worth, personally I do not really believe that the Chronovisor ever worked (although I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out it did); and it is painfully obvious to anyone that the "Christ's photo" was nothing but an awkward fake.
But that doesn't mean I am going to rely on other possible fakes to make up my mind.

And I do think such a thing as Ernetti's chronovisor could be possible.
What's more, there seems to be a group of Russian scientists who are, if you'll forgive the pun, looking into it.

Whatever you think - and I hope you do think - never forget to be a healthy skeptic.
Which, contrary to popular opinion, means keeping an open mind at all times.


(For another version of this story go here.)

***

* A totally and utterly and disgustingly irrelevant bit of trivia: Father Ernetti was born at the exact same point in time - on the same day of the same year (October 13, 1925) - as the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, Margaret Thatcher. :)