A room with a view

In my last post I questioned the validity of almost automatic attribution of apparent time/space anomalies to "ghosts".

The story that follows - it's very short (always a commendable virtue in my book), taken from the files of the American Society for Psychical Research - adds little or nothing towards the clarification* of this issue, but it does further illustrate my point (I hope).

If you are from Nebraska, you have probably heard it before.

Then again, I am not, and I have heard it myself. I read it, to be precise, in Michael Talbot's book The Holographic Universe.

On page 227-228 he speaks of "a woman identified only by the name Buterbaugh", who "looked out the window of her office at Nebraska Wesleyan University and saw the campus as it was fifty years earlier. Gone were the bustling streets and the sorority houses, and in their place was an open field and a sprinkling of trees, their leaves aflutter in the breeze of a summer long since passed".

Charming. ;)

But Talbot's account, while succinct and enticing (certainly enticing enough for me to have remembered it), sounds a little vague. Expressions like "a woman only identified as Buterbaugh" certainly don't help building an impression of credibility.

The good news is that the story is relatively recent and that it involves people whose existence seems to present little doubt (although I should tell you that I usually try to "investigate" them anyway**) .

Furthermore, in the years since the publication of Talbot's book it has spread to other sources of information and is now to be found in versions that contain some more (and quite reassuring) details.

We now know the exact date when it's supposed to have happened: October 3, 1963.

We also know that Buterbaugh's name was Coleen and that she was a secretary at the university.

However, those extended versions feature another player, also a woman: Miss Urania Clara Mills, the former head of the university's music department. She was appointed to that position in 1912, and occupied it until her death, at age sixty, in 1940. (But the accounts - and supposed date - of her death seem to vary; see below.)

Be it as it may, it was apparently Miss Mills' room at the university where the unsuspecting Miss Buterbaugh was confronted with a vista like no other.

Here is a short version posted on a genealogy site:

"The ghost of Miss Urania Clara Mills haunted the C.C. White Memorial Building on this campus. The huge brick building, erected between 1903 and 1907, housed the Music Department, where Miss Mills taught from 1912 to 1936. On October 3, 1963, Mrs. Coleen Buterbaugh, a secretary to Dean Sam Dahl, was in the music building on an errand.

When she entered the rooms of Dr. Tom McCourt she was overcome by a strong, musty odor. Then she saw the apparition of a tall, thin woman reaching for some papers on the top shelf of an old music cabinet in a corner. Looking out the window, Coleen realized it was summertime and the sun shining and flowers blooming. Suddenly the ghostly scene disappeared and the outdoor scenery returned to a gray October day.

When she told Dean Dahl about her experience, she launched an investigation and discovered that those rooms belonged to Clara Urania Mills. She had died on October 3, 1936, in the room across from where her ghost was seen. The case has become a classic in the literature of the paranormal.

The CC White Building was torn down in 1973."

Here is another one, an excerpt from an interesting article:

"Now that is a very good question," said Roger Cognard when asked if he believes in the ghost that haunts the university.

Cognard, a professor of English at Wesleyan, was reluctant to talk about his personal beliefs about Lincoln's most notorious ghost but was willing to tell the story.

On Oct. 3, 1963, the dean of the university sent his secretary, Coleen Buterbaugh, on an errand to the C.C. White Building on campus. She entered a room in the building and saw a woman dressed in early 20th century clothing. Buterbaugh looked out the room's windows and saw that the tall trees she had walked past before entering the building had transformed into small, recently planted ones.

The area surrounding the building appeared to be underdeveloped and resembled what it would have looked like 50 years in the past. Buterbaugh turned and ran.

Upon hearing his secretary's account of the story, the dean sent Buterbaugh to a faculty member who had worked at the university the longest.

He showed her a yearbook, and she proceeded to flip through it, eventually identifying the woman she saw as Urania Clara Mills, a former music teacher at the school.

Buterbaugh was unaware that 23 years prior, Mills walked into the room Buterbaugh entered, sat in a chair and died of a heart attack.

"I came here one year after the incident and got to know the dean real well," Cognard said, "He is a credible man and he accepted his secretary's story as gospel."

But there is another version, much more extensive, where the apparent time slip, amazingly, plays only a minor role:

Nebraska's Haunted Colleges

(by Troy Taylor)

Go ahead, read it.

I'll wait...

(The C.C White Memorial building as it was cca 1906 - 1920.
Photo taken from here.)

So, how did you like it?

What I like about this version is that it questions the date of Miss Mills' death. According to them, the most probable date of death is April 12, 1940 (not even remotely close to October 3, 1936).

What I don't like about it (through no fault of the author) is the fact that there is no mention of that ancient summer's day - in October - with breeze wafting through the leaves of long-gone trees.

And yet, it is precisely that purported fleeting view from the window, into a summer long gone, which not only justifies the inclusion of this interesting incident here, but, more importantly, proves - at least in my mind - that Miss Mills, or whoever that apparition was, was not a "ghost".

As I see it, Miss Buterbaugh somehow entered a point in space/time that included that woman's presence (very real at the time - in her own real time). She entered a moment - a summer's day - that, from her perspective, had passed "long ago", but in reality, in the fullness of time, that moment still is. All moments, past and future, still are.

Miss Mills (asuming that it was her presence) may have somehow triggered an apparent "rift" in the spacetime continuum. Or maybe she didn't - maybe something, or somebody, else did.

Was it Miss Mills' memory that Coleen Buterbaugh somehow accessed?

(That's one explanation that Charlotte Moberly offered for her trip extraordinaire.)
The vision of her reaching for a book would speak against that possibility. People do not usually "remember" themselves as they are seen from outside, by another pair of eyes.

Was it somebody else's memory, then?
Who knows.

Was Miss Mills - or somebody else? - reminiscing across time about her office, her daily work?

Or was she, with all of her life, somehow "hardwired" into the apparent separate space/time of that room - eternally present, so to speak? And did Miss Buterbaugh simply (simply?) got the wires of her "now" somehow crossed with the wires of Miss Mills' "now"?

Be it as it may, I have little doubt that Miss Buterbaugh really experienced what she said she had.

But were the presence(s) that she sensed "ghosts"?

Not as I understand them; not unless it is a name for images and other sensory perceptions somehow retrieved from the eternal NOW into the illusion of "present" (illusion in the sense of being separate from that "eternal now", I mean).

I will say this: music being intimately connected with the numerical repartition of time/space, it should come as no surprise that this string of incidents involves a musician.

Many of the physicists and/or mathematicians I know have great talent for music. (Dear old Albert - you know Albert - was a very accomplished violinist. Did you know that? Yes, I know you did. Only the smartest people come here. ;))

And I am almost sure Miss Urania Clara is dancing to the music of the spheres as we speak... in her own former office. In her own former life.

(Honestly: what else would you expect from someone called Urania Clara, I ask you...? ;)

***

* Pun on Miss Mills' middle name not intended - but welcome. ;)

** Somewhat irritatingly, Miss Mills does not appear on this group photo, taken in 1916. Much more unsettlingly, she is not even mentioned in the official catalogue issed by the Department of Music, in April 1916 - or anywhere on that site, for that matter.

For somebody who failed to appear in any photo of the staff, she certainly has a strong presence...

I am not saying that she didn't exist (in case you haven't noticed, the author of the article above gives a precise address for her - see the note at the bottom of the article); all I am saying is that I am yet to find photographic "proof" of her presence at the university.4717 Baldwin Avenue in Lincoln4717 Baldwin Avenue in Lincoln

I anticipate further edits to this post, so do come back at some later date. ;)

EDIT (23. XI. 08): Actually I am not sure that the photo and the catalogue (see note **) were even published by the Wesleyan university - both refer to the University of Nebraska, which was in Lincoln at the time (or so it seems).
The fact remains that her name is not mentioned on that site.
(Nor is Miss Buterbaugh's, for that matter.)

A petrifying forest

I've always loved forests - even as a metaphor - and stories about them, especially enchanted ones. I dont know why, but the sheer concept of »enchanted forest« just sounds somehow right to me. Maybe my subconscious knows a lot more about the real world than my conscious mind does. And »metaphors« may be just half-forgotten truths and facts about the essence of things.

Which is why I was somewhat surprised when I discovered a story about a »forest« I had never heard about: a stone forest in Peru – and »inexplicable« at that.

It's called Marcahuasi (or Markawasi, in the English transcription of the indigenous word), and apparently it is famous among the local population for offering strolls way beyond a normal hike in the woods...

The »forest« itself is worth decades of exploration.
(See here. BTW, does it remind you of anything...?)

But here is the story I wanted to share with you today, because it's directly related to the topic of »time slips«. I am quoting a part of it verbatim, as it was told to Scott Corrales by Raul Rios Centena:

"Several months ago, a patient came to see me about a serious case of hemiplegia. The patient claimed to be 30 years old but was unable to prove it, stating that she'd lost her formal identification card. It was a very strange case of hemiplegia, since upon examination with a CAT (Computerized Axial Tomography) scan, there were neither areas showing bleeding vessels nor any traumatic lesions.

When I began asking questions about the case, the patient told me the following: 'I was at a campground in the vicinity of the ancient stone forest, Markawasi, when I went out exploring late at night with some friends. Oddly enough, we heard the strains of music and noticed a small torch-lit stone cabin. I was able to see people dancing inside, but upon getting closer I felt a sudden sensation of cold which I paid little attention to, and I stuck my head through an open door. It was then that I saw the occupants were clad in 17th century fashion. I tried to enter the room, but one of my girlfriends pulled me out.'

The patient was tugged out by one of her friends, and her body became paralyzed in half precisely as she was drawn out of the 'stone cabin'. My conclusion is that the probable cause behind the hemiplegia is unknown. No medical test was able to ascertain its cause. Nonetheless, an EEG was able to show that the left hemisphere of the brain did not show signs of normal functioning, as well as an abnormal amount of electric waves.

Many Peruvians claim having had contact experiences in Markawasi, while many scholars indicate the existence of a dimensional doorway. No conclusive proof of this exists, of course. Some friends, myself, obviously, and others who have visited the stone forest can attest to the existence of a strange kind of energy. According to those persons having knowledge of this subject, dimensional doorways tend to open and close not necessarily in specific places. The patient is currently undergoing physical rehabilitation in Lima's Arzobispo Loayza National Hospital.

The unanswered question is, of course, what would have happened if her body had entered completely into the stone cabin? Would she have gone into another dimension? I suppose the truth shall be known in the fullness of time."



I suppose it will.

At this point, I have only one question: how did the subject know that the clothes were "in the 17th century fashion"? It's a very specialised piece of information. Of course she could be just that: a specialist, or at least a highly observant "lay" person with a lot of knowledge about the history of clothing. It's not unheard of.

Meanwhile, you can read the rest of the article here.

Or, if you prefer a full book, here's the one for you:

If these walls could sing...

Last night, in the post about Jung in Ravenna, I mentioned that something similar happened to me, too.

It did - only it wasn't a visual "slip".
Instead, I heard something that "logic" tells me couldn't have been there.

It was September 11th or 12th, 1998.
I was visiting a delightful small town by the sea; a town I had visited many times before.
(The absence of geographical names is the result of a "secret pact" with myself: whenever something is precious to me, for whatever reason, I take precautions to preserve it from over-exposure and outer influences by withholding a vital piece of information. And you're welcome to think I am a kook...:))

Around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I climbed a hill to visit an ancient church that stands there, commanding a view over two gulfs. (It's actually just a single gulf, but from the vantage point at the church it looks like two.)

I was happy to be there, and relaxed, as I usually am after the sea air, with all that iodine, gets me. But, climbing that hill, I was also saddened on seeing the obvious neglect of the town by its present population.
And so, when I arrived at the top of the hill and leaned on the parapet in front of the church, observing the skyline merging with the sea, a sense of melancholy took over me as I thought about the town's glorious past.

I like history; I even know a thing or two about it.
I also happen to have a vivid visual imagination.
Which is why it would have been practically impossible for me to resist the temptation of trying to imagine the town as it once was. In my mind, I tried to remove all the baggage of the centuries, all the architectural additions (AKA houses ;)), and see the hills around me as they once were, overlooking the very same sea that I was now hearing, pounding against the rocks far below me.

I turned to look at the church. It was too far "gone" to be envisaged as it once was, what with the additions and remodeling through the centuries (and besides, nobody really knew how it looked when it was first erected, back in the 7th or 8th century). But at least its location hadn't changed in more than a thousand years. Regardless of its looks, people had been climbing that same hill for more than a thousand summers, more than a thousand autumns, more than a thousand Septembers; and, without a doubt, they, too, stopped to catch their breath at the very spot where I was standing at that moment. The sea was the same as then; so were the mountain crests and the hills in the distance; and the sun, all those centuries ago, shone on their hair and cheeks as it shone on mine in September 1998.

My spirits were suddenly lifted; I started to feel cheerful as I hadn't felt in a long time. I realised that nothing could really defeat and destroy the ancient spirit of the city; that the neglect, as destructive as it was, could not reach backwards into time and corrupt what once was. For once something exists, it never ceases to exist: it cannot cease to exist.

I decided to go to the other side of the church, to take in the view of the "other" gulf.

There was a stone bench attached to the church wall. I sat there, leaning on the church wall with abandon, with the back of my head against it. I felt so good... With my sadness and resentment gone, there was nothing to occupy my thoughts - nothing whatsoever. I just wanted to breathe and relax, not thinking, unthinking, almost animal-like. My eyes wandered lazily across the sea and up into the sky and back again.

Then, out of nowhere, I heard music. It seemed to be coming from behind the wall on which my head was resting. I was startled. (The church seemed empty when I had arrived, and I would have heard people arriving to the top of the hill and entering the church.)
I listened intently. Definitely, it sounded as if it were coming from inside the church: a small male choir singing a Gregorian chant - muffled but unmistakable.

For some reason I still find slightly odd, I immediately grabbed my handbag and literally ran to the other side, where the entrance to the church was.

It was just as I thought: there was nobody there.

Nor was the music, for that matter.

I stood still, holding my breath, so I could catch the slightest sound of any movement, anywhere in the church.

Nothing.

And yet, I still stood there for a minute longer, waiting... something.
Then I returned outside and looked all around me: there were no people, either arriving or descending from the hill.

It's been almost ten years, and I still haven't figured out what exactly was that happened on that warm September day.

There is no question of my having "imagined" it. (My mind was almost totally blank at the moment, remember? And even if I had been thinking about the church's history - which I wasn't, certainly not at the time - I would not have thought about music.)

There was no visible or audible tape recorder or any other sound device - or anyone to operate them, for that matter - not in the church not anywhere around it. (The church doesn't have a monastery or any type of dwelling attached; and I didn't have any type of radio or player with me.)

I wasn't under "influence" (alcohol, prescription or OTC drugs of any type) nor was I suffering from any physical or mental condition worth mentioning.


So... what was it?
No, really - I am asking you: what do you think it was?
Send me an email if you think you've found a satisfactory answer. ;)