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.

Lost (in) time

I have always, even as a child, suspected that there may be something quirky about "time": that it may not be all that it seems to be - or not to be.

But before I discovered the internet, I had no idea that so many other people had occasional... »issues« with time/space. And it took me a relatively long time to google for »lost time« - just to see what would come up (apart from Proust, of course.)

Nor did I have any idea that so many people seem to associate this phenomenon (be it subjective perception or something else) with UFOs and/or with "spirit activity" (scroll down to "lost time").

But the odd occurrence I am about to describe has nothing to do with either "spirits" or UFOs, even if they do come and visit us and/or influence our perception of timespace. That much I (seem to) know.

What exactly it was, I don't know.
You decide.

Salvador Dalí, Soft watch at moment of first explosion, ink on paper, 1954.

It happened one mid-afternoon in the summer of 1999 or 2000.
I was waiting, somewhat impatiently, for a re-run of a TV documentary which was scheduled to start about 25 minutes later.

I checked the hour, turned on the TV to see whether there was any change in programming - no, there wasn't (checked it against the printed programming in the TV guides, too) - and turned it off again to do some work at the PC.

As I sat down to work, I glanced at my PC clock and then at another clock in the living room. (Both were always on time.) I opened a document file... and closed it again, almost immediately (certainly before writing a single word) - I decided I was in no mood for work, after all.

So I got up, sat on the sofa and turned on the TV again - just in case... But of course the documentary I was waiting for was still some 20 minutes away, according to both the schedules and my clocks. And obviously there had been no sudden change in the programming; the channel where the documentary was coming up was still showing a different programme, exactly according to the schedule. I turned the TV off. (Yes, I have this mania of never leaving the TV on if I am not watching - sue me.)

So I got up again and went to the kitchen, to have a drink - but not before checking the hour on my monitor screen and on the other clock. (Needlessly - about a minute, at most, had passed - but automatically.)

I crossed the two or three metres that separate my sofa from the kitchen. I opened the fridge, took out a drink, closed the fridge door and went back to the sofa. Still bored, I switched the TV on again... and there was my documentary, WELL under way!
(How do I know that? Because I had seen the programme before, but had missed the first part of it - that's why I wanted to watch the re-run. What I saw when I turned on the TV was the part I was already familiar with.)

At first, I was incensed (at the TV station, for its highly irregular programming - or so I thought). I took the TV guide again, checked the schedule, checked the clocks... and discovered that, somehow - I have no idea how or when - 20 minutes had passed since I last checked the hour.





What happened there?
Or rather... HOW did it happen?

I have no idea.

I do know that it was NOT a »seizure«, as some people are quick to suggest.
I mean, who on Earth has seizures standing in their kitchen and not even notice it?
Besides, what kind of "seizure" exactly - and I emphasise: exactly, i.e. am asking for a scientifically rigorous definition - would that be, especially considering I had never experienced any before?
(But then, the most »scientific«-sounding explanations are usually the most ridiculous and in-credible ones. The often flippant tone that comes with them doesn't help either.)

I was under no influence of drugs (don't use them), alcohol (I rarely keep even a drop of booze in my home, and that wasn't one of those rare occasions), or any type of medications. As far as I can remember, I had slept normally the night before.

The weather, by the way, wasn't unusual in any way - not that I can remember. (I mention this because an electrically charged atmosphere seems to be much more conducive to time/space anomalies.)

Whatever it was that happened, I do know I am by no means the first, the last or the only person to have experienced this.
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of accounts of this kind.
To read more about such experiences, go here and here.
(And if you had one yourself, be sure to drop us a line.)

But if you'd rather forgo timespace speculation and invest your time in Marcel Proust's quest (always a wise investment, if you ask me), go here.
It is a totally delightful website; I could not recommend it warmly enough. The time you spend there, or indeed with Proust himself, may be lost - but never wasted.

Dark pitch

After several of our cunning plans to trick the authors of the spam siege against our "time slip" mailbox went awry, we recently discovered that a few of our readers have experienced unseemly "time slips" of their own - thanks to us and to our apparent callous unresponsiveness...

There is no way we can express our regret for this time (banana) slip. But we can - and gladly will - publish some of the best personal accounts sent in by readers.

What follows - verbatim - is a personal account from S. E., England.
(And it is almost exemplary in its completeness. It's not often that people record the weather - even though they absolutely should!)

Photo: The Unpredictables, 2006

In their own words...

"DATE: I can only be very vague. It was possibly 1994, in either late spring or summertime.

TIME: early evening, it would have been around about 6.40 to 6.45pm.

LOCATION: a cricket pitch in the grounds of a mental hospital in central England (it was a mainly staff cricket team but with additional friends & family to make up the numbers - my father had got me involved - I swear I wasn‘t a patient!!).

WEATHER: a storm had recently passed over no more than an hour earlier. It had left the ground quite wet but the sun was now out and it had become a pleasant evening.


Unsure if the rainstorm would mean the cricket training for that day was cancelled or not, I decided to chance-it and made my way to the ground arriving at the cricket pitch around 6.30pm. In the middle of the pitch there was a rope held up by small poles which marked off the main playing area (the square) and was designed to discourage people from entering there in order to preserve the playing surface.

As I arrived, I saw that someone had lifted several of the poles from their holes and dropped them on the ground (it wasn’t unusual for things like this to happen - the very nature of the hospital meant that patients would often do quite odd things for no apparent reason). I made my way to the middle of the pitch and replaced each pole (there were only 5 or 6 of the 8 poles removed) and looped the rope back onto some of the poles as it’d become dislodged.
Having done this, I continued across the pitch to the far side where there were two small huts a small distance apart, one of which was used as a changing room (Hut 1) and one of which was used for storage (Hut 2).

Nobody else had so far arrived so after a few minutes I was pleased to see a friend of mine arrive on his bicycle. Cycling around the pitch, he dismounted and leant his bike up against Hut 1 on the side which faced Hut 2.

After some discussion we agreed that it appeared training had been cancelled, however with 20 minutes or so until opening time at our local social club (where the team met after training), we decided to try and find a ball we could toss to one another to kill some time. My friend decided to search in the hedgerow where we were knew many balls had been lost in the past while I tried my luck at forcing entry to Hut 2.

The door to the hut to was a split door - rather like you’d find in a stable - and being wooden and exposed to the elements wasn’t in good condition. Using a stick I was able to prise the two door sections apart and push the lock on the inside of the bottom half of the door open allowing me to crawl inside.
I knew there was a kit-bag under a table to my left, so crawled that way and fumbled around in the darkness for 30 seconds or so until success, I found what I’d been looking for. However, I could feel it was a bit gnarled and old and generally not in good condition and after backing out the way I came and back into the light, this was confirmed.

Standing up, I turned to face the pitch and was a little puzzled. The sky had darkened and there were now grey clouds rather than it’s previous sunny blueness. The poles in the middle of the pitch I had returned to their holes not 10 or 15 minutes earlier were once again on the floor and in exactly the same positions they‘d been in as I first arrived.
Turning to my right I could see that my friend’s bike was now gone. I quickly scanned the hedgerow but he was not in sight and moving toward Hut 1, I could see through the windows neither he or the bike were on the far side of the hut. I looked to see if he was cycling away but there was no sign whatsoever.

At the time, I was unable to grasp what I was seeing and assumed it to be a practical joke being played on me. I felt very angry over the events - probably more so than was reasonable and I recall swearing before heading back to Hut 2 and crawling back inside to return the ball I’d found.
Backing out of the hut once again I stood back up into sunshine, turning to see the poles back in their holes. My friends bike was once again against Hut 1 and he was coming from the hedgerow having given up his search.
I remember asking him what he was playing at and why he’d moved his bike and the poles, not once but twice. My mind initially seemingly ignored the sudden weather changes and the shortness of time in which he’d had to carry out the supposed practical joke! Of course, he could only deny any wrongdoing but he had experienced some oddities…
In conversation as we left the pitch my friend told me that while searching the hedge he’d noticed a sudden change in the weather, that it’d become gloomy and cold. He’d also turned to witness me come forward from Hut 2, take a look around for a few moments (including looking right at him), mutter something and return to the hut.

Over the years I’ve tried to explain the events of those few minutes without success and a time slip is the closest to an explanation I’ve ever come. And if I did experience one, how far backwards I saw I cannot say, though it was more likely minutes or hours rather than days or years. Whatever it was, it was highly unusual."

***

It certainly was unusual in the sense that such things do not happen - or are perceived - very often. But within the context of timespace distortions it sounds quite typical: the "unsettled" weather, especially, seems to have played a role, even though one can only guess how.
Was this oddity in the perception of timespace somehow influenced by the discharge of the storm that had recently passed?
Did this discharge perhaps affect the neural paths - and thus the perception of timespace - of those involved?
It does seem more than a coincidence that such experiences are often - albeit not always - associated with stormy weather. (See, for example, this story; or this one.)

More (speculation, of course ;) on the possible influence of electricity on neurons in a future post.

Time flies... faster than you think

Don't tell me that you haven't noticed it yourself: years becoming ever shorter and shorter and shorter, even though each one of them still has exactly 365 days (and this year even an extra second)?

Whether you have or you haven't, it doesn't really matter right now. This pedestrian time-keeping talk is a red herring - it has nothing to do (or so it seems) with the subject of tonight's... flight of fancy. ;)

Flight of fancy... Indeed, I am sure most "time slip" accounts are called just that - unless the person who experienced such a "slip" happens to be somebody with untarnished reputation for clear and logical thinking as well as personal integrity, both before and after the purported event.

Sir Victor Goddard was such a person.

He had joined the Royal Navy at the tender age of thirteen (in 1910); eight years later, in 1918, he entered the RAF (the Royal Air Force) - in fact, he is considered one of the founding fathers of the RAF- and worked his way up to the rank of Air Marshal.

We know now that even in his early youth he saw - or thought he did, anyway - more than usually meets the eye (more on that later). But whatever his experiences and view of the world, they evidently never obstructed his grasp on reality, needed to progress as he did in his professional career. If there were any unusual experiences during his first fifteen or twenty years of service in the RAF, nothing is known of them.

And then came a day in 1935 (some sources say 1934), when Goddard, flying alone over Scotland towards Andover, flew his Hawker Hart biplane into a gathering giant thunderstorm.

(If you're asking why didn't he check the weather forecast before departure - oh yes, people really do ask this question! - I'll remind you we are talking about Scotland: if you wait for "fair weather", you might never get off the ground.)

Hawker Hart biplanes at Andover (1931 footage)

In those circumstances, there was little that even an experienced airman such as Goddard could do, except land in the nearest airfield. And it so happened there was one nearby: the RAF training airfield Drem. Built in 1917, it had been abandoned, and its runways were badly damaged; but even a damaged runway was better than nothing, Goddard thought (I assume). He knew the terrain well, so even without sophisticated equipment he was able to steer his plane in the general direction of Drem. Flying low, he soon spotted familiar landmarks and then, in the distance, the abandoned airfield itself.

But then, when he was less than a mile away from the airfield, the weather suddenly changed: the heavy clouds parted and rays of brilliant sunshine flooded the landscape.

Still intent on landing, Goddard looked for the runway.

It was there.

But the Drem airfield wasn't.

Or so Goddard thought.

The abandoned hangars and buildings looked freshly refurbished; and the runway was teeming with activity: men in blue overalls - instead of the customary brown - were busy painting airplanes yellow (a fact that confused Goddard more than anything, as he had never seen training planes in any other colour than silvery grey).

In fact, they were so busy that nobody even looked up, towards the incoming airplane.

Goddard circled the airfield. He was now flying at 50 feet, to get a better look at the miraculously restored runways and buildings.

And still nobody looked up.

But then, except for the roaring airplane flying in circles above them, they had no reason to look up: the sky had cleared. The storm was nowhere to be seen.

In view of the considerably improved weather conditions, Goddard climbed back to the normal altitude and resumed his flight towards Andover, his original destination.

Upon return to his base, he checked the current status of the Drem training field: it was indeed abandoned, in disrepair, deserted.

Five years later, in 1938 or 1939, Goddard returned to Drem, this time with a mission to rebuild the ruins into a top-quality training airfield. (The country was already preparing for the eventuality of a war with Germany.)

The runways were repaired, the installations refurbished; and when the airfield finally opened, it was once again full of military training airplanes - now painted bright yellow. And the mechanics were now wearing blue overalls. (Presumably they were also more responsive to Goddard's presence than in 1935.)

Goddard's circling had come full circle.

So there you have it: an in-credible story told by an apparently very credible man.

A man, however, who supposedly had other extraordinary experiences of this type both before and after this extraordinary flight. One such experience was even made into a film, The Night My Number Came Up (1955, starring Michael Redgrave); and Goddard's ghost photo is one of the very few such artifacts around that have yet to be satisfactorily "debunked", as the horrid word goes.

Still, if you know anything at all about aviation, about piloting airplanes (not to mention military aircraft), you know that it calls for people with a steady mind. Airy-fairy (excuse the pun) characters most likely wouldn't last a day in the air.

(Which is the reason why so many professional pilots speak up about purported unexplained events they had witnessed only after they have retired - i.e. when they cannot be sacked on the grounds of "mental instability" or whatever the verdict would be. About this see Martin Caidin's wonderful - only one dud! - book Ghosts of the Air: True Stories of Aerial Hauntings. The present account of Goddard's adventure owes much to his delightfully detailed description.)

Was Victor Goddard such a person?

Certainly his career and public reputation point to a man who was clearly in control of himself and of his surroundings. And those who knew him (so I am told) were adamant in that he was an unimpeachable character.

But does it even matter? After all, couldn't anyone, even the most "level headed" of people, happen to have an event of what appears to be a diminished grasp of the so-called objective reality"?

I suppose so; but there is no way of ascertaining the "truth" in questions as vague as that. Far too many parametres are unknown, unidentified, perhaps even misidentified.
On a purely psychological level, what is an "objective" or "steady" (or whatever one may call it) mind? How do you define it, how do you measure it? And of course, what is the "objective reality"? How do you measure that? Are we really familiar with the rules it obeys? How can we know that even within the apparent frame of objective reality we really do have the same perception of the same phenomena?

Whatever the "true" nature of reality (if there is a single "true" nature at all), Goddard thought this question intriguing - and important - enough to dedicate the last part of his life to researching the realms of the invisible and sharing his thoughts with others. He even wrote a book about his extraordinary experience. Its title sounds like a very appropriate response to all those who undoubtedly must have called his experiences "flights of fancy".

Goddard called his book - Flight Towards Reality. ;)

I suspect he was right.