Is it the fault lines' fault?

Every serious discussion about more or less verified "paranormal" events ends - and sometimes starts - with the big question: what causes these events?
What triggers them?

One of the episodes of the series "Ghosthunters", mentioned in a previous post, for example, presents an interesting (if necessarily tentative) explanation of apparitions in the Severn Valley, in England. (It is the episode called, appropriately, "Spectres of the Severn".) Namely, that the apparitions purportedly witnessed by many people in said valley are to be blamed on the terrain itself, more precisely on the fault lines that run across the valley and the geomagnetic activity that they produce.


Personally, I am quite inclined to believe it. What else but magnetic or electric currents of some description could trigger such unusual visions? After all, everything around us, including our brains (which, I believe, house only a small portion of our Mind - a gate to it, if you will), is electricity - patterns of energy, receptive to all kinds of impulses from the greater "net" into which they are woven and from which they emerge.

Furthermore, I've always been intrigued by the apparent fact (which probably is no such thing, just a firmly anchored subjective impression) that there are countries or lands where reports about "paranormal" events - and that includes folk legends - seem to be more bountiful than elsewhere, notably Great Britain and Japan. (A typical - and typically shortsighted - reponse to such musings is: "Well, they are probably more prone to belief in such things than people elsewhere". Well, if that is so - why is it so?)

I used to suspect that it may have something to do with the vast expanses of water surrounding both of these countries. Water, after all, is among the best conductors of electricity there are.

And it may be so. But the theory that it might be the shifts of tectonic plates activity that affect the neural system is no less fitting. Japan, for example, is criss-crossed by fault lines, being a hotspot for earthquakes.

Whatever the precise cause, I have little doubt that the specific geomagnetic pattern of each place potentially has a measurable effect on the neural system of living beings, perhaps triggering unusual insights into the realities of timespace.

What I find somewhat silly, however, is the often simplistically reductionist view of such interaction.

By now almost everyone - certainly everyone reading this, I dare say - will be familiar with the various experiments involving artificial stimulation of the brain by magnetic and electrical impulses, conducted in the past two decades or so. By stimulating certain areas of the brain (the temporal lobes) researchers were able to trigger what seemed like "mystical" or "paranormal" experiences in the test subjects.

Here is a good compendium of such work by Michael Persinger, a well-known researcher in this field.

Spirituality and the Brain

What I find oddly shortsighted is the failure by many researchers and interpreters of such experiments to realise that identifying the spot in the brain where reaction takes place, and even replicating such an experience by artificial stimulation, does not automatically identify the source of said experiences in the "wild".

(Furthermore, these experiments are not as reproducible as many reports would have you believe. See, for example, the cutely but somewhat annoyingly titled article Electrical Storms Busted as the Source of Ghosts.)

In fact, this type of research fails to answer even the simplest questions. Because it's one thing to poke the brain with a wire (if they can be simplistic, so can I), and another thing to be walking about and suddenly be confronted with, say, the sounds of singing coming out of nowhere (or take practically any experience described in this blog).

Yes, a geomagnetic or electrical impulse of some description is messing with my brain.
But how? Why then and there? Where is it coming from?
Why do some people - people from all walks of life, sometimes a priori skeptical about such phenomena, and often quite oblivious to the possibility of such a thing happening - witness certain events and others don't?

And most importantly: why do "established" (i.e. repeated over time) anomalies always appear more or less the same to all those who witness them, even though they knew nothing about them beforehand (or about each other)?

It is the same question raised by so called "hallucinations".
Yes, they may appear under the influence of some substance... but does that necessarily mean that it is the substance that produces them?
(And we're not talking about delirium tremens, so there's no need to banalise the discussion by dragging it in.)

Or does it perhaps mean that the substance has made the person simply more susceptible to see what actually is there, but unseen in ordinary circumstances?

(This is the question raised by an articulate young clinical psychologist in the episode Spectres of the Severn, above. By the way, this man became a clinical psychologist because of a "paranormal" experience he had had years earlier, along with a few friends of his. It is described in the first episode of the series, Ripples in Time.)


Anyway, if you want to explore such anomalies and their possible sources "scientifically", here's a gadget you don't want to miss:

MADS

And here is a good comprehensive introduction to "paranormal" phenomena:

And finally, to end this on a lighter (?) note - being summer and all - here's an "unscientific" but fun and unpretentious - and ultimately potentially useful - article on fault lines, or "ley lines", and their connection to "paranormal" phenomena, written by someone who had been researching them for more than two decades.

Ley-Lines and their Connection to the UFO

For the record and in the name of intellectual honesty:

In the past few years I have developed a singular distaste for anything involving the terms "UFO" or "alien" and "abduction" in a single sentence.

Which is all the more pity, from my viewpoint, because I vividly remember the soft glow of a gentle, smiling awe that I felt as a child (and even later) whenever I witnessed something extra-ordinary in the skies. And I have seen, more than once, things that definitely appeared to be: a) artificial objects; b) flying, or airborne, to be more precise; and c) unidentified (not just by me).

Were they of extra-terrestrial origin, even if they turned out to be some sort of never-seen-before aircraft?
I honestly don't know.

But I certainly can understand the fascination that UFO hold for so many people.

So, it is not that I dismiss - certainly not entirely - the possibility of (presumably extraterrestrial?) "aliens" descending upon us and abducting unsuspecting citizens, for whatever purpose.
It's just that, faced with the avalanche of dubious reports and intepretations of such experiences, I feel I cannot be bothered with them anymore. I've grown tired of them.

Nevertheless, I decided to include the link above because it gives a good, easy-to-understand account of the phenomenon we're talking about here.
I may add others in the future.

No mere flesh and blood

Today marks the 61st anniversary of the death of Frank Smythe.
(And the interesting thing is I decided to write this entry yesterday, before finding out - just now - that it was the anniversary of his death. Serendipity!)

Smythe was a great mountaineer, one of those rare individuals who thrive on the most extreme challenges.
He was also one of the relatively few mountaineers who openly admitted to have witnessed things that transcend our usual human experience of this world.

Here is one of Smythe's experiences, as described in J. H. Brennan's oft-quoted book Time Travel: A New Perspective (p. 53).

Frank L. Smythe describes how he entered a grassy hollow near Glen Glomach in the Scottish hills and experienced a time slip. He saw a small group of weary men, women, and children stagger into an ambush laid by men wielding spears, axes and clubs. In the resultant massacre, every last member of the group was slaughtered. Smythe was so horrified he ran from the scene.

The interesting thing about this account - it happened in 1940 - is that Smythe was a mountaineer, not an historian [unlike Arnold Toynbee whose experiences are discussed immediately previously in Brennan's book]. He had no particular interest in or knowledge of the spot where the time slip occurred. He did do some research into the area, but only afterwards, as a result of his experience. On the debit side, Smythe was never able to confirm his experience. He discovered two massacres had happened at the spot, but the clothing and weaponry did not match his vision.

The history of mankind being what it is - exceedingly prolific in blood and gore -, it is not at all surprising that not every single massacre would be properly recorded.

But even if it were... what would the confirmation of an event matching Smythe's description tell us? Is there something at that spot, near Glen Glomach - some fault, some "ley line", some source of electromagnetic activity - that would occasionally obliterate the single vision of linear time that is characteristic of our human experience?

View from the Glen Elchaig track towards Glen Glomach
© Copyright Peter Van den Bossche. Taken from here.

Be it as it may, this was not the only odd sight that Smythe witnessed.
Here is a very interesting account of what is, I suspect, all too easily dismissed as the result of oxygen deprivation or whatever.

On June 1 1933, Frank Smythe was as high as anyone had ever climbed. But it would be another 20 years before anyone would stand on the summit. Exhausted after two nights in the so-called "death zone" and emaciated by weeks at high altitude, he began his descent to Camp Six at 27,400ft, where fellow climber Eric Shipton, too ill to climb, lay in a tiny tent waiting for him.

As he made his way down, he began to hallucinate - he was climbing without oxygen - and he had an overpowering feeling that someone was with him. It was so strong, that when he stopped, he divided his mint cake and turned to offer half to his "companion".

Later, he noticed two dark, bulbous objects hovering above him. One had "what looked like squat, underdeveloped wings, whilst the other had a beak-like protuberance like the spout of a teakettle. They distinctly pulsated... as though they possessed some horrible quality of life."

Smythe collected himself enough to do a mental check, naming each of the peaks around him. Then he looked back. The things hadn't moved. A mist drifted in front of them, and, when it cleared, they had vanished.

(From the article "The last 1,000 ft are not for mere flesh and blood", by Simon Smythe, published in The Telegraph, April 8th, 2003.)

Oxygen deprivation?
It is a facile "explanation", and in reality says nothing - certainly not about the event itself.

Frank L. Smythe died on June 27th, 1949, in New Delhi. He was two weeks shy of his 49th birthday.

Wherever he is, I hope he is enjoying himself.

Wotton Hatch Revisited

A comment and a promise from Josh, a kindly visitor to this blog, reminded us of an old favourite that has been covered here in late 2008. All the material for that entry was gleaned from books, most especially from Brennan's Time Travel: A New Perspective, so we only included data that were available in those sources.

But early today, thanks to insomnia and the full moon that kept me happily awake, I found myself watching TV in the early hours of the morning, when an old programme I had totally forgotten about came on: Ghost Hunters.
As I sat watching it, I suddenly remembered that an episode of that series covered the Wotton Hatch incident, among others. I could not remember the title (the first and so far last time I had watched it was in 1996 or 1997), but it didn't take me long to find it.

It is the episode called Ripples in Time. (And it covers not only the Wotton Hatch incident, but starts with another one of our favourites: C. G. Jung's "time slip".)

The "Mr and Mrs Allan" from our post were really a well-known bookshop owner, Eric Barton, and his wife, Irina. And there is much, much more additional - and more importantly, first hand! - information about the whole incident.


Thanks to the magic of the internet, you can watch it here.