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Trollers Gill

2005-07-01T12:35:05+02:00

Long before the Christian Church came to these islands and forbad belief in and communing with The Little People, the native population had a strong association with Fairies, Elves, Boggarts and any other number of elemental beings that were thought to inhabit the landscape around them.

Many folklore theoreticians today believe that the origins of these beliefs could go back to Stone Age cultures. They were certainly very strong in the Celtic communities of the British isles and lasted up until relatively recently in Ireland.

The folklore of Britain and Ireland has long fascinated me but recently it has begun to absorb me more than ever as I try to understand why the once widespread acceptance of faery folk should have all but died away.

It was this in mind that led me to plan a trip to Troller’s Gill near Skipton. Many years after the Celts populated these lands the Vikings came with a novel mix of trade and violent invasion. They settled widely in the north of England and their legacy remains in the many Norse place names that survive. Would you believe that Troller’s Gill is Old Norse for Troll’s arse ravine?

It is described as a sinister ravine, the home of the Barguest, (a terrifying spectral dog, said to have eyes as big as saucers). The caves and crannies of the gorge are believed to be the haunt of Trolls, bloodsucking Gnomes, flesh eating Boggarts, gargoyle like rock Sprites, deranged Goblins, predatory Pixies, maliciously twisted Imps and other nasties! On the face of it a trip to the place shouldn’t be confused with pleasant.

But despite several websites declaring the location too unnerving to be visited alone I was sceptical; after all climbers are keen to test their skills on the challenging rock faces and have their own dedicated websites recommending Troller’s Gill. Even more comforting was my youngest son’s robust assertion that: “Trolls don’t suck blood”

When does a paranormal Odyssey merge into a lovely family day out? I would contend that it came pretty close to doing so today. The sun shone throughout and the agreeable weather brought out those wanting to commune with nature and stretch their legs on such a fine Sunday in July. Unfortunately the little groups of people and the glorious sunshine did little to imbue Troller’s Gill with any kind of eldritch milieu. It was a beautiful place, no doubt and the views across the dales before you enter the gorge were stunning but I never once felt that a Troll was about to roll a boulder onto my head or that a deranged Goblin would attack me without warning!

Despite all that I did stop to reflect that the belief in the presence of all these awful faery folk at this particular spot would have persisted for centuries, probably a lot longer and this got me thinking about the nature of such entities.

There are a number of theories concerning faery belief and it’s decline. Modern psychology has suggested that a small percentage of the population exhibit what is known as ‘fantasy proneness’. Proposed by Wilson and Barber the theory allows for a around 4% of the adult population to be able to fantasise to such a degree that they begin to believe that they are experiencing ghosts, fairies aliens etc. Today such people may be eyed with suspicion but in more ancient cultures these highly imaginative people would have just as likely been revered a seers.

Another theory is that The Little People are in fact elemental beings that can transmute into any form they choose. In yesteryear they would appear as a Sprite or Elf, today it is more likely to be a UFO or alien being.

My personal favourite is the concept of the thought form; a psychological projection from the subconscious mind. This form is then maintained by a group belief or collective unconscious.

As for Troller’s Gill I’m going back there when the weather isn’t so clement and the absence of day trippers lends a more brooding presence to this undoubtedly remarkable place. To see it in fog or mist or when dusk starts to fall on an autumn afternoon would be an altogether different experience.

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Stocksbridge Bypass

2005-07-01T12:27:50+02:00

Heavy drizzle greeted me when I packed my camera, tripod and other accoutrements into the car in readiness for my journey down to Stocksbridge in South Yorkshire. To be more accurate it was the infamous Stocksbridge bypass that interested me and in particular the point at which a small lane crosses it by means of a bridge.

As I sped down the M1 in the rain and spray the car stereo played R.E.M. and Michael Stipe sang:

“I’m breaking through,
I’m bending spoons,
I’m keeping flowers in full bloom,
I’m looking for answers from the great beyond.”

OK, so the sentiments may have seemed just a tad ambitious; presumptuous even, but it felt like a good omen on only my second leg of the Odyssey.

I figured it would be best to exit the motorway at junction 37 and head west towards Thurlstone before taking one of the many minor roads south towards Stocksbridge. I had never been to the area before and this was probably not the best way to approach this particular town if you are not sure where you are going.

It seems to be a peculiarity of the area that rather than have signposts at road junctions the roads themselves have names, which is kinda cute but did little to help me read my Ordnance Survey map.

But why, I hear you ask, am I wandering around the southern Pennines in inclement weather looking for a bridge? It’s a fair question and I will briefly explain.

Under the section ‘Ghosts and Hauntings’ on this site I have written in some depth on the remarkable events that have occurred in this outwardly unremarkable area of land in the last two decades, but the salient points are these;

In 1987 the bypass that now skirts the edge of Stocksbridge was nearly completed but the bridge that takes Pearoyd lane over the new road was still under construction. In September of that year there occurred events that terrified four mature men not used to chance encounters with the paranormal.

The first two witnesses were security guards who worked for Constant Securities. On the night of 7th September they drove up to the half finished bridge as they were accustomed to doing. The bridge was constructed in such a way so as to make it impossible for children to climb onto the structure. In other words there was no way up or down. Despite this, the lights from their Landrover picked out a figure on the top of the bridge and the beam seemed to go right through the form. They also described their Landrover as being bounced around. Shortly before they had reached the bridge the men noticed a small group of children dancing around the foot of a pylon, dressed in ‘old fashioned clothes’. This, it should be stressed, was at 12.30 at night.

The profound effect it had on the two guards was far reaching. They had sought help from the church and it wasn’t long afterwards that both men had left their employment.

Police Constables Walton and Bellamy (names changed) were the next witnesses to the disturbing events and theirs was an experience even more unsettling than that of the security guards. The police had been contacted by one of the guards, their boss Michael Lee and the local vicar Stuart Brindley but they were powerless to do much of consequence.

However the two constables did take a drive up to the Pearoyd Lane bridge on the following Saturday night. The moon was almost full and the night was clear as they parked up the police Vauxhall. After noticing some unexplained movement on the bridge that then ceased the policemen sat and waited a few minutes with Constable Walton winding his window down. He described what happened next as, experiencing a feeling as if someone had walked over his grave, and he froze as if he knew something was about to happen. It was.

PC Walton had the distinct feeling that there was someone standing next to the car. He looked round to see the torso of a figure standing right against the driver’s door. He noticed that it seemed to be dressed in clothes from some time past, possibly Victorian, sporting a cravat and what might have been a waistcoat. The face too was momentarily visible.

The apparition could not have approached the car without being noticed and neither could it have instantly relocated on the passenger side of the car, which is what it did.

The final straw for PC’s Walton and Bellamy was the car being struck hard from the rear or side. At this point they drove hurriedly away.

These incidents are but two of many that have been reported in the district, many of which are related in my other thread. It seems clear to me that something in the surrounding landscape is in some way responsible for this focus of strange goings on. I have discussed before the ‘disturbance of land’ factor that may possibly activate hauntings of various kinds but I was struck by something else on this visit that could also be implicated.

You cannot help but notice the high tension power lines in the area. They criss-cross the landscape in an untidy tangle, straddling hill and dale. Very close to the scene of the hauntings is an electricity sub station.

The research carried out by Michael Persinger has demonstrated that strong electrical fields passed across the temporal lobes of the brain will sometimes engender a sensation of a presence. It has been suggested however that the strength of the fields necessary to bring about such effects could not be generated by these cables. I tend to agree but the electromagnetic activity in the atmosphere of such an environment must be considerable.

Can you spot the flaw in this theory about electro magnetic fields, especially in relation to the stories I have just recounted? Well I have just spotted one. In both stories there were two witnesses who experienced the same phenomena.

But let’s play around with the electro magnetic question. What if the fields generated were used by entities from other realms to manifest themselves in our reality. Or a middle way; the EM fields do affect our brains, not by causing subjective hallucinations but by enabling us to experience ghosts that would otherwise remain hidden.

With the drizzle almost stopped I found Pearoyd Lane and followed it to the bridge where the above tales took place. It turned out to be an unprepossessing location, smaller than I had imagined, both the bridge and the bypass. Below was the steelworks that dominates that part of the town, above was the upland area known as Green Moor.

Although I was on the pennines it is quite different here than in the Dales further north. Here the exposed rock and the dry stone walls are blackened by centuries of heavy industry. The little dales are populated by towns and villages that scramble up the hills and then give way to isolated farmsteads and fields of livestock. There is definitely a forlorn feeling about the area. I could quite imagine that at night time or in fog it could turn altogether more perturbing.

Since writing previously on Stocksbridge I have learned that the area around Pearoyd Lane has long held a reputation for being strange and unearthly.

I would have liked to wander along the public footpath near the bridge on Pearoyd Lane and explore some more of the myriad of tiny roads that meander across the hills but time was against me. Reluctantly I turned the car around and headed back whence I came.

The hauntings in the area have quietened down in the last few years it seems and I didn’t really expect to experience much but I’m glad I went and had a look at the spot where one of the most alarming true ghost stories occurred in recent times.

And if you are wondering who took the photographs of Earl Tosti on his car and at Pearoyd Lane, well there was this quiet guy off to a fancy dress do in Dickensian togs. I asked him to take the snap and he duly obliged…..never uttered a word mind. Odd.

Toby - paranormal researcher

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Spofforth Castle

2005-07-01T12:21:50+02:00

Spofforth is a small village on the A661, situated midway between Wetherby and Harrogate. It is a pretty place with many attractive houses but most of the travellers that drive through Spofforth never think of stopping and having a closer look. If they did they might be pleasantly surprised. There is an interesting church and a charming pub, but of greatest interest to me is the ruined Manor house, better known as Spofforth Castle.

The ruins are approached by walking up the expansive green that affords an impressive view long before you reach your goal. I had decided to make my visit on a rainy Thursday probably because I knew I may have the place to myself and definitely because the atmosphere would be more charged. I wasn’t wrong.

The history of the house is interesting but not spectacular. William de Percy was granted 86 lordships in the north of England by his friend King William after the conquest in 1066. Spofforth became the home of the Percy’s until they moved their power base to Alnwick in the north east in the fourteenth century. The Percy’s lost the house and lands after backing the losing side in the Wars of the Roses but regained them again in 1559. The house was last inhabited in 1604 and was destroyed in the Civil War half a century later.

Today the ruins you see are mainly fifteenth century. One strange peculiarity of the building is the fact that the undercroft is built into the solid rock face. The hall which would have been above the undercroft was obviously impressive in its size and there is fashionable gothic tracery still to be seen above the large windows.

Of course it has a ghost, only one as far as I know. She is supposed to be a young maiden who took her own life by throwing herself off the tower to the ground beneath. The vision of her final action on this earth has been seen on several occasions. In 1969 some children and their teacher witnessed the fall and in 1973 two picnickers saw the same awful apparition. It is said that the spectre is bluish white in colour, and most srange of all, can only be seen from the waist up. There are also reports of her wandering around in the ruins themselves.

More important to me at the time though was the lack of shelter. I spent some time dodging the frequent and heavy showers that reminded me of the vagaries of the British summer. Certainly I had the place to myself and it was drab and gloomy in a rather satisfying way. There are tall trees that block out the light from one side and the built upon rock face on the other presenting a slight claustrophobic vibe. I took a number of pictures none with anything anomalous appearing on them unfortunately. Inevitably I kept looking up to the well preserved tower and imagined I might, with luck, witness the tragedy that presumably befell that young woman so many years ago.

After soaking up as much rain as the heavens could throw at me I reckoned it was time to get back to the protection of the car. Reason told me that on a hot bright day Spofforth Castle would be a cheery place to have a family picnic or spend a couple of hours sketching its romantic dilapidation but on this damp and dreary day it felt only sad and rather forlorn.

I will return to Spofforth because it is not far away and may well be haunted.I know that people have captured photo anomalies here so I am determined to persist with this promising location.

Toby

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Toby's odyssey - A journey across Yorkshire

2005-07-01T12:10:58+02:00

The Oxford English Dictionary defines an Odyssey as, ‘a long and eventful or adventurous journey or process.’

My aim over the coming weeks and months is to embark on such a journey across Yorkshire searching out the spookiest and most enigmatic places in the hope or capturing something inexplicable to intrigue those who read my reports and to convince me that there are, in the words of Hamlet to his friend:

“…more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt off in your philosophy.”
Hamlet, act 1, sc 5. 1.166

But as the OED suggests, an Odyssey can be a process as well and I would like to think that during my travels I will learn something about ghosts and hauntings through continued reading and empirical evidence. Those who have read my musings on the unexplained on Jules’s site may have noticed that I’m not big on ‘experts’ when it comes to the paranormal. If the evidence doesn’t fit the theory then change or abandon the theory. The trouble with the paranormal is that the evidence pulls in every which way. This doesn’t mean we should discard reasoned argument and debate but there is something to be said, for now and again, taking a step back and marvelling at the wonderful mysteries that are ghosts and hauntings.

I want to have fun too and try to convey that sense of fun to the reader. It is a mad activity this paranormal research in the field. I will get wet, cold and tired. I will experience nothing in many locations. I may get discouraged at times. But I will continue because it’s what I have always dreamed of doing. I’m hoping to be amazed, awestruck, and yes, even frightened.

Follow me on this journey into the biggest and most varied of counties, Yorkshire, where the landscape and historic buildings tell a thousand stories and the past may well come back to visit us from realms we can only dream about.

Toby

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Investigation somewhere that isn't haunted

2005-06-30T17:43:57+02:00

Now, this could be scientific lol. I would be interested if anyone has conducted a paranormal investigation in a location that has no hauntings whatsoever, has no history to it even. It could possibly be your own house!

Could it be possible to still capture, so called orbs, evp’s movement of trigger objects?? This could not only be an experiment to find out what spirits regularly visit there, but also, to find that these anomalies are common everywhere no just haunted places.

Try setting up a locked off camera in a spare room. Hold a séance in your attic space, place trigger objects in your bathroom and put a voice triggered dictaphone in your living room when you go on your summer holidays. Honestly, you never know what you may find.

Good Luck

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The nature of ghosts - Author Paul Lee

2005-06-29T16:58:44+02:00

Science, Not Superstition:
The Nature of Ghosts
A Review of the Evidence Part 1
by Paul Lee

Despite many thousands of reports of apparitions since the beginning of history, the evidence for the paranormal remains very sketchy. It is not too hard to see why this is, and why sceptics remain to be convinced; the main reason is a lack of tangible, tabulated evidence. Ghosts stories are almost purely anecdotal, and seem to be very personal experiences. They also mostly seem to focus on trivial, mundane events, which is remarkable when we are often told that ghosts are imprints of violent etc. behaviour committed in the past and this somehow becomes imprinted upon the environment. We can only presume that many people have died from the mundane, for instance how many times have you read a ghost story where a figure is seen in the middle of the night, walk across the room to the window and vanish?
We all seem to love a good ghost story, but they are sources of frustration. Very little time has been spent trying to understand the nature of ghosts- why do we see them? and what are they? In an era of dwindling science grants and the lack of objective enthusiasm by scientists (particularly in the field of spontaneous casses in parapsychology), sadly, this is one status quo that will be maintained. The burden of providing proof lies with the amateur and his trusty range of secondhand, or custom-built equipment.
Tantalising pieces of experimental evidence and observations have given us a few clues, but, to quote one drama serial, "a ghost is a mass of data waiting for a correct interpretation". It is fair to mention another quote (which I hope I will report reasonably accurately): "In the world of parapsychology, we not only await an Einstein, but an Aristotle." An excellent comment indeed on crude knowledge that we have into understanding the nature of ghosts.
For the sake of discussion, let us assume that you do believe in ghosts, either by faith, religious or otherwise, or by actually seeing one. You do not need convincing. Now, do ghosts occur "all in the mind" as many critics have cruelly suggested, or do they occur in the enviroment? Hopefully, in the discussion that follows, you will be intrigued as I am and will hopefully want to learn more of these elusive apparitions.
Those who dismiss ghosts as being a figment of the mind have one compelling piece of evidence on their side: the seeming lack of interplay between spirits and their enviroment: on the whole, they do not move things around or communicate with witnesses although there are of course exceptions to this. One could easily create a theory that accounts for the movement of objects by psychokinetic abilities on the part of the observer, or poltergeist phenomena but this is hardly satisfactory since, to quote Fortean researchers Janet and Colin Bord excellent maxim, it attempts to explain one mystery by invoking another. Furthermore, ghosts rarely appear on film or videotape; again, there are exceptions to this. Even with infra-red imaging equipment the chances of successfully recording a ghost on film or tape is remote. Of interest are of those cases where, of many people in a group, only a few see the apparition, the others excitedly asking "what do you see?" One may attempt to use 'mass hysteria' or 'mass hallucination' as one possible explanation but for it to be remarkably selective and for people to see the same thing, unprompted by others, is intriguing to say the least. Also, sometimes video/film equipment does record something. I should also point out here that sometimes cameras have picked up images when even humans don't see anything at all, and others times the reverse situation is true.

Written by Paul Lee

Paul Lees The Nature of Ghosts part 2

The most widely touted theory regarding ghosts is known as "The Stone Tape" theory, made popular by the excellent BBCtv drama production shown in 1972, and written by Nigel Kneale (the creator of "Quatermass" in the 1950s). In this dramatisation, a group of scientists realise that the image and sounds of the ghost is stored materially in the fabric of an old room and that people sensitive to the recording can play it back in their heads- a fascinating idea since it presupposes that everyone's reaction to the 'ghost' is different- "like eyesight or hayfever". The production is also noteworthy for predicting the digital revolution many years early.
"The Stone Tape" theory relies on no 'external' ghost- everything is perceived in the mind, and nothing can be recorded or analysed on their equipment. Such a 'ghost' would follow a predetermined course of action- walking the same path as in life, although how the recording comes to be imprinted on stone is an interesting theoretical question!
This explanation does have many parallels with 'real' ghost-stories; the apparition that walk through walls where doors used to be, climb up steps that no longer exist etc. The most spectacular cases of this are at The Treasurer's House in York (where a worker in the basement saw a legion of Roman soldiers, whose legs were cut off at the ankles- the current level of the ground), Westminster Abbey (where a priest is seen walking an inch or two above the ground, marking the settling of the ground since he 'died') and Bell Lane in Enfield, London (where a phantom stagecoach allegedly rushes along - 6 feet above the ground).
Of relevance here is a passage that appeared last year in the New York Times on-line magazine. It recounted how audio experts were trying to uncover the erased 18 1/2 minute segment from one of President Nixon's Watergate tapes. Using digital technology, and a knowledge of the original media, it may be possible to at least partially restore some of the excised material. Very interesting, but what has this to do with ghosts? The following quote may explain the matter:
"One of the more peculiar theories about sound was developed hypothetically some 30 years ago. A technician named Richard Woodbridge III coined the phrase "acoustic archaeology" in the August 1969 issue of Proceedings of the I.E.E.E. (the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers". Woodbridge theorised hat there were many occasions when sound might innocently get scooped out of the air and preserved. For example, when an ancient potter typically held a flat stick against a rotating pot, he was accidentally (and crudely) recording into the clay the sounds around him. Woodbridge wrote about experiments he performed pulling basic noises off a pot. Another experiment involved setting up a canvas and then talking while making different brush strokes.
'This is to record the finding of a spoken word in an oil portrait,' Woodbridge wrote. The word was "Blue" and was located in a blue paint stroke - as if the artist was talking to himself or to the subject. Parenthetically, the search was long and tedious. The principle, however, was established."
This may have an overlap with ghosts: A possible example of such a possible pseudo-tape recording occurred in 1982, when the landlord at the Prince of Wales inn at Kenfig in Mid-Glamorgan (Wales) complained of the sound of organ music and voices. When he had retired for the night. John Marke, an electrical engineer and Allan Jenkins, an industrial chemist, connected electrodes to the wall of the pub after closing time one night. They fed 20,000 volts across the electrodes and locked tape recorders in the room for four hours. Reports in books later described voices (speaking in old Welsh), organ music and a clock ticking (though there was no clock in the room at the time). It was mentioned a few years back that the stones in the wall contain may contain similar substances to those found in modern tape. One unanswered question remains however; would the sounds have occurred in the room anyway even if the scientists hadn't pumped 20,000 volts into the wall? - in short, had a control experiment been performed?

Paul Lees The Nature of Ghosts part 3

This Stone Tape evidence suffered a blow in later years when I learned from Dr.Melvyn Willin (who has a doctorate in Parapsychology and Music) that technicians at the now-defunct BBC Radiophonic Workshop, described the Prince of Wales pub sounds as being akin to distortion and feedback, perhaps caused by the nearby presence of a very large transformer required to create the hefty voltages required. Certainly, having heard extracts from the tape, the sounds resemble flatulent elephants, not clocks ticking etc.! John Marke said, shortly after the 1982 recordings, that BBC Newsnight, and TV crews from Japan and Canada had filmed the experiments under controlled conditions with "surprising results" (although it is not clear what he means by this). Furthermore, Marke elucidated that he had performed experiments of a similar nature at the Jolly Sailor pub in Porthcawl. If anyone knows the outcome of this experiment, please let me know.
Another major problem for the Stone Tape theory is: just where are the data required for playback stored? This poses no problem for buildings, where the fabric remains more-or-less in situ, but what about the reports of phantoms on battlefields, or brand new housing estates? The ground must have been worked thousands of times, hedges and trees uprooted and planted, so where is the "ghost" information stored? Mike White, an ASSAP member suggested that it might actually be recorded in deep lying strata, deep beneath the surface. Of course, this might tie in nicely with Paul Devereux's hypothesis of "Earth Lights" being the product of tectonic plate stresses. And David Taylor, Parasearch chairman, has made the connection between recent earth tremors in the Dudley area and its population of ghosts. One satellite TV show ("Ghost Hunters- Spectres of the Severn") even made the connection between the ghosts in Gloucesterhsire (e.g. The Ancient Ram Inn) being linked to its series of local fault lines. This programme has suggested the possible link between high rates of spectral appearances and geological fault lines; the evidence was intriguing, but faulty, since no control of non-fault areas was performed. The idea is that somehow the stresses in the Earth causes bursts of electro-magnetism, and this affects eyewitness perceptions. An acquaintance has also suggested this link, but has suggested that the natural conductivity of the surrounding ground may also play a part in somehow causing phantoms some distance away from an earth tremor or fault line. If this phantom-fault line connection is proven, then the mechanism will still be a mystery: is it simply due to the natural effect of electricity and magnetism on the brain, or some unknown force?
The "Stone Tape" theory does not explain those instances where ghosts communicate with the observer (sometimes being able to understand a foreign language), but one could always explain this as due to telepathy, which, conveniently does not seem to be a quantifiable subject under current undertanding of physical laws! Also a mystery are those cases that seem to incorporate a 'sentient' ghost, and in this category one could include Poltergeists, which love to put on a good show for the obsevers, but only once recording media (video, tape recorders etc.) have been turned off or directed elsewhere.
One seemingly obligatory feature of paranormal manifestation seems to be a sudden drop in temperature, or a very localised zone of cold air - the so-called "cold spot". Again, this is sometimes real and is measureable on a thermometer, and other time it seems to be a perceived effect. One idea is that the ghost is somehow extracting energy from the air. Alternately, the "cold spot" may not be real and may simply be an artefact of the way the human body reacts to such things, such as shivering uncontrollably when in a state of shock, for instance. Incidentally, a story I vaguely recall from a few years back refers to the fact that one ghost would shift locations to another room if an ioniser was left activated in its original haunted location; more recently, a mention in a Ghost club circular referred to a build-up of static electricity during a vigil. A friend once related how, during an otherwise uneventful vigil, a digital multimeter (used by, for example, car mechanics and electricians to measure electrical conductivity, voltage etc.) registered a massive surge just before a crash was heard to emanate from an empty room. Alas, I cannot recall which electrical property (voltage, current or resistance) showed the "spike". How all these enviromental effects affect, or are affected by ghosts is an open area for research.
More recently, and very excitingly, a new avenue of research comes from Vic Tandy at Coventry University. He has found that infra-sound (at around 19 Hz) causes the human eye to vibrate almost imperceptably, but causing a feeling of "being watched" as it causes a distortion in the peripheral vision. You wouldn't feel the vibration (it is so subtle) but it would cause unease, not just in the eye but in the stomach too (19 Hz being close to the natural frequency of the human body, as reinforced by research from NASA). Vic discovered this effect when he traced feelings of dread to a faulty desk fan in his lab. Once this fan was repaired, the feeling vanished. He has also discovered one other case of this infrasound being the cause of spooky feelings, in an old catacomb. He has also noted the conditions when such "feelings" may occur. The media naturally tried to conclude that this low frequency sonic wave was the cause of all ghost stories, a claim very easy to dispute.

Paul Lees The Nature of Ghosts part 4

I am also intrigued by the cases where animals can "sense" the presence of ghosts. Dogs often bark at the air, and cats purr as if stroked by invisible hands. One story from York related how a dog, in its attempt to pursue something, ran into a brick wall! It is known that some animals possess superior senses to humans (such as hearing and smell)- do they use these enhanced senses, or do they possess other abilities, enabling them to see ghosts?
Attempts to record ghosts on equipment have met with remarkable degrees of unsuccess (for want of a better word): they are camera-shy even when cornered! At a lodge in Dudley Castle, near Birmingham, the oppressive nature of the building totally vanished when each room had two people, a video camera and a tape recorder installed! Members of ASSAP tried a tactic a few years back at Dover Castle: they reasoned that since ghosts never appear where video cameras are, they would place machines in every room and station themselves in a 'nerve centre', playing Monopoly and waited for things to happen! A good plan, but it never worked.....
Considering the difficulty of seeing ghosts, why is it that people almost always see them when they never expect it? For instance, when in a relaxed, or distracted frame of mind, or have just woken up? On vigils, this usually happens when you are changing tapes over or having a tea break. Of course, if the ghost had intelligence, we might say that "it" was being mischevious. But I wonder.... It almost reminds me of the Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Physics: observing the experiment adds energy to the system, altering it slightly, and making it impossible to observe two quantities simultaneous to a given precision (such as momentum and position). It may be similar to going on vigils: by observing, we are blocking what we set out to seek! In a similar fashion, John Spencer once related a theory that stated that ghosts seem to have a prediliction towards appearances when the witness is least expecting it, and hardly ever during vigils. The theory goes that the logical, rational hemisphere of the human brain may be blocking the appearance of ghosts (it should also be noted that the "artistic vs. scientific" hemisphere theory of the brain seems to be controversial too!). With the permission of the National Trust, an attempt was made by a party at Dover Castle to switch off the logical, reasoning side of the brain by getting drunk (!) and engaging in a musical jamboree. This vigil was unsuccessful as far as seeing ghosts was concerned!
As an aside, it shoud be pointed out here that most of the typical "bedroom invader" type phantoms are usually encountered between 2.15 and 4.00am. Can it be mere coincidence that the time that the body is usually at its tiredest and concentration falters is at about 3.15am?
Relaxed, but conscious people exhibit "alpha rhythms" in their brain. These are regularly recurring electrical waves. They are 11 "peaks" per second in an alpha state, and the voltages involved are tiny (approximately 50 MILLIONTHS of a volt!). When excited or startled, the alpha rhythms are replaced by a low voltage (37 microvolts), but irregular waves. In sleep, the waves become increasingly slow. Can ghosts be connected with these relaxed mental states?
It might be worthwhile to consider what happens in the brain during a ghost sighting, and ASSAP did use an Electroecephelagram (EEG) to measure this during their vigil of Chiselhurst caves many years back; this was in conjuction with a experiment into a connection between the various brain rythyms and hypnosis. Interestingly, one person did experience an epileptic episode in the caves some time prior to 1987 when this ASSAP vigil occurred. The man in question was not an epileptic, though it should be noted that everyone is likely to experience one such seizure in their lifetime. Still, the timing is interesting. But even so, an EEG is limited by what it can do: it records only a small sample of electrical activity from the surface, not the interior of the brain.
Perhaps the inclusion of equipment changes the nature of the environment; perturbs it in such a way as to prevent spontaneous cases occurring. A lot has been written about the effect that ghosts have on equipment - in Borley Church, a tape was ripped from the spools of an audio tape recorder; in the Enfield poltergeist case, three flashguns rapidly drained of power, tapes machines jammed, tapes were either wholly or partially wiped and a metal part inside one machine was bent; in Rosenheim in Bavaria, a poltergeist somehow created very localised voltage and current surges (which didn't trip the fuses) and even caused investigators to speculate about invisible forces causing direct pressure on the crystal in a microphone, springs inside a telephone and the pen of a instrument that recorded voltage fluctuations on a paper chart. But has anyone ever considered the effects that the introduction of equipment has on the appearance of ghosts- maybe the electrical and magnetic fields reduce the probability of a presence. In the Australian Humpty-Doo case, the Poltergeist would only put on a show once the TV cameras batteries had run out of power, and any witnesses had left the building. An interesting coincidence, or juts malice on the part of the poltergiest?
Returning to the argument that the barrage of electrical equipment we take on vigils perturb the EM atmosphere so much that we actually inhibiting the very phenomena we are seeking: perhaps it should be ensured that our equipment is shielded for producing such pollution into the environment? Or, what would happen if we could create a machine where the periodic waves of the alpha rhythms are duplicated, but the voltages were increased many fold? Would we be feeding the ghost? Would one appear?
At a Society for Psychical Research talk recently, council member Tony Cornell mentioned that his infra-red triggered monitoring system (called 'SPIDER', or Spontaneous Psychophsysical Incident Data Electronic Recorder) had been used for 10 years and had not produced one single, verifiably paranormal event on tape. It has only apparently triggered once in hundreds of deployments, and this was only after 53 days "in the field"! This could imply that humans need to be present for manifestations to occur.

Paul Lees The Nature of Ghosts part 5

A friend has pointed out the corroboration, noted by Michael Persinger, on the corroboration of the Earth's magetosphere (magnetic field) during occurrences of spontaneous psychic events. This is rather akin to the cases of Spontaneous Human Combustion, which were noted (controversially) many years ago to follow the same peaks, namely that ESP & Precognition was more likely to occur on days of high geomagnetic activity, and Ghost & Poltergeist activity was more likely to during low geomagnetic activity. Albert Budden has also noted that witnesses to paranormal activity are likely to: live near high levels of electromagnetic activity (pylons etc) and/or have been involved in an electromagnetic discharge (lightning strike etc).
[ As an aside to this main narrative, Dr.Persinger was interviewed on the BBC Horizon documentary edition airied on 16th April; the documentary covered the connection between the brain and relgion - Neurothology. Dr.Persinger noted that the application of weak magnetic fields to the Temporal Lobes of the brain resulted in similar experiences to those who encounter religious or paranormal occurrences. For instance, in one subject, applying a field to the right lobe resulted in the person "sensing a presence". Dr.Persinger thinks that nearly, if not all cases of the paranormal could be explained by such magnetic fields, which could occur from overhead pylons or underground fault lines. To back this assertion up, the BBC showed a reconstruction of a case that Dr.Persinger had investigated. In this case, a young girl was complaining of nightly visitations by an entity. The cause of the disturbances was traced to the EM field of a clock radio, sitting on a table adjacent to the girl's bed. When the clock was removed, the girl reported no further "bedroom invaders". ]
Some tantalising experimental evidence does exist that suggests that the stimulation of the brain by an external magnetic field can rekindle old, dormant memories - and 'create' new hallucinations ("Temporal Lobe Epilepsy"): this may explain the many cases of Alien Abduction prevalent througout the world. Andrew Green recounted a tale at a recent lecture that people with TLE might be more prone to supernatural phenomena. There might also be an element of chaos and 'non-reproducibility of results' involved here: if the reports are anything to go by, phantoms should appear all over the place. Clearly this is not the case. Perhaps they require certain enviromental conditions to be (even approximately) met before they appear?
The effects of strong magnetic fields on the brain, causing transient Temporal Lobe Epilepsy has been noted above: this can produce hallucinations and was trumpeted as a "explanation" for ghosts. But the actual fields required are so large it is highly doubtful that they could be produced naturally on the Earth. Even arch sceptic Richard Wiseman concedes this point. It may be that high fields are produced in the vicinity of fault lines when Earth Lights appear; after all, if these lights are anything like Ball Lightning, they may require strong fields to cohere the energised particles together.
The Hutchison Effect is a more recent attempt to mimic Poltergeist activity using electrical and magnetic fields; the equipment, when activated, caused items to levitate and various items to move seemingly by themselves. Fires would spontaneously erupt, too. The effect of these fields on the human body is quite damaging, and there is talk of electricity being stored by the body, then released catastrophically. However, if the Hutchinson Effect is a good start to unravelling the mystery of the paranormal, it doesn't seek to explain how such strong electrical or magnetic fields can be generated in the environment. It also hasn't received much in the way of credibility from the scientific community because it is extremely difficult to reproduce. But, if magnetic fields are a partial answer to this conundrum, then a good, cheap piece of equipment that may be of use during vigils is the magnetic compass; any deviation from North caused by a field would be observable. You don't have to have a big equipment budget to perform science!
A very recent, and in this reviewers opinion, particulalry irksome modern introduction to ghost-hunting are "Orbs". I am not convinced that orbs represent definite signs of Paranormal activity. I am convinced by experiments done by ASSAP and the Ghost Club that most sightings can be explained by dust, fireflys, lens flare caused be reflections etc. After all, when you go into a "haunted house", you are probably disturbing a lot of dust and muck, which are picked up by cameras.

Paul Lees The Nature of Ghosts part 6

One professional camera man said that there was a whole glut of explanations which could explain orbs: poor lens coating, the presence of an air gap between lenses in the camera, poor darkened internal surfaces and "specular reflection". He provided technical details which explains why successive shots on a digital camera may show just one bright orb, and then the next picture might show hundreds of fainter ones. His theory was that the cheaper cameras, with poorer lens coating etc. were easier to detect orbs - but this is due to the poorer construction. Parasearch researcher Andrew Homer writes, "Incidentally, from recent researches it appears that different makes of digital camera have their own orb 'signature'. One particular make even seems to reproduce 'face' type images. Orbs are recognised as a problem by digital camera manufacturers but rarely mentioned in the advertising blurb - no surprise there then!" He also says that the depth of field associated with cameras plus the presence of infra-red illumination, makes anything close to the lens appear to be coloured white and in sharp, or near-sharp focus - things like dust, or insects.

This brings me to another topic: the use of digital cameras. yes, they are handy and convenient, but the images are too easy to manipulate.
Digital cameras certainly can pick up what the human eye sees and more besides (i.e. slightly into the infra-red portion of the electromagnetic spectrum). One tale I would like to recount occurred at a recent vigil to Beaulieu Abbey. One digital camcorder, on super night vision mode (with one new image being recorded every second or so) showed streaks of light. These were like mobile orbs, with a comet trail, and most of them were moving horizontally, from right to left, although a handful did move diagonally from top right to bottom left. A correspondent on the Fortean Times message board suggested that this might be due to the optics or over exposure of mundane things. I should add here that I was observing the scene through my hand-held image intensifier. I saw no orbs at all. This makes me think that the fault lies in the software in the camera, since it, and my intensifier should see more-or-less the same thing.
One team, on the Ghosts-UK website is attempting to prove that orbs are definitely paranormal by positioning four cameras in a square configuration, each camera pointing at one directly opposite. The theory is that if an orb appears in two cameras that are looking at each other, but not the others, then this would prove that orbs are 2 dimensional, and hence must be paranormal, as sparkles caused by water etc. would "apparently" cause 3 dimensional spherical obs.
( Incidentally, one of my absoulute pet hates is when ghost hunters - and even TV people who should know better! - describe image intensifying "night sights" as infra red scopes. THEY ARE NOT!!! )
Back to orbs: whilst writing this, it occurred to me that there is a pre-digital age precedent: the glowing balls of light seen on American Civil War battle fields, and the like.
Tony Cornell of the SPR (Society for Psychical Research) bemoaned the lack of ghost reports in 2002, blaming possible interference by mobile phone masts. But, maybe there are the same number of ghosts, but we are interpreting them differently. It might be argued by Orb proponents that maybe the typical apparition has mutated or evolved into orbs, thanks to increased levels of EM pollution?
So, while I believe that most orbs are bunkum, there are a few that defy explanation so far. It is just highly suspect that orbs and digital photography's introduction were coincident.
[ It was after writing the above section that a thought struck me as to why we have so many orb photographs appearing comparatively recently. I have seen a few orb photos from 35mm film, but they are very scarce. The reason is, I believe, due to the convenient nature of digital photography; you can take many pictures, delete the ones you want and reuse the camera's memory for other photos. This leads to any non-paranormal pictures being removed. Film cameras on the other hand, do not enable an immediate viewing of your photos, plus you have the expense of development costs etc., so you may feel inclined to take few pictures. So, it may not be case of more orbs photos being taken, but simply more photos taken - the majority of which are discarded. Sadly, this means that ghost hunting has turned into a hobby that has become the domain of camera-happy orb obsessives.

Paul Lees The Nature of Ghosts part 7

A topic that I would like to mention that requires further research points to sociological aspects of ghost sigthings. It was raised by museum curator Jeremy Harte at last year's excellent Parasearch ghost conference: why are "out of time" ghosts a recent occurrence?
To qualify this, ghost reports go back to (at least) Roman times. However, for instance, there are no reports of Elizabethans seeing Roman ghosts. No reports of Tudors seeing Bronze Age phantoms. It wasn't until quite recently (early 20th century???) that we started getting reports of Roman ghosts, and all other periods of history. Why? Were our predecessors so ignorant that they thought that anyone dressed "oddly" wasn't worth a second glance? Or is it because our schooling these days is so advanced that everyone knows what a Roman, Tudor, Elizabethan, Georgian etc. person looks like? My personal theory about this is similar to a "key and lock" mechanism. It requires some psychologic conditioning, (knowledge from history or folklore etc. etc.) before a person can see the ghost. If a person is not familiar with how Romans look, then they may see nothing, or perhaps misidentification - for instance, the balls or light or mists that we sometimes see during vigils. This is somewhat reminiscent of the time when 17th and 18th century explorers would encounter natives; when the native saw the explorer's boats, some of them unconsciously blanked it from their vision, rendering it invisible, because they had never seen one before and didn't know "what to make of it".
Jeremy also expands on this research by noting that perhaps Ghosts have shaped our culture more than we suspect. An analysis of ghost sightings in Devon revealed that a huge 54% appeared on parish boundaries. Is this because boundaries have been formed around the sightings?
T he last point I wish to refer to are those periodic phantoms; the ghosts that such re-enact some event on a regular, periodic basis (comparitively rare)- for Royal phantoms (say) that appear on the anniversary of their execution in the middle ages is bizarre, since with the 10 day shift in dates when Britain changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in the mid-18th century, not to mention the various leap days added to the years by now, such sighting should be days or even weeks away from their expected appearances - But they aren't! Nature itself does not operate on a weeks, months, years system- this a purely human invention for the convenience of keeping appointments etc. Surely this must mean some form of human (perhaps psychological) trigger for such periodic events to take place? I have a theory about the seeming fondness for ghosts to keep to such appointments: humans, it must be noted, have a predeliction towards observing anniversaries and tend to congregate then, making sightings of ghosts that would have occurred anyway, more likely.
An interesting tale is regaled in the book "Ghosthingyching - The Ghosthunter's Handbook": a family were regularly disturbed just before midnight by the sounds of footsteps on the stairs, even though there was no-one there. ASSAP were called and various sensors were placed in locations around the flat; an infra-red sensor was situated on the staircase. Nothing was seen or heard though. The next day, however, upon reviewing the output of the sensors, it seemed that at about five minutes to eleven, the sensors on the stairs were activated and continued to relay data for several minutes. What is interesting in this case is that a few days before, there had been a change from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time. As "Ghosthingyching" notes: "The implication was that the sensor had triggered at close to midnight, but midnight British Summer Time. The ghost had 'ignored' the change-over to Greenwich Mean Time".
With regards to re-enactment, Chris Huff refers to two famous historical battles- Edge Hill, fought in 1642 and Flodden field in 1513. Both are famous for their visual and audio 'playbacks' : indeed, in the years after Edge Hill, King Charles was so concerned about the tales of fighting at Edge Hill that he sent along a team of investigators, who duly noted the phantom fighting (if anyone can provide documented evidence for this sighthing, please let me know asI am sceptical of such anniversary ghosts). Edge Hill it seems no longer visualises (the last recorded case was in the mid-19th century), but Flodden is quite active. Sounds of a battle have often been heard and drivers using the A697 have reported soldiers crossing their path. "The difference", as Chris writes, "is that a power line runs very close to the battle field at Flodden, and this may have prolonged the haunting". Chris also points out the effect on a haunting caused by the renovation, rebuilding or remodelling of a building and that this can cause sporadic, spontaneous outbursts. Why this latter effect occurs is, like most of parapsychology, unknown.
To summarise then, it is clear from the meagre collection of experimental data that a great deal of work needs to be done to quantify and qualify the nature of ghosts. Hopefully, with the small but growing band of dedicated amateurs throughout the world some significant advances in our understanding will be achieved. But for those of you lucky enough to have seen a ghost, no amount of argument or debate is necessary for you- you are convinced that they do exist. Now lets try and understand them.

Written by Paul Lee

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table tilting

2005-06-29T16:44:19+02:00

Most groups who embark on Table Tilting experiments obtain results if they persevere. The table will vibrate or move and raps can be heard on the table or even in the room in which the sitting is taking place. What the origins of these phenomena are is as yet obscure but to my mind there are four possible causes.

1. Fraud. No doubt fraud has played a part in many a Table Tilting sitting but it is difficult to see how it could account for the more extreme instances of movement.

2. Ideomotor Effect. Or the subconscious and involuntary movement of muscles. The more scientific studies of Table Tilting have claimed that this does indeed take place but how can you involuntarily lift a table around a room. I’m suspicious about this explanation.

3. Group Psychokinesis. If it exists it is an explanation that I can certainly live with. The theory is that the group produces this hidden psychic power to produce a force strong enough to move the table. In most experiments the power to move the table increases with the time the sitters have been meeting suggesting that the harmony of the group itself is aiding the build up of power.

4. Spirit Presence. Difficult to discount and equally difficult to prove, although there are some instances where the ‘spirit’ seems to have relayed information unknown to the sitters present.

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Charles Bonnet syndrome

2005-06-29T16:42:00+02:00

Not quite Off Topic this.I like reading Paul Devereux's writings and found a very interesting piece in Fortean Times this month.

It's an article entitled 'Eye Spirits'and deals mainly with the eye condition known as macular degeneration but could as easily be about a number of degenerative eye diseases.

Charles Bonnet was an eighteenth century Swiss philosopher who first recognised visual hallucinations in psychologically normal people. His grandfather had been going blind from his advancing cataracts and began to describe seeing birds and buildings that were not there.

The condition was thought to be fairly rare until research in the 1980's suggested that it was probably far more widespread than was at first thought.The hallucinations can last from a few minutes to several hours and can be disturbing and disorientating.

I have to admit that I have a personal interest in this perplexing syndrome because for a period of around six months before he died my father suffered from this condition. Dad was an academic who had employed logic and reason all his life but with the advanced Glaucoma that had destroyed his eyesight the visions and hallucinations became too convincing for him to explain away. He was sure that there was a Nun in the house. She was quite friendly and he used to talk to her. But there were more disturbing images too. Unpleasant apparitions and physical disorientation including windows and doors that were not there became common.

Shortly after Dad died I saw a programme on the TV about the historian Lord Hugh Trevor Roper, who was also losing his eyesight. He too suffered the hallucinations and had to exert all his willpower to overcome a belief in this alternative reality.

Other sufferers have reported monsters, angels and visions of recently deceased people that the sufferer had known.Whole scenes can be created making it imposible to operate normally in the 'real' word.

But Devereux points out that the Syndrome is only the symptom not the explanation to what is going on.Medical literature is not too helpful. In fact nobody really knows the cause but the most common explanation is that the brain, as it loses it's familiar stimulus from the eyes makes up the gaps by introducing elements from the subconscious.I presume this could relate to hypnogogic imagery that 'pops'up from the subconscious once the brain loses it's visual information.Devereux suggests dreams could fall into this category too. It certainly is reported that subjects enduring sensory deprivation do report hallucinations.

Where Paul Devereux deviates from normal explanations however is his thoughts on what these visions really are. Is it possible that they could include spirits or even some level of perception that lies between subjective hallucination and spirits of the dead?

Devereux goes on to question what constitutes 'reality'. He asks if what we take to be concrete reality could be no more than a kind of hallucination sustained by cultural conditioning, and paranormal phenomena just glitches in that illusion?

I feel that at the very least the stimulus that the brain receives from the eyes dictates our perception of what 'reality is'. Once this most powerful of stimuli is taken away other perceptions, quite different, are wont to take over.

Written by Toby - Paranormal Researcher

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Times slips

2005-06-29T16:40:28+02:00

BACK TO THE FUTURE

REPORTS OF SUDDEN LEAPS IN TIME ARE INTRIGUING. WHAT IS IT THAT TRIGGERS SUCH EVENTS? HAVE WE PERHAPS ALREADY EXPERIENCED EVERYTHING TO COME?

To most people, time slips are firmly relegated to the realm of ‘the supernatural’ and left at that. Some, however, would argue that the ‘supernatural’, as such, cannot exist, since any event arising in the natural Universe in which we live must have natural origins. So even if we cannot explain a particular phenomenon in terms of the known laws of nature, this must be because current knowledge is incomplete. Who, for instance, could explain the mechanism of an eclipse before the true motions of the planets were known? The mechanism of time slips eludes us still. So all we can do is sift the evidence and search for common denominators among reputed experiences and possibly some relationship with known laws of physics. What we do know, however, is that some sort of a trigger factor usually appears to set the occurrence in motion. There is generally an abrupt onset of the experience; and a sensation of living in two time zones at once, either past and present or future and present. There is, too, almost always a feeling of being an integral part of the experience or a participant in the action; an absence of sound from beginning to end of the time slip; and conditions and those experienced during the time slip. Those who travel in time this way often describe indeed a ‘silvery light’.

ELECTRICAL EXPERIENCES

It seems that certain physical effects often take place, too, the subject seeing and hearing abnormally and experiencing a feeling of disorientation or detachment. Occasionally, people have also reported a tingling sensation or nausea immediately before they experience a time slip, just as particularly sensitive people may react to an impending earthquake or thunderstorm. (It is interesting that several of these sensations also herald haunting or other paranormal happenings.)
One subject wrote describing a tingling in her arms and legs, and a feeling of being ‘plugged in’. She may have been much nearer the truth than she realised, for there are indications that some form of electrical activity may well play a part in many paranormal experiences.
This sort of trigger was a major factor in the case of Anne may, the Norwich teacher who, in May 1973, at Clava Cairns in Scotland, experienced a slip into what appeared to be the remote part of the area. Significantly, it was not until she leaned back against one the standing stones that her extraordinary transition into the past took place, as though a switch had been thrown. Several correspondents have also used that very phrase to describe their individual time slips. The immediacy of the slip is always pronounced, too. It is as though the trigger object (in Anne May’s case, the stone) itself contained the power to evoke the time dislocation she experienced.

PART OF HISTORY

Several people have reported finding themselves actively involved in some historical occasion. One woman, while walking near Bootham Bare, York for instance, suddenly found herself in the past when a shaft of sunlight struck a coat of arms on the medieval city gate. At once, her awareness of the present dissolved and she discovered herself standing in the midst of a medieval scene, where there were milling barrows, carts and a great crowd of people. She also saw mounted horsemen clearing the way for some great personage who followed them. Then the sun went in, and the whole glowing picture disappeared. There seems little doubt that she ‘saw’ an actual historical scene and was herself briefly a part of it.
Here, again the trigger factor is present – in this case, the sudden shaft of light on the coat of arms on the city gate. It may even be possible that the Bar itself had ‘recorded’ this scene from its own past, and that the particular conditions of light provided by the sudden flash of sunshine ‘switched on’ the ‘playback’. But if that were so, why did the Bar ‘choose’ to replay this scene out of all its millions of recorded moments? And why was the scene not witnessed and reported by everyone else present in the modern precincts of Bootham Bar in 20-century York? Perhaps that particular scene had some special significance, such as a spontaneous memory of a past life? Or could it be that this women’s brain was alone in being in the necessary state to receive the information and transform it into pictures and sound?

WAVE PATTERNS

Particularly fascinating is the theory that if the operation of time slips is due to the transmitting of information from past or future into the present, then that information must already be in existence somewhere. Indeed, perhaps every single component of the world in which we live is continually broadcasting information about itself (form, colour, texture, situation, and so on) by means of ‘waves’ as yet unknown to science.

In theory, some of this information may be received and absorbed by surrounding material and, when conditions are appropriate, rebroadcast. Any human being then in the area, whose brain is at the time operating on the same frequency as the transmitter, could – at least in theory – register an audio or visual impression of the original ‘wave’ pattern sent out by the first broadcaster. Thus, in moments of high emotion or stress, you may yourself be sending out signals into the air that will be received years hence by same sensitive individual. Most (though not all) hauntings are attributed by some to this type of mechanism.
The human brain operates electrically and uses several frequencies. But there is some variation from brain to brain, and not all operate on exactly the same frequencies. So it may be possible that persons sensitive to psychic phenomena are merely tuning in to existing wave patterns (either past or future) by accident, their own brain activity being on the correct frequency for reception at the time.

TOMORROW’S WORLD

What, then, are these mysterious waves that seem to have the power to carry pictures and sounds through time? We do not know as yet. But it is a physical fact that all objects radiate electromagnetic waves. Light waves, which enable us to perceive the world around us, are just one example; and radio waves, infrared and ultra-violet waves, X-rays and gamma rays are all electromagnetic. Most of these invisible forms of radiation were discovered only within the last century; so other types of radiation may well still await discovery.
The fascinating branch of physics known as quantum mechanics presents the concept of electrons in atoms moving backwards and forwards in time equally easily. Perhaps, therefore, it could be possible for information from the future to be returned to us by some mechanism. So, if such information can indeed be returned from the future, then that future must already exist ‘somewhere’, in some form. What is more, it may be that we ourselves – and indeed all atomic material – carry within us the seeds of our own future. The behaviour of individual at atomic particles is unpredictable, but it is possible to predict how they will behave en masse. In other words, by cause and effect, all events may perhaps be predetermined. The idea of destiny may even have arisen from an instinctive knowledge of this very fact.

If this were always and wholly true, we and the whole of human history would indeed by predestined and our fortes would be laid down for us inescapably. Do we therefore actually have the power to alter and modify our destiny – at least occasionally – by the exercise of will? When we encounter precognitive experiences, whether dreaming or waking, it may be that we are actually receiving from matter already existing (people, animals, or buildings) information about the future. In the short term, it seems possible that such information is likely to prove true; in the long term, less so – for over a longer period of time, there is greater likelihood of human will being used to intervene in the cause and effect process. With more time available, in theory there should be more opportunities for action, and therefore more opportunities for change. However, there are exceptions. Occasionally, precognitive experiences will come to completion accurately several years after they have been initially uncounted. Indeed, there are cases where there has been a full 20-year lapse between the precognitive experience and its accurate fulfilment. This is, however, unusual.
The view is also sometimes expressed that many bizarre time experiences can be explained as hallucinations. Memory is incompletely understood, and the subconscious mind has proved to be very complex, dreams and hypnosis revealing a level of creativity inaccessible to the conscious mind. The full scope of the human mind has by no means been fathomed, leaving the possibility that time slips may perhaps be the result of imaginative responses, hysteria, drug usage or even illness at times. However,
Even when all these factors have been considered, there still remain experiences that cannot be accounted for – or which can only be accounted for by analogies that relate to the electromagnetic force field every human possesses, and through which we doubtless give and receive information. If electrical data fed into the brain from outside sources is indeed capable of being translated by the brain into terms of pictures and sound, than many psychic phenomena, including time slips, may thereby be explained.

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Psychokinesis experiment

2005-06-29T16:38:54+02:00

Psychokinesis is defined as the movement of matter by mental influence without physical contact. Like many aspects of the paranormal it is unproven to the sceptics and mainstream science at least.

Some claim it is a real force that can be exerted by some people either consciously or subconsciously. Many theorists believe that poltergeist activity is psychokinesis out of control, exercised by a focus individual who unwittingly utilises this power.

Here is a little experiment that may determine if you have some latent psychokinetic powers. The writer Colin Wilson was persuaded by dowser Robert Leftwich to attempt this simple test using only a few everyday objects.

You need a needle, a cork and a two inch square of paper. The paper is first folded diagonally from corner to corner twice, thus making an X, then in half again, vertically and horizontally. This can then be pinched into a paper dart shape with four fins. The needle is pushed into the cork and the paper dart placed on the end of the needle like an umbrella.

Leftwich suggested tying a handkerchief around the mouth to prevent breath moving the dart but I would recommend getting a 2 litre pop or water bottle and cutting the bottom off neatly and placing your experiment underneath.

Wilson described Leftwich placing his hands around the apparatus and concentrating hard before the paper dart began to move in one direction and then the other. Wilson tried but failed despite the utmost concentration. Nevertheless he persisted and kept the cork, needle and dart construction next to his typewriter. Every time he felt relaxed he attempted to move it and then one day he tried but this time imagined it moving and it did. He found he could move it one way, stop it and then move it in the other direction. He maintains that the trick is to use the power of the imagination.

A few years ago I tried this experiment and failed miserably but I’m going to have another go and this time persist a little longer. If anyone else tries and succeeds with this interesting study let me know.

Toby

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Black dogs

2005-06-29T16:37:20+02:00

The Black Dog phenomenon is one of those mysterious aspects of British folklore that is as yet unexplained. I say British advisedly because it is in the main a characteristic of these islands rather more than in other European countries.

There are some distinctive characteristics that mark a typical encounter with a Black Dog .They are usually black of course. They appear silently beside lonely travellers on lonely moors or isolated lanes. It is almost always larger in size than a normal dog and most intriguing of all often displays glowing red or sometimes green eyes. The duration of the encounter is usually short.

This consistency is remarkable but there are always atypical reports where the dog is heard to howl or can become aggressive.

We have recorded accounts of Black Dogs from the 1700’s but spectral dogs in folklore can be traced back much further than that. They are usually malevolent in character and are to be found accompanying gods scudding across the night skies in both Roman and Norse folklore. The Roman goddess of the hunt, Diana was said to ride through the skies with her pack of evil hounds. To see her was said to mean certain death. In the Norse version the god was Woden, but the result on encountering him would be no less dire.

In Britain there is the intriguing tale of Gabriel Ratchet’s hounds who traditionally were said to be seen racing across the night skies chasing human souls. Even today in South Yorkshire some older folk refer to Barn Owls as Gabriel Ratchet’s, evincing perhaps the belief that they are traditionally birds of ill omen.

In literature too we find the Black Dog. Hans Christian Anderson wrote of one such in his story ‘The Tinderbox’ and of course Sir Arthur Conan Doyle leaned heavily on the legend in ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’.

In our small island the Black Dog is known by many different names depending on where you are. In the south they may be Shucks or Shags, in the Midlands a Trash or Striker and in the north a Bargest, Padfoot, Boggart or Guytrash.

The derivation of the word Bargest is particularly interesting. It has various spellings but it is possible that it is a corruption of the words ‘bar guest’, referring to the tradition of pouring an extra drink for the ‘unseen visitor’ in the Taverns and Inns of past times. Is it possible therefore that the name alludes to an attempt to appease this disturbing entity.

It seems as though encounters with this phenomenon usually reveals the Dog to be unaware of the percipient but it often is known to accompany the witness on their journey, almost as if it is acting in a protective way.

In Yorkshire there is the story of a woman who claims that during the dark months when she walked home from her working day at the farm the Bargest would walk with her until she was safely at her doorway. Another lady who worked at Pontefract Infirmary as a night cook swore that such a spectral beast would also accompany her on her lonely walk home.

Occasionally we find uncharacteristic phenomena associated with the appearance of a Black Dog. As an example, a farmer in 1972 was awoken one night by a scratching at his bedroom door. When he went to investigate he was faced with a large dog with glowing red eyes. As he struck out at the beast with a poker there was a brilliant burst of light followed by the sound of breaking glass. The dog vanished altogether but upon further investigation the house’s electricity was found to have failed and all the windows were smashed. Outside it could be discerned that the tiles on several outbuildings were damaged.

A much older story concerns a Black Dog that suddenly appeared in a church in Suffolk in 1577. It is claimed that three people were killed by a vicious attack and another was somehow severely burned. There are, it is said, still to be seen, scorch marks left on the door as the hound brushed past to leave.

In 1893 two men were travelling in a cart along a Norfolk lane but were forced to come to an abrupt stop when coming face to face with a Black dog, its eyes burning brightly. When the driver decided to edge past the spectre the cart touched it and there was given off a strong smell of sulphur and the dog disappeared in a ball of flame.

It has been remarked upon that Black Dog encounters often seem to occur near prehistoric sites or ancient churches. There was indeed a belief that Black Dogs were ‘Church Grims’, spirits that guarded churchyards from the Devil. This possibly relates to the custom of burying an ordinary black dog on the north side of the churchyard near the Devil’s door,(the north door of a church). The idea was to avoid a human soul from having to guard the door. Traditionally it was thought that the first human soul buried in a churchyard would have that duty.
In consequence there are reports of Black Dogs in churchyards in Lincolnshire, East Anglia and Lancashire, all recognised by their local names.

Ancient track ways are also favourite haunts of our beasts, as are sites from prehistory. Doghill Barrow in Wiltshire boasts a spectral dog that is said to stand guard outside. Other popular sites are boundaries, crossroads, burial grounds and holy wells.

As well as being unaware of the witness the Dog often appears or disappears at the same precise spot. A farmer near Aylesbury claimed that there was a Black Dog that appeared at one particular gap in the hedge. It has been suggested that the gaps in hedges may mark age-old track ways adding credence to the thought that they may be ‘residual’ in nature. But are the dogs some kind of recording of once flesh and blood normal dogs or are they representatives of the altogether more mysterious phenomena of Black Dogs characterised by their large size and glowing eyes?

They are often associated with water. Research by Ivan Bunn has suggested that in East Anglia out of 62 reported sightings 15 dogs were very near a main river, 15 were on or near the coast, 16 were sighted within a mile of the coast and the remaining 16 fell into four different categories and were 2 to 5 miles away from a major water source. It has been pointed out however that in our islands it is difficult to find a location that is not near a water source!

The writers Janet and Colin Bord have collected more than 150 individual descriptions of the materialisation of Black dogs and believe that the phenomena is in some way connected with the controversial theory of leys. This theory is supported by the fact that Black Dogs appear in the very places that are thought to connect ley lines; churchyards, ancient track ways, barrows and tumuli. The Bords hypothesize that if our ancestors were more aware of the energies that are to be sensed and utilised in leys it is reasonable to believe that they would want to protect this precious source of energy with a guardian. What better guardian than a big black dog? Quite what the dogs are guarding the ley lines from however I am not sure.

If the theory of ancient monuments that are able to store images and events from long ago are correct, the Black Dogs we se today could be recordings of real dogs that had once guarded a site. Alternatively they could be an archetype that is representing guardianship, presumably set up by strong belief, imagination, ritual, or a combination of the three.

There are certain times of the year that seem to occasion the sightings of the phenomena. There may be meteorological conditions required to activate the resonance to in turn reveal the apparitions to sensitive individuals. It has also been suggested that there may be certain conjunctions of the sun, moon and planets that create the necessary circumstances.

It seems to me that the theories, although interesting, are as yet pure conjecture. There needs to be more study and correlation of reported encounters before we can make any firm conclusions on the subject.

The most fascinating part of the Black Dog mystery for me is the consistency of the descriptions and the precise locations of appearances. Clearly people have and are still seeing Black Dogs. Quite what they are has not as yet been successfully demonstrated.

Written by Toby Paranormal Researcher

Comments

Big Cats (Dinofelis)

2005-06-29T16:35:50+02:00

The frequency of Big Cat sightings in Britain show no sign of diminishing but as yet there is little evidence of their existence as physical feline beasts. An article in The Fortean Times this month by David Hambling suggests that the 'cats' may be a miss-reading by our minds of data, due to the fact that as humans we carry a mental template in our psyche inherited from our ancestors on the African Plains that is progammed to identify sets of behaviour that resembles a big cat.

His theory is supported by the work of Dr Clarke Barrett of the University of California who has studied the perceptual mechanisms in recognising predators.

Two and a half million years ago man was not only the hunter but the hunted and in particular by a large cat now named Dinofelis. It was the size of a Puma with a pair of long teeth to penetrate the skull of humans.Palaeontologist Bob Brain has termed the cat "a specialist killer of primates"

It was likely to have been nocturnal, attacking by means of ambush. If hundreds of generations of humans had to avoid the predatory skills of Dinofelis it is quite possible that we adapted mental skills to identify such big cats.

This adaptive behaviour is found in other species. A horse will often rear up on the sight of a stick indicating, it is thought, its inherent fear of snakes. Humans may also posses this mental template which is not concerned purely with an outline but with movement typical of a predator.

The suggestion here is not that witnesses are imagining the whole thing but are interpreting a normal sighting of a cat, dog or fox and allowing their inherited wariness of big cats to fill in the rest. The perception that results is of a large predator rather than the more mundane reality.This could explain why the resulting searches after big cat sightings rarely come up with anything tangible.

Barretts research has shown that we can recognise predatory behaviour in something as simple as one white dot persuing another. Children have been found to have an instinctive understanding of predator behaviour.

Is it possible also that the fear of something under the bed or in the wardrobe and the resulting instinct to lie still reveals our innate ability to remain undetected by the big cats of Africa two and a half million years ago?

Toby

Fortian Times FT188 David Hambling (A Zoo in the Mind)

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THE GOLUM

2005-06-29T16:29:54+02:00

The Golem

A Golem in Jewish tradition is an entity created by magic to serve its creator. The word Golem in the Talmud refers to an imperfect thing, which it is, in the sense that it is not created entirely by God, but also by the hand of man and the fact that it has no soul.

Although some Jewish mystics consider the Golem to be symbolic rather than a feasible creation, the Sefer Yezirah (Book of Creation) does contain instructions on the making of a Golem. The most frequently suggested way is to shape the Golem into the approximation of a human being and use God’s name to bring it to life.

The Golem would be expected to perform tasks for its maker. The most famous story concerning this relationship is that of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel the Maharal of Prague (1513-1609). He was assumed to have created a Golem to protect the Jewish community either from Blood Libel or Christian hatred and to do hard manual labour. There are several versions to what happened next but it seems that the Golem became unmanageable and was endangering lives as it went steadily mad. The Rabbi had to remove the Divine name to inactivate the creature.

The disturbing nature of the Golem, that clearly has a parallel with Zombie’s and certain thought form creations has attracted the arts during the last two centuries. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is an obvious working of the theme but the concept has been used in books, plays and movies as well as in TV serials such as The X Files.

More on the Golem in greater length coming up on our main site soon.

http://www.theshadowfinders.moonfruit.com/

Toby

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THE CROGLIN GRANGE VAMPIRE

2005-06-29T16:27:59+02:00

UK VAMPIRES

Part 1, The Story

Britain does not have a rich history of tales of Vampires.We tend to think of eastern Europe, especially the Romanian province of Transylvania for tales of the Prince of Darkness and his cronies. But one story from our country has entertained and intrigued the public and folklorists alike for over a century. This is the tale of The Croglin Grange Vampire.

The story was first published in Augustus Hare's autobiography, 'The Story of my Life' in 1900. Hare had obtained the tale from a family friend Captain Fisher who claimed that his family had once owned property in Cumberland called Croglin Grange before moving south to Surrey some years before.

The Grange had been let to the Cranswells, two brothers, Edward and Michael, and a sister, Amelia. They had settled well in the small community and the first winter passed well enough. In the hot summer months that followed however, Amelia found that she could not sleep and passed many a nightly hour gazing out of the ground floor window on moonlit nights.

On one particular night she was disturbed to see what looked like a creature darting around the lawns and moving closer to her window. By the time it appeared just outside her bedroom she was petrified with fear and could not scream out. The cadaverous entity was by now scratching at the lead around the glass and in a short time had loosened a pane that duly fell into the room affording access to long bony fingers that reached round to unlock the latch.

The horrible vision entered the room and on reaching the hapless Amelia caught her by the hair before sinking its teeth into her neck. At this point the brothers must have heard the commotion because they burst in and chased the thing from the room.

Amelia recovered from the wounds but a holiday in Switzerland was advised in order to get over such an ordeal. On returning to Croglin Grange everything went well over the winter but in the following March Amelia was again woken by the familiar scratching at her window. This time however Edward and Michael were ready and shot the creature in the leg before it got to their sister. It escaped but was seen to enter the nearby graveyard where it entered a vault.

In the morning the villagers were alerted and the vault was searched. It was reported that coffins were found scattered around and mangled corpses were strewn everywhere. One coffin remained intact and on opening it revealed the shrivelled and mummified body of the horror that had attacked Amelia Cranswell. It even had a bullet wound in its leg. In the time honoured way for laying a vampire, the unholy abomination was taken out of its coffin and burnt.

Part 2, The Reality

Was there ever a Croglin Grange and did the Fisher family ever live there? There is no property with that name today and no records support its previous existence although there is a Croglin Low Hall which has often been cited as the possible Grange of the story.Furthermore parish records show that Fishers have owned and farmed the land since at least the 1730's.

Unfortunately Croglin Low Hall hardly fits the description painted by Hare in his book. There is no veranda and certainly no elegant grounds with lawns and trees. Rather it has a cobbled yard that points to a history of a working farm.

Another discrepancy involves the churchyard that Hare describes as being close to the Grange. The nearest church to Croglin Low Hall is two miles away.

These incongruous facts do not entirely preclude the possibility that there was a Croglin Grange. It may be that Hare provided embellishments for the sake of the story. Nor is it difficult to imagine that Fisher, not wanting to give away his comparatively humble background, exaggerated the grandness of his families antecedence.

More damaging to the veracity of the story is the fact that records in Surrey reveal that there were no Fishers at Thorncombe before the Captain moved there, despite him claiming his family had moved south from Croglin generations ago.

It looks very much as though Croglin Low Hall was not Croglin Grange, if there ever was such a place.

But if the story is a fiction where did Fisher get it from? The writer Colin Godman has suggested that we look at a work of the writer James Malcolm Rymer (1804-1882).Rymer was a popular author of 'penny dreadfuls' (sensationalist literature in weekly parts for the urban poor). In 1847 he wrote 'Varney the Vampire, or the Feast of Blood', a romance in 220 chapters.

Comparing the two vampires, Croglin and Varney, Godman points out some remarkable similarities. Both vampires attack a young woman in rooms with large fastened windows. Both women hear fingernails on the glass panes. Varney breaks a small pane of glass and the Croglin vampire picks at the lead from around a pane. In both stories the vampires have long bony fingers that seize the hair of their victims before biting them.

Sadly for the romantics amongst us it looks as though the Croglin tale was nothing more than a thinly disguised telling of 'Varney the Vampire'.But there is a glimmer of hope that Croglin Low Hall may just have been Croglin Grange. Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe researched the story anew and on visiting Croglin Low Hall were directed by the owner to a patch of land that was impossible to plough because of the remains of an old church below the surface of the soil. It had been destroyed by Cromwell during the civil war years but could have been extant when Fishers owned the land.

Could this possibly have been the lair of the Croglin vampire?

Today there are certainly no vampires at Croglin Low Hall in that peaceful area of the Lake District but we are assured that they do have the ghost of a pig!

Part 3, The Mezzotint

I thought I would add a Part Three because I got to thinking, when I was looking up some sources for this thread, that I had read something similar to the Croglin Vampire somewhere else, and then I remembered where

I have read a lot of ghost stories over the years by the great masters of the genre, but my favourite writer will always be M.R.James who was a noted Cambridge scholar for much of his working life. He wrote a number of ghost stories that were traditionally read out loud to the Chitchat society in Cambridge at Christmas time. They were later published in several volumes the first of which was 'Ghost Stories of an Antiquary' in 1904. One of the stories in this first volume was called 'The Mezzotint' and in my opinion shows some significant similarities to Augustus Hare's retelling of Captain Fisher's story of the Croglin Vampire, published in Hare's autobiography in 1900.

A Mezzotint is a print made from an engraved copper or steel plate. In the story a Cambridge academic receives a Mezzotint on recommendation from a dealer in topographical drawings. At first the recipient can see nothing remarable about the print but when night falls, a grisly story starts to unfold on the picture.

Like the Croglin story the setting is a large country house with tall trees and and a large expanse of lawn.The observer in the Croglin story is Amelia Cranswell whereas the observers in The Mezzotint are the academic and his colleagues, but what they see is remarkably analogous.

Both stories describe a moonlit night and the appearance of a sculking figure making a circuitous route to the house. Once there, it gains entry via a ground floor window. At close quarters both figures resemble a bony cadaver. Although the stories deviate at this point, the initial setting and the appearance of the fiend are so alike that I feel it is entirely possible that M.R. James had either read or heard about Hare's book, 'The Story of my Life', and incorporated some of the more descriptive aspects of the Croglin Grange Vampire in 'The Mezzotint'.

My problem is, that I have been unable to find out whether James had written the story before or after Hare published his autobiography in 1900. James published his, 'Ghost Stories of an Antiquary' in 1904 but he may have written it some years before that, even before 1900 which would quash my theory.

Despite this possibility I prefer to think that Monty (M.R. James) heard the story on one of his several visits to the Lake District in 1902 where the Croglin Vampire tale may have been a talking point because of Hare's book, or even possibly part of a much older local folklore

TOBY

Comments

THOUGHTFORMS

2005-06-29T16:25:01+02:00

Thoughtforms

I've got reams of notes on this topic but I'm going to try and keep the theory as short as possible. I'll try anyway.

Occult lore tells us that a 'thought form' is a non physical entity created by thought that exists in the mental or astral plane. In theory every thought we have generates vibrations in the aura's mental body

If the original thought was strong and clear it is thought that the form can last for some time and can travel great distances. Most strange of all they are believed to be able to take on a degree of independence and have intelligence.Over time these 'forms' disintegrate but conscious effort can have the same effect.

In magic these thought forms are also called artificial elementals and are created by rituals and intense concentration. In his book 'Operation Trojan Horse' John Keel writes:

" There are several kinds of elementals in psychic lore. One type is supposedly conjured up by secret magical rites and can assume any form ranging from that of a beautiful woman to hideous, indescribable monsters. Once a witch or a warlock has whipped up such a critter, it will mindlessly repeat the same actions century after century in the same place until another occultist comes along and performs the rite necessary to dissolve it."

Anyone thinking of Leap Castle here?

The purpose of creating these elementals or thought forms is varied. They can be used to heal and assist but equally they have been used to harm.

An interesting theory suggests that thought forms may spring up spontaneously from the collective unconscious as archetypes which can take on a phantom or even seemingly real form. This could go some way to explaining the myriad of monsters, fairies, aliens and creatures peculiar to certain cultures around the world.

I'm leaving it there for now but shall return with some examples of thought forms soon.

Written by Toby - Paranormal Researcher

Thought Forms, example 1. Philip:

In the 1970's the Toronto Society for Psychical Research under parapsychologist A.R.G.Owen demonstrated how an entity seemed to have been created through the application of human will, expectation and imagination.

None of the participants were psychically gifted but the purpose of the experiment was to try and create, through intense and prolonged concentration, a collective thought form.

To this aim they fabricated a fictitious identity, physical appearance and personal history. To them he became Philip Aylesford who was born in England in 1624.

The experiment started in 1972 with the group meditating on his life and visualising his presence.In the early days they failed to communicate with Philip during the seances but some members reported the sense of a presense in the room.

After several months the group decided to try table-turning which quickly brought some results including raps,knocks and the table moving on it's own.It was at this point that Philip began to communicate by rapping in response to questions.The important point here is that his answers were consistent with his fictitious history but revealed nothing about himself beyond what the group had invented for him. He did however provide other historical information that was accurate.

At no point during the experiment did Philip appeared before the group as an apparition and attempts to capture his voice were inconclusive.

The Society team came to the conclusion that the information came from their own subconscious.

But the Philip experiment throws up some intriguing questions.Initially the group had assumed a sober meditative approach with little success. After reading of experiments by British researchers, Hunt, Bachelor and Brookes-Smith, who since 1964 had produced paranormal phenomena by adopting an atmosphere of jollity, joke telling and songs the Toronto group changed their approach and soon saw results.

The table movement and other physical events were captured on TV and Philip seemed to respond better if a large audience took part in the merriment.But did he exist in any way independently from the group who imagined him? The evidence probably does not support it. The phenomena produced could be explained through the psychokinesis theory.In the strictest sense according to occult lore Philip was a thought form but he didn't achieve an independence of will that other thought forms are claimed to do.

Thought Forms, example 2. Tulpoid Forms:

In Tibet a Thought Form is called a Tulpa. They usually assume human shape and are created to be sent on some errand or mission.

The French explorer Alexandra David-Neel once wrote:

"Tibetans do not believe in miracles, that is to say, in supernatural happenings. They consider the extraordinary facts which astonish us to be the work of natural energies which come into action in exceptional circumstances, or through the skill of someone who knows how to release them."

She also said:

"Tibetans also tend to believe that everything which one imagines can be realised. They claim that if the imagined facts correspond to no external reality one could not conceive of their images."

In other words I presume she means only things that cannot be imagined are impossible.

Now consider the experiment that David-Neel conducted. She had become fascinated with the concept of the Tulpa but doubted the stories of them becoming so energetic as to escape their makers control.

To test the concept she endeavored to create her own Tulpoid entity. To this end David-Neel visualised and animated the Tulpa using imagination and ritual techniques.The idea was to produce a fat jolly Lama (priest) and after some time and effort she seemed to have succeeded. The Lama existed like a guest in her house and was seen not only by her but by others.In time though the friendly monk became less friendly and then decidedly leaner and more malevolent. It got out of her control and became troublesome. It took six months of following the prescribed rituals to dissolve the entity as it seemed to resist her efforts.

Clearly this thought form had taken on some degree of autonomous existance despite being on the face of it no more than the product of David-Neel's imagination.It makes you wonder what would have happened if it had been allowed to continue its semi-existance.

Written by Toby

Thought Forms, example 3. Wolf:

In her book,'Psychic Self Defence' the occultist Dion Fortune tells of an occasion when she involuntarily created a thought -form or 'elemental' as she called it. She had been thinking negative thoughts about someone who had done her an injury.

In a semi dozing state she thought of a wolf god,(probably Fenris the Nordic wolf god although she doesn't mention him by name).She imagined how satisfactory it would be to let this imaginary creature at her enemy.She takes up the story:

"Immediately I felt a curious drawing-out sensation from my solar plexus, and there materialised beside me on the bed a large wolf...I knew nothing of the art of making elementals at that time, but had accidentally stumbled upon the right method,the brooding highly charged with emotion, the invocation of the appropriate natural force, and the condition between sleeping and waking in which the etheric double readily extrudes."

Fortune ordered the creature out of the room and it went but other things started to happen. Guests in her house started to dream of wolves and imagine yellow eyes shining out of the darkness.She decided to try and 're-absorb' it and managed to summon it before turning it into a 'shapeless grey mist'.

This thought -form seems to have much more in common with Alexandra David-Neel's Tulpa than with 'Philip'. Significantly both women had to make great efforts to terminate the entity.

Written by Toby
Thought Forms, example 4. Hexham Creature:

I thought I would go back to this entity that Jules and I talked about in the Hexham Stone Heads thread also in the Mysterious Universe section.

In light of what I have described regarding the above examples it seems more likely to me that what was experienced at Hexham could well have been a thought form, created either by an individual or by a process involving the collective unconscious.

Briefly, two stone heads the size of tennis balls were found in a garden of a house in Hexham. The owners experienced paranormal activity in there house as did their neighbour. The heads were acquired by an academic who soon started to suffer from similar problems including the presence of a wolfman type creature in her house.The academic believed the heads had been made around AD 200 but a man who had lived in the house where the heads were found claimed he had made them in 1956 for his daughter. We shall probably never know the truth.

If the stone heads were of Celtic origin is it possible that they could be connected to the construction of a thought form in the shape of the Wolfman or Wulver? It seems feasible to me that thought form may be attached in some way to an object, a sort of genie in a bottle thing if you like.

Unfortunately I have already come to a tentative conclusion that the heads were made by Mr Craigie in the fifties. OK so the heads may have nothing to do with the unpleasant atmosphere and frightening creature. It does seem an unlikely coincidence but perhaps that is just what it is. That said I believe that the academic Dr Ross, and for that matter all the other people who took charge of the heads did experience what they said they did. Everyone who possessed the heads encountered problems.

The problems started when the Robsons brought the heads into their home. They endured poltergeist type activity that they attributed to the presence of the heads. But what if it was a poltergeist focusing on one of the Robson's children? Carl Jung devised the theory of a collective unconscious that we all inherit from our ancestors. It will by definition be peculiar to that race, tribe or community.Some process is thought to take place periodically whereby architypes common to a race are experinced as if real. What if they are real to a degree? What if they are thought forms.

The poltergeist activity wrongly attributed to the stone heads may have triggered the emergence of this architypal entity. In Scotland there is a entity from the folklore of the culture called a Wulver that has the body of a man and the head of a wolf. Although the Wulver is thought to be harmless could the Hexham creature be a variation of this presence?

Several of the people who found themselves unwilling custodians of the heads experienced the wolfman entity, but was it entirely objective? It seemed on at least two occasions to dissappear into the back of Dr Ross's house.Dr Don Robins who held the heads after Dr Ross seemed to have a degree of control over the activity they were thought to engender.When he collected them his car wouldn't start because the electrics had gone dead. He told them to stop it and he started the car with no more trouble. He later asked them to create some sort of effect and the atmosphere in his study became oppressive.

We know that thought forms are created by strong will and imagination. Was Dr Robins exercising his will over the thought form that had become associated with the Hexham stone heads?

TOBY

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Teleportation

2005-06-29T16:20:17+02:00

TELEPORTATION

The idea of being able to teleport ourselves around the world almost instantaneously is attractive, especially with our crowded planet becoming ever more congested.

Dr David Darling, author of Teleportation. The Impossible leap is optimistic about the development of this groundbreaking science.

Teleportation is defined as getting from point A to point B without passing any of the points in between. Particles or objects are dematerialised in one place and materialised somewhere else.

It is now much more that science fiction popularised in TV shows such as Star Trek. In the laboratory subatomic bodies such as electrons and light particles are teleported from one location to another. It is even possible to transport up to a mile in some circumstances.

This subatomic research is known as Quantum teleportation. The original particle is lost but the information is used to create an identical version at the desired location. This begs the question as to whether the new object is the same or different from the now destroyed original.

Quantum teleportation relies upon a weird effect called entanglement. Einstein never believed in it, in fact he described it as, spooky action at a distance. However, it has now been proved to exist and involves two particles being formed together and becoming entangled. They then behave like telepathic twins as whatever happens to one will happen to the other. The teleportation is achieved when a group of these entangled particles is created half of which are sent to the location required whilst the other half is used to scan the object you want to be teleported.

The information is remembered and because all the particles are linked, that information is transferred to the half you have sent to the chosen location.

It is simply a technical problem to increase the size of the objects teleported. Dr Darling estimates that in fifty years it will be possible to transport objects but perhaps only ten years before this is achieved with a molecule.

Scientists are not intent on teleporting objects for the sake of it. They are most interested Quantum computers which we may see being developed in ten to fifteen years. These computers will be revolutionary in concept relying entirely on teleportation.

It is worth having a quick look at the teleportation seen on Star Trek which is essentially different from Quantum Teleportation. Firstly you would need a very powerful CAT type scanner to record a digital blueprint of all available information into a computer memory. On Star Trek this is called a Pattern Buffer. All the information about where the atoms are to be pieced together is sent in a matter stream and then the object is rebuilt at the other end. With this variant on teleportation the original is stored and could serve as a replicator to produce unlimited copies. Any number of clones could then be produced.

Ultimately it is by no means impossible that we will see transportation booths on our street corners some time in the future that will radically transform the way we move about the world.

In human terms however there are questions that will inevitably have to be asked. Who or what will be at the other side of teleportation? Does the soul, if it exists at all, gather around the new pattern of matter and most importantly is the new version of you the same person who stepped into the teleporter?

Toby

Comments

Realistic Aspirations

2005-06-29T16:11:52+02:00

Those of you who have read more than a smattering of my stuff on the forum may have noticed that I’m not overly confident about answers to the important questions that occupy paranormal researchers being answered in the near future. Every near breakthrough turns out to be just that…near. Research conducted by reputable parapsychologists and scientists in related disciplines, that seems to suggest there is something science has as yet no answer for, seems to mysteriously be forgotten after a few years. In the meantime the received wisdom from conventional science remains resolutely opposed to the world of the paranormal. In other words, nothing seems to change.

This rather jaundiced view of mine is of course not held by most in the field of paranormal research, at least at an amateur level. This is probably a good thing because I could well be wrong and dramatic progress could be made next month or next year that would make a few cynics sit up and take notice. But I’m not holding my breath because the history of psychical research is long and littered with blind alleys.

A serious study of the subject probably started along with the booming Spiritualist movement in the nineteenth century. Mediums abounded and séances became the latest thing in middle class parlours on both sides of the Atlantic.

Science was scarcely less vociferous in its condemnation of the paranormal or supernatural in those days than it is now, but there were a number of more open minded academics at Cambridge that decided that the subject deserved a more considered approach. They founded the ‘Society for Psychical Research’ in 1882. Their remit was to study the paranormal without prejudice and in a scientific manner and they have remained true to this first principle to the present day.

This old but venerable body has attracted generous bequests from past members which have enabled PhD students working in British Universities to gain support in approved research.

The SPR library contains a vast amount of research data that purports to show the reality of Psi and the existence of ghosts. Is the scientific community ignoring this material through some inherent prejudice or because of legitimate scientific reasons whatever they may be.

All this obfuscatory confusion leaves someone like me baffled and impotent (that’s powerless or helpless for you sniggering in the back ). All I feel I can do, save for raiding the SPR library and spending the rest of my days sifting through dusty records (I assume they’re dusty), is to subject myself to the paranormal as best I can through joining a club, or Fellowship in my case and hope that for me at least some of the questions just may be answered.

After all I have met many people, (just spoken to one not five minutes ago in fact) who have come face to face with the paranormal and need no more convincing. For her it matters little that the scientist at the university does not believe in ghosts or that her neighbour scoffs at the talk of poltergeists. She has experienced something that is as real to her as the everyday objects that surround her and if she has to bite her tongue to avoid the all too frequent derision and mockery then so be it, she can live with that.

Strange stuff happens, of this I am in no doubt. If the most we can do as paranormal researchers is convince ourselves of this fact it may have to suffice. But that, in my humble opinion, would be no small achievement.

Toby

Comments

EMF METERS

2005-06-28T20:32:50+02:00

EMF METERS

It is claimed, not least by the manufacturers of EMF meters, that ghosts are connected in someway with electromagnetic fields. They admit the connection is as yet unexplained but are full of assurances that in haunted locations these mysterious relationships are to be found.

It is with this in mind that most paranormal investigators and ghost hunters are commonly to be found waving their EMF’s around taking base-line tests and looking for anomalous readings. These readings do occur but I ask the question; ‘is this anything to do with a ghost?’

As a paid up member of a paranormal group I have my own EMF, (electro magnetic field in case you were wondering) I can wave it about with the best of them too (oo err missus LOL) but have yet to find a ghost that way. It could well be a matter of time because it is only fair to say that whereas most other high tech equipment has been tried and subsequently rejected, the humble EMF has survived.

There will be those who claim that a ghost or spirit in some way affects the local EMF and the fluctuations that result could be an indication of a ghost.. There is no doubt some evidence to support this although ghosts often seem to present themselves without any anomalous EMF’s being detected.

Recently Leeds Paranormal Research Fellowship were asked by the BBC to investigate The Theatre Royal, Wakefield. Jules and I, being members of the Core group, went along for the preliminary inspection and the recorded investigation. The most intriguing thing for me about the location however, was not spooky noises or ghostly apparitions, we saw none of those, but the wildly erratic fluctuations in EMF’s. Some of the readings were so high that even placing your EMF directly in front of your computer or TV could scarcely have registered more EMF noise. It was literally noise too, because at one point we had three EMF meters next to each other on the floor all twittering away for all the world like exotic birds in a tropical rain forest.

The fields would oscillate, drop, disappear and return in any order even when the meter seemed to be some distance from a power source. It really was bizarre and the most curious of all seemed to be the way it was affected by physical movement of people many yards away. Jules discovered this particular phenomenon and may want to add her extraordinary find.

I was left assuming that the cabling and lighting in the Theatre was responsible for the wild readings and not the presence of any ghosts. However it is just possible that entities can feed off these high levels of electromagnetic energy to present us with phenomena that we recognise as ghostly. We have no idea how ghosts or spirits make themselves known to the physical world we recognise and so this use of available energy could in theory take place.

But what of the usefulness of my EMF? I’ll continue to carry it in my itinerary no doubt. In outside locations I think it will be a useful tool, especially where there are no artificial electrics present, but the visit to Wakefield has taught me a valuable lesson I think. The EMF’s are unpredictable and in constant flux which renders the readings as an indicator of ghostly presence rather nebulous.

Toby

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BETWEEN REALITY AND IMAGINATION

2005-06-28T20:31:23+02:00

Between reality and imagination

I'm increasingly drawn to the possibility that paranormal phenomena is neither totally objective nor subjective imagination. The truth may in fact lie somewhere inbetween.

To support my theory I am loooking out for evidence to support it and having just watched 'Jane Goldman Investigates' I think I may have come up with another little piece.

At the beginning of the show she meets a lady, Judith Chisholm who has conducted a lot of work into Electronic Voice Phenomena and she related the chilling tale of a voice that reportedly says: "It's Bernard's time" Forget who Bernard was now, but he was dead within the week.Judith did say that the last thing she would want to hear would be the words: 'It's your time'

At the end of the programme Jane did her experiment with various recording devices at The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. On the dictaphone she believed she had picked up a voice that later was interpreted as....and you've guessed it........'It's your time'

This surely has to be more than coincidence and leads me to think that in some way the knowledge Jane and her team had about Judith's fear had manifested onto the dictaphone by means unknown, thereby producing a thought on tape.

Is this a dimension between ordinary everyday reality and imagination?

Toby

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THE LUMINATOR

2005-06-28T20:02:08+02:00

The Luminator

Techniques of contacting the dead are many and varied, some are ancient, others new and dependent on modern technology. The use of the Luminator comes into the latter category.

It was originally devised to aid energy conservation in offices but its inventor noticed that when photographs were taken close to the device they were affected by its energy field.

Paranormal investigator Mark Macey has used the Luminator to take what he considers to be spirit photographs. The technique is very simple, he uses polaroid cameras with factory sealed film to reduce the chance of fraud. He then takes pictures of people close to the Luminator where they would be within the energy field that is emitted.

Thre results are intriguing. The images of the people photographed seem to be overlaid with other faces of people sometimes recognised as those now dead.

I am always a bit suspicious of the 'faces in the clouds' effect when interpreting indistinct images but the examples I saw recently on the television were interesting. I prefer to think that the energy field is distorting the faces to create seemingly foreign subjects in the pictures but I would be interested to see more examples of this interesting experimentation.

Toby

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THE SPIRICOM

2005-06-28T19:59:50+02:00

The Spiricom was a device that was purported to enable communication between the living and the dead. The origin of the machine is rather unusual in that the technical details were apparently provided by radio enthusiasts from the other side.

George Meek and his wife Jeanette received this information from séances and through a medium by the name of William O’Neill. Meek, a long time enthusiast of communication between the two worlds, was so impressed he invested half a million dollars into the research.

It was supposed to work by using a system of tones that the spirits were thought to be able to use to form speech on the tape. Great success was claimed but others who tried were not so successful. Even Meek himself was disappointed to discover that he could not attain a link with his wife after her death in 1991.

Away from the attentions of O’Neill the Spiricom seemed to fail which brings up some interesting questions. Was O’Neill, with his not inconsiderable abilities as a medium, able to assist the spirits in recording their communications on the machine? Or was it possible that, as some parapsychologists believe, some people are able to utilise their psychokinetic abilities to put their own thoughts down on tape?

Author: Toby Ion

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GHOSTS AND WHEN TO SEE THEM

2005-06-28T19:58:05+02:00

Ghosts, and when to see them.

There is a question that often gets asked of paranormal researchers, which is; “Are Ghosts more likely to be seen at night?”

It is a difficult enquiry to answer for a number of reasons. We tend to look for ghosts in the dark, but why? I have believed it was probably because we expect to experience the paranormal when we can feel that frisson of fear that is more acute in the dark when our normal senses are deprived of information and we become disorientated.

Recently however I have come across some research on the pineal gland that suggests that there is a very good physical reason why we become more receptive to psi or the paranormal at night.

The pineal gland is located in the brain and in humans is about 1cm in length. It only produces its chemicals in the dark so it begins at sunset and ceases at dawn. Its peak production is at 3-4 am. It has been pointed out that this is the time that Buddhists meditate, and monks get up to say Matins. Many psychics believe this is the time when the veil between this world and others is at its thinnest. Nurses will attest that most babies are born at this time and more people die during these hours.

One of the chemicals produced by the pineal gland is called pinoline which is thought to act on another chemical, serotonin, which results in the creation of a hallucinogen called DMT. It is a very powerful psychedelic that is possibly the neurochemical trigger for dreaming which is in itself a hallucinogenic state. The dream state is now thought to be the state we slip into when we shut down the senses and we may not have to be asleep to experience it.

Of course whether this means the resulting psychic experiences we may have are purely subjective or in some sense real, facilitated by our increased psychic awareness under the influence of DMT is still open to question.

Author: Toby Ion

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About Ghost Research UK

2005-06-28T19:42:58+02:00

Hello and welcome !!! to Ghost Research UK. We are a dedicated team of paranormal researchers and investigators that cover all aspects of the paranormal.

Authors: Jules Houston, Toby Ion.

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