WHEN A PLANE FELL

I’ve experienced much paranormal phenomena during my life. Here is one example.
It was a beautiful summer afternoon in the mid-1980s. I was walking home down a quiet country road when my peace was shattered as a Phantom and Jaguar fighter flew low overhead. As I watched, I saw the Phantom crash and explode in a field near me.
Shaking my head, I realised the field was empty, the planes having flown on. What was the nature of this strange hallucination? I found out when I watched the news that evening. A Phantom had crashed about a hundred miles away.
I have no idea whether the crashed plane was the one I saw. But even more interesting, was the event a case of premonition? Perhaps. But if the plane was the one I saw, there may well be a rational answer to the event.
I used to be in the RAF, and for a couple of years I worked in an office in a Phantom hangar. I knew the plane quite intimately. So the question arises, could I have unconsciously noticed there was something wrong with the plane as it flew past?
If this is feasible, then the unconscious can play tricks with the mind. And in this instance, the knowledge of an error visible on the plane came in the form of a hallucination of an aircraft crash. And a most vivid episode of paranormality has a rational explanation.

(c) Anthony North, Mar 2007

Paranormal UFO Occult

This is a post from Anthony North’s ‘alternative network.’ Current affairs posts almost daily on North’s Review and Eye on the World (this includes politics and links). North’s Review also has fiction, writers’ resources and TV reviews. For deeper issues, including paranormal, crime, environment and much more, Beyond the Blog is for you.

SALEM

The Salem witch trials in New England, USA, began in 1692. It all started with the tales of spells and the occult told by Tituba, the West Indian slave of the Rev Samual Parris, who lived at the Salem parsonage. Sat in the kitchen, enthralled by such stories, were the Parris children - nine year old Elizabeth and her cousin, Abigail, eleven - and a number of children from the neighbourhood.
Such story sessions became a regular part of life for the girls, and one day they decided to try a form of divination for themselves, involving the dropping of egg whites into water. The shape of the egg white, they had been told, gave indications of the future. However, when one of the egg whites seemed to form the shape of a coffin, one of the girls became hysterical.
This, combined with Tituba’s other tales, caused a prolonged episode of mass hysteria among the young, pubescent girls. Several developed phantom pregnancies, Elizabeth suffered bouts of hysterical sobbing, Abigail took to running about on all fours, even barking like a dog. And a neighbour’s child - twelve year old Ann Putnam - fantasised a struggle with a witch who had tried to cut off her head. The girls suddenly realised they were the centre of attention.
Spurred on by the local doctor who, finding nothing physically wrong with them, announced that the evil hand is on them, Rev Parris asked them to name the witch who tormented them. Elizabeth named Tituba. And thus inspired, the girls began to name others such as Sarah Good, a hated, pipe-smoking local beggar, and Sarah Osborne, who’s only crime was to scandalise New England’s Puritan sensibilities by living in sin.
Tituba was put on trial, and fearing for her safety, she admitted being a witch. What is more, she was one of many in the local community. Rising to the occasion, the girls advised that they could identify a witch by simply touching them. Ann Putnam accused 71 year old Rebecca Nurse of killing children. Susanna Martin was accused of bewitching a neighbour’s cattle following an argument. And the former minister, Rev George Burroughs, was accused of being the ringleader.
By this time the hysteria had got well out of hand and the witchhunt spread to other nearby towns, resulting in 150 arrests and, seven months later, the execution of seven men and
thirteen women, including Rev Burroughs. One of the accused - 80 year old Giles Cory - refused to testify, thus being pressed to death, proving Tituba’s wisdom in confessing, for in confessing and helping to name others, she was spared.
The madness of Salem was finally stilled 18 months after it began. By this time it had infected the whole of New England society, and only came to an end when both the governor’s wife and the president of Harvard University were accused. This led Governor William Phips to pardon and release all those held in prison. Eventually even the executed were pardoned, and in 1711 the state compensated any surviving relatives of those executed with the vast sum of £600.

(c) Anthony North, Mar 2007

Paranormal UFO Occult

This is a post from Anthony North’s ‘alternative network.’ Current affairs posts almost daily on North’s Review and Eye on the World (this includes politics and links). North’s Review also has fiction, writers’ resources and TV reviews. For deeper issues, including paranormal, crime, environment and much more, Beyond the Blog is for you.

ENFIELD POLTERGEIST

The most amazing area of paranormality is the poltergeist. Typical is the Enfield Poltergeist, the most documented infestation on record. It began on 31 August 1977 and continued for 14 months, the entire story witnessed by psychical researcher Maurice Grosse. Occurring in a semi-detached Enfield council house of a single-parent and her four children, it began with vibrating beds and moving furniture.
The family, including 13 year old Margaret and 11 year old Janet, then witnessed knocking on walls and floors, the movement of objects through the air and spontaneous combustion. Some thirty witnesses other than the family saw phenomena, and one photographer caught a curtain on camera twisting itself into a tight spiral.
Other events were more terrifying. For instance, at one stage, the girls were levitated out of their beds, hanging horizontally in the air. However, the events surrounding Janet were particularly disturbing. In particular, she would be taken over by a number of entities and spoke in a deep male voice.
Grosse finally established contact with the entities through a code of raps. Initially it claimed to be a previous tenant from 30 years before who had died. Later, it used a harsh voice to identify itself as one Joe Watson. Now vocal through Janet, at one stage it claimed to be Bill Haylock, a resident of a local graveyard.

(c) Anthony North, Mar 2007

Paranormal UFO Occult

This is a post from Anthony North’s ‘alternative network.’ Current affairs posts almost daily on North’s Review and Eye on the World (this includes politics and links). North’s Review also has fiction, writers’ resources and TV reviews. For deeper issues, including paranormal, crime, environment and much more, Beyond the Blog is for you.

DON’T TRUST FATE

Don’t you just love a good conspiracy theory. No matter what it is, chances are it’s rubbish. Most people leave conspiriology at that, but far more interesting is to look at society and work out why we believe in such far-fetched conspiracies in the first place.
One reason is fate – the idea that things can be predestined, and we are just pawns in the lap of gods. Such an idea gives us the feeling that there are forces above us, controlling us – it is a psychological breeding ground for replacing ‘fate’ with forces, from interfering aliens to big, secretive governments.
The existence of fate, though, is itself a kind of conspiracy theory. We are said to have free will to choose what we want to do. If this exists, then fate cannot also exist, for what is the point of choice if things are predestined, no matter what we choose?
I suppose the healthy choice is to go down the middle. The universe is rigged by chance. We’re not sure what chance is, but we know it throws up coincidence all the time. Things just seem to happen in serial groupings.
Carl Jung tried to explain the more meaningful coincidences in terms of synchronicity, with the suggestion that we may play a part in how coincidences happen. Research into luck can maybe offer a helping hand.
It has often been noted that luck tends to be a mix of only remembering the good times and an ability to calculate odds better than the next person. This places a psychological angle on a coincidental event. Does this hold the key to our appreciation of fate?
A person can be either pessimistic or optimistic by nature. If we apply the above to these attitudes, we can argue the optimist can go through life with perceived opportunities opening up before him, whilst the pessimist will trip on every obstacle he perceives in his way. So, a kind of fate may well happen – but the conspirator is our own attitude.

© Anthony North, Mar 2007

It’s Under Control

This is a post from Anthony North’s ‘alternative network.’ Current affairs posts almost daily on North’s Review and Eye on the World (this includes politics and links). North’s Review also has fiction, writers’ resources and TV reviews. For deeper issues, including paranormal, crime, environment and much more, Beyond the Blog is for you.

ANTARCTICA

Poor old Antarctica. Not just satisfied to watch it melt, conspiriologists have built a whole file on conspiracies surrounding this frozen wasteland. Hitler was fascinated by the place after hearing of myths of secret cities there, believed by several Arian cult organizations. From 1938 he sent secret U-boat expeditions to the region, which continued until 1946.
After the war, the Americans took an interest, and rumours surfaced that there had been many casualties when US forces encountered something. In 1973 rumours began of the Secret Earth project, with America exploiting what secret had been found on the continent.
Some theorists believe it is the home of Atlantis. Maps such as the Piri Reis portolan from the 16th century show Antarctica free of ice. They are thought to have been copied from much older maps.
Why does America keep its activities there so secret? Theorists point out the international treaties banning exploitation of Antarctica. So is there a secret city or secret knowledge on Antarctica? All I know is it’s damned cold there.

© Anthony North, Jan 2007

It’s Under Control

This is a post from Anthony North’s ‘alternative network.’ Current affairs posts almost daily on North’s Review and Eye on the World (this includes politics and links). North’s Review also has fiction, writers’ resources and TV reviews. For deeper issues, including paranormal, crime, environment and much more, Beyond the Blog is for you.

DEATH OF DIANA

If ever there was an iconic death to match that of JFK, it was the tragic death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Diana died, along with boyfriend Dodi Fayed and Ritz securityman Henri Paul, when their speeding Mercedes crashed into the Pont d’Alma tunnel in Paris on 31 August 1997. Speeding to avoid the paparazzi, the driver, Paul, had been drinking beforehand. Tragic and needless, the logical answer is, nevertheless, to accept the event as an accident.
Conspiriologists say otherwise. Rather, Diana was killed. One popular myth argues that the killer rode on a motorcycle in front of the car and used an anti-personnel flash gun to blind Paul, thus causing the crash. Yet another myth speaks of a white Fiat Uno, which the Mercedez clipped, being involved in the ‘assassination.’
As to motive for the assassination, Diana was causing much embarrassment to western governments over her landmine campaign, or, alternatively, sections of the British establishment, including the Royal Family, couldn’t bear the thought of the mother of a future king being married to, or having a child with, a muslim.

(c) Anthony North, Mar 2007

It’s Under Control

This is a post from Anthony North’s ‘alternative network.’ Current affairs posts almost daily on North’s Review and Eye on the World (this includes politics and links). North’s Review also has fiction, writers’ resources and TV reviews. For deeper issues, including paranormal, crime, environment and much more, Beyond the Blog is for you.

VAMPIRES

Since the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897 the vampire has entered modern culture. But what exactly is a vampire? Is it an aristocratic count feeding on blood?
Contrary to popular belief the vampire didn’t suddenly appear with Stoker. Indeed, there is a tradition of vampirism going back thousands of years. They appear in ancient mythology, and in the 12th century, William of Newburgh recorded several cases of ‘revenants,’ as they were then called.
One famous case from 1732 Meduegya in Serbia concerned a spate of deaths followed by fears of vampirism. Soldiers and surgeons dug up the recently dead and found them undecayed.
One obvious answer to this is a form of sleeping sickness, the people not realizing the people they were burying really were undead. Indeed, many cases of vampire infestations can be put down to various forms of sickness.
Typical is Mercy Brown from 1892 Rhode Island. Many in her family had died, and she became a suspected vampire. The answer to the deaths was TB, but it did not stop her exhumation and her body defiled in typical anti-vampire style.
One possible answer to the vampire myth is the existence of the incubus and succubus, entities that come to you in sleep and have sex. Psychologist Stan Gooch experienced one in the 1980s. The most obvious answer is sexual frustration combining with sleep paralysis – a phenomenon on the border of sleep when you are partially awake but your body appears weighted down – thus providing a delusion.
The effects of such a phenomenon can be stark, and it can appear so real that orgasm is achievable. But if one person can be tricked so easily by the mind, could the vampire seem to exist in a community?
Washington DC suffered a spate of vampire stories in 1897. In one famous case a young woman’s body was found apparently drained of blood. After her incarceration her ghost was seen searching for souls, wearing a white dress. At one point her coffin was opened and she appeared to have a mouth full of blood.
Perhaps the date – 1897 – provided the key. It was the year Dracula was published, and the Washington tale so exactly follows the fate of its heroine Lucy. It seems that all that is needed for monsters to exist is a culture that says they may do.

© Anthony North, Jan 2007

This is a post from Anthony North’s ‘alternative network.’ Current affairs posts almost daily on North’s Review and Eye on the World (this includes politics and links). North’s Review also has fiction, writers’ resources and TV reviews. For deeper issues, including paranormal, crime, environment and much more, Beyond the Blog is for you.

EVERY PSYCHO SHOULD WRITE

I sit down to write, and so often I think, who shall I kill today? Who has really angered me – who deserves to die. Of course, I’m not thinking of real people, but characters I’ve devised. But isn’t there something of the real in all fiction?
Don’t worry, I’m not a psycho. I’m quite an easy going fellow – not so quiet that I build up and explode, but quiet enough. Rarely does a violent feeling rise inside me – except, so often, when I write.
I used to be short tempered, but that all seemed to change when I began to write. It was as if any aggression was channeled into the craft. And it seems to be a general rule. Writers, artists, musicians rarely kill, it seems. Yes, they can be erratic, but Caravaggio aside, I cannot think of one famous murdering creative type.
Writing, I think, should become a therapy all its own. It curbs your aggressions, and is perfect therapy for the mind. Now, how do I feel? A short story I think. All those characters. Do I feel God-like? I’ll kill them all.

© Anthony North, Mar 2007

Writing Index

This is a post from Anthony North’s ‘alternative network.’ Current affairs posts almost daily on North’s Review and Eye on the World (this includes politics and links). North’s Review also has fiction, writers’ resources and TV reviews. For deeper issues, including paranormal, crime, environment and much more, Beyond the Blog is for you.

EVIL

Evil is thought of as action in the world due to the supernatural Devil. However, this is a peculiarly western concept. Eastern philosophies know of no such thing. Rather, what we term evil is an action counter to the balance of things.
This is so because in the east, opposing forces work in harmony to produce balance, whereas in the west, opposing forces are the antithesis of each other. However, we can explain this difference through politics rather than religion.
In order to gain power, early western leaders realized that an enemy had to be identified. Hence, that enemy was always seen as opposing the good of the leader’s system. In this way, the population could be frightened into obedience and required behaviour.
This excellent political tool evolved into good and evil, and is still used today in order to marginalize a system that is counter to the prevailing one. As a tool of social control, it has never been equaled, hence its omnipotent effect upon us.
This said, evil must be much more. For instance, why do people do actions that are considered evil? One answer to that they are not being evil, but instinctual. Most animals carry out actions that, if applied to humans, would be considered evil.
What separates these actions from the human? The obvious answer is that we have learnt a moral code to fight our instinctual drives. In order to live in a society regulated by human law, we must find a balance between our own drives and the needs of others.
Children do not appreciate moral law. Hence, they have wants, which can also been seen as instinctual. Interestingly, someone who commits an ‘evil’ act seems to have similar urges he cannot fight. The teaching of morals seems to be the divide between actions that are good and those that are evil.
We can see, here, that evil is nothing more than instinctual behaviour. We can thus argue that an evil person is one who has not sufficiently learnt a moral code capable of subsuming his instinctual drives. However, this leaves us with a moral dilemma.
For centuries homosexuality was considered evil. This was wrong. But in freeing gays from moral condemnation, we also hammer at the door or all other traditional evils. With such a watering down of the moral code, crime has become a major problem, with moral restraints to criminal behaviour removed.
It is the task of the moral philosopher to revisit evil and find a way to separate behavioural morality – such as homosexuality – from the morality required to continue to banish criminal behaviour. One system would be: do as you will, but hurt none. Which is, of course, a term at the heart of the occult.
Strange how the obvious answer has been classed, for millennia, as evil.

© Anthony North, December 2006

This is a post from Anthony North’s ‘alternative network.’ Current affairs posts almost daily on North’s Review and Eye on the World (this includes politics and links). North’s Review also has fiction, writers’ resources and TV reviews. For deeper issues, including paranormal, crime, environment and much more, Beyond the Blog is for you.

TELEPATHY

Explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins once went on an Arctic expedition in which he co-operated with researcher Harold Sherman. Over 68 nights he would spend a little time trying to communicate the events of the day by thought to Sherman in New York. Records of the test show that Sherman wrote some incredibly accurate notes.
This was one of the most celebrated cases of telepathy, the believed ability to receive messages in the mind from another mind. A term coined by Frederic Myers in the 19th century, it is usually called extrasensory perception, or ESP, today; although the latter also takes in clairvoyance and precognition.
Classic examples of telepathy which most people have experienced include foreknowledge of someone about to phone you, or thinking about someone then seeing them. Sceptics deny this is telepathy, but merely coincidence.
J B Rhine began the first ‘scientific’ analysis of telepathy in the 1930s. Using packs of 25 cards with 5 sets of five symbols, subjects would try to guess which symbol another person had turned over. The number of guesses above chance suggested ESP.
By the 1970s, the Ganzfeld became popular, where a person is placed in sensory deprivation and asked to speak his thoughts whilst another person concentrates on sending images of a picture he is looking at. Evidence has been patchy.
Theories to explain telepathy have included the idea that messages are carried on radio-like waves, or are a product of pheromones, or airborne hormones. All such ideas have been discounted.
Others opt for more esoteric explanations, such as Carl Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’; a level of mind below the personal and arguably connecting minds together. Quantum mechanics allows spontaneous action, suggesting an answer may also exist here.

© Anthony North, November 2006

This is a post from Anthony North’s ‘alternative network.’ Current affairs posts almost daily on North’s Review and Eye on the World (this includes politics and links). North’s Review also has fiction, writers’ resources and TV reviews. For deeper issues, including paranormal, crime, environment and much more, Beyond the Blog is for you.