ECTOPLASM

Morna’s Stories: Part I

2008-11-28T23:25:00.001-05:00

One person that I really enjoy talking to about supernatural events is my friend Morna. Remember her? She is the one that told me the story about Bud and Rat, but then later couldn’t remember any of the details. Well, nevertheless, she has other stories that also intrigue me and I thought I would tell a few of them. One day while canoeing on the Rideau Lakes she told me these two. They ain’t much but they are what they are.

About fourteen years ago Morna’s father died and Morna was struggling with the grief over her loss. As well, at the time she was stuck in a dead-end job with a boss that was half nuts and who was always tormenting her. At the time it seemed that none of her dreams or ambitions were coming true. Plus she had a whole basket full of worries concerning her extended family that were suffering everything from drug abuse to spousal abuse. To top it all off she felt powerless to do anything about it.

One day her depression was so bad that she couldn’t bring herself to go to work. Instead she decided to take a walk down by the lake. After a while she came to a park bench and sat down on it. Before long she started crying uncontrollably. After a few minutes she then heard a voice – a familiar voice. It was the voice of her dead father. The voice was loud and clear, just as if he were sitting next to her on the bench. And all it said was “Morna, whenever you don’t know what to do, play trump.”

And that is the story really. It goes on a bit more. She then went to her doctor for a bit of therapy; then decided to quit her job and enrol in university for her Masters degree; but no more supernatural events.

Comments:
It just occurred to me now that there is a similarity with this story and the one about my wife and Henrietta. In both cases they heard the voice of their dead loved one while crying over another problem. And in both cases the voice gives advice to guide and calm them. However, Morna’s ghost came during the middle of the day, and not even in a house but outside, which I think is rare.

Morna’s second story isn’t a ghost story, but a déjà vu story. When Morna was small her parents used to take the whole family on long car trips for the summer holidays – and I mean long. They would drive to Alaska or Labrador or, as in this case, Central America.

Along the way they stopped in a village in Mexico. They parked the car and began walking around the village like tourists do. At one point Morna all of a sudden had this sense of déjà vu. But unlike most cases, as with me, it wasn’t vague and sort of “I think this happened to me before,” but Morna knew where she was. She told her family she had been there before and was able to describe different parts of the village. She pointed down a street and said if they walked down the street and turned the corner they would find a large fountain in a plaza. So her family did as she said and sure enough there was the fountain just as she had said.

And again, that is all there is to the story. That is my only déjà vu story. I don’t have any thoughts or theories about this, but it is another bit of information for my collection.

Do you have any? I would love to hear them.

The Men in the Bookstore

2008-11-21T22:33:00.001-05:00

This week I’m going to tell sort of a fun story. It isn’t a story about the supernatural at all, because nothing happens that isn’t perfectly natural – that is, of this world. Yet I have never been able to explain what happened. I’m hoping someone out there might have some good ideas.

The event took place I believe around the summer of 1979. At the time I was browsing the shelves of the Place Bell Bookstore in Ottawa. I haven’t been there in years, but at the time it specialized in travel books, but it also had a very good collection of classic works of fiction. I couldn’t help noticing two men that were in the store. They seemed to be moving methodically through the fiction section and already had picked up quite a few books. As they got closer I could hear their conversation. Actually, it wasn’t a conversation at all, only one man was speaking. And this is essentially what he said:

“This book is Nineteen Eighty-four. It sold such-and-such million copies. It was written by George Orwell. He is the same author that wrote Animal Farm, which you read last week. You will enjoy it.”

The book was then placed in the arms of the other man along with his other books. The first man would then continue:

“This is A Tale of Two Cities. It sold such-and-such millions of copies. It was written by Charles Dickens. He is the same author that wrote Oliver Twist, which you read last week. You will enjoy it.”

And so this continued until the two men accumulated a mountain of books – let’s say 30 – and then took them to the cash to buy. As I recall I had paid for my books just before them. I had wanted to return afterwards to ask the cashier if he knew what was up with these guys, but then thought better of it for what ever reason. As usual, I now sort of regret that decision as I have never been able to come up with a satisfactory explanation of what happened that day.

The questions that need to be answered to explain this event are:

How is it that a person so keen on reading could have never of heard of any of these famous books and authors before?

If this was a foreign student or immigrant trying to learn English, or even a man recovering from a comma, what was the rush? Why did so many books have to be read each week, and why classic fiction? Wouldn’t the newspaper be just as good and more informative?

Is it even possible to read that many books in a week?

Why was it important to know how many books were sold?

If the man was learning English literature why would he only be told “you will enjoy it?” Wouldn’t some comment on its literary merit be expected?

Why was the other man taking him to the store to buy the books? Couldn’t the reader have got the books by himself? Wouldn’t a reading list and a library card have been good enough?

If they were aliens from another planet doing a crash course on human culture would they be doing this so conspicuously?

Any way folks, if you have an explanation I would love to hear it.

Really scary stuff: My ideas!

2008-11-15T08:08:00.002-05:00

Intro:
There is going to be a bit of a change-up this week. I believe I have finished telling most of the significant stories in my collection. That is, stories that seem to have some sort of commonality, that happened to me, or that I think have credibility. After this it will be mostly curiosities, fun stories, or whatever stories.

This week I have decided to put forward some ideas that I have about the supernatural, for what ever its worth. And in turn I am going to open up the blog to comments. I’m still not getting many readers of Ectoplasm, so if I get comments from one or two readers I guess I will have to be satisfied.

My thoughts:
To begin, I’m not saying that I actually believe the following to be true. It is just sort of my working hypothesis. I have a handful of reoccurring facts and I’m trying to figure how they fit together.

I’m starting to wonder whether when people experience a supernatural event that the event is just localized. That is, something strange did happen to the person but what happened was only intended for that person. In essence reality shifted, but only briefly, and only in one place, and only for one person. Outsiders that are nearby may or may not notice something. In the stories of Tara and Henrietta, Mark and I only saw a light or felt being rubbed, but we didn’t take in the full event. And even in the case of my wife she only heard a voice. Was she also supposed to have seen Henrietta? When I was pushed down along the wickets in the bank it seemed that only I was aware of what had happened. No one else in the bank seemed to react. Rat was woken by bells in the middle of the night, but no one else. She saw only half of Terry’s ghost. Was she supposed to have seen his full body? The chap who saw the flying saucer saw it until he went to wake up his friends, then it was gone.

I think this idea makes sense because of the contradictions found with supernatural or inexplicable events. No one could ever make me believe that those events that happened to me didn’t really occur. It wasn’t just in my mind. Those papers from the windstorm were still on the floor the next morning. Something really did happen. Maybe some of the details have blurred over time, but the events occurred. But if someone else had been around during the windstorm in my bedroom, would they have seen the same thing? UFO stories demonstrate this best. A person sees a UFO, but the rest of the city doesn’t? How could that be? Yet the person is certain they saw a UFO. Possibly the UFO existed only for them. It also explains the irrational nature of UFO stories. Why would aliens come to our planet and just zoom into a city for a sixty second visit and then zoom out again? What was gained? Why risk being seen? Out-of-body/near-death experiences are another example. Anyone who has had this happen is absolutely convinced that what they experienced really did happen, yet other people that are around at the time usually report seeing something different at the time. Did the person hallucinate the event, or did they experience a different reality?

Another question I have is this: is it an outside force that is warping reality or is it the person experiencing the event? The person mourning the death of a loved one could be altering their own reality. Admittedly it is a weird idea, but on the other hand the idea of ghosts or spirits returning to Earth is just as unbelievable really.

I have this idea. There is really no basis to it at all; it just came to me in a dream once. And it just makes me wonder. The dream was very short. It probably lasted just ten or fifteen seconds. In it I was in another world, as in another universe or plain of existence. I was asked whether I was going to carry on with the test and I replied that I had decided to quit and not be tested anymore. And that was the dream. Not much was said, but much was understood. I understood in the dream that I was being tested on Earth – for what I do not know – and that I had abandoned this challenge, if you will; presumably a challenge for some sort of advancement in the other world. Now I think this dream was just a dream and nothing more than that. I don’t think really that I caught a glimpse into another world, but then again the idea is interesting. Ever since I have wondered whether possibly we simultaneous exist in two worlds: one on Earth and a second in … well I don’t know. It could be a spirit world, it could be a world in another dimension of space, I really can’t say. To surmise further, I wonder whether that self in the other world isn’t constantly interacting with the self in this world. People often believe that God or a guardian angel is constantly looking after them. Could it be that it is really just themselves in another plain of existence? And what if there are times when they interact with us, possibly preferably while we are asleep, that a ripple occurs in the fabric of reality. That reality warps just briefly as the two universes interact.

Thus when we say we saw a ghost, was it really a ghost, or was it just the way we in that the other world warped reality for us? True, if we in that other world can warp reality for ourselves then why not for other people? When we die in the physical world why not continue interacting with the living from this other world? I have no real answer for this. And how does this explain UFOs? A spaceship is a pretty big warp in reality. Do aliens also visit us this way? But are the UFOs really physical or just visual? Maybe we just create the appearance of them for unknown reasons. This could explain why UFOs are mostly a western phenomena.

Well clearly I’m just rambling here. But that is because there are still many pieces to this puzzle that do not fit, so I keep turning them around to see what happens.

If I haven’t bored you to death I would like to comment on one other aspect of the soul or spirit or what ever you call it. I have proof that the spirit must exist and I have proof that the spirit can’t exist. First, I don’t know about you but I have this minds eye that experiences life. Life doesn’t just happen; it is experienced by something else that sees my body as being some sort of extension. But how can that be because my brain is made up of only neurons that have electro-chemical discharges; one being fired by the other. It doesn’t matter how complex the circuitry of the mind is, in the end it is just synapses firing. There is nothing about our understanding of physical reality that can explain why one neuron firing in coordination with a million others should create a sense of existence. What makes all of the neurons firing in millions of locations of the brain at once create a singular experience. Therefore the unification of the mind is just an illusion. If you say yes, but it is millions of neurons firing, which makes it so much more complex. But what is it that is unifying them? It has to be something non-physical.

On the contrary, I know that a spirit can’t exist outside the physical world. We know this from brain injury studies. If a portion of a brain is damaged, that part of the mind, including the mind’s eye also disappears. If you sever a connection between two parts of a brain then so is the mind. There are no channels for communication through the spirit world to tie the disconnected halves back together. And as the mind slowly deteriorates so does the mind’s ability to perceive its own existence. If there is a spirit that can sense and think outside of the physical work then the loss of the physical mind shouldn’t affect it.

I have no resolution to this paradox, but I think it is important to resolve. But possibly the idea of the two selves in two worlds could be the key.

I have said enough for this week but will get back to these topics again later. I would enjoy hearing about your personal experiences with supernatural or inexplicable events, as well as your ideas on the topic.

Mark’s Ghost Story

2008-11-07T21:11:00.002-05:00

Last week I mentioned my good friend Mark. Every once in a while I try to get him into a discussion about my interests in the supernatural. He usually will only accommodate me briefly before trying to change the topic. You see, even though he had the same realization about fate as I did, I believe for him it is more of a way of interpreting the world. I don’t think Mark really believes that there is some sort of fatalistic force that influences our lives, and he certainly doesn’t believe that God is controlling our lives.

On one occasion I asked Mark if he really had never had anything happen to him that struck him as supernatural. He admitted that yes in fact there had been but it didn’t interest him in the least. Mark is a scientist and to him the only things that interest him are things and events that can be studied by science. In his words “if you can’t kick it and if it doesn’t kick back I’m not interested in it.” The problem with studying the supernatural is that almost by definition it can’t be analysed scientifically. It doesn’t seem to involve forces and energy that are apart of our normal reality. That is why I like collecting stories. It isn’t science, but I think it gives you hints about what is going on. It is really the only think we have got. With this in mind I pushed Mark further: “Even if you aren’t interested in the supernatural, I am and I would like to hear your story.” And this is his story.

Mark had had this long on-again, off-again relationship with this woman, Tara, in Edmonton. He finally broke the romantic ties with her but remained a close friend and would visit her whenever he happened to be passing through town. On this one occasion he made a special trip up to visit Tara as she had recently lost her dog Fallah. Tara had been extremely close to Fallah and it was clear to Mark that Tara wasn’t handling the death well.

Now I guess I should point out that Tara believes she has the 3rd Eye and can see auras and ghosts. Apparently she once told Mark that I have one of the blackest auras she has ever seen. I think this is because I have a tendency to be cynical and sceptical – hard to believe, ain’t it folks? Tara would probably be one of the last people I would collect a story from about the supernatural because she strikes me as a person who needs to believe in things – anything. This I think makes her vulnerable to suggestion.

Now when Mark arrived at Tara’s house Tara told him that she had already been visited a couple of times by Fallah’s ghost. I don’t think Mark really believed this, but he had heard this sort of thing many times before from Tara and just considered it part of her persona, and so didn’t question her about it.

That evening Tara suffered another blue spell over the loss of her dog and had started crying. Mark sat her down on the couch, put his arm around her and tried to console her as much as possible. Then after a while Mark noticed a light in the corner of the room. It didn’t move but just seemed to light up that section of the room. Tara stopped crying and looked over towards the light. She asked Mark “Do you see that light over there?” Mark said he did and then Tara replied “That’s Fallah. He just came into the room.” Mark couldn’t see Fallah, just the light, but then all of sudden he felt something rub up against his legs just as if a dog had had squeezed passed him. The next moment Mark then saw Tara recline backwards into the couch, just as if a large dog had stood up and put its paws on Tara’s chest. Tara then started speaking to Fallah as she would have when he was alive. The dog however stayed only briefly and the next thing Mark noticed was the light had gone out in the corner of the room.

Comments
I find that this story has lots in common with the story about my wife hearing the voice of her dead friend Henrietta while I saw the red light in her eyes. In this case Tara saw the ghost and Mark saw a light in the corner of the room. Tara, the person the Ghost is visiting, is able to see the ghost, but Mark the bystander sees the light. Also, Mark and I were both acting to console the other over their loss. This story does differ in that Mark could actually feel the ghost. In fact I think this is my only story in which someone feels a ghost touch them. There is another difference in that the story doesn’t take place late at night after waking up. It did, though, happen in the evening, if that is worth anything.

Again, I like this story because it happened to two people so they can corroborate the event. Admittedly I would have never believed the story from Tara, but since Mark is such a sceptic, to me the story is worth gold. Ironically he still doesn’t really believe in ghosts.

Having said this I have to come clean about something. Once again I tried verifying the facts of this story and so contacted Mark about it. I was curious to find out if the light Mark saw was also red. To quote Mark “I don’t recall the colour of the light. In fact I don’t really recall the event at all. Although I don’t doubt it happened.” Yikes! I’m not doing very well here folks. It’s curious that similar to my friend Morna he couldn’t recall any of the detail, although didn’t deny the story. On one hand it seems clear that to my friends these stories don’t overly concern them and so they forget the details over time. The question is how much am I embellishing the stories purely because of my fascination for the stories? Am I subconsciously adding on to the stories in some way because they are always in the back of my mind? Obviously I made a big mistake in not documenting these stories when I first heard them.

Act of God

2008-10-31T23:06:00.001-04:00

Okay, today’s the day. This is one story in particular that I have been saving up and I figure now is about time to tell it. This story involves God. Once again I would like to mention that I am in no way promoting the belief in God, or religion or spirituality in any form. This story is a part of a much bigger and more complicated story in my life that I don’t think I am going to get into at the moment. I would just like to tell the sequence of events of this story as matter-of-fact as I can, and let the reader take from it what they will. But as I’m sure you can imagine it did have a profound affect on me and my thinking at the time.

To begin, my parents raised me as an atheist. They didn’t so much teach me that God doesn’t exist, but simply gave me no religious or spiritual teaching or exposure. Even today I feel somewhat uncomfortable attending religious services.

So by the time I was a young adult I was happily and consciously an atheist in my beliefs. However I couldn’t help noticing that my life seemed to be a long string of unlikely events. More to the point it seemed that the more I would strive to take my life in one direction other forces seemed to be pushing it in the other. I remember at the time also analysing the life of my very close friend Mark. It seemed too that the more he tried to chase his dreams the further away he was getting from them. Finally it dawned on me: our lives were controlled by fate.

This came as a eureka moment for me. I felt that I had come to a profound and important realization. Since this also involved my friend Mark I was excited to talk to him and tell him all about my realization. It was about a week or two later that the phone rang and it was Mark on the other end. We traded pleasantries and I was just about to tell him about my realization when all of a sudden Mark interrupted saying: “Hey, guess what? I’ve come to the conclusion that our lives are controlled by fate.” As the British would say, I was gob-smacked. I couldn’t believe he had come to the same conclusion at the exact same time as me, and on top of that taken away my thunder by saying it first. I jokingly cursed him for making this announcement before I did, but inside was actually overjoyed. It meant that I didn’t have to explain my reasoning to Mark or to have to try and convince him. He already knew and understood. This incredible coincidence also helped convince me of the certainty of my conclusions.

This period of my life was filled with highly unlikely coincidences that happened on a daily bases. Each time it happened it only further confirmed my notions about fate. However, after about a year I started wondering whether I was copping-out be calling this fate. I wondered whether because I had been raised an atheist whether I was afraid to admit that it was actually God controlling my life, and not some meaningless term such as ‘fate’. So from that period forward I started up a relationship, of sorts, with God, clearly understanding that all these unlikely events that were happening to me were due in fact to God.

So this was the situation for about another year until when I found myself studying in London, Ontario. At the time I was getting my Masters of Library Science degree at the University of Western Ontario. If you don’t know what London is like in the summer, then I will tell you: it is very hot and extremely humid. One day when I was bicycling it was so hazy in the morning that in some places the street lights were still on. As I bicycled the air would pass over my bicycle, causing it to cool, and in turn causing the moisture in the air to condense onto my bicycle so that it would rain as I drove – very weird. About a couple of times a week, just as my afternoon classes would be ending, huge thunder clouds would appear. I seemed to constantly be being chased home on my bicycle by thunder and lightening.

Any ways, one night I came home on a particularly hot, humid, and stagnant evening. Even though I had windows on three sides of my apartment, with all of them wide open, there wasn’t a bit of breeze blowing through. When I went to bed I had on just my briefs, with not even sheets on, and I struggled to fall asleep in the horrid heat. Still, sleep I did, and after an hour or so I had a dream.

It was a very short dream. In it I was in the library stacks at school. I was with someone and I was having an argument with them. I don’t know what I was arguing about, but in order for me to win the argument I had to say “because I believe in God.” Unfortunately, even though I believed in God, up until then I had never actually told a person that I believed in God, not even my friend Mark. So in the dream I struggled to say it, but no matter how much I wanted to win this argument I just couldn’t bring myself to say it. Then, at that moment, I woke up.

When I awoke I found myself to be shivering with cold. The air was like ice. And there was a racket in my apartment. I opened my eyes and saw a hurricane blowing in my bedroom. Wind was blowing so hard through my window that the curtains were spinning around in spirals with big violent flaps. There was a desk in my room that had been covered with loose-leaf paper, but now all of the paper was flying around my room like they were caught in a tornado. I jerked up in a sitting position and wondered “what the Hell is going on here?” Just then the wind immediately stopped, the hot humid air returned, and the papers slowly settled to the floor like snow flakes. Once again I was sweltering with the heat. I got up and went to my window and looked out. I could see no trees bending or rustling in the wind. I listened, but I couldn’t hear the slightest sound of wind, not even in the distance. It was as if the wind had only been in my room.

I slowly went back to sleep, contemplating what had just happened. When I woke up the next morning the loose-leaf paper was still all over the floor. It hadn’t been a dream. In fact I left the paper on the floor for a week or two to reaffirm what had happened that night. I wish I had actually taken a photograph of those papers, because now after all those years you begin to doubt your memories. Yet I know it happened.

Comments:
Well obviously I like this story. It happened to me so I am certain that it occurred. Once again it is an inexplicable event that happened late at night just after waking up. I also had evidence the next day that I wasn’t dreaming because I found all the papers on the floor that had been blown about in the night. Unfortunately there was no one else there to share the experience, so I have no corroboration. However my friend Mark did come to the same realization about fate at the same time as me. I have asked him about that since then and he does remember it, so it did happen. Unlike me Mark has remained an atheist and has even toned down his beliefs on fate.

I also think it is interesting that I looked out of the window. This is similar to Rat looking out the window when she woke up in the night, and my physics teacher’s friend who looked out the window at night to see the flying saucer. I can’t imagine what it means. Possibly it is just a natural thing to want to do when you wake up at night, although I think in my case I had justifiable reason.

One criticism of the story would be that in fact nothing truly inexplicable happened. I had a dream; the wind blew threw my window; some coincidences happened. So what? Coincidences happen all the time.

The Story of Bud and Rat

2008-10-25T09:00:00.002-04:00

This week I’m going to relate a story told to me by a very old and close friend of mine named Morna. She tells the story about a couple that were old school roommates of hers in university. The couple are Bud and Rat -- both silly nicknames that I suppose Morna made up for them. At the time Bud and Rat weren’t a couple, but were just friends sharing an apartment along with Morna and a couple of other students.

The story is going to be a bit of an experiment. I actually wrote it down about a month ago. Since then I had an opportunity to visit Morna for a weekend and while there I asked her to retell the story to make sure I had all of my facts correct. She gladly did so, but I was horrified when I listened to her tell a completely different story. How could I have gotten so many facts wrong to a story that has always fascinated me so much? I then told Morna the story as I remembered it. At first she completely discounted it, but then as she went through each fact she then changed her mind and agreed that my account was closer to the mark. However there were some points she just couldn’t recall. In the end she had to admit she couldn’t remember the facts for sure. So I asked Morna if I could e-mail Bud and Rat in Calgary and get the story directly from them. She agreed but decided to e-mail them herself. As yet I haven’t received a reply.

At first I thought I should wait for the reply first before posting the story to this blog, but then I thought maybe I should tell the story as I remember it and then later we can compare it with Rat and Bud’s version. It should be interesting to see how much a story changes over time and as it is passed from one person to another.

If you have ever been to Kingston you might actually be familiar with the apartment building that Morna, Bud and Rat lived in. At the time it was called Elrond College – I don’t know why ‘College’ as it was a cooperative student high-rise. The design of it is totally insane and worth mentioning. As I recall the elevator only stopped on the ground, 3rd, 6th, and 9th floors. The reason for this is that to get to your apartment – called houses – from the hallway you have to take a half a flight of stairs either up or down. Once in your house, to get to your bedroom you then have to take another half-flight of stairs up or down again. If you lived in an 8 person house there would be even another half-flight of stairs to further bedrooms. I remember a student once left the bath running in an upper house and the water overflowed 1 ½ of flights of stairs down and out of the house and into the corridor and then into another house going down another 1 ½ flights. Elrond was, and still is, all hallways. It has long winding and useless halls that connect houses on one side of the building with another on the other side. It has finished rooms with no windows or doors, just trap doors in the floor for entry. On top of this the contractor that built it made a measuring error causing one bedroom in each house to be too small for use and another super sized. The building is at the corner of Princess and Division. Go Google Satellite it. Heck, her it is: http://maps.google.ca/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=44.233443,-76.492567&spn=0.002233,0.003782&t=h&z=18 .

Okay, so I digress. Back to the story.

At the time Rat had just broken up with her boyfriend, Terry. He was a trucker that lived, I believe, in Barrie, Ontario. He had just been up for a visit, trying desperately to patch up his relationship with Rat. However, Rat had decided that was it and the relationship would not continue, although she still liked the guy and wanted to remain friends.

Well it got late and Terry had to return to Barrie so he left in a saddened mood. Rat promptly went to bed and fell asleep. In the middle of the night she was awoken by the sound of church bells. She looked out her window down Princess Street and all was calm. There were no people or cars moving, just the eerie sound of the bells at night. For reasons that Rat couldn’t explain she then put on her housecoat and left the apartment into the hallway. When she looked down the hallway she saw Terry ‘standing’ there looking at her. Completely surprised, Rat said “Terry, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Barrie.” Then Rat noticed that Terry didn’t have any legs. His upper torso was just floating there in the air. Terry said nothing. Rat then turned around and ran back to the apartment.

When Rat got to the apartment door she discovered that it had locked behind her and that she couldn’t get in. With no other choice she began pounding on the door trying to wake up someone to let her in. In time the door opened up and there stood Bud. He asked Rat “what are you doing outside?” but before giving her a chance to reply then interjected “you saw Terry, didn’t you?” Bud could never explain why he had said that.

Rat didn’t answer but just ran to her room and got dressed. She then ran out of the apartment, went to her car, and drove all the way to her home back in Barrie. She arrived home in the wee hours of the morning. When she got to her parent’s house her mother told her that she had just received word that Terry had died that night in a crash. The time of the crash was the same time that his ghost had appeared to Rat.

Comments:
This is another story in which the affected person is woken up in their sleep. I also like the story because it was partially verified by Bud, who as well had a slightly surprising response when he discovered Rat out in the hall. There was also no way in which Rat could have known about Terry’s death before she had arrived home. Morna had also lived in the apartment at the time and so verified the disappearance of Rat to Barrie and the death of Terry, although admittedly not a very reliable verification.

This event happened approximately 30 years ago, so clearly too much time has gone by without properly documenting the event. Even if Bud and Rat reply to my request there is no knowing how reliable their account will be. Over that many years much can get distorted and go fuzzy.

The Old Woman in the Bank

2008-10-18T09:49:00.003-04:00

I think I will continue my blog with another first. This time I will tell you about the first time something inexplicable happened to me. Like my previous story it is also out of character for it deals with ESP. And again, I believe this is the only ESP story that I have in my collection.

This story took place I believe in December of 1978. I was studying at McGill University at the time. McGill back then had a very annoying practice of having Christmas exams both before the Christmas holidays and following them. So I would have to spend all my time prior to the holidays cramming for my exams, not to mention writing them, and then when I arrived home for the holidays, would have them ruined by having to study further for those exams waiting for me on my return to school.

On this particular year I was even more overwhelmed then usual with my studies and for had not done a single bit of Christmas shopping before returning home for the holidays. And since I had one of the last exams scheduled, by the time I got home there was only one shopping day left before Christmas. I was rushed.

So that day I went to downtown Ottawa to shop, but first made my way over to my bank to get money – the Bank of Montreal on Rideau Street. When I entered the bank there was a huge line up for the tellers. (Remember them? They are sort of human automated banking machines.) Well, there was nothing I could do so I decided just to be patient and eventually I would get served and get my money for shopping.

While waiting I couldn’t help noticing the woman that was standing in front of me. She was quite old and she had a terrible cataract over her left eye. It was all a milky blue colour. I couldn’t tell about the right eye because she was turned so that I could only see her left side. Well I then went off into a world of day-dreams and didn’t think about this woman again until much later when I noticed that we were now up at the front of the line. The old woman was next, followed by me.

Now I need to first briefly explain the layout of the land here. The bank had its wickets along the left wall of the bank as you entered. The line-up wound its way down the centre of the bank heading towards the back and terminated in front of the farthest wicket in the back left corner. So as you approached the wickets you sort of had to look up and down towards your left for any free tellers.

So returning to the story, I then couldn’t help noticing the old woman in front of me. Instead of her keeping an eye towards her left for an available wicket she was instead facing to the right with her back to the wickets. I then started thinking. “God damn it, this really pisses me off. Here it is the busiest season of the year, you’ve got a bank jammed with people waiting to be served, and isn’t it just typical that the person next in line isn’t paying attention so that the teller keeps on having to call out ‘next please, next.’ And you would think this woman, half blinded by her cataract would be even trying harder to look for tellers, but what does she do, but turn her back away.”

Well that was about as far as I got in my mental tirade, because the next thing I new this woman spun around, grabbed me with both hands by my shirt, and with unexpected force threw me down the aisle in front of the wickets. I staggered to a stop and desperately tried to figure out what had just happened. I looked around, thinking there must be a free wicket that she had pushed me towards, but no they were all busy. I then looked back towards the woman to try to get some sort of sign of her intent. But she just looked blankly my way as if nothing had happened. She certainly didn’t look upset. And what is really odd is that no one else gave any indication that anything had just happened either. I didn’t know what to think or do. I briefly considered getting back in line, but there was no way I was going to stand near that woman again. So I just stood there feeling very foolish in front of the wickets waiting for a teller to come free, which mercifully didn’t take too long.

How had that woman read my thoughts, if in fact that is what she did? She couldn’t have read the expression on my face, as if that could be a reason, because she was looking away from me at the time. Or did she just have a little fit and it was all a coincidence?

Comments:
Well, this story is different in many ways. First, it doesn’t take place at night or after just waking up. It involved ESP, or seemingly so, which is completely rare from my experiences. It happened in public, in front many people, but who seemed to be almost oblivious to what had just happened. And the act was perpetrated by a human and nothing otherworldly.

For the most part I don’t know what to do with the story because it doesn’t fit the mould. It doesn’t follow a pattern. Yet I believe because it happened during the day and was a physical, almost violent, event that it has elicited the strongest memories of all. When you wake up in the morning, scratching your head, and asking yourself “what the Hell happened last night,” you immediately start doubting and questioning your memory. Did that really happen or not? But when you get thrown down an aisle in the middle of the day by a blind old woman: that you do not forget.

UFO Story

2008-10-10T20:46:00.002-04:00

In my last entry I wrote about the common occurrence of strange events happening late at night, usually after being woken up or being woken up due to the strange event. I thought this time I would write about the first time I ever heard a story with this occurrence. In fact it is probably the first inexplicable story that I heard which seemed to me to have an ounce of credibility to it. However, this story is different in that it is a UFO story. I believe it is the only UFO story I have.

The story was told to me when I was in high school. In my final year I took a course in advance physics. It was essentially a university level physics course that the school taught. Students came from other regions of the city just so that they could take this course. We had just finished taking a class on relativity. In it the teacher explained that ordinary matter cannot travel faster than the speed of light because as its speed approaches that of light the energy exerted on the object to make it go faster ends up being converted to mass. As the object gets more massive it takes even more energy to make it go faster. As the object reaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite and so effectively making it impossible to go faster. The teacher then got slightly off topic by explaining that this is why UFOs could not be visiting Earth from other planets. The great distances involved and the limitation of velocity prevented any reasonable quick travel across the stars.

Further discussion on this point continued. Of course a classroom full of teenage boys (there was only one girl in the class) was bound to have a few trying to argue for the existence of UFOs. The teacher finally agreed to concede one point by telling the following story.

He had studied at Carleton University in Ottawa, and while he was there he was good friends with another science student that lived on the campus in student residence. This friend was a hard core student of science and didn’t have any interest in supposed inexplicable events, in particular UFOs. He was interested only in what could be explained by science.

However one night my teacher’s friend went to bed only to be woken up in the middle of the night. For reasons he couldn’t explain he got up and looked out his window and there hovering in the air outside of the residence was a flying saucer. (Now this story was told to me so long ago that I have now forgotten the details of the saucer, such as size, etc, but I don’t think that is critical.) Any way, the student observed the saucer for a few minutes and then finally decided that no one would ever believe him unless he told some other students on his floor and have them look. So with this he ran out of his room and started hammering on a couple of his friend’s doors trying to get them to wake up and look out the window. (Again, I have forgotten to what degree he had success in this operation, but he was able to rouse at least one neighbour.) Upon returning to his dorm window he looked out only to see that the UFO was gone. The other student or students saw nothing. My teacher’s friend recounted this event later to his friends. He admitted that it couldn’t have been a UFO, yet on the other hand he had seen something that he couldn’t explain.

My teacher had full faith in his friend and that he wouldn’t have made up this story, yet still he couldn’t believe in UFOs.

Comments:
Obviously I like this story because it has the repeating theme of being woken in the night to experience a curious event. Unfortunately the story is handed down to me second hand, and now third hand to you dear reader. So this leaves much room for error in the facts, not to mention that we really can have no faith in knowing what the personality of this student was like. However I did know my physics teacher quite well and knew that he definitely was not the type to entertain bogus ideas and pseudoscience. I don’t think he would have told this story unless he trusted his friend, and even then I think he was reluctant to tell it.

I also don’t know what to make of the UFO theme. I have never seen a UFO and have never met anyone who thinks they have. Also UFO sightings seem to be associated with modern-day western observers. The ancient Chinese didn’t seem to report on them very often. Still, it is a fun story and possibly another piece of the puzzle.

Henrietta’s Ghost

2008-10-03T22:21:00.002-04:00

I would like to begin this entry by clarifying a point. Previously I used the term “supernatural” to describe the topic of this blog. Actually I use this only due to a lack of better options. The problem that I have with words like “supernatural” or “paranormal” is that they are loaded terms that seem to almost scream “nut case”. However for better or worse I think I will keep with the term for now until I can find something better.

I also don’t follow popularly held theories on the supernatural or read publications on the topic. Very little that I have read on the topic has ever impressed me and the web sites I have looked at impress me even less. And grainy black and white photos of buildings and portraits with mysterious phantoms and lights don’t convince me either. Photographs are incredibly easy to alter, so you simply can’t trust them. I’m not saying that therefore these photos must all be fakes, but that the viewer has no way of knowing whether or not they are faked. As well, photos really don’t tell you much. It is an image and that is it. What I like about recounted stories is that they have context, sequence of events, themes and patterns. True, none of the readers of this blog can know whether any of the stories are true, but if someone reading the blog has had personal experiences with supernatural events they can at least say “hey, this story is very similar to what happened to me,” or conversely “these stories don’t sound right at all from my experiences.”

Okay, I promised you last time a real supernatural story. I would like to first mention that in none of my stories will I use real names. I do this for the anonymity of the people concerned. So with no further ado …

About twelve years ago my wife’s best friend Henrietta died of cancer. Then six months later Henrietta’s husband began seeing another woman. News of this hit my wife, Jill, unusually hard. She had still not gotten over her friend’s death, and seemed to place unrealistic expectations on Henrietta’s husband.

Any way, as the day progressed Jill’s anguish over the news only increased, and by night time she was weeping by herself in bed. I suppose because I didn’t agree with he feelings, and because I didn’t think I could do much to console her anyway I decided just to let my wife cry herself to sleep. Later on that night I was awoken by the sound of Jill crying out loud in big sobs. I opened up my eyes and looked at the clock and saw that it was passed 1:00 AM. I then realized that she was only getting worse and so decided that I had better do something. I sat up in bed, rolled over and put my arm around Jill to give her a reassuring hug. I looked at her face and was surprised to see that there was a red light shining on her eyes. I took a second glance, but sure enough there was the light shining on her eyes. I said to her, “what’s with the red light?” She stopped crying and replied “what red light?” Then immediately, as if was turned off by a switch, the red light was gone. I really didn’t know what do think or do. Confused, I then decided that I must be more asleep then awake and so flopped back onto my side of the bed. Oddly enough my wife had stopped crying. Then, more out of sleepiness then a sense of mission accomplished, I went back to sleep.

If it had ended there I probably would have never thought of that moment again, but the next day at breakfast Jill and I were talking. She said that something really curious had happened to her the night before. In the middle of the night she had heard the voice of Henrietta in the bedroom. She said that it was as clear as a bell and right in front of her, but though she looked around she could see nothing. I asked her what Henrietta had said to her. She replied that she had just kept saying “it’s okay, it’s okay” over and over again. I then asked Jill what she took it to mean and she replied that she thought it meant that it was okay that Henrietta’s husband was now seeing this other woman. Then I asked her exactly when this happened. Jill said that she didn’t know the exact time, but that it was quite late. She then asked “did you say something last night about there being a red light or something.” I said yes. Then she said that Henrietta’s voice had begun just a minute or two before I had asked her about the light and that as soon as I had mentioned the red light the voice disappeared. I then told Jill my story about hearing her crying and the red light. I asked her whether she had seen the red light, but apparently she hadn’t.

There is a brief follow-up story to this. Ten years later I had woken up in the middle of the night – I can’t remember the exact time, but it would have been between midnight and 1:00 – and I looked down past my feet towards the far wall and I saw a glowing read light, like a ball of light, suspended in the air. The light slowly drifted from right to left across the room and went out the bedroom door. I was then torn by two emotions. The first was concern for my 10 year-old son who slept in the room just outside our bedroom door. But when I went to get up to run to his room I discovered that I was paralyzed with fear. This is the only occasion in which I have ever felt fear from a supernatural event. I can’t imagine why I felt this way. Any way, for the next few days I felt a terrible guilt that at a time when I should have gone to my son’s help I was too scared to do so. But the story continues. The next day I told Jill about seeing the red light. She listened quietly and then remarked “that’s interesting because today is the 10th anniversary of Henrietta’s death.”

I wasn’t aware that it was her anniversary. In fact I am generally terrible with dates and anniversaries. I need to rely on my Outlook calendar to remind me of my wedding anniversary, my wife’s birthday, and Mother’s Day. Even that often doesn’t help.

Comments:
I like this story for a few reasons. One is that it happened to two people at the same time. Although the experience was strange and inexplicable to both of us, we both experienced something slightly different. We also weren’t aware that the other had experienced something strange until we had told our stories’ the next day. The fact that we experienced something different I think is a clue to what is happening. It is also interesting that my wife experienced something more tangible and natural, while what I experienced had less substance.

I also like the story because both events occurred late at night, sometime around One o’clock. As you will see with later stories, this is a common theme and I think another clue.

The glowing red light might also be clue, but I’m not sure since I don’t have enough stories with it to come to much of an opinion.

With respect to the story of the first apparition, I don’t like the fact that I fell asleep so easily. It hints that the red light could have just been a dream – huge coincidence though it would be.

What I really don’t like is the story of the second apparition. I can’t think of a single reason in the world why a spirit, or what ever it was, would be concerned about the 10th anniversary of its death. Surely Earthly calendars mean nothing to them, and even if they do what would be gained by them returning for the anniversary? It’s a curious form of celebration. On the other hand, dates and anniversaries are very important to my wife. She, like my son, is a walking calendar. I am certain that the upcoming anniversary of her friend’s death would have been on her mind the night of the apparition. This too could be a clue.

Welcome

2008-09-26T21:50:00.005-04:00

Well this is the first entry of my blog. I have been playing around with the idea of creating this blog for a couple of years now but have been reluctant to do so. I am always very sceptical of anything I read having to do with the supernatural and so I would expect, and hope, others would do the same with mine. Yet although I support scepticism, I can’t help feeling just a little bit insecure that possibly people might think of me as a fraud or nut case. Any way, be that as it may I have finally worked up the nerve to put a few thoughts, stories, and experiences up on the web to see if I can generate any interest.

In this blog I will be telling stories about various aspects of the supernatural: everything from ghosts, to UFOs to God. However, this blog isn’t about promoting the belief in any of these. Conversely it is also not a criticism of such beliefs. I’ve created this blog to act, hopefully, as a tool for me to better understand inexplicable events that have happened to me, and hopefully to act as a forum for others who have had similar experiences.

Here is the format that I think I will follow. I intend to put up, on a weekly basis, accounts of curious or inexplicable things that have happened to either me or people that I have known. One of the problems with stories of the supernatural is that you can really only trust what you know has happened to yourself, and sometimes not even that. Any story handed down is always open to suspicion. And then every time it is passed on its credibility becomes more open to question. There is nothing that can be done to rectify this. There is no way to certify a story as true. However, I have noticed that there can be patterns or commonalities in supernatural stories, which I think can be used as clues. Either as clues as to whether the story can be trusted, or as clues to try to explain what may be happening. After I tell each story I intend to give it a little grading as to how much I trust the story and think that it has something to say. Of course my personal prejudices will come into play here. I will also tell stories that I think have no legitimacy at all if I think it is anyway entertaining.

For now I do not intend to allow comments from readers, but after a while when I have sort of gotten into the meat of my thesis I will open up the flood gates.

So I should begin with a story. However, I think I will begin with a story about something that happened to me that I thought at the time was pretty darn strange, but I now realize has a natural explanation. It is a lesson that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions when we think something is supernatural.

The story begins about twenty years ago when I was canoeing in Algonquin Park, Ontario, with some friends. By nightfall the weather had completely clouded over and it had begun to rain. On top of that there was no moon in the sky that night, so it was pretty close to pitch dark by the time we crawled into our sleeping bags. I remember when we turned out the lights not being able to see my hand in front of my face. So we just closed our eyes and went to sleep to the sound of the rain on the tent and an owl in the distance.

Any way, for some reason -- I can no longer remember why, if I ever knew -- I woke up in the middle of the night. I was immediately startled to see that the whole tent was completely lit up. Strangely though, the light didn’t appear to be coming from any direction. Everything was just visible. I sat up straight looking around trying to figure out what was up. I was just about to wake up my friends when all of a sudden everything slowly turned dark again and I couldn’t see a thing. It pretty much freaked me out. I wondered whether it was a UFO or what.

I tried to think of an explanation. The only thing that I could think of came from a memory of a story I was once told by this hiker that had I met along the Appalachian Trail in New Hampshire. He was walking the whole length of the trail, starting in Louisiana and ending in Main. He was telling us about all sorts of adventures he had had in his life. One of them was when he was bicycling across the U.S. and one night had mistakenly camped in a field being used by the Green Berets for combat manoeuvres. He was awoken in the night by flares that lit up the sky as paratroopers dropped in down around him. This story seemed to offer a possible answer for my situation because Algonquin Park is right next to the Petawawa army base. However, my location at the time wasn’t any where near the base, and if it had been manoeuvres I would have heard a lot more action going on.

The incident remained as a mystery to me for about five years. Then one night I awoke in the middle of the night at home and experienced the same thing. My bedroom was all lit up as if it was day, but there didn’t really seem to be any source of the light, other than that the windows were brighter than the room. Once again the room gradually went dark. Then the reason suddenly occurred to me. There must be situations in which the rods in the retina of the eye become hypersensitive, presumably due to long periods without exposure to any light. When you then open your eyes some dim light gets in, but just like a cat with night-vision everything is easy to see. Once the rods become saturated with light they lose their sensitivity and everything goes dim again. I have never researched this effect. I probably also have some of the details slightly wrong, but I’m sure something like that must be happening.

Well, that is my analysis of what what must have happened. Perhaps you have a better explanation. I'll give you a chance to comment, but later.

Next week I promise you a real story of the supernatural.