More: Pink Tentacle

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“During a summer of superhero blockbusters, Dallas psychiatrist Colin A. Ross, M.D. ( www.rossinst.com), is perfecting a superpower of his own. Dr. Ross’ application to the $1 Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge has been received by the James Randi Educational Foundation ( www.randi.org). Dr. Ross can make a tone sound out of a speaker using nothing but an energy beam he sends out through his eyes.

The $1 million prize serves as a challenge to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. The James Randi Educational Foundation states in its Challenge rules that he is only interested in a demonstration of the claim. He does not want theories about how the paranormal claim works. Therefore, Dr. Ross is not required to explain how his demonstration of the human eyebeam works — only that it does work.”

(via MarketWatch. h/t: Professor Hex)

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he year is 1908, and it’s just after seven in the morning. A man is sitting on the front porch of a trading post at Vanavara in Siberia. Little does he know, in a few moments, he will be hurled from his chair and the heat will be so intense he will feel as though his shirt is on fire.

That’s how the Tunguska event felt 40 miles from ground zero.

Today, June 30, 2008, is the 100th anniversary of that ferocious impact near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in remote Siberia–and after 100 years, scientists are still talking about it.

“If you want to start a conversation with anyone in the asteroid business all you have to say is Tunguska,” says Don Yeomans, manager of the Near-Earth Object Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It is the only entry of a large meteoroid we have in the modern era with first-hand accounts.”

Full Story: NASA

(via Hit and Run)

See also: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event and Tunguska event in fiction. The latter notes that the Tunguska Event was mentioned in Ghostbusters.

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The formation, measuring 150ft in diameter, is apparently a coded image representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi.

It is has appeared in a field near Barbury Castle, an iron-age hill fort above Wroughton, Wilts, and has been described by astrophysicists as “mind-boggling”.

Michael Reed, an astrophysicist, said: “The tenth digit has even been correctly rounded up. The little dot near the centre is the decimal point.

Full Story: the Telegraph

See also: Crop Circles in South Korea 2008

(via Cabinet of Wonders)

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Perhaps it’s a good thing that this is in the UK, otherwise I’d probably be glued to my set most of the time:

“Paranormal purveyors of scariness Yvette Fielding and Karl Beattie will launch a new TV phenomenon on Monday 9th June 2008 - The Paranormal Channel. The Channel will first broadcast from 18:00 hours on 9th June and show a petrifying mix of original programming shot on location, exclusive re-runs of British science-fiction author, inventor and futurist Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, through to sci-fi and horror movies.

The Paranormal Channel is the brainchild of Fielding and Beattie, with a high proportion of the original programming being made by their successful Manchester-based production company, Antix. Executive Producer and face of The Paranormal Channel Yvette Fielding says: “Karl and I have worked towards launching this channel for many years. Our Most Haunted devotees have told us in person and online, that they’ve always wanted a dedicated channel for all things paranormal. From ghosts, UFOs, aliens, mythical monsters to doppelgangers and poltergeists, The Paranormal Channel will cover every possible phenomenon.”

(via IT News)

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Pink Tentacle has a round-up of seven mysterious Japanese creatures. Above are some drawings of Kappa:

Kappa (river imps) have appeared in countless stories and folk legends for centuries, and they rank among Japan’s most well-known cryptids. While most people nowadays regard the amphibious child-sized troublemakers as pure myth, stories of kappa encounters still crop up from time to time, such as the following two reports from Japan’s southern island of Kyushu.

Full Story: Pink Tentacle

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“The Anima Project promises to finally end the debate of whether certain paranormal phenomena exist. The site, launched April 10, 2008, is currently gathering data from the internet community in preparation for a definitive mathematical analysis of clairvoyance and precognition, bringing such realms under the lens of rigorous science for the first time in history.

Though scientific in nature, the Anima Project is still accessible to the general public. All that is necessary is to enter the website, register, and play a simple card-guessing game. Once enough data is gathered in this way, various mathematical tools will be used to compare the overall user results to what is expected by chance and thereby determine the veracity of paranormal phenomena. The Anima Project is unique in that it “plies the scientific method to a field commonly derided as pseudo-science, establishing a protocol for legitimate and reproducible analysis of the occult”, says project administrator and creator Keith Comito. Unlike previous parapsychology studies, the Anima Project eliminates human error and bias during data acquisition and employs sophisticated statistical techniques such as goodness-of-fit testing and runs analysis to interpret that data in a meaningful and significant manner.

As word of the website spreads, the Anima Project is sure to draw the notice of believers and skeptics alike; the resolution to this hotly debated topic has been sought for ages by both sides. Welcoming this resolution, Comito is currently in negotiations with noted skeptic James Randi over the project’s entry into his famous “Million Dollar Challenge”.

(The Anima Project via Unexplained Mysteries)

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Inspired by our now regular watching of Paranormal State on Monday nights (from the good folks that brought you MTV’s Laguna Beach), my friend Mark and I decided to dig up the schematics for the device used in tonight’s rerun. In it, the crew travel to an old asylum which is now used as a drug treatment centre. Good ol’ Chip Coffee is briefly possessed by the "demon" that inhabits the asylum, and there is an appearance by Chris Moon and his radio-to-talk-to-the-dead, aka "Frank’s box."

From the Paranormal State website:

Frank’s Box scans AM/FM and low band frequencies to create a noise matrix from which the dead — as well as other entities — can use to modulate for messages. It’s made of computer, radio and electronic components. Like real-time EVP (electronic voice phenomena), Frank’s Box produces messages from a word or two to complete sentences in length.

Sumption says he received instructions for building the device from disembodied entities. His first box was built in 2002, and he has made fewer than three dozen. While anyone can build one from his schematics, there seems to be something especially effective about the boxes hand-made by Sumption himself.

As the owner of two Frank’s Boxes made by Sumption, I can attest to their operation. The box (shown in photo with digital records and K2 meter) seems to create an entire energy field that attracts spirits. You can ask questions, and get answers — but not consistently. No matter who you ask for on the Other Side, it’s often a guess as to who — or what — really answers. Some researchers, like Sumption himself, don’t ask questions, but turn on the box and record whatever comes through, much like EVP.

Anyhow, most people online I perused call it a hoax — that it picks up random bits of broadcasts or something. I for one don’t think that would work the way it’s set up, but then again I’m no electrical engineer.

I’m curious to see what effect these things have when someone hooks orgone accumulators up in the vicinity. Or, as I’m interested to try out, performing some evocations from the Goetia or Heptameron. I wanna get our little friends on tape.

Regardless, Mark and I may try to make one this summer if we find the time and know-how. Anyone else out there wanting to give the radio-to-the-dead a try can find some (what appears to be?) useful information here:

1. Ghost-Tronics: A new electronic method of spirit communication
2. Keyport Paranormal (two PDF schematics for download, which Mark and I are reviewing)
3. Beaver Spirit Search Society: One more PDF schematic there

After briefly reading over the schematics, what I found interesting is that it reflects ideas I’ve had in the past. When I used to be smarter and write more, I wrote an interesting post called "Here Be Demons." In it, I contemplate the chaotic elements of our realm Malkuth ("kingdom"; מלכות) as canvas by which entities of an occult nature might "embed" themselves, in order to make human contact:

Rather than offering parfums and analogous artefacts and symbols by which to aid the entity to embed itself in Malkuth — the manifest realm which we believe is reality — if there were some way in which to associate code and "sacrifice" or offer a binary language to them by which they could learn? […] As parfums are used in ceremonial magic and other rites, their functions are many, but I figure from what I know that they act as a lighthouses in that the particles have poetic properties akin to the nature of the entity being evoked. The nature of the parfum offers an entry point — an anchor — into this realm. The olfactory sense, in particular, seeing as how it bypasses the other processes of the senses and affects the part of the brain that deals with long-term memory (if I recall correctly), may tie together aspects of the subconscious mind to other aspects of subtle consciousness and/or altered states made use of in magical rites.

In the PDF "Newer ‘Frank’s Box’ Schematics," available above from Keyport Paranormal (or here direct), the author believes that it is the randomness from accessing the white and pink noise and whatever other frequencies that allows them to pick up on these paranormal auditory signals. In this, I would be willing to say I agree, at least in theory. It has long since my belief that chaos is what lets supranatural elements in to affect us. It is Prometheus’s light, if you will, shining through into the realm of the Archons and the ordered realm by which the Demiurge keeps this realm spinning on in.

As an aside, here’s more on magical parfums if you’re looking to putz with this stuff.

Photo by Simon Crowley

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In the spirit of my friends and I regularly watching Paranormal State on A&E on Mondays, here is a gooder from YouTube. Some good quality ghost stories, which always send shivers up my spine. Which is why I like them:

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“A “neurotheology” researcher called Dr Michael Persinger has developed something called the “God Helmet” lined with magnets to help you in your quest: it sounds like typical bad science fodder, but it’s much more interesting than that.Persinger is a proper scientist. The temporal lobes have long been implicated in religious experiences: epileptic seizures in that part of the brain, for example, can produce mystical experiences and visions. Persinger’s helmet stimulates these temporal lobes with weak electromagnetic fields through the skull, and in various published papers this stimulation has been shown to induce a “sensed presence”, under blinded conditions.

There is controversy around these findings: some people have tried to replicate them, although not using exactly the same methods, and got different results. But however improbable or theologically offensive you might find his evidence, because it is published and written up in full, you can try to replicate it for yourself and find out whether it works. In fact, you really can try this at home: the kit needed to make a God Helmet is fabulously rudimentary.”

(via Pure Pedantry)

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Archive of PDF scans of the Zetetic Scholars journal, 1978 - 1987.

Archive of PDF scans of the Archaeus Journal, 1983 - 1989.

(via The Daily Grail).

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“Most of us experience ‘gut feelings’ we can’t explain, such as instantly loving – or hating – a new property when we’re househunting or the snap judgements we make on meeting new people. Now researchers at Leeds say these feelings – or intuitions – are real and we should take our hunches seriously. According to a team led by Professor Gerard Hodgkinson of the Centre for Organisational Strategy, Learning and Change at Leeds University Business School, intuition is the result of the way our brains store, process and retrieve information on a subconscious level and so is a real psychological phenomenon which needs further study to help us harness its potential.

There are many recorded incidences where intuition prevented catastrophes and cases of remarkable recoveries when doctors followed their gut feelings. Yet science has historically ridiculed the concept of intuition, putting it in the same box as parapsychology, phrenology and other ‘pseudoscientific’ practices.

Through analysis of a wide range of research papers examining the phenomenon, the researchers conclude that intuition is the brain drawing on past experiences and external cues to make a decision – but one that happens so fast the reaction is at a non-conscious level. All we’re aware of is a general feeling that something is right or wrong.”

(via University of Leeds)

(Thanks Dedroidify!)

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Furtive Labors Publishing is known in underworld circles for its survival manuals for marooned astronauts and motivational tapes for chronic masturbators, Hollow Earth atlases and Luddite manifestos in e-book format, alarmist commentary on end-times prophecies and richly ornamented prose portrayals of grotesque graveyard orgies, Armageddon-heralding holiday greeting cards and bulletins from the front lines of future wars, Black Mass breviaries and forbidden books the perusal of which brings madness, terror and spectral horror.

Ask about our telepathic correspondence courses.
OSOTO-3 raises new and troubling questions

OSOTO, Issue 3 - Featuring an account of Freeman’s UFO encounter on the drive to Esozone 2007, excerpts from the FBI’s Marmaduke file, and a two-page homage to Mark Lombardi involving electronic camouflage of pinball machines in some dilapidated barracks at an abandoned military base on the city’s outskirts. Print edition is out now. E-mail us for more information. Special thanks to our sponsor, Martinez Double-Weight Cinder Blocks. POSTED 22 FEB 08

Furtive Encounters.

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“Poveglia is a small island floating in the lagoons of Venice. In stark contrast to the beauty of its surroundings, the island is a festering blemish. The waves reluctantly lapping its darkened shores will often carry away the polished remains of human bones. When the first outbreak of bubonic plague swept through Europe, the number of dead and dying in the city of Venice became unbearable. The bodies were piling up, the stench was oppressive, and something had to be done. The local authorities decided to use Poveglia as a dumping ground for the diseased bodies.

The dead were hauled to the island and dumped in large pits or burned on huge bonfires. As the plague tightened its grip, people panicked, and those showing the slightest symptoms of the Black Death were dragged screaming from their homes. These living victims, including children and babies, were taken to the island and thrown into the pits of rotting corpses, where they were left to die in agony. As many as 160,00 tormented bodies were disposed of over the years.”

(via Phunk U)

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“The mind is a wonderful thing - there is so much about it which remains a mystery to this day. Science is able to describe strange phenomena, but can not account for their origins. While most of us are familiar with one or two on this list, many others are mostly unknown outside of the psychological realm. This is a list of the top ten strange mental phenomena.”

“We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time – of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances – of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remember it! “– Charles Dickens

(via The List Verse)

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Waiting for Nesara is a documentary about “a group of ex-Mormons awaiting the announcement of a secret law which they believe will abolish the IRS, remove George Bush from office, expose him as a reptilian alien, and install a UFO-flying Jesus Christ as America’s new leader.”

Official site.

(Originally via Post Atomic, reminded by Trevor).

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The suggestion that ending the Challenge after 10 years supports any statement that psi does not exist or someone would have won the challenge, is absurd on many levels.

The procedures for the Challenge included several hurdles in favor of, and multiple “outs” for Randi and the JREF that any discerning individual capable of any kind of extraordinary human performance would think twice about (and here I’m not just referring to psychics and the like).

Full Story: Daily Grail.

(via Posthuman Blues).

Good points are made about the level of proof Randi requires (1 in a million odds) and the difficultly in running enough iterations of an experiment to produce conclusive results within the perimeters of Randi’s experiments. However, one would think that psychic of the supposed caliber of, say, Ari Uri Geller would have no trouble producing conclusive results.

What I suppose is being suggested is that while challenge screens out obvious charlatans who claim to have mind blowing supernatural powers, it doesn’t provide for more subtle forms of ESP.

I am, however, confused by reference to Ganzfeld telepathy research. These have been going since before I was born and are still not accepted by skeptics. Why would Randi be backing out of the challenge now, after all these years?

Also, here is an easier explanation for true believers as to why the Randi prize has not yet been won:

Why would someone with legitimate psychic powers “out” themselves for a mere one million dollars? Surely they must be able to make far more money in secret. Warren Buffet doesn’t reveal his secret investment strategies (hell, maybe he’s got psychic powers), why would anyone else?

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Tracy R. Twyman has a round-up of reptilians caught shapeshifting live on camera.

Full Story: Tracy R. Twyman.

See also: Presidents and Others Shapeshift.

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The tone of this article is annoying (tin foil hat jokes? how original), but I liked reading what the editors had to say:

Hidell and D’Arc represent different wings of the conspiracy theories movement. “She’s more into the speculative paranormal end of things,” he said. “I’m more of a meat-and-potatoes politics, international relations and secret societies kind of guy.”

Together, they attempt to publish a “provocative, unpredictable mix” of conspiracy theories. “We try not to have a house conspiracy style,” he said.

Hidell admitted that he doesn’t believe all the conspiracy theories advanced in the pages of Paranoia. For instance, he’s a little skeptical of Icke’s theory that the queen of England and the Rockefellers are really shape-shifting Satanic reptiles from outer space. But then he adds this about Icke: “For all we know, he’s putting all that in purposely so people think he’s just a nut and he can keep publishing.”

Full Story: Paranoia Magazine.

(via Adam Gorightly).

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People are flocking to wallow in the mud of 3 small remote ponds that locals in Peru believe to possess miraculous healing powers brought by alien space ships. Residents of Chilca — a dusty, desert town on the Pacific coast 40 miles (20 kilometers) southeast of Lima — claim that aliens altered the mud flats in town, infusing them with inexplicable healing powers.

It’s said that the lagoons cure everything from acne to rheumatism and boast plentiful cures. Ailing Peruvians arrive sick and in a short time set forth healed and revitalized.

The nutrient rich mud is applied to the skin as a natural peel that restores the cells of the skin and eliminates toxins. The secret of the cure is to bake in the sun, allowing the mud to thoroughly dry after utterly plying yourself from top to bottom with the medicinal muck.

Full Story: Life in the Fast Lane.

(Thanks Bill!)

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“TV-Mystifier Uri Geller on his experiences with the CIA, his work for an Israeli and Palestine rescue service, the war in Lebanon, his novel “Ella” - and his advice to forget spoon bending …
Last year Telepolis brought a short bio on Uri Geller that was criticizing the media, but could have been alleged itself because it didn’t use an important source: Uri Geller himself. This was made good by meeting the worldfamous spoonbender in Cologne, where he is living for two months to realize his current tv-show. Between a trip to the hospital and his appearance in a talkshow he took the time to give Telepolis an interview concerning political matters.”

(via Telepolis)

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“It is undeniable that human beings in all times and cultures have been hardwired for spiritual experiences – some of course more than others. But is this proof of any of the multiple metaphysical belief systems that we tend, I would suggest, to superimpose onto the experience? The central difficulty here is that the altered state of a spiritual experience is so convincing (and so important, beautiful and meaningful in its own right) and we are so suggestible during and afterward, that it is almost ubiquitous to be convinced that the experience is undeniable (or at the very least strong) proof of whatever belief system the ensuing interpretation is coming from - when in actuality it is nothing of the sort!

Humans love to go into altered states. There is not a culture in the history of the planet that has not come up with some way of fermenting, drinking, eating, fasting, dancing, sweating, drumming, smoking, snorting, chanting, breathing, meditating, stretching, sensory depriving or sensory overloading its way into altered states of consciousness. In addition some people have more labile neurophysiology than others – be they epileptic, hypo-glycemic, bipolar, schizophrenic or merely garden-variety creative, empathic types with thin ego-boundaries.

Thankfully we have developed an ever-deepening understanding of some of the more extreme dysfunctions of the brain and have ways of diagnosing and treating these problems that are more effective than ever before. One cannot help but be curious about the similarities between say religious and schizophrenic statements about reality and wonder how much of the difference is one of degree, and to what extent the vocabulary of experience being used is coming from the same part of the brain.

It is undeniable that to both the person in the grips of an ardent religious conversion and the clinically insane the novel and metaphysical revelations being described are not only convincing but are held as extremely important, often not only for the individual in the grip of the experience, but for all of humanity. I want to suggest that this is an extreme form of an activity of our physiology and its related interior - the psyche, that at its best can be positively transformational, healing and creative and at its worse can be fundamentalist, violent and crazy.”

(via Julian Walker’s Blog)

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Wow! All throughout this book and his others for that matter, Icke details and talks about how secret societies have all these very same rituals, ideas, plans and structures and how evil and dangerous they are. And then he’s saying that some unknown being wants to indoctrinate him and the rest of us in those same mystic rites and that he wants Icke and the rest of us to turn ourselves inside out.

I’m afraid that I don’t turn myself inside out for any entity; no matter how ‘good’ they supposedly are.

I also have a very hard time following the logic that Satanism, witchcraft and Harry Potter are different from Icke’s sources of information. What I mean is this. Icke constantly rails against them, (well not so much Harry Potter but he does mention the ‘evilness’ of the Harry Potter series) and yet Icke consorts with psychics, who channel goodness knows who, as well as witch doctors and shamans. Not that I’m against the Harry Potter series, on the contrary I loved it. And as for witches, I have a wonderful story or two that I could share about the kindness and total loving nature of a witch I happen to know. My point is there seems to be some sort of double standard or divide here. Why is one bad and the other good? It boggles my mind.

Full Story: My Strange Blog.

(via Disinfo).

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Portland-area historians have found virtually nothing in their research to back up the notion that hustlers used a tunnel network for kidnapping men. A few question whether tunnels, beyond some simple connections among basements, ever existed.

Although the city does have a history of “shanghaiing,” or “crimping” as the practice was called, local historians say the first recorded mention of the tunnel connection didn’t come until the 1970s — decades after the practice peaked. The types of historical evidence academics and researchers would normally expect to find are missing.

“It’s not good history,” said Jacqueline Peterson Loomis, founder of the Old Town History Project and a history professor at Washington State University Vancouver. “It tends to obfuscate the real history, which I would argue is equally interesting and dicey.”

[…]

Still, Jones’ tours, which started in 1996, continue to thrive. IRS filings by the nonprofit that runs the excursions show that some 6,000 people each year take one of Jones’ underground tours, including one version for history buffs and one for those interested in ghost stories.

[…]

But on the tour itself, visitors don’t venture down any tunnels. Rather, the tour consists of walking among a few interconnected basement rooms.

[…]

Jones insists that he will prove the tunnels’ existence and their role in supporting Portland’s Shanghai trade. Eventually.

For years, he has said he was working on a book documenting the tunnels’ history. Now he says he aims to release a book in the next year, including information and documentation from a family who he said has photos and other evidence.

Jones refuses to disclose or share any of the documents before then.

Full Story: The Oregonian.

Jones has been giving these tours, for $13 a head, for over 10 years and has yet to release a shred of evidence. Also, the official web site provides no information about Jones’s credentials.

I’ve been on one of these tours: it mostly involved walking around in dusty basements and listening to ghost stories. Each group gets to pick which version of the tour they want: the historic version or the ghost version. Guess which version most people want to hear. Jones did mix in some history with our tour, but from the sounds of it it was just as much fiction as the ghost stories.

Even before reading this article, I’ve suggested that people skip the tour and just visit the Shanghai Tunnel bar, where for the cost of a drink you can see what these Old Town basements look like.

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“In the first chapter of his fascinating book The Origins of Psychic Phenomena (1984), the British psychologist Stan Gooch explains that he used to smile when he heard, “for instance, stories of invisible ‘thought forms’ allegedly produced by Tibetan mystics and others.” He then adds: “I no longer smile at such stories. My own feeling, now, is that there may literally be no limit to what can be achieved by the human subjective mind manipulating and actualising itself in the external, objective universe around it.”

(via New Dawn Magazine)

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