The Mystery of the Octave – The Ultimate Secret of Lincoln Cathedral

The Paranormal Effect presents this fascinating article by Dan Green. 

 Callum Jensen (Dan Green – author of ‘The Lincoln Da Vinci Code’ and ‘The Lincoln Da Vinci Code and the Mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau’)

The Mystery of the Octave – The Ultimate Secret of Lincoln Cathedral  

By Dan Green

Connoisseurs and collectors alike of coincidences would note that on the final scheduled day of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ movie being filmed within Lincoln Cathedral in the summer of 2005, the Circular Chess Championship – with a board shaped like King Arthur’s Round table – was also being held in the Cathedral, the first time it had featured in such an environment. For me, this became a further clue to the Magdalene mysteries cloaked in and around this great Gothic church, and that stayed on hold until now.

I had stated back then that I suspected that the Great East Window with its 64 roundels, was an covert chess board yet to be fathomed, and had already noted that the famous Rennes-le-Chateau Parchment Two was decoded by use of the Knights Tour, a mathematical problem involving a knight on a chessboard, dating back to the 9thC. What further agitated my interest is that the Knights Tour may avail itself to solution by way of the implementation of an artificial neural network composed of artificial neurons thus mimicking neural processing in the brain. Again, this appealed to me as I was looking for further evidence to reinforce the stance that Lincoln Cathedral is a deeply psychological battleground of Light and Dark, complementing that the squares of the chessboard are even called ‘light’ and ‘dark’.

 The hypothesis was beginning to take shape….the Great East Window as a board of chess, that tactical game of strategy and war in which the object is to take the opposing King, in a Cathedral whose hidden aspect is an actual battleground. My ‘Lincoln Cathedral Code’ research has shown me already that a great secret had been maintained here concerning a location a short distance across from the South East corner of the edifice, and had it been preserved in moves of strategy resembling a game of chess being played? For related to the Cathedral we have all six chess pieces – the King (Edward) and Queen (Eleanor) both stone statues at that very South East Corner, the Knight that is concealed as a carving hidden under the Sub-Dean’s seat in the Choir Stalls, – in 2005 the Dean of the Cathedral was even called Alec Knight! – the Bishop at the 12thc Bishops Palace adjacent the Cathedral, and the Castle of Lincoln Castle alongside the Cathedral, the piece now known as the rook, of which I will soon mention. Only the pawn remains unaccounted for, unless it is Dan Green, drawn into this game and used by the Collective Unconscious?

The initial premise of a battle between Light and Dark suggested itself at the 19thC small church at Rennes-le-Chateau with its chequered floor of black and white squares, a sure sign of Freemasonry as the floor or groundwork of every Lodge denotes this dual nature, some say symbolising the Good and Evil principles of the Egyptian and Persian creed. Staring across at each other in this strange ornately decorated church are the figures of Jesus and the demon guardian Asmodeus. The dual Light and Dark aspect of the Rennes mystery is also clearly demonstrated in the name of one of its key players, who without doubt was privy to the mystery, Marie de Negre de Blanchefort, whose name means ‘Black Marie of the White Fort’.
Over the years it hadn’t missed my attention that there is a close relationship between chess and the classical Chinese text the I-Ching, possibly the oldest divinatory system known, often called the Book of Changes, with its 64 Hexagrams. The 64 squares of chess mirror the number of Hexagrams (64 also being the number of DND Codons), the 8 major trigrams replicate the 8 ranks, 8 files, six lines in a hexagram duplicate the 6 types of chess pieces and both have two opposing modes, the Ying-Yang and the two opposing black and white colours. Transformation in the I-Ching entails 8 major shifts paralleling the musical octave, something we will be returning to.

    Harking back to the strange symbology that first attracted my attention at the Great East Window, a dog on Jesus’ plate at the Last Supper – which, using a standard number grid system we find at 5th roundel down and 4th across – I thought It would be interesting to introduce the 64 Hexagrams of I-Ching  to the 64 roundels of the chess board doing so, intuitively, in twisting, serpentine fashion, starting with top left square as number one and continuing second square down top left as number 9 and so on, in order not to break sequential contact and also to symbolise the snake as guardian of temple treasure By doing so, where the dog on the platter sits as a roundel, it arrived me at the very apt Hexagram number 36 for Hexagram 36 is ‘Darkening of the Light’, loosely translating as ‘By concealing your light when danger is around is an effective way of avoiding detection’.

Given that my ‘Lincoln Cathedral Code’ that initiated with the discovery of the dog on the platter leads to a location at a burial ground opposite the SE corner of the Cathedral – whereby a secretive ‘treasure’ guarded by the Knights Templar and relating to Mary Magdalene may await at a depth under an established tomb – this hexagram serves superbly in intimating the wisdom and necessity for concealment. Even when employing a basic 1-8 line from left to right, continuing line two 9-16 and so on, one still arrives at the dog on the platter roundel being hexagram 36!

  It would have satisfactory to have left it at that but turning my attention to the ‘Cullinane sequence of the 64 Hexagrams’, an arrangement discovered in 1989 during an investigation of the six-dimensional affine space over the two element field, whereupon a geometry of the I-Ching is revealed, we then find the dog on the platter sittingly neatly on square 28…..a  re-occuring key number  associated with Lincoln Cathedral and also the catalogued number of the tomb under where the Templars Magdalene ‘treasure’ resides. This geometrical aspect is made all the more interesting when we learn that the Great East Window was reglazed in 1762, the design at that time chiefly, if not entirely, of geometrical forms rather than the current scenes from the Testament and life of Jesus.

 The Lincoln Cathedral Code Marker Tomb number 28 which conceals the
‘Treasure’

So far, we have taken a deep psychological look at the alternative facets of the Great East Window and the unsuspected possibility that a deeply psychological game of chess is somehow being played out at Lincoln Cathedral. If an actual ‘Mind Game’ is being played here, could the opposing forces of light and dark be found in the two hemispheres of the brain? If it is a likelihood that ‘evil’ emanates from one side of the brain, and discussions of this kind first surfaced as far back as 1854 in a book by American physician Joseph Buchanan, ‘Outlines of lectures on the neurological system of anthropology’ in the chapter ‘Organology – Hemispheres of Good and Evil’, I wondered if an area of brain hemisphere could also be responsible for the unfortunate almost demon-like affliction suffered by 10% of those with the neurological affliction we know as Tourettes Syndrome, named after its founder Georges Gilles de la Tourette. It is sadly misunderstood that sufferers of this fascinating disorder, who cannot but help exclaiming obscene and derogatory remarks, are exerting their Tourettes, for this involuntary swearing is an independent neurological disorder called Coprolalia from the Greek ‘kopros’ meaning ‘feces’ and ‘lalien’, ‘to talk.’

   Using the phonetic aspect of the Mother Tongue, we will discover some interesting hidden connections.‘Tourettes’ is pronounced as ‘Turrets’, in architecture a small tower, from the Old French’ tourete’. Magdala, the home of Mary Magdalene, in Hebrew, means ‘Tower’. A turret is traditionally supported by a corbel, a piece of stone jutting out of a wall. ‘Corbel’, is from the Late Latin ‘corvellus’ diminutive of ‘corvus’, a raven. A raven is a species of crow, in turn a rook. The demonic Lincoln Imp guardian is seen on a spandrel squatting under the corbal high up between two arches on the North side of the Angel Choir within Lincoln Cathedral. Is he playing the part of the chess piece, the rook? The rook is most formidable towards the end of a game and a powerful piece to deliver checkmate.
There is a growing public suspicion about the grip of Freemasonry within the police force, that leads to fears of corruption. Both British and American police display the black and white chequers of the Masonic Lodge floor on their uniforms. The most prevalent of slang terms for a British policeman or woman is a ‘copper’. Amongst a few contending theories as to why, we are told that the term originates from the Latin ‘capere’ meaning ‘to seize, to take’. The other contender is that it comes from New York’s first official police force in the States who wore badges made from copper. However, ‘copper’ hides neatly in ‘copralalia’ – copr. Perhaps the unknown origin for another popular slang for police, ‘rozzers’, can also be claimed in ‘Kopros’, containing both ‘cop’ and ‘ros’.

  We return for one final and potential covert explanation for the Great East Window. It is known that cathedrals, like old churches were built to serve as vibrationary chambers, holding undetected acoustic and sonic properties, and if one were to make the right sounds within them the effect can be Mind expanding. Aware of the octave connection and the window through the I-Ching, I was interested in taking a closer look at what is known as the ‘Liturgical Octaves’. In Christian liturgical useage, octave is the 8th day after a feast, sometimes called ‘Octave Day’  as well as the entire period of these days during observance of certain major feasts. In 2000, author of ‘Music and the Earth Spirit’, musician Bob Dickinson, conducted research on particular acoustic properties of Lincoln Cathedral which he focussed on some ‘ringing pillars,’ an octave and a fifth apart, which connected with certain intervallic relationships of the harmonic series. During the Easter Octave, for each of the days, there are specific chants. Could an analysis of these chant melodic/pitch patterns reveal certain intervallic relationships between notes that might connect with these ‘ringing pillars’?

Scottish author Brian Allan is a firm believer that the musical notation given the title ‘The Devil’s Chord’ by the Catholic church in the 12thC, and banned throughout Christendom, this the musical interval of the augmented fourth, could be the frequency and harmonic chord that holds the key (pun intended) to the ultimate mystery of Rosslyn Chapel, perhaps precipitating the opening of a portal of consciousness. In a prior article on the world wide web ‘Lincoln Cathedral – Battleground of Light and Dark?’, I explained in length the numerous ‘Devil’ connections, and so it might not be unlikely to consider an involvement with the ‘Devil’s Chord’ here.
   The classical image of the devil with his pitchfork might actually be a visual allegory of an acoustic resonating tuning fork which can be used to emit a pure musical tone, key or pitch. For use in the opening of a ‘Portal’?. International stone sculptor Michael Dan Archer, who has used the tool of the Collective Unconscious for some of his work, in 2002 contributed numerous examples of his sculptures in and around Lincoln Cathedral, one he called ‘Portal 1’. Although this has since been removed, at the South East end of the Cathedral you can still see his Gateway entitled ‘Between two worlds’.
Not without its Alice in Wonderland absurdities and the inter-connectiveness of the Collective Unconscious when synchronicities collect up, let me share some starting with Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci

Code’ and what it has to say about the keystone. Architecturally, the final piece placed during construction to lock all the stones into position, Brown’s keystone in his novel was an encoded map revealing the hiding place of the Holy Grail. Given that we know that a key is the major or minor scale around which a piece of music revolves, and that ancient South Indian temples were once built by ancient kings who chose stone granite pillars which produced musical notes when struck with a stick, we have to concede to a whole new and musical meaning to ‘key’ stones. Returning to our investigation into police origins, ‘The Keystone Cops’ were incompetent fictional police that featured in early 20thC silent film comedies and in 2010 it was discovered a previously lost short was discovered featuring a previously unknown cameo appearance from the famous English comedy actor Charlie Chaplin. The connection here? Authoress of ‘City of secrets’ is Patrice Chaplin who claims that the Rennes mystery involves a portal upon a mountain in Spain – and she was married to Charlie Chaplin’s son!

  Amidst my speculative attempts, perhaps the final and ultimate mystery of Lincoln Cathedral is that it conceals a consciousness portal of its own, fought over by unconscious brain lobes of light and dark in a constant game of chess (more correctly, ‘Chase’), one side keeping it closed the other seeking to open, the start of the game of chess actually called ‘The opening’, of which the key is a musical one. And for those of you who will ask where does the dog on the platter at the Great East Window fit into that particular scenario, I will point out that the other name for the Octave of Easter is known historically as Quasimodogeniti – find him hiding amongst the word.

Copyright Dan Green 2012

Pics and titles of, as shown above are:

1.  The Great East Window Chess Board2. The chequered floor of the Rennes-le-Chateau church

3. The Dog on the Platter at the Last Supper, Great East Window

4. The 64 Hexagrams of the I-Ching

5. The Lincoln Cathedral Code Marker Tomb number 28 which conceals the
‘Treasure’

6. The Demon Guardian Lincoln Imp, the Rook of the Chess Board

7. ‘Between Two Worlds’ Portal sculpture by Michael Dan Archer

8. The Devil’s ‘Tuning’ Pitch Fork

Hello to all! It’s the year 2012, the dreaded (or not) year that is supposedly to be our final year on Earth and the ushering in of a new era of reality, destruction or perhaps just a calender that was misinterpreted?

Personally, my views and beliefs are that we as a culture are prone to expecting the worst perhaps all or in partly due to the corporate media news always exposing the worst that goes on in our society…crime, extortion etc., etc.

Now, as far as what’s new…much has changed in the last four months alone. Personal as well as publicly…hence with the lack of any actual updates. But all that has formally changed and a renewed dedication has been brought back to this site. There will be a few very welcome additions that will be added to this site…a guest blogger (I won’t spoil the surprise just yet!) with some very well researched, exciting information on a topic that many of us in the paranormal world will welcome.

Now is a great time to add The Paranormal Effect to your bookmarks if you haven’t already done so! 2012 May be a year of destruction for some, but this year is the start of something new and captivating here at TPE.

A belated happy new years to everyone!

-Admin of The Paranormal Effect

2012 – A confimed date for destruction or not?

The below story was found and was interesting enough, despite all the hype about 2012, to be posted here. If indeed 2012 marks the year of our impending change/doom/climactic upheaval in all that we currently know, then we better start preparing for it now.

-Admin

Mexico adds yet another brick to the 2012 Maya legend
Archaeologists say another artifact refers to date, but downplays doomsday angle

MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s archaeology institute downplays theories that the ancient Maya predicted some sort of apocalypse would occur in 2012, but on Thursday it acknowledged that a second reference to the date exists on a carved fragment found at a southern Mexico ruin site.

Most experts had cited only one surviving reference to the date in Mayan glyphs, a stone tablet from the Tortuguero site in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco.

But the National Institute of Anthropology and History said in a statement that there is in fact another apparent reference to the date at the nearby Comalcalco ruin. The inscription is on the carved or molded face of a brick. Comalcalco is unusual among Mayan temples in that it was constructed of bricks.

Arturo Mendez, a spokesman for the institute, said the fragment of inscription had been discovered years ago and has been subject to thorough study. It is not on display and is being kept in storage at the institute.

The “Comalcalco Brick,” as the second fragment is known, has been discussed by experts in some online forums. Many still doubt that it is a definite reference to Dec. 21, 2012 or Dec. 23, 2012, the dates cited by proponents of the theory as the possible end of the world.

Referring to past or future?
“Some have proposed it as another reference to 2012, but I remain rather unconvinced,” David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a message to The Associated Press.

Stuart said the date inscribed on the brick “‘is a ‘Calendar Round,’ a combination of a day and month position that will repeat every 52 years.”

The brick date does coincide with the end of the 13th Baktun; Baktuns were roughly 394-year periods, and 13 was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas. The Mayan Long Count calendar begins in 3114 B.C., and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.

But the date on the brick could also correspond to similar dates in the past, Stuart said.

“There’s no reason it couldn’t be also a date in ancient times, describing some important historical event in the Classic period. In fact, the third glyph on the brick seems to read as the verb huli, ‘he/she/it arrives,’” Stuart wrote. “There’s no future tense marking (unlike the Tortuguero phrase), which in my mind points more to the Comalcalco date being more historical than prophetic.”

Cryptic characteristics
Both inscriptions — the Tortuguero tablet and the Comalcalco brick — were probably carved about 1,300 years ago, and both are cryptic in some ways.

INAH
The Tortuguero stone tablet apparently refers to an event that is due to occur in 2012, but a crack in the stone makes the final passage almost illegible.

The Tortuguero inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation. However, erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible, though some read the last eroded glyphs as perhaps saying, “He will descend from the sky.”

The Comalcalco brick is also odd in that the molded or inscribed faces of the bricks were probably laid facing inward or covered with stucco, suggesting they were not meant to be seen.

The Institute of Anthropology and History has long said rumors of a world-ending or world-changing event in late December 2012 are a Westernized misinterpretation of Mayan calendars.

The institute repeated Thursday that “Western messianic thought has twisted the cosmovision of ancient civilizations like the Maya.”

The institute’s experts say the Maya saw time as a series of cycles that began and ended with regularity, but with nothing apocalyptic at the end of a given cycle.

Given the strength of Internet rumors about impending disaster in 2012, the institute is organizing a special round table of 60 Mayan experts next week at the archaeological site of Palenque, in southern Mexico, to “dispel some of the doubts about the end of one era and the beginning of another, in the Mayan Long Count calendar.”

Story posted originally at www.msnbc.com

New updates are on the way!

New updates, personal accounts etc., will be posted here at The Paranormal Effect starting 11/28/2011. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

-Michael G
Webmaster

A part of our hidden past?

Ancient Advanced Technology In Nazca and Peru

About this video:
Researcher David Hatcher Childress and his investigative team head down the Pan American Highway from Lima to Ica and Nazca. In Ica they investigate the huge elongated alien looking skulls discovered in the area, and then they investigate the strange museum of Dr. Cabrera and its stones depicting dinosaurs and humans. Then the team flies over the Nazca figures in order to grasp their amazing complexity. Were they meant to be seen only from the air by the sky people? The team then journeys to Cuzco in central Peru and visit the megalithic sites of Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu and Sacsayhuaman, including a special examination of megalithic rock quarry near the Inca Trail.

Monsters from the Shadows of Reality

     ASK ANYONE interested in the subject to name a crypto creature – an animal reported to be seen but unknown to science – and he or she will probably come up with Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster or perhaps even El Chupacabras. They have been sighted, allegedly, on numerous occasions.

As any reader of this website knows, however, people see all kinds of creatures – animal-like beings that don’t fit neatly into scientific or even cryptozoological categories. People will swear to you that they saw them with their own eyes. Strange creatures. Creatures that seem to have been spotted perhaps only once in a given area, and never again. So are they real? Do they exist in our physical reality or are they products of imagination and misidentification? Or do they exist in some other reality and pay only brief visits to our dimension, living on the outskirts of our perception?

Consider these reports of bizarre creatures from readers:

ROSWELL REPTILIAN

Mark was caring for his parents’ ten-acre estate in a remote valley near Roswell, New Mexico, famous, of course, for its alleged UFO crash. “This valley is surrounded by mountains to the west (Sacramento), the Permian Basin in the east, and the Carlsbad caverns to the south,” Mark tells us. “This basin is very ancient; it was once the shoreline of an ancient sea.

“The Bottomless Lakes State Park is within this basin and is the result of many strange legends both ancient and recent, with countless rumors of individuals who see things come out of the water, people being chased by strange creatures, sightings for UFOs, and the list goes on. Legends of creatures that live in these lakes are old and as mentioned keep occurring to this day.

“As I was waking up one morning around 10 a.m., I walked outside to get a breath of fresh air. My uncle, who lived directly behind us, had a dog named Ono. Ono was half pit bull and half blue heeler. Directly east of us was a field, and as I happened to look east in the field, Ono was chasing a creature that stood approximately 2½ to 3 feet tall. This creature was light brown in color and was definitely reptilian. I just stood there watching as this creature and Ono disappeared out of sight. I was not frightened, just in awe and disbelief of what I was actually witnessing.

“My cousin had seen the creature around the same time and several days later, my aunt, uncle, mom, and I had seen unusual tracks that were not, to our recollection, of any known animals of the area. I know what I witnessed and science cannot tell me otherwise.”

THE MONSTER OF BENBROOK LAKE

Benbrook Lake is a small body of water on the southwest side of Fort Worth, Texas, created by the Army Corp of Engineers as a flood control reservoir in the mid-1900s. It was here that Jack L. had his unusual sighting.

“The heat brings all manner of animals to the water at sunset,” says Jack. “Deer, armadillo, fox, raccoon and possums all frequent the dark, green pool, but I’m not exactly sure what I saw there in the waning glow of dusk on October 20, 2005.

“I had arrived at Holiday Park on the lake’s western shore around 6:15 in the early evening, but the thermometer still registered in the 90s. There wasn’t another soul in view except for a lone hobbyist flying his radio-controlled airplane some 200 yards away. I fanned out my blanket and settled down to stretch in preparation for my daily swim.

“I happened across a set of large, strange tracks that led into the water where I routinely swam. Although unusually large, I attributed the tracks to a pair of Great Danes that I had seen running with their owner earlier in the month. As the sounds of the lake began to filter into my awareness, I heard someone trudging through the underbrush and reeds that fronted a small patch of woods to my right, which separated me from the point on the shoreline where I went into the water. It never registered that there were no other vehicles or evidence of swimmers nearby. I walked slowly back to my blanket and collapsed to soak up the heat.

“As I rolled onto my left side, I saw it. I say ‘it’ because I don’t really know what ‘it’ was. It had dark fur and was large… perhaps seven or eight feet tall. It was pushing through a stand of reeds about 200 yards from me. The reeds came up to my chest, but only reached the animal’s waist. It appeared to walk upright, grunting in a belabored manner. The animal had turned away from me so I could not make out any facial details. I wheeled about to see if there was anyone within earshot, but the lake was deserted now. I can’t describe my fear. I quietly and quickly collected my stuff and strode back to my truck for safety. I sat quietly and watched the animal disappear into the woods.

“I was shaking. Several minutes passed before I cranked the truck and headed home, primarily because I was afraid I would see the creature along the winding lake road that lead out of Holiday Park. I returned to the site two days later and found sufficient evidence that something large did move about the reeds. It appeared as though something large had nested there. I don’t know what I encountered, but I still swim and bike at Benbrook. Perhaps, someone will corroborate what I saw.”

FOREST WHITE-CLAW

Zion and his buddies had built a fort to play in within a wooded field on the outskirts of town. It was a place to hang out and engage in pretend defense against imaginary enemies. What they didn’t count on was an intruder of an altogether strange sort.

“It was maybe three in the afternoon when school got out,” says Zion. “I decided to call my friend Eric to see if he would like to go to the fort. His mom always made him stay home and eat dinner first, so I told him I would just meet him there. We started building onto the fort.

“At about 5:00 p.m. it started getting dark, so we decided to head back. As we packed all of our stuff, both Eric and I noticed something slowly coming out of a bush about 150 yards north of us. Acting quickly, we dove silently into the fort. We sat there for at least five minutes.

“It was the size of a large wolf, but dark black with long, large, white claws. It did not look like anything Eric or I had ever seen before – nothing we could compare it to. As it vanished from our sites, we cautiously started back. We made it out of the forest where we came to an abandoned house. We did not plan on stopping, but noticed that about 100 yards on the path the creature was standing on all fours looking at us.

“We stood paralyzed as it slowly walked toward us. All of a sudden it stopped. We got a good look at it. It had dark yellow eyes and not one look of mercy on its face and a row of bright white teeth showed. All of a sudden, we heard a noise behind us. We quickly turned around to see a doe and a fawn running out of a thorn bush. We turned around and the creature was gone. Seeing the chance, we ran home. We made it home, but not one memory of that animal will ever leave my mind. We have not seen it since then.”

CHUPACABRAS ROADRUNNER

There have been many claims for Chupacabras sightings, some of them in the southern U.S., especially Texas. Although there is no consensus about what Chupacabras might be – descriptions vary widely – Dub and his wife Ann think they might have spotted a creature that fits a common description in 2004.

“We were driving home late at night in East Texas near Crockett,” Dub relates, “when we saw something run right across the road in front of us. It was about ten feet in front of our car. We both later on drew a picture of what we saw and they look almost the same.

“The features we both noted were: About four to five feet tall and ran on the two hind feet. The knees bent backward, not forward as a human’s. It made it across the road in three or four seconds. It had the body of a slim small child, not like a fat kangaroo. The arms chugged back and forth like a person running. The head had a pointed chin and a pointed top at the back like a rooster’s comb. The body looked gray or some other dark color. The thing looked to be an alien to both of us. We have never seen a picture of any [conventional] animal that resembled what we saw. It seems there have been many sightings of such a thing in the past. These are found on the Internet under Chupacabras.”

LIZARD MAN

It was also in Texas that a reader, calling himself The Kid, saw something larger when he was 12 years old. “My grandpa had taken us hunting up near Big Springs in west Texas,” he says. “We rode our jeep up the side of the mountain, when suddenly, two families of quail appeared. My grandpa was still teaching my two younger brothers to hunt, so they went with him to follow one family, and I followed the other all by myself.

“I strode up the mountain, and I carried with me only my shotgun and a bag full of shells. I scratched my foot on a very large rock. I howled in pain. I tended to my wound for a few minutes. I heard ducks nearby and knew that there had to be a nearby pond where I could wash my cut. I headed toward the sound. I stepped on a twig and six ducks flew off away from the pond. I figured the sound I made had scared them off, so I kept walking there.

“I was at the shore splashing water on my leg when I heard another splashing sound. I looked up and saw a man leaning over, drinking from the pond. It only took me a few seconds to realize that this was no ordinary man. This man had scales and a lizard’s head! I was petrified – I couldn’t move a muscle. I stood there watching the deformity drink, when all of a sudden I saw it jerk its head up. It eyed me for what seemed like hours. It jumped in the water and started to swim toward me. All I could do was shoot at it. I shot three shells, and then I heard the dreaded click. I ran and ran and ran. I met up with my grandpa, and he didn’t believe me. Would you blame him?”

LEERING GARGOYLE

Seeing a bizarre creature out in the remote wilderness is one thing… but seeing one in the landscaping of your own home is quite another. In August 2005, Greg stepped outside his apartment building to smoke a cigarette. “As I was turning to head back indoors,” he reports, “a gleam in a nearby shrub (about 20 feet away) caught my eye. I looked more closely and saw what, for all intents and purposes, was a face leering at me. At the moment, I thought how unusual that the evening lighting and the arrangement of the shrub’s branches and leaves would create such a startling effect. So I walked closer to the bush, wishing I had a camera to capture this unusual optical illusion.

“At about five feet from the shrub, I stopped dead in my tracks. This was a face – a very malevolent face that looked like a gremlin from the movies. Its eyes were focused intently on mine and it was perfectly still, although a slight breeze was rustling the rest of the bush. Disbelieving, I shook my head, closed my eyes, and opened them again. The face was still there, still looking at me.

“I thought it must be a cat, raccoon or possum and took another step toward the face. At that moment, I felt a wave of such hostility that it practically took my breath away. I looked more closely now and could see green and darkly mottled ridged eyebrows, brilliantly white (almost mesmerizing) pupils, rubbery-looking pointed ears, and a very large mouth partly opened in what appeared to be a sneer – or a threat.

“Shaken, I hurried back into my apartment, locked the door, and looked out the front window only to see that the thing was still watching me. Keep in mind that I was looking at it from a different angle now, yet it held its form and appeared to have slightly turned its head toward me. Then I understood something. I had caught a glimpse of some legendary elf- or gargoyle-like creature, and I wasn’t supposed to. The malevolence I felt and the hypnotic stare of the creature were its warnings to me to back off.

“What would have happened if I’d walked right up to the thing in the bush? I’m glad I didn’t, by the way.”

BLACK LUNAR MONSTER

The woods are home to all kinds of creatures, of course, but most of them can be readily identified. Occasionally, one is sighted that is not so easily named. Braydon and his friend Tony were walking in a wooded area near Bardstown, Kentucky between 11:00 p.m. and 12:00 midnight. “Did you hear that?” asked Tony. “Hear what?” Braydon replied.

They both listened. Tony was about to say something else when a black-skinned, orange-eyed creature just walked right by them. “I was startled for a sec, then I was scared stiff,” Braydon says, “for it was now looking right at us. I whispered, ‘Run!’ Before we started running, the creature ran in the opposite direction.

“It was about five feet tall on all fours and looked like a mix between a pit bull terrier and a giant bird with no wings. It doesn’t really walk on all fours, but kind of leaps. No fur.”

CREATURE ON THE GARAGE

Hollywood has created many memorable and terrifying fictional monsters over the years, but what Adam saw in December 2005 at his home in North Hollywood, California seemed very real to him.

“I was inside my garage all day and night organizing things,” Adam says. “I was finishing up when at approximately 9:30 p.m. I was shocked by a large crash and smash against my closed garage door. At first I thought it was maybe a drunk homeless person that fell against the garage door, or kids outside throwing a football around. So I slowly and quietly listened and walked out of the garage to hear what it was.

“As I got around to the front of the garage, I didn’t see anyone. I decided to keep quiet and just listen for any movement. Then I heard something on the roof of the garage. I went into the garage and grabbed my flashlight. I returned outside and looked on top of the garage, which is 12 feet high – and there it was in the night, crouching on all fours. I didn’t need to turn the flashlight on, but I did.

“When I flashed the light on the thing, it looked back at me with glowing yellow eyes. At first I thought it was a cat, but it was too large. Possum, no; mountain lion, no. It kept looking at me for about 30 seconds. I still thought it could be a cat until it turned its head away from me. ‘Oh my god,’ is all I could say. My brain had never seen an animal such as this one.

“Its head was that of a dog, its snout wasn’t long, it was medium and flat. It scared the hell out of me. It had a nubby tail, but its head was unusual, like no animal I’ve ever seen. It was about 3½ to 4 feet long, looked about 40 pounds, gray or black fur like a cat. After those 30 seconds of confrontation, it leaped off the garage with amazing ease, and thundered through my backyard, jumped over a 7-foot fence and was gone.

“It wasn’t a cat; it was too heavy and clumsy, like a dog, yet it wasn’t a dog because it jumped off a 12-foot-high garage. It wasn’t a mountain lion because it was gray and black and it had a dog face. It was a different creature that possibly related to a cat or dog, but much more evolved and quicker.”

Contacting the Dead in the Electronic Age

No one can deny that computers and electronics have revolutionized life on this planet. There are electronic controls and computer chips in everything from the small appliances that toast our bread to the cars we drive, and make possible myriad forms of new entertainment, from DVDs to video games and iPods. We’re just at the beginning of this remarkable revolution.

And now many serious and casual researchers are claiming that some of this gadgetry can be useful in a quite unexpected way: to contact the dead… or at least allow the dead to contact us.

Obviously, these claims are highly controversial. They make many assumptions: that there is life after death, that the dead are interested in contacting us, and that they have the means by which to do so. Assuming all that, many people experimenting with electronic voice phenomena (EVP) and instrumental transcommunication (ITC) say they have received messages from “the other side” through tape recorders, VCRs, televisions, telephones and even computers. It seems we may no longer exclusively need Ouija boards, psychics and mediums to contact dear deceased Uncle Harold… just turn on the TV instead. Yes, even spiritulism has entered the electronic age.

These phenomena have manifest themselves since the appearance of the instruments themselves. EVP (electronic voice phenomena), for example, has been reported for well over 30 years: unexplained voices heard faintly on magnetic recording tape. It’s said that even Thomas Edison experimented with devices for spirit communication. Investigators around the world are trying to get to the bottom of EVP and ITC, endeavoring to explain, in one way or another, how these voices are encoded on audio tape, how unexplained images appear on video tape and TV screens, where phantom phone calls come from and how computers can relay messages from “the beyond.”

Here are some interesting cases of EVP and ITC, about which you can read more at the links provided:

Audio tape

Two of the pioneers of EVP were Konstantin Raudive, a Swedish psychology professor, and Fredrich Juergenson, a Swedish filmmaker. In the late 1950s, Raudive began to hear words recorded on blank audio tape and eventually made more than 100,000 recordings. (A CD of some of this recordings is even available.) Around the same time, Juergenson first captured unexplained voices while taping bird songs outdoors. He continued his research for over 25 years.

Is ITC phenomenon genuine? relates how Belling and Lee, a British laboratory, conducted some experiments in EVP, suspecting that the “spirit voices” were actually caused by ham radio broadcasts bouncing off the ionosphere. The tests were conducted by one of the leading sound engineers in Britain, and when phantom voices were recorded on factory-fresh tape, he was baffled. “I cannot explain what happened in normal physical terms,” he is quoted as saying.

Another interesting case is that of two Italian Catholic priests who in 1952 were trying to record a Gregorian chant, but a wire in their equipment kept breaking. Out of desperation, one of the priests asked his dead father for help. Then, to his amazement, his father’s voice was heard on the tape saying, “Of course I shall help you. I’m always with you.” The priests brought the matter to the attention of Pope Pius XII, who reportedly accepted the genuineness of the phenomenon.

Today, many individuals and groups are experimenting with and gathering EVPs. Dave Oester and Sharon Gill of the International Ghost Hunters Society travel the US collecting EVPs from various haunted sites, and they post many of their recordings on their site.

Radio

In 1990, two research teams (one in the U.S. and one in Germany) claimed to have independently developed devices that allowed them to talk to the dead. Using a modified form of ham radio that receives 13 different frequencies at once, the researchers claimed to have held conversations with several people who have passed on to another plane of existence. Dr. Ernst Senkowski, in Germany, said that he contacted a Hamburg dockmaster who died in 1965. “We verified this information,” Senkowski said. “He told us he was well and happy.”

In the U.S., George Meek, director of the MetaScience Foundation in Franklin, N.C., said that more than 25 times he has talked to Dr. George J. Mueller, an electrical engineer who died in 1967 of a heart attack. “Dr. Mueller told us where to find his birth and death certificate records” and other details, Meek said. Supposedly, it all checked out.

TV/VCR

In 1985, according to Instrumental Contact with the Dead?, German psychic Klaus Schreiber started receiving pictures of deceased family members on his television. Sometimes just voices would come across, telling Schreiber how to tune his TV for better reception. When Schreiber died soon after, his own image began to show up on the TV screens of some European ITC researchers.

Some researchers have claimed success in capturing ghost images with an instrumental transcommunication (ITC) set-up. With this technique, a video camcorder, connected to a television, is pointed at the television screen. In other words, the camera is recording the image it is simultaneously sending to the TV, creating an endless feedback loop. The frames of the video are then examined one by one, and sometimes ver distinct human faces can be seen. You’ll find examples here:

• Paranormal Dimensions
• World ITC

Telephone

In January 1996, ITC researcher Adolf Homes received a series of paranormal phone calls, according to Is ITC phenomenon genuine? Reportedly, a female voice said, “This is mother. Mother is going to contact you several times on your phone. As you know, my thoughts are sent in different speech patterns. The vibrational ties with your equipment make our contacts possible…”

Of course, there are also many documented cases of phantom phone calls, or phone calls from the dead. You can read several chilling examples in my article on the subject.

Computer

The seeming ability of entities to make contact through a computer were first noticed in Germany in 1980, according to Electronic Links to Other Dimensions & Entities. A researcher received a spontaneous message that appeared first as a series of letters, then words and finally phrases that referred clearly to a deceased friend of the investigator. Four years later, an English professor claimed to have exchanged messages (supposedly this was not e-mail) for over 15 months with a group of advanced entities living in the year 2019 as well as a man from 1546.

In 1984-85, says Instrumental Contact with the Dead?, Kenneth Webster of England said he received 250 communications via several different computers from a person who lived in the 16th century.

Can we believe such stories? Some are so far out that they should be taken with a megadose of salt. And the field of spiritualism and contact with the dead has always been so rampant with charlatans and fraud that there’s no reason to think that that tradition is not being continued with the assistance of electronic devices. But it’s always best to keep a cautiously open mind and welcome legitimate research into this dark, nebulous region of the paranormal.

In the news!

GHOSTS, HAUNTED PLACES AND POLTERGEISTS:

Paranormal report: The great orb debate
Dave Schrader, Kris Williams, John Zaffis, and Nina De Santo talk orbs…

Council to relocate Newbiggin Hall ‘haunted’ house family (video)
A family who fear their house is haunted can move to a new home, council bosses have agreed…

BBC haunted by Roy Castle
It has emerged that the ghost of Roy Castle has been haunting BBC Television Centre in London’s White City since his death from lung cancer in 1994…

Four notorious haunted places at St. Cloud State University
Seems as though there are more than a couple spots on campus famed for their unexplainable, and at times frightening activity…

Curious conversations with talkative ghosts
There seems to be some evidence that a former resident, who passed away recently, may still be occupying it in some form…

Who’s afraid of ghosts?
In his free time, Petty Officer 1st Class David Frees likes to take a step beyond the unknown…

EARTH MYSTERIES:

Crop circle communication
An interesting phenomenon that has been happening throughout history is the crop circle.

CREATURES:

Loch Ness Monster-like animal filmed in Alaska?
The alleged sea serpent has a long neck, a horse-like head, large eyes and back bumps that stick out of the water…

Bigfoot tracks spotted in Lincoln’s old stomping grounds
The same area where Abraham Lincoln came to fame (Chatham, IL, a suburb of Springfield) has experienced a rash of unexplained howls at night and some giant footprints investigated by police…

Ken Chaplin’s Ogopogo: Twenty-two years later
On July 18, 1989, a 42 year old car salesman from Kelowna, BC captured something on tape. Ken was a Okanagan Valley native, having lived near the lake all his life…

Patagonian monsters and manlike apes
A petroglyph seems to depict something distinctly shorter and stouter than the regular human stick figures surrounding it…

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA:

Psychic helps professor find father
For decades, Prof Sorpong Peou believed his father to be dead – executed by the Khmer Rouge. But a vivid dream and the insistence of a psychic have led the family to an emotional reunion in their home country, Cambodia…

HUMAN MYSTERIES:

Shock as girl vomits strange objects
Residents of an estate in Nakuru were recently left in shock when a 12-year-old girl started vomiting strange objects…

Woman grows full-sized nipple on the sole of her foot
Lily Allen proudly showed hers off on television, Mark Wahlberg’s famous for his and just last week, Zac Efron was forced to deny he has two.

A reader had pointed out something very important!

Comment from a reader:

Ok you need to stop fear mongering. Let the powers that be do that just dont buy into it.
Your right this is happening and the frequency is growing but putting a fear spin is completly missing the point of what is going down. we are being given an oportunity to go from a terrestrial species to a galactic species, if we can handle it.
Also the thing with art bell was a hoax google it if you dont believe me.

From the webmaster:

In response to the reader who suggested a taint of “fear spin” was added by me, in regards to certain UFO posts made here… no, I am NOT suggesting we all cower in fear at an impending “alien invasion” etc., I am simply pointing out the rising frequency of sightings worldwide leading to a possible landing/contact event.

You (reader) however are very correct in pointing out that we need to be prepared to become “galactic citizens” if need be!

So yes, I apologize for ANY misconceptions and DO advocate a willingness to accept a place amongst the stars, so to speak, with other sentient races out there.

-Admin

What’s new in the paranormal news

CREATURES:

“Finding Bigfoot” hoax exposed – by the cast!
The TV show Finding Bigfoot has a lot of critics debunking the evidence that the legendary cryptid really exists. That now includes the people who appear on the show itself…

An editorial: What impact will “Finding Bigfoot” have?
Loren Coleman: It seems like a good time to take a long-term look at what influence and impact the Finding Bigfoot series may have on the future interactions of television and cryptozoology, especially as they relate to what educational role Finding Bigfoot is filling for youthful students of cryptozoology and hominology…

Sasquatch, man, ape or something else?
For the first time, scientists from many disciplines put the most compelling Sasquatch evidence under the microscope and apply forensic science to the on-going mystery. ..

Sea monster sightings debated
Sea monsters like those described in ancient mariners’ tales down the ages really could exist, some experts claim. But they are probably not Jurassic Park-style survivors from the dinosaur age…

Is the government hiding evidence of Bigfoot?
Every now and then one does hear rumors that the “government” is hiding a carcass of Bigfoot, or a Sasquatch was taken from the ruins of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens…

Sea monsters really DO lurk beneath the waves, scientists claim
From krakens to gigantic sea serpents, terrifying monsters of the deep have haunted the imaginations of generations of mariners. Now experts in marine life claim sea monsters might actually exist…

GHOSTS, HAUNTED PLACES AND POLTERGEISTS:

A closer look at ‘ghost hunting’ shows, the pros and the cons
Here are my reviews of my four favorite ghost hunting shows. You are welcome to share the pros and cons of your favorite shows in the comments section…

Haunted Niagara: Urban legends or a glimpse into the paranormal?
Laurie Collins-Koehn: Niagara has been called the most haunted region in Canada and I decided to learn more about the folklore of this area.

GHOSTS, HAUNTED PLACES AND POLTERGEISTS:

Is Rose Hill Cemetery haunted?
Although the only thing living in the cemetery seems to be a vivid history of Matawan, even the tour guide, Al Savolaine of the Matawan Historical Society, claimed the cemetery is haunted…

Personal experience creates a paranormal believer
About two hours north of Phoenix lies the small town of Jerome. It is nestled into the side of a mountain overlooking a beautiful valley and is full of art, amazing food, and site seeing. Oh yeah, and ghosts…

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA:

Nurse claims psychic abilities led to persecution
Lori Niell, a former occupational nurse in Colorado Springs, says she unfairly lost her job because of her psychic abilities…

LIFE AFTER DEATH:

Whoopi Goldberg was a nun in previous birth
Hollywood actress Whoopi Goldberg was apparently a nun in her former life, according famous psychic twins Linda and Terry Jamison…

EARTH MYSTERIES:

Strange fruit: The costs and benefits of rural mysticism
Whether extraterrestrials or pranksters are to blame, in the Wiltshire countryside crop circles are costly: around £1,000 each, says Tim Carson, a farmer in the village of Alton Barnes, whose land has been dotted by 125 circles since 1991…

HUMAN MYSTERIES:

Out-of-body experiences linked to neural instability and biases in body representation
Although out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are typically associated with migraine, epilepsy and psychopathology, they are quite common in healthy and psychologically normal individuals as well…

LOST WORLDS:

A lost world? Atlantis-like landscape discovered
Buried deep beneath the sediment of the North Atlantic Ocean lies an ancient, lost landscape with furrows cut by rivers and peaks that once belonged to mountains. Geologists recently discovered this roughly 56-million-year-old landscape using data gathered for oil companies.

MYSTERY SPOTS AND GRAVITY HILLS

Mystery Spots and Gravity Hills

Cars and balls seem to roll uphill, people appear able to stand at impossible angles – all in contradiction to the laws of gravity and physics. What’s really happening at these curious locations?

More of this Feature • Part 2: What’s the explanation?  Join the Discussion about other weird places “The Orkney Islands are creepy. My father used to tell tales of a race of little people that lived on the islands and fed off raw flesh. Whenever anyone would come near them they would run into the trees and hide until dark, when they would come out and cause mischief. If you’ve ever been to the islands, the trees there have strange markings and patterns in the wood that look like doors or holes. And it just feels CREEPY there. For one thing, it’s unnaturally silent there. It makes you feel very heavy if you stand near the trees – almost like being hypnotized.”   Related Resources • Spooklights: Where to Find Them • Haunted Lighthouses • The Haunted Railroad Crossing  From Other Guides • Travel Talk: Healing Places to Visit  Elsewhere on the Web • Gravitational Mystery Spots • Roadside America

There are dozens of mystery spots to be found around the U.S., and many more gravity hills – places where gravity itself seems to be warped. Our perceptions of up, down, straight and crooked are confused by what some say are powerful gravitational anomalies and dizzying magnetic vortexes. Is that the case, or are our senses being fooled by clever man-made and natural optical illusions?

Here are just some of the more well-known locations:

The Mystery Spot – Santa Cruz, Ca.
Discovered in the 1940s, this site on Branciforte Drive in Santa Cruz just might be the most well-known “mystery spot” in the U.S. Tour guides walk visitors through the “Mystery Shack” that stands on this spot and demonstrate the many weird effects that seem to take place there. Balls roll uphill, brooms stand on end at odd angles, people’s heights seem to change as they walk about, among other weird effects of perspective and gravity. Even the trees in the area do not stand straight. Some visitors actually feel faint within the shack. MORE INFORMATION

Spook Hill – Lake Wales, Fl.
Located between Orlando and Tampa, this stretch of road off Hwy. 27 is said to have gravity-defying effects on cars. The phenomenon on the sloping road is so well known that there is a sign on the roadside explaining its legend:

“Many years ago, an Indian village on Lake Wales was plagued by raids of a huge gator. The chief, a great warrior, killed the gator in a battle… The chief war buried on the north side. Pioneer mail riders first discovered their horses laboring down hill, thus naming it ‘Spook Hill.’ When the road was paved, cars coasted uphill. Is this the gator seeking revenge, or the chief still trying to protect his land.”

The story is local folklore, obviously, but drivers do attest that when they stop their cars at a certain spot and shift their transmissions into neutral, the cars do seem to roll up the incline of the road.

The Mystery Spot – St. Ignace, Mi.
Like the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot, this one in Michigan’s upper peninsula also features an old shack situated on a sharply sloped landscape. Balls and water appear to defy gravity by moving uphill. People seem to be able to stand at impossible angles. MORE INFORMATION

Mystery Hill – Marblehead, Ohio
“See Mystery Hill defy the laws of nature and gravity…” declares the promotional material for this anomaly-plagued site in Ohio. Visitors to this place say that you can feel perfectly okay standing in one spot, then just a few inches away feel totally strange. Here, too, water seemingly flows uphill, a pendulum swings only to the south and people appear to change height right before your eyes.

The Oregon Vortex – Gold Hill, Or.
Some kind of magnetic vortex – a spherical field of force, half above the ground and half below – is said to be responsible for the peculiar effects experienced at this site’s House of Mystery. Those who visit the spot, it is claimed, cannot stand erect anywhere within the vortex, but are always inclined toward magnetic north. Distortions in perceived perspective are also affected, giving the impression, in some spots, that as a person approaches you he or she becomes shorter. There are other weird effects as well. MORE INFORMATION

Gravity Hill – Bedford County, Pa.
It’s a place where gravity goes haywire, says one article about this hill near New Paris, Pa. A “GH” spray-painted on the road tells you when you’ve found the spot where you can stop your car, shift it into neutral, then sit in amazement as it seems to slowly begin to roll uphill. If you’re still in doubt, you can do as other experimenters have done and pour water on the road – and watch as it flows uphill.

Gravity Hill – Franklin Lakes, N.J.
This gravity hill on the Ewing Avenue exit of Rt. 208 South has one of those “ghost child” stories attached to it. The reason cars appear to roll uphill in defiance of gravity is because the ghost of a little girl pushes them that way. The little girl, the story goes, was killed by a passing car when she dashed into the road to fetch a ball. It’s either that or some kind of anomalous magnetic field, they say, which also causes balls to roll up the hill instead of down. MORE INFORMATION

Mystery Hill – Blowing Rock, N.C.
The Mystery House in this N.C. attraction is said to have a stronger-than-normal gravitational pull to the north. A person can apparently stand at a 45-degree angle, they say, and balls can be shown to roll up an incline. The site also features some other optical illusions and puzzles.

Cosmos Mystery Area – Rapid City, S.D.
Situated just six miles from the Mount Rushmore National Monument, the Cosmos Mystery Area on Hwy. 16 features a house where no one appears to be able stand up straight. A ball placed on a plank will appear to roll up it. “You can even stand on the wall!” says the promotional literature. MORE INFORMATION

Gravity Hill – Salt Lake City, Utah
This gravity hill is located a few blocks northwest of the Capitol building in Salt Lake City. On a road that leads down into a canyon, supposedly, gravity works against known physics. If you stop at the bottom of the hill here, they say, and put your car in neutral, the car will coast back uphill out of the canyon. There’s a legend behind this one, too. Someone named Elmo is buried in the area, so the story goes, and his gravestone glows blue at midnight. It’s the force of this ghostly presence that warps gravity.

What’s the Explanation?

Is something paranormal taking place at all these mystery spots and gravity hills? Are there strange magnetic vortexes and bizarre gravity anomalies to account for the apparent phenomena reported by hundreds and hundreds of visitors? Or are these simply optical illusions?

Although it is well known that gravity is not uniform everywhere on Earth, there are no known areas where it has been scientifically proven that gravity does not act the way it is supposed to act. Of course this does not prove that such areas can exist or do exist, but the mystery spot attractions around the country and the hundreds of “gravity hills” are probably not among them.

As fun, entertaining, even baffling as these spots can be, it’s unlikely that the cause is paranormal in any way – no vortexes, gravity anomalies or even ghost children.

As made clear at “Mystery Spots Explained,” they are “cleverly engineered tourist attractions” designed to create convincing optical illusions. The “mystery houses,” always constructed on steep inclines, take advantage of the fact that the human eye and brain can be easily fooled by deliberate distortions in perspective and odd angles. In this way, people can appear to always be standing at impossible angles, even on walls; balls and water only seem to move uphill; and pendulums just look as though they don’t work quite right.

Similar illusions are at work on the so-called “gravity hills.” Cars and tennis balls that look as though they are rolling uphill are actually being pulled downhill by gravity. Optical illusions created by the lay of the land and surrounding landscape fool the eye into thinking that the laws of physics are being defied. (If you want to check out these places for yourself, roadsideamerica.com offers a “Mystery Spot Test Kit.”)

Despite these scientific explanations, mystery spots and gravity hills can be a source of wonder, curiosity and fun. Just don’t expect anything paranormal to occur.

Gateways to the Otherworld

HUMANKIND HAS AN innate “knowledge” that there is something more to our existence than our brief lives on this planet. And we yearn to understand exactly what it is. It is this unquenchable yearning that has led to the creation of religions and myths, and explorations of such concepts as life after death, reincarnation and past lives. We long to truly discover this “otherworld.”

In his fascinating book, Gateways to the Otherworld: The Secrets Beyond the Final Journey, from the Egyptian Underworld to the Gates in the Sky, author Philip Gardiner delves deep in the knowledge of ancient cultures and discovers that they might have had the ability to journey to other realities. He also explains how we can begin to take that journey ourselves.

In this interview, Mr. Gardiner explains some of what he has learned.

Q: Let’s start with the title. What is the “otherworld” you refer to?

Gardiner: There are, of course, many definitions and they seem to grow with each year. Today, people often think about the otherworlds of science fiction (or maybe not) such as those of Stargate. However, for the purposes of my book, we are dealing with more ancient concepts that have come down to us today in the Western world, such as Heaven or even Avalon. For as long as there has been consciousness, it seems man has found the desire to overcome the greatest of fears – the loss of self following death. And so we now have myths and religious belief systems built around the concepts man created (or discovered) to overcome this issue.

The other concept of the otherworld seems to have come later (although this may not be so; it is difficult to prove either way historically). This secondary otherworld is the place that our Shaman claims to visit and is, of course, related to the world of the “spirits”. The two otherworld concepts are related in most cultures, although some have them slightly differing.

Q: In the first sections of the book, you delve into a lot of history. Is the “secret” information that was known to the ancients and has been lost or forgotten?

Gardiner: I have often had this discussion with other authors in the field and many of us agree that these “secrets” fell out of popular perception over time naturally, but that some were pushed out, especially by a jealous and empire-building church, which wanted its “heaven” to take precedence. Some elements have been kept alive in the undercurrent, and by that I mean the many so-called secret societies that maintained the “wisdom traditions”. By piecing their elements together with those from ancient texts, archaeology and even science, we can draw some conclusions and that’s what I did for the book.

Q: What is the significance of the great Egyptian pyramids in this context?

Gardiner: Quite apart from the fact that one cannot leave the Great Pyramid at Giza out of any equation regarding “gateways” to otherworlds, I was amazed to see the science of the building and its materials actually meeting with the belief systems of the ancient Egyptians.

Let me explain. The Great Pyramid stands at what was then said to be the centre of the Earth’s landmass. It was built from materials well-suited for absorbing energy – specifically, electromagnetic energy. The Kings Chamber is created from granite, which is made up mainly of quartz crystal, which magnifies electromagnetic energy. So the building collects and magnifies energy. This energy is that of the natural world around us – the energy of the Earth (Mother, as our ancestors believed). Place yourself in a meditative state inside the Kings Chamber and you not only bring your brainwaves down to a specific frequency known as the hypnagogic, but you also become one with the frequency of the Earth. Sounds mad, I know, but that’s the science, and there is much more to it.

Q: Is an understanding of this ancient knowledge essential for making this journey?

Gardiner: I would not say so totally… but it is extremely important that one gains knowledge of balance and grows in wisdom before attempting anything that involves trance. We can often take heaven or hell with us wherever we go.

Q: What can we expect to find through the gateway?

Gardiner: The last answer gives a clue. Those individuals who are not balanced and who have not sought out “themselves” prior to accessing this otherworldly truth have all too often discovered a terrifying world. I cannot say with all certainty that what is found within these states is real in the classical sense, but the fact is that man has sought out and had these experiences for millennia, and the similarities among the experiences are profound. Quite often, people can have these experiences spontaneously too, and this can give rise to the many tales of alien abduction… but that’s another book….

Q: How difficult is it for any of us to find our way through the gateway? What’s required?

Gardiner: First and foremost, one needs to deal with the thing we know as consciousness and its relationship to chaos, which is created by conflict between being aware and yet having natural urges in a society that is simply not natural – it’s called ego. Once we have dealt with that – which is basically discovering one’s true self – then we can move on. Our ancestors discovered many methods from drugs (not advised nor required) to meditation, prayer, fasting, solitude and even dervish (spinning around). These things help the mind become entrained – to get the brain frequency to meet with the frequency of the Earth (twilight zone!). They also release certain hormones and drugs that affect our consciousness and perceptions. Then one is on the road.

Q: How has this knowledge changed your life?

Gardiner: All the knowledge I have gained over the years has changed my life in many great and sometimes also subtle ways. I began by wanting to know many things – the who, where and when – but as time went on and the more I learned, the more I realized that what mattered most about history was why! H. G. Wells said that we teach our children about the philosopher, about when and where he lived, but we fail to teach them the philosophy. Nothing seems to have changed since he wrote that.

It is time we began thinking more about our responsibilities as conscious beings on this planet, and stopped reacting like barbarians who can make a brilliant weapon, use it for war and murder and yet not really know why we do so. My personal role is to help the innocent in any way I can, and if that means I have to go through the process of getting a message of “philosophy” to those who are not innocent, then I shall continue to do so.

Philip Gardiner is also the author of The Ark, The Shroud, and Mary and Gnosis: The Secret of Solomon’s Temple Revealed. His website is www.gardinersworld.com.

 

Gateways to the Otherworld is also available as a DVD and an audio CD.