On the Trail of the Werewolf

Some people have accused me of Misanthropy;
And yet I know no more than the mahogany
That forms this desk, of what they mean;-Lycanthropy
I comprehend, for without transformation
Men become wolves on any slight occasion.
- Lord Byron

How real are werewolves?

Werewolves. People who shapeshift into howling, bloodthirsty wolves by the light of the full moon. As Lord Byron noted, this affliction is also known as lycanthropy. It’s a superstition that dates back centuries and has been popularized by books of fiction and dozens of films. Virtually every culture on the planet has lore and traditions of were-creatures.

But is there any truth to the werewolf legend?

In medical terms, lycanthropy is applied to people who suffer from the delusion that they transform into wolves. And physically there is a genetic condition called hypertrichosis in which a person, male or female, is mostly or even entirely covered in thick dark hair. All 32 members of the Aceves family in Mexico have this rare condition, for example. Some of them have become skilled acrobats and travel with a circus. Fajardo Aceves Jesus Manuel even bills himself as “Wolfman.” The family is currently under study by The Center of Biomedical Research in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Undoubtedly, throughout the centuries people with this genetic disorder have inspired the werewolf legend. In times past, they would have been shunned by society, even cast out by their own families. We can imagine that they would have sought refuge in the forests, surviving as best they could, like primitives… or animals… perhaps even killing to stay alive.

These tragic circumstances are a far cry from the werewolf tradition, however, in which a human literally transforms into a wolf.

So again we ask, is there any truth to the werewolf legend? There have been reports.

The Ohio Man Dog

On August 27, 2005, a truck driver named Scott called into the Coast to Coast radio show and told host Ian Punnett of his strange sighting. While driving, his truck’s headlights illuminated a strange scene: some kind of beast was crouched on the side of the road eating a deer. He described it as looking like a cross between “an ape with a dog’s head” and the werewolf from the horror film Van Helsing.

The Beast of Wisconsin and Michigan

In her book The Beast of Bray Road, Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf, Linda Godfrey chronicles the many encounters with The Dog Man, a werewolf-like creature that has been seen in the backwoods of northern Michigan and Wisconsin at least since 1936.

• In 1938, a man named Robert Fortney of Cadillac, Michigan encountered a werewolf-like creature near Paris in Mecosta County, according to an April 25, 1987 article in the Record-Eagle by reporter Sheila Wissner: “Fear gripped Robert Fortney as he shot and killed one of five dogs that lunged at him as he stood on the banks of the Muskegon River in 1938. But fear escalated to cold terror as the only dog that didn’t run off reared up on its hind legs and stared at Fortney with slanted, evil eyes and the hint of a grin.”
• Another story comes second-hand from an old lumberman. Two of his friends had been fishing on Claybank Lake late one day. They spotted something swimming in the water, which they at first thought was a coon hound that one of them owned. As the creature neared, however, they saw that it had a dog’s head but the body of a man! According to the tale, the fishermen had to actually beat the creature away with their oars to prevent it from climbing into their boat.

The Beast of Gévaudan

A ferocious, man-killing animal terrorized south-central France in the mid-1760s. It was described as looking like a wolf, but of enormous proportions (the size of a donkey or cow), leading villagers to speculate that it was more than a mere wolf, rather a werewolf – a loup-garou. The huge creature was responsible for many gruesome deaths, children and adults alike. Those who fought it with guns and knives said it seemed impervious to weapons.

The beast’s attacks became so terrible and frequent that King Louis XV sent a troop of light cavalry to the area to slay it, but it always escaped, despite being wounded. A large reward was offered for the creature’s death, and finally in June 1767, a group of hunters set off after it. One of them, Jean Chastel, managed to shoot it directly in the heart… using silver bullets. The Beast of Gévaudan was dead. (Source: Unexplained! by Jerome Clark)

Hellhound or Werewolf

In August, 2003 I received this story from a reader:

“This really happened to my friend. She said that about four years ago her cat wanted to go out because her litter box was broken, so they took the cats out to use the ‘bathroom.’ Her yard is very long and at the end are woods, so she took her cat to the woods to use the bathroom, when she heard a growl. She looked up to see two red eyes staring at her in the woods, and her cat hissed and jumped out of her arms and ran into the woods. Then she heard it scream. When she heard that, she was frozen with fear and then the thing started to run after her. She forced herself to run, so she started to run with all her might. She looked back to see what it was. She explained that it had a hound’s face with a big body; its front legs were longer than the back ones, and it ran like a gorilla. She finally got to her porch and ran inside, then she slammed the door shut and looked out. It was gone. Some say it was a hellhound or a werewolf.”

Other miscellaneous facts:

• England’s King John (reign, 1199-1216), a most unpopular monarch, was thought by the citizenry to be a werewolf. This was no doubt a demonization of a ruler they detested. Some time after his death, monks claimed to hear noises from his tomb, furthering the werewolf legend. They dug up his body and relocated it to unconsecrated ground.
• According to a medieval cleric, you can become a werewolf by stripping naked under a full moon and rolling around in sand.
• In 1682 in Fahrenholz, Germany, several people were accused of being able to transform themselves into wolves and were put on trial.
• Some researchers contend that modern sightings of werewolves might actually be of another cryptozoological creature: Bigfoot.

Wagner the Wehr-Wolf

Do I have a werewolf ancestor? In 1846, a short book (of fiction, supposedly), known as a penny dreadful, entitled Wagner the Werewolf or Wagner the Were-Man was written by George W. Reynolds, a contemporary of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray, and at the time more widely read that either of them. According to the “story,” Wagner was a German peasant who entered a pact with the devil, thereby gaining eternal life. The only catch was that he would become a werewolf every seven years. This also resulted in a series of supernatural adventures, with the beautiful murderess Nisida at his side. Ultimately, he gained salvation from some passing Rosicrucians.

Werewolves: A Field Guide to Shapeshifters, Lycanthropes, and Man-Beasts is a great book to find out much more about these legendary beasts of the night. With so many accounts through-out history of Werewolves, could there indeed be truth to these creatures?

Saint-Germain: The Immortal Count

Saint-Germain: The Immortal Count

He was an alchemist who, it is believed, discovered the secret of eternal life

   IS IT POSSIBLE that a man can achieve immortality – to live forever? That is the startling claim of a historical figure known as Count de Saint-Germain. Records date his birth to the late 1600s, although some believe that his longevity reaches back to the time of Christ. He has appeared many times throughout history – even as recently as the 1970s – always appearing to be about 45 years old. He was known by many of the most famous figures of European history, including Casanova, Madame de Pampadour, Voltaire, King Louis XV, Catherine the Great, Anton Mesmer and others.

Who was this mysterious man? Are the stories of his immortality mere legend and folklore? Or is it possible that he really did discover the secret of defeating death?

ORIGINS

When the man who first became known as Saint-Germain was born is unknown, although most accounts say he was born in the 1690s. A genealogy compiled by Annie Besant for her co-authored book, The Comte De St. Germain: The Secret of Kings, asserts that he was born the son of Francis Racoczi II, Prince of Transylvania in 1690. Other accounts, taken less seriously by most, say he was alive in the time of Jesus and attended the wedding at Cana, where the young Jesus turned water into wine. He was also said to be present at the council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.

What is almost unanimously agreed on, however, is that Saint-Germain became accomplished in the art of alchemy, the mystical “science” that strives to control the elements. The foremost goal of this practice was the creation of “projection powder” or the elusive “philosopher’s stone,” which, it was claimed, when added to the molten form of such base metals as lead could turn them into pure silver or gold. Furthermore, this magical power could be used in an elixir that would impart immortality on those who drank it. Count de Saint-Germain, it is believed, discovered this secret of alchemy.

COURTING EUROPEAN SOCIETY

Saint-Germain first came into prominence in the high society of Europe in 1742. He had just spent five years in the shah of Persia’s court where he had learned the jeweler’s craft. He beguiled the royals and the rich with his vast knowledge of science and history, his musical ability, his easy charm and quick wit. He spoke many languages fluently, including French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and English, and was further familiar with Chinese, Latin, Arabic – even ancient Greek and Sanskrit.

It might have been his extraordinary learnedness that led acquaintances to see that he was a remarkable man, but an anecdote from 1760 most likely gave rise to the notion that Saint-Germain could be immortal. In Paris that year, Countess von Georgy heard that a Count de Saint-Germain had arrived for a soiree at the home of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV of France. The elderly countess was curious because she had known a Count de Saint-Germain while in Venice in 1710. Upon meeting the count again, she was astonished to see that he hadn’t appeared to age, and asked him if it was his father she knew in Venice.

“No, Madame,” he replied, “but I myself was living in Venice at the end of the last and the beginning of this century; I had the honor to pay you court then.”

“Forgive me, but that it impossible!” the perplexed countess said. “The Count de Saint-Germain I knew in those days was at least forty-five years old. And you, at the outside, are that age at present.”

“Madame, I am very old,” he said with a knowing smile.

“But then you must be nearly 100 years old,” said the astonished countess.

“That is not impossible,” the count told her matter-of-factly, then continued to convince the countess that he was indeed the same man she knew with the details of their previous meetings and of life in Venice 50 years earlier.

EVER PRESENT, NEVER AGING

Saint-Germain traveled extensively throughout Europe over the next 40 years – and in all that time never seemed to age. Those who met him were impressed by his many abilities and peculiarities:

• He could play the violin like a virtuoso.
• He was an accomplished painter.
• Wherever he traveled, he set up an elaborate laboratory, presumably for his alchemy work.
• He seemed to be a man of great wealth, but was not known to have any bank accounts. (If it was due to his ability to transmute base metals into gold, he never performed the feat for observers.)
• He dined often with friends because he enjoyed their company, but was rarely seen to eat food in public. He subsisted, it was said, on a diet of oatmeal.
• He prescribed recipes for the removal of facial wrinkles and for dyeing hair.
• He loved jewels, and much of his clothing – including his shoes – were studded with them.
• He had perfected a technique for painting jewels.
• He claimed to be able to fuse several small diamonds into one large one. He also said he could make pearls grow to incredible sizes.
• He has been linked to several secret societies, including the Rosicrucians, Freemasons, Society of Asiatic Brothers, the Knights of Light, the Illuminati and Order of the Templars.

The renowned 18th philosopher, Voltaire – himself a respected man of science and reason – said of Saint-Germain that he is “a man who never dies, and who knows everything.”

Throughout the 18th century, Count de Saint-Germain continued to use his seemingly endless knowledge of the world in the politics and social intrigues of the European elite:

• The the 1740s he became a trusted diplomat in the court of King Louis XV of France, performing secret missions for him in England.
• In 1760 he performed a similar function at the Hague, where he met the infamous lover, Giacomo Girolamo Casanova. Casanova later said of Saint-Germain, “This extraordinary man… would say in an easy, assured manner that he was 300 years old, that he knew the secret of the Universal Medicine, that he possessed a mastery over nature, that he could melt diamonds… all this, he said, was mere trifle to him.”
• In 1762 he traveled to Russia where it is said he was complicit in a conspiracy that placed Catherine the Great on the throne. He later advised the commander of the imperial Russian armies in the war against Turkey (which they won).
• In 1774 he returned to France when Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette occupied the throne. He allegedly warned them of the revolution that was to come 15 years in the future.

In 1779 he went to Hamburg, Germany, where he befriended Prince Charles of Hesse-Cassel. For the next five years, he lived as a guest in the prince’s castle at Eckernförde. And, according to local records, that is where Saint-Germain died on February 27, 1784.

BACK FROM THE DEAD

For any ordinary mortal, that would be the end of the story. But not for Count de Saint-Germain. He would continue to be seen throughout the 19th century and into the 20th century!

• In 1785 he was seen in Germany with Anton Mesmer, the pioneer hypnotist. (Some claim that it was Saint-Germain who gave Mesmer the basic ideas for hypnotism and personal magnetism.)
• Official records of Freemasonry show that they chose Saint-Germain as their representative for a convention in 1785.
• After the taking of the Bastille in the French Revolution in 1789, the Comtesse d’Adhémar said she had a lengthy conversation with Count de Saint-Germain. He allegedly told her of France’s immediate future, as if he knew what was to come. In 1821, she wrote: “I have seen Saint-Germain again, each time to my amazement. I saw him when the queen [Antoinette] was murdered, on the 18th of Brumaire, on the day following the death of the Duke d’Enghien, in January, 1815, and on the eve of the murder of the Duke de Berry.” The last time she saw him was in 1820 – and each time he looked to be a man no older than his mid-40s.

After 1821, Saint-Germain may have taken on another identity. In his memoirs, Albert Vandam wrote of meeting a man who bore a striking resemblance to Count de Saint-Germain, but who went by the name of Major Fraser. Vandam wrote:

“He called himself Major Fraser, lived alone and never alluded to his family. Moreover he was lavish with money, though the source of his fortune remained a mystery to everyone. He possessed a marvelous knowledge of all the countries in Europe at all periods. His memory was absolutely incredible and, curiously enough, he often gave his hearers to understand that he had acquired his learning elsewhere than from books. Many is the time he has told me, with a strange smile, that he was certain he had known Nero, had spoken with Dante, and so on.”

Major Fraser disappeared without a trace.

Between 1880 and 1900, Saint-Germain’s name once again became prominent when members of the Theosophical Society, including famed mystic Helena Blavatsky, claimed that he was still alive and working toward the “spiritual development of the West.” There is even an allegedly genuine photo taken of Blavatsky and Saint-Germain together. And in 1897, the famous French singer Emma Calve dedicated an autographed portrait of herself to Saint-Germain.

The most recent appearance of a man claiming to be Saint-Germain was in 1972 in Paris when a man named Richard Chanfray announced he was the legendary count. He appeared on French television, and to prove his claim apparently turned lead into gold on a camp stove before the cameras. Chanfray later committed suicide in 1983.

So who was Count Saint-Germain? Was he a successful alchemist who found the secret of eternal life? Was he a time traveler? Or was he a highly intelligent man whose reputation became a fantastic legend?

If you’re still alive, Count de Saint-Germain, I invite you to contact me for an interview. I’m sure my readers would be interested in knowing what you’ve been up to.

Creating the Paranormal

Where is the mind? Where does your consciousness reside? Is it solely a product of your brain? A biologist would likely say yes, since the brain is the only thing the scientist can see, examine, and experiment with. If the mind, or consciousness, is merely the output of the brain, however, how are we to explain the extraordinary cases of fully functional people who have half a brain or very little brain matter at all?

• A 39-year-old woman in China was found, to her doctors’ surprise, to have just half a brain, on the right side. The left side of her brain was completely missing, yet she lives a completely normal life, having completed high school with good grades. The only reason her doctors found out was because the woman came to them complaining of a feeling of weakness. What puzzled the doctors most was that the left side of the brain is commonly thought to control language, “but this patient has no problem communicating with people,” said the hospital’s director of Neural Rehabilitation Department.
• A 44-year-old man in France was discovered to have only a thin shell of a brain. Most of his skull was filled only with fluid, leaving room for just the slightest sheet of actual brain tissue. He had a below-average IQ of 75, but was an otherwise normal civil service worker and a married father of two children.
• A low IQ isn’t always the result of this anomaly, however. A mathematics university student in Sheffield, U.K., who had an IQ of 126, had virtually no brain at all. A CAT scan revealed that the boy had less than a millimeter of cerebral tissue covering the top of his spinal column.

If the brain really is the seat of function, consciousness and personality, then these people should be vegetables or, at best, severely disabled. Yet they are anything but. Certainly, many people who are the victims of brain trauma through accident are disabled, or worse, become vegetables (or die). Yet remarkable people like those mentioned above thrive. It could be because their “abnormality” occurred not as the result of trauma, but slowly over time, or at birth. This allowed the brain to adapt, to hand over its high functions to smaller and smaller vestiges of brain matter.

Even so, how can a fully functional, perfectly normal mind remain?

THE HOLOGRAPHIC BRAIN

The answer might be found in the consciousness rather than the brain. The consciousness of these people has obviously been unaffected by their diminishing or non-existent brains, suggesting that the two may indeed be separate things. The brain may be a mechanism that expresses consciousness, much like a radio can make a broadcast audible, yet they are two different things. If true, than how can an almost non-existent brain mechanism continue to express consciousness?

Michael Talbot theorizes the answer in his groundbreaking book, The Holographic Universe. The brain, he says (recounting the research of neurophysiologist Karl Pribram), might work like a hologram. A hologram is a three-dimensional photograph, and if you break it into pieces, each piece of that hologram contains the entire original photo. So, too, might the brain, no matter how small a piece of it remains, be able to completely express what a whole one can.

So what does all of this have to do with the paranormal?

“The most staggering thing about the holographic model,” Talbot writes, “was that it suddenly made sense of a wide range of phenomena…. These include telepathy, precognition, mystical feelings of oneness with the universe, and even psychokinesis….”

The key to this is that our holographic brains are not stand-alone objects. Your holographic brain – an analogy for your consciousness – mingles and works not only with the holographic brains of everyone else, but with the universe itself. In a real sense, we are all a part of the same universal consciousness, which can explain ESP and other psychic phenomena, as Talbot said.

Now back to our extraordinary people mentioned at the beginning of this article.

BEYOND THE PSYCHIC

Their holographic brains – their consciousness – was able to create the semblance of a “normal” brain, complete with language, memory and other high functions. This is because the brain as hologram is able to tap the greater holographic consciousness (of which it is a part) and fill in – or create – the missing pieces. In The Holographic Universe, Talbot uses the example of those optical illusions we’re all familiar with in which the brain fills in elements of a picture that are not really in the drawing. The brain creates the missing elements because they are what it expects to see.

This gets us to thinking: If the brain can create what it wishes to see in a two-dimensional drawing, can the holographic mind create what it wishes or expects to see in the three-dimensional world? With regard to the paranormal, this could include ghostly apparitions, UFOs and even Bigfoot.

The suggestion here is that these creations of the consciousness are not illusions or figments of the imagination, but three-dimensional, physical-looking, temporary creations (holograms?) that can be viewed by many people, leave footprints, move objects and have other physical effects. (Psychologist Carl Jung suggested this as a possible explanation for UFOs back in 1959.)

I’m not suggesting that all ghosts, UFOs and sightings of Bigfoot are creations of consciousness, but some could be. Some could be just what they appear to be: spirits, alien ships and unknown primates. But in some cases they could be products of what we expect, desire or fear to see – created by the force of our powerful intentions, and physical enough to show up on videotape.

THE INCREDIBLE POWERS OF D. D. HOME

He could levitate tables – and himself – in full view of witnesses, elongate his body, and hold burning embers in his bare hands. Was he the greatest supernatural medium of his time… or the best magician?

D.D. Home

   Daniel Dunglas Home was the most celebrated medium of the 19th century. Although his name is not very well known today, he astonished audiences, friends, heads of state, and the rich and famous with startling paranormal feats and levitation. His seemingly impossible powers bewildered those who witnessed them, including many respected scientists and journalists.

Did D. D. Home truly possess extraordinary paranormal abilities? Or was he a gifted magician, far ahead of his time, who was able to fool even the closest of observers with slight of hand and magician’s illusions? Although there were certainly many skeptics among his contemporaries who denounced him as a clever fraud, they could never really prove how he accomplished his many incredible demonstrations. To this day, there is much mystery surrounding Home.

Home (pronounced “Hume”) was born in 1833 in Currie, Scotland. Like many people who seek the public spotlight or a presence in “show business,” Home seems to have exaggerated or fabricated details of his early life and heritage. For example, he was baptized as Daniel Home and seems to have adopted the middle name of Dunglas. Although he claimed to that his father was the bastard son of the tenth earl of Scotland, his father was actually an ordinary laborer and, by some accounts, an abusive drunk. As a baby, he was adopted by an aunt and at age nine was brought to America where his new family settled in Connecticut.

Home may also have created some myths about his childhood. He said that as an adolescent he began to experience premonitions. At age 17, poltergeist activity would occur when he entered a room: mysterious raps would be heard and furniture would move by itself. Were these stories Home made up to enhance his mystical persona, or were they early signs of unexplained abilities that Home would later be able to control?

Although he had little formal education, as an adult Home could converse intelligently on a number of subjects, could play the piano, and developed an easy wit and charm that facilitated his profession as a “professional houseguest.” It was at this time that his remarkable abilities came to prominence. His early reputation as a medium was made by his séances, which participants declared as uncanny, and his apparent powers of clairvoyance and healing.

Over his controversial career, these are just some of the feats D. D. Home was seen to perform around the world:

• In a well-lit room before Professor David Wells of Harvard and three other spiritualist investigators, Home caused a table to move all about, even though he stood nowhere near it. It took all the strength of two of the witnesses to restrain the table. Upon its release, the table levitated completely off the floor for several seconds. When Wells and two others sat on the table, it continued to rock. They could find no scientific explanation for the experience.

• In 1852, Home first demonstrated self-levitation. Witnesses watched in astonishment as he rose a foot or more above the floor. When they tried to hold him down, they too were lifted off the ground.

• During séances, he was able to make phantom hands appear, which sitters were able to feel. In 1857, he held a séance in Paris with Napolean III and his empress, Eugénie. The empress held a spirit hand that she recognized as her dead father’s – because of the characteristic deformity of one finger.

	He was even seen to plunge his hands and his face into a hearth fire, “moving it about as though bathing it in water.” His skin showed no signs of injury whatsoever.

• He was able to elongate his body by as much as 11 inches.

• In a July, 1868 séance in a normally lit room of the home of a client, the host’s elderly mother was levitated in the chair in which she sat.

• In December, 1868, Home gave what is perhaps his most famous performance. At his apartment in London, Home conducted a séance for three respected gentlemen. After some “conventional” spirit apparitions, Home began to walk around the room. His body elongated, according to the witnesses, then Home rose off the ground. Returning to the floor he then went into an adjoining room. The men heard a window open in that room and shortly after saw Home apparently floating in midair outside their window. The apartment was three stories up. Home opened the window from the outside, then “glided into the room feet foremost and sat down.”

• In 1871, Home was tested by William Crookes, a respected physicist and fellow of the Royal Society. With a contraption of weights he had devised, Crookes sought to measure the “power, force or influence, proceeding from his hand.” Crookes measured a force equal to about three-quarters of a pound, and was at a complete loss to explain it. Crookes was also witness to Home’s levitation, which, he wrote, challenged his “most firmly rooted articles of scientific belief.”

• In a demonstration he did many times, Home could hold white-hot embers in his bare hands. He was even seen to plunge his hands and his face into a hearth fire, “moving it about as though bathing it in water.” His skin showed no signs of injury whatsoever.

Home astonished many, but not all. Harry Houdini, known for his debunking of spiritualists and séances, denounced Home as a fraud and claimed to be able to duplicate his feats of levitation… although he never did. And while many skeptics were sure Home’s demonstrations were only trickery, Home was not once – in any of his 1,500 séances – caught in any kind of deception or exposed in perpetrating a hoax. This fact alone earned him his great reputation.

So, while reason says that Home was an extremely gifted magician and illusionist – on a par, perhaps, with some of the great magicians working today – such legerdemain was never proved. And because many of his feats were accomplished in broad daylight in full view and inspection of witnesses, Home must be regarded either as one of the greatest magicians of all time… or a true medium with extraordinary, unexplained powers.

That brings about an interesting point, if one takes the position that Home’s abilities were not supernatural: If Home had presented himself as a magician rather than a medium, he might be regarded and remembered today with greater awe than the legendary Houdini.

There’s more that we are capable of than what is usually accepted by most people. The power of the mind can be truly incredible if we can harness it! People like D.D.Home are exceptional people. To learn more about the power of the mind, check into The Three-Pound Enigma: The Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock Its Mysteries for more information on our capabilities and how we might be able to hone them. This book is a recommended one that you’ll want to have in your library or collection!

What You Need to Know About… Telekinesis!

Psychokinesis (PK) – sometimes referred to as telekinesis or mind over matter – is the ability to move things or otherwise affect the property of things with the power of the mind. Of psychic abilities, true psychokinesis is one of the rarest. Few have been able to demonstrate this ability, and even those demonstrations are highly contested by the skeptics.

Do people have psychokinetic powers? Do you? Is there a way you can test and develop your PK abilities?

Case studies

Here are brief outlines of some people who have demonstrated remarkable PK abilities:

Stanislawa Tomczyk. Born in Poland, Tomczyk came to the attention of investigators when it was reported that startling poltergeist-like activity occurred spontaneously around her. She could control some telekinetic feats, but only under hypnosis. In this hypnotic state, Tomczyk took on a personality that called itself “Little Stasia” who could levitate small objects when Tomczyk placed her hands on either side of them. In the early 1900s, one investigator, Julien Ochorowicz, watched these levitations at very close range and observed something like fine threads emanating from her palms and fingers, although they were examined carefully before the experiment. And it didn’t seem to be a trick. “When the medium separates her hands,” Ochorowicz observed, “the thread gets thinner and disappears; it gives the same sensation as a spider’s web. If it is cut with scissors, its continuity is immediately restored.” In 1910, Tomczyk was tested by a group of scientists at the Physical Laboratory in Warsaw where she produced remarkable physical phenomena under strict test conditions.

Nina Kulagina. One of the most celebrated and scrutinized psychics to claim psychokinetic powers was Nina Kulagina, a Russian woman who discovered her abilities while attempting to develop other psychic powers. Reportedly, she has demonstrated her powers by mentally moving a wide range of nonmagnetic objects, including matches, bread, large crystal bowls, clock pendulums, a cigar tube and a salt shaker among other things. Some of these demonstrations have been captured on film. The skeptics contend, of course, that her abilities would not stand up to scientific testing, and that she may be nothing more that a clever magician.

Uri Geller. Geller is one of the most well-known “psychics” who has publicly demonstrated feats of psychokinesis: spoon and key bending have become almost synonymous with Geller’s name. Although many skeptics and magicians consider his metal-bending performances nothing more than adroit sleight-of-hand, Geller has allegedly shown that he can manifest the effects over great distances and in multiple locations. On a British radio show in 1973, after demonstrating key bending to the astonishment of the host, Geller invited the listening audience to participate. Just minutes later, phone calls began pouring into the radio station from listeners all over the UK reporting that knives, forks, spoons, keys and nails began to bend and twist spontaneously. Watches and clocks that had not run in years began to work. It was an event whose success surprised even Geller and thrust him into the spotlight.

Some magicians may be able to duplicate some of these effects, but there may be legitimacy to this telekinetic phenomenon. In April, 2001, University of Arizona psychology professor Gary Schwartz conducted a “spoon-bending party” at which about 60 students were able to bend spoons and forks, with varying degrees of success, seemingly with the power of their minds. (Do you want to try it yourself? Here’s How to Host a Spoon-Bending Party.)

Poltergeist Activity

Some researchers contend that the most common form of psychokinesis is one that is not consciously intended. Poltergeist activity, they suggest, might be caused by the subconscious of people under stress, emotional turmoil or even hormonal peaks. Without conscious effort, these people cause china to fly off shelves, objects to break or loud rappings to emanate from their houses’ walls, among other effects.

In the same way, PK might also be responsible for phenomena experienced at séances. Table tilting, knockings and levitation might not be caused by contact with spirits, but by the minds of the participants. And, yes, many, many séances have been hoaxed over the years, but if you think the paranormal phenomena documented at some séances is not real, read the article How To Create a Ghost.

How Does It Work?

How psychokinesis works is unknown for certain, but many parapsychologists think that it is a demonstration of the physical influence of a person’s brain on the physical world.

Robert L. Shacklett at Speculations about PK says that laboratory tests demonstrate that “the release of relatively large amounts of physical energy can be triggered by thought power.” And this power can move or influence things, essentially, because cosmologically we are all connected to everything else. “‘Thought’ takes place at a different level than the physical (call it ‘mind’) but interacts with the physical through a weak coupling between physical energy and a more subtle energy form,” he says. “The physical level operates in accordance with natural law except at the times when thought interacts with it.“

How remains the puzzle. But there are theories:

• Some researchers suspect there might be a quantum connection. Unpredictable, often bizarre effects have been documented in the world of subatomic particles, ruled by the perplexing laws of quantum mechanics. Are our minds capable of directing subatomic particles and energies in a way that results in PK phenomena?
• One theory is that psychokinesis is the manipulation of a sort of human “magnetic field” around the body, which can be concentrated in a specific area. For this to work, they say, you must be able to relax completely and focus your attention without distraction.
• Another speculation is that mediums or participants in a séance are able to coalesce sound or heat waves within a room to form coherent energy which can then be directed at an object, such as a table, causing it to move.

Although the “how” of PK remains unknown, research and experimentation on this fascinating phenomenon continues in respected research labs around the world. (Go here for a brief history of psychokinetic research.)

Developing and Testing Your Psychokinetic Powers

Can anyone have powers of telekinesis?

“Everyone has the potential to be able to be telekinetic,” says Deja Allison at Telekinesis on Crystalinks. “Telekinesis is created by higher levels of consciousness. It cannot be created by ‘wishing it’ to happen on the physical level. The energy to move or bend an object is created by a person’s thoughts created by their subconscious mind.”

Several websites suggest ways that you might be able to develop or strengthen powers of psychokinesis. Using Psychological Telekinesis says meditation and a kind of chanting, which they provide, can help train your mind for the task, even though they offer no proof of any kind that it really works.

Mario Varvoglis, Ph.D., author of PSI Explorer, suggests that the best way to begin testing psychokinetic powers is not by trying to move a table or even a matchbook. Varvoglis says it’s much better to see if you can influence movement on a microscopic level – micro-PK. Micro-PK has been tested for years with such devices as random number generators, in which the subject tries to influence the random outcome of the machine in a way that is much greater than chance. Some of the most interesting tests of this kind were conducted at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Laboratory (PEAR) laboratory at Princeton University – and their results show that some people really can influence the computerized random number generators with the power of their minds.

Spirit Online offers this seven-step method of improving your PK:

1. Meditate daily for half an hour, 15 minutes if your schedule is too busy.
2. Attempt PK at least once a day, twice if possible. Give yourself a good 30-60 minutes to try it.
3. Focus on one method for at least a week; if it shows no results, switch methods.
4. Be at ease; instead of taking it too seriously, think of it as an experiment, a game. If you try too hard you’ll just end up frustrating yourself and you’ll get nowhere.
5. Don’t give up.
6. Don’t tell yourself you can’t do it, because you can.
7. BELIEVE!

This site also provides instructions for a few tests you can set up and conduct at home.

There are a few online experiments where you can test your psychokinetic abilities:

• Online Psychokinesis Experiment provides three different tests in which can try to move a red line on a colored bell curve, try to influence the appearance of a randomly generated shape, or try to influence the position of a blue circle on the screen.
• RetroPsychoKinesis Experiments Online also offers three tests: the same bell curve test as above, a clock face that you try to manipulate, and a pendulum whose swing you try to influence. If you succeed at demonstrating psychokinesis, be sure to let me know.

Unexplained Disappearances

Unexplained disappearances have always intrigued me. Maybe it’s the theory I have that wormholes or doorways into other realities may open up at certain points and the people who do go missing, may just be in another reality right now. I almost want to label them lucky to be able to be the ones that are able to be in these other realities to explore. But, these people may not also be that lucky either…they may be lost, or in a world that is much harsher than ours. The possibilities are endless. Here are some of the more public stories that have fascinated me for awhile now…

Vanished! Unexplained Disappearances

There one second… and gone the next. Strange cases of unsolved disappearances, from common folk to aristocrats to entire villages.

    

Doorways into other realms?

  History is peppered with intriguing tales of people who, for all intents and purposes, inexplicably vanish from the face of the earth without a trace. These stories – some of the most fascinating in the annals of the unexplained – vary from being well-documented to having the flavor of mere legend and folklore. But they are all fascinating because they force us to question the solidity of our existence. Where did these vanished people go? A time portal? Another dimension? Into a UFO? Consider those chilling possibilities as you read these amazing reports:

The Bennington Triangle

Between 1920 and 1950, Bennington, Vermont was the site of several completely unexplained disappearances:

• On December 1, 1949, Mr. Tetford vanished from a crowded bus. Tetford was on his way home to Bennington from a trip to St. Albans, Vermont. Tetford, an ex-soldier who lived in the Soldier’s Home in Bennington, was sitting on the bus with 14 other passengers. They all testified to seeing him there, sleeping in his seat. When the bus reached its destination, however, Tetford was gone, although his belongings were still on the luggage rack and a bus timetable lay open on his empty seat. Tetford has never returned or been found.
• On December 1, 1946, an 18-year-old student named Paula Welden vanished while taking a walk. Welden was walking along the Long Trail into Glastenbury Mountain. She was seen by a middle-aged couple that was strolling about 100 yards behind her. They lost sight of her when she followed the trail around a rocky outcropping, but when they rounded the outcropping themselves, she was nowhere to be seen. Welden has not been seen nor heard from since.
• In mid-October, 1950, 8-year old Paul Jepson disappeared from a farm. Paul’s mother, who earned a living as an animal caretaker, left her small son happily playing near a pig sty while she tended to the animals. A short time later, she returned to find him missing. An extensive search of the area proved fruitless.

The Vanished Cripple

Owen Parfitt had been paralyzed by a massive stroke. In June, 1763 in Shepton Mallet, England, Parfitt sat outside his sister’s home, as was often his habit on warm evenings. Virtually unable to move, the 60-year-old man sat quietly is his nightshirt upon his folded greatcoat. Across the road was a farm where workers were finishing their workday by pooking the hay. At about 7 p.m., Parfitt’s sister, Susannah, went outside with a neighbor to help Parfitt move back into the house, as a storm was approaching. But he was gone. Only his folded greatcoat upon which he sat remained. Investigations of this mysterious disappearance were carried out as late as 1933, but no trace or clues to Parfitt’s fate were ever uncovered.

The Disappearing Diplomat

British diplomat Benjamin Bathurst vanished into thin air in 1809. Bathurst was returning to Hamburg with a companion after a mission to the Austrian court. Along the way, they had stopped for dinner at an inn in the town of Perelberg. Upon finishing the meal, they returned to their waiting horse-drawn coach. Bathurst’s companion watched as the diplomat stepped over to the front of the coach to examine to horses – and simply vanished without a trace.

Time Tunnel

In 1975, a man named Jackson Wright was driving with his wife from New Jersey to New York City. This required them to travel through the Lincoln Tunnel. According to Wright, who was driving, once through the tunnel he pulled the car over to wipe the windshield of condensation. His wife Martha volunteered to clean off the back window so they could more readily resume their trip. When Wright turned around, his wife was gone. He neither heard nor saw anything unusual take place, and a subsequent investigation could find no evidence of foul play. Martha Wright had just disappeared.

The Mysterious Cloud

Three soldiers claimed to be witnesses to the bizarre disappearance of an entire battalion in 1915. They finally came forward with the strange story 50 years after the infamous Gallipoli campaign of WWI. The three members of a New Zealand field company said they watched from a clear vantage point as a battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment marched up a hillside in Suvla Bay, Turkey. The hill was shrouded in a low-lying cloud that the English soldiers marched straight into without hesitation. They never came out. After the last of the battalion had entered the cloud, it slowly lifted off the hillside to join other clouds in the sky. When the war was over, figuring the battalion had been captured and held prisoner, the British government demanded that Turkey return them. The Turks insisted, however, that it had neither captured not made contact with these English soldiers.

The Stonehenge Disappearance

The mysterious standing stones of Stonehenge in England was the site of an amazing disappearance in August, 1971. At this time Stonehenge was not yet protected from the public, and on this particular night, a group of “hippies” decided to pitch tents in the center of the circle and spend the night. They built a campfire, lit several joints of pot and sat around smoking and signing. Their campout was abruptly interrupted at about 2 a.m. by a severe thunder storm that quickly blew in over Salisbury Plain. Bright bolts of lightning crashed down on the area, striking area trees and even the standing stones themselves. Two witnesses, a farmer and a policeman, said that the stones of the ancient monument lit up with an eerie blue light that was so intense that they had to avert their eyes. They heard screams from the campers and the two witnesses rushed to the scene expecting to find injured – or even dead – campers. To their surprise, they found no one. All that remained within the circle of stones were several smoldering tent pegs and the drowned remains of a campfire. The hippies themselves were gone without a trace.

Forbidden Archeology – Secret Discoveries of Early Man

It’s Indiana Jones meets The X-Files in this intriguing program that tackles the age-old question “Where did we come from?” Fascinating viewing! Highly recommended! – Michael Rogers, “Library Journal”

The creators of the Emmy Award Winning Mystery of the Sphinx present a revolutionary new film that examines one of our greatest mysteries: Man’s origins. Hosted by Charlton Heston, this film challenges what we are being taught about human evolution and the rise of early civilization. A new breed of scientific investigators present startling evidence that the academic community has quietly ignored.

Includes the facts about this amazing mystery and a fascinating series of spellbinding interviews with researchers, scientists, and the best known, most credible authorities in the world today.

Remote Viewing – What it is and what it’s not

Are you curious about remote viewing? You have most likely heard about this mysterious practice and understand that is has something to do with ESP. What you may not know is that a person does not have to be a psychic to learn and use remote viewing. In fact, you can learn to become a remote viewer and access incredible mental powers you didn’t even know you have.

What Is Remote Viewing?

Remote viewing is the controlled use of ESP (extrasensory perception) through a specific method. Using a set of protocols (technical rules), the remote viewer can perceive a target – a person, object or event – that is located distantly in time and space. A remote viewer, it is said, can perceive a target in the past or future that is located in the next room, across the country, around the world or, theoretically, across the universe. In remote viewing, time and space are meaningless. What makes remote viewing different than ESP is that, because it uses specific techniques, it can be learned by virtually anyone.

The term “remote viewing” came about in 1971 through experimentation conducted by Ingo Swann (who correctly remote viewed in 1973 that the planet Jupiter has rings, a fact later confirmed by space probes), Janet Mitchell, Karlis Osis and Gertrude Schmeidler.

In the method that they and others developed, there are five components necessary for remote viewing to take place:

a subject (the remote viewer)
active ESP abilities
a distant target
the subject’s recorded perceptions
a confirmatory positive feedback

A remote viewing sessions lasts about one hour.

During the Cold War through the 1970s and 1980s, remote viewing was further developed by the US military and the CIA through such programs codenamed Sun Streak, Grill Flame and Star Gate. The government-sponsored remote viewing programs were successful, according to many who participated. Some of the now-declassified examples include the highly accurate and detailed descriptions of buildings and facilities hundred of miles from the remote viewer – including a crane assembly in the Soviet Union.

Although these organizations claim that after 20 years of experimentation their remote viewing programs have been abandoned, some insiders believe that they are being continued secretly. Some well-known remote viewers say they were contacted by the US government after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to help locate other possible terrorist activity.

What It Isn’t

Remote viewing is not an out-of-body experience. A remote viewer does not astrally project to the target, although some remote viewers occasionally report a feeling of bilocating to the site of the target.

It also is not a meditative, dream or trance state. During a remote viewing session, the subject is always fully awake and alert. As Christophe Brunski writes in “Remote Viewing: Conditions and Potentials,” “Whereas one might consider a trance state to be ‘going down’ into the deeper levels of mind, RV might be said to allow information from these deeper levels to ‘come up.’”

How Does It Work?

No one really knows for certain how remote viewing works, only that it does. One theory is that trained remote viewers are able to tap into the “Universal Mind” – a kind of comprehensive storehouse of information about everything, where time and space are irrelevant. The remote viewer can enter a “hyperconscious state” in which he or she can tune in to specific targets within the universal consciousness of which all people and all things are a part. It sounds like a lot of “New Age” jargon, but it’s a good guess as to what’s really taking place.

Ingo Swann calls remote viewing a “form of virtual reality traveling” that is brought under conscious control.

How well does it work? While skeptics contend that it doesn’t work at all and some proponents claim it works 100 percent of the time, the fact is it does work, but not all of the time for all remote viewers. A highly skilled remote viewer may have a success rate that approaches 100 percent; he or she may be able to access a target nearly all of the time, but all of the data obtained may not be completely accurate. There are many factors involved, and some targets may be more complicated to reach and describe than others.

Who Can Learn Remote Viewing?

Virtually anyone can learn remote viewing. You don’t need to be “psychic” to successfully remote view, but it does require training and diligent practice. Some research has shown that left-handed people are more likely to become successful at it. But learning remote viewing has been likened to learning to play a musical instrument. You’re not going to be able to read a book (or website) about it and then be able to do it. You must learn the techniques and then practice. As with a musical instrument, the more you train and practice with it, the better you’ll be able to perform. It takes time, motivation and dedication.

According to Paul H. Smith in his article “Can Remote Viewing Be Trained,” remote viewing “training has been nearly always successful to a greater or lesser degree depending on the level of motivation, preparation and innate ability of a given student viewer.” Remote viewer Joe McMoneagle has compared it to training for the martial arts.

How You Can Learn Remote Viewing

If you’re curious about the potential of remote viewing, there are many resources for learning its methods and techniques. For example, the official Army manual on Coordinate Remote Viewing, written in 1986, is available free online. It provides background, training procedures, how a remote viewing session works and more.

There are commercial courses as well, which can range in cost from free to hundreds of dollars and even thousands of dollars. Be cautious and research a company thoroughly before investing any money in training. Be wary of exaggerated claims and find out exactly what you get for your money. Here are a few sources:

Academy of Remote Viewing
The Farsight Institute
Hawaii Remote Viewers’ Guild
Western Institute of Remote Viewing
PSI Tech
Straightline Remote Sensing (free online exercises)

Why would you want to learn remote viewing? Paul H. Smith answers:

“Within its inherent limitations remote viewing has been used in intelligence collection, crime-solving, finding missing persons, market predictions, and – more controversially – space exploration. Yet most people who learn it do so not because of practical applications so much as the challenge it represents – learning to do something that few other people as yet know how to do; or acquiring a skill deemed impossible under the currently ruling scientific paradigm; or because it provides convincing and satisfying proof that we are, indeed, much more than our physical bodies. While skydivers learn that it is possible to transcend the physical fears and bodily limitations that we normally think we are subject to, remote viewers learn something analogous: that it is possible to transcend not only those limitations, but the boundaries of space and time as well.”

Recent paranormal oddities and mysteries

GHOSTS, HAUNTED PLACES AND POLTERGEISTS:

Is America’s oldest house haunted?
It’s the oldest timber frame house in America, lived in for generations by the same family and lovingly kept just as it was in its early Colonial days. But what the Fairbanks House lacks in modern facilities it seems to make for with … strange spirits. The house in Dedham, Massachusetts, was built between 1637 and 1641 by English settlers Jonathan and Grace Fairbanks. Today the house is a museum, but it could very well one of the most haunted houses in America…

Woman was checking out “haunted” 10th floor
Louisville Metro Police say they arrested a drunk Louisville woman early Friday morning after she decided to investigate a claim that the 10th floor of the Seelbach Hilton Hotel was haunted…

Now for the exorcist after haunted house spooks ghostbusters
As paranormal investigators, they have entered many haunted homes. But it is not every day they get slapped by spirits or have poltergeists throw remote controls at them. This is what happened to the team who explored an east Hull house this week after claims that a young family had been driven out by a poltergeist. Now, the experts are drafting in an exorcist to bless the house and rid it of the restless spooks…

Ghosts come out at night
Great houses in Jamaica are reported to be a refuge for ghosts. This legend lives large at Royal Palm Estate which has had its fair share of deaths in the house and environs. When a white-clad figure floats through the passageway, it is sure to cause panic and pandemonium. It is left to be seen who the ghosts represents at the midnight hour…

Two kinds of ghosts
When is one most scared of ghosts? Typically the setting is an abandoned house or graveyard at night with no one else around. Under such circumstances the appearance of an apparition is terrifying because there’s no affirmation of life anywhere one can relate to…

Things that go bump in the night
Reality Uncovered: Ghosts and poltergeists are not normally something I think about. I am considered by most people, myself included, to be quite the sceptic where claims of a paranormal nature are concerned. My usual reaction upon hearing a strange story for the first time is one of disbelief and annoyance. Disbelief, because upon further investigation most of these stories turn out to be either fake, or at the very least, just normal events embellished with hyperbole and drama. I also feel annoyance, because there are just so many of these stories…

Online survey investigating experiences of ghostly phenomena
Dr. Simon Sherwood at the University of Northampton (UK) is conducting an investigation of ghostly phenomena, the circumstances in which it is reported, and the characteristics of people who have and have not experienced it…

HUMAN MYSTERIES:

Man ‘engulfed in flames’ at San Francisco porn shop
A man was hospitalized Wednesday evening with life-threatening, third-degree burns after somehow catching fire inside a San Francisco porn store, authorities told CBS 5…

There are voodoo wasps and zombie worms, what about people?
In central Europe, a speeding car ploughs into the central reservation, killing the driver. At exactly the same moment in rural Ireland, a shepherd watches in despair as two thirds of his ewes miscarry. Meanwhile, on a garbage-strewn street in east London, a cat pounces on an unwary rat. Three species, in three locations, dead in three different ways. But all victims of the same killer.

RELIGIOUS MYSTERIES:

Philippine priest in ancient battle with ‘demons’
A blood-curdling scream echoes through the Roman Catholic chapel in Manila as Father Jose Francisco Syquia says a prayer of exorcism over a Satanic cult member believed to be possessed by the devil…

CREATURES:

Sasquatch spotted in Gladwin?
New video has surfaced from a local business of what appears to be a Sasquatch. The owner of the business videotaped the creature in the woods behind the business…

The LaCrosse, Wisconsin Man-Bat
This encounter happened on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2006, on Briggs Road near LaCrosse, Wisconsin around 9:30 pm to a 53-year old resident who prefers to be known only by his Cherokee name, Wohali, and the man’s 25-year old son. The creature they encountered was 6-7 feet tall with batlike, leathery wings with a span of 10-12 feet, long claws on it’s feet and hands and a snarling expression on the face. It flew towards their windshield, stared at them and then swooped upwards into the night sky…

Grendel’s grimace: Was Beowulf’s beast a Bigfoot?
Micah Hanks: Perhaps no vile nemesis of any hero in classic literature is as renowned and studied as Beowulf’s legendary adversary, Grendel. While studying the famous battle between Beowulf and the aforementioned beast for a new book I’m spending time writing at present, I began to notice a variety of interesting parallels, ranging from associations between Grendel and his alleged descent from the biblical Cain to more modern reports of Bigfoot-like creatures in the United States, as well as part of Europe and abroad…

Wildmen of the Pamir Mountains
There seems to be renewed interests in the ‘wildmen’ of Asia…probably the best known is the Yeti. But there have been expeditions into the more tropical areas of south central Asia as well…

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA:

Psychic tip on Long Island serial killer?
While police continue their search for a serial killer stalking Long Island, a psychic is claiming to have accurately predicted where the body of one of the first victims would be found…

FORTEAN PHENOMENA:

FBI Vault cattle mutilation documents: Bizarre details of 1970′s cattle mutilation wave
Were aliens from outer space responsible for ’8,000 thousand cattle sacrifices’ in the 1970′s? The aliens’ ‘animal sacrifices’ sending the White House in a ‘panic’? The answers revealed in the FBI’s recently released archives documents over at the FBI ‘Vault’ website…

TIME TRAVEL:

China bans time travel
Time travel stories on TV are totally made up, say Chinese officials. Time-travel is a wildly popular theme in TV and film, such as the movie “Donnie Darko,” seen here. But if you ever find yourself in China wanting to check out what Bill and Ted were up to last week, forget it. Time travelling is banned. In a bogus move by the Cultural Revolution-loving dudes at China’s State Administration for Radio, Film and Television, it has been decided that TV shows that deal with changing history “lack positive thoughts and meaning.”..

MEDIA: BOOKS. MOVIES, TV, GAMES

“Haunted Collector” with John Zaffis coming to Syfy
The Syfy channel has added a new reality-based television show to it’s lineup for the summer of 2011. Produced by Gurney Productions the new show will feature John Zaffis of Stratford Connecticut. Zaffis has long been involved in the paranormal field, including appearances on “Ghost Hunters” and “Ghost Adventures”. In particular his appearance on “Ghost Adventures” featured the paranormal museum that Zaffis curates out of his home’s basement…

Book review: “Aliens Above, Ghosts Below” – Dr. Barry Taff
Javier Ortega: Dr. Barry Taff has seen it all. From his meticulous work as a young researcher for UCLA’s parapsychology lab in the 70s, to his most famous cases which propelled his status as one of the greatest in the annals of the paranormal. With decades of experience, Dr. Taff now finds the time to reflect back through all the crazy years and crazy things his research took him to. Still, keeping his firm stand on science, Dr. Taff explains his encounters with the unknown in his new book titled “Aliens Above, Ghosts Below”…

Flying Humanoids

A mystery that’s been going on for some time now…flying humanoids. Just what are we dealing with here? Alien intruders, a secret technology conceived of and implemented by a private black ops firm or a revised and actually usable version of the rocket packs we all wished we could have had as kids (and even some of us adults even to this day!) What do you think?

A video that stands out from the rest about flying humanoids

About this video:
This is probably the best evidence for the existence of humanoids ever captured on video. Rich Giordano, Paranormal Researcher and UFO Specialist, captured this object in his backyard on September 23rd, 2005. The Discovery Channel did a show about this humanoid and tried debunking it with many balloon tests and failed miserable. You can see that story on Rich’s UFO Site http://www.cnufos.com and judge for yourself. Balloons? Maybe…Humanoid from another world? Possibly.

Monsters and unusual creatures of almost every description have been reported over the centuries. From dinosaur-like animals to fairies to bizarre hodgepodges like the Jersey Devil, there seems to no limit to the variety of unexplained creatures people claim to have seen with their own eyes. One of the most curious types of sightings – and quite rare – are those of human-like beings that fly. “Human-like” because in most respects they look like us, except that they have wings. In most cases, these odd creatures are not assumed to be either angels or devils (as traditional depictions have them as human-like beings with wings), but as something else. Something quite unusual.

Brooklyn Batman. Over 100 years ago, a man named W. H. Smith told the New York Sun that he saw a “winged human form” flying over Brooklyn, New York on September 18, 1877. Just about three years later, there were multiple reports from Coney Island, Brooklyn, of a man with bat-like wings flying overhead at approximately 1,000 feet. The man was flying toward the New Jersey coast, witnesses told the New York Times, and that he bore a “cruel and determined expression” on his face.

Wingless Angel. It’s easy to dismiss such sightings as misidentified birds or alcohol-induced illusions when one or two people report them. When as many as 240 people, however, attest to seeing the same thing, the reports are far more difficult to discount. Such a sighting look place over several of days in June, 1905 in Voltana, Spain. The accounts consistently described a woman dressed in white flying through the air – without the aid of wings. The woman sometimes flew against the wind, and one woman said she might have heard it singing as it passed overhead.

Flying Robot. It was the winter of 1936 in the Pavlodar region of Kazakhstan in what was then the U.S.S.R. when this sighting took place. Mrs. E. E. Loznaya was a 15-year-old girl then, and one day as she was walking to school on a quiet road, her attention was caught by a strange figure above her. Flying quickly across the sky was a man-like figure dressed completely in black. Despite its speed, the girl was able to see and describe it clearly. He was “of medium height and his black clothes covered him completely, like overalls,” she said. It made a rumbling noise and appeared to her to be wearing a helmet of some kind, had a black surface where the face should have been, and wore a “rucksack” on its back.

Russian Legend. There had been legends of a flying man in the Soviet Union, but not quite like the one described above. Hunters around the Sikhote Mountains near Vladivostok claimed to have come across prints of a barefoot human that ended abruptly, as if he had taken off into the air. Such a creature was actually seen by writer V.K. Arsenyev in July, 1908. “I saw the mark on the path that was very similar to a man’s footprint… then something rushed about nearby trampling among the bushes. Then I stooped, picked up a stone and threw it towards the unknown animal. Then something happened that was quite unexpected: I heard the beating of wings. Something large and dark emerged from the fog and flew over the river.”

Brazilian Birdmen. In the early 1950s, a couple was taking an evening stroll near their home by the sea at Pelotas, Brazil. When two fast-moving shadows crossed their path, they looked up to see what they at first thought were two enormous birds flying about 30 feet above the ground. It was soon evident to the couple that these were not birds at all when the two flying creatures descended vertically and landed not far away. It was then clear that they looked like men, standing about six feet tall. Discovering they were being watched by the couple, the two “birdmen” squatted close to the ground, as if trying to hide. The female half of the couple convinced her husband to leave – and quickly.

Mad Inventors? Several people saw a flying man over Chehalis, Washington on January 6, 1948. Bernice Zaikowski was one of them. She was soon joined by some schoolchildren who asked to come into her garden to get a better view of the aerial mystery. The man, in an upright position, was hovering just 20 feet above her barn, she estimated. He was apparently kept aloft by long silver wings that were strapped to his body. He seemed to have controls of some kind on his chest, which he worked to maneuver himself with a lot of whizzing noise.

A strikingly similar case was reported eight years later in Falls City, Nebraska. On a fall afternoon in 1956, “John Hanks” saw a winged creature flying only about 15 feet above the ground. Its wings were like shiny aluminum and had multi-colored lights running along their underside. The wings, spanning 15 feet, were clearly attached to the man by means of a shoulder harness. This flying man also had some kind of control panel affixed to his chest, and he manipulated the dials as he flew. This sighting could be attributed to some remarkable invention if not for the witnesses description of the flying man himself: leathery wrinkled skin, large watery blue eyes and a face that was “very frightening, almost demonic.” The witness also attested that he was paralyzed as this “man” flew over.

In April 1948, in the city of Longview, Washington, two witnesses saw no fewer than three helmeted men flying around in a similar manner. The witnesses could see no motors or propellers, yet it seemed to them that they could hear motor-like sounds. (It’s worth noting the similarity of these last three accounts to ultralight aircraft or hang gliders; but of course, they hadn’t been invented yet.)

Flying Man Returns. In 1952, Sinclair Taylor, a young soldier on guard duty at Camp Okubu near Kyoto, Japan, likewise saw a flying thing he first thought was a bird. As it came closer and hovered above him, the guard could distinguish that it had a man’s body that, if he were standing, would be seven feet tall. Its wingspan was also estimated at seven feet. Feeling threatened, he fired at the being with his rifle, but whatever it was had vanished. Strangely, when the guard reported the incident, his sergeant revealed that another guard had a similar experience the previous year.

Fantasy Flier. Some marines got Bob Hope as entertainment during theVietnam War. Others were even luckier. Three U.S. Marines standing guard one night in Da Nang, Vietnam in 1969 were also approached by a winged creature, but this one was tantalizingly different. As the creature flew closer and closer, they could see that it had the form of a naked woman. She was completely black and had enormous bat-like wings. She glowed, they said, with an eerie greenish light.

Texas Batman. On June 18, 1953 in Houston, Texas, three people were enjoying a hot summer night on their front porch. The night turned unbelievably strange when they saw a winged creature alight in a nearby pecan tree. It was, they said, “the figure of a man with wings like a bat. He was dressed in gray or black tight-fitting clothes. He stood there for about thirty seconds, swaying on the branch of the old pecan tree.” They further described him as wearing a cape and quarter-length boots. Most oddly, one witness claimed he was enveloped in a “halo of light.”

How can we account for such sightings? Men and women flying with bat’s wings are hard to explain. Even the cases in which the people seem to be flying by some mechanical means appear to be out of time, using technology that hadn’t been invented yet… or if it had been invented by these “pilots,” is entirely unknown.

Sources: Unexplained! by Jerome Clark; Visible Ink, 1999. Unexplained Mysteries of the 20th Century by Janet and Colin Bord; Contemporary Books, 1989.

New page added

The new section for cosmic awareness and related issues has been added. A very intriguing personal account from a friend of mine, Phillip is up at the new page. Your personal accounts and experiences are wanted as well, so feel free to send them in for the new\ area, Mind Journey, to be added in. I’ll be adding in more info soon, so be watching for that. Enjoy!

A very cool personal account to be posted soon

A friend of mine has agreed to share some of his experiences with cosmic awareness and alien greys, as well as an reptilian experience. This individual has had no prior exposure to anything remotely close to reptilians, yet he has had an experience with them! There’s far more to be shared here from Phillip.

Look for the personal account to be posted at a new up-coming page devoted to the Metaphysical, cosmic awareness and all things related to mind journeys. This account is a must read, so stay tuned!

-Admin