In the news…

FORTEAN PHENOMENA:

Can neuroscience explain our paranormal obsession?
From UFOs to ghosts, our strong reaction to unexplained phenomena has a lot to do with our brains…

Paranormal obsessions
For those who engage in research, investigations and writing in the realm of Forteana – Ufology, cryptozoology, ghost-hunting and more – it’s a pursuit that can be as mentally stimulating as it can be enlightening, challenging, and thought-provoking. But there’s a disturbing downside to all this, too…

Acclaimed paranormal investigator seeks explanations for the unexplained
As a youngster, Robert Goerman’s curiosity was encouraged, even when that interest led to consequences…

GHOSTS, HAUNTED PLACES AND POLTERGEISTS:

Group says historic middle school home to spirits
Historic Washington Middle school hasn’t held a class since 2009, but paranormal investigator David Woolever believes there are still a few people lingering around the halls…

Union Hotel in De Pere hunts for ghosts
Mary Boyd believes ghosts inhabit the Union Hotel in De Pere, the 128-year-old building that her family has owned at 200 N. Broadway since 1918…

Ghost evidence found
A local paranormal team claims it found evidence of ghosts inside of a historic Harrisburg home and they showed that evidence only to CBS 21 News…

Video: Haunted hotel? – TV report

CREATURES:

Loch Ness Monster sighting reported by locals
Foyers shop and cafe owner Jan Hargreaves and her husband Simon believe they caught a glimpse of Loch Ness’s most elusive resident – Nessie…

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA:

Psychic Diane Lazarus called in to solve Australian murder
A Welsh psychic is travelling to Australia in a bid to unravel one of the country’s most baffling unsolved murders…

Did a psychic predict where Caylee would be found?
Casey Anthony case mystery: A private investigator testifies that a psychic contacted him and directed him to the spot where Caylee’s body was found a month after his search…

EARTH MYSTERIES:

Ghostly apparition of entire city appears over Chinese river
Residents in a Chinese city have been stunned after a giant mirage of a ‘ghost city’ towered across the skyline…

LOST WORLDS:

New old crystal skull discovered in Berlin
A photographer made an astonishing find at a flea market in the German capitol Berlin: If confirmed to be authentic, this newly discovered crystal skull could once have been owned by an eminent German art historian…

MEDIA – BOOKS, MOVIES, TV:

Bigfoot ‘Exists’ in new film
Haxan Films and Amber Entertainment are looking for Bigfoot, setting an October start date for lensing “Exists,” with “Blair Witch Project” director Eduardo Sanchez to helm…

“Celebrity Ghost Hunt” featuring psychic Chip Coffey Premieres Saturday, July 2 on Bio
Documents the work of psychic Chip Coffey as he travels into the private lives of the famous, leading them on investigations into the unexplained paranormal activity they’re experiencing.

 

News from the paranormal side

CREATURES:

Sasquatch face print
Cryptomundo : The folks at Sanger Paranormal put out a news release, and now AOL News has broken the story in the mass media. But despite Sanger’s desire to keep the imagery secret until their news conference of the 23rd, in a move that is strangely similar to the leaks of the “Georgia Bigfoot” under ice hoax of 2008, Sanger has leaked the face print of the Sasquatch early. It was found on their site, and then quickly removed. But here’s what they posted, which was saved by a Cryptomundo reader, Rick Sheen and forwarded to Cryptomundo…

Bigfoot investigators hope DNA test will confirm existence of two man-beasts
California Bigfoot investigators were shocked over Memorial Day weekend when they found strange markings and hair on their pickup truck windows. Now, they’re hoping DNA tests will prove once and for all the existence of the legendary man-beast…

Daniel Boone’s Yahoo = Bigfoot?
Long before it became the brand of a search engine, the creature whose uttered cry gave it a name haunted Kentuckians. Daniel Boone told tales of “killing a ten-foot, hairy giant he called a Yahoo,” says John Mack Faragher in a 1992 biography of Boone. The Yahoos are hairy man-like creatures in Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” one of Boone’s favorite books…

io9 Offers $2000 bounty for authentic photos of cryptids
This summer, io9 is going cryptozoological. We’re offering a $2000 bounty to the person who sends us the best authentic photo or video of a “cryptid,” or mystery animal. And that’s just the beginning of Cryptid Summer…

Looking for Bigfoot? County has had its share of mysterious sightings
If you happen to see an eight-foot-tall, very hairy fellow wearing sunglasses, a straw hat and strings of old Mardi Gras beads at this week’s Handy blues festivities, don’t be alarmed. It’s merely Bigfoot, a.k.a. Sasquatch or Yeti, who has snuck into town to enjoy the music, eat some red beans and rice, and watch folks lose their inhibitions and break into impromptu dance.

GHOSTS, HAUNTED PLACES AND POLTERGEISTS:

Marlins reliever spooked at ‘haunted’ hotel
With the Marlins in Tampa to start a weekend series against the Rays, relief pitcher Steve Cishek felt an eerie presence at the team’s hotel, and let his Twitter followers know all about it. Too bad he didn’t find out whether the ghost could help the team break its ongoing losing streak…

Sandra Bullock fears home is haunted
Sandra Bullock reportedly fears that her temporary home in London is haunted. The 46-year-old actress is in town filming sci-fi thriller Gravity with George Clooney, and is apparently being kept awake by things that go bump in the night…

Spirits said to inhabit former jail
Laugh if you please, but Medina County Judge Jim Barden isn’t joking when he says an other-worldly spirit has made its presence known in the former jail building that now houses his staff. He recently was spooked into leaving by the sound of unexplained footsteps as he worked alone, after hours…

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA:

“Psychic sheep” detects cancer, saves farmer’s life
A shepherd claims her ‘psychic sheep’ saved her life by detecting that she had breast cancer. Alfie, a five-year-old sheep is being hailed a hero by some in the UK and now has a following of hundreds of friends on Facebook…

Dogs likely born with canine telepathy
Dogs are so in tune with us that they can read our minds, according to a new Learning & Behavior study that also determined canines are probably born with the ability. Practice makes perfect, however, so the more a dog hangs around humans, the better he or she becomes at “canine telepathy,” which actually relies upon hyperawareness of the senses…

EARTH MYSTERIES:

Wichita, Kansas experiences bizarre “heat burst”
At 12:22am on June 9 temperatures in Wichita, Kan., rocketed from 85 degrees Fahrenheit to 102 F in the space of twenty minutes. What caused this heat burst?

Latest news of the paranormal!

GHOSTS, HAUNTED PLACES AND POLTERGEISTS:

The ghosts that haunt Montevallo
The ghost lore of the University of Montevallo, which has passed between students and residents of Montevallo for years, was shared during a ghost walk on the university’s campus on June 11. Kathy Lowe, the new director of UM’s Carmichael Library, led a walk around the campus, telling the stories of UM’s most infamous ghosts…

Ghost Seekers investigate Bender Park
Oak Creek’s Bender Park has become a hotspot for paranormal investigators after rumors of its supposed haunting spread on the Internet. Last week, a couple of amateur Milwaukee ghost hunters – accompanied by yours truly – headed out into the park in the dead of night to see what all the hubbub was about…

Into the dark
Two grey shadowy figures play hide-and-seek in main passages of Fortuna Villa. An elegant woman in a ball gown floats around the Pompeii Fountain and front gardens and a well-spoken young woman asks visitors to leave. Some people believe in ghosts and paranormal experiences while others brush it off as a load of rubbish…

LOST WORLDS:

Texas Woman JoAnn Parks talks to crystal skull (and sometimes, she says, it talks back)
His name is “Max.” He is made of clear quartz and was discovered nearly 100 years ago in a Mayan tomb in Guatemala. Max is believed to be between 5,000 and 36,000 years old, and ancient legend has it that Max is one of 13 life-size crystal skulls that exist in the world. It is also known for partly inspiring the crystal skull in the most recent Indiana Jones film, according to his keeper, JoAnn Parks…

CREATURES:

Mummies overtaking zombies? Well, this week anyway
As far as pop culture interest goes, it’s hard to beat the massive zombie onslaught. However, mummies may be taking them over for at least this week. In a strange convergence, there are three major mummy events scheduled over the next week, giving mummies their highest profile since Brendan Fraser’s last “Mummy” sequel.

PARANORMAL BASICS:

CGI: The knife in the paranormal back
Chris Holly: I have been writing for a while now about how destructive this nonsense is to the quest of finding real answers to so many unknown questions…

EARTH MYSTERIES:

Tiny village is latest victim of the ‘The hum’
It is a mysterious sound on the very edge of perception that has driven thousands of people around the world to distraction…

OUIJA AND DIVINATION:

Baffling paranormal cases
Two fifteen-year-old boys, enthusiasts of flying saucers, contacteeism and the occult in general, decided to contact “alien intelligences” by means of a Ouija board – the vehicle of choice in such matters, it would seem – and had sustained a prolonged relationship with entities claiming to be captain this or commander that, spouting the same shopworn rhetoric about the environment and spirituality. But things were about to take an unexpected turn…

RELIGIOUS MYSTERIES:

Jesus, Mary and crucifixion images appear in Lemurian coded crystal
Las Vegas author, psychic and resident, Zarin is always on the lookout for information concerning ancient mysteries. Recently, however, he came face to face with a mystery that appears to have roots deep in the shrouded mists of ancient history, but discovered on the internet…

HUMAN MYSTERIES:

“Battery man” stuns scientists by conducting 20,000-volt current without feeling a thing
Human conductor Slavisa Pajkic has scientists scratching their heads because he can withstand high voltages without feeling a thing. Known as ‘Battery Man’, the machinist claims he can act as an insulator, conductor and even a heater.

The Latest Paranormal Links

EARTH MYSTERIES (more)

Crop Circles: Created by Sound? (added 6/16)
The force of sound may be a logical explanation for the previously unexplained phenomena of crop circles.

Scientific Proof of Burning in Crop Circle Plants (added 5/5)
There have been many reports over the years about possibly “burned” plants in crop formations, but in 2010 seedheads from a Dutch formation have provided scientific proof of actual burning.

GHOSTS and HAUNTINGS (more)

Tales of the Unquiet Dead (added 5/19)
Is the funeral industry shy about reporting their ghostly incidents? Here are some haunted goings-on at the funeral parlor.

Who Or What Are The Shadow People? (added 5/26)
Shadow people, also known as shadow folk or shadow beings, are usually attracted to one person or location for unknown reasons, this site says.

HUMAN MYSTERIES (more)

The Astral Plane (added 4/21)
The author tells of his remarkable discovery of the astral plane when he was a young boy in England, and then later in Connecticut.

Crystalinks: Doppelganger (added 3/17)
A doppelganger is the ghostly or in some cases, a physical double of a living person. The term has come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person, most commonly in reference to a so-called evil twin, or to bilocation.

Vampires and Disease (added 5/19)
This monster did not keep a polite distance; he was a friend, a neighbor or husband. He was a corpse who returned from the grave to kill.

LIFE AFTER DEATH and REINCARNATION (more)

How to Run A Home Séance (added 5/5)
Does mediumistic ability exist within the circle of your family and friends? Here is how you may find it and put it to work.

What Happens During a Life Review? (added 3/17)
This study is a review of 319 NDErs responses to questions about the near-death experience and the life review, changed beliefs, life changes, and universal order/purpose.

LOST WORLDS and MYSTERIOUS CIVILIZATIONS (more)

Ancient American Artifacts (added 4/14)
Video: Fascinating evidence in the form of artifacts from northern Michigan that provide evidence of European habitation of North America long before Columbus.

MAD SCIENTISTS and WEIRD SCIENCE (more)

Anti-Gravity Machines, Devices, Propulsion and Research (added 5/19)
Here you will find information on anti-gravity inventions, machines, perpetual motion inventions, and much more related to anti-gravity technology.

MYSTICS, PROPHETS and PROPHECIES (more)

The Occult World of CG Jung (added 7/23)
How a near-death experience transformed the psychologist’s attitude to the world of mysticism and magic.

OUIJA BOARD and DIVINATION (more)

Ouija Board – A History (added 6/9)
This article examines the Ouija’s origins, its paranormal aspects, the psychological angle, and more.

PARANORMAL BASICS (more)

The Bent Spoon Magazine (added 6/9)
This online magazine in PDF format labels itself as “the skeptical magazine for the true believer,” and includes Q&As between those with opposing viewpoints, interviews with investigators and thinkers, and articles critical of believers and skeptics alike.

PLANETARY and LUNAR ANOMALIES (more)

Mars Fossil Images (added 5/26)
This site presents several photos taken by the Mars rovers that show objects that look very much like fossils found on Earth.

NASA’s Anomalies Above the Moon (added 6/9)
This YouTube video is a compilation of NASA film taken by the Apollo missions that include anomalies on and around the moon. Some are rather intriguing.

PSYCHIC PHENOMENA (more)

10 Ways to Develop Psychic Abilities (added 6/16)
Everyone has some psychic tendencies, this site says. We are all born with psychic abilities, but society conditions us to hide them. Here are 10 ways to improve your psychic abilities.

Psychic Spies (added 4/7)
Whatever happened to America’s remote viewers? To understand what has happened to remote viewing since the death of the programme, it helps to understand why the programme was killed.

Psychic Test (added 5/26)
This site presents several different visual tests you can try to see if you might have some psychic ability.

RELIGIOUS MYSTERIES and MIRACLES (more)

The Apparition at Knock Ireland, 1879 (added 5/5)
The apparition was like a three-dimensional, life-like sculpture that never moved, like a well done holographic projection.

What Is a Demon? (added 4/21)
Demonology is a hot topic in Fortean circles currently. But what is a demon? There are various theories by various experts with varied world views.

TIME-DIMENSION TRAVEL (more)

Train Ride to a Parallel Dimension (added 11/18)
A fascinating tale and analysis of a woman who had a bizarre experience traveling in Scotland. When she stepped off of her train, did she enter a time warp?

WEIRD CREATURES and MONSTERS (more)

Bownessie (added 4/7)
No one is sure if the sightings of strange creatures in the lake over the years are linked, but they are treated that way by those who have witnessed the “lake monster”.

Congo: Mystery Beasts from the Heart of Darkness (added 4/21)
There a number of other lesser known mystery animals with allegedly dinosaurian identities from in and around the Congo basin region.

Top 20 Bigfoot Sightings (added 6/16)
This article should more properly be called the “Top 20 Bigfoot Sightings on Video” since they are all fairly recent, except for the Patterson-Gimlin film. They vary in quality.

The unexplained and more from around the world

Unexplained events and paranormal experiences 

A haunted history lesson
Atchison group makes film about The Sallie House. Several people pass by a little two-story house on North Second Street in Atchison every day. What’s surprising is how few people know about all of the bizarre things that have allegedly happened there…

The healing power of prayer?
Health and religion have always been intertwined, most obviously through prayer on behalf of the sick. Does intercessory prayer for sick people actually help heal them? For thousands of years some people have believed so. But new Brandeis University research in the Journal of Religion this month shows that over the last four decades, medical studies of intercessory prayer—the prayer of strangers at a distance—actually say more about the scientists conducting the studies than about the power of prayer to heal…

Chile: What the Devil…?
“What the devil is in this photo?” The text goes on to say: Rosa Araya says that the only thing she did was take a photo of her nephews in the backyard of her house in Montegrande to finish a roll of film. Upon developing the roll, she became aware of two things. She had only focused on the boys’ heads and that some strange luminous dots forming a sort of saucer appeared over the skies of Valle de Elqui. Ufologist Patricio Diaz, when consulted by the “El Dia” newspaper, dismissed the possibility that the image was a hoax…

Witches’ coven claims religious persecution after church hall ban
A coven of witches is accusing the Roman Catholic church of religious persecution after being banned from using a parish social centre for a Halloween gathering…

C2C guest blows it on Patterson-Gimlin
One of the painful things about surveying the cryptozoological field is to watch people that should know better misrepresent facts, conjectures, and theories. As usual, one of the worst minefields is the Roger Patterson-Bob Gimlin footage of an apparent Bigfoot taken on October 20, 1967, in Bluff Creek, California. Sometimes people just say too much about the footage, without any firm foundation in what they are uttering. It is as if the sandbar at Bluff Creek has turned into a bit of verbal quicksand for some folks…

Huge pre-Stonehenge complex found via “crop circles”
Given away by strange, crop circle-like formations seen from the air, a huge prehistoric ceremonial complex discovered in southern England has taken archaeologists by surprise. A thousand years older than nearby Stonehenge, the site includes the remains of wooden temples and two massive, 6,000-year-old tombs that are among “Britain’s first architecture,” according to archaeologist Helen Wickstead, leader of the Damerham Archaeology Project…

Charity night in haunted house turns Wrexham friends into ghost believers
Hour upon hour of ghostly goings on proved very successful in raising hundreds of pounds for the special baby care unit at Wrexham Maelor Hospital. A group of friends from the Wrexham area – Claire Westhead, Kurtis Baines, Michael Griffiths and Leanne Westhead – decided to stay overnight at Plas Teg, near Mold, which has a reputation as one of the most haunted buildings in Wales, and were sponsored by friends and family to the tune of £383. They said their time spent at the imposing country house was a very spooky occasion with several incidents taking place.

Clooney hires psychic to contact dead pig
George Clooney has hired to psychic to help him contact his beloved potbellied pig Max, who died in 2006. George reportedly told a friend: “The psychic told me Max had a great life with me. He is very happy in spirit and still hangs out with me sometimes. “I am not sure she was telling the truth but I do want to believe her.”..

A grandmother’s love transcends dimensions

Slapper: The phantom of Akalai Flats/La Valentina
Paul Dale Roberts: Cathy Orange meets me at a very unusual spot. She tells me to meet her at Safeway, she has a story for me, plus she has to get her grocery shopping done. I follow Cathy Orange down the aisles, as she selects coffee, cheeses, variety of meats, bread, cucumbers, cereals and everything else that she can fit into her basket. She tells me that she was waiting for the light rail at 9pm on 12th Street between D and E Streets in Sacramento. This is known as Akalai Flats/La Valentina. While waiting, she was slapped in the face by an unknown force…

The invisible Porcupine Man of Sedona, Arizona
Beautiful Sedona, Arizona …there was one night while I was up there, I was attacked by something invisible. I felt like something was shooting me with quills. My body had red botch marks all over. I feel like I was attacked by an invisible porcupine…

Supernatural saviours
I think most of us are familiar with the concept of the guardian angel, who stays with you throughout your life on earth, guiding you and shielding you from danger and harm. Some mediums believe most of us have spirit guides, known as “Doorkeepers”, that stay with an individual from a time prior to birth right through to the afterlife and beyond. Whether that is true I cannot say, but over the years I have collected many accounts of a mysterious benevolent force preventing death and injury in the lives of people, and here are just a couple of these intriguing cases…

Caught on camera: Is this eerie caveman image Britain’s oldest ghost?
Britain’s oldest ghost appears to have been caught on camera at the country’s most ancient inhabited site. The ‘spook’ was snapped in a prehistoric cave at Kent’s Cavern in Torquay, Devon, looming from a wall and surrounded by an eerie mist. In the image, taken by a tourist, the ghostly face of the caveman seems to hover in mid air staring in to the distance…

Study proves planets impact animal behavior
No one who owns one doubts the family pooch exhibits personality traits that seem remarkably human at times. Is there a way to rationally explain this? Incredibly, a new book describing the original and unusual research pursuits of award-winning French scientist Suzel Fuzeau-Braesch presents rigorous proof that man and animals — specifically pedigreed pups and cloned cows — are behaviorally impacted by where the major planets turn up in their astrological birth charts!

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?

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.

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