EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
One of the most puzzling aspects of paranormal activity is how to communicate with the dead. If, as I have said in numerous other blogs, the dead are still living, but in another or different dimension, technically, communication should be impossible. Yet, there are numerous claims of people who believe they have communicated with dead loved ones, and many of these people are of the type you would never, ever suspect of giving misleading information. As recounted in another blog, I wrote about a girl who told me her dead father came to her and gave her the location and numbers of a bunch of different, foreign, bank accounts that neither she nor their family lawyer knew about.
By communicating with the dead, I give very little credence to showmen like John Edwards or Alion Duboise who will go to a mass audience and, allegedly, speak to their dead relatives or loved ones. These people are showmen and their audiences are full of “plants” (actors who will pretend that their loved ones are whatever the “medium” says). Although I have never gone to one of their performances, I seriously doubt that they can communicate with the dead as they claim.
In fact, the master magician, Harry Houdini, offered any medium $10,000 who could prove that he/she could communicate with the dead. In those days, $10,000 was worth about the same as $250,000 today, and there were a lot of “mediums” who tried…but none were successful. However, we must remember the axiom I often repeat: “If you do not believe something, no amount of proof will change your mind.” Maybe…just maybe…some of these so-called “mediums” had something real, but since Houdini was able to duplicate some of the “medium’s” efforts with the aid of props, Houdini discounted their entire performance. I guess we’ll never really know.
Yet, communication with the dead is not only possible, I believe it happens all the time! Sometimes we recognize it, and sometimes we don’t. It’s just that I am unconvinced that so-called “mediums” can do it, at will, especially for strangers in the audience.
My research into the paranormal indicates strongly that any communication between a living and a dead person would have to be with someone with whom you had a strong bond. How many people do you know of who believe…no, will actually swear…that have been “visited” by a dead wife or husband or by a child or a parent, etc. These “visitations” always seem to come when you are asleep…usually in dreams, although sometimes the visit continues when you have awakened. If you stop to analyze it, there is an excellent reason for this:
I have often talked about our “mind” and “aura”. When you sleep, your body is, effectively, dead to the world. But your mind and aura are working full blast. You dream of things, places and people you’ve never met, but you can see them in such detail as to swear you were there, in person. I don’t want to appear repetitious, but evidence indicates that both the mind and the aura are in a different dimension than our bodies: we can’t see them, touch them, smell them, taste them or hear them. What we hear is merely our own voice. When the voice you hear in your head is not your own, there’s an excellent chance that someone…something…or some force is putting it there.
Even scientists agree that they have never found a physical location for the mind.
So, it becomes logical to assume that much of what we visualize and hear when we are sleeping is really coming from another dimension…a dimension that may be trying to communicate with us, but has difficulty in breaking-down the dimensional barriers. It also becomes logical to assume that, because of the dimensional barriers, someone or something trying to communicate with you may use things they know that only you and they shared…like music. Suddenly a song, or music, will pop into your head when you are sleeping (sometimes when you are awake, you can’t shake it out of your head). Often the music will be songs that you haven’t sung or heard for years. But the lyrics of these songs may well be a message a dead loved one is trying to send to you.
The other morning I woke up and a song sung by a campfire in a summer camp (when I was 10) was going through my mind. I hadn’t heard or sung that song for more than sixty years…yet the lyrics came back to me, and I stopped to analyze the reason “why”. The only person I knew in my lifetime that shared the song with me was my brother (who died two years ago). I realized that it must be a communication from him. The lyrics were peaceful and beautiful…and it told me that all was well with my brother.
Who among us has not had a song pop into his/her head while they were asleep? A song that you haven’t heard for years and years? I firmly believe it is a form of communication from someone who has great difficulty communicating in spoken language. Sometimes the lyrics of that song will convey a message to us. But the lyrics of a song seldom tell a full story, so you have to analyze what the message is meant to convey.
The dead are not dead! Only their bodies are dead. The journey past life is a continuing one and, with practice, I believe we can gain much from the messages sent to us while our bodies are asleep.
As I said…nobody asked me.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
A Word About Religion and Faith Healing
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
Some people call me an historical "scholar". In truth, I have studied history extensively, but am far from deserving the rank of "scholar". One of the problems of researching recorded history is that it does not jibe with our Bibles. I use the plural term "Bibles" because there are more than a hundred different versions of the Bible in print today. It just doesn't make sense to me that the "Word of God" should be so different in so many books.
The Bibles, however, are a source of many paranormal beliefs and occurrences.
Normally, I try to stay away from discussions of religion because, to many, it is a very sensitive subject. Recorded history does not tend to support any specific religion and, accordingly, citing historical records is sure to upset some people…and has even been known to get violent reactions in some of the more fervently religious people. Why should I go out of my way to upset someone?
Religious beliefs can be a very beautiful thing (witness Christmas and Easter) or it can be a horrible thing (witness the Christian Crusades or the present Islamic Jihads).
Yet, many of the superstitions and beliefs about Heaven and Hell, etc. are of religious origin…as are beliefs about a life after death, an immortal soul, reincarnation, numerous claims of “miracles”, etc. Don't ask me to be the one to say that Jonah was not swallowed by a giant fish, or that Noah did not restart civilization by bringing two of every species aboard his Arc, or that Jesus did not walk on water. If these are things you believe with fervent passion, so be it. Historical documentation may offer strong proof that these things never happened, but if you don’t want to hear or appreciate what the historical records show…that’s up to you. "Belief" is a very individual thing. There are still people…state leaders…in Iran and Pakistan who do not believe the Holocaust ever happened. No amount of proof is going to change their minds.
If you do not believe something, no amount of proof will ever change your mind. If you believe something, no proof is necessary.
The thing is, there are a lot of logical explanations for many of the things we have come to accept on faith alone. i.e. The “aura” discussed in several previous blogs could well be what religious leaders call an “immortal soul”. The Hindu concept of “reincarnation” could very well be the “aura” finding another body to surround.
I do have to laugh at some of the ridiculous Pentecostal Evangelists' “fire and brimstone” sermons in which they talk about the Devil and horrors of Hell. Although the concept of Heaven and Hell was mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments, the “Devil” was not created until 1308 AD in Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”. This classic poem was the first writing to create a “Devil” in charge of Hell. Dante gave him Neptune’s trident and a stingray’s tail…and the “Devil” was born.
Dante’s “Inferno” was the first description of Hell ever made. That’s why I have to laugh when Evangelists imply that the Devil and the horrors of Hell are a part of the Bible. Nonsense! These things were created a thousand years after the Gospels were written.
Another of many Evangelists' ridiculous tricks is so-called “faith healing”. This is when someone with an (ostensibly) incurable disease is brought to the Evangeist who cures them in a matter of minutes by making them repeat that they love Jesus. While more than 99% of what you see on TV is done by “plants” (actors who pretend illness), there is, seriously, a lot of merit and historical support to “faith healing”. For many years, “faith healing” was an accepted medical practice, and there are thosands of cases on record of “incurable” diseases that have been wholly cured through faith healers.
Faith healing is one of those “mysteries” of life that I will tackle in future blogs.
It’s interesting to note that when the medical profession first became a “profession” back in old England, the all-male-dominated profession passed laws prohibiting a woman from ever practicing medicine. Most faith healers, throughout history, have been women and faith healers had to go “underground” for fear of being arrested and jailed. In Spain, during the Inquisition, any woman practicing faith healing was arrested and charged with “Heresy” (denial of God) and most were put to death...after a week or two of unimaginable torture. So, the art and magic of faith-healing quietly went underground…until recently.
Now the (not-so-male-dominated) medical societies have begun to extensively research faith healing and many physicians now have faith-healer associates.
As I said, nobody asked me.
Stephen Ellis
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
Some people call me an historical "scholar". In truth, I have studied history extensively, but am far from deserving the rank of "scholar". One of the problems of researching recorded history is that it does not jibe with our Bibles. I use the plural term "Bibles" because there are more than a hundred different versions of the Bible in print today. It just doesn't make sense to me that the "Word of God" should be so different in so many books.
The Bibles, however, are a source of many paranormal beliefs and occurrences.
Normally, I try to stay away from discussions of religion because, to many, it is a very sensitive subject. Recorded history does not tend to support any specific religion and, accordingly, citing historical records is sure to upset some people…and has even been known to get violent reactions in some of the more fervently religious people. Why should I go out of my way to upset someone?
Religious beliefs can be a very beautiful thing (witness Christmas and Easter) or it can be a horrible thing (witness the Christian Crusades or the present Islamic Jihads).
Yet, many of the superstitions and beliefs about Heaven and Hell, etc. are of religious origin…as are beliefs about a life after death, an immortal soul, reincarnation, numerous claims of “miracles”, etc. Don't ask me to be the one to say that Jonah was not swallowed by a giant fish, or that Noah did not restart civilization by bringing two of every species aboard his Arc, or that Jesus did not walk on water. If these are things you believe with fervent passion, so be it. Historical documentation may offer strong proof that these things never happened, but if you don’t want to hear or appreciate what the historical records show…that’s up to you. "Belief" is a very individual thing. There are still people…state leaders…in Iran and Pakistan who do not believe the Holocaust ever happened. No amount of proof is going to change their minds.
If you do not believe something, no amount of proof will ever change your mind. If you believe something, no proof is necessary.
The thing is, there are a lot of logical explanations for many of the things we have come to accept on faith alone. i.e. The “aura” discussed in several previous blogs could well be what religious leaders call an “immortal soul”. The Hindu concept of “reincarnation” could very well be the “aura” finding another body to surround.
I do have to laugh at some of the ridiculous Pentecostal Evangelists' “fire and brimstone” sermons in which they talk about the Devil and horrors of Hell. Although the concept of Heaven and Hell was mentioned in both the Old and New Testaments, the “Devil” was not created until 1308 AD in Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”. This classic poem was the first writing to create a “Devil” in charge of Hell. Dante gave him Neptune’s trident and a stingray’s tail…and the “Devil” was born.
Dante’s “Inferno” was the first description of Hell ever made. That’s why I have to laugh when Evangelists imply that the Devil and the horrors of Hell are a part of the Bible. Nonsense! These things were created a thousand years after the Gospels were written.
Another of many Evangelists' ridiculous tricks is so-called “faith healing”. This is when someone with an (ostensibly) incurable disease is brought to the Evangeist who cures them in a matter of minutes by making them repeat that they love Jesus. While more than 99% of what you see on TV is done by “plants” (actors who pretend illness), there is, seriously, a lot of merit and historical support to “faith healing”. For many years, “faith healing” was an accepted medical practice, and there are thosands of cases on record of “incurable” diseases that have been wholly cured through faith healers.
Faith healing is one of those “mysteries” of life that I will tackle in future blogs.
It’s interesting to note that when the medical profession first became a “profession” back in old England, the all-male-dominated profession passed laws prohibiting a woman from ever practicing medicine. Most faith healers, throughout history, have been women and faith healers had to go “underground” for fear of being arrested and jailed. In Spain, during the Inquisition, any woman practicing faith healing was arrested and charged with “Heresy” (denial of God) and most were put to death...after a week or two of unimaginable torture. So, the art and magic of faith-healing quietly went underground…until recently.
Now the (not-so-male-dominated) medical societies have begun to extensively research faith healing and many physicians now have faith-healer associates.
As I said, nobody asked me.
Stephen Ellis
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES
By Stephen Ellis
The Enterprise
Posted Dec 12, 2008 @ 06:53 AM
Last update Dec 12, 2008 @ 07:34 AM
News: Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson are Roto-Rooter plumbers that have hit the big time in the paranormal world by investigating ghostly accounts. The Sci Fi channel is reporting all time record ratings with Hawes and Wilson’s show “Ghost Hunters,” which airs on Wednesday nights and has for the last four years.
Hawes and Wilson have been investigating spectral nuances for over ten years when Hawes and Wilson founded The Atlantic Paranormal Society, better known as TAPS. The group has investigated everywhere from private homes to retired US naval ships. They use the scientific method to collect data, examine and debunk experiences as much as possible. But there are other times when no earthly explanation can be given and this leaves one to wonder what else it could be? Could it actually be a visage from the other side of the veil?
Nobody asked me, but…
The principals from a very successful TV show “Ghost Hunters”, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, are going to visit Taunton, MA, the home of the newly formed paranormal society “The Bayside Paranormal Center”.
It is impossible for me to predict what, if anything, the “Ghost Hunters” will find. In all probability, they will find little or nothing. This is not to suggest that there is no paranormal activity going on in Taunton, but I feel strongly that the use of electronic devices will not provide any significant proof. In the four years of successful TV, the “Ghost Hunters” have found little to confirm or deny the existence of ghosts.
In my opinion, they are searching in a way that cannot succeed.
“If”, as I have tried to explain numerous times, ghosts, UFOs and other paranormal phenomena emanate from a different dimension, there are no devices or electronic equipment we know of that can measure their activities or their presence to any significant degree except at very specific moments.
People have called my blogs “analytical”. “realistic” and sometimes plain “crazy”. But, I have seen a ghost…or at least something that defies any other rational explanation. In my first blog I told of what happened in San Francisco when I, unwittingly, occupied an apartment where a girl had been murdered. The “ghost” or “apparition” I saw was meaningless to me until, several weeks later, I saw her photograph and she was identified to me as having been murdered in that apartment. Please read or re-read my first blog for details.
Did I communicate with that ghost or apparition? No.
Did it dissolve or take some ghostly form? No.
One moment it was there and the next it was gone.
Could it have been my imagination? Absolutely. Until, several weeks later I saw her photo and identified her as the person I had seen in my room. It was then…and only then…that I began to realize what I had seen.
An important fact that I don’t want to skip-over is that she was “there one moment and gone the next”. What conceivable thing(s) do we know of on Earth that can do that? The answer is a clear “nothing”. Thus, in my search for answers, I began to think about different “dimensions” that we cannot sense with any of our five senses. As far-out as this may seem, it began to provide reasonable and logical explanations and answers to a lot of paranormal happenings and mysteries I had read about and encountered as an individual. Who among us had not had a déjà vu experience? Logically, and within our limited perception of our five senses, this cannot happen. But expand your thinking to allow for a sixth sense...or different dimension...and most déjà vu experiences can make good sense.
The appearance of a ghost, in living form, can only occur when circumstances are right…and we, apparently, have no control over those circumstances. It’s like the appearance and disappearance of UFOs. When conditions are right, lots of people see them…but we can never control when or where that time may be. How is it that your phone can ring and you know, before answering it, that it’s someone you haven’t seen for a long time?
And that’s the problem with “Ghost Hunters”. If the time is right, they may be able to see and measure fantastic changes as something from another dimension enters our dimension. But they cannot control when or where that time may be. Ghost hunting can be a very frustrating experience.
Notwithstanding that, they have an interesting show and it would be worth your time to watch an episode or two.
As I said…nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
The Enterprise
Posted Dec 12, 2008 @ 06:53 AM
Last update Dec 12, 2008 @ 07:34 AM
News: Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson are Roto-Rooter plumbers that have hit the big time in the paranormal world by investigating ghostly accounts. The Sci Fi channel is reporting all time record ratings with Hawes and Wilson’s show “Ghost Hunters,” which airs on Wednesday nights and has for the last four years.
Hawes and Wilson have been investigating spectral nuances for over ten years when Hawes and Wilson founded The Atlantic Paranormal Society, better known as TAPS. The group has investigated everywhere from private homes to retired US naval ships. They use the scientific method to collect data, examine and debunk experiences as much as possible. But there are other times when no earthly explanation can be given and this leaves one to wonder what else it could be? Could it actually be a visage from the other side of the veil?
Nobody asked me, but…
The principals from a very successful TV show “Ghost Hunters”, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, are going to visit Taunton, MA, the home of the newly formed paranormal society “The Bayside Paranormal Center”.
It is impossible for me to predict what, if anything, the “Ghost Hunters” will find. In all probability, they will find little or nothing. This is not to suggest that there is no paranormal activity going on in Taunton, but I feel strongly that the use of electronic devices will not provide any significant proof. In the four years of successful TV, the “Ghost Hunters” have found little to confirm or deny the existence of ghosts.
In my opinion, they are searching in a way that cannot succeed.
“If”, as I have tried to explain numerous times, ghosts, UFOs and other paranormal phenomena emanate from a different dimension, there are no devices or electronic equipment we know of that can measure their activities or their presence to any significant degree except at very specific moments.
People have called my blogs “analytical”. “realistic” and sometimes plain “crazy”. But, I have seen a ghost…or at least something that defies any other rational explanation. In my first blog I told of what happened in San Francisco when I, unwittingly, occupied an apartment where a girl had been murdered. The “ghost” or “apparition” I saw was meaningless to me until, several weeks later, I saw her photograph and she was identified to me as having been murdered in that apartment. Please read or re-read my first blog for details.
Did I communicate with that ghost or apparition? No.
Did it dissolve or take some ghostly form? No.
One moment it was there and the next it was gone.
Could it have been my imagination? Absolutely. Until, several weeks later I saw her photo and identified her as the person I had seen in my room. It was then…and only then…that I began to realize what I had seen.
An important fact that I don’t want to skip-over is that she was “there one moment and gone the next”. What conceivable thing(s) do we know of on Earth that can do that? The answer is a clear “nothing”. Thus, in my search for answers, I began to think about different “dimensions” that we cannot sense with any of our five senses. As far-out as this may seem, it began to provide reasonable and logical explanations and answers to a lot of paranormal happenings and mysteries I had read about and encountered as an individual. Who among us had not had a déjà vu experience? Logically, and within our limited perception of our five senses, this cannot happen. But expand your thinking to allow for a sixth sense...or different dimension...and most déjà vu experiences can make good sense.
The appearance of a ghost, in living form, can only occur when circumstances are right…and we, apparently, have no control over those circumstances. It’s like the appearance and disappearance of UFOs. When conditions are right, lots of people see them…but we can never control when or where that time may be. How is it that your phone can ring and you know, before answering it, that it’s someone you haven’t seen for a long time?
And that’s the problem with “Ghost Hunters”. If the time is right, they may be able to see and measure fantastic changes as something from another dimension enters our dimension. But they cannot control when or where that time may be. Ghost hunting can be a very frustrating experience.
Notwithstanding that, they have an interesting show and it would be worth your time to watch an episode or two.
As I said…nobody asked me.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
British Ghosts
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES
By Stephen Ellis
News: The Durham Journal
An investigation is to be carried out into ghostly goings on at a community centre. The North East-based Esoteric Paranormal Investigations team will visit the Mainsforth & District Community Centre in Ferryhill, County Durham. The team said that incidents at the centre have included: : Unexplained temperature fluctuations: Spectacular light anomalies on photographs, videos and seen by the naked eye: Unexplained strange noises – bumps, groans and voices: Strange smells which come and go: Doors opening and chairs folding of their own accord: Tables which move around the room: The centre was built as a miners’ welfare hall in 1927. Anne Piper, who lives in Gateshead and is coordinator of the investigations team, said: “It is an unusual location. “When it comes to paranormal activity, people don’t think of buildings like that.”
BRITISH GHOSTS
While Great Britain does not have any exclusivity on ghosts, Great Britain does lay claim to having more ghosts (or reports of ghosts) per square foot than anyplace else in the world. England even offers tours of haunted castles.
The last time I was in England (being the curious cat that I am), I took one of the tours of haunted castles. We were taken to several castles of varying ages where we did hear strange sounds such as chains clanging and doors opening and closing. In one case I heard voices apparently coming out of nowhere. But, being a realist, I am well aware that almost invisible microphones and speakers can be hidden away…especially in walls made out of mortared stone, and I was duly unimpressed.
Except for one thing…
We were shown into what used to be a bed chamber (a master bedroom in our parlance), and we were told to stick our hand over a certain spot near the middle of the room. It’s what our guide called a “cold spot”. The guide said that many of the haunted castles have them.
The spot was round and about six inches in diameter…and it was cold! The temperature inside the room was about 70-degrees Fahrenheit (it was during the summer), but as my hand entered spot, the temperature in the spot was no more than 30 degrees Fahrenheit. As my hand passed through it, the temperature returned to normal. Again and again, I passed my hand through the cold spot. I tried leaving my hand in the cold spot, but I couldn’t do so for very long as it was just too cold and it was starting to freeze my hand and wrist. I bent down to the floor and it was exactly the same thing. I stood on a couple of stone blocks and reached up to the ceiling. The same thing. Although I had no tools to precisely measure the diameter of the spot, it appeared to be the same size and shape at the ceiling as it was on the floor.
It was a very puzzling thing: If were just a normal inlet of cold air, it would be expected to spread out into the rest of the room. It would be expected to expand as it got higher up towards the ceiling. But it remained in the narrow cylinder from floor to ceiling.
I examined the floor and the ceiling, and there were no significant cracks or holes through which cold air could come. More important, there was no wind or movement of the air inside the cold spot, so I was absolutely certain nothing was blowing up or down. I walked through the cold spot several times and it was just as if I was walking through a transparent cylinder of ice.
Naturally, I asked the guide to explain it. His response was classic: "You've got to expect things like this. This is a haunted castle!"
I gave this cold spot a lot of thought on my way back to London. There was no rational, reasonable or scientific explanation for it, so I decided to try and seek some explanation that was not rational. The only thing I could come up with was the word “portal”.
If you believe in different dimensions, such as I do, the term “portal” refers to a crack or small opening in that mysterious wall or fabric that separates dimensions. An entryway to another dimension that our limited five senses can't perceive. How it can be used or applied is a totally different matter, but I do believe it is possible that I was touching a small opening to another dimension. Who or what uses that entryway or if it can be used by mortal people goes beyond my limited abilities of analysis and clear thinking. But I was experiencing a physical impossibility: Every single law of physics is violated...for a cylinder of air, approximately six inches in diameter unchanged from floor to ceiling...to be forty degrees colder than anything around it. Interestingly, the cold stayed within that cylinder and did not drop the temperature in the rest of the room.
For those people who do not believe in or accept paranormal possibilities, I strongly recommend a haunted castle tour in England.
As I said, nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
News: The Durham Journal
An investigation is to be carried out into ghostly goings on at a community centre. The North East-based Esoteric Paranormal Investigations team will visit the Mainsforth & District Community Centre in Ferryhill, County Durham. The team said that incidents at the centre have included: : Unexplained temperature fluctuations: Spectacular light anomalies on photographs, videos and seen by the naked eye: Unexplained strange noises – bumps, groans and voices: Strange smells which come and go: Doors opening and chairs folding of their own accord: Tables which move around the room: The centre was built as a miners’ welfare hall in 1927. Anne Piper, who lives in Gateshead and is coordinator of the investigations team, said: “It is an unusual location. “When it comes to paranormal activity, people don’t think of buildings like that.”
BRITISH GHOSTS
While Great Britain does not have any exclusivity on ghosts, Great Britain does lay claim to having more ghosts (or reports of ghosts) per square foot than anyplace else in the world. England even offers tours of haunted castles.
The last time I was in England (being the curious cat that I am), I took one of the tours of haunted castles. We were taken to several castles of varying ages where we did hear strange sounds such as chains clanging and doors opening and closing. In one case I heard voices apparently coming out of nowhere. But, being a realist, I am well aware that almost invisible microphones and speakers can be hidden away…especially in walls made out of mortared stone, and I was duly unimpressed.
Except for one thing…
We were shown into what used to be a bed chamber (a master bedroom in our parlance), and we were told to stick our hand over a certain spot near the middle of the room. It’s what our guide called a “cold spot”. The guide said that many of the haunted castles have them.
The spot was round and about six inches in diameter…and it was cold! The temperature inside the room was about 70-degrees Fahrenheit (it was during the summer), but as my hand entered spot, the temperature in the spot was no more than 30 degrees Fahrenheit. As my hand passed through it, the temperature returned to normal. Again and again, I passed my hand through the cold spot. I tried leaving my hand in the cold spot, but I couldn’t do so for very long as it was just too cold and it was starting to freeze my hand and wrist. I bent down to the floor and it was exactly the same thing. I stood on a couple of stone blocks and reached up to the ceiling. The same thing. Although I had no tools to precisely measure the diameter of the spot, it appeared to be the same size and shape at the ceiling as it was on the floor.
It was a very puzzling thing: If were just a normal inlet of cold air, it would be expected to spread out into the rest of the room. It would be expected to expand as it got higher up towards the ceiling. But it remained in the narrow cylinder from floor to ceiling.
I examined the floor and the ceiling, and there were no significant cracks or holes through which cold air could come. More important, there was no wind or movement of the air inside the cold spot, so I was absolutely certain nothing was blowing up or down. I walked through the cold spot several times and it was just as if I was walking through a transparent cylinder of ice.
Naturally, I asked the guide to explain it. His response was classic: "You've got to expect things like this. This is a haunted castle!"
I gave this cold spot a lot of thought on my way back to London. There was no rational, reasonable or scientific explanation for it, so I decided to try and seek some explanation that was not rational. The only thing I could come up with was the word “portal”.
If you believe in different dimensions, such as I do, the term “portal” refers to a crack or small opening in that mysterious wall or fabric that separates dimensions. An entryway to another dimension that our limited five senses can't perceive. How it can be used or applied is a totally different matter, but I do believe it is possible that I was touching a small opening to another dimension. Who or what uses that entryway or if it can be used by mortal people goes beyond my limited abilities of analysis and clear thinking. But I was experiencing a physical impossibility: Every single law of physics is violated...for a cylinder of air, approximately six inches in diameter unchanged from floor to ceiling...to be forty degrees colder than anything around it. Interestingly, the cold stayed within that cylinder and did not drop the temperature in the rest of the room.
For those people who do not believe in or accept paranormal possibilities, I strongly recommend a haunted castle tour in England.
As I said, nobody asked me.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Are UFOs For Real
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES
By Stephen Ellis
ARE UFOs FOR REAL
News: Australia - A spate of UFO sightings on the Central Coast (of Australia) has attracted the attention of the UFO and Paranormal Research Society of Australia. The Society has convened a conference at Gosford this Saturday, November 29, 2008.
************************************************************************************************************
Nobody asked me, but…
For the past 50 years or so, there have been reports of sightings of UFOs. No government, anywhere in the world, has acknowledged that UFOs exist. Even the US Air Force’s famous “Project Bluebook” has not offered any answers or explanations.
The nature of my job means that I try to stay impartial: I am not a UFO fan or a UFO “freak”. But there are certain facts that are often overlooked when discussing the subject: Few reports even mention the fact that there have been slightly more than two million alleged sightings of UFOs throughout the world. It doesn’t make good sense to call 2 million people “liars”, or “frauds”. Assuming that most reports of UFOs were from people looking for personal publicity or fame, or people whose imaginations were running rampant, or even people making reports as a “joke”…If only one percent of the sighting reports was legitimate, that means that there have been more than 20,000 legitimate sightings…of something. Some of those sightings have come from heads of State, U.S. Senators and Representatives and many people whose credentials are far above reproach. Why, then, has there not been one shred of conclusive proof ever brought to light?
Objectively, I have asked myself “why”, if UFOs are from other solar systems, has there been no contact? Then, too, we should consider the practicality of someone or something from a distant star, traversing incredible distances through space to actually find its way to Earth. I do not believe or accept the Roswell, New Mexico, stories of a crashed UFO or the stories of people having been abducted by aliens. Nor does the secrecy about Air Force “Area 51” appear worthy of discussion.
So how do we explain what it is that millions of people claim to have seen?
I have to conclude that if contact was possible, we would have been contacted. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no way for the people or things aboard UFOs to contact us. Even assuming that some advanced civilization developed what we call “Warp” power (the ability to travel at many times the speed of light…which is 186,000 miles per second), it is highly unlikely that any civilization capable of this would be incapable of making contact with the Earth or, at least, convey some sort of signal to Earth.
So, let’s look in a different direction for logical answers: We live in a world of dimensions. The only dimensions we can perceive are those of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. If we can’t see it, hear it, feel it, taste it or smell it…it doesn’t exist. But the fact is that there are other dimensions that we cannot sense: we don’t know where our mind is located…but we know it’s there. We can’t see our aura…but infra-red photography will show us that it exists. We don’t understand certain “psychic” feelings or déjà vu experiences…but they happen to people all the time.
Let’s expand our thinking and open the doors to a possible explanation: Possibly UFOs are from another dimension…one we cannot sense. They break-through into our dimension briefly and then return from whence they came. They can’t communicate with us because they are not in our dimension. Obviously, they have no harmful intent towards us as there has never been a report of any attempted combat with a UFO. And, most important, the way they appear and disappear lends significant support to the possibility of their being from a different dimension.
A Naval Lieutenant on a US Destroyer off the coast of Ecuador was on the bridge of the ship when one of the deckhands called his attention to objects in the sky. The Lieutenant immediately called his Captain and looked at the objects through field glasses. He observed them carefully. As his report to Project Bluebook stated, the objects would appear as a “dot”, then like a cartoon, the dot would expand to a straight line, then bank revealing itself to be round in shape. It would fly over an area briefly, then become a thin line again, shrink to a dot and disappear…like happens in some cartoons.
By the time the Captain got to the bridge, the objects were gone. While the appearance of a thin line shrinking down to a dot and disappearing might create the illusion of something flying off at incredible speeds, the Lieutenant said that, through his field glasses, he was certain of what he saw. He scrutinized them as possibly being a danger to his ship. He recorded his observations and sent them to Project Bluebook.
The problem with opening the door to other possible dimensions is that it opens up a book with millions of blank pages. We know almost nothing about other dimensions, and our hard and fast scientific society views a discussion of other dimensions as nonsense and unworthy of comment.
Yet, I’ve seen a ghost…or at least what I believe to have been a ghost (talked about in my first blog). What dimension is that? I’ve had personal experience with what I believe to be past lives. What dimension is that?
Actually, I may have seen a UFO, but I’m not certain: When I was twelve, my mother used to take my brother and me to Florida for the Winter. Not the luxury route, but more like the “economy” route. My mother would rent an inexpensive apartment in Miami Beach while pulling in a top dollar from sub-leasing her New York apartment. The apartment we had faced Biscayne Bay. One morning, about 6 AM, I was awakened by an amazingly bright light from the sky shining through my window. I went to my window and looked at it and I thought it was the brightest “sun” I had ever seen. So, I woke up my older brother and asked him to look at it. He got up, and it was gone. Then, when I tried to tell him what I had seen, he punched me in the shoulder and called me “stupid”. My window faced west…and the sun rises in the east. So…what did I see?
E-mail me and tell me about similar experiences you’ve had.
As I said…nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
ARE UFOs FOR REAL
News: Australia - A spate of UFO sightings on the Central Coast (of Australia) has attracted the attention of the UFO and Paranormal Research Society of Australia. The Society has convened a conference at Gosford this Saturday, November 29, 2008.
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Nobody asked me, but…
For the past 50 years or so, there have been reports of sightings of UFOs. No government, anywhere in the world, has acknowledged that UFOs exist. Even the US Air Force’s famous “Project Bluebook” has not offered any answers or explanations.
The nature of my job means that I try to stay impartial: I am not a UFO fan or a UFO “freak”. But there are certain facts that are often overlooked when discussing the subject: Few reports even mention the fact that there have been slightly more than two million alleged sightings of UFOs throughout the world. It doesn’t make good sense to call 2 million people “liars”, or “frauds”. Assuming that most reports of UFOs were from people looking for personal publicity or fame, or people whose imaginations were running rampant, or even people making reports as a “joke”…If only one percent of the sighting reports was legitimate, that means that there have been more than 20,000 legitimate sightings…of something. Some of those sightings have come from heads of State, U.S. Senators and Representatives and many people whose credentials are far above reproach. Why, then, has there not been one shred of conclusive proof ever brought to light?
Objectively, I have asked myself “why”, if UFOs are from other solar systems, has there been no contact? Then, too, we should consider the practicality of someone or something from a distant star, traversing incredible distances through space to actually find its way to Earth. I do not believe or accept the Roswell, New Mexico, stories of a crashed UFO or the stories of people having been abducted by aliens. Nor does the secrecy about Air Force “Area 51” appear worthy of discussion.
So how do we explain what it is that millions of people claim to have seen?
I have to conclude that if contact was possible, we would have been contacted. Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is no way for the people or things aboard UFOs to contact us. Even assuming that some advanced civilization developed what we call “Warp” power (the ability to travel at many times the speed of light…which is 186,000 miles per second), it is highly unlikely that any civilization capable of this would be incapable of making contact with the Earth or, at least, convey some sort of signal to Earth.
So, let’s look in a different direction for logical answers: We live in a world of dimensions. The only dimensions we can perceive are those of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. If we can’t see it, hear it, feel it, taste it or smell it…it doesn’t exist. But the fact is that there are other dimensions that we cannot sense: we don’t know where our mind is located…but we know it’s there. We can’t see our aura…but infra-red photography will show us that it exists. We don’t understand certain “psychic” feelings or déjà vu experiences…but they happen to people all the time.
Let’s expand our thinking and open the doors to a possible explanation: Possibly UFOs are from another dimension…one we cannot sense. They break-through into our dimension briefly and then return from whence they came. They can’t communicate with us because they are not in our dimension. Obviously, they have no harmful intent towards us as there has never been a report of any attempted combat with a UFO. And, most important, the way they appear and disappear lends significant support to the possibility of their being from a different dimension.
A Naval Lieutenant on a US Destroyer off the coast of Ecuador was on the bridge of the ship when one of the deckhands called his attention to objects in the sky. The Lieutenant immediately called his Captain and looked at the objects through field glasses. He observed them carefully. As his report to Project Bluebook stated, the objects would appear as a “dot”, then like a cartoon, the dot would expand to a straight line, then bank revealing itself to be round in shape. It would fly over an area briefly, then become a thin line again, shrink to a dot and disappear…like happens in some cartoons.
By the time the Captain got to the bridge, the objects were gone. While the appearance of a thin line shrinking down to a dot and disappearing might create the illusion of something flying off at incredible speeds, the Lieutenant said that, through his field glasses, he was certain of what he saw. He scrutinized them as possibly being a danger to his ship. He recorded his observations and sent them to Project Bluebook.
The problem with opening the door to other possible dimensions is that it opens up a book with millions of blank pages. We know almost nothing about other dimensions, and our hard and fast scientific society views a discussion of other dimensions as nonsense and unworthy of comment.
Yet, I’ve seen a ghost…or at least what I believe to have been a ghost (talked about in my first blog). What dimension is that? I’ve had personal experience with what I believe to be past lives. What dimension is that?
Actually, I may have seen a UFO, but I’m not certain: When I was twelve, my mother used to take my brother and me to Florida for the Winter. Not the luxury route, but more like the “economy” route. My mother would rent an inexpensive apartment in Miami Beach while pulling in a top dollar from sub-leasing her New York apartment. The apartment we had faced Biscayne Bay. One morning, about 6 AM, I was awakened by an amazingly bright light from the sky shining through my window. I went to my window and looked at it and I thought it was the brightest “sun” I had ever seen. So, I woke up my older brother and asked him to look at it. He got up, and it was gone. Then, when I tried to tell him what I had seen, he punched me in the shoulder and called me “stupid”. My window faced west…and the sun rises in the east. So…what did I see?
E-mail me and tell me about similar experiences you’ve had.
As I said…nobody asked me.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
More on our Mysterious Aura
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES
By Stephen Ellis
MORE ON THE HUMAN AURA
News: A new Paranormal Center in Taunton, MA opened recently. It’s called the Bayside Paranormal Center. I’ve looked at their catalog and it offers a lot of interesting lectures and some ghostly experiences. If you are interested n the paranormal, I think it will be worth your while to check it out.
************************************************************************************************************
As mentioned in earlier blogs, the human aura is known to exist and it has been photographed thousands of times. The most interesting thing we have discussed is how the aura does not die when the body it surrounds dies…it merely separates itself from the body and moves on.
Let’s go back a step and assume that the human mind is in the aura, and not in some undetermined part of the body. There is a reasonable amount of evidence that this is true: such as the mind functioning perfectly even when the brain is injured. But, if this is so, let’s carry it a step further:
We believers in the paranormal agree with scientists that the mind feeds the brain…that the brain is a computer and the mind, effectively, is at the keyboard. When the body dies and the aura moves on…what happens to it? The logical answer is that it finds another body and attaches itself to that body. There is no real proof of this, but how else would you explain how, in dreams, you can see people you’ve never met in remarkable, photographic, detail, down to the tiny scars of their faces…to the way they speak and behave? If the aura has moved on to another body, isn’t it likely that it has moved on with some of the memories of the body it left? It would certainly explain the déjà vu feelings of having been someplace you know you’ve never visited…or looking at someone and feeling that you’ve known this person before…or that you’ve had a conversation before. It might also help to explain the case of Bridey Murphy or some of the hundreds of “past-life” experiences that have been recorded and verified.
It might also help explain the phenomena of “astral-projection”: the separation of mind and body where people, usually under hypnosis or medical anesthesia, can feel themselves float above their body…and even travel to distant places.
As, with many other paranormal events, astral-projection seems to defy explanation. There are, literally hundreds of thousands of cases where people seemed to separate their minds from their bodies and have looked down at surgeons operating on their bodies, have traveled through walls and ceilings into different rooms, and even travelled across oceans. The individual who has astrally-projected often brings back information about what was said and what was going on in other rooms and even in other parts of the world that they had no reasonable way of knowing. Hundreds of such cases have been verified by scientists conducting astral projection experiments.
Is this “proof” of anything? Of course not! Skeptics will always find ways to challenge this experience even to the point of alleging conspiracy from people involved. One such instance comes to mind:
A New York man who claimed he could astrally-project, at will, was tested: A person in California opened an unnamed book to a specific page and left it open on a table in California. The challenge was for the subject to astrally-project his mind to California, see the open book, remember the page number and the first few words printed on the page. This was done, successfully, in a matter of seconds. The skeptics made allegations of a planned conspiracy, some magicians alleged they could do the same thing, etc. There will never be a way to “prove”, beyond a doubt, the truth of anything paranormal.
The aura or “mind” moving from one dead body to a live person may also tend to explain people who claim past-life experiences…and even that dream I had my first night in Paris.
Skeptics ask “why”, if this is so, that children have no memories of the past. Mostly true! But if, in fact, the aura is at the keyboard of the computer (brain), it has to first wait until the computer warms-up before it can download any information. In the case of the human brain, it may take fifteen or twenty years for the computer to develop sufficiently or warm-up sufficiently for the input coming from the aura to be received and understood.
There’s a lot more to it, but at least I hope this begins to give you a general idea of how the human mind works…and maybe sets your mind to start trying to recall things you know you have not seen or done.
There will be lots more about the aura in future blogs. It really explains a lot of life’s mysteries.
As I said…nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
MORE ON THE HUMAN AURA
News: A new Paranormal Center in Taunton, MA opened recently. It’s called the Bayside Paranormal Center. I’ve looked at their catalog and it offers a lot of interesting lectures and some ghostly experiences. If you are interested n the paranormal, I think it will be worth your while to check it out.
************************************************************************************************************
As mentioned in earlier blogs, the human aura is known to exist and it has been photographed thousands of times. The most interesting thing we have discussed is how the aura does not die when the body it surrounds dies…it merely separates itself from the body and moves on.
Let’s go back a step and assume that the human mind is in the aura, and not in some undetermined part of the body. There is a reasonable amount of evidence that this is true: such as the mind functioning perfectly even when the brain is injured. But, if this is so, let’s carry it a step further:
We believers in the paranormal agree with scientists that the mind feeds the brain…that the brain is a computer and the mind, effectively, is at the keyboard. When the body dies and the aura moves on…what happens to it? The logical answer is that it finds another body and attaches itself to that body. There is no real proof of this, but how else would you explain how, in dreams, you can see people you’ve never met in remarkable, photographic, detail, down to the tiny scars of their faces…to the way they speak and behave? If the aura has moved on to another body, isn’t it likely that it has moved on with some of the memories of the body it left? It would certainly explain the déjà vu feelings of having been someplace you know you’ve never visited…or looking at someone and feeling that you’ve known this person before…or that you’ve had a conversation before. It might also help to explain the case of Bridey Murphy or some of the hundreds of “past-life” experiences that have been recorded and verified.
It might also help explain the phenomena of “astral-projection”: the separation of mind and body where people, usually under hypnosis or medical anesthesia, can feel themselves float above their body…and even travel to distant places.
As, with many other paranormal events, astral-projection seems to defy explanation. There are, literally hundreds of thousands of cases where people seemed to separate their minds from their bodies and have looked down at surgeons operating on their bodies, have traveled through walls and ceilings into different rooms, and even travelled across oceans. The individual who has astrally-projected often brings back information about what was said and what was going on in other rooms and even in other parts of the world that they had no reasonable way of knowing. Hundreds of such cases have been verified by scientists conducting astral projection experiments.
Is this “proof” of anything? Of course not! Skeptics will always find ways to challenge this experience even to the point of alleging conspiracy from people involved. One such instance comes to mind:
A New York man who claimed he could astrally-project, at will, was tested: A person in California opened an unnamed book to a specific page and left it open on a table in California. The challenge was for the subject to astrally-project his mind to California, see the open book, remember the page number and the first few words printed on the page. This was done, successfully, in a matter of seconds. The skeptics made allegations of a planned conspiracy, some magicians alleged they could do the same thing, etc. There will never be a way to “prove”, beyond a doubt, the truth of anything paranormal.
The aura or “mind” moving from one dead body to a live person may also tend to explain people who claim past-life experiences…and even that dream I had my first night in Paris.
Skeptics ask “why”, if this is so, that children have no memories of the past. Mostly true! But if, in fact, the aura is at the keyboard of the computer (brain), it has to first wait until the computer warms-up before it can download any information. In the case of the human brain, it may take fifteen or twenty years for the computer to develop sufficiently or warm-up sufficiently for the input coming from the aura to be received and understood.
There’s a lot more to it, but at least I hope this begins to give you a general idea of how the human mind works…and maybe sets your mind to start trying to recall things you know you have not seen or done.
There will be lots more about the aura in future blogs. It really explains a lot of life’s mysteries.
As I said…nobody asked me.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES
By Stephen Ellis
THE STRANGE CASE OF BRIDEY MURPHY
Nobody asked me, but please excuse this blog for being so long.…
As a further follow-up to my blog concerning the Foreign Accent Syndrome, back in 1952, a book was written by a businessman, Morey Bernstein, called “The Search for Bridey Murphy”. To date, it remains one of the most remarkable tales ever told about life-after death. It has been written about, numerous times. It has been “debunked” by a couple of newspaper reporters…who, incidentally, were quite badly “mistaken” as we will see.
Capsulizing the book, it told that the author, Morey Bernstein was an amateur hypnotist who hypnotized a friend, Virginia Tighe. As an experiment, he regressed her back to a time before she was born, and she suddenly started speaking with a heavy Irish brogue. Curiosity being what it is, he asked her who she was and where she was.
Virginia identified herself as a woman named Bridey Murphy who lived in a small village near Cork, Ireland. Bernstein asked her to describe where she lived, and, as Bridey Murphy, she described, in intricate detail, the small house in which she lived…going to the outside pump for water, she described her husband and her family, and she described the neighborhood…again in intricate detail. She described the Antrim coastline, the details of her journey, in later life, from Cork to Belfast and numerous other details that should be known by someone extremely familiar with the area and the lifestyle of a hundred years ago. Briefly, her story went like this:
She doesn’t remember much before her eighth birthday. She was born on December 20, 1798 in Cork, Ireland and she died in 1864. She said she was the daughter of Duncan Murphy, a barrister (lawyer) and his wife, Kathleen. At the age of seventeen, she married a lawyer named Sean Brian McCarthy and moved to Belfast. Bridey told of a fall that caused her death and of watching her own funeral including a description of her tombstone. Her description of life after death was much less detailed and, although she could not explain “why” or “how”, she said she was reborn in America in 1923 as Virginia Tighe
When awakened, Virginia said that she was born in 1923 in Madison, Wisconsin; she had never been to Ireland nor even thought of doing so; she had never looked at any Ireland travel brochures and certainly did not speak with an Irish dialect. Her parents were Midwestern who, like Virginia, had never visited Ireland nor had they ever planned to do so. Her parents backgrounds were Norwegian. Although she became somewhat of a celebrity in the 1950s, Virginia was too frightened to allow herself to be hypnotized by some medical professionals. She died in Madison, Wisconsin in 1995.
Needless to say, Bernstein’s book caused a flurry of excitement and a resurge of reincarnation claims. Numerous reporters went to Ireland to try and check on the details of the story told in Bernstein’s book. Interestingly, most of the details were verified, although no trace could be found of birth records for a Bridey Murphy in 1798 or a Sean Brian McCarthy, Bidey Murphy’s descriptions of life, the area, the people, they type of living (including a detailed description of her kitchen) and the old road from Cork to Belfast, were all verified. Of even greater interest was her description of the church her family went to. The original church was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1911.
It should be understood, that birth records, marriage records, etc. in the late 1700s, other than in the large cities, were kept in family Bibles, so it should not be surprising that birth and marriage records were not found. Yet, these are the kinds of things on which the skeptics base their skepticism.
One reporter (who received much publicity for his so-called “debunking” of the Bridey Murphy story) researched records and found that there was a Bridey (middle name “Murphy”) Corkes who lived “across the street” from Virginia when Virginia was two years old. Actually, a map of Madison, Wisconsin shows that the Corkes house was quite a ways from the Tighe house. The skeptics stated that, as a two-year-old, Virgina spent a lot of time with the Corkes family and gained her impressions of Ireland from them. Again, the skeptics were mistaken: The Corkes family never baby-sat Virginia, and were not close friends of the Tighe family. Even if the Corkes family was very close, it’s highly unlikely that they could give a two-year-old intricate details of the coastline near Belfast, or a description of a kitchen, a church and other details that Bridey Murphy spoke about. In fact, speaking in a practical manner, it’s even more likely that Bridey Murphy was reincarnated rather than that, as a two-year-old, she garnered all that information from neighbors her family hardly knew.
But Bridey Murphy was not the first publicized claim of reincarnation:
In 1824, a nine-year-old boy named Katsugoro, the son of a Japanese farmer, told his sister that he believed he had a past life. According to his story, which is one of the earliest cases of past life recall on record, the boy vividly recalled that he had been the son of another farmer in another village and had died from the effects of smallpox in 1810. Katsugoro could remember dozens of specific events about his past life, including details about his family and the village where they lived, even though Katsugoro had never been there. He even remembered the time of his death, his burial and the time he spent before being reborn. The facts he related were subsequently verified by an investigation.
In 1958, a woman who in this case was identified only as T.E., underwent hypnosis by her husband, a medical doctor and experimenter with past life regression. Once in a trance state, T.E.'s voice deepened to one that was distinctly male and she declared in broken English that she was a farmer named Jensen Jacoby who lived in the 17th century. T.E.'s speech was peppered with Swedish words, a language that she and her husband swore she did not know. After six hypnotic sessions, T.E. was talking exclusively in Swedish, even conversing fluently with several Swedish persons that her husband had brought in to witness the phenomenon. These native Swedes confirmed that she was speaking a somewhat archaic form of Swedish that would have been spoken at the time Jensen said he had lived.
There are, literally, hundreds of verified cases of past-lives. Can they be proven? Absolutely not! Does it give rise to some serious questions? Absolutely yes!
To me, the most interesting case is one that happened to me, personally: The first time I went to Paris, I stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel. The hotel is directly across the street from the Louvre. My first night there, as I slept, I kept hearing a waltz being played by a string quartet. I’m not a waltz expert, but I certainly am familiar with those written by Strauss. But this was a waltz that I had never heard. Yet, it was beautiful!, and I was almost in a semi-awake condition and I was saying to myself, “I’ve got to remember this music.” Suddenly, as if in a movie, I saw there was a string quartet in an alcove above a huge ballroom. The violinists were dressed in satin breeches, they were wearing white wigs and were playing this waltz….and I was there! Amazingly, I looked and felt different and I asked one of the girls near me for a “looking glass”. I don’t know where I got the term “looking glass” as I had never used that term to describe a mirror. I looked at myself and I was a red-haired woman! It was so disturbing that I woke-up, and the music and the ballroom were gone.
Two days later, I took a tour of the Louis XIV palace. When they showed us the ballroom, it looked very much like the one in my dream, but there was no musician’s alcove above the dance floor. I asked the guide if there was ever a musician’s alcove up there. He responded that there had been one but it was removed by German soldiers during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s.
If you’ve had similar experiences, I will really appreciate you writing to me at stebrel@aol.com.
As I said, nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
THE STRANGE CASE OF BRIDEY MURPHY
Nobody asked me, but please excuse this blog for being so long.…
As a further follow-up to my blog concerning the Foreign Accent Syndrome, back in 1952, a book was written by a businessman, Morey Bernstein, called “The Search for Bridey Murphy”. To date, it remains one of the most remarkable tales ever told about life-after death. It has been written about, numerous times. It has been “debunked” by a couple of newspaper reporters…who, incidentally, were quite badly “mistaken” as we will see.
Capsulizing the book, it told that the author, Morey Bernstein was an amateur hypnotist who hypnotized a friend, Virginia Tighe. As an experiment, he regressed her back to a time before she was born, and she suddenly started speaking with a heavy Irish brogue. Curiosity being what it is, he asked her who she was and where she was.
Virginia identified herself as a woman named Bridey Murphy who lived in a small village near Cork, Ireland. Bernstein asked her to describe where she lived, and, as Bridey Murphy, she described, in intricate detail, the small house in which she lived…going to the outside pump for water, she described her husband and her family, and she described the neighborhood…again in intricate detail. She described the Antrim coastline, the details of her journey, in later life, from Cork to Belfast and numerous other details that should be known by someone extremely familiar with the area and the lifestyle of a hundred years ago. Briefly, her story went like this:
She doesn’t remember much before her eighth birthday. She was born on December 20, 1798 in Cork, Ireland and she died in 1864. She said she was the daughter of Duncan Murphy, a barrister (lawyer) and his wife, Kathleen. At the age of seventeen, she married a lawyer named Sean Brian McCarthy and moved to Belfast. Bridey told of a fall that caused her death and of watching her own funeral including a description of her tombstone. Her description of life after death was much less detailed and, although she could not explain “why” or “how”, she said she was reborn in America in 1923 as Virginia Tighe
When awakened, Virginia said that she was born in 1923 in Madison, Wisconsin; she had never been to Ireland nor even thought of doing so; she had never looked at any Ireland travel brochures and certainly did not speak with an Irish dialect. Her parents were Midwestern who, like Virginia, had never visited Ireland nor had they ever planned to do so. Her parents backgrounds were Norwegian. Although she became somewhat of a celebrity in the 1950s, Virginia was too frightened to allow herself to be hypnotized by some medical professionals. She died in Madison, Wisconsin in 1995.
Needless to say, Bernstein’s book caused a flurry of excitement and a resurge of reincarnation claims. Numerous reporters went to Ireland to try and check on the details of the story told in Bernstein’s book. Interestingly, most of the details were verified, although no trace could be found of birth records for a Bridey Murphy in 1798 or a Sean Brian McCarthy, Bidey Murphy’s descriptions of life, the area, the people, they type of living (including a detailed description of her kitchen) and the old road from Cork to Belfast, were all verified. Of even greater interest was her description of the church her family went to. The original church was destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1911.
It should be understood, that birth records, marriage records, etc. in the late 1700s, other than in the large cities, were kept in family Bibles, so it should not be surprising that birth and marriage records were not found. Yet, these are the kinds of things on which the skeptics base their skepticism.
One reporter (who received much publicity for his so-called “debunking” of the Bridey Murphy story) researched records and found that there was a Bridey (middle name “Murphy”) Corkes who lived “across the street” from Virginia when Virginia was two years old. Actually, a map of Madison, Wisconsin shows that the Corkes house was quite a ways from the Tighe house. The skeptics stated that, as a two-year-old, Virgina spent a lot of time with the Corkes family and gained her impressions of Ireland from them. Again, the skeptics were mistaken: The Corkes family never baby-sat Virginia, and were not close friends of the Tighe family. Even if the Corkes family was very close, it’s highly unlikely that they could give a two-year-old intricate details of the coastline near Belfast, or a description of a kitchen, a church and other details that Bridey Murphy spoke about. In fact, speaking in a practical manner, it’s even more likely that Bridey Murphy was reincarnated rather than that, as a two-year-old, she garnered all that information from neighbors her family hardly knew.
But Bridey Murphy was not the first publicized claim of reincarnation:
In 1824, a nine-year-old boy named Katsugoro, the son of a Japanese farmer, told his sister that he believed he had a past life. According to his story, which is one of the earliest cases of past life recall on record, the boy vividly recalled that he had been the son of another farmer in another village and had died from the effects of smallpox in 1810. Katsugoro could remember dozens of specific events about his past life, including details about his family and the village where they lived, even though Katsugoro had never been there. He even remembered the time of his death, his burial and the time he spent before being reborn. The facts he related were subsequently verified by an investigation.
In 1958, a woman who in this case was identified only as T.E., underwent hypnosis by her husband, a medical doctor and experimenter with past life regression. Once in a trance state, T.E.'s voice deepened to one that was distinctly male and she declared in broken English that she was a farmer named Jensen Jacoby who lived in the 17th century. T.E.'s speech was peppered with Swedish words, a language that she and her husband swore she did not know. After six hypnotic sessions, T.E. was talking exclusively in Swedish, even conversing fluently with several Swedish persons that her husband had brought in to witness the phenomenon. These native Swedes confirmed that she was speaking a somewhat archaic form of Swedish that would have been spoken at the time Jensen said he had lived.
There are, literally, hundreds of verified cases of past-lives. Can they be proven? Absolutely not! Does it give rise to some serious questions? Absolutely yes!
To me, the most interesting case is one that happened to me, personally: The first time I went to Paris, I stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel. The hotel is directly across the street from the Louvre. My first night there, as I slept, I kept hearing a waltz being played by a string quartet. I’m not a waltz expert, but I certainly am familiar with those written by Strauss. But this was a waltz that I had never heard. Yet, it was beautiful!, and I was almost in a semi-awake condition and I was saying to myself, “I’ve got to remember this music.” Suddenly, as if in a movie, I saw there was a string quartet in an alcove above a huge ballroom. The violinists were dressed in satin breeches, they were wearing white wigs and were playing this waltz….and I was there! Amazingly, I looked and felt different and I asked one of the girls near me for a “looking glass”. I don’t know where I got the term “looking glass” as I had never used that term to describe a mirror. I looked at myself and I was a red-haired woman! It was so disturbing that I woke-up, and the music and the ballroom were gone.
Two days later, I took a tour of the Louis XIV palace. When they showed us the ballroom, it looked very much like the one in my dream, but there was no musician’s alcove above the dance floor. I asked the guide if there was ever a musician’s alcove up there. He responded that there had been one but it was removed by German soldiers during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s.
If you’ve had similar experiences, I will really appreciate you writing to me at stebrel@aol.com.
As I said, nobody asked me.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Foreign Accent Syndrome
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES
By Stephen Ellis
MYSTERIOUS FOREIGN DIALECTS
Nobody asked me, but…
Last week on the news (and drawing quite a bit of attention) were a couple of people who have what they call a Foreign Accent Syndrome. Briefly, these people started speaking with foreign accents…usually more than one…and this happened without any control of the person doing the speaking. They would start a conversation in a strictly-American manner and, suddenly start speaking with a French accent or a Russian accent. The people doing this swore that they had no control of this and have been examined by several physicians who seem to be without explanation.
I can explain it, and, in fact, have had several experiences with this syndrome. The problem is that in order to really understand it, you’re going to have to become a steady reader of this blog because the facts that create this syndrome are not simple.
Let me relate my first experience with this syndrome:
When I was in my late teens (I had graduated high school when I had just turned 16), I worked my way through college as a magician and a hypnotist. My agent would book me into hotels in what was called the “Borscht Circuit”: small, resort, hotels in the Catskill Mountains just north of New York City. On any given weekend, I might have from one to four bookings, varying from hotels to private parties to (a) appear as a magician mentalist, (b) put on a hypnotism show or (c) be hired to walk through the dining rooms of larger hotels and simply sit down with the diners and perform close-up magic. Fortunately, for me, I was quite successful and I was able to pay my college tuition, pay my rent, keep food on the table and save a little bit on the side.
Being young and good-looking (I actually was good-looking when I was young), and being a stage performer, I was attractive to a lot of females varying in age from their teens to their sixties, and several of the younger females would ask me to hypnotize them.
I was never foolish enough to hypnotize any females without other females being present because I had been warned by other hypnotists (and it is true) that most females, when awakening from hypnosis, have the feeling that they have been sexually used. I didn’t need a criminal record as a sexual predator, so whenever I hypnotized a female, I would only do so in the presence of several other people.
On one occasion, at a private party, I was putting on a hypnotism show. Recently, a book entitled “The Search for Bridie Murphy” had been on the best-seller list. The book was about a woman who, under hypnosis, had started to speak with a heavy Irish brogue and identified herself as a woman named Bridie Murphy who lived in a small village outside of Dublin about a hundred years ago. I’ll talk more about the fascinating case of Bridie Murphy in another blog, but for this blog the story of Bridie Murphy had piqued my curiosity so much that I tried something on one of my subjects who happened to be a seventeen-year-old girl.
When giving a hypnotism show, I would routinely regress subjects through the years and have them remember what presents they got for their third birthday party and who was there, etc.
This time, however, I told this female subject that I was regressing her back to her mother’s womb…and even before that. I asked her where she was,,,
Imagine everyone’s shock and surprise when this girl started to speak in French! I am not a linguist, but French is something quite distinctive. I knew some words in the language, but not a lot. Fortunately, there was a woman in the audience who said she spoke French…but said she could not understand many of the words the girl was rambling on in French because she said the words were ancient and no longer in use.
At the insistence of her friends who were, understandably, frightened, I brought the subject back to the present and woke her up.
She told us that she did not speak French. She did not know anyone who spoke French and that she was studying Spanish in High School. She did not remember anything that had transpired while she was hypnotized.
This incident does not fully explain how the women in the news report had this Foreign Accent Syndrome, but it does open the door to some possibilities. Future blogs will explain it in more detail. Please, encourage your friends to read this blog. It’s new and I have very few readers, but I guarantee you this blog will never cease to be interesting.
As I said, nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
MYSTERIOUS FOREIGN DIALECTS
Nobody asked me, but…
Last week on the news (and drawing quite a bit of attention) were a couple of people who have what they call a Foreign Accent Syndrome. Briefly, these people started speaking with foreign accents…usually more than one…and this happened without any control of the person doing the speaking. They would start a conversation in a strictly-American manner and, suddenly start speaking with a French accent or a Russian accent. The people doing this swore that they had no control of this and have been examined by several physicians who seem to be without explanation.
I can explain it, and, in fact, have had several experiences with this syndrome. The problem is that in order to really understand it, you’re going to have to become a steady reader of this blog because the facts that create this syndrome are not simple.
Let me relate my first experience with this syndrome:
When I was in my late teens (I had graduated high school when I had just turned 16), I worked my way through college as a magician and a hypnotist. My agent would book me into hotels in what was called the “Borscht Circuit”: small, resort, hotels in the Catskill Mountains just north of New York City. On any given weekend, I might have from one to four bookings, varying from hotels to private parties to (a) appear as a magician mentalist, (b) put on a hypnotism show or (c) be hired to walk through the dining rooms of larger hotels and simply sit down with the diners and perform close-up magic. Fortunately, for me, I was quite successful and I was able to pay my college tuition, pay my rent, keep food on the table and save a little bit on the side.
Being young and good-looking (I actually was good-looking when I was young), and being a stage performer, I was attractive to a lot of females varying in age from their teens to their sixties, and several of the younger females would ask me to hypnotize them.
I was never foolish enough to hypnotize any females without other females being present because I had been warned by other hypnotists (and it is true) that most females, when awakening from hypnosis, have the feeling that they have been sexually used. I didn’t need a criminal record as a sexual predator, so whenever I hypnotized a female, I would only do so in the presence of several other people.
On one occasion, at a private party, I was putting on a hypnotism show. Recently, a book entitled “The Search for Bridie Murphy” had been on the best-seller list. The book was about a woman who, under hypnosis, had started to speak with a heavy Irish brogue and identified herself as a woman named Bridie Murphy who lived in a small village outside of Dublin about a hundred years ago. I’ll talk more about the fascinating case of Bridie Murphy in another blog, but for this blog the story of Bridie Murphy had piqued my curiosity so much that I tried something on one of my subjects who happened to be a seventeen-year-old girl.
When giving a hypnotism show, I would routinely regress subjects through the years and have them remember what presents they got for their third birthday party and who was there, etc.
This time, however, I told this female subject that I was regressing her back to her mother’s womb…and even before that. I asked her where she was,,,
Imagine everyone’s shock and surprise when this girl started to speak in French! I am not a linguist, but French is something quite distinctive. I knew some words in the language, but not a lot. Fortunately, there was a woman in the audience who said she spoke French…but said she could not understand many of the words the girl was rambling on in French because she said the words were ancient and no longer in use.
At the insistence of her friends who were, understandably, frightened, I brought the subject back to the present and woke her up.
She told us that she did not speak French. She did not know anyone who spoke French and that she was studying Spanish in High School. She did not remember anything that had transpired while she was hypnotized.
This incident does not fully explain how the women in the news report had this Foreign Accent Syndrome, but it does open the door to some possibilities. Future blogs will explain it in more detail. Please, encourage your friends to read this blog. It’s new and I have very few readers, but I guarantee you this blog will never cease to be interesting.
As I said, nobody asked me.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES
By Stephen Ellis
THE PUZZLE OF THE “AURA”
Nobody asked me, but…
Most people are unaware that there is an “aura” surrounding the bodies of almost every living thing. I’ve never seen any photography showing an “aura” for insects, but humans, dogs, cats, birds and virtually everything that is made of flesh and blood has this “aura” surrounding their body…and there are literally thousands of photographs that show it. I tried to attach one to show you, but my computer would not allow it. You can see several of them at http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=slv8-reg&va=human+aura&sz=all). The “aura” surrounding human beings is more than a hundred times larger than the “aura” surrounding any other warm-blooded animals. The aura surrounding humans is massive while the aura surrounding other animals is more like a halo.
When I speak of “infra-red” film, I want to be certain that everyone is on the same page: There are two colors that the human eye cannot see: infra-red and ultra-violet. We know these colors exist and can be measured by computers, but they are not visible to the human eye. Ultra-violet is very sensitive to light and infra-red is very sensitive to heat. So, taking pictures with infra-red film is taking pictures that are very sensitive to heat. These “auras” of human beings seem to completely surround the body, but are particularly intense around the area of the head. These “auras” are quite colorful, and will change color as the mood of the individual changes.
Please do not confuse “aura” photography with what is called “Kirlian” photography. “Kirlian” photography sends out an electro-magnet charge that will give even inanimate objects a “glow”. “Aura” photography takes pictures of things in their natural state without adding an electro-magnetic charge. The human aura is not something that can be measured with an electro-encephalograph (EE). The EE only measures electrical activity going on inside the brain…not outside the brain.
There are a number of people who claim to be able to see “auras” with their eyes, unaided by anything. Many of these people say they can tell if a person is good or bad…trustworthy or dishonest…a leader or a follower…by looking at his or her “aura”. More about such people in another blog.
These “auras” play an exceptionally important role in discussing the paranormal.
Human curiosity, being what it is, “aura” photography has been used by photographers to photograph the “aura” of dying people. Having a photographer standing-by while someone is dying is, usually, not an acceptable practice, but it has been used around wounded military personnel when doctors knew there was no chance of recovery. When a body is declared to be medically “dead”, the “aura” continues to surround the body for varying lengths of time, and then appears to slowly move-off. Most often the “aura” seems to rise and disappear into the atmosphere. The fact that it does not cease to exist when the body dies, is not only curious, but is strongly indicative of some sort of existence beyond death…and it does beg certain questions be answered:
Is this what a lot of religions call an “immortal soul”?
Is the “aura” of a dead person what we call a ghost?
What role does the “aura” play in our daily lives?
What role does the “aura” play in our thinking?
Does this mean that some part of us is still living after we die?
Of course, there are many more questions that should be asked, and I will welcome any questions or experiences you have if you will send them to me at stebrel@aol.com.
Now let’s take a good look at another unseen part of human beings : The thing that separates human beings from all other animals…the human mind.
Our brains are sensitive to five things: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. If we can’t see, something, hear it, smell it, taste it or touch it, we assume that it does not exist. But what about our minds? We can’t really see it (or even locate it). It has no smell. We can’t taste it. We can’t touch it. And, what we “hear” is really our own voice talking to us…so we can’t really hear the mind, either. Yet we certainly know it exists…and in fact, it controls our lives!
The human brain has often been likened to an incredibly fine computer. But in order for any computer to function, data has to be put into it. It’s reasonable to assume that the data input to our brain comes from our mind.
The precise location of the human mind has always been a puzzle to scientists. Most assume the mind is in the brain, because when we talk or read or think, we hear our voice in our heads as if it’s coming from inside our head. But this is not, necessarily, the case. The “mind” could be located in the toes…or in our liver…and it would still sound like it was coming from inside our heads because if the mind supplies the data to the brain, the brain conveys the messages from its location in the head. The brain is the computer that controls the body…the mind feeds the brain with information.
Proof? When someone has a massive stroke, the brain will not function sufficiently to allow the body muscles to move on command…but the thought process…the “mind”…is unimpaired. Ask people who have recovered from a stroke and they will tell you that their minds functioned in a completely normal manner…while the rest of the body was unable to respond to the commands of the mind. When someone is knocked out by a blow to the head…the brain may be damaged, but the mind continues to flow as if nothing happened. Talk to someone with cerebral palsy: Their brain is clearly malfunctioning…but their minds are clear and many have become doctors, lawyers, professors, etc.
Supposing…just supposing…the mind is not located in our body, but is somewhere outside of our body. For example…in our “aura”. I’m not saying that this is the case, but let’s open our vistas to look at this as a “possibility”. It would explain how it is that mind continues to function even when the brain is seriously injured. It would also explain much that science cannot explain as well as several things we may not understand, such as déjà vu experiences, dreams and a lot more.
The human mind is fascinating and mysterious: it can not only perceive colors no other animal can perceive, it actually enables us to make choices, rather than act on instinct like every other animal. The human mind enables us to communicate with others, analyze problems, see things and hear voices that aren’t really there when we sleep (dreams), hear music that isn’t being played anywhere, visualize people, places and events we have never seen (reading). Unquestionably, the human mind stands alone as one of the most remarkable…and inexplicable…things in this world. There is much more to the mind that we will look at in future blogs.
If I seem to be “getting off the track”, I’m really not. The true location of the mind may also explain the paranormal and life after death experiences. More about this next time.
As I said, nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
THE PUZZLE OF THE “AURA”
Nobody asked me, but…
Most people are unaware that there is an “aura” surrounding the bodies of almost every living thing. I’ve never seen any photography showing an “aura” for insects, but humans, dogs, cats, birds and virtually everything that is made of flesh and blood has this “aura” surrounding their body…and there are literally thousands of photographs that show it. I tried to attach one to show you, but my computer would not allow it. You can see several of them at http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=slv8-reg&va=human+aura&sz=all). The “aura” surrounding human beings is more than a hundred times larger than the “aura” surrounding any other warm-blooded animals. The aura surrounding humans is massive while the aura surrounding other animals is more like a halo.
When I speak of “infra-red” film, I want to be certain that everyone is on the same page: There are two colors that the human eye cannot see: infra-red and ultra-violet. We know these colors exist and can be measured by computers, but they are not visible to the human eye. Ultra-violet is very sensitive to light and infra-red is very sensitive to heat. So, taking pictures with infra-red film is taking pictures that are very sensitive to heat. These “auras” of human beings seem to completely surround the body, but are particularly intense around the area of the head. These “auras” are quite colorful, and will change color as the mood of the individual changes.
Please do not confuse “aura” photography with what is called “Kirlian” photography. “Kirlian” photography sends out an electro-magnet charge that will give even inanimate objects a “glow”. “Aura” photography takes pictures of things in their natural state without adding an electro-magnetic charge. The human aura is not something that can be measured with an electro-encephalograph (EE). The EE only measures electrical activity going on inside the brain…not outside the brain.
There are a number of people who claim to be able to see “auras” with their eyes, unaided by anything. Many of these people say they can tell if a person is good or bad…trustworthy or dishonest…a leader or a follower…by looking at his or her “aura”. More about such people in another blog.
These “auras” play an exceptionally important role in discussing the paranormal.
Human curiosity, being what it is, “aura” photography has been used by photographers to photograph the “aura” of dying people. Having a photographer standing-by while someone is dying is, usually, not an acceptable practice, but it has been used around wounded military personnel when doctors knew there was no chance of recovery. When a body is declared to be medically “dead”, the “aura” continues to surround the body for varying lengths of time, and then appears to slowly move-off. Most often the “aura” seems to rise and disappear into the atmosphere. The fact that it does not cease to exist when the body dies, is not only curious, but is strongly indicative of some sort of existence beyond death…and it does beg certain questions be answered:
Is this what a lot of religions call an “immortal soul”?
Is the “aura” of a dead person what we call a ghost?
What role does the “aura” play in our daily lives?
What role does the “aura” play in our thinking?
Does this mean that some part of us is still living after we die?
Of course, there are many more questions that should be asked, and I will welcome any questions or experiences you have if you will send them to me at stebrel@aol.com.
Now let’s take a good look at another unseen part of human beings : The thing that separates human beings from all other animals…the human mind.
Our brains are sensitive to five things: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. If we can’t see, something, hear it, smell it, taste it or touch it, we assume that it does not exist. But what about our minds? We can’t really see it (or even locate it). It has no smell. We can’t taste it. We can’t touch it. And, what we “hear” is really our own voice talking to us…so we can’t really hear the mind, either. Yet we certainly know it exists…and in fact, it controls our lives!
The human brain has often been likened to an incredibly fine computer. But in order for any computer to function, data has to be put into it. It’s reasonable to assume that the data input to our brain comes from our mind.
The precise location of the human mind has always been a puzzle to scientists. Most assume the mind is in the brain, because when we talk or read or think, we hear our voice in our heads as if it’s coming from inside our head. But this is not, necessarily, the case. The “mind” could be located in the toes…or in our liver…and it would still sound like it was coming from inside our heads because if the mind supplies the data to the brain, the brain conveys the messages from its location in the head. The brain is the computer that controls the body…the mind feeds the brain with information.
Proof? When someone has a massive stroke, the brain will not function sufficiently to allow the body muscles to move on command…but the thought process…the “mind”…is unimpaired. Ask people who have recovered from a stroke and they will tell you that their minds functioned in a completely normal manner…while the rest of the body was unable to respond to the commands of the mind. When someone is knocked out by a blow to the head…the brain may be damaged, but the mind continues to flow as if nothing happened. Talk to someone with cerebral palsy: Their brain is clearly malfunctioning…but their minds are clear and many have become doctors, lawyers, professors, etc.
Supposing…just supposing…the mind is not located in our body, but is somewhere outside of our body. For example…in our “aura”. I’m not saying that this is the case, but let’s open our vistas to look at this as a “possibility”. It would explain how it is that mind continues to function even when the brain is seriously injured. It would also explain much that science cannot explain as well as several things we may not understand, such as déjà vu experiences, dreams and a lot more.
The human mind is fascinating and mysterious: it can not only perceive colors no other animal can perceive, it actually enables us to make choices, rather than act on instinct like every other animal. The human mind enables us to communicate with others, analyze problems, see things and hear voices that aren’t really there when we sleep (dreams), hear music that isn’t being played anywhere, visualize people, places and events we have never seen (reading). Unquestionably, the human mind stands alone as one of the most remarkable…and inexplicable…things in this world. There is much more to the mind that we will look at in future blogs.
If I seem to be “getting off the track”, I’m really not. The true location of the mind may also explain the paranormal and life after death experiences. More about this next time.
As I said, nobody asked me.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
SCIENTIFIC PRROF
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
A reader wrote and asked me what “scientific” or “ironclad” proof I had concerning the two blogs I wrote about ghosts. I do understand the reader’s concern or apprehension, but the fact is that science has proven absolutely nothing!
Let’s start with the basics: Where do we live? If you stop to take a moment to think about it, we live on a little ball, floating around, surrounded by nothing. For some reason, this little ball rotates and revolves about a larger ball without any demonstrable scientific explanation…and it does it with amazing accuracy. Our clocks and calendars can predict the exact moment of sunrise in Moscow (or any other location) fifty or one hundred years from now to the exact second. Why?
Astronomers (a division of science that freely admits it knows nothing about “everything”) will tell you it’s because the rotation and revolution of the Earth is precise and predictable. Wow! Isn’t that a great scientific explanation.
When I was kid, almost all the schools in the world taught us that, billions of years ago, another star passed close enough to our sun and the gravitational force of the larger star pulled some gasses from our sun. As the gasses cooled, they formed into round globules and became the planets in our solar system. That theory of creation was accepted virtually everywhere in the world...except by those who believed in the "six days" story.
A hundred or so years later, that scientific explanation was exploded when the “Big Bang” theory of creation came out and became accepted as the story of our creation. The “Big Bang” explanation has lost most of its support because of the “Perpetual State” theory…which is now losing its standing to the “String Theory”.
In other words…science doesn’t know and can’t explain how we got here.
O.K. Maybe science can explain how we stay here? As long as I have been alive, science has explained that we are held in place by “gravity”…the same gravity that Sir Isaac Newton, three hundred years ago, used to explain why an apple from a tree falls down and not up. Scientists expanded this theory to explain that the gravity of the sun is so strong that it holds us in place…year after year…millennium after millennium, etc. But all explanations of gravity tell us that the force of gravity creates an equal force in all directions. But, as we have recently discovered, the rotation of the Earth and other planets is slightly “elliptical” and not equal in all directions. And why doesn’t the friction in space (recently discovered) slow down our rotations and revolutions as friction slows down a spinning top?
Again, science has no explanation.
What about other sciences? Like medicine or physics? The so-called-science of medicine changes their minds every year. A couple of hundred years ago, tomatoes’ were considered a poisonous fruit. The cure for most sickness was to cut your arm and bleed the bad blood out of your body. Things like antibodies, antihistamines, antibiotics, cholesterol, stem cells, etc. were unknown. Medicine is probably the least scientific of all sciences.
Physics? A hundred years ago, no one seemed to know anything about nuclear physics… crystal physics, microwave physics…or quantum physics. The truth is that each and every one of our physical laws defy explanation by physicists. Physicists will tell you that there are no valid scientific explanations for anything…only theories.
So what kind of “scientific” proof are you looking for concerning paranormal phenomina?
When I went to school, the 150-year-old theory of Charles Darwin that man evolved from monkeys was taught as absolute fact. Yet, as we are learning today, the inner physical differences and differences in the DNA between us and the primate apes are so basic, and numerous it now seems almost inconceivable that man evolved from apes.
So, do we turn to the theory of “intelligent design”? That some intelligent being or God designed the whole pattern of our planets and life on them? Why not? It makes every bit as much sense as do the scientific explanations.
As an individual, I do not believe that God created the world in six days and, on the seventh, he rested…as the Book of Genesis tells us. It doesn’t jibe with fossils we’ve found dating back millions of years. All the Bibles (there are more than 100 versions of the Bible in publication today) start with the Book of Genesis. From there, they all head-out in different directions, many of them directly contradicting each other. Yet, they are all supposed to be the word of God. To me, it doesn’t make sense that a God would contradict himself.
I’m not trying to start a new religion or a new cult, and I definitely do not want my readers to think of this blog as religiously induced, but the thought of “intelligent design” makes as much or more sense to me than any of science’s theories concerning how we got here. It’s just that none of the religious dogmas with which I am familiar offer good answers or even follow known historical records.
I guess I’ll keep looking. Maybe, when I die, I’ll find the answer, because I definitely do not believe our journey through life ends here. My research into the paranormal has convinced me that there is more to life and death than most people seem to believe.
Next week I’ll talk about some of the things my research has uncovered.
As I said…nobody asked me.
Please e-mail me at stebrel@aol.com and tell me about your paranormal experiences.
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
A reader wrote and asked me what “scientific” or “ironclad” proof I had concerning the two blogs I wrote about ghosts. I do understand the reader’s concern or apprehension, but the fact is that science has proven absolutely nothing!
Let’s start with the basics: Where do we live? If you stop to take a moment to think about it, we live on a little ball, floating around, surrounded by nothing. For some reason, this little ball rotates and revolves about a larger ball without any demonstrable scientific explanation…and it does it with amazing accuracy. Our clocks and calendars can predict the exact moment of sunrise in Moscow (or any other location) fifty or one hundred years from now to the exact second. Why?
Astronomers (a division of science that freely admits it knows nothing about “everything”) will tell you it’s because the rotation and revolution of the Earth is precise and predictable. Wow! Isn’t that a great scientific explanation.
When I was kid, almost all the schools in the world taught us that, billions of years ago, another star passed close enough to our sun and the gravitational force of the larger star pulled some gasses from our sun. As the gasses cooled, they formed into round globules and became the planets in our solar system. That theory of creation was accepted virtually everywhere in the world...except by those who believed in the "six days" story.
A hundred or so years later, that scientific explanation was exploded when the “Big Bang” theory of creation came out and became accepted as the story of our creation. The “Big Bang” explanation has lost most of its support because of the “Perpetual State” theory…which is now losing its standing to the “String Theory”.
In other words…science doesn’t know and can’t explain how we got here.
O.K. Maybe science can explain how we stay here? As long as I have been alive, science has explained that we are held in place by “gravity”…the same gravity that Sir Isaac Newton, three hundred years ago, used to explain why an apple from a tree falls down and not up. Scientists expanded this theory to explain that the gravity of the sun is so strong that it holds us in place…year after year…millennium after millennium, etc. But all explanations of gravity tell us that the force of gravity creates an equal force in all directions. But, as we have recently discovered, the rotation of the Earth and other planets is slightly “elliptical” and not equal in all directions. And why doesn’t the friction in space (recently discovered) slow down our rotations and revolutions as friction slows down a spinning top?
Again, science has no explanation.
What about other sciences? Like medicine or physics? The so-called-science of medicine changes their minds every year. A couple of hundred years ago, tomatoes’ were considered a poisonous fruit. The cure for most sickness was to cut your arm and bleed the bad blood out of your body. Things like antibodies, antihistamines, antibiotics, cholesterol, stem cells, etc. were unknown. Medicine is probably the least scientific of all sciences.
Physics? A hundred years ago, no one seemed to know anything about nuclear physics… crystal physics, microwave physics…or quantum physics. The truth is that each and every one of our physical laws defy explanation by physicists. Physicists will tell you that there are no valid scientific explanations for anything…only theories.
So what kind of “scientific” proof are you looking for concerning paranormal phenomina?
When I went to school, the 150-year-old theory of Charles Darwin that man evolved from monkeys was taught as absolute fact. Yet, as we are learning today, the inner physical differences and differences in the DNA between us and the primate apes are so basic, and numerous it now seems almost inconceivable that man evolved from apes.
So, do we turn to the theory of “intelligent design”? That some intelligent being or God designed the whole pattern of our planets and life on them? Why not? It makes every bit as much sense as do the scientific explanations.
As an individual, I do not believe that God created the world in six days and, on the seventh, he rested…as the Book of Genesis tells us. It doesn’t jibe with fossils we’ve found dating back millions of years. All the Bibles (there are more than 100 versions of the Bible in publication today) start with the Book of Genesis. From there, they all head-out in different directions, many of them directly contradicting each other. Yet, they are all supposed to be the word of God. To me, it doesn’t make sense that a God would contradict himself.
I’m not trying to start a new religion or a new cult, and I definitely do not want my readers to think of this blog as religiously induced, but the thought of “intelligent design” makes as much or more sense to me than any of science’s theories concerning how we got here. It’s just that none of the religious dogmas with which I am familiar offer good answers or even follow known historical records.
I guess I’ll keep looking. Maybe, when I die, I’ll find the answer, because I definitely do not believe our journey through life ends here. My research into the paranormal has convinced me that there is more to life and death than most people seem to believe.
Next week I’ll talk about some of the things my research has uncovered.
As I said…nobody asked me.
Please e-mail me at stebrel@aol.com and tell me about your paranormal experiences.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Do Ghosts Talk?
EXPLAINING LIFE'S MYSTERIES
By Stephen Ellis
DO GHOSTS TALK?
Nobody asked me, but…
Years before I became interested in the paranormal, I was told of an incident by a female friend of mine. At the time we were both seventeen years old, and I really didn't give what she told me too much credibility. But now, reflecting back on the story she told me, I can't think of another possible explanation. For purposes of this blog, we'll call the girl Laura Goldberg.
I knew Laura as a part of the crowd I used to hang-out with in New York. She was a member of the B'nai B'rith Girls, and I was the president of the B'nai B'rith Boys. These were social associations connected to a couple of neighborhood synagogues where the kids shared a belief in Judaism. We would sponsor teen-age dances and other outings (such as a trip to Bear Mountain or to Rye Beach, etc.). Dances were always held at one or another synagogue and it was a great way to meet other kids your age who shared your religious beliefs.
I knew Laura only slightly as a member of BBG, but I did hear about the tragic accident that took the lives of both her mother and father. I don't know the details of the accident, but from what I was told, her father and mother were returning from a day at Atlantic Beach, when a car in front of them had a blow-out and careened into their car. They swerved and went into a tree, killing them both instantly.
Possibly the accident (everyone at B'nai B'rith talked about it) made me take greater notice of Laura, and we became quite friendly. One night, after a B'nai B'rith sponsored dance, I asked her if she would like to join me for some dessert and coffee at a restaurant on Broadway and 86th Street called "Tip Toe Inn". She accepted and we went there.
As kids of seventeen will do, our conversation started by talking about mutual friends, but quickly came around to the accident that killed her parents. I had planned to have coffee for about thirty minutes, but two hours later, we were still talking and having more coffee. Laura told me that she didn't talk about an incident with her father much because people usually thought she was crazy, but she decided she was going to tell me about the strangest thing that happened to her after her parents were killed:
The night following the accident, Laura had virtually cried herself to sleep, when she awoke with a start. She opened her eyes and her father was standing over her bed. She bolted upright with a lot of questions pounding in her head when her father spoke to her and said, "Laura, don't talk, just do what I tell you to do. Go to your desk and write down what I tell you to write."
Almost in a trance, she did what her father said.
Her father began to list a number of bank accounts that were in Swiss Banks . They were numbered accounts and he had her write down the numbers. He also told Laura where she would find two keys that were hidden in the apartment. They were, he said, to two safe deposit boxes no one knew about. She wrote everything down, and then her father's voice stopped. She looked around and he was gone.
Needless to say, Laura did not go back to sleep. She tried calling her father's attorney, Irving Roth, but his office did not answer (no answering machines in those days) until 9:30 the following morning. She finally reached Roth and Laura told him what had happened. Roth told Laura that she was probably dreaming and that he didn't know of any Swiss bank accounts or safe deposit boxes her parents had, but if Laura would relate what she thought her father told her, he would check it out for her. She relayed the information.
About a week later, Roth called Laura and wanted to know where she got the banking information. Everything Laura had written down was accurate! Roth refused to believe the story Laura had told him and preferred to believe that Laura had simply come-upon the information when going through her deceased parents' things. Laura told me that following her parents' death, she had not gone into her parents' bedroom because she was afraid to…until after her father spoke with her.
I told Laura that Roth made more sense than the story she told me, but Laura swore to me that every word was true. I have to admit, our mutual friends all believed Laura to be a very honest person.
Knowing what I now know, I can believe Laura's story quite readily. I've run into numbers of people who have been contacted verbally by a deceased parent, spouse or other loved one.
It would have been prudent for me to meet with Laura again and question her thoroughly, but at seventeen you're not always "prudent". She moved away less than a year later and I have completely lost contact with her. I did try to locate an attorney named Irving Roth in New York, but there was more than one lawyer with that name...and some lawyers with that name had already passed away.
As I said, nobody asked me.
Please e-mail me at stebrel@aol.com and tell me about your paranormal experiences.
By Stephen Ellis
DO GHOSTS TALK?
Nobody asked me, but…
Years before I became interested in the paranormal, I was told of an incident by a female friend of mine. At the time we were both seventeen years old, and I really didn't give what she told me too much credibility. But now, reflecting back on the story she told me, I can't think of another possible explanation. For purposes of this blog, we'll call the girl Laura Goldberg.
I knew Laura as a part of the crowd I used to hang-out with in New York. She was a member of the B'nai B'rith Girls, and I was the president of the B'nai B'rith Boys. These were social associations connected to a couple of neighborhood synagogues where the kids shared a belief in Judaism. We would sponsor teen-age dances and other outings (such as a trip to Bear Mountain or to Rye Beach, etc.). Dances were always held at one or another synagogue and it was a great way to meet other kids your age who shared your religious beliefs.
I knew Laura only slightly as a member of BBG, but I did hear about the tragic accident that took the lives of both her mother and father. I don't know the details of the accident, but from what I was told, her father and mother were returning from a day at Atlantic Beach, when a car in front of them had a blow-out and careened into their car. They swerved and went into a tree, killing them both instantly.
Possibly the accident (everyone at B'nai B'rith talked about it) made me take greater notice of Laura, and we became quite friendly. One night, after a B'nai B'rith sponsored dance, I asked her if she would like to join me for some dessert and coffee at a restaurant on Broadway and 86th Street called "Tip Toe Inn". She accepted and we went there.
As kids of seventeen will do, our conversation started by talking about mutual friends, but quickly came around to the accident that killed her parents. I had planned to have coffee for about thirty minutes, but two hours later, we were still talking and having more coffee. Laura told me that she didn't talk about an incident with her father much because people usually thought she was crazy, but she decided she was going to tell me about the strangest thing that happened to her after her parents were killed:
The night following the accident, Laura had virtually cried herself to sleep, when she awoke with a start. She opened her eyes and her father was standing over her bed. She bolted upright with a lot of questions pounding in her head when her father spoke to her and said, "Laura, don't talk, just do what I tell you to do. Go to your desk and write down what I tell you to write."
Almost in a trance, she did what her father said.
Her father began to list a number of bank accounts that were in Swiss Banks . They were numbered accounts and he had her write down the numbers. He also told Laura where she would find two keys that were hidden in the apartment. They were, he said, to two safe deposit boxes no one knew about. She wrote everything down, and then her father's voice stopped. She looked around and he was gone.
Needless to say, Laura did not go back to sleep. She tried calling her father's attorney, Irving Roth, but his office did not answer (no answering machines in those days) until 9:30 the following morning. She finally reached Roth and Laura told him what had happened. Roth told Laura that she was probably dreaming and that he didn't know of any Swiss bank accounts or safe deposit boxes her parents had, but if Laura would relate what she thought her father told her, he would check it out for her. She relayed the information.
About a week later, Roth called Laura and wanted to know where she got the banking information. Everything Laura had written down was accurate! Roth refused to believe the story Laura had told him and preferred to believe that Laura had simply come-upon the information when going through her deceased parents' things. Laura told me that following her parents' death, she had not gone into her parents' bedroom because she was afraid to…until after her father spoke with her.
I told Laura that Roth made more sense than the story she told me, but Laura swore to me that every word was true. I have to admit, our mutual friends all believed Laura to be a very honest person.
Knowing what I now know, I can believe Laura's story quite readily. I've run into numbers of people who have been contacted verbally by a deceased parent, spouse or other loved one.
It would have been prudent for me to meet with Laura again and question her thoroughly, but at seventeen you're not always "prudent". She moved away less than a year later and I have completely lost contact with her. I did try to locate an attorney named Irving Roth in New York, but there was more than one lawyer with that name...and some lawyers with that name had already passed away.
As I said, nobody asked me.
Please e-mail me at stebrel@aol.com and tell me about your paranormal experiences.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Are Ghosts for Real? Volume I
Nobody asked me, but...
With Haloween around the corner and people getting into costume as vampires, ghosts and other imaginary creatures, I'm reminded of an incident that actually changed my life:
Years ago, if I was asked about a life after death, I'd probably have laughed and told the person I was talking to that they go to church too often. When you die...you die! Your body gets cold and either gets buried or cremated...but one way or another, that's it!
When I read about people who claim to have become one with God and/or visited with a dead spouse or parent I used to chuckle to myself and think these people were "weirdos". The whole concept of Heaven and Hell are really very recent innovations first appearing in Dante's "Divine Comedy" in the 1300s. Prior to the publication of the "Divine Comedy" there hade been talk of a Heaven during the early Roman Empire when many people were dissatisfied with having to live the life of a Serf or a Slave, and the concept was created that when you die you will go to a better place and be rewarded for your pain during your lifetime.
Heaven, Pergatory, Hell and the Devil were created in Dante's "Divine Comedy", but the idea that life does not end when we die goes way back to the Old Testament.
As a skeptic, it only makes my own experience more of a puzzlement:
About thirty years ago, I had some business in San Francisco. I knew I would be there for about six months, so rather than confine myself to a hotel room for that length of time, I rented a furnished apartment on Dolores Street. It was a small one-bedroom place in a gigantic complex catering mostly to singles...and being single, that was a "plus".
The first night I was there, I was feeling quite uncomfortable trying to get to sleep in an unfamiliar environment. I opened my eyes and looked around...and there, in the corner of the room, was girl! Not the kind I have fanatisies about, but a blond girl in her early twenties. She was wearing a tan pant-suit; she had her hair in kind of a pageboy hairdo, she was looking at me with her arms folded in front of her...and she was kind of pretty.
Not that I would normally object to finding a pretty girl in my bedroom, but I was both startled and a little scared. I asked her what is she doing there. She didn't respond, so I reached for the lamp next to my bed and turned it on. In doing so, I looked away for less than a second.
She was gone!
Climbing out of bed, I searched the apartment thoroughly...and there was no sign of anyone (but myself) having been there. I relaxed and reasoned that this was one of those cases where you seem to wake up but you're really still half asleep, and because this was a new environment for me, my mind was just playing some tricks on me. I went back to sleep.
Now let's fast-forward to about a month later: San Francisco was having one of those extremely rare days in San Francisco when the skies were clear and the temperature was in the mid-eighties. Just about everyone living in the complex was gathered about and was using the large swimming pool that was, typically, only used three or four days a year.
San Francisco being what it is, I was hit on by a "beautiful" young man. I'm not homosexual, but neither am I homophobic. I didn't know anyone else by the pool, so it was nice to have someone to talk with. I made the comment (innocently) that my "beautiful" friend had a magnificent physique. That was all the encouragement he needed. He ran to his apartment and came back with a stack of photographs of himself striking "Mr. America" type poses. As he was going through the pictures, I bolted upright and said "stop"!
In the background of one of his pitures were two girls...not wearing pant-suits, but wearing bikinis. But there was no doubt, whatsoever, in my mind that one of the girls was the girl I thought I had seen in my room my first night there. I asked my new friend if he knew her name. He said "yes", and told it to me.
Curiosity overcame me and I asked him if he knew where I could contact her.
My friend's expression grew dark. He said, "Didn't they tell you when you rented the apartment? She was murdered by her boyfriend in that apartment about a month before you moved in."
O.K....so what did I see? Is that what they call a "ghost"? Or did the walls and furniture somehow bear the memories of that horrible event and convey some of them to me?
That event changed my life in several respects: From someone who had little interest in the paranormal and other mysteries of life, I became an avid researcher of the subject. My research led me into things like psychic phenomina; astral projection; faith healing, religion...and even into UFOs. I became determined to find reasonable explanations where none seemed to exist. Somewhere in the vastness of our world were things and events that defied explanation. Quite often, there were "scientific" explanations that simply did not hold water.
I made it a quest to try and find some logical or sensible answers. In many cases, I did!
And that's what this blog is about. Sometimes I will be "debunking" claims of experts, sometimes I will explain the "how" and the "why" of religious beliefs...and sometimes I will be relating things that I experienced on my quest for the truth.
The paranormal is always in the news...but it's usually hidden in a small paragraph on page 23 or 24 of a newspaper. I'll invite you to share your experiences with me and see if we can't find the truth behind them. I'll continue to research items about the paranormal and see if some of them don't help us understand life's mysteries.
This blog will be your blog. My name is Stephen Ellis. You can contact me at stebrel@aol.com. Please do.
As I said...nobody asked me.
With Haloween around the corner and people getting into costume as vampires, ghosts and other imaginary creatures, I'm reminded of an incident that actually changed my life:
Years ago, if I was asked about a life after death, I'd probably have laughed and told the person I was talking to that they go to church too often. When you die...you die! Your body gets cold and either gets buried or cremated...but one way or another, that's it!
When I read about people who claim to have become one with God and/or visited with a dead spouse or parent I used to chuckle to myself and think these people were "weirdos". The whole concept of Heaven and Hell are really very recent innovations first appearing in Dante's "Divine Comedy" in the 1300s. Prior to the publication of the "Divine Comedy" there hade been talk of a Heaven during the early Roman Empire when many people were dissatisfied with having to live the life of a Serf or a Slave, and the concept was created that when you die you will go to a better place and be rewarded for your pain during your lifetime.
Heaven, Pergatory, Hell and the Devil were created in Dante's "Divine Comedy", but the idea that life does not end when we die goes way back to the Old Testament.
As a skeptic, it only makes my own experience more of a puzzlement:
About thirty years ago, I had some business in San Francisco. I knew I would be there for about six months, so rather than confine myself to a hotel room for that length of time, I rented a furnished apartment on Dolores Street. It was a small one-bedroom place in a gigantic complex catering mostly to singles...and being single, that was a "plus".
The first night I was there, I was feeling quite uncomfortable trying to get to sleep in an unfamiliar environment. I opened my eyes and looked around...and there, in the corner of the room, was girl! Not the kind I have fanatisies about, but a blond girl in her early twenties. She was wearing a tan pant-suit; she had her hair in kind of a pageboy hairdo, she was looking at me with her arms folded in front of her...and she was kind of pretty.
Not that I would normally object to finding a pretty girl in my bedroom, but I was both startled and a little scared. I asked her what is she doing there. She didn't respond, so I reached for the lamp next to my bed and turned it on. In doing so, I looked away for less than a second.
She was gone!
Climbing out of bed, I searched the apartment thoroughly...and there was no sign of anyone (but myself) having been there. I relaxed and reasoned that this was one of those cases where you seem to wake up but you're really still half asleep, and because this was a new environment for me, my mind was just playing some tricks on me. I went back to sleep.
Now let's fast-forward to about a month later: San Francisco was having one of those extremely rare days in San Francisco when the skies were clear and the temperature was in the mid-eighties. Just about everyone living in the complex was gathered about and was using the large swimming pool that was, typically, only used three or four days a year.
San Francisco being what it is, I was hit on by a "beautiful" young man. I'm not homosexual, but neither am I homophobic. I didn't know anyone else by the pool, so it was nice to have someone to talk with. I made the comment (innocently) that my "beautiful" friend had a magnificent physique. That was all the encouragement he needed. He ran to his apartment and came back with a stack of photographs of himself striking "Mr. America" type poses. As he was going through the pictures, I bolted upright and said "stop"!
In the background of one of his pitures were two girls...not wearing pant-suits, but wearing bikinis. But there was no doubt, whatsoever, in my mind that one of the girls was the girl I thought I had seen in my room my first night there. I asked my new friend if he knew her name. He said "yes", and told it to me.
Curiosity overcame me and I asked him if he knew where I could contact her.
My friend's expression grew dark. He said, "Didn't they tell you when you rented the apartment? She was murdered by her boyfriend in that apartment about a month before you moved in."
O.K....so what did I see? Is that what they call a "ghost"? Or did the walls and furniture somehow bear the memories of that horrible event and convey some of them to me?
That event changed my life in several respects: From someone who had little interest in the paranormal and other mysteries of life, I became an avid researcher of the subject. My research led me into things like psychic phenomina; astral projection; faith healing, religion...and even into UFOs. I became determined to find reasonable explanations where none seemed to exist. Somewhere in the vastness of our world were things and events that defied explanation. Quite often, there were "scientific" explanations that simply did not hold water.
I made it a quest to try and find some logical or sensible answers. In many cases, I did!
And that's what this blog is about. Sometimes I will be "debunking" claims of experts, sometimes I will explain the "how" and the "why" of religious beliefs...and sometimes I will be relating things that I experienced on my quest for the truth.
The paranormal is always in the news...but it's usually hidden in a small paragraph on page 23 or 24 of a newspaper. I'll invite you to share your experiences with me and see if we can't find the truth behind them. I'll continue to research items about the paranormal and see if some of them don't help us understand life's mysteries.
This blog will be your blog. My name is Stephen Ellis. You can contact me at stebrel@aol.com. Please do.
As I said...nobody asked me.
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