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.
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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.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
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.
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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.
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