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Supernatural Mysteries
Posted on Monday, May 07, 2007 (CDT) by Thoth
 The supernatural world is one that seems to have existed alongside our own world since the dawn of time, yet despite our awareness of the phenomena associated with it, there is still much to be understood.
The natural world offers us examples of multitude of unexplained occurrences, encompassing subjects such as ghost activity, sightings of bizarre creatures and the development of abilities that defy rational explanation, that warrant serious investigation.
As such, this wealth of unexplained phenomena has encouraged many researchers to consider the possibility that forces beyond our current understanding can and do affect and interact with our world.
Interestingly,
the influence of this strange and uncharted realm of existence is not
confined to mediums, mystics and clairvoyants; people with well
developed psychic abilities. Occasionally, ordinary, even sceptical
people are confronted with situations that make us question the nature
and reality of our own world.
Doppelgangers and Bilocation
 Tales of Doppelgangers are
far from new; in fact they have bewildered and often frightened people
across many cultures for thousands of years. These tales date back at
least as far as ancient Egypt, where it was believed that on occasion a
person’s etheric double could leave a sleeping person and roam free.
The classic doppelganger
manifestation seems to be a darker instance of bilocation. Whereas
bilocation tends to be the result of a deliberate projection of the
self; an art practiced by Tibetan Lama and Indian Yogi, doppelganger
manifestations seem to be different in that the person is often
sleeping or unconscious and thus not consciously in control of the
splitting of their etheric twin from their physical self.
Doppelgangers also tend to be more associated with ill omens and death.
It was said, for example, that England’s Queen Elizabeth saw her own
doppelganger laid out on her bed shortly before her own death.
Interestingly some of the
best documented examples of doppelgangers involve creative people, such
as the English poet Shelly, French author Guy de Maupassant and John
Donne, the 16th century English poet who encountered his wife’s
doppelganger as she gave birth to his stillborn child. Deeply religious
people such as St. Anthony and St. Alphonsus also seem to be more prone
to involvement with these events. Perhaps the most famous example is
that of Padre Pio. Born in Italy in 1887, Padre Pio was a peasant
priest who has become famous as a worker of miracles, a clairvoyant and
stigmatic and a master of the art of being in two places at the same
time, particularly when a dying person needed reassurance.
In 1917, General Luigi
Cadorna was contemplating suicide after Italy’s humiliating defeat at
the hands of the Germans. As he held his service revolver to his head
and prepared to pull the trigger, a Capuchin monk appeared from nowhere
and admonished him for being so stupid. It was years later that Cadorna
met Padre Pio and recognised him as the monk that had saved his life
that night; yet Padre Pio had remained in his monastery in Foggia
throughout World War I.
 In 1942, Padre Pio repeated
this amazing feat by summoning the Archbishop of Montevideo to the
bedside of Monsignor Damiani, a priest who had met Padre Pio in the
1920’s and who had been so impressed by him that he had vowed that when
his time came to die, he would do so in Padre Pio’s presence. When the
archbishop got to his bedside, Damiani had already died, but he had
left a handwritten note that simply said ‘Padre Pio came’. It was not
until two years later that the Archbishop met Padre Pio himself and
recognised him as the monk that had summoned him that night.
A slightly less well known
example of bilocation was that of Emilie Sagée, a 32-year-old French
school teacher whose double would appear and disappear in full view of
her students. Emilie’s double was actually able to appear next to her
in the classroom as well as appearing in other parts of the school.
Emilie seemed to be aware of her strange ability and admitted that it
was good for ensuring her students’ undivided attention - although she doesn't seem to have had conscious control over the situation.
Perhaps the most
astonishing example of Emilie’s unusual ability took place in full view
of over forty students on a summer day in 1846. As the girls sat in the
school hall for a needlework class, Emilie could be seen gardening in
the schools grounds. When the class teacher left the room Emilie’s
motionless doppelganger appeared in her chair - while the real Emilie
could still be seen in the garden. Two of the girls became curious and
approached the doppelganger and tried to touch it, but felt an odd
resistance in the air surrounding it. The apparition faded away after
one girl succeeded in passing through it, causing it to slowly fade into nothing.
Sadly Emilie’s strange ability unnerved many of her employers and resulted in her dismissal from several jobs.
Supernatural creatures
There is a large body of
evidence that suggests that creatures that are most definitely not of
our world sometimes seem to get trapped here. There is much debate as
to whether this may be the result of inter-dimensional travel, parallel
universes, time slips or are a manifestation of the collective
consciousness. Whether these beings have arrived in our world
intentionally or by accident remains a mystery but the fact that
creatures that are not of this world can sometimes end up trapped in it
could explain some of the strange sightings from London’s Highgate
Vampire to the Mothman and Spring Heeled Jack.
The Mothman
 The Mothman phenomenon is
of course one of the best modern examples of a supernatural creature
that has been sighted over a lengthy period of time. During a thirteen
month period, there were multiple sightings of a heavily built 'winged
humanoid', described as being between six and seven feet tall with
brown or grey coloured torso and red glowing eyes, around the small
town of Point Pleasant on the banks of the Ohio River. Although it was
known to chase cars on occasion, the creature tended not to attack
people directly, but its unearthly appearance, sheer size and loud
screech meant that those who saw it were naturally concerned for their
safety.
Many witnesses also
reported being filled with in an inexplicable foreboding and the
creature seemed to be able to mesmerise people with its hypnotic stare.
Sightings of the Mothman ended suddenly in 1967 but only with the
catastrophic collapse of the Silver Bridge into the Ohio River, a
tragedy that many believe was triggered by the creature. The mothman
wasn’t the first supernatural creature to cause fear and widespread
disruption, nor was his stay the longest; that honour goes to England's ‘Spring-healed Jack’.
Spring-heeled Jack
 Spring-heeled Jack was a
‘devil eyed’ flame breathing humanoid type creature, said to be able to
fly through the air in massive leaps. Over a 67 year period from 1838
to 1904, Jack terrorised the people of England by carrying out random
attacks on both men and women alike. He was described by one of his
first victims as wearing a kind of helmet and a tight fitting white
oilskin costume and having long claws and breathing blue and white
flames.
Despite having been spotted all
over England, this description remained remarkably consistent. As
Jack’s rampage continued, women had their clothes torn from their
bodies and were scratched and terrorised, while men were taunted,
slapped, scratched and thrown to the ground. Jack successfully evaded
several traps set by the army and simply laughed and disappeared when
the townsfolk of Lincoln shot at him. The last sighting of
spring-heeled Jack was in Liverpool in 1904 where he started a panic by
leaping from the cobbled streets to the rooftops repeatedly, as if
playing a disruptive game. When a group of men tried to corner him, he
simply vanished into the darkness and was never seen again.
The superhuman qualities
that Jack was said to exhibit have led many observers to speculate that
whatever Jack was, he had to have been something that came from beyond
our dimension, certainly there is little by way of earthly suspects
that would explain his 67 years of mayhem.
Ghosts and Spirits
Like doppelgangers and
bilocation, tales of ghosts and spirits visiting and communicating with
the living also date back to ancient Egypt; it is by no means a recent
phenomenon only attributed to the modern world. There are several
different forms of ghosts and just as many theories concerning what
they might be.
One type of apparition is often attributed to something
called ‘stone tape theory’, which offers an explanation for ghost
sightings that follow established patterns. The best known examples are
the spectral coaches that can sometimes be seen thundering along an old
road or the Roman soldier that at times can be seen guarding an old
town gate. According to the theory, these are specific historical
events that are replayed like a holographic video. In some cases, it is
not just individual ghosts that have been witnessed, but entire armies.
A Spectral Army
 In 1953, a young plumber
named Harry Martindale was working in an old house in the ancient
English city of York when he was amazed to see a legion of Roman
soldiers, some on foot and others on horseback emerging from a cellar
wall. The apparition was so real that a sound, almost like a blaring
trumpet accompanied the disembodied soldiers. Martindale was able to
describe their clothes in amazing detail, telling of their plumbed
helmets and short sword which they carried on their right-hand side.
One peculiar aspect of the sighting was that the soldiers and horses
were only visible from their knees upward. It was later realised that
the reason for this was due to the cellar only reaching so far down
towards the original Roman Road.
Cases like this provide
excellent examples of stone tape theory as one of the key features of
the theory is that the image is replayed like a video, the location and
the movement of the apparition never varies. If the movie screen is
partially obscured, then certain aspects of the image (the soldiers’
feet) simply cannot be seen even though they are ‘there’.
More commonly, ghostly
apparitions can be attributed to those that have retained their
connection to loved ones and can maintain an open channel to the people
with whom a close bond existed during life, which is how the Egyptians
tended to view ghosts. Perhaps the most interesting kind of ghosts are
the ones that are anchored permanently to the earth plane for some
reason, and which can interact with people in the physical world in an
intelligent, often playful manner.
Pete, the playful Ghost
 Perhaps the best example of
these so called ‘intelligent’ ghosts is a ghost from Cardiff, Wales who
is affectionately known as ‘Pete’. The only person who has actually
seen Pete describes him as being the ghost of a young boy of around
nine years of age who judging from his clothes, seems to have grown up
in the 1930’s. Pete took up residence in a lawnmower workshop in the
early nineties and has made his presence known almost daily since then
although he has only been seen once or twice.
What makes Pete different
to most ghosts is that Pete not only displays intelligence, but
playfully interacts with the people involved in the workshop as if he
were part of the family. His tricks include making coins appear from
nowhere on a regular basis, as ‘gifts’ for people and playfully
throwing rubber carburettor plugs at his new found family members when
they least expect it. They in return would chat to Pete and leave him
toys to entertain him; his favourite being a rubric cube, which he
would apparently play with, often changing the top three colours of
each side to a sequence of Blue, Orange, Yellow, which his adopted
family seemed to think was intended to spell out ‘boy’.
Small stones were not
uncommon in the lawnmower workshop and Pete was known to enjoy throwing
them if the opportunity arose. If one of the engineers gently threw a
stone they had retrieved from a mower into the corner of the workshop,
one was invariably thrown back to him. One day, the man in question
threw a stone and as usual Pete playfully threw one back.
The next
time, the man pretended to throw one but didn’t and still a stone came
back, but when the man repeated his dummy throw a second time, no stone
was returned, somehow Pete had ‘learned’ that some of the throws were
trick throws. Likewise, if Pete was being a bit of a pest the men would
gently reprimand him as if he were a real child and Pete would
obligingly ‘behave’ while they worked. Over the years, Pete has become
something of a local legend in Cardiff, in many respects he seems to be
the playful little boy from the past, that simply came to stay.
Time Slips
 Is it possible to
temporarily find yourself transported back in time? According to some
witnesses, it is. One of the most famous cases involves two English
women who were holidaying in Puys, a seaside village near the port of
Dieppe in Normandy, France. Just before dawn on August 4th 1951, they
were woken by the sound of gunfire. This developed into the sound of
men’s cries, mortar fire and the sound of aircraft bombing raids.
During the three hours that followed, the bemused women sat and
listened to what can only be described as a battle that had become
trapped in time. Other people in the area heard nothing unusual at all,
but the two women were adamant that a huge battle had occurred. As they
began to recount what they had heard, it became obvious that somehow
they had relived the disastrous attack by the Allies that had occurred
on August 19th 1942.
A Road to the Past
 The Dieppe case is not an
isolated one. In Liverpool, England, several different witnesses over a
period of sixty years have reported unexplained phenomena occurring in
one particular street; Bold Street. Under certain conditions, the
street seems to temporarily transport certain people back in time.
Witnesses who have experienced the phenomenon report how the whole
street seemed enshrouded in an eerie silence, with lighting conditions
changing to something similar to that of a solar eclipse. Other
witnesses add that despite it being a busy time of day, the traffic and
number of people out suddenly became much lighter than expected, as
though some were simply ‘missing’.
One man reported how when
going to pick up his wife, he suddenly noticed that a shoe shop had
suddenly closed, he then became aware that everyone looked a little
different, they were dressed in fashions and vehicles dating back
around 15 years earlier – to the 1980’s. Other shops seemed to have
reverted back to their earlier locations on the opposite side of the
street.
Another lady reported how in the 1980’s, she had experienced
being transported back to the street as it was thirty years earlier, in
the 1950’s. The lady in question even had a conversation with a
gentleman who sat on the same bench as her while she ate her
sandwiches, but it dawned on her that he too was dressed in 1950’s
clothing. On another occasion, another witness recounted noticing that
a derelict church seemed to be in use – despite the fact that it has
been all but destroyed during the war. It was only after, that he
realised that what he had seen was the church as it was in the 1930s.
Unexplained Aerial Phenomena
As mysterious aerial
anomalies go, there is little to compete with the legendary war time
phenomena known to the pilots who saw them as Foo Fighters.
 Foo Fighters were variously
described as ‘balls of fire’ and ‘glowing’ orange, red or white spheres
that tailed the wartime aircraft in the skies above Europe and Japan
for miles, but never interfered with them. Contemporary witnesses of
the time from both the German Luftwaffe and the Allied forces assumed
that these strange light balls were secret weapons developed by the
enemy. Pilots on both sides who tried to shake off these strange
glowing balls of light quickly found that any evasive manoeuvres they
took were matched by the balls of light; likewise it was impossible for
pilots to outrun them. It was only after the war that they realised
that neither side were responsible for them, this created a deeper
mystery, if they weren’t man made, what were they?
The Allies were so
concerned that the Germans had developed a new weapon far beyond their
own technical abilities, that they placed a news blackout on the story
for several years. It was not until 1945 near the end of the war when
the story finally hit the headlines. Time magazine journalists learned
of the seemingly intelligent balls of light and ran a story on the
strange phenomenon that quickly captured the public’s interest.
According to the article:
"If it was not a hoax or an
optical illusion, it was certainly the most puzzling secret weapon that
Allied fighters have yet encountered. Last week U.S. night fighter
pilots based in France told a strange story of balls of fire which for
more than a month have been following their planes at night over
Germany. No one seemed to know what, if anything, the fireballs were
supposed to accomplish. Pilots, guessing it was a new psychological
weapon, named it the 'foo-fighter' ... Their descriptions of the
apparition varied, but they agree that the mysterious flares stuck
close to their planes and appeared to follow them at high speed for
miles. One pilot said that a foo-fighter, appearing as red balls off
his wing tips, stuck with him until he dove at 360 miles an hour [580
km/h]; then the balls zoomed up into the sky."
 Despite the initial fears,
foo fighters were never reported to have harmed any flight crew or to
have taken any aggressive action at all; they simply followed, observed
and finally left.
Lacking any credible
explanation as to what these balls of light could be, the military
decided they might be an unusual electrical phenomena related to either
ball lightening or St Elmo’s fire. The number of photographs that had
been taken combined with an overwhelming number of witness statements
meant that it was impossible to put the sightings down to imagination.
No conclusive explanation has ever been found and the phenomenon
remains unexplained to this day. Many researchers, acutely aware of the
‘intelligence’ that these balls of fire seem to display tend to view
the phenomenon as either inter-dimensional or extraterrestrial; in any
event, it seems that there is little to tie them to the natural world.
Conclusion
 There are a variety of
explanations that might go someway towards helping us understand what
might be behind these strange events. Certainly, the idea that our
universe is a multi-dimensional one is something that quantum physics
has toyed with for many years. Perhaps an occasional overlap or rift
between dimensions might account for how strange creatures such as the
Mothman and Spring-heeled Jack, that look as real as you and I, but are
capable of superhuman feats and are clearly not from this dimension,
are able to interact with our world.
There also exists the
possibility that within our particular dimension. there are multiple
layers of reality ranging from the physical here and now to a series of
ethereal worlds occupied not only by ghosts and spirits, but perhaps
much more. What if time itself were somehow enfolded in these ethereal
layers of reality? In the right conditions, bridges between these
worlds might allow us to access our own past or even future.
Perhaps keeping an open
mind is the most important step to opening the door to the unexplained.
Is all that stops us from starting to understand the supernatural
world, our own doubt?
© ThothWeb - http://www.thothweb.com
All images copyright © by
their respective photographers. This article is copyrighted. No part of
this article can be reproduced without the written permission of
ThothWeb.
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