Running On Fumes

Not necessarily the most auspicious start to a week, but hey, you gotta start somewhere, right? Speaking of running ragged, lets talk about the Raggedy Man (or the Tatterdemalion, if you prefer).

The Raggedy Man is the closest thing to a cautionary tale that those in the distant past had about "Stranger Danger". Depicted as living only a hair above the level of a transient, "the Rag and Bone Man" was the colloquialism used to describe a person who collected scrap metal, bone, and fabric to sell back to others: the modern analog could be those homeless who spend their time collecting recyclables to make enough money for food. Now, in and of itself, that doesn't sound too bad. But keeping in mind that he quietly travelled from town to town in search of his wares, and also didn't have a whole lot to lose (and the inherent anonymity of a social outcast), -and- the fact that children went missing all the time, it was easy to see that the majority attracted quite a bit of suspicion. Tie that to stories of certain Rag Men who somehow were consistently able to make lively incomes from the vast quantities of bone they were able to sell, seemingly from out of nowhere...

Thus was born one of the first "door-to-door" serial killer stories. As far as bogeymen went, there was definitely a division between reality and fantasy in that there were many legitimate, trusted Rag-And-Bone Men (and in fact, with the global recession really starting to set in, the profession is making a comeback, believe it or not) to contrast with the dark killers that some were rumored to be. Supernaturally, there wasn't a whole lot going on for them, and physically they tended to be fairly unremarkable excepting that they were usually very gaunt and lithe (from their hard living), had faces that were usually vague and forgettable, and that they were exceedingly hard to kill due to enduring a lifetime of scavenging. Sort of like a skinny Jason Vorhees, if you will. However, while there wasn't anything directly paranormal about them, if there were indeed a few who travelled around murdering those when they thought they could get away with it (and, to be honest, it seems like a perfect profession for at least one or two to have engaged in it), then there remains a distinct possibility that a couple of dark Rag Men may have created many unfortunate situations (i.e., ripe for paranormal residuals) in far-off wild places that are begging for further investigation...maybe it's time to follow the dancing lights after all? :P

 

Weak Sauce

I know, I shouldn't be taking time off from just catching up to where I should be anyways, but hey, whatcha gonna do about it? However, in place of an actual substantial update I give you the following, one of my absolute favorite songs (which, considering the source material, is at least tangentially related to the basic premise of the blog):

 

Poultry Guys

Poltergeists (German for "knocking ghosts") are another class of spirit that seem to be found the world over under a variety of different names, though rather than going into the distinctions between different "types" of poltergeists, I'd like to focus on their shared abilities, as well as one very interesting point about them.

Poltergeists, by their most simplified definition, are entities that have the ability to make noises and move objects around independent of any observable external force. Usually the phenomena manifests quite suddenly, with often with no provocation on the part of the inhabitants of the affected dwelling, and tends to last between the space of a few hours to a few years at sporadic intervals of quiet and activity. While the phenomena can be mischevious-seeming at times, as there have been numerous reports of objects being tossed at individuals residing in a house afflicted with poltergeist activity, it is worth noting that for the most part the activity seems "dumb", that is to say there is no rhyme or reason to the actions it takes, and most objects that impact individuals seem to be projected with only enough force to make contact, and not nearly enough to hurt someone. However, this last point has two major caveats: one, that there have been rare cases of violent poltergeists that actively harmed those in their vicinity with forcefully thrown objects, scratches, beatings, etc (however, while this has been reported, it is in the -wildly- vast minority), and two, that most houses with a poltergeist tend to have a "center" of the activity, not necessarily a focal point or target of the phenomena, but someone who seems to always be present when the activity happens. Usually, this happened to be a child in the midst of adolscence, leading many to claim that poltergeists are actually subconscious manifestations of telekinesis by those "centers", their existence usually reasoned as an outlet for their feelings of agression, alientation, and other teenage angsty-wangsty issues.

Now, the big thing worth noting that I had no idea about until recently...supposedly lending support to the psychokinesis theory, a group of paranormal researchers in the 1970s were able to create an "artificial poltergeist" named Philip. See, what they did was make up a name and backstory for a fictional person, and by collectively meditating and visualizing the spirit, were able to supposedly make a table tilt and knocks to be heard in response to questions, with the questions answered as a person with the given backstory would answer them. Even more curious is that the table movement and rapping was supposedly caught on film, and that other parapsychological groups were able to replicate the same effects with different backstories and therefore different "artifical poltergeists". So the story goes that the original group continued to try and meditate with the intent of getting an actual apparition to appear, but upon finding themselves unable to, the project was abandoned.

A couple of questions pop out at me on hearing this. The biggest, though, is while it's an interesting story, why was the work discontinued? It may be that seeing an apparition would have been much more convincing an effect that just hearing knocks, and maybe I'm just being naive, but if I could reliably cause knocks to sound in response to questions without physical movement on my part, I'd be pretty damn excited with even that. So for me, the whole story should be taken with a Buick-sized grain of salt, but still, an interesting little story all the same...

 

Little Light

Will-O-the-Wisps, corpse candles/lights, ignis fatuus, corposant, jack-o-lanterns, fetch candles/lights, earth/ghost/witch lights...all these are names for basically the same phenomena, that of floating lights with no discernible source or carrier. However, while there are a multitude of names for this phenomena, there actually tend to be certain trends observable across the different names, and those trends form the meat of our discussion today.

So, what is the general meaning attributed to such phenomena? Well, this seems to fall into two major camps. One is that it's a phenomena that forecasts death at a given location, with the type of death warned of being dependent on the color or number of the lights. Usually the death forecast is that of the viewer or the viewer's loved ones, with small blue lights indicating a child's death, larger white lights for that of an adult, and a number of lights for a mass death, thought there have also been reports of lights in most other imaginable colors. It is important to note that in this particular framework, the lights in and of themselves are not sentient and therefore not inherently moral or malevolent, they are simply an impassive warning of a fate yet to pass. In this manner, while they are indeed unexplained phenomena, many attributed their viewing as a sort of divine intervention that allowed them to say their goodbyes to any affected. Also worth noting is the virtual impossibility of arguing with or avoiding this sort of phenomena (this sort also tend to be called the corpse/fetch candles/lights), as again, they are merely warnings and not direct enablers or participants in the fate of the viewer.

The second main school of thought holds that the lights are ghosts themselves, but the intent of these beings varies from culture to culture...though the general consensus is that it is wise to stay away (in fact, "ignis fatuus" literally means "foolish fire", named such after those who'd chase after it). Basically, the intent of the entities falls into two sub-categories. The first, and most benign -and- rare, is that of "unfinished business". In this case, the ghost is helplessly trying to signal any passerby to a particular area in the hope of them completing whatever task keeps them from crossing over. The most usual occurrence in this camp is that of a death in some far-flung area quite distant from the trappings of society (possibly also involving bringing a murderer to justice, if such a death wasn't accidental), and the entity's need for a proper burial for their remains, and according to some legends, they may possibly even reward the one who helps them by directing them to a treasure afterwards...though getting to the light in the first place can prove quite a challenge, as usually the terrain the first victim died in had to be a requisite level of treacherous to have caused them to die unexpectedly in the first place, so the task is not without risk.

Now for the other, more common sub-category. This sort is particularly malevolent and insidious, with the "nicest" of them causing travelers to become incredibly and hopelessly lost. More often than not, these lights are quite hypnotizing to look upon, overpowering the will of lesser individuals and leading them to their deaths. These entities are reasoned to be sinners that were for whatever reason denied entrance into heaven or hell, and are thus stuck on earth for all eternity, and that the boredom of such a fate has led them to treat us "fleshies" as playthings by tormenting us until such a time passes with which they get bored, at which point they end the "game" and consequently, the victim's life. It is worth noting that while there are supposedly a variety of ways to avoid and repel the spirits of this class, there are no direct ways to fight them.

As far as natural explanations go, these lights are usually reasoned to be fireflies or the ignition of swamp/carrion gas, but their occurrence across cultures with the same relative explanations leads one to wonder if there isn't something more to the tale of the mysterious lights...

 

Bad Ideas, Day 2: The Negative Ion Gun!

So, on a kick from my last posting, I'd like to continue the trend by offering another weird idea to the Wild Wild Webs as to how to unprovedly protect against/magnify the powers of ghostly happenings. Now, as far as my dumbed down version of the theory goes, paranormal activity is also accompanied by a positive ionic field of varying levels. Putting aside the very important point of whether "ionic fields" are actually bullsh-t or not,let's pretend that they aren't. According to current ionic theory, positive ions are, as they say in the academic community, "hella bad" for you, causing anything from general feelings of malaise and depression on up to suicidal ideation and actions or even death (though supposedly only in massive, theoretical or apocryphal amounts), while negative ions do good things, like lighten one's mood and sterilize the immediate environment. And while I could geek out and use positive ions as a link to the old tales of ghosts causing people to despair, age, or die due to "fright", that's not the point of this post. Let's talk tech-y (get it? Cause it's like "let's talk turkey", but with "tech-y"...fine, whatever).

My new idea kinda came to me as I was researching negative ion generators, with the intent of placing one in a hairdryer and using it as a "Negative Ion Projector", to counteract any dastardly positive ions I may come across during my adventures. Well, while I found negative ion schematics online, I also found that there is a thriving market on ionic hairdryers already...and I'm not too big a man to admit that finding this out sorta killed my enthusiasm to build one (as I said in the intro to this blog, I am a self-admitted hipster). So while I was closing all my open tabs in a positively forlorn manner, I found this little gem. I think that this picture could say more than I ever could...

On second thought, maybe not. Basically, this guy provided schematics to create a show-based static shocker to shock his friends. However, what I see is a personal negative ion field generator, and one that could be used as a potential shield against the negative effects of the potential positive ions associated with different forms of paranormal occurences...or maybe this is just me geeking out and trying to go all James Bond, Ghost Hunter. Of course, being that I have no real background in electronics, I have no idea what would happen if a positive ionic field happened to make contact with a negatively charged object like this, or if you'd even want to be in the same time zone when it happened...

 

EMF Theory, a.k.a. The Idiots Guide to Stun-Gunning a Ghost

So, I had a crazy idea today, and I wanted to share it with you, my steadfast readers. The basic theory is thus; supernatural activity is usually accompanied by EMF activity. That's the most basic summarization of one of the currently dominating theories in paranormal research, with some of the controversy cut out of the equation (some claim the phenomena observed are actually caused by the EMF fluctuations, but we'll leave the hypothesis at the more reasonable correlationary association). Anyways, EMF fluctuations/spikes/whatever are supposed to happen when things like poltergeist activities, apparitions, and phantom noises happen, so my question is what happens if you have an already existing EMF spike around when the fluctuations begin? Or also, if you let the fluctuations start, then trigger a massive spike?

Keeping in mind that I was a psych major that mostly kept to his own subject and gained most of his knowledge of physics from either a) Mythbusters, Bill Nye the Science Guy, or Mr Wizard, or b) listening to his physics-geek friends talk about "hypothetically awesome" tricks they should "totally pull sometime" while they were black-out hammered at a party (what can I say, U of A was a Party League school)...my idea is basically this: what if you trigger a stun gun before or during the phenomena? To be honest, because I don't have one, I couldn't say whether the stun gun would actually even cause an EMF spike, though my research into the topic (thanks Google) seems to indicate that it probably would (again, odd that there's no definitive answer to this). However, would a stun gun trigger an increase in noticeable phenomena? Would it cause any burgeoning phenomena to disperse? In my mind, I'd liken it to giving air to a candle, but whether it's enough air to cause the candle to blow brighter or to extinguish it entirely remains unsolved in my mind...you guys have any ideas?

The Next Episode...

So, I'm going to admit that the next two weeks worth of entries are actually backdated, and that I'm composing them all in one sitting on the night of February 25th. In my defense, I had an exceedingly rough last two weeks, but to those who care for such things as punctuality, I offer my sincerest condolences. That said, let's jump in.

This entry pertains to something that I've heard about but never really understood. In this case, I'll use the traditional Book of Shadows as my example, but really, you could use any supposed text that educates or elucidates in the supposed art of spellcraft. For those of you who aren't familiar with them, a Book of Shadows is the common term used to describe a coven of practicing witches' written record, usually including recipes for potions, rituals for any given spell, and general transcriptions of various feats of derring do.

Now, my question may be completely asinine, and if it is, feel free to let me know in the comments below. However, I'm pretty flummoxed by one simple point: WHY WOULD YOU EVER G-DDAMN WRITE STUFF LIKE THIS OUT? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it a bad idea to write anything based on content alone, I think that everyone should have access to (and actively partake in) the means to write whatever they'd like privately. But this is a group-based, group-sourced, group-available text which supposedly gives the users of it a great deal of power that most don't have access to.

Assuming it works/magic is real, my main problems come down to the ability of multiple people to use it. Number one, do you trust all of your co-workers/classmates/fellow religion observers? While they may share the same values as you at a basic level, that in no way means you agree with them a hundred percent. So what's to say they won't use their equally-to-yours granted powers to do things you wouldn't agree with? Or worse yet, to screw you over? Next, would you want anyone to be able to contribute equally? I see Wikipedia written all over this, and trust me, the scenario in my imagination is fairly benign:

"Sister Mary, I'm reading over Sister Gertrude's recipe for a potion of perceptiveness, and it says I need to obtain essence of butfur. What's a butfur?"

"IT'S FER POOPIN', HAW HAW! PWNED."

So yeah, there's that. Also, the unfiltered nature of the contents of the book also seems a little ill-thought out. That is to say, the books supposedly describe everything from the virtually useless minutia of the coven to the incredibly overpowering spells and what-have-you, the contents of the book can be likened to listing the recipe for oatmeal cookies next to that of an atomic bomb. Which is to say, bad news, especially if you're allowing anyone from a day-one initiate to a day-four-million senile to have access to it...

I dunno, I could just be acting obtuse. But am I the only one who's wondered that?

Jurassic Parks and Rec

So, where were we? Ah yes, dinosaurs! Let's crack into a couple of examples, shall we? Mr. Wikipedia, if you please?

---

Most reports of allegedly surviving dinosaurs come from African rain forests in the Congo Basin and the rain forests of South America, although others include those from Australia and Scotland.

 

 

• Emela-ntouka, allegedly a living ceratopsian.
  
• Kasai rex, allegedly a living theropod.
  
• Mbielu-Mbielu-Mbielu, claimed to be a living stegosaur.
  
• Mokele-mbembe, claimed to be a living sauropod.
  
• Muhuru, allegedly a living ankylosaur.
  
• Nguma-monene, allegedly a living Spinosaurus.
  
• Ngoubou, allegedly a living Styracosaurus.
  
• Other Mesozoic reptiles such as the winged pterosaurs have been reported as well.
  
• Kongamato, hypothesised to be a living Rhamphorhynchus.
  
• Mahamba, hypothesised to be a freshwater mosasaur.
  

Just for reference, Mokele-mbembe is by -far- the most "well-known" (or infamously still at large) out of all those listed. Also, I think it's somewhat unusual that out of all of these, almost half (Mokele-mbembe, Emela-ntouka, Mbielu-mbielu-mbielu, and Nguma-monene) come from the same rough area, the Likouala region of the Congo. All I'm saying is it's not the only time things have gotten a bit weird down there...maybe they have a King Kong situation up ins? All the same, for as far fetched as the the idea of living dinosaurs may sound, stranger things have happened, so maybe it's too early to discount it quite yet.

 

 

Land of the Lost

 

How goes it, Earthlings? Today we're going to start a two part discussion about a very unusual trend in cryptozoology, that of the living dinosaur.

So what is a "living dinosaur", exactly? Well, at it's simplest, it's the idea that a resident reptile (or species of reptiles) from a bygone age has somehow remained undetected until modern times. A good example of this in practice would be the popular hypothesis that the Loch Ness Monster is supposedly a plesiosaur (or family of them) and survived the mass extinction event because it was able to camp out underwater for long enough. Any creature that could prove the idea in and of itself would basically be considered one of the Holy Grails of cryptozoology, as the discovery of the possibility of a dinosaur surviving through to modern times would basically open up the creature catalog of the entire fossil record to possible discovery. Think kind of like the Ark of the Covenant, minus this.

Anyways, where did this idea even come from and get started? Good question. Actually, the idea itself started getting circulated quite early, as the identification and reconstruction of dinosaurs started all sorts of imaginations as to the similarities between them and the hitherto firmly-in-the-camp-of-the-mythical dragons of legend. Once that germ of an idea began to spread, combined with the occasional "living fossil" finds such as the coelacanth and our reconstructed records of forgotten fauna expanded, it became easier and easier to justify the inclusion of "dinosaurs" as a viable hypothesis to explain sightings of unusual or mysterious creatures. Bigfoot, Champ, Ron Paul...all became possible examples of something unexpectedly surviving until modern times.

So, if the theory is so widespread, why don't we have any examples of it actually occurring? Well, nature, mostly. You see, the theory in and of itself is kind of a reach, even for cryptozoologists. See, if we look through the fossil record, you can damn well find almost anything that you can imagine, so one can always use it as an alternative hypothesis. Also, the likelihood of even a small herd of dinosaurs surviving undetected while still being able to have enough food to continue to flourish in incredibly small, even in the (few) areas that have little to no human habitation/traffic. Lastly, even if one of these wonder-herds did exist, nobody seems to take into account the fact that these things would have had thousands of years to evolve into completely new creatures. But still, the idea is an attractive one at least at the romantic level, so it persists to this day.

Aaaand that's it for today. Friday I'll go into specific famous and not-so famous examples of supposedly still-living dinosaurs. Take it easy!

 

Distant Hope

 So I was thinking today could be more of a history lesson than a paranormal essay, even though it has some tangential importance to paranormal investigations, it has even more influence on the very course of history and the exploration of the globe. Of course, I speak of Prester John.

Prester John was a legendary figure that was claimed to have kingdom first located in the Middle East, then the Orient, then back to India, then finally somewhere in Africa. As the tale goes, John was a descendant of one of the three Magi (Wise Men) who attended the baby Jesus' birth. Being rich in both resources and spirit, his realm was purported to be a place where the incredible was the norm, and his subjects lived in happiness and contentment. More intriguing than all of that, however, was one simple fact that had explorers trying to seek him out for over 500 years: he and the entirety of his kingdom were devout Christians.

While it seems a minor detail here, to understand the extraordinary impact that had you have to put yourself in the shoes of a European explorer between 1100 and 1800: you're considering going out for a jaunt that may or may not end with your death. At the very least, it will probably take the majority of your lifetime to get somewhere new, and even upon getting there, there is a very good chance that you will -not- be coming back with more wealth than you could possibly dream of. You're thinking of hitting South America because you've heard that El Dorado has awesome 2-for-1 shooters nights mandated for the entire nation and becaus the wings are f-ing bomb, but Spain and Portugal are being complete d-bags about it. But wait...your friend Chad-ington Blake-buryson just told you about this totally legit kingdom somewhere on your side of the Atlantic, and the dude running it is totes chill! The best part is it's like El Dorado, but with all the bro-skis worshipping the same God as you!

I dunno why I lapsed into Frat-Speak, but the point remains, Prester John's kingdom was widely considered a very rich, well-outfitted outpost or resupply area that one could look forwards to, in addition to the said area being a bastion of familiar culture, which was an invaluable bonus to the oft-harried and alienated explorers. One could liken it to an oasis in a desert, except where most oases could only be used for a moment and had to be moved on from, this oasis could be considered a respectable, self-sufficient endpoint if one wanted to. Anyways, Prester John's legend spread throughout Europe, culminating in many ridiculous situations such as the Prester John Letter Hoax, or the fact he was used as an excuse to start the second Crusades, or the fact that when the emperor of Ethiopia made contact with Europe that he was continuously referred to as "Prester John" (so much so that he actually called a couple of people out on it, letting them know that he was never referred to as "Prester John" by his people or anyone else up until that meeting, for that matter), but as an abstraction, a place that was always quested towards but never reached, it served as a well-believed carrot-on-a-stick for generation upon generation of explorers, and helped shape the world as we know it in incredibly sweeping ways.

From Out Of The Ashes...

So, when one thinks of the phoenix, you usually think of one of three things: the decent basketball team, the ridiculously ill-fitting-with-it's-surroundings retirement megapolis, or the Western mythological warhorse of a mystical bird that symbolizes eternal life through it's reported combustion and rebirth through it's own ashes. Being that you're a regular reader of the blog (hopefully), I'm going to assume you're familiar with it, but if not, here's somewhere to get a good overview...

That said, here's an analog that I was -not- aware of...the Chinese Phoenix. While so-called, it's not so much like a phoenix as it is an amalgam of many different animals and portrayed as the King of the Birds, or avian ideal in Chinese culture. Used more as a symbol of luck, balance, and prosperity, the Fenghuang actually struck me as having more than a passing similarity to another Western beastie, the Cockatrice. Which itself is related to a variety of other petrifying creatures, such as this, this and this.

Anyways, the point of this post is currently lost on even the author, but I'll end this somewhat link-heavy and disjointed entry by saying that I was at the very least surprised that there was anything like an Eastern analog to the concept of the Phoenix, even if it turned out that the Chinese Phoenix moniker was of mostly Western invention as well. Also, this.

Odds-On Favorite

So, I promised that I'd get into a bit of opinion-tossing on psychic phenomena today, and I plan to. But as a preface, I'd just like to make two things plain; first, that I really have nothing to back up my beliefs (I guess at that point, it wouldn't really be a belief-system so much as just faith) and second, that I don't expect you to agree with me. That all said, let's dig in.

I already mentioned a while back that I'm pretty agnostic about the concept of the afterlife and paranormal phenomena as a whole. Do I believe it's possible that either or both of these things exist? Yeah, why not. Am I sure about those beliefs? No way. But while I may be aggravatingly ambivalent about a couple of the foundation areas of parapsychology, one thing I believe and have always believed in is luck. I simply think luck exists. I know that statistically, it shouldn't. I also know that may determinists/deeply religious would argue that there's no such thing as luck, just divine will. But, human logic and attributions aside, however irrational a belief it may be, I have it. I think that regardless of where you think it comes from or how subjectively constructed it is, every person has a certain level of luck in any given situation, luck being defined as the ability to have larger than normal probabilities of a positive or desired outcome in that given situation. I also think that this level of luck in a specific situation tends to carry over into other similarly-structured situations. Like different areas of aptitude or knowledge, some people are luckier at certain things than others...like one may be luckier at financial gambles, whereas another is better at socio-political risks, where yet another takes on physical chances with a fearless demeanor...

I sort of conceptualize it like this: all actions with multiple outcomes have a certain level of probability associated with each of those outcomes. In certain philosophical and (if I remember correctly) physics frameworks, all of these outcomes occur in parallel universes, leading to the idea of divergent realities, where everything is the same to one point, then the paths diverge around the different resolutions to that situation. So, if every action has multiple outcomes (because let's face it, "meteor to the face" is always a possibility), then those who have luck have the ability to "nudge" a decision in their favor, basically altering reality around them. The stronger the level of luck, the more ridiculous the level of probability shifting they can undertake with a reasonable level of increased odds...some things will always be out of reach, but the luckier you are, the greater the spectrum of possibilities open up to create that "positive outcome", relatively speaking.

So what does this have to do with psychics, magicians, and/or the paranormal? Well, looking at luck as a simple probability-boosting field, then maybe it stands to reason that many of the proclaimed psychics and magicians aren't exercising arcane art so much as just a natural ability of "luck" in a specific area or set of areas. Divinatory oracles may not speak to gods so much as have a higher than statistically reasonable level of luck in predicting events, though they reason their abilities come from divine sources. Magicians that can control the weather and move objects over distances without touching them just have incredible innate powers of probability shifting, sometimes to the extent of flying in the face of the laws of physics.

Now, most of this was just getting some mind-babble on the interwebs, and for the most part, is purely speculatory. The only thing I really believe in is luck as a concept and a part of our reality...and I wouldn't really hold it against anyone else to disbelieve that, though. It was, as I said at the beginning, a sort of leap of faith, and like all faith, some make the jump, others don't. But whether or not you believe in luck, I still wish it in abundance to you all the same :)