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?

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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 :)

The Phenomenist: Apports and Asports

So another component of paranormal phenomena which hasn't received a whole lot attention in the blog yet is that of the psychic.  Which really is a damn shame, when you think about it, as some of the richest and most unusual reports fall into that arena, which is why I plan on rectifying that immediately. Next entry I'll talk a little bit more about psychic phenomena in general and a theory I cooked up having to do with it, but for today we'll get our feet wet with a little review of two commonly reported (relative to other psychic phenomena) occurrences that are attributed to psychic mechanisms, the instances of Apports and Asports.

Put simply, an Apport is the appearance of an object or living thing out of thin air and an Asport is the reverse, or its disappearance. Some paranormal researchers reason that the people able to apport and asport objects are in fact mentally disintegrating the object in one place and reintegrating it in another. Others claim that the psychics have no control over the objects they choose to bring to them, while others claim they indeed have the ability to specify exact items that they can target with this ability. Still others believe the psychic is actually constructing the item without the deconstruction of a replica item or vice versa, meaning that they would truly be creating "something from nothing" (thanks to the laws of thermodynamics, this last position has mostly fallen out of style). The ability to "conjure" things into or out of existence without any reasonable explanation has long been a purported power of many different self-proclaimed psychics, magicians, and holy men and reached it's overall peak in reportings in the late 1800's, coinciding with the height of the popularity of mediums and seances. At that time, a series of investigations into the field began, with the vast majority of the claimed psychics being revealed as fraudulent, leading to the decline in popularity of seances and the practitioners/facilitators thereof. However, there are still to this day scattered reportings of the otherwise inexplicable appearance of small objects in situations where such things should not occur.

Case Files: The Cheshire Dog, pt. 2

So, you got to see what I saw. Here's how I responded.

 

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Hey everybody!

 

So...I have a couple more random thoughts in no particular order to toss into the conversation, so here we go...!

 

1. The discomfort associated with the memory by the original/main subject of the phenomena...why? Is this due to how the subject ended up rationalizing the experiences, or possibly the negative feelings she associated from her social support at the time rubbing off enough on her to negatively reinforce the topic as a whole? Or did something bad happen after the dog started to appear? I'd be curious to hear -why- she dislikes talking about it...

 

2. I understand everyone has a different eye for details, and it may just be me, but mentioning a "buried treasure" seems somewhat incongruous, and I'd like to know more whether the mentioning of that particular point was just coincidental or if there was something behind that. Did she get the feeling like the dog was guarding something? Or was it just a flavor detail?

 

3. Large and wavy fur would indicate a large likelihood of a herding or hunting dog, if I recall my dog show assistant experience at all correctly, though probably more likely herding. They're both known for their unusual intelligence, as well as being pretty aces at athletic feats...though if we could get a better ID on the breed we may have more traits to go on. Either way, this probably wasn't a "stupid dog", which leads me to my next point...

 

4. Bachelor lived there. 1930s. Any background on Señor Richy-Britches or a history of his pets (if he had any)? Seems like it'd make sense for him to have one, given the time and social climate, and (BIG jump on this line of logic) if he was a bachelor and died as such, then his only constant, deepest emotional contact would be his faithful hound. Also, a better idea as to the layout of the house and which rooms were which might also give insight into the issue, which I personally see as a toss-up between two off-the-cuff-completely-not-based-on-anything-other-than-an-educated-guess theories (assuming the manifestation of the phenomena was not explainable by conventional means [which seems difficult, as I imagine trying to reconcile a ghostly Cheshire Dog with reality isn't the easiest thing to do]): either a) she resemble(s/d) someone who abused/killed the dog in life, and he always manifests with the terror/hatred he felt towards the original or b) the "master" still dwells there (as a spiritual manifestation) and the dog feels she is getting too close to him and is attempting to protect him from the intruder. I personally lean more towards the second, from the note about her noticing the footsteps when no one else did (at least initially) as well as the fact she saw it often in her room, which I'm thinking may have actually been originally the master's room or possibly the "pet room". So, if that were the case, then it stands to reason that she'd be pretty high on the spectral dog's doo-doo list, so to speak. Keep in mind, that was all based on a -large- number of logical assumptions which are more than likely wrong, so I broker no offense to anyone saying that they think those are ludicrous working theories :P

 

5. Like YYYYY and ZZZZZ said, memory loss or "blanking" after a traumatic or logically irreconcilable event is quite common. I probably wouldn't call it amnesia per say, since I bet you dollars to donuts that she probably could tell you other events that happened in her life at that time, she simply denied the experience at such a basic level that it ceased to be a conscious memory, so as to allow her to put some distance between herself and the worldview-warping memory. There's a wide range of responses, from direct confrontation, to avoidance (as the primary subject appears to be exhibiting), to denial (conscious or subconscious), to amnesia, to fugue, to PTSD, to gosh knows how many different mental aberrances and abnormalities. To make a bad joke/analogy, pretend the mind is a baby...if Patrick Swayze taught us anything, it was to never put it in a corner, which it seems the "dog" forced it into in a manner of speaking. A relatively benign corner, but one all the same. Anyways, million dollar question: why mention it now? Was it the friend's mother's inexplicable experiencing of the basement noises that jogged her memory back to that spot?

 

6. As far as other weird notes and errata about the story as it stands...Ghost Dog: a movie starring Forrest Whittaker, if I remember from my Blockbuster video days. But, lots of occasions in tales for animals to become ghosts that appear with malevolence, both in an abused or protector setting, but also to occasionally warn of ill-fortune yet to come (doubtful, since there was ample time for that to happen and it doesn't seem like it did, and multiple manifestations don't usually occur). Also tales of playful animal spirits (though highly unusual for them to be playful with anyone outside their immediate family at the time of death, and also doubtful due to the palpable malevolence felt during each event). Lastly, in European and Middle Eastern countries, the sacrificing of animals and subsequent haunting of the premises where the ritual was done at is/was quite common, but actually as a form of good luck, if I'm not mistaken...but yeah, none of the other types of spiritual animals seem to match the simultaneously occurring aura of hostility.

 

Anyhoo, fun story, I'd be curious to see what happens next. Take care!

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And there you have it, a glimpse into my world. Have a good weekend!