They Said Apparitions Materialized Right in Front of Them

 I think it is very important to keep a list of surveys trying to determine how common are reports of paranormal experiences. Publishing such a list helps to show how common such experiences are, and helps to disprove false claims that only some tiny fraction of the population report such things. My list of such surveys appear as a bullet list in my post here. 

This afternoon I added a very interesting addition to that bullet list:

"A project entitled 'Investigation of the phenomenology and impact of perceived spontaneous and direct After-Death Communications (ADCs)' was conducted from February 2018 to January 2020, with results described here and here.  About 1000 people were surveyed. 460 of these people reported a 'visual ADC' which often corresponded to an apparition of the dead. We read, 'For 61.6% of our sample, the deceased seemed solid like a living being, for 12.5% the apparition was semitransparent, and 11.3% perceived a foggy silhouette.' We also read, 'For 59.8% the apparitions were already there when they perceived them and for 28.5% they were materializing right before their eyes. After a few seconds or a few minutes, they were fading away gradually (14.4%), dissolving instantly (28.1%), or not there anymore when respondents  blinked (18.0%). 79.8% claimed that the apparition conveyed a message, either in words, telepathically, or by expression of the face.' "

Just after adding this passage to my previous post, there was a strange synchronicity. In Season 4 of the very dry and down-to-earth TV series I was watching ("The Lincoln Lawyer" on Netflix) -- a season which thus far is something you might say is something that only a lawyer or a law student would love -- the main character suddenly starts talking to a ghost. It is the ghost of the father-figure character played by Elliot Gould, whose death we had been told about only a few minutes earlier. We soon learn it is a dream sequence. 

I thought this was a good moment to take a few photos of my TV, in hopes of getting an orb photo -- maybe something like the photo here in which I got an orange orb above the TV while my TV screen showed a depiction of fairy magic. So I took five photos of the main "Lincoln Lawyer" character talking to the ghost. My hope about the orb photo was not fulfilled. There was nothing unusual in the photos. 

But at the very instant I finished checking the photos on my camera, I kind of go, "What on Earth!" I notice that in a very noticeable spot about a meter from where I am sitting, right in front of me, is a yellow rubber band on the floor. I had worked at the same spot for 5+ hours that day, with only me in the room, and had not touched any rubber bands in that room previously that day. My strict policy is to pick up from my floor any and all out-of-place items I see on the floor (things like coins, pens and rubber bands), as soon as I see them. So how, I ask myself, could there be a rubber band right in right of me, one that went unnoticed by me in the previous five hours I was working from that spot, where the rubber band would have been very noticeable? 

It seemed rather as if the rubber band had teleported to the spot I saw it at, at the very moment I was taking a photo of the TV ghost. I have seen similar anomalies involving rubber bands more than 27 times, and I report some of them in my series of posts here. An interesting speculation is that an invisible power may leave hints of its presence by moving or teleporting very lightweight objects such as rubber bands or coins, perhaps with synchronicity involved. I know (as I reported here) that only a few minutes after audibly stating that it was my late mother's 100th birthday, I was spooked to see a quarter on top of a bedspread I had just laid out a few minutes before making the statement.   

Postscript: The next day there was another spooky event. Standing in front of a sink, I ate a few mini-marshmallows from a bag. A few minutes later I was very surprised to see one of the mini-marshmallows on the other side of the room, about 2.5 meters away, aligned to the wall. I asked myself: how could that have happened? I came up with an explanatory hypothesis: maybe I dropped one of the mini-marshmallows, and it rolled 2.5 meters. I tested the hypothesis by taking a mini-marshmallow, and rolling it on the ground, rather as you might roll a bowling ball. The hypothesis failed, because friction caused the rolling to stop after much less than a meter of rolling.  We have in this strange sighting some possible "Other Side" symbolism. 

A Blue Orb

 Photo date: February 4, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. If you see the top left circular features as eyes, and the bottom curved feature as a mouth, you may start to see a faint face in the image. 

Mysterious Blue Indoor Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 12)

Below is Part 12 of a retrospective showing some of the better photos I have taken indoors of mysterious blue orbs photographed indoors. 

The photo below shows a transparent blue orb that I photographed at Grand Central Terminal in New York.

We see below a mysterious blue orb I photographed at Grand Central Terminal in New York. Look to the left of the orb, and it looks rather as if light from the orb is reflecting on a marble surface.

The photo below shows a mysterious blue orb I photographed in Grand Central Terminal in New York.

I took the photos below on February 26, 2018 and March 13, 2018.  In both we see mysterious blue orbs in the center of a stairway.

The photos below show two mysterious orbs I photographed in Grand Central Terminal in New York on January 5, 2018 and February 12, 2018.  The photos were taken with different cameras.

The photo below shows  a mysterious orb that I photographed in Grand Central Terminal.

The photo below shows two mysterious blue orbs I photographed near a temporary  advertising sign in Grand Central Terminal.

Hint of a Grin?

 Photo date: February 2, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors.  We get what some might call a faint suggestion of a grinning face. 

Mysterious Red Sky Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 6)

  Below are some photos I previously took of mysterious red orbs in the sky. All of the photos were taken in clean, dry air when there was no fog, mist, rain or precipitation.

In my photo below we see a weird colored sky orb with a strange stripe.

The photo below shows a red orb I photographed above a building in New York City.

My photos below show two red orbs I photographed  in New York City.

My photo below shows a red orb above a building in New York City.

My photos below show three colorful sky orbs I photographed one night. None of them was the moon, which was only a half-moon on this night.

The photo below shows 4 orbs I photographed near a building top. One of the orbs was red-colored.

My photos below show two orange orbs I photographed, along with a red sky orb. None of these was the moon, which was less than a half moon on this night.

Baffling Birthday

Today (January 29) is my late father's birthday. On his last two birthdays there were baffling anomalies:

• On January 29, 2024, as described here, I was lying in bed thinking of my father, wondering whether a dream I just had was a reference to him. At that moment the GFCI outlet in the bathroom mysteriously turned off with a loud sound. There was no one in the bathroom. Turning off the outlet requires a press of a button on the GFCI panel on the wall of the bathroom. 
• On January 29, 2025, as described here, around 12:50 AM, a structural panel in front of my sink mysteriously fell to the ground. The event was very surprising, as the whole floor had been remodeled a few years ago, and the panel was expected to stay undisturbed for many additional years. 

Today, January 29, 2026 I woke up about 1:00 AM, and went into the living room. I was surprised to see the thermostat showing a temperature of 67 degrees. I had set the thermostat to 60 degrees when going to bed at midnight, a temperature I keep it at when I sleep. I set the thermostat back to 60 degrees, and went back to the couch. A few minutes later I saw the thermostat was again showing a setting of  67 degrees. It was as if some invisible hand had moved the thermostat to the right, resetting it from 60 to 67. 

It is interesting that all three of these events involve a panel. The dictionary defines a panel as "a flat or curved component, typically rectangular, that forms or is set into the surface of a door, wall, or ceiling." The thermostat was in a wall panel, as shown below. The first syllable of "panel" is "pa," an English word meaning "father." 

Below is the description of this morning's event that I wrote on a notepad immediately after it occurred:

"1/29: Saw thermostat at 67 at 1:10. I turned it back to 60, which I had set it to at 12:00. A few minutes later it was mysteriously back to 67." 

The Google Nest thermostat has a Settings interface that allows you to look at changes in the temperature that get scheduled, under some capability of the thermostat to learn from your previous habits in switching the temperature. Around noon today I used that Settings interface to see whether there was any scheduled switch in temperature that could explain the anomaly described above. There was not. Below is what I saw when looking at the schedule for today (Thursday):

Postscript: On February 4 I had the 186th dream I have had about my later father since I started recording my dreams. I  dreamed that I was living in some high apartment tower, and that my late father was on the other side of my apartment's window, like some window washer working outside the window. The dream seemed to symbolize an idea of my late father being on the Other Side of an afterlife, while also suggesting the idea of lofty heights associated with an afterlife location. But at the same time the dream has a "nearby, just past the barrier" idea. It was the latest of more than 500 dreams I have had that suggested the idea of life after death, all of which are described in my frequently updated post here. 

A Paraverse Interaction Map Might Be More Empirically Warranted Than a Dark Matter Map

 There they go again: claiming to have a map of something never observed. 

This time it's an article in the Daily Mail with this headline: "See dark matter like NEVER before: NASA reveals one of the most detailed maps of the elusive substance yet – confirming its vital influence on the universe."  We have these claims:

"NASA has revealed one of the most detailed maps of dark matter yet. Taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, the map suggests the elusive substance acts as a hidden framework on which entire galaxies are built...'By revealing dark matter with unprecedented precision, our map shows how an invisible component of the Universe has structured visible matter to the point of enabling the emergence of galaxies, stars, and ultimately life itself,' explained Dr Gavin Leroy, co–author of the study."

But how can someone have a map of dark matter locations when dark matter has never been observed? Scientists say dark matter is invisible. All attempts thus far to make direct observations of dark matter have failed. Dark matter doesn't even have a place in the Standard Model of Physics, and no evidence for it has turned up at the Large Hadron Collider. 

We have in the Daily Mail article a claim that the map of dark matter was made by studying gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing is what the article is referring to when the article states this: "Because dark matter is invisible, the team looked for it by observing how its mass curves space itself, which in turn bends the light travelling to Earth from distant galaxies."

 But observations of gravitational lensing are not equivalent to observations of dark matter. Gravitational lensing is a strange effect produced on light rays bent by the gravity of high concentrations of matter. Such matter can be any type of matter: either normal matter or possibly some type of dark matter. 

As Scientific American puts it when describing gravitational lensing:

"According to Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, mass warps space, so a large amount of matter in the foreground of a galaxy can bend its light in a way that makes it look slightly squashed. This is true whether the foreground mass is made of invisible dark matter or ordinary matter."
 
So if you are claiming to have a map of dark matter made by observing gravitational lensing, you are doing something rather like announcing that you have a map of UFO landing sites made by observing small burnt patches in the forest. Such patches might be produced by hot UFO's that are landing, but they also might be produced by ordinary lightning flashes, or by people setting campfires.

We have in the Daily Mail article some unwarranted language by a scientist, the language below:

"Dr Diana Scognamiglio, co–author of the study from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: 'This is the largest dark matter map we've made with Webb, and it's twice as sharp as any dark matter map made by other observatories.

'Previously, we were looking at a blurry picture of dark matter. 

'Now we're seeing the invisible scaffolding of the Universe in stunning detail, thanks to Webb's incredible resolution'." 

No, there was no actual "dark matter map" created. All that went on is that scientists saw things that can be explained by matter or things other than dark matter (as postulated by MOND theorists), and scientists jumped to the conclusion that such effects were caused by dark matter, without any adequate warrant. You can't see things that are invisible. 

The scientific paper of these claimants is entitled "An ultra-high-resolution map of  (dark) matter."  The title is inaccurate. The paper has figures, and none of them is labeled as a map of dark matter. The term "dark matter" is not even used in any of the captions of the paper's figures. We have here another case of what is so common these days in science literature: citation-hungry scientists giving their papers titles that do not match what is in the paper. 

What scientists call "dark matter" is something they believe is not actually dark matter but instead invisible matter. A more candid term for "dark matter" would be "spooky matter." Scientists boasting about having created a dark matter map may say that they "saw dark matter." But they should instead merely be saying that they saw regular matter and energy, and that they inferred dark matter or guessed that dark matter was somewhere. 

What type of "map of the spooky" would have much more empirical  warrant than the claimed "map of spooky matter" that is a claimed dark matter map? It would be what we might call a paraverse interaction map 

To explain such a map, I must explain the concept of the paraverse, explained in my 2016 post "The Possibility of a Paraverse." The term paraverse is formed from the end of the word “universe” and from the prefix “para,” which means “beside” or “to the side of.” We can define a paraverse as some hypothetical realm of existence that is in some sense connected to our universe in a way that allows information and causal influences to flow between our universe and this other realm of existence. 

The two main differences between the multiverse concept and the paraverse concept are as follows:

1. The multiverse concept postulates many other universes, while the paraverse concept postulates only a single other realm of existence (without excluding the possibility of additional universes). 
2. The multiverse idea typically postulates universes that are completely isolated from each other, without communication or interaction between any two of the universes; but conversely the paraverse concept says there may indeed be interaction or communication between our universe and some other realm of existence, with perhaps causes and effects sometimes flowing between the two.

The visual below illustrates the difference between the two ideas. The arrows represent interaction or communication. 

In the diagram above the arrows ---> and <--- represent causal interaction. 

In imagining a paraverse we should be as flexible and open-minded as possible. A paraverse might be a very physical place such as we know. Or it might be some ethereal state of existence very different from our existence. Beings living in a paraverse might be biological beings, or they might be beings of energy or purely spiritual beings. Maybe some of these beings once lived on Earth. 

Given the limits of our knowledge, it would seem to make little sense to try to make a map of the paraverse. There are those who claim that after you die, you go to an afterlife realm that has seven levels. But the basis of such claims seems to be too thin to allow any map of the paraverse to be created. 

However, there is a different type of "map of the spooky" that could be made with some empirical warrant. It is what we might call a map of paraverse interactions.  A paraverse interaction may be defined as some occurrence in our world of some inexplicable paranormal phenomenon that seems to be some interaction involving causal agency between a paraverse and our familiar world. 

A map of paraverse interactions would simply be a map showing where on planet Earth the most inexplicable paranormal phenomena have been observed. I will not attempt to make such a map. But I can mention a few places that should probably be marked by anyone creating such a map. 

One such place would be London, England, the site of some of the most well-documented paranormal events in history, such as those discussed in my posts here, here,  here, and here. Another such place would be some spots in upstate New York state, USA corresponding to the phenomena reported in my posts here and here. Two other such places might be Fatima, Portugal and Lourdes, France. Another such place might be the city of Boston in the USA, where lived the medium Leonora Piper, whose case is described here. Another such place might be New York City, USA, particularly Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan, where I have photographed more than 1000 mysterious orbs, as you can see by using the link here, and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right. Below is one of the photos, from 2015.

The same city has been the sight of a long series of extremely spooky events described in my post here and my series of 100+ posts you can read here by continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right of each page. 

A thorough attempt at a paraverse interaction map might well also include various locations in India and Brazil where paranormal events have been reported. Unlike the "dark matter map" which scientists groundlessly boasted about, a paraverse interaction map would be a map listing the locations of baffling sights that people actually saw or photographed.