Circa 1975
I did a mind-reading test with my sister, in which a person would think of an object somewhere in the house, and the other person would try to guess that object. The guessing person could only ask questions with a "yes" or "no" answer, and as soon as there was a single "no" answer a round was considered a failure. Including the basement, the house had four floors. There were at least ten consecutive successful rounds in which all the answers were "yes," with the correct object being guessed. This involved roughly 50 or 60 consecutive questions in which every single question was answered "yes." After each round the guesser was switched, so it couldn't have just been a case of my sister always saying, "yes." The odds of something like this occurring by chance are less than 1 in a quintillion. After we were scolded by an older sister for being enthusiastic about the result, we never retried the experiment.
Circa 2000
About a year or so before the World Trade Center attack, I had a dream that the World Trade Center was collapsing. The dream was very simple: some office workers inside the building, the floor collapsing, and a horrifying plunge. It was one of those “wake up in horror” dreams. I have never had a dream about any other building burning or collapsing. Later, I was in one of the towers of the World Trade Center when the building was hit by a hijacked jet on September 11, 2001. Luckily I was able to use the stairs to escape the building before it collapsed on that day.
Circa 2010
One day I opened the refrigerator door to put something in the refrigerator, and then for some reason the pizza pan I had on top of the refrigerator came crashing to the floor. Back then I had only 2 things on top of the refrigerator – a muffin pan and a pizza pan. I would always put the pizza pan on top of the same-sized muffin pan, where it would rest very securely on top of the refrigerator. So I was mystified by how the pizza pan could have fallen to the floor. I put it back on top of the muffin pan, and thought to myself: how the hell could that have happened? At the very instant when I was thinking that thought, staring at the top of the refrigerator, another object in my kitchen crashed to the ground – an object 12 feet away. It was a cutting board I kept behind my faucet, in a groove between the faucet and the wall (a cutting board I hadn't touched for hours). This is the only time in which that board had ever crashed to the ground, and it occurred less than ten seconds after another object had mysteriously crashed to the ground 12 feet away. I checked the window – could wind be gusting furiously? No, there was no sign of wind. At this time I had the suspicion that some mysterious invisible force was at work.
Circa 2012
My daughter told me she was going running. For the next 70 minutes I did not think of her, but then I thought to myself: where is she? Three seconds later I hear the door buzzer – it's the same daughter. I remark to her about the coincidence, mentioning some book claiming that dogs anticipate when their owners will return, by sitting next to the door a few minutes before the owner returns. The next day (Thursday) I don't think about my daughter between 1:00 and 5:50, and then at 5:50 I say aloud: where is she? Three seconds later the door buzzer sounds – it's the same daughter I was thinking of. The next day I don't think about my daughter between noon and 3:30, and then suddenly at 3:30 I recall the previous two day's coincidences and think to myself: I wonder whether it will happen again when my daughter comes home today? Three seconds later the buzzer rings – it's the same daughter. I estimate the odds of these events occurring by chance is about 1 in a million. It requires about a 1 in 100 coincidence each day, but the chance of it happening on three consecutive days is about 1 in 100 times 1 in 100 times 1 in 100, or about 1 in a million.
June 23, 2014
I was at the Queens Zoo in New York City with my two daughters (teenagers at this time). We were looking at a feline animal called a puma, which we could see distantly, far behind a plastic barrier. Suddenly (oddly enough) I had a recollection of a time about 10 years earlier when I and my daughters saw a gorilla just behind a plastic barrier, at the zoo at Busch Gardens in Florida. About three seconds later (before I said anything), my younger daughter said, “Do you remember that gorilla we saw close-up in Busch Gardens?” I was flabbergasted. It was as if there was telepathy going on. The incident seems all the more amazing when you consider that teenagers live very much in the present or the near future, and virtually never talk about unimportant things that happened 10 years ago. There was nothing in our field of view that might have caused both of us to have that recollection at the same time. On that zoo visit we hadn't seen a gorilla, nor had we seen any animal near a plastic barrier.
When we moved to the next zoo exhibit, just for laughs I asked my older daughter whether perchance she also was thinking of that gorilla we saw 10 years ago, before anyone mentioned the gorilla. My jaw dropped when she reported: yes, she also was thinking of that gorilla we saw ten years ago in Busch Gardens, before anyone had said anything about it. So apparently before anyone said anything, we had three out of three people all recalling the same very distant memory – a memory of seeing a gorilla ten years ago. How do you explain such a thing without a hypothesis of something like ESP? The odds of such a coincidence seem less than 1 in a billion.
July 2014
This summer I was all alone in my apartment, with my wife and two daughters far away visiting my wife's mother. My notes from this time state that there was a "case of waking up to find the light on in the kid's room." This was the first of several such cases I will report in this narrative, of lights seeming to mysteriously turn on by themselves.
I also noticed what seemed to be a bizarre phenomenon in regard to coins. It seems as if I was finding coins again and again in different places around the apartment. Repeatedly I would see some coin, and ask myself: how could I have failed to notice a coin in that position? It was as if coins were appearing out of nowhere at random times, although I never saw such a thing directly.
After noticing such a thing for several days, I finally decided I must start rigorously investigating the matter. So I decided to very thoroughly search the apartment, and make sure there were no loose coins around anywhere, and that every single coin in the apartment was in a coin jar. On July 19 I spent hours making sure there were no loose coins anywhere. I double-checked that there were no such coins. I resolved that I would be careful not to leave stray coins anywhere, and to record all coins that I found.
Immediately after finishing this double-checking, I went into the kitchen to pour some lemon juice into a cup of tea I had made. Suddenly I observed a coin rolling on the ground. It was rolling up from behind me, on the right. The coin was rolling on its edge. I was flabbergasted. How could such a coin have appeared? I had just double-checked that there were no loose or out-of-place coins anywhere in the apartment. No one in my family ever leaves coins in the kitchen, and I was alone in the apartment. It was as if the coin had appeared out of thin air. This is one of the most inexplicable occurrences I have ever witnessed. According to a scientific paper, the probability of a tossed coin landing on its edge is only about 1 in 6000. But the marvel here was not just that the coin was rolling on its edge, but that it appeared inexplicably, just after I had double-checked that there were no loose coins anywhere in the apartment.
I made the diagram below 24 hours after this rolling coin incident.
Over the next few years I would countless times observe anomalies involving coins. More than 100 times I would notice a coin in some spot that I had previously observed a short time ago without noticing such a coin. But none of these anomalies was as dramatic as the incident of July 19, 2014.
September 10, 2014
I found myself in need of a blog post for my "Future and Cosmos" blog at www.futureandcosmos.blogspot.com. I had read an online New Yorker article a day or two earlier written by a woman who claimed to have got a picture of an unrecognized figure in her home, which she thought was some kind of ghost. Lazily I thought to myself: let me try that; maybe it's an easy way of getting a topic for a blog post.
So I took out my cheap old digital camera, and said to myself: let me try to get something like this woman said she got. I audibly stated something along the lines of, “If there are any immaterial spirits who want to come forth and be photographed, please do so now.” I started taking some photos, thinking that there was maybe 1 chance in 100 that something interesting would show up.
Click. Nothing unusual.
Click. Nothing unusual.
Click. My first orb photo.
This was the first time I had ever seen an orb in one of my photos. It was very noticeable. From this day onward, mysterious orbs kept appearing in a significant fraction of my photos.
September 24, 2014
Very shortly after hearing that a sister of mine had died, I walked to a park. In the sixty seconds it took me to walk from the edge of the park to a pond, I observed at least 100 leaves fall, on a day that was not windy (the actual number could have easily been 150 or 200). Read here for a discussion of why such a "leaf shower" occurrence on such a day (a month before peak foliage) was incredibly improbable, having a likelihood of less than 1 in a trillion.
September 14, 2015
I asked one of my daughters to fill in the blanks in this sentence: why is there ___ rather than ___? I was thinking of the classic philosophical question of why there is something rather than nothing, but also thought of the question of why is there war rather than peace. The daughter filled in the sentence with an answer of "why is there fighting rather than peace," matching one of the two things I was thinking of. When my second daughter was asked the question by email, of why is there ___ rather than ___, she answered, "Why is there war rather than peace?" So both gave basically the same answer, matching one of the two answers I had originally thought of. Something pretty similar happened when I posed the question to my wife.
September 23, 2015
One of my family members was suffering from a troubling medical malady. Sad about this, I did what I almost never do. While sitting in a New York City subway car, I kind of sent out a general mental plea of assistance very vaguely addressed to any spiritual power that might be listening, in hope of lessening this problem. This was the first time in years that I had done any such thing resembling a prayer for assistance. A few minutes later, I saw something I had never previously seen in the many years I had rode the New York City subway: an insect flying in a subway car. It was a strange type of stick-like insect I can never recall seeing in New York City except this time. A few seconds after I noticed it, I saw it fly to my body, briefly landing at the exact position of my heart. It was as if I had very quickly got some astonishing "heard you" validation from my rare prayer. The family member soon recovered from the medical problem. I have never heard of a stick-shaped insect that can fly, but have merely read of stick-shaped insects that can jump (and such insects are found in forest environments totally different from New York City).
January 6, 2016
I was sitting about a meter away from a very sturdy lamp on a table, a lamp that was plugged directly into the wall, but turned off. Suddenly, while I was motionless, the lamp turned on by itself. I stood up, and turned the lamp off. I immediately tried to turn the light back on, but it would not turn on. The light bulb was now burned out. Pondering this later, I found this sequence of events to be inexplicable. You can understand how a lamp might turn off as its bulb burned out. But there is no reason why a light would ever turn on because the bulb had burned out.
June 9, 2016
After returning to my apartment in the evening after being away for a while, I was very surprised to see a piece of candy (a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup) right in front of the television set I had watched throughout most of the day, in a very noticeable position on the floor. My daughters were both away on this day, and the only other person who had been in the apartment was my wife (who never eats candy). I asked her about the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, and she denied any knowledge of it. I had not bought this brand of candy in many months, nor had I seen any Reese's Peanut Butter Cup around my living quarters for many months prior to this day. Given the piece of candy's position, it was inconceivable that I could have failed to notice it during the preceding afternoon and morning, when for five or more hours I was directly facing the position the candy was found, about 4 feet away. Reese's Peanut Butter Cup was my late mother's favorite snack.
October 31, 2016
Here is a quote from the blog post I made on this day:
"This morning while I was working on my couch, about 17 feet away from my bathroom, I heard my toilet flush. It was not just some little gurgle that might be caused by a blockage clearing up -- it was a very clear flush. This event would have been completely unremarkable were it not for the fact that there was no one else in my apartment other than myself. I have no explanation for how this toilet flush could have occurred. The flush handle is the type that requires a strong flick of the wrist, a type that would not flush even if a mouse climbed on top of it. The toilet was a type (shown here) that has no tank and no flapper, so it couldn't have had the type of 'flapper' problem that can cause a toilet to flush by itself."
Later that day I updated the blog post to read as follows:
"There was more Halloween spookiness later in the day. In the evening, at the very moment when I was re-reading the post above, my toilet started flushing again when there was no one in the bathroom. This time it flushed full blast for a full 60 seconds. I searched the Internet for cases of 'ghost flushing' or 'toilet flushed by itself,' and found only cases of such a thing happening with types of toilets other than the type I have (shown here), a toilet without any tank or flapper or float device."
The same thing happened on October 21, 2017. Twice the toilet flushed by itself when there was no one in the bathroom. This was the only time this happened in 2017, and it never happened in 2018 or 2019.
2016-2017
Fifteen different times between 2016 and 2017, I found an electric toothbrush of mine had started to run when no one had touched it.
March 1, 2017
I played an ESP game on the subway. I looked at a woman and thought, “Scratch your head” and visualized her scratching her hair. She scratched her nose. Three other people next to her also either scratched their hair or nose, some more than once. Plus two other people near me either scratched their noses or hair.
March 25, 2017
There's a very funny TV show on the TruTV channel. It's called The Carbonaro Effect. It's a combination magic show and hidden camera show. Magician Michael Carbonaro acts like some ordinary person (such as a cashier), and interacts with unsuspecting people, who are exposed to startling magic effects they weren't expecting to see. For example, in one show Michael is a supermarket cashier checking out someone's milk carton, and he transforms the carton so that it has on its back a "Have You Seen This Person?" image that matches the face of the very person trying to buy the milk.
Below is my account of what happened on March 25, 2017, which was written on the next day:
"I was watching an episode of the show I hadn't seen before, and for a few seconds went into my kitchen, where I suddenly had an idea for something that would be funny in the context of the show. My idea was: Michael could put a frozen fish into a microwave, run the microwave, and then remove a live fish. I then came back to watch some more of the episode. Within 60 seconds the show had exactly the same thing I had imagined: Michael putting a frozen fish into a microwave, running the microwave, and then removing a live fish. I have no explanation for this coincidence, and I'm very certain I had never watched the episode before."
July 18, 2017
A few weeks before this date I had placed five coins in a row in a remote corner of my apartment, in a small area where no one goes except myself. I placed the coins on a window sill of a small window that is always kept closed. I had placed the coins as a kind of test, to see whether some invisible influence could move one of the coins. I told no one else in the apartment about this test. On this date I noticed one of the five coins was clearly displaced, being about two inches away from the line formed by the others. It was just as if my "spirit power" test had succeeded.
July 28, 2017
I woke up and was surprised to find myself lying on my side, with a coin on the side of my stomach, the side that was facing the ceiling. This is one of countless seemingly inexplicable experiences I have had in which coins were involved, usually involving coins that seem to show up in a way that made me ask: how could that be there?
August 7, 2017
This was the first of many days in which I would witness a strange sight. Here is how I reported the sight:
"A bright light was coming from the back of my Samsung tablet, which was lying against the wall, power-charging. The previous night I had turned off the tablet before plugging it into a power-strip so it could power-charge. I had not yet touched the Samsung tablet since waking up, and I had not come within a meter of it. I had passed by the Samsung tablet when going to the bathroom, and had not noticed the bright light shining (it probably turned on after I passed by it). It seems that there is a little square on the back of the tablet that can serve as a flashlight. This flashlight had somehow turned on, even though the tablet device was turned off. I had no idea there was such a flashlight capability on this device, which I have been using regularly for 7 months. After I saw the light at the back of the tablet shining brightly, I swiped my finger against the surface of the tablet to verify that it was turned off, and then turned it on. The question is: how could the light at the back of the tablet device have turned on, even though the tablet device was off, and I hadn't touched the device? There is no knob or button that switches on this light."
Over the next months, the same thing would happen more than 15 times. In each of these cases, the flashlight at the back of the tablet would turn on, even though the tablet was turned off. The only way that I found to turn on the flashlight was by using a voice command. But in none of these cases was there any voice command used, and it doesn't work to use such a command when the tablet is turned off. The video below captured one of these occurrences. I still use this Samsung tablet every day, and no such thing has happened for a long time.
I also experienced nine cases of my Samsung tablet turning off by itself or turning off and then turning on by itself. This has not occurred in the past year.
August 11, 2017
I was watching TV. Just after I heard someone on TV say something like, "We debunked that paranormal thing," my box fan fell over and toppled to the floor. No one had touched it in more than 15 minutes.
August 30, 2017
A CD mysteriously fell off of a shelf for no apparent reason, a shelf I hadn't touched in more than 20 minutes.
September 22, 2017
I turn to the TCM channel on the TV, which is playing, “This is Spinal Tap,” a 1984 movie I had never watched. For some inexplicable reason I remember (from a newspaper review I read in the 1980's) that there's some joke in this movie along these lines:
Person 1: The Boston concert's been canceled.
Person 2: Don't worry; Boston isn't a big college town.
Within 10 seconds after having this incredibly improbable recollection of something I had merely read in a movie review 30+ years ago, I heard just such lines spoken on the TV.
October 23, 2017
Some coins near no one mysteriously fell over from a surface top in a way I cannot explain.
October 30, 2017
As I approached the bathroom in my apartment, I saw the light in the bathroom turn off. I waited for someone to exit. No one did. I went into the bathroom, assuming that the light bulb in the bathroom must have burned out. A flick of the light switch revealed that the light bulb had not burned out.
April 9, 2018
As described here, my TV suddenly started showing a Sharpness Control Screen in a popup window. This can only be evoked by using my black remote unit, and pressing Menu/Settings. But the black remote was 3 feet away from me, on the other end of the couch. I hadn't even touched the remote. I had never even seen that Sharpness Control Screen screen before. Experimenting with the remote, I found that this Sharpness Control Screen was a "very deeply nested screen" that can only be brought up by a very specific long series of button presses on my remote, one that requires 14 different button presses involving various different buttons on the remote. But no one was touching the remote when this Sharpness Control Screen appeared. It was as if some invisible presence had made a very specific series of 14 button presses on the remote.
June 26, 2018
Alone in my apartment, I went to the bathroom, and upon returning to the living room, I found that the TV had changed channels.
July 8, 2018
While watching a TV show on paranormal phenomena, I was very surprised to see my credit card on the opposite end of the sofa I was sitting on. I had no recollection of having placed the card in that spot.
August 27, 2018
On this date I published a post summarizing my previous experiences in finding hard-to-explain coins. I stated, "Since 2014 the breakdown of the number of anomalous-seeming coins I have sighted is as follows: 121 pennies, only two nickels, 20 quarters, and 62 dimes, for a total of 205 coins." I found it interesting that such a small percentage of these coins should be nickels. The number of nickels in circulation is about half as much as the number of dimes, and about one third the number of pennies. So it is extremely improbable that there would be only two nickels in 200 random coins. In my post I used a binomial probability calculator to calculate that the chance of you getting only two nickels in a random group of 200 coins is less than 1 in a million. This suggests (although does not prove) that something more than chance is involved in the finding of mysterious coins.
August 29-30, 2018
Pockys are a tasty brand of snack food consisting of a long, thin coated biscuit. When I woke up on August 29, I found on my kitchen counter a sealed envelope of Pockys, like you find inside a box of Pockys. No one else was in the apartment. I asked my wife whether she had left this treat for me. She said she hadn't, and that it must have been one of my daughters. I asked one daughter whether she had left the treat for me. She said no, and that it must have been her sister. I asked my other daughter whether she had left the treat for me. She said no, it must have been her sister who did it. So everyone else in the household denied having left the pack of Pockys in the kitchen. I hadn't bought the product in many years.
The next day something equally strange happened. I was sitting at the top of an apartment stairway, tying my shoes, my feet motionless, when suddenly I heard a set of keys falling down the stairs, just as if they had fallen from my body. I assumed that they must have been my apartment keys, and that they had somehow fallen out of my pocket. When I walked down the stairs to get the keys, I found a set of keys I had never seen before. They were not my apartment keys, which were still in my pocket. No one else was in the stairway. One of the keys in the mysterious set of keys was made by a company that went out of business in 1998.
Since Pockys sounds like "Pa-keys," we have the "keys" sound in both of these strange cases of unexplained appearances. When you subtract the sound of "keys" from the sound of "Pa-keys," you are left with the sound of "Pa."
September 26, 2018
Several times on this day a sound machine I was using (to create pleasant background sound to drown out noise) turned off by itself. The same thing happened quite a few times on October 4, 2018. But the same machine has worked without any such problem the past 6+ months. On October 16, 2018 the machine changed its "sound channel" by itself, while I was out of the apartment.
October 7, 2018
I looked around for my phone and found it on a windowsill. I had no recollection of having placed it there, nor can I imagine any possible reason why I would have put the phone in such a position.
November 2, 2018
The volume on my TV mysteriously turned all the way down, while both of the TV remotes were a foot or more away from me. Around this time there were two additional cases of the sound machine turning off by itself.
November 5, 2018
On this day I woke up about 10:00 AM alone in my apartment and noticed a light in my daughter's bedroom was on. The light is a type that you can turn on by pressing the lampshade. I pressed the lampshade several times to turn the light off. But at about 2:00 PM I noticed that the light had turned back on. There was no one else in the apartment. I had taken some photos of the room that day, which confirmed my recollection that the lamp was off a short time before I noticed that it had mysteriously turned on. Also twice on this day my Samsung tablet rebooted by itself, a problem I have not had with this device in 2020.
December 16, 2018
One of several days in which I have woke up to find a red scratch on my arm (an inch or two inches in length) that I cannot explain. On the Internet you can read various theories about the origin of such scratches, but they are all pure speculation.
February 28, 2019
A running faucet seemed to turn off by itself, right in front of me.
March 10, 2019
This morning (a Sunday) I woke up around 3:00 AM, and went to use the bathroom. Alone in my apartment, I noticed a table lamp was on in a bedroom that is normally slept in but which was empty on this night. I'm quite sure that the light was off when I went to bed around 12:30 AM. No one other than me had been in the apartment since about 10:00 AM on Saturday, and I had taken a photo of the bedroom at 4:06 PM on Saturday showing the light in question was off.
March 24, 2019
On this day there occurred one of the spookiest things I have ever seen: a locked door opening when no one was near. Sitting alone in my apartment, I suddenly heard what sounded just like the cylinder lock of my front door turning. The door opened slightly. I went up to investigate, and found no one at the door or in the hall of my apartment. The door had been locked by my daughter when she left earlier in the day. When she returned, I asked whether she had locked the door, and she said she had locked it. I have never known her to not lock the door when leaving, at any time she was leaving by herself.
April 2, 2019
Drying my clothes in a laundromat, I chose the "High" setting I always pick. Checking the dryer some minutes later, I saw that two of the three dryers I was using were now set on "Delicate," a drying option I have never selected in my life.
April 14, 2019
While watching with interest a "Game of Thrones" marathon on TV, I got up to close a window. Upon coming back from the window, I noticed the TV had changed channels, apparently while I was far away from any of the TV remotes that can be used to change channels. No one else was in the room with the TV. Something similar had happened a few days earlier. I had got up to do something in another room, and upon coming back to the room (with no one else in it), I found the TV channel had changed.
May 13, 2019
I noticed that the cover of a carbon monoxide detector in my apartment was open, with the battery halfway pulled out. I had replaced the battery with a new battery about 10 days earlier, testing the battery successfully after snugly snapping the battery into the battery slot, and snapping shut the detector cover. The battery test (done by pressing a button on the front of the detector) will only work if the battery is snug inside the slot, and the detector cover is shut tight. The carbon monoxide detector was at eye-level, and I had passed right by it at least 8 times previously that day without noticing anything unusual such as the cover being open. The carbon monoxide detector is right in front of anyone leaving the bathroom, about an arm's length away.
How could the detector lid have opened, and the battery halfway pulled out? The only one else in the apartment on this day except myself was my wife. I've been married to her for 27 years, and never once saw her touch a smoke detector or carbon monoxide detector. Once you snap the battery in and close the cover, deliberate manual effort must be made to either pry open the detector cover or remove the battery from its snug position inside the battery slot.
About a week later the carbon monoxide detector started giving warning beeps, because the unit had exceeded its functional life. I replaced it with a new unit.
June 19, 2019
My TV seemed to change channels by itself, while the TV remote control was well away from my body. I had quite a few times previously seen such a thing seem to happen.
June 28, 2019
I woke up at 9:30 AM and saw that my alarm clock (plugged directly into the wall) was blinking, and showing a time of 12:20. This is the kind of thing that might happen if there is a power interruption. But (as I discuss more fully here) if such a power interruption had occurred, it would have left its mark on two other devices plugged in elsewhere in my apartment, such as another clock I had in another room, and a sound machine I keep running in the same room I woke up in. But both of those other devices were normal, and the Internet on this day reported no power interruption in the city I lived (New York City). So I couldn't explain how my alarm clock got in the state I found it in.
August 2019 -- March 2020
During these months I experienced a bizarre phenomenon in which I would repeatedly find on my body (while I was alone) a very long detached hair, one much longer than any hair on my head. This happened 30 times. The detached hairs were as long as 19 inches, and usually longer than 12 inches. My hair is never longer than about six inches.
October 1, 2019
I suddenly observed my Sony A6000 camera changing its settings without me touching the camera. The settings can only be changed by moving a Mode Dial at the top of the camera. But no one was touching the camera. It was therefore as if some invisible spirit was manipulating the camera.
October 12, 2019
On this day I about seven times was surprised to see my Sony A6000 camera taking a single picture by itself. During all of these times I was more than a meter away from the camera. I observed such a thing happening quite a few other times around this date.
October 18, 2019
As reported in this post, I suddenly observed my Sony A6000 camera taking about 300 photos by itself, while no one was touching the camera. This mysterious picture-taking occurred in 13 separate bursts. Between each of these bursts there would be 8 or 9 seconds during which the camera would not take any photos. It was as if invisible spirit was pressing down the shutter button 13 different times. I captured this incident on a video which you can watch below:
There are no possible camera settings that can cause this camera to perform in such a way. There was no way that this could have been some "delayed action" effect produced by some self-timer setting. The camera was in "Sports Action" mode, also called burst mode. When the Sony A6000 is in "Sports Action" mode (also called "burst" mode), it is physically impossible to choose any of the "delayed action" or "self-timer" options offered by the camera (which cannot take more than 3 photos at a time when such options are chosen). There was nothing wrong with the shutter button or anything else on the camera in question, which worked without any problem during hour-long photography sessions on more than fifty different days between the date of this video (October 18, 2019) and December 31, 2019.
January 17, 2020
I found a smoke detector in my apartment misplaced from its normal position, outside of the room where it is normally kept. The same thing had happened several days earlier. On this date (January 17) I asked my wife whether there was any problem with the smoke detector, and she said, "No, why do you ask?" We were the only two in the apartment on this day.
January 21, 2020
I turned off the water in the bathroom, and turned around to dry my hands. The faucet seemed to turn back on by itself. This is the only time I can recall this happening in the many years I have lived in this apartment.
March 20, 2020
At 7:40 PM a lamp about a meter away from me stopped shining while I was motionless. I heard no sound. I thought it might have been that the light bulb had burned out. But when I stood up and gave the bulb a slight turn, the light turned back on. The light was plugged directly into the wall, and there was nothing wrong with the bulb, which continued to shine for many days. I made sure the bulb was turned all the way in one direction.
A while later, on April 3, the same thing happened. The same lamp stopped shining, while I was sitting about a meter from it. I stood up, and gave the light bulb a slight turn. The light turned back on. Doing this should have been impossible, because on March 20 I had turned the bulb as far as it could go in one direction, and saw the lamp on with the bulb in that position.
April 13, 2020
I woke up at 3:00 AM for no particular reason. I soon heard a loud crashing sound from the kitchen. I immediately entered the kitchen, and found a completely filled unopened grape juice jug (that had been upright on the floor) had overturned, and now lay prone on the floor. A large filled jug like this (shown here) is hard to topple, and cannot even be overturned by a quick slap of the wrist. There are no pets in the apartment that might explain such an overturning. On the same day (before I mentioned this event) someone else in the apartment mentioned that 2 or 3 times a closed bedroom door had mysteriously opened.
April 19, 2021 (after the original publication of this post)
Shortly after waking up on April 19, 2021 (the day after learning of a sister's death), I was very surprised to see a 10-inch-long scroll in a particular corner of my apartment, parallel to the left edge of a black bookcase. I opened the scroll (about two inches in width) and found two portraits of my daughters that some artist had made years ago. I was very delighted to discover the portraits, which I do not remember ever seeing before. But hanging unresolved was the question: how did they get in that spot? My wife was as baffled by their appearance in that spot as I was. Neither of us (the only ones in the apartment that day) had done anything related to the bookcase that might have caused the portraits to appear where I found them. We had both barely touched the bookcase on the previous day. My wife said she last remembered the portraits being in some other place in the apartment, in a drawer on the opposite end of the large black bookcase.
The position where I found the scrolled-up portraits was very plainly visible from the place on the sofa where I sit most of the day, about three meters away, so I should have noticed them in such a spot on the previous day, but did not. To make things all the more baffling, I took a few photos of my living room around midnight at the end of April 18, and upon examining such photos on April 19 I saw they showed the paper scrolls parallel to the left edge of the black bookcase (where I discovered them on the morning of April 19), in a position where they should have been very visible to me during the evening of April 18, when I sat for hours three meters away from them, but failed to notice them. It is as if near the end of April 18 the scrolls had been inexplicably teleported to the position parallel to the left edge of the black bookcase, where I noticed them very quickly after waking up on April 19.
The photo below shows the paper scrolls just as I found them on the morning of April 19, and the photo is taken from the spot 3 meters away where I sat through most of the afternoon and evening of April 18. You can see how clearly noticeable such scrolls are from such a spot, from which I never noticed such scrolls on that day.
See the pdf file here for a discussion of many accounts similar to the account given above, some of which seem to involve objects mysteriously appearing, and some of which seem to involve objects mysteriously showing up in unexpected places. Such cases have been studied by Mary Rose Barrington of the Society for Psychical Research.
Spooky Things I Saw in 2022 and 2023 and 2024
See my posts here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here for many other spooky things I saw after the original publication of this post.
Conclusion
Although many people might be scared if they had seen some of the events I have described, I cannot ever recall being scared by any of them. I do not regard any of them as being threatening. The general impression I have got from observing such events is that there is some mysterious unseen force or unseen agency that is capable of manipulating matter inside human homes. Such a force or agency may periodically manipulate matter as a way of sending out a sign of its presence and power. We might best regard such manifestations as being welcome indications that there is some powerful unseen higher reality, some superhuman agency that is probably a spiritual reality. I am unsure about whether we should interpret such manifestations as coming from any deceased spirit. But they would seem to be manifestations of some mysterious spiritual power, probably some power that has some interest in occasionally providing indications of its existence.
Some will claim that the events described here are impossible. But all of the following things argue that they are very much possible:
(1) I have videos showing some of the events described above, the very videos I have included in this post.
(2) I have published online very massive photographic evidence of paranormal anomalies similar to the events mentioned here. You can see some of that evidence here, here, here, here, here, here and in the long series of posts here (which you can tour through completely by continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right). Such photographic evidence seems to indicate that some unseen reality can mysteriously intervene very precisely in the physical state of matter in front of an observer (or whatever is in front of a camera), to achieve pattern repetitions that occur very massively. Given such a reality, no one should exclude anything discussed in this post. Almost everything I have discussed in this post is less impressive as a manifestation than what is shown in the series of photos mentioned in the links I just gave.
(3) There exists a very massive literature documenting that very many other people have had experiences as astonishing as my own. You can read summaries of such literature at the series of 68 posts here and in some of the essays here, which include links back to the original sources. You can also read part of this literature in the classic parapsychology works of writers such as Joseph Rhine, Camille Flammarion, Frederic Myers, Sir William Crookes, Frank Podmore, Edmund Gurney and Hereward Carrington, and in the many volumes of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (and the Proceedings of that Society) that can be read on www.archive.org. A recent study indicates that a significant fraction (10% to 28%) of the general public have had something like near-death experiences, which are often more dramatic than anything reported here.
(4) Far from being "impossible," some hypothesis of the existence of spirit seems massively necessary, not only to explain anomalous psychic phenomena, but also to explain so-called ordinary mental phenomena such as the retention of memories for 50 years, the instantaneous recall of very old memories and little-remembered information, and also basic human mental phenomena such as human creativity, human consciousness, human imagination, coherent self-hood and abstract human thinking. The utter failure of attempts to explain such things as mere neural activity is very thoroughly discussed in these essays and at this site, a site that includes a host of references to neuroscience literature.
I may note that I am a lifelong non-drinker who has never used drugs, and I was as sober as a judge (and also in a calm state of mind) when all of these events occurred.
Although many people might be scared if they had seen some of the events I have described, I cannot ever recall being scared by any of them. I do not regard any of them as being threatening. The general impression I have got from observing such events is that there is some mysterious unseen force or unseen agency that is capable of manipulating matter inside human homes. Such a force or agency may periodically manipulate matter as a way of sending out a sign of its presence and power. We might best regard such manifestations as being welcome indications that there is some powerful unseen higher reality, some superhuman agency that is probably a spiritual reality. I am unsure about whether we should interpret such manifestations as coming from any deceased spirit. But they would seem to be manifestations of some mysterious spiritual power, probably some power that has some interest in occasionally providing indications of its existence.
Some will claim that the events described here are impossible. But all of the following things argue that they are very much possible:
(1) I have videos showing some of the events described above, the very videos I have included in this post.
(2) I have published online very massive photographic evidence of paranormal anomalies similar to the events mentioned here. You can see some of that evidence here, here, here, here, here, here and in the long series of posts here (which you can tour through completely by continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right). Such photographic evidence seems to indicate that some unseen reality can mysteriously intervene very precisely in the physical state of matter in front of an observer (or whatever is in front of a camera), to achieve pattern repetitions that occur very massively. Given such a reality, no one should exclude anything discussed in this post. Almost everything I have discussed in this post is less impressive as a manifestation than what is shown in the series of photos mentioned in the links I just gave.
(3) There exists a very massive literature documenting that very many other people have had experiences as astonishing as my own. You can read summaries of such literature at the series of 68 posts here and in some of the essays here, which include links back to the original sources. You can also read part of this literature in the classic parapsychology works of writers such as Joseph Rhine, Camille Flammarion, Frederic Myers, Sir William Crookes, Frank Podmore, Edmund Gurney and Hereward Carrington, and in the many volumes of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (and the Proceedings of that Society) that can be read on www.archive.org. A recent study indicates that a significant fraction (10% to 28%) of the general public have had something like near-death experiences, which are often more dramatic than anything reported here.
(4) Far from being "impossible," some hypothesis of the existence of spirit seems massively necessary, not only to explain anomalous psychic phenomena, but also to explain so-called ordinary mental phenomena such as the retention of memories for 50 years, the instantaneous recall of very old memories and little-remembered information, and also basic human mental phenomena such as human creativity, human consciousness, human imagination, coherent self-hood and abstract human thinking. The utter failure of attempts to explain such things as mere neural activity is very thoroughly discussed in these essays and at this site, a site that includes a host of references to neuroscience literature.
I may note that I am a lifelong non-drinker who has never used drugs, and I was as sober as a judge (and also in a calm state of mind) when all of these events occurred.
No comments:
Post a Comment