Orbs with Ten Stripes

 Photo date: April 19, 2021. Photographer: Mark Mahin.   

I took the photos below while photographing only ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background.  We see orbs with ten stripes. 

"Burning" Bands

Photo date: April 19, 2021. Photographer: Mark Mahin.   

I took the photos below while photographing only ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background.  We see orbs with big stripes, stripes that have a flame-like feature on their left edge. 

Strange Events Shortly After Learning of a Sibling's Death

Many a person reports strange inexplicable events around the time of a loved one's death, such as a clock mysteriously stopping at the time someone died. Prior to this year, I had only one such experience around the time of a loved one's death.  The experience was that within an hour after learning of a sibling's death, I observed an inexplicable shower of leaves. While working a short distance from the edge of a park to a pond, within an hour of learning of a sister's death,  I saw during 60 seconds about 100 to 200 leaves fall from the trees, even though it was only September 24th (long before leaves tend to fall in my area), and even though there was no unusual wind.  Returning four days later to the same spot, and keeping track of how many leaves fell, I saw only one leave fall during three minutes. 

Yesterday evening (April 18) I heard of the unexpected death of a  sister. There followed two very hard-to-explain events. 

The first event involved my Samsung tablet device. It suddenly froze up.  I turned it off, hoping the problem would go away when I turned it back on. But it was then impossible to turn the tablet device back on. I must have pressed the "on" button 30 times, without it turning on. Then finally I was able to turn the device on.  I checked the battery, thinking that maybe I had been low on charge. But I found instead it was still 85% charged.  I can't explain this strange behavior of the device, which I have never seen before. 

The next morning (today, April 19, 2021) something else very strange happened. Shortly after waking 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. 

Strange Triads

Photo date: April 17, 2021. Photographer: Mark Mahin.   

I took the photos below while photographing only ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background.  We see a strange pattern. 

From Orb to Angel?

The 1874 book Dead and Gone by James Samuel Pollock (which you can read here) is a a book deserving much more attention than the very little attention it has received so far.  It is a book filled with accounts of paranormal experiences, such as apparition sightings, dreams that seemed to foretell death, and deathbed visions. In some of the accounts we hear of balls of light. On page 120 we read this:

"Shortly after, when the room was dark, she saw the light again. It appeared as a globe of white light, and gradually formed itself into an angel. Both Mr. and Mrs. B- saw this. Next day their baby died."

On the same page we read another account involving an orb:

"When he inquired of her the cause of her comfort, she said, ' Father, I have seen with my own eyes the things of which I doubted. My soul went forth from the body, and I saw the holy angels, and the souls of the blessed, and^the rewards of the just. I saw also my own body, with the eyes of my soul, lying pale and bloodless on the floor of my cell, as it were dried up and without juice.'  The abbot asked what appearance the soul had out of the body. She answered, 'The appearance of a ball of fire, like the moon, and able to see on all sides.'  She added, however, that when the soul, or an angel, manifests itself to men, it takes the lineaments of a body."

This account matches quite a few accounts of near-death experiences. In such accounts a person will often report floating out of his body, and being able to see in all directions rather than only in a single direction. On page 136 we read this:

"Miss A. M. K. is the youngest of three sisters, who lived in London in the year 1865. She had gone to rest one night, when she saw a blue globe of light in her room. She was greatly excited, and rushed at the light, when it disappeared."

On page 159 we read this:

"The man of God, Godric, saw, while he was praying, an intense light penetrating into the darkness of the night, and two walls of brightness reaching from earth to heaven. Between these walls angels, were flying up to heaven, bearing, with songs of joy, the soul of Abbot Robert, one on the right hand, the other on the left. The soul, as far as it could be seen, was like a globe of fire."

 On page 203 we read this:

"She observed that the room was lighted up. A little ball of light was floating about the room, and her father was outside the window, looking in upon her.... At the time of the vision her father had been dead a few months, and her infant only a few days."

Bizarre Bands

 Photo date: April 16, 2021. Photographer: Mark Mahin.   

I took the photos below while photographing only ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background.   We see strange stripes in orbs. 

Bright Shapes in the Orb Holes

 Photo date: April 15, 2021. Photographer: Mark Mahin.   

I took the photos below while photographing only ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background. We see orb holes, and in each orb hole is a bright shape. 

They Saw Orbs Long Ago

Below are various reports from Chapter 15 of the book The Unexplained: A Sourcebook of Strange Phenomena by William R. Corliss. 

• In 1897 a bright ball of light was seen to descend and float about six feet above the ground. 
• A G. Gilmore reported in the journal Nature in 1919 that he saw a luminous ball lying on the street, and that it vanished with a loud noise. 
• An M. F. Faulkner reported in 1964 that his father saw a small egg-shaped ball of brilliant light which spread out to become a sheet of greenish light about 12 feet.  "The whole sight then vanished as suddenly as it appeared, with a loud bang," Faulkner reported. 
• In 1967 a G. S. Sheldon reported a ball of brilliant blue light descending from a cloud.  It passed behind or into a cloud, but seemed to reappear as a ball of bright red light. 
• In 1749 someone reported a ball of blue fire rolling along the water.
• An aircraft pilot named M. A. Uman reported in 1968 that a yellow-white ball of light about 18 inches in diameter passed through his windshield and went moving about in his aircraft, seen by multiple witnesses. It soon left the aircraft and was seen on the wing. The ball of light made no noise. 
• The next year an R. C. Jennison reported seeing a similar ball of light (20 centimeters in width) coming from the cabin of the aircraft he was on. 
• A Frederic B. Mohr reported in 1966 that a relative had seen a ball of light the size of a basketball, which suddenly disappeared. 

Striped Recurrence

 Photo date: April 14, 2021. Photographer: Mark Mahin.   

I took the photos below while photographing only ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background.  We see a strange pattern that looks a little like the mathematical symbol standing for "greater than": a > symbol.

A Strange Pattern

Photo date: April 1, 2021. Photographer: Mark Mahin.   

I took the photos below while photographing only ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background.  We see orbs with an odd hole shape. 

Strange Shoe-Shaped Holes

Photo date: April 12, 2021. Photographer: Mark Mahin.   

I took the photos below while photographing only ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background.  We see orb holes that are shaped like shoes. Very odd is the little bright spot inside these holes. 

Rainbow Rings

Photo date: April 8, 2021. Photographer: Mark Mahin.   

I took the photos below while photographing only ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background.  We see some colorful shapes. 

Meandering Motif

 Photo date: April 8, 2021. Photographer: Mark Mahin.   

I took the photos below while photographing only ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background.  We see orbs with a strange wiggly stripe that reminds one of a meandering river.