Another J-Shaped Stripe in an Orb

 Photo date: September 28, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. It is one of several orbs I have recently photographed with a letter "J" in it. 

It Was Just As If They Teleported In Front of Me

 I will now give you a very fresh observational report of some spooky events I observed within the past hour (I started writing this account immediately after the events occurred).

After awaking, I showered and dressed, and walked into a living room (there was no one else on the floor). At first I noticed nothing unusual. But a minute or so later I noticed a pink rubber band on the floor, in front of the TV set. The rubber band had not been there when I went to bed last night. I am in general very careful to pick up from the floor any objects such as coins, rubber bands or pens that I see there, as soon as I notice them. 

Struck by this anomaly, I picked up a camera I keep on a little ledge in front of the TV. I raised my camera to photograph what I thought was a single rubber band on the floor. I was surprised to see there was now a second rubber band right next to the pink rubber band: a larger brown rubber band. It was as if the larger rubber band had been instantly teleported to the spot right in front of me. I had very clearly looked at the pink rubber band, and I am certain that when I first saw it there was only one rubber band on the floor area in front of the TV (the area shown in the photo below). 

A few seconds later I noticed there were now three rubber bands on the floor, right in front of the TV set. There was now a third rubber band about a foot to the left of the first two rubber bands. 

What I saw was like objects being instantly teleported from one spot to another, just as if the rubber bands I keep on the TV ledge were being teleported to the surface of the floor. As I reported in a series of posts labeled "rubber band anomalies," I have seen more than a dozen previous similar anomalies involving rubber bands. But none of the previous incidents seemed as dramatic as what I saw today. 

I speculated earlier that rubber bands may have a symbolic meaning. Being very expandable, rubber bands may symbolize some expansion of the mind that may occur in an afterlife. 

Below we see the rubber bands. What I saw was: (1) first no rubber band noticed on the floor; (2) then a single rubber band on the floor; (3) then a few seconds later two rubber bands on the floor; (3) then a few seconds later three rubber bands on the floor. This all happened in a period of maybe two minutes, during which I was alone in the room, and did not touch any rubber bands. I had not yet opened any window in the room, and there was no fan running, ruling out blowing air as an explanation. The area shown below is about 3 meters from the window, and today is not a windy day where I live. 

A conceivable hypothesis to explain these events is some invisible spirit or power quickly moving small objects around. 

Postscript: On October 5, 2025 there was another similar event. I woke up and noticed no rubber bands on the floor near the TV. About 30 minutes later I noticed a blue rubber band  on the floor, in front of the left edge of the TV, in front of the black leg shown in the photo above.  I had taken a photo the night before, which showed the same blue rubber band a meter away, in the middle of the ledge in front of the TV. How did that rubber band get half a meter lower, and also one meter to the left? I can't explain it. There was no one else in the room; the nearest open window was about 4 or 5 meters away, and the wind on this day was only 5 miles per hour where I live. 

Roundness Meets Roundness

 Photo date: September 27, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors, near a black thermostat. 

The Spookiest Windows I've Photographed

 Below are the spookiest photos I've taken of windows.  I will include both windows looking outdoors and information windows such as exist in Grand Central Terminal in New York City. 

I took the photo below  at Grand Central Terminal.  I entitled the post "Was It Trying to Peek Inside the Little Window?"

My post publishing this photo remarked how it looked like a mysterious blue orb was "playing human," as we see the orb just exactly at the information window, as if the orb were chatting with a woman:

I took the photo below  at Grand Central Terminal. 

Below is another mysterious orb near an information window:

The photo below was taken in Grand Central Terminal in New York.  We see a blue orb floating above one of the station's information windows. The window is closed in the photo, but such a window is often open and manned. 

This photo looks almost exactly like the photo below I took  months earlier on August 5, 2015, and reported in this blog post.  

One of the spookiest windows I have ever photographed is a window I photographed in 2015 (the original post can be seen here). I got an astonishing effect: what looked like a side profile of a ghostly figure in the window, looking to the right. It did not seem to be a mere image attached to the window, because if you look at the three photos below, you will see what looks like a change in the expression of the figure, with the size of the figure's mouth changing. 

Below is one photo I took of the strange figure in that window.

This photo was cropped from the top right corner of the photo below, showing a building on Fifth Avenue in New York, taken at 4:05 PM.

Below is another photo taken after the first photo, also at 4:05 PM.

Notice that in the photo above the figure's mouth seems shorter than in the other photos. This photo was cropped from the top right corner of the photo below, showing a building on Fifth Avenue in New York, taken at 4:05 PM.

Below is a photo taken after the photo above, but also at 4:05 PM.

This photo was cropped from the top right corner of the photo below, showing a building on Fifth Avenue in New York, taken at 4:05 PM.

 

Below is a photo taken after the photos above, but also at 4:05 PM. Now the figure's mouth seems much more prominent than in the two previous photos, and the figure looks more wide-eyed. 

This photo was cropped from the top right corner of the photo below, showing a building on Fifth Avenue in New York, taken at 4:05 PM.

Could it be this was just some decoration put up by some prankster? Apparently not, because the "facial expression" of the ghostly figure clearly changes between the different photos. Note how "wide-eyed" the ghostly figure looks in the fourth photo, and notice how the size of the figure's mouth seems to change.

The effect I got at this location could conceivably have been a gigantically improbable optical illusion, but what are the odds against such a thing accidentally suggesting a ghostly figure with a changing expression?

A Bright Orb

Photo date: September 25, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. The background is a chest of drawers. 

Postscript: The next day I got the bright orb below.

Orbs Near the UN Building: A Retrospective

Back in the days, when I was more energetic, I used to get fantastic orb shots around famous buildings such as the United Nations building and Grand Central Terminal. Below are some photos I got of mysterious orbs near the United Nations building in New York City. All of the photos were taken on clear nights in which there was no fog, mist, rain or precipitation. 

My photo below shows two blue orbs near the UN building. 

My photo below also shows two blue orbs near the UN building:

My photo below shows a purple orb near the UN building.

My photo below shows an orange orb near the UN building in New York City.  The moon on this night was only a crescent.

My photo below shows a pink orb in front of the United Nations building, in the lower left of the photo. 

My photo below shows some orbs above the UN building. 

In my photo below, we see what looks like a purple orb resting atop the UN building. 

Weird Weekday

I'll skip telling you another "light that seemed to mysteriously turn on by itself" anecdote matching my experience of this morning. But I will mention something very strange that happened this afternoon. I went to the Post Office to drop off a package and buy a book of stamps. As soon as I got back home, I put back my credit card in my wallet, and started searching my pockets for the book of stamps. I could not find the stamps, which I distinctly recall putting in my pocket. I looked all around for the stamps, and could not find them. I scolded myself for being careless, thinking that I must have dropped the stamps on the street.  Then after going to the other side of the first floor I found the missing stamps, lying strangely on the floor, positioned in a way that seemed to exclude any "falling out of the pocket" possibility. I have no explanation for how they got there. It was rather like teleportation had gone on. 

Looking for some possible metaphysical symbolism here, it is easy to find some. The stamps have on them the word "Forever." And we possibly have some "other side" symbolism, perhaps referring to the Other Side of an afterlife. 

This morning I had only one dream: after I went to the other side of an office floor, a US President told me something roughly to the effect of, "When it is Game 6 or Game 7 of the World Series, you have to go home." In life after death symbolism, the phrase "going home" often symbolizes returning to some heavenly home, where the soul may possibly have pre-existed. The reference to Game 6 or Game 7 of the World Series refers to a date of about November 1. But it is unclear whether the date is a date of this year or some other year. 

Orb With a Shadow Stripe

Photo date: September 21, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. The background is a chest of drawers. 

Another photo from this day shows what looks like a green speeding orb:

Barely Blue

 Photo date: September 20, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. 

Spooky Tumbles

Below is a photo of my shower drain. The sieve device is over the drain to prevent hairs from getting down into the drain hole. On top of the sieve I have placed a large bottle of mouthwash, which helps to press down the sieve, minimizing the chance that hairs will get through it. 

A large bottle like this is quite stable when placed as shown below. Water from the shower will not cause it to fall (particularly given a shower head like I have, which spreads out the water evenly across an area about the size of a large pizza platter). Prior to yesterday I had showered on many previous days with the exact arrangement as shown above, with the bottle never falling. So yesterday I was surprised to see without any apparent cause the bottle falling down while I was showering and standing behind the bottle. 

At first I thought: maybe I accidentally kicked the bottle over, even though I had no memory of even touching it and no memory of doing anything unusual. But then I realized why this was basically impossible: the bottle had fallen towards me, not away from me, as it would have done if I had accidentally kicked it over. 

Early this morning there was another strange tumble. First I used the tube shown below, which was on the rim of my bathroom sink. I walked about 15 feet away, and then heard a sound coming from the unoccupied bathroom. I went back to the bathroom to investigate. The tube had fallen from the rim of the sink to the center of the sink.  This happened about 8 seconds after I had left the bathroom, 8 seconds after anyone had touched the tube. 

Now, it is just barely conceivable that an object like this could fall by itself in a windless bathroom with no window, 8 seconds after anyone had touched it, if the object has been very specially placed on the exact edge of the sink rim. But that would require a positioning so careful that it would be like balancing a pencil on its point.  The chance of it accidentally happening seems like 1 in a million. 

Rather than having any concern about such spooky events, I look for signs of a positive indication. The mouthwash bottle had large words across it: "MAXIMUM PROTECTION." Was its strange fall a hint of some protective presence, perhaps? On the same day I had a dream of a figure of cardinal importance standing directly behind my back, a dream suggesting a motif of spiritual protection, reminding me of that phrase "I have your back," referring to support or protection. As for the tube on the sink rim, it had an upward arrow symbol marked "Up & up." A spooky movement of such a tube might have been a hint about a future "up and up" progression of the soul. 

Postscript: Within the same hour I first published this post, there appeared on my front walkway the feather below, about 5 inches long. I almost never see pigeons in the front yard, making the appearance a striking one. I had used the front walkway an hour earlier without noticing such a thing. Some interpret improbably positioned feathers as spiritual signs, an old association stemming from traditional depictions of angels as having wings. 

Post-postscript: Another day, another spooky tumble. The day after writing the post above, I found the little round cap of an almond milk container in a refrigerator shelf was strangely off of the container, and on the other side of the internal space of a refrigerator. I can't explain how this happened, although I know it happened also on a previous day. We have here some possible symbolism that may hint at the metaphysical concept of the Other Side of an afterlife. 

Last night (besides dreaming of being at a funeral) I dreamed window curtains were being moved horizontally across a window space,  by some supernatural force. In English "curtains" is a slang term for death. The curtains being moved in a supernatural way from one side of the window to the other side also may have hinted at the concept of the Other Side of an afterlife. It was one of 500+ dreams I've had that seemed to symbolize or refer to life after death, dreams all described in my post here.

Post-post-postscript:  A few days later I again saw " the little round cap of an almond milk container in a refrigerator shelf was strangely off of the container, and on the other side of the internal space of a refrigerator." The distance between the two was about 12 inches. This is the third morning in recent weeks that I have seen this effect, illustrated in the diagram below. Even the laziest quarter turn of the cap will prevent it from falling off the almond milk container. 

An Orange Orb

 Photo date: September 17, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. 

Mainstream Site Speculates About the Cause of Mystery Orbs Snapped by Scientist Camera, Mentioning Spirit Explanations

 As I mentioned in a previous post, at this page of the Coast to Coast web site, we have an interesting account of scientists who got images of what look like mysterious orbs. The images came from a trail camera set up in a remote part of Chile, for the purpose of scientifically studying wildlife. On the page we have a video, and at the 29 second mark we see the objects shown below, which seem like bright spheres.

Recently the mainstream LiveScience.com had an article about this event. We have an article with this headline:

"Camera trap in Chile detects strange lights blazing through the wilderness. Researchers are scrambling to explain them."

We have this quote:

" 'On a camera located at the edge of a meadow, quite far from any public road and focused on a flat horizon, some lights appeared that we cannot explain,'  biologist Alejandro Kusch said in a UMAG podcast in August. 'Apparently, these lights, which are initially distant, approach and remain in front of the camera, dazzling it, in a movement that appears to be descending ' ."

We read this:

"Potential explanations ranged from an arachnid coming very close to the camera lens to that of a 'plasmoid,' a short-lived form of plasma rarely observed in nature that may be behind phenomena such as ball lightning. However, all specialists agreed: for now, there is no conclusive explanation."

Later we read this:

"The local Mapuche people traditionally speak of 'bad lights,' which they believe are spirits that appear in the fields. This raises the possibility that the camera traps are finally capturing a phenomenon that has long been recognized in the region....One possibility is that the lights are unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), possibly from a mysterious flying object."

The "ball lighting" explanation is trotted out, but knocked down:

"According to Alexis, the primary light may be a plasmoid, or a bubble of incandescent ionized gas that is confined by Earth's local magnetic field, and that can remain stable for a few seconds. The most familiar atmospheric example is ball lightning, usually associated with storms. But that is where his explanation hits a wall. 'It was summer, with 48  degrees Fahrenheit [8 degrees Celsius], and there were no electrical storms,' Alexis told Live Science. 'There were no atmospheric conditions for a storm, so it is very unlikely that ball lightning could have formed.' "

The article ends on a "we have no explanation for this" note. 

We may note the huge failure of almost all scientists to study this topic decently. Mysterious orbs have been showing up in photos for decades, in the photos of very many people, with peculiar markings (the free online book here shows more than 800 photos of mysterious striped orbs), and with dramatically repeating patterns. But senselessly the mainstream may follow a policy of "pay no attention to something unless it shows up in a photo taken by a scientist."  So we get an article like the LiveScience one, which wrongly makes it sound like a mystery that has been photographed most abundantly for decades has been photographed for the first time this year. 

I may note that the Chile trail camera photos being discussed are not at all the first photos of mysterious orbs by a scientist. The physics PhD Klaus Heinemann took very many photos of mysterious orbs which he thinks have no mundane explanation, and he discusses his activity here. Also the scientific paper discussed here described observations of mysterious objects it called "spheroids,"  which occurred  repeatedly when some fancy scientific equipment was used to look for sky anomalies during a 10-month investigation in a remote part of Long Island. 

Yet Another Orb With a J-Like Stripe

 Photo date: September 17, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. 

The similarity between this orb and an orb I photographed five days earlier is striking. The top of each stripe begins at exactly the same point, a little to the right of the top center point in the circle. Both orbs have a J-shaped shadow stripe. Could the J letter be symbolic? A J could stand for a person, or maybe the month of June or January. 

Another Green Orb

 Photo date: September 16, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious green orb I photographed indoors.

Click here to see 270 photos I have taken of mysterious green orbs. 

A Green Orb

 Photo date: September 15, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

Below we see a mysterious green orb I photographed indoors. 

On the same night I also got this orb:

Looking Lethargic: the Society for UAP Studies

 A few years ago there was formed what is called the Society of UAP Studies. This society has a website at https://www.societyforuapstudies.org/.  After examining the website I can describe some things I find not quite right.  

Glitch #1: Its Definition of UAP

Everyone knows what UFO stands for: Unidentified Flying Object. But there is some ambiguity in the term UAP. When I look for the definition of UAP I find that the Merriam Webster dictionary defines it like this: "unidentified aerial phenomenon, unidentified anomalous phenomenon —used especially as an alternative to UFO or unidentified flying object." 

The term "UAP" was introduced by people trying to avoid some of the stigma associated with the term "UFO."  But the term "UAP" has two definitions, one much more narrow than the other:

• A definition of UAP as "unidentified aerospace phenomena" or "unidentified aerial phenomena" is very narrow, limiting things to only what is observed in the sky or space. 
• A definition of UAP as "unidentified anomalous phenomena" is a much broader definition that includes very many spooky things that might not commonly be called a UFO. 

A US government announcement in 2024 used the second of these definitions, and was entitled "DOD Examining Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena." But the Society for UAP Studies defines UAP in the more narrow way, defining the term as meaning "unidentified aerospace phenomena." The society locks itself into this definition by using a subtitle at the top of all of its pages, a subtitle defining itself as a society "Advancing the study of unidentified aerospace phenomena through interdisciplinary dialogue."

Why is it problematic to define UAP as "aerospace phenomena"? One reason is that there is a continuum between sightings of strange things in the sky and strange things seen in people's homes and backyards. Specifically:

• People very often report seeing mysterious bright objects in the sky, which have very many shapes, including very often a spherical or ball shape. 
• People often report seeing or photographing mysterious spherical or circular objects in their homes or in their backyards.  You can read about one class of such reports by reading my 181 posts with a tag of "orbs visible to naked eye." You can read such posts by using the link here, and continuing to press Older Posts when you get to the bottom of the page. 

In light of the reality mentioned in the second item on the list above, it makes no sense to be defining UAP in some limiting way, as only "unidentified aerospace phenomena." It's much better to use a broader term that allows you to study a wider spectrum of reports. 

Glitch #2: Its Snooty Snobbish Elitism

A page of the Society for UAP Studies makes clear that it is rather an "old boy network."  On this page we read this: "As a learned society, only those applicants with advanced degrees or specific and relevant expertise, as well as demonstrated excellence in their field or profession, will be seriously considered for full 'affiliate'  membership status." This makes no sense. There are no PhD degrees or Master's Degrees issued in the topics of UFO studies or UAP studies. So it makes no sense to be organizing some Society for UAP Studies and limiting it to those with PhD degrees or Master's Degrees.   

On an "Our Team" page there is a description of a hierarchical structure of the Society for UAP Studies, something that rather reminds you of the hierarchical structure of academia. We are told that there are four layers: (1) a "Board of Advisors" consisting of 36 members, almost all PhD's; (2) an "Advisory Council" consisting of 6 people, mostly PhD's; (3) a "Divisional Leadership" consisting of what looks like six PR folks involved in marketing efforts "positioning the Society as the leading critical voice and trusted source of information, analysis and knowledge production in contemporary UAP Studies" (something it is not); (4) two "Senior Strategic Advisors." 

But where are the actual field researchers in this society? Where are the guys who knock on doors to question witnesses?  None seem to be mentioned on this "Our Team" page. We get the impression of a society that may have been created largely to give honorary titles to the group of people listed on the "Our Team" page or another page listing an Editorial Review Board of 17 members.

Glitch #3: The Not-Very-Diligent Scholarly Efforts and Paywalls

On its home page the Society for UAP Studies sounds in various ways like it is not very serious about the diligent study of unidentified phenomena, but more interested in discouraging  "speculative or interpretive anarchy."  The outputs of this Society for UAP Studies are to be found in two places:

(1) A publicly available journal called Limina, which since 2024 has published on a twice-a-year schedule. 

(2) A blog on the Society for UAP Studies site. 

The first edition of the Limina journal can be read here. It starts out in a very ignorant-sounding way. In the first paragraph of text the editor states, "Ever since publication of the Journal

of UFO Studies came to an end in the early 2000s, for the English-speaking audience there has been no serious and sustained scholarly publication focused exclusively on the subject of what is now termed 'unidentified aerial or anomalous phenomena' (UAP). " This is not true at all. To give an example, there is The Journal of Scientific Exploration which has been published on a quarterly basis since 2010 (you can read all its issues here). That journal has been primarily devoted to documenting anomalous phenomena. 

In the first edition of this Limina journal we have five articles, none of which is particularly noteworthy. One article is an overview of previous studies of UFOs and UAP. Another is a lecture about best practices in UFO/UAP research. Then there is an article on using astronomical techniques to investigate UFOs. Then there is a book review, and a profile of Wilhelm Schickard (1592-1635), who is called the first UFO investigator.  I am left asking, "This is the best we can get as the first effort of this grand new society?" 

The page here lists other articles or papers available in one or two other editions of the Limina journal. We do not actually get links to full articles that we can read from that page. All we get are abstract summaries. So this is the grand result of the Society for UAP Studies -- a free first journal issue, and then mostly the annoyance of paywalls? It is true that someone can go to the trouble of looking up the article titles on Google Scholar, and can try to find the full text for free. But doing that is inconvenient. 

The Limina journal has 17 members on its Editorial Review Board, which is a number higher than the number of authors contributing papers or articles of decent length each year. 

The blog page of the Society for UAP Studies has 31 posts published since 2023. Most are not very deep or long posts. 2 are identified as "1 minute reads"; 6 are identified as "2 minute reads"; 8 are identified as reads of 3, 4 or 5 minutes; several others are identified as reads of 6 or 7 minutes. 

Sadly I have a suspicion about the Society for UAP Studies:  that its efforts may be mainly a kind of low-effort window-dressing affair involving mainly dabblers in the study of anomalous phenomena, who are mostly "phoning it in." Most of the people involved do not seem like people seriously interested in devoting long and diligent efforts to the study of anomalous phenomena. The research published by the society seems mainly like perfunctory "for show" efforts. Today's professors are notorious for their failure to decently study the paranormal and the anomalous and the inexplicable. What might you do if you were a typical professor or PhD failing to make any decent effort to study paranormal or anomalous phenomena? You might want to organize or join some society which mainly just "goes through the motions" or makes token, minimal efforts rather than doing the laborious work needed to seriously study the unexplained.  Then if someone criticized you for failing to study the unexplained and anomalous or paranormal, you might refer to yourself being on the Board of Advisors of the Society for UAP Studies, or on the Editorial Review Board of its journal, to try to make it seem like you were a serious scholar of the unexplained. 

Thus far the Society for UAP Studies has failed to live up to the very high standard of research diligence set by the principal researchers of the Society for Psychical Research founded in 1882, men such as Frederic Myers, Edmund Gurney and Richard Hodgson. To read about the work of these and other very diligent researchers of the paranormal, see my post "40+ Leading Researchers of the Paranormal." 

Postscript: The Society for UAP Studies recently made some very longwinded announcement of something called "AURA/Upward." It is announced on a page mentioning "institutional stewardship." There is a link to a very graphically slick page mentioning "epistemic stewardship," which sounds to me like "editorial control." Both pages seem to be filled with the kind of language that only a bureaucrat or  middle-manager would love. Basically the pages seem to be saying "we want to manage your anomaly research work."  I'm not sure why anyone would want to get entangled with the "red tape" of this society and its stewards or aspiring overlords. 

Strange Saturday

 When I woke up this morning I picked up my smartphone, and was surprised by what I saw. There was displayed a message I had received months ago, some junk marketing message. Why, I asked, would that old message be displayed on the screen of my smartphone? Then I realized there was a connection between the message and the name of a deceased relative.  Was this just coincidence, I wondered? Or could it be that the deceased have some way to manipulate smartphones in a way that drops hints about their continued existence? I will "keep an eye open" for such an anomaly, but I cannot claim yet to have much in the way of evidence for it. 

Then there was the "ghost cat" that made a brief translucent appearance on my monitor. 

I had a dream this morning of one cat (either a living cat or a ghost cat) looking down at the body of a dead cat. I used Google's ImageFX to try and recreate what I saw in the dream. The resulting AI-generated image showed a cat with open eyes floating above a lying cat with closed eyes. The dream image rather hinted at the possibility that the soul of a cat may survive the death of a cat.  I posted the image on Facebook, saying that it was an AI representation of what I had dreamed. (I would post the image here, but a rule I have always followed is to never, ever publish AI work or art work on this site, with the exception of diagrams that are obviously diagrams.)  

My image was not quite what I wanted, because the "ghost cat" in my image did not look transparent. A few hours after publishing the AI representation of my dream on Facebook, I saw something weird on my screen. Somehow my screen was blending some post I was writing on a different topic, and the AI art of the floating ghost cat. But now somehow the "ghost cat" was translucent, which it was not before. I could see through the "ghost cat" to see text I was writing underneath it. Somehow, by some process I cannot explain, the intended image of a ghost cat had become translucent, as ghosts are often reported to be. I tried to reproduce the effect, but was absolutely unable to. 

Was this somehow some paranormal sign meant to suggest: yes, the soul of a cat really does survive its death? All I know is that I can't explain the translucency I saw. 

Postscript: As soon as I finished the post above, I walked outdoors to take a walk. Immediately (while still at the doorstep) I saw a large black-and-orange Monarch butterfly fly by me, no more than an arm's length away. This is the only time in the three and a half years I have lived at this location that I have seen such a Monarch butterfly at this location. I noted well the synchronicity between this symbol of life after death (the Monarch butterfly) and me just finishing a post mentioning life after death. Monarch butterflies are a symbol of life after death because caterpillars undergo a death-like transition before becoming butterflies that soar up into the sky.  Below is a quote from an earlier 2017 post of mine:

"A few days ago my wife's father died. This morning I had a dream that seemed to fuse together the symbol of the rainbow and the symbol of the butterfly. In my dream I saw a big butterfly in my apartment, one with a rainbow-like set of colors (I can never recall noticing colors so clearly in a dream). In my dream I simply opened the window of my apartment, and the butterfly flew out. I then awoke. It's the only dream I've ever had of a butterfly.

The symbolism of the dream seems striking: the rainbow theme, the butterfly theme, and the 'escaping from the prison' theme of the butterfly flying out of the apartment window. A metaphor for the soul escaping the prison of the body?"

To read about very, very many dreams I have had that seemed to symbolize life after death, and very many dreams I have had about the deceased, read my long post here. 

Also, upon returning from the walk I took just after writing the top part of this post, I noticed a small feather in the middle of the floor, in a very noticeable position in the center of a living room.  I cannot account for how the feather  appeared there, and there was no one else in the home during my walk. Some consider feathers as a life-after-death symbol, as angels are often depicted with feathers. About 2 hours before I noticed the feather, I took pictures of the area that the feather was found in; and the pictures showed no such feather.  The feather was found about 4 meters from a front door on a day not windy, leaving only the slimmest chance that its appearance where I saw it could have been the result of a gust of wind when I opened the door. I noticed no wind on my walk. 

Post-postscript: "Strange Saturday" turned into "Spooky Sunday." This weekend I am alone in a house until my wife returns mid-week. Last night in the middle of the night I was surprised to see an internet router device was lit up, one that I always turn off and make lightless before going to bed. After awaking in the morning I then walked up to the second floor of the house, and found the ceiling lights of the main living room were on, lights sufficient to light up the whole large room. I had (to the best of my remembrance) turned off the lights before leaving that room last night, at a time it was dark outside.  The physical arrangement of the stairs and room is such that accidentally leaving on the overhead lights at night is extremely improbable.  

Another Orb With a J-Like Stripe

 Photo date: September 12, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. It has a J-like stripe resembling the J-like stripe of  8 other orbs shown in my post here, under the "The J-Like Pattern" section header. 

Colorful Edges

 Photo date:  September 11, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. Around the edges we see colors of orange, purple and yellow. 

US Congress Hearing Witness Tells of Being Spooked by an Orb

 In the video below we see part of testimony delivered this week at a hearing of the United States Congress. We hear some astonishing accounts told by Jeffrey Nuccetelli. He says five UFO/UAP events occurred at Vandenburg Air Force Base. He says that on October 14, 2003  Boeing contractors reported a massive red square hovering over two missile defense sites.  He then says a triangular craft larger than a football field hovered above some military installation for about 45 seconds. Around the 3:50 mark he says that in 2005 he saw a light in the sky which dropped in elevation, and which he and his friends then observed (200 feet over his house) as a 30-foot (about 10 meter) "sphere of light." He says the strange orb disappeared into the sky. 

US Congress Hearing Video Shows Speeding Orb Hit by Missile

 In the video below we see part of testimony delivered yesterday at a hearing of the United States Congress. The video shows a speeding object that is described as an "orb." It looks like a blob of energy. We then see a Hellfire missile colliding with the mysterious orb. The mysterious orb seems to survive intact, continuing on its path. The video was taken in October, 2024. 

At the 1:30 mark of the video below, also from the US Congress hearing of September 9, 2025, we hear a US Navy officer report seeing this:

 "A self-luminous Tic-Tac shaped object emerged from the ocean, before linking up with three other similar objects. The four then disappeared simultaneously with a high-synchronized near instantaneous acceleration. I observed no sonic boom and no conventional propulsion signature, no exhaust plume...."

The video here gives us some of the hearing testimony before and after this evidence was introduced. 

A Striped Orb

 Photo date: September 8, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. 

I have had some rather ominous-seeming indications recently. One was a dream a few days ago of a figure looking like Death personified: a figure with a black hat, all black clothes, a black cape, and a black mask covering his face. Then there was the dream I had last night of some person talking about my curtains. In English "curtains" is a slang term meaning death. In the dream the figure said, "You must take the design seriously," although he could have been saying "You must take the d. sign seriously," with "d. sign" meaning "death sign." Then this morning I saw that a green cloth bag had been blown into my backyard. It was a bag marked "Sam Ash music stores." Ashes are a death symbol, because many people are cremated.  This year the marking of "Sam Ash music stores" on the bag may be doubly-symbolic of death, because recently the Sam Ash chain of music stores "bit the dust," closing down, with apparently only an online business remaining. 

The TV Was Off

 Photo date: September 7, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a photo I took of my TV screen while the TV was off. We have a strange sight that rather resembles a one-eyed face with a giant mouth. It was not the reflection of the camera flash. From the position I was in, it was impossible to get a photo showing the camera flash reflected off of the TV. 

This morning I was surprised to find two blue ear plugs next to each other on the floor, on the right side of my bedroom. I had worn the plugs last night, sticking to a habit I had recently followed partially because of a recently-solved problem of flies in my living quarters (I wanted to exclude the chance of a fly flying into my ear while I slept). I store the ear plugs on the left side of the bedroom.  We have some possible "Other Side" symbolism here, possibly related to life after death semiotics. The plugs being on the floor on the right side of the room could only be explained by an extremely improbable coincidence: the hypothesis that both of the plugs fell out of my ears unnoticed at the same instant during one of the few seconds that I walked past the spot where the plugs were found.  The "Other Side" motif is one that very frequently occurs in my dreams, such as a dream I had last night which had both an "Other Side" motif and a "rising up after decay" motif possibly suggestive of the ascent of the soul after bodily death. 

A Hint That Orbs and Apports Are Related?

 Photo date: September 3, 2025. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

In psychical research an apport is some object that seems to appear in some way that seems anomalous or inexplicable, as if the object had appeared "out of nowhere." An example of a report of an apport is  Alfred Russel Wallace's report of fresh-cut flowers mysteriously appearing at a seance. Here is what Wallace said about a Miss Nichols:

"The most remarkable feature of this lady's mediumship was the production of flowers and fruits in closed rooms. The first time this occurred was at my own house, at a very early stage of her development. All present were my own friends. Miss N. had come early to tea, it being mid-winter, and she had been with us in a very warm gas-lighted room four hours before the flowers appeared. The essential fact is, that upon a bare table in a small room closed and dark (the adjoining room and passage being well lighted), a quantity of flowers appeared, which were not there when we put out the gas a few minutes before. They consisted of anemones, tulips, chrysanthe. mums, Chinese primroses, and several ferns. All were absolutely fresh, as if just gathered from a conservatory. They were covered with a fine cold dew. Not a petal was crumpled or broken, not the most delicate point or pinnule of the ferns was out of place."

Wallace's account is hard to dismiss, as he was a very weighty scientist who was the co-founder (with Charles Darwin) of the theory of evolution by natural selection. I have on this blog discussed many strange observations that seemed to fall under the category of apports, including the case of a coin rolling up from behind me while I was alone in an apartment. 

I  have described in some recent posts a very strange effect in which I will suddenly notice some rubber band on my floor, with me lacking any explanation for how the rubber band got there. I have recently seen an effect like this well over 16 times. Upon awakening on this day (September 3),  I entered into my living room, and was surprised to see a pink rubber band on the floor, in front of the TV, a spot where I am sure no rubber band existed when I went to bed.  I reminded myself of a rule I am trying to remember: whenever you see something strange, photograph it, even if you don't think the photo will merit a social media post. So I took a photo of the anomalous rubber band lying on the floor. 

The photo showed the anomaly below. We see a mysterious orb right next to one of the rubber bands on the ledge in front of my TV set.  Was this a hint of a connection between the phenomenon of mysterious orbs and the phenomenon of apports? I have speculated about potential symbolism involving rubber bands. Being very expandable, a rubber band may symbolize some expansion of the mind that could occur in an afterlife. 

Postscript: on the morning this post was published (September 6) there was more rubber band weirdness. I picked up from my TV ledge my palm-sized Sony camera, and walked back to my sofa two meters away. I then saw a blue rubber band very strangely clinging to the flat-panel viewfinder on the back of the camera I held in my hands. This was baffling because I always place the camera viewfinder-down, and never put any rubber band on top of it.  Thinking this might have been caused by some adhesion effect, I tried ten times to reproduce the effect, by putting the camera on top of the same rubber band on the same ledge, and lifting up the camera which had its viewfinder touching the  rubber band. The effect was never reproduced. No rubber band clung to the viewfinder when the camera was raised. There was nothing sticky on the camera viewfinder and nothing sticky on the rubber band. 

Mystery Orbs Photographed Far From Humans

 At this page of the Coast to Coast web site, we have an interesting account of scientists who got images of what look like mysterious orbs. The images came from a trail camera set up in a remote part of Chile, for the purpose of scientifically studying wildlife. On the page we have a video, and at the 29 second mark we see the objects shown below, which seem like bright spheres.

We read this:

" 'Explaining that the camera was placed at the edge of a valley 'quite far from any public road,' biologist Alejandro Kush Schwarzenberg marveled that 'we cannot explain' the origin of the anomalous illuminations picked up by the device. To that end, the University of Magellan team has eliminated prosaic possibilities for the enigmatic lights, such as a vehicle or an animal, and is now pondering more fantastic possibilities. One idea, put forward by Chilean ufologist Freddy Alexis Silva, is that the illuminations may be some kind of plasma that mysteriously manifested in front of the camera.

Meanwhile, Environmental Study Group member Rodrigo Bravo Garrido noted that the unexplained phenomena being detected during a scientific study and recognized by academics at the university make the case 'something very unprecedented.' "

Contrary to Garrido's statement, innumerable times in the past there was "unexplained phenomena being detected during a scientific study and recognized by academics at the university," such as the many years in which the ESP experiments of Duke University Professor Joseph Rhine produced extremely convincing results for telepathy. The study of paranormal phenomena has now gone on for a full 200 years, with the first major organized effort being the 1825-1831 investigation of the medical division of the French Royal Academy of Sciences, which found resoundingly in favor of clairvoyance (as discussed here). But in general today's professors are utterly ignorant of the history of research into paranormal phenomena, and such people work in conformist echo chambers of academia in which the serious study of the paranormal is taboo, for the sake of protecting a materialist creed.  So we should remember never to attach any weight to any generalization a professor makes about psychical research or research into the paranormal, unless that professor shows some signs of having done substantial scholarship on such a topic. 

Spooky Spot

 The 2002 article below refers to the Plummer Auditorium in Orange County, California, which has been renamed as the Fullerton Auditorium. We read of a naked-eye sighting of a mysterious orb: