A Pink Orb

 Photo date: April 16, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. 

A Skeptic Would Say, "It Must Have Just Fallen Out of Your Deep Pocket"

 A few minutes ago I had a fond thought of my late father. A few seconds later I went into the bathroom. Standing, I was surprised to hear the sound of a pen falling to my left, landing on the ground.

How to explain this strange event? I had used the pen earlier to mark on a calendar that I had taken a pill. After I do that, I normally put the pen back in my pen holder cup on the living room table. Conceivably I could have failed to follow my normal habit, and left the pen in my pocket. And conceivably the pen could have fallen out of my deep jeans pocket that is about six inches deep, the same size as the six-inch pen.

But what is the chance of both of those things happening? I'm reminded of when I was questioned as a young boy for walking in the halls during classes without a hall pass you were supposed to get before doing such walking. I claimed that I had got such a pass, but that it "must have fallen out of my pocket."  Some school authority made a skeptical face, saying something like, "Come on -- things don't just fall out of your pocket." 

An alternate explanation here is a Potential Spiritual Manifestation involving some power with the ability to make mysterious movements of matter, with the event being related to the thought of my late father. 

A Bright Orb

 Photo date: April 13, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

Below we see a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. Tilt your face to the right a bit, and you may see what faintly looks like a smiling face with eyes closed. 

None of Us Seeded or Planted These Purple Flowers

 My late mother's favorite color was purple, and she was very fond of wearing purple clothes. The last conversation I had with the first born of my sisters (occurring quite a few years ago, shortly before she died) was one involving the paranormal and a purple flower. I asked my sister whether she had ever experienced something paranormal or something she could not explain. She told me she had some experience involving a purple flower she could not explain. It seems that after my mother's death there were some purple flowers that had appeared  unexpectedly in my sister's garden, and a purple flower that had survived way longer than expected. I cannot recall precisely all the details, but I remember my sister saying that a purple flower from her garden had survived for years in her refrigerator. My sister seemed to think that such things may have been some supernatural or paranormal sign related to my mother.

On June 1, 2022 I had the 67th dream I have had of my mother since mid-November 2020, when I started recording my dreams.  (By now I have had 167 dreams of her.) The dream was a realistic one. In the dream I was in a store, talking to some woman named Yolande. In the dream, after pointing to some Christmas decorations, I accurately described my mother's Christmas decoration habits, which were to fill the house with Christmas decorations during the time from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.  How very strange that the name "Yolande" should appear in my dream. Prior to the dream, I had (as best I can recall) never spoken that name, and could not identify anyone (fictional or real) who had that name. Not knowing what the name meant, I looked up the meaning of the name Yolande, and found that it is a name meaning "violet flower."  

I thought it strange that again we should have an association between my mother and purple flowers. On July 11, 2022 I had another dream about my mother. I dreamed that I found unlocked both the front door and front gate of the house where I now live. In the dream I looked around and found my mother kneeling in the back yard, as if she was gardening. Remembering the previous association with purple flowers and my mother, I made in my mind around that time a prediction. I predicted that purple flowers would mysteriously appear in my back yard, even though no one had planted any flowers in the back yard. 

Purple flowers did mysteriously start growing in my back yard, which is all concrete, except for two planters on one side. In 2022 the flowers started to appear on the left edge of the back yard. You can see photos of the flowers in my post here from 2022 and my post here from 2025. It was an astonishing affair of purple flowers kind of "rising up through the little concrete crack." 

This year I see no such purple flowers on the left edge of my concrete back yard. But the two planters on the right side of the yard are now entirely filled with little purple flowers -- purple flowers that arose mysteriously, and were not  planted or seeded by any of the house's residents.  We see some of the flowers below.  The planters have a total area of about 12 square feet. 

I can imagine how unplanted purple flowers might naturally arise in the soil of someone's backyard. Maybe somehow purple flower seeds might get blown by the wind, across the yard, from somewhere else. But in this case we have two planter surfaces that are about a meter above the ground. It would seem very, very difficult for purple flower seeds to rise up so high and land in both of two separated planters. 

Below from my previous posts are some of the purple flowers that I got in previous years in my back yard. None of them were planted or seeded by any of the house's residents. In the first photo we see an amaranth plant. Since ancient times the amaranth plant has been a symbol of immortality. This symbolism arose because the plant was famous for maintaining a vibrant color for very long after it had been cut from the ground. 

Mysterious Yellow Indoor Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 3)

 I have done two previous retrospective posts on mysterious yellow sky orbs, which you can see below (the photos were all taken at night, after the sun had set): 

Yellow Sky Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 1)

Yellow Sky Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 2)

Below is Part 3 of a retrospective showing some of the better photos I have taken indoors of mysterious yellow orbs.  Part 2 can be seen here. 

My photo below from 2019 shows a large mysterious yellow orb.

My photo below shows a mysterious orb I photographed in 2019. 

My photo below from 2019 shows a transparent yellow orb near a light switch. 

My photo below from 2019 shows  a transparent yellow orb.

 My two photos below from 2019 (taken on the same day) show a mysterious yellow orb with stripes. 

My photo below from 2019 shows  a transparent yellow orb.

Below we see some mysterious orbs I photographed indoors one pink, one yellow, and one green.

In Search of a Better Term Than "After-Death Communication"

 The term "after death communication" or ADC is widely used for a broad group of spooky phenomena that may be interpreted as communication with deceased spirits.  The term may be used for any of these type of events:

1. An apparition sighting in which the apparition seems to correspond to a known deceased individual. 
2. A deathbed vision in which a dying person may claim to see or hear a deceased relative. 
3. A dream someone may have of a deceased relative, particularly a vivid dream. 
4. A "sense of presence" experience in which someone may have a feeling that a deceased person is near, without the person hearing or seeing the deceased person. 
5. Various types of spooky events in which someone may experience a very hard-to-explain or very improbable sight, and interpret such an event as having been produced by a deceased individual who can interact with our physical reality. 

There is a problem with using the term "after death communication" to refer to all of these types of experiences. The problem is that the term is not an impartial-sounding term, but a term that seems to presuppose a particular type of supernatural explanation for an event. But events like the five types of events described above tend to be mysterious events in which the cause of the event is less than certain. 

On page 14 of the PhD thesis document here (entitled "A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF RESEARCH ON

AFTER-DEATH COMMUNICATION (ADC)") we have a list of various terms that have been used to describe such phenomena:

"In addition to the term hallucinations, authors have referred to encounters with the deceased as, in alphabetical order: after-death communication (Devers, 1997; Drewry, 2003; Guggenheim & Guggenheim, 1995; LaGrand, 1997, 1999; Wright, 2004, 2006); afterlife encounters (Arcangel, 2005); anomalous experiences (McClenon, 1988); apparitions (Haraldsson, Gudmundsdottir, Ragnarsson, Loftsson, & Jonsson, 1977; Kohr, 1980; Palmer, 1979); contact with the dead (Burton, 1982; Greeley, 1975, 1987; Haraldsson, 1985; Haraldsson & Houtkooper, 1991; MacDonald, 1992); encounters with the dead (Haraldsson, 1988); experiencing the deceased (Devers, 1994); extraordinary experiences (La Grand, 1997, 1999, 2005, 2006; Parker, 2005); idionecrophanies (MacDonald, 1992); illusions (Grimby, 1993, 1998; Parkes, 1965, 1970; Rees, 1971); near-life experiences (Wooten-Green, 2001); perceived presence (Datson & Marwit, 1997); post-death communication (Houck, 2005; Mack & Powell, 2005); post-death contact (Kalish & Reynolds, 1973; Klugman, 2006); sensing a presence (Conant, 1996; Hobson, 1964; Lindstrom, 1995; Marris, 1958; Parkes, 1965, 1970; Rees, 1971; Simon Butler, Christopherson, & Jones, 1988; Yamamoto, Okonogi, Iwasaki, & Yoshimura, 1969); and spiritual connections (Sormanti & August, 1997)."

I think most of these terms have one problem or another. The main problem with most of these terms is that they seem to involve a presumption about the cause of the event; and in so many of the cases of these mysterious events it seems best not to presume that the cause is understood. In very many of these cases, there seems to occur some mysterious movement of matter. But can we conclude with high confidence that such cases involve interaction with a spirit of the dead? It seems that usually we can have no high confidence, and that the cause of the event is mysterious. 

It is true that in some of these cases there may seem (at least on the day of their occurrence) to be a likelihood of a cause involving a spirit of the dead. For example, as described here, on the first hour of my late father's 100th birthday, a panel in front of my kitchen sink was violently dislodged, landing on the floor. I had predicted that some spooky event like this event would occur on that day, because an equally spooky event had occurred on my late father's 99th birthday (as described here). Similarly, as described here, within a few minutes after putting some coins next to a picture of my late mother (while alone in an apartment), I saw a penny mysteriously rolling up behind me, a coin rolling on its edge. Within 24 hours of the incident I made the diagram below describing the incident.  In both of these cases it seemed probable (at least at the time of the event) that there was some supernatural cause at work, involving some spirit of the dead or agency of the deceased. 

But in very many other cases I and others observe something very spooky and hard-to-explain, with the cause being so unknown or uncertain that no language presuming interaction with the dead seems justified. For example, consider the phenomenon of mysterious striped orbs, which I have photographed more than 800 times. There seems to be some very important unexplained phenomenon here, particularly given that such orbs so often show repeating patterns, as I document in my post here.  But are such orbs manifestations of the deceased? It is hard to say. The cause of such photographic mysteries seems highly uncertain. 

It would seem that what we need is some very broad term that suggests but does not presume that some spiritual manifestation is occurring. I propose the term Potential Spiritual Manifestation or PSM. The term has the same advantage of the astronomy term "potential biosignatures," used to describe unusual things seen in outer space which might be signs of extraterrestrial life. Both terms are similar in that they suggest an extraordinary cause, but do not presume such a cause.  Both terms are intellectually modest, because they include the term "potential," indicating a lack of certainty. 

Like a Teleportation

A few minutes ago I picked up my house keys from the ledge in front of my TV set. Before I could take another step, I noticed something very baffling. A wristband that I keep on the same ledge somehow fell to the ground, landing about 4 feet (1.3 meters) to my right and about a foot behind me (I heard it landing on the floor). I keep the wristband on the same ledge (in front of the TV) where I keep my keys. I have failed to come up with any credible-sounding scenario that can naturally explain the event. 

The only thing I can think of is that the mere action of picking up the keys somehow caused the wristband to be violently ejected to the right, so that the wristband would land four feet away, to the right. The scenario seems unbelievable, and I failed to notice anything unusual in front of me.  

An alternate explanation is a paranormal one, that the incident is a supernatural omen. The wristband was a "Do Not Resuscitate" wristband I wear on walks, to specify that if my heart ever stops, I do not want CPR to be attempted. A spooky event involving such a wristband might be an omen of my death in the not-too-distant future.  

Below is the wristband as I saw it on the floor. 

Postscript:  The next morning I woke up and moved around in a living room for several minutes, without noticing anything unusual. I then noticed a rubber band in the middle of the small living room floor, the appearance of which I cannot account for.  This is a type of anomaly I have seen more than 30 previous times, as discussed in my posts here, with all of the cases involving rubber bands.  My policy is to immediately pick up all out-of-place small objects on the floor as soon as I see them, making such events baffling. 

I had an interesting dream the day after the wristband incident. In the dream I stood in front of a surface on which my house keys rested. Then suddenly in the dream there was an extra set of keys in front of me. In the dream I had the idea that the keys belonged to my late sister, and that the keys had teleported in front of me. Then in the dream my late sister appeared, smiling.  In real life I once witnessed the most astonishing event suggesting a teleportation of keys, an event I describe in my 2018 post here. 

Intelligent Orbs in Norway?

Massimo Teodorani is a PhD astrophysicist who has written a scientific paper entitled "Anomalous Luminous Phenomena, Plasma Consciousness and the Quantum Vacuum." The paper (which you can read here) states this: 

"Anomalous luminous phenomena (ALP) — long-duration plasma spheroids documented most systematically at Hessdalen, Norway — exhibit physical properties that conventional plasma physics cannot adequately explain: sustained self-confinement for tens of  minutes,  periodic pulsation, multi-chromatic emission, and a documented  responsiveness to  laser  stimulation bearing the hallmarks of an intelligent reaction rather than a passive optical interaction. This paper  proposes a  unified conceptual  and partially  mathematical  framework built  on three interlocking hypotheses. The Intelligent Plasma Hypothesis (IPH) argues that plasma balls can acquire a quantum-coherent internal structure functionally analogous to neuronal microtubule networks,  satisfying  the  conditions  of  the  Penrose–Hameroff  Orchestrated  Objective Reduction (OrchOR) theory."

Later the paper states this:

"Since 1984, the Hessdalen Valley in central  Norway  has  been  the  site  of  one  of  the most  sustained  and  methodologically  careful investigations of anomalous luminous phenomena (ALP) in scientific history. Over four decades, instrumented field campaigns  —  equipped with cameras, spectrometers, radar, magnetometers, and eventually high-speed photometers — have documented thousands of events in which self-luminous plasma spheroids appear at low altitude, sustain themselves for periods ranging from minutes  to an  hour,  pulsate with  measurable  periodicities, and  on  one  occasion react  to  laser stimulation in ways that resist explanation by any known photon-plasma interaction mechanism (Strand, 1984; Teodorani, 2004)."

The paper then gives these interesting details:

"The phenomena appear as self-luminous spheroids ranging from roughly thirty centimetres to ten metres in diameter, hovering at altitudes from ground level to about two hundred metres above the valley floor, predominantly near geological fault lines rich in piezoelectric minerals (Devereux, 1982).  Their  continuum  spectra  are  consistent  with  a  partially  ionised  plasma  at  electron temperatures  of  the  order  of  ten  thousand Kelvin.  Normally their  luminance can  reach  values comparable to a searchlight, but in some cases it can be much higher. But what most distinguishes them  from any  known  variety  of  ball  lightning  is their  duration:  while  ball  lightning events typically last a fraction of a second to a few seconds at most, Hessdalen events routinely persist for ten to sixty minutes — three to five orders of magnitude longer (Figure 1). No classical plasma physics mechanism of confinement explains this discrepancy (Teodorani, 2004, 2008)."

Google Gemini infographic visual on this phenomenon

Postscript: The program of a conference of the Society for Scientific Exploration has just been released, and you can see it here. On June 18 there will be a talk discussing "Orbs in Bigfoot Encounters, UFO Sightings, and Remote Viewing."

Mysterious Yellow Indoor Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 2)

 I have done two previous retrospective posts on mysterious yellow sky orbs, which you can see below (the photos were all taken at night, after the sun had set): 

Yellow Sky Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 1)

Yellow Sky Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 2)

Below is Part 2 of a retrospective showing some of the better photos I have taken indoors of mysterious yellow orbs. Part 1 can be seen here. 

My photo below from 2019 shows a mysterious yellow with a dramatic shadow stripe.

My photo below from 2019 shows a vivid yellow orb. 

My photo below is from 2025.  We have an interesting "other side" motif here, possibly symbolizing an Other Side of an afterlife. 

My photo below from 2024 showed both a mysterious orange orb (in the top left) and a mysterious yellow orb (in the bottom right),one with a very unusual feature. 

My photos below show a vivid yellow orb and a green orb. 

My photo below from 2023 shows a yellow orb. 

My photo below from 2020 shows a mysterious yellow orb. 

Green and Translucent

 Photo date: March 26, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. 

Orb With an Inner Ring

 Photo date: March 24, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoor (near two smoke detectors resting atop an air conditioner).  The orb has a ring-like feature. 

Mysterious Orange Indoor Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 2)

Last night I had what we can call an orb photographer's nightmare. In the dream I saw a mysterious orange orb traveling through the sky. I thought to myself: I've got to photograph this. But when I tried to photograph the orb, my camera failed.  

Below is Part 2 of a retrospective showing some of the better photos I have taken indoors of mysterious orange orbs.

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors.

We see below two mysterious orbs I photographed, one orange. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. 

Below we see a mysterious orange orb I photographed in front of a turned-off TV screen.  

We see below a mysterious orange orb I photographed indoors.

Below we see a mysterious orange orb I photographed indoors. 

We see below some mysterious orbs I photographed; and the top one looked fast. 

Saturday Smile?

 Photo date: March 21, 2026. Photographer: Mark Mahin. 

We see below a mysterious orb I photographed indoors. We get a bit of a suggestion of a grinning face. 

Mysterious Red Sky Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 10)

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

My photo below shows a large red orb and a smaller green orb floating mysteriously near the Time Warner Center in New York City.  

My photo below was taken in New York City. We see several mysterious objects high in the sky. One is a vivid bright red.

My photo below shows a tower in New York City. Above it floats a most mysterious red-colored orb.

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

My photo below shows a red orb floating near an apartment building in New York City.

My photo below shows a mysterious red orb floating above the Time Warner Center in New York City. This was not the moon, which was not visible above these towers when the photo was taken.

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

Mysterious Yellow Indoor Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 1)

I have done two previous retrospective posts on mysterious yellow sky orbs, which you can see below (the photos were all taken at night, after the sun had set): 

Yellow Sky Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 1)

Yellow Sky Orbs: A Retrospective (Part 2)

Below is Part 1 of a retrospective showing some of the better photos I have taken indoors of mysterious yellow orbs. 

I took the photo below in 2022:

I took the photo below in 2022:

I took the photo below in 2022:

I took the photo below in 2022:

I took the photo below in 2022. The orb seemed to be moving fast or pulsating. 

I took the photo below in 2022:

I took the photo below in 2021. We seem to have a speeding yellow orb. 

A Strange Occurrence

Today (alone in a house) I made myself lunch, and sat down to eat. Below is the view that I have when I am eating lunch (I always sit in a chair that gives me this view). 

Midway through eating my meal, about 8 minutes after starting the meal, I noticed something very strange. One of the two oven mittens was on the floor. I was very surprised by this, because my strict policy is to immediately pick up from the floor all out-of-place items I see on the floor, as soon as I see them. The moment I noticed the oven glove on the floor was after I had been back and forth in the area shown above quite a few times, to make my meal, without noticing any oven glove on the floor. It was also after about eight  minutes of eating in which I should have noticed any oven glove on the floor (it being right in front of me), but failed to do so.  While eating I was glancing at an I-Pad on the table. 

Trying to explain this, I came up with the idea that maybe by just walking back and forth in this area, I had perhaps caused one of the oven gloves to fall off the hook that holds it. I tested this idea, by walking back and forth near the gloves, trying to brush by them in a way that would cause one to fall off the hook. The test failed. It seemed that once one of these gloves is on the hook that holds it, the glove is very securely held there. Below is a closeup of the hook. 

I have one other hypothesis to explain the strange occurrence. Perhaps we have here a symbolic warning by some mysterious supernatural power. When one glove mysteriously falls, with one glove remaining, that makes a kind of "one left" symbolic motif. And that motif may symbolize that for me there is "one left" in my earthly life.  

But due to some vagueness in the phrase "one left," I need not worry too much. "One left" could mean one week left in my earthly life, or one month left in that life, or one year.  But it could also mean one decade left. And that is quite a bit of time. 

Postscript: There was a similar "one left" spooky event five days later, today, on March 15, 2026. I turned on the water faucet in the sink shown below. As I was holding a cup to let it fill up with water, to wash out the cup, I saw a knife  mysteriously leave the utensil holder seen at left below, falling into the sink four inches away from the utensil holder. This happened as I was standing right in front of the utensil holder, facing it, looking slightly to its right. 

 At first I thought to myself, "Maybe it fell through a hole at the bottom of the utensil holder." But an examination of the bottom of the utensil holder showed that it had only tiny holes, way too small for a knife to fall through. 

I can imagine no conceivable movements of my hand (to turn on the water) that would have caused a knife to fall out of such a utensil holder. Again we have the possibly symbolic "one left" motif.

I posted both of the reports above just after the events occurred. 

Below we see a mysterious orb I photographed on this day: