Sometimes I wonder if my home is becoming Ghost Central. This evening when I let the dog out the back door, I caught a strong scent of cologne just outside the door. The wind was howling (and has been all day) and there was no one around. The smell quickly dissipated.
I’m baffled as to why the cologne smell was so strong, especially considering the wind was blowing at about 20 MPH tonight. I have a habit of smelling phantom scents, strange as it may seem. Could this be another instance?
Ooooookay. Things around the Turner household turned a bit for the weird this month when a ghost apparently took up residence in our attic. I never expected that to happen in a house less than five years old, but it apparently did.
On the afternoon of Saturday, January 9th, the kids and I were out shooting baskets in our driveway. It was clear and sunny at the time. As I was about to shoot another basket, I caught a whiff of a familiar smell: gasoline!
I stopped and immediately asked the kids if they smelled anything. “Yeah, gasoline!” they responded.
I looked all around for potential sources of the smell. There were no cars passing by (we live on a dead-end street), no neighbors were mowing or trimming their lawns, no planes were flying over, and no gasoline was stored in our open garage. That got me wondering if the smell might not have been a physical one. I was reminded of the phantom gasoline smell we had in our home on March 3rd, 2009. Was our ghost back?
The smell quickly dissipated and we continued playing. Everything seemed normal. That is, until that Monday morning, January 11th!
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Early this morning I had an unusual dream. An unseen guide took me to a darkened place where I was offered a chance to meet some alien creatures that lived on our planet. I was warned that I had to be brave as what I was about to see would seem shocking. Having faith in my escort, I nodded and was then “immunized” with some sort of shot. We proceeded down this metal staircase into an underground labyrinth.
There were countless humanoid creatures here, small in stature. They had prominent eyes (glasses?) and very clearly expressed desperation at their situation. They wanted to reach the surface but this was too dangerous. I felt very sorry for them, though I knew there was nothing I could do. Without comment my escort brought me back out of this place.
An insect near my nose awoke me from the dream. As my attention returned to the room, I clearly heard a voice quietly say “hey Mark.” My wife was asleep next to me and though she sometimes talks in her sleep, she almost never calls me by my name. Nor did the voice seem to echo from our bedroom walls: it seemed to have been in my head. I wasn’t alarmed so much as curious.
The clock read 12:58 AM. I spent a minute looking around the room, wondering about the dream and who might have called my name.
Richard Bach said “argue for your limitations and sure enough, they’re yours.”
After posting my story on meditation and Dr. Larry Dossey, I found this rather nasty thread at the Huffington Post regarding an excerpt of Dr. Dossey’s book. The skeptics weigh in with their predictable arguments, repeating the tired but incorrect mantra that no evidence exists.
This used to really annoy me, but I’ve come to an understanding about it. Basically, what other people think about psi doesn’t change my psi ability one whit, so I will pay it no mind. They can go on merrily believing it does not exist. That does not change the fact that it does occur for me and thousands (if not millions) of others.
Let them believe it’s impossible to see the future. Let them believe one can’t read another’s mind. Let them believe they’re secure in their worlds. No need to upset the apple cart.
It is not my role to show skeptics the error of their ways. Maybe they’ll eventually catch on, but that’s not important to me anymore. I have far too many more interesting things to do with my time.
As I was listening to Larry Dossey, MD, speak about his new book, The Power of Premonitions, something clicked in my head. I’ve been following remote viewing for a few years now, and have had psychic moments off and on throughout my life. I’ve read books about the power of psi. Most of this material describe how it works when psi is functioning well. Little of it talks about what it takes to get there.
Dr. Dossey’s new book opens with the statement that one of the best things one can do to improve one’s psi abilities is to take up meditation. I wasn’t intrigued by this but didn’t yet make the connection.
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Author Stacy Horn was interviewed by Frank Stasio on WUNC’s The State of Things two months ago to discuss her new book Unbelievable, which is a history of the Rhine Center. Horn provided many good stories from her research and did well in presenting the topic. She made it sound far more exciting than it probably was (imagine staring at Zener cards, day in and day out)!
Stacy is as engaging in person as she is on the radio. If you get a chance to hear her speak about her book or her research, don’t pass it up!
Geek blog Boing Boing linked today to a video of Skeptic Magazine’s Michael Shermer presenting what he calls a “baloney detection kit.” Essentially the “kit” is a way to weed the truth from what someone only claims is true.
In spite of the biased, derogatory scenes that accompanied Shermer’s talk, he did provide many good points. Shermer kept referring to using science to test claims, and for “following the data” when trying to prove a claim. It sounded like the recipe for good science: when confronted with new phenomena, test it.
Then around the 13:10 mark of the video, Shermer throws this advice out the window. Read the rest of this entry »
Former First Lady Nancy Reagan told Vanity Fair that sometimes she ’sees’ her late husband, Ronald Reagan.
“At night time, if I wake up, I think Ronnie is there, and I start to talk to him… And I see him,” she told the magazine.
This week, University of Hertfordshire professor Richard Wiseman will use Twitter to conduct a remote viewing outbounder experiment. At 3 PM (UK-time) each day this week, Professor Wiseman will travel to a certain location. Participants will then try to get an impression of where he is and “tweet” this information to Wiseman’s Twitter account. Thirty minutes later, Wiseman will upload photographs of the target location.
While it will be good fun, I would hope the good professor will make everyone well aware that this experiment is not being conducted under laboratory conditions. I also have concerns that reading the Twitter stream will unduly influence the imagination of many participants. However, if a participant were to simply concentrate on Wiseman’s location rather than the Twitter feed, I would think some good results could be obtained.
It would be interesting to have some of the more seasoned RVers I know join in on Wiseman’s experiment. If you’d like to try your hand, go to his Twitter Experiment website, visit his blog, or follow his Twitter feed.
I took the kids for a hike around a new nature preserve north of the city. We walked the perimeter of the property under the cool shade of hardwoods and pines. As we hiked along over tree trunks and leaves, we got into a rhythm and I let my mind wander a bit. Looking down as I chose my footsteps, a thought crossed my mind that it might be wise to watch for poison ivy.
Instantly, Hallie’s voice piped up from behind me. “We should watch for poison ivy!” she cheerfully declared.
I chuckled all the way back home, thinking how Hallie seemed to have read my mind once again!