Category:
Paranormal
Paranormal
Healing Mummified Hand
Although the mummified hand supposedly healed 500 people, I've only been able to find one description of a "cure":One old lady who had been unable to raise her paralysed arm above her heart for ten years was one of the pilgrims who tested it, and in three days she was able to raise her helpless arm over her head.
Saskatoon Phoenix - Feb 8, 1928
Sydney Sunday Times - Feb 5, 1928
Posted By: Alex - Tue Sep 12, 2023 -
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Category: Paranormal, Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, 1920s
Bad perm caused loss of psychic powers
Oct 1950: Jacqueline Sisson sued her hairdresser for $20,000, alleging that scalp burns she suffered while getting a permanent wave caused her to lose the psychic powers she relied upon for her stage act. Specifically, she had lost the ability to know what musical tunes audience members were thinking of.As is typical of stories like this, the media never ran a follow-up to report the outcome of her lawsuit.
Los Angeles Times - Oct 12, 1950
Posted By: Alex - Sun May 21, 2023 -
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Category: Paranormal, Predictions, Lawsuits, 1950s
ESP Girl
In November 1964, 5-year-old Kenneth Mason went missing. The police searched the river where he was last seen, but failed to find him.Then 15-year-old Linda Anderson came forward and offered to use her psychic powers to help the police find Kenneth. Her father put her in a hypnotic trance, to activate her powers, and she declared, "The boy is not in the river, but is in a house." So the police began searching houses in the area.
Charlotte Observer - Nov 14, 1964
Linda Anderson, ESP Girl
In addition to being able to locate missing children, Linda also claimed to have the power of "dermal optical perception." She could read through her skin (as opposed to through her eyes). The media dubbed her "ESP Girl."
Lewiston Daily Sun - Nov 14, 1964
A skeptical physics professor, James A. Coleman, doubted that she could see through her skin and challenged her to prove it.
Bangor Daily News - Feb 11, 1965
She lost the challenge.
Nashua Telegraph - Feb 15, 1965
And then Kenneth Mason was found. Sadly he was dead and in the river after all. So much for the powers of ESP Girl.
Daily Kennebec Journal - Mar 12, 1965
Posted By: Alex - Tue Apr 04, 2023 -
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Category: Crime, Paranormal, Predictions, 1960s
Death By Yoga?
Robert Antoszczyk died on June 3, 1975. That much everyone agrees on. But how he died is more controversial.
Robert Antoszczyk
Initial reports claimed that he went into a yogic trance and projected his spirit out of his body, but that he didn't know how to re-enter his body. So he died. This explanation remains popular with the Fortean crowd.
The official explanation, which emerged later, is that he died from a cocaine overdose. However, his friends and family always contested this, insisting that he was very much into clean living and never drank, let alone took drugs.
Over at medium.com, Nick Ripatrazone has an article in which he explores this case, as well as the broader interest in 'astral projection' during the 1970s.
Palladium Item - June 30, 1975
NY Daily News - July 3, 1975
Posted By: Alex - Fri Jun 03, 2022 -
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Category: Death, Forteana, Paranormal, 1970s
The housewife who became pregnant after watching Uri Geller
March 1974: a Swedish housewife claimed that, after she watched Uri Geller on TV, her contraceptive coil got bent out of shape, thereby causing her to become pregnant.Given that the housewife was never named, I'm going to assume this story sprang from the overly fertile imagination of the "Sunday Mirror Reporter in Stockholm".
Uri Geller references the event in his biography, posted on his website, but gives no more details than are available in the Sunday Mirror story, which suggests that, at the very least, he was never sued by the Swedish housewife.
Sunday London Mirror - Mar 17, 1974
Posted By: Alex - Sun Apr 10, 2022 -
Comments (2)
Category: Paranormal, 1970s, Pregnancy
Swindle’s Ghost
'Swindle's Ghost' is a term for an optical illusion that some psychologists have offered as a possible scientific explanation for ghost sightings. Actually, I doubt that many sightings are a result of this phenomenon, but I like the name.Newsday Special Correspondent Paul Brock (May 15, 1967) offered this explanation:
One after-image, which psychologists believe has given rise to many reports of nocturnal apparitions, is called "Swindle's Ghost." It was first described by the American psychologist P.F. Swindle, about 45 years ago.
It can be summoned up by anybody. Using no more ectoplasm than a table lamp, friends can join you in this weird experiment, right in your own living room. Choose a dark moonless night and draw the drapes securely so that no stray light from street lamps or passing cars enters the room. Group the chairs near a table or floor lamp with one person directly alongside it to switch it on and off.
First, everyone must remain in the darkened room for at least 10 minutes before the experiment begins, so that the eyes can adjust completely to the darkness. Then, each ghosthunter must look steadily toward the lamp but not directly at it. They must keep perfectly still and keep the eyes from moving during the time the room will be illuminated and immediately afterward.
Now turn on the lamp for a full second. Turn it off. Shortly after you will see the whole scene loom up in the darkness with startling clarity, and the ghost impression will last for some time. Not only will everything appear exactly as it was when the light was on, but many precise details will be evident which could not possibly have been noted during the brief illumination...
The same optical illusion occurs when someone reports that he has seen a ghost in a graveyard at night. If a man is passing a graveyard at night and the moon breaks through the clouds just as he is opposite a white tombstone, in a few minutes he might see a vague white form loom up before him. The moon's illumination has created the 'ghost' which the man actually does see, but which is only an after-image— in the image of "Swindle's Ghost."
It can be summoned up by anybody. Using no more ectoplasm than a table lamp, friends can join you in this weird experiment, right in your own living room. Choose a dark moonless night and draw the drapes securely so that no stray light from street lamps or passing cars enters the room. Group the chairs near a table or floor lamp with one person directly alongside it to switch it on and off.
First, everyone must remain in the darkened room for at least 10 minutes before the experiment begins, so that the eyes can adjust completely to the darkness. Then, each ghosthunter must look steadily toward the lamp but not directly at it. They must keep perfectly still and keep the eyes from moving during the time the room will be illuminated and immediately afterward.
Now turn on the lamp for a full second. Turn it off. Shortly after you will see the whole scene loom up in the darkness with startling clarity, and the ghost impression will last for some time. Not only will everything appear exactly as it was when the light was on, but many precise details will be evident which could not possibly have been noted during the brief illumination...
The same optical illusion occurs when someone reports that he has seen a ghost in a graveyard at night. If a man is passing a graveyard at night and the moon breaks through the clouds just as he is opposite a white tombstone, in a few minutes he might see a vague white form loom up before him. The moon's illumination has created the 'ghost' which the man actually does see, but which is only an after-image— in the image of "Swindle's Ghost."
Some more info in the book Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception:
Swindle observed that if one experiences a very bright flash, one achieves a very powerful positive afterimage that may last over a period of hours. "Swindle's Ghost," as it is referred to occasionally, is a conscious image sustained purely by cortical activity; it is an image created by a stimulus that is not present during later observation. In spite of the absence of a distal stimulus, the image is very real. Observations by Gregory, Wallace, and Campbell (1959) and Davies (1973) attests to just how real it is; if a Swindle's Ghost image is a corridor, and one walks down it in total darkness, one seems to be walking, briefly, through his or her own afterimage.
You can find Swindle's original article here:
Swindle, P.F. (1916). Positive Afterimages of long duration. American Journal of Psychology, 27, 325-334.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Jun 15, 2021 -
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Category: Paranormal, Supernatural, Occult, Paranormal, Psychology, Eyes and Vision
Ghost Tape Number Ten
From Wikipedia:Operation Wandering Soul was a propaganda campaign and large scale psychological warfare attempt exercised by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War...
U.S. engineers spent weeks recording eerie sounds and altered voices, which pretended to be killed Viet Cong, for use in the operation, with the intended purpose of instilling a sense of turmoil within the enemy, the desired result being for the soldier to flee his position. The tape, dubbed Ghost Tape Number Ten, was played on loudspeakers outside U.S. bases.
U.S. engineers spent weeks recording eerie sounds and altered voices, which pretended to be killed Viet Cong, for use in the operation, with the intended purpose of instilling a sense of turmoil within the enemy, the desired result being for the soldier to flee his position. The tape, dubbed Ghost Tape Number Ten, was played on loudspeakers outside U.S. bases.
Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 10, 2021 -
Comments (4)
Category: Military, Paranormal, Cacophony, Dissonance, White Noise and Other Sonic Assaults
Animal psychic clears dog of eating owner
After Dean Goodman crashed his car into a canyon in early 1978, something ate his body. His mother assumed it was his German shepherd, Prince, who had survived the crash and remained at the scene for three weeks until Goodman's body was found. She wanted the dog put down.More details from Skeptical Inquirer magazine (Winter 1978):
this gross injustice was narrowly averted when North Hollywood psychic Beatrice Lydecker interviewed the dog and found that Prince had in fact been wrongfully accused. "I have this ESP with animals," Mrs. Lydecker explained. "Prince had been traumatized by the accident. All Prince could talk about was his dead master."
Coyotes and wild dogs, the German shepherd said, had eaten the body, despite Prince's valiant efforts to drive them off. The canine hero's life was spared, owing to this timely information. A local police sergeant observed, "She says she got the information from the dog—and I've no evidence to dispute that."
Coyotes and wild dogs, the German shepherd said, had eaten the body, despite Prince's valiant efforts to drive them off. The canine hero's life was spared, owing to this timely information. A local police sergeant observed, "She says she got the information from the dog—and I've no evidence to dispute that."
Santa Rosa Press Democrat - Feb 28, 1978
As far as I can tell, Beatrice Lydecker is still active, and still talking with animals. She's got a website where she sells various "natural products," as well as her book: You Too Can Talk With the Animals.
Beatrice Lydecker - 1988 press photo
Posted By: Alex - Mon Jan 04, 2021 -
Comments (4)
Category: Paranormal, Dogs, 1970s
Phone Calls From the Dead
As opposed to phone calls from telemarketers, who are more like the living dead."Scientific" parapsychologists D. Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless have recently discovered a startling fact: that dozens of people have had telephone calls from the dead. "The weight of evidence has convinced us that there are surviving spirits making attempts to contact living people" through the telephone, Bayless told the National Enquirer. Their new book, Phone Calls from the Dead, describes fifty such cases. Unfortunately, if the person receiving the call realizes that he is speaking to a spirit from the Beyond, the call is usually over within seconds, they say. Some postmortem calls arrive, appropriately enough, over dead telephone lines. Rogo believes that these calls occur when a spirit manipulates electrical impulses in the phone to reproduce the sound of its own voice. "We've stumbled on a whole new mothod of psychic communication!" says Rogo.
— The Skeptical Inquirer - Summer 1979
— The Skeptical Inquirer - Summer 1979
Posted By: Alex - Wed Dec 23, 2020 -
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Category: Death, Paranormal, Books, 1970s
Canadian Prime Minister Consults Ghost Dogs
Article:
William Lyon MacKenzie King (1874-1950), Canada’s 10th and longest serving Prime Minister was a devoted dog owner in life and in death.While active in politics King had an achingly dull public image, which was certainly at odds with the goings-on in his private life. What the Canadian populace wasn’t aware of was his séances, his consultations with spiritual mediums, table-rapping sessions, tea-leaf readings and communing with the spirits of the likes of former PM Wilfrid Laurier, his long-deceased mother, and of course his dear ghost dog, Pat. That he owned and frequently used both a Ouija board and a crystal ball was published in Time Magazine in 1953, news that shocked the nation. Rampant rumours circulated about King’s oddities, some true, most false. That King had Pat stuffed by a taxidermist so that the little dog would always be by his side turned out to be untrue. King’s detailed diary entries, published after his death in 1950 revealed that King consulted the dead Pats during these séance sessions in manners of international political policy, conscription, and Liberal Party Leadership.
King, obsessed with death and the afterlife, often expressed his wish to communicate with the living after he died, just as he hoped to be reunited forever in the spirit world with his three Pats; “we shall all be together in the Beyond,” he wrote, “of that I am perfectly sure”.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Jan 30, 2019 -
Comments (2)
Category: Communications, Eccentrics, Government, Officials, New Age, Paranormal, Dogs, Twentieth Century
| Who We Are |
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |