A collection of intriguing topics and fascinating stories

about the rare, the paranormal, and the strange

Volume 3




Discover the mysteries behind mass hysteria and demonic possession.
Uncover mysterious cases, strange people, and mysterious abilities.






Pablo C. Agsalud Jr.
Revision 6







Foreword

In the past, things like television, and words and
ideas like advertising, capitalism, microwave and
cancer all seemed too strange for the ordinary
man.

As man walks towards the future, overloaded with
information, more mysteries have been solved
through the wonders of science. Although some
things remained too odd for science to reproduce
or disprove, man had placed them in the gray
areas between truth and skepticism and labeled
them with terminologies fit for the modern age.

But the truth is, as long as the strange and
unexplainable cases keep piling up, the more likely
it would seem normal or natural. Answers are
always elusive and far too fewer than questions.
And yet, behind all the wonderful and frightening
phenomena around us, it is possible that what we
call mysterious today wont be too strange
tomorrow.

This book might encourage you to believe or refute
what lies beyond your own understanding.
Nonetheless, I hope it will keep you entertained
and astonished.

The content of this book remains believable for as
long as the sources and/or the references from the
specified sources exist and that the validity of the
information remains unchallenged.










Demonic Possession



Are demons real?
Are they walking among the living?

Are the numerous accounts of demonic possession enough to prove
their existence or are they just malevolent symptoms of temporary
insanity?

The following pages contain REAL accounts and articles about alleged
demonic possessions.

Demonic Possession
Wikipedia.org
Overview
Demonic possession is held by many belief systems to be the control of an individual by a
malevolent supernatural being. Descriptions of demonic possessions often include erased
memories or personalities, convulsions, fits and fainting as if one were dying. Other
descriptions include access to hidden knowledge (gnosis) and foreign languages (glossolalia),
drastic changes in vocal intonation and facial structure, the sudden appearance of injuries
(scratches, bite marks) or lesions, and superhuman strength. Unlike in channeling or other
forms of possession, the subject has no control over the possessing entity and so it will persist
until forced to leave the victim, usually through a form of exorcism.

Many cultures and religions contain some concept of demonic possession, but the details vary
considerably. The oldest references to demonic possession are from the Sumerians, who
believed that all diseases of the body and mind were caused by "sickness demons" called
gidim or gid-dim. The priests who practiced exorcisms in these nations were called ashipu
(sorcerer) as opposed to an asu (physician) who applied bandages and salves. Many cuneiform
tablets contain prayers to certain gods asking for protection from demons, while others ask
the gods to expel the demons that have invaded their bodies.

Shamanic cultures also believe in demon possession and shamans perform exorcisms. In these
cultures, diseases are often attributed to the presence of a vengeful spirit (or loosely termed
demon) in the body of the patient. These spirits are more often the spectres of animals or
people wronged by the bearer, the exorcism rites usually consisting of respectful offerings or
sacrificial offerings.

Christianity holds that possession derives from The Devil, i.e. Satan, or one of his lessor
demons. In many Christian belief systems, Satan and his demons are actually fallen angels.
Bible accounts

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"In the Old Testament we have only one instance, and even that is not very certain.
We are told that "an evil spirit from the Lord troubled" Saul (1 Samuel 16:14). The
Hebrew rah need not imply a personal influence, though, if we may judge from
Josephus (Ant. Jud., VI, viii, 2; ii, 2), the Jews were inclined to give the word that
meaning in this very case. In New-Testament times, however, the phenomenon had
become very common."

The New Testament mentions several episodes in which Jesus drove out demons from
persons, believing these to be the entities responsible for those mental and physical illnesses.

Matthew 4:23-25: Demon-possessed persons are healed by Jesus (also Luke 6:17-
19).
Matthew 7:21-23: Many will drive out demons in Jesus' name (also Mark 16:17; Luke
10:17; Acts 5:16; 8:7).
Matthew 8:14-17: Jesus healed many demon-possessed (also Mark 1:29-39; Luke
4:33-41).
Matthew 8:28-34: Jesus sent a herd of demons from two men into a herd of pigs
("about two thousand" pigs, according to the account at Mark 5:1-20; both Mark's
account and Luke 8:26-39, mention only the one man).
Matthew 9:32-34: Jesus made a demon-possessed mute man speak, the Pharisees
said it was by the power of Beelzebub (also Mark 3:20-22).
Matthew 10:1-8: The Twelve Apostles given the authority to drive out evil spirits (also
Mark 3:15; 6:7; 6:13; Luke 9:1; 10:17).
Matthew 11:16-19: "this generation" said that John the Baptist was possessed by a
demon (also Luke 7:31-35).
Matthew 12:22-32: Jesus healed a demon-possessed blind and dumb man (also Luke
11:14-23; 12:10; Mark 3:20-30).
Matthew 12:43-45: Jesus told an allegory of nasty spirits coming back home, that is,
to the human body where they have lived before (also Luke 11:24-26).
Matthew 15:21-28: Jesus expelled a demon from the body of the daughter of a
Canaanite woman (also Mark 7:24-30).
Matthew 17:14-21: Jesus healed a lunatic by driving out a demon from him (also Mark
9:14-29; Luke 9:37-49).
Mark 1:21-28: Jesus expelled a nasty spirit from a man (also Luke 4:31-37).
Mark 9:38-40: A non-Christian is seen driving out demons in Jesus' name (also Luke
9:49-50).
Mark 16:9: Jesus had driven seven demons out of Mary Magdalene (also Luke 8:2).
Luke 7:21: Many people are cleansed from evil spirits by Jesus.
Luke 13:10-17: Jesus expelled a spirit of disease from the body of a woman on the
Sabbath.
Luke 13:31-32: Jesus continued to cast out demons even though Herod Antipas
wanted to kill him.
Luke 22:3: Satan entered into Judas Iscariot (also John 13:27).
John 7:20: A "crowd of Jews" that wanted to kill Jesus said he was demon-possessed.
John 8:48-52: "The Jews" said Jesus was a Samaritan and demon-possessed.
John 10:20-21: Many Jews said Jesus was raving mad and demon-possessed, others
said he was not.
Acts 5:3: Satan filled the heart of Ananias.
Acts 5:16: The Apostles healed those tormented by evil spirits.
Acts 8:6-8: At the teaching of Philip the Evangelist in Samaria, evil spirits came out of
many.
Acts 8:18-19: Simon Magus offered to buy the power of Laying on of hands.
Acts 10:38: St. Peter said Jesus healed all who were under the power of the devil.
Acts 16:16-24: Paul and Silas were imprisoned for driving a future-telling spirit out of
a slave girl.
Acts 19:11-12: Handkerchiefs and aprons touched by Paul cured illness and drove out
evil spirits.
Acts 19:13-20: Seven sons of Sceva attempted to drive out evil spirits by saying: "In
the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out." But because
they did not have faith in Jesus, they were unsuccessful and were actually driven from
that house by the possessed.
Revelation 18:2: The Whore of Babylon is a home for demons, evil spirits and unclean
birds.

Acts of the Apostles contains also a number of references to people coming under the
influence of the Holy Spirit (1:8, 2:4, 2:17-18, 2:38, 4:8, 4:31, 6:3-5, 7:55, 8:15-19, 8:39,
9:17, 10:19, 11:12-16, 11:28, 13:9, 16:6-7, 19:2-6, 20:23, 21:11, 23:8-9) which is believed
to be a good thing in contrast to demonic influence, see also Spirit possession#Christianity.

The 1902 work Demonic possession in the New Testament by Rev. William Menzies Alexander
attempted to explain accounts of possession in the synoptic Gospels, outlining their historical,
medical and theological aspects.

Christian Views

Catholic exorcists differentiate between "ordinary" Satanic activity or influence (which includes
mundane everyday temptations) and "extraordinary" Satanic activity, which can take six
different forms:

External physical pain caused by Satan;
Demonic Possession, in which Satan takes full possession of a person's body without
their knowledge or consent: the victim is therefore morally blameless;
Diabolical Oppression, in which there is no loss of consciousness or involuntary action,
such as in the biblical Book of Job in which Job was tormented by a series of
misfortunes in business, family, and health;
Diabolic Obsession, which includes sudden attacks of irrationally obsessive thoughts,
usually culminating in suicidal ideation and intrusive dreams;
Diabolic infestation, which affects houses, things, or animals; and
Diabolic subjugation, in which a person voluntarily submits to Satan.

In Hostage to the Devil, Malachi Martin also mentions a type of demonic attack called
"familiarization". He writes,

"The possessing spirit in 'familiarization' is seeking to 'come and live with' the subject.
If accepted, the spirit becomes the constant and continuously present companion of
the possessed. The two "persons", the familiar and the possessed, remain separate
and distinct. The possessed is aware of his familiar".

True diabolical or satanic possession has been characterized since the Middles Ages, in the
Rituale Romanum, by the following four typical characteristics:

manifestation of superhuman strength;
speaking in tongues or languages that the person cannot know;
the revelation of knowledge, distant or hidden, that the victim cannot know; and
blasphemic rage and an aversion to holy symbols or relics


The Bible indicates that people can be possessed by demons but that the demons respond to
Jesus's authority:

In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an evil spirit. He cried out
at the top of his voice, 34 Ha! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have
you come to destroy us? I know who you arethe Holy One of God! 35 Be quiet!
Jesus said sternly. Come out of him! Then the demon threw the man down before
them all and came out without injuring him. 36 All the people were amazed and said
to each other, What is this teaching? With authority and power he gives orders to evil
spirits and they come out! 37 And the news about him spread throughout the
surrounding area. (Luke 4:33-35 NIV)

It also indicates that demons can possess animals.

When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town.
For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the
tombs. 28 When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of
his voice, What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you,
dont torture me! 29 For Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the
man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and
kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into
solitary places. Legion, he replied, because many demons had gone into him. 31 And
they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss. 32 A large herd
of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into
the pigs, and he gave them permission. 33 When the demons came out of the man,
they went into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and
was drowned. (Luke 8:27-32 NIV)

The literal view of demonization is still held by a number of Christian denominations. Official
Catholic doctrine affirms that demonic oppression can occur as distinguished from mental
illness, but stresses that cases of mental illness should not be misdiagnosed as demonic
influence. Catholic exorcisms can occur only under the authority of a bishop and in accordance
with strict rules; a simple exorcism also occurs during Baptism (CCC 1673). In charismatic
Christianity, deliverance ministries are activities carried out by individuals or groups aimed at
solving problems related to demons and spirits, especially possession of the body and soul,
but not the spirit as ministries like Ellel Ministries International, Don Dickerman Ministries and
Neil T. Anderson explicitly teach that a Christian can not have demons in their spirit because
the Holy Spirit lives there, though they can have demons in their body or soul due to inner
emotional wounds, sexual abuse, satanic ritual abuse. This is usually known as partial
possession or demonic infestation, as opposed to outside demonic oppression which does not
reside in any of the 3 parts of a person: body, soul, spirit.

A great deal of controversy surrounds the book War on the Saints originally published in 1912
as a resource to the Christian faced with combating demon influences.

In the New Testament Jesus is reported to have encountered people who were demonized and
to have driven the "evil spirits" out of these demoniacs. In the 4th century, St. Hillary asserted
that demons entered the bodies of humans to use them as if they were theirs, and also
proposed that the same could happen with animals.

The New Testament's description of people who had evil spirits includes a capacity for hidden
knowledge (e.g., future events, innermost thoughts of the people around them) (Acts 16:16)
and great strength (Act 19:16), among others, and shows those with evil spirits can speak of
Christ (Acts 19:16, Mark 3:11). According to Catholic theologians, demonic assault can be
involuntary and allowed by God to test a person (for more details about God's tests on
persons see Job). Involuntary demonic assault, according to these theologians, cannot be
denied because this would imply the negation of the cases mentioned in the New Testament
(12, some of them repeated in more than one Gospel). However, in the overwhelming
majority of cases of alleged demonic possession in modern times, the victim can suffer due to
any of a number of personal initiatives: occult practices, mortal sin, loss of faith, or
psychological trauma, among others. Furthermore, Malachi Martin goes as far as to say "...no
person can be Possessed without some degree of cooperation on his or her part," and "The
effective cause of Possession is the voluntary collaboration of an individual, through his
faculties of mind and will, with one or more of those bodiless, genderless creatures called
demons.

In previous centuries, the Christian church offered suggestions on safeguarding ones home.
Suggestions ranged from dousing a household with Holy water, placing wax and herbs on
thresholds to ward off witches occult, and avoiding certain areas of townships known to be
frequented by witches and Devil worshippers after dark.

Medicine and psychology

Demonic possession is not recognized as a psychiatric or medical diagnosis by either the DSM-
IV or the ICD-10. There are many psychological ailments commonly misunderstood as
demonic possession, particularly dissociative identity disorder. In cases of dissociative
identity disorder in which the alter personality is questioned as to its identity, 29% are
reported to identify themselves as demons, but doctors see this as a mental disease called
demonomania or demonopathy, a monomania in which the patient believes that he or she
is possessed by one or more demons.
Demonic Oppression
http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com
http://www.religiousdemonology.com/index.htm

Demonic oppression is when the demonic problem becomes personal and interacts with the
victim, sometimes taking over the persons thoughts for a time. The goal of demonic
oppression is to put strain on the victim emotionally, psychologically and physically, causing
them eventually to give up and accept more complete control from the demons. If a demonic
infestation took the form of a helpful spirit that pretense is generally dropped when things
progress to this point. The demonic have enough of a hold on the persons life, mind and soul
that they can afford to let the truth be known: they want to destroy the victim and their soul,
usually through suicide. This process can involve:

Affecting the emotions of the victim, usually in the home or location where the problem
started, but not always. This can take the form of depression, withdrawal from friends and
family, anger issues, or any other negative emotional problem. This is done to wear the
victim down emotionally and isolate them away from people that care about them. This
could simply be depression.

Affecting the thoughts of the victim. This can take the form of paranoia, distrust of others,
irrational beliefs, intrusive thoughts that seem to come from somewhere else. This is done
to wear the victims sense of reality down and eventually make them more vulnerable.
This could be normal psychosis.

Affecting the sleep of the victim. The victim is often bothered by nightmares of a demonic
nature, disturbed in their sleep so they get little rest, or waking to see things in their
room. This is done to wear the victim down and make them fatigued.

Causing the victim to hear voices, either in their head or in the room with them. The
voices often encourage the victim to do negative things and avoid positive people. It is
important to be sure these voices are not part of a mental illness or side effect of a
medication or physical disease.

Taking over the victims body completely, but not permanently. The demons speak and
interact with the victims body as if it were their own. The victim often has no recall of
what happens during these episodes.

Causing the victim to see things, including images of demons.

Distorting the victims perceptions. This includes sometimes not perceiving words
associated with God, such as Jesus, prayer, Church, Holy, etc. The victim may see angels
as demons

Touching the victim.

Scratching or biting the victim.

Causing writing or occult symbols to appear on the victims body.

Sexually assaulting the victim. Depending on how far the oppression has gone it can be
hard to communicate with the victim in a normal way. They may appear distant or spaced
out. It is good to ask if they are hearing voices when they seem to not pay attention to
what is going on around them. Always have a full medical work up done to be sure the
symptoms are not medical or simply psychiatric.


Spirit Possession
Wikipedia.org

Spirit possession is a paranormal and/or supernatural event in which it is said that spirits,
gods, demons, animas, extraterrestrials, or other disincarnate or extraterrestrial entities take
control of a human body, resulting in noticeable changes in health and behaviour. The term
can also describe a similar action of taking residence in an inanimate object, possibly giving it
animation.

The concept of spiritual possession exists in many religions, including Christianity, Islam,
Buddhism, Haitian Vodou, Wicca, and Southeast Asian and African traditions. Depending on
the cultural context in which it is found, possession may be considered voluntary or
involuntary and may be considered to have beneficial or detrimental effects. Scientific
materialists[who?] also have opinions about the nature of the phenomenon.

Buddhism

According to the Indian medical literature and Tantric Buddhist scriptures, most of the
"seizers," or those that threaten the lives of young children, appear in animal form: cow, lion,
fox, monkey, horse, dog, pig, cat, crow, pheasant, owl, and snake. But apart from these
"nightmare shapes," the impersonation or incarnation of animals could in some circumstances
also be highly beneficial, according to Michel Strickmann.

Ch'i Chung-fu, a Chinese gynecologist writing early in the thirteenth century, for example,
wrote that in addition to five sorts of falling frenzy classified according to their causative
factors, there were also four types of other frenzies distinguished by the sounds and
movements given off by the victim during his seizure: cow, horse, pig, and dog frenzies.

Taoism and other East-Asian religions

Certain sects of Taoism, Korean Shamanism, Shinto, some Japanese new religious
movements, and other East-Asian religions feature spirit-possession. Some sects feature
shamans who become possessed, or mediums who channel beings' supernatural power, or
enchanters who imbue or foster spirits within objects, like samurai swords.

African and African diasporic traditions

In Sudan and certain other East African cultures the Zr Cult conducts ethnomedical healing
ceremonies involving possession typically of Muslim women by a Zr spirit.

In Haitian Vodou and related African diasporic traditions, one way that those who participate
or practice can have a spiritual experience is by being possessed by the lwa (or Loa). When
the lwa descends upon a practitioner, the practitioner's body is being used by the spirit,
according to the tradition. Some spirits are believed to be able to give prophecies of upcoming
events or situations pertaining to the possessed one, also called Chwal or the "Horse of the
Spirit." Practitioners describe this as a beautiful but very tiring experience. Most people who
are possessed by the spirit describe the onset as a feeling of blackness or energy flowing
through their body as if they were being electrocuted. According to Vodou believers, when this
occurs, it is a sign that a possession is about to take place.

The practitioner has no recollection of the possession and in fact when the possessing spirit
leaves the body, the possessed one is tired and wonders what has happened during the
possession. Not all practitioners have the ability to become possessed, but practitioners who
do generally prefer not to make excessive use of it because it drains immense energy from
them. It is said that only the lwa can choose who it wants to possess, for the spirit may have a
mission that it can carry out spiritually. It is believed that those possessed by the lwa probably
are at a very high spiritual level such that their soul is mature and at an advanced level.

It is also believed that there are those who feign possessions because they want attention or a
feeling of importance, because those who are possessed carry a high importance in ceremony.
Often, a chwal will undergo some form of trial or testing to make sure that the possession is
indeed genuine. As an example, someone possessed by one of the Gud spirits may be
offered piment, a liqueur made by steeping twenty-one chili peppers in kleren, a potent
alcoholic beverage. If the chwal consumes the piment without showing any evidence of pain or
discomfort, the possession is regarded as genuine.

Balinese Sanghyang

The animist traditions of the island of Bali (Indonesia) include a practice called sanghyang,
induction of voluntary possession trance states for specific purposes. Roughly similar to
voluntary possession in Vaudon (Voodoo), sanghyang is a sacred state in which hyangs
(deities) or helpful spirits temporarily inhabit the bodies of participants. The purpose of
sanghyang is to cleanse people and places of evil influences and restore spiritual balance.
Thus, it is often referred to as an exorcism ceremony.

Wicca

Wiccans believe in voluntary possession by the Goddess, connected with the sacred ceremony
of Drawing Down the Moon. The high priestess solicits the Goddess to possess her and speak
through her.

Christianity

Roman Catholic doctrine states that angels are non-corporeal beings and that they are purely
spiritual creatures who have intelligence and will. Fallen angels, or demons, are able to
"demonically possess" individuals without the victim's knowledge or consent, leaving them
morally blameless. Traditionally, Christians have believed that there are many spirits in the
world, but only the Holy Spirit is considered pure and trustworthy. They see the human body
as having been created to be a temple to the living God. Finally, Christians believe that Jesus
came to the earth to fill all things with His Holy Spirit, which is the fullness of God literally
living inside of a believer.

Spiritism and Spiritualism

In Spiritism and in some schools of Spiritualism, the undue influence exerted by spirits upon
new and imperfectly trained mediums is considered a distinct danger to both the mediums
themselves and to the communities they serve. Both the Spiritist author Allan Kardec and the
Spiritualist author Paschal Beverly Randolph wrote on this topic. In modern Spiritism and
Spiritualism, deleterious spirit possession is generally referred to as spirit obsession, to
distinguish it from African-influenced traditions of spiritual possession.

Scientific materialism

Scientific materialists, skeptics, and empiricists, have said that those who have experienced
demonic possession have sometimes exhibited symptoms similar to those associated with
mental illnesses such as psychosis, hysteria, mania, Tourette's syndrome, epilepsy,
schizophrenia, or dissociative identity disorder. Common features of possession include
involuntary, uncensored behavior, and an extra-human, extra-social aspect to the individual's
actions. He is dehumanized, bereft of normal powers of recognition and reaction, and his
speech and movements are distant from the societal norm. In the cases of animal possession,
the individual's deportment suggests that of an animal.

However, cultural context is critical for proper diagnosis of spirit, or demonic, possession as
psychosis or spiritual. In western industrialized nations such as the United States, spirit
possession is not normative, and therefore calls for caution in acceptance of this condition as
actually caused by spirits. The DSM-IV-TR, in describing the differences between spirit
possession and Dissociative Identity Disorder, identifies only the claim that the extra
personality is an external spirit or entity, lacking that, there would be no difference between
the two conditions. Dissociative Identity Disorder in the United States is itself extremely rare.
All forms of DID constitute only about 1% of the entire population. Of those, 98-99% are of
the type of DID commonly recognized as the traditional form of Multiple Personality Disorder,
rather than related to spirits.

Those most susceptible to being possessed are people with weak boundaries and low self-
esteem, pointing to dysfunctional ego involvement in manifestations of this phenomenon
rather than actual outside entities.

Faustian bargain
Wikipedia.org

A deal with the Devil, pact with the Devil, or
Faustian bargain is a cultural motif widespread in the
West, best exemplified by the legend of Faust and the
figure of Mephistopheles, but elemental to many
Christian folktales. In the Aarne-Thompson typological
catalogue, it lies in category AT 756B "The devil's
contract."

According to traditional Christian belief in witchcraft, the
pact is between a person and Satan or any other demon
(or demons); the person offers his or her soul in
exchange for diabolical favours. Those favours vary by
the tale, but tend to include youth, knowledge, wealth,
or power. It was also believed that some persons made this type of pact just as a sign of
recognizing the Devil as their master, in exchange for nothing. Regardless, the bargain is a
dangerous one, as the price of the Fiend's service is the wagerer's soul. The tale may have a
moralizing end, with eternal damnation for the foolhardy venturer. Conversely it may have a
comic twist, in which a wily peasant outwits the Devil, characteristically on a technical point.

Any apparently superhuman achievement might be credited to a pact with the Devil, from the
numerous European Devil's Bridges to the superb violin technique of Niccol Paganini.

Overview

It was usually thought that the person who had made a pact also promised the demon to kill
children or consecrate them to the Devil at the moment of birth (many midwives were accused
of this, due to the number of children that died at birth in the Middle Ages and Renaissance),
take part in Sabbaths, have sexual relations with demons, and sometimes engender children
from a succubus, or incubus in the case of women.

The pact can be oral or written. An oral pact is made by means of invocations, conjurations, or
rituals to attract the demon; once the conjurer thinks the demon is present, he/she asks for
the wanted favour and offers his/her soul in exchange, and no evidence is left of the pact; but
according to some witch trials and inquisitions that were performed, even the oral pact left
evidence, namely the diabolical mark, an indelible mark where the marked person had been
touched by the devil to seal the pact. The mark could be used as a proof to determine that the
pact was made. It was also believed that on the spot where the mark was left, the marked
person could feel no pain. A written pact consists in the same forms of attracting the demon,
but includes a written act, usually signed with the conjurer's blood (although sometimes was
also alleged that the whole act had to be written with blood, meanwhile some demonologists
defended the idea of using red ink instead of blood and others suggested the use of animal
blood instead of human blood). Forms of these include contracts or simply signing your name
into Satan's Red Book.

These acts were presented often as a proof of diabolical pacts, though critics claim there is no
proof of whether they were authentic, written by insane persons believing they were actually
dealing with a demon or just were fake acts presented by the tribunals of the Inquisition.
Usually the acts included strange characters that were said to be the signature of a demon,
and each one had his own signature or seal. Books like The Lesser Key of Solomon (also
known as Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis) give a detailed list of these signs, known as
Diabolical signatures.

The Malleus Maleficarum discusses several alleged instances of pacts with the Devil, especially
concerning women. It was considered that all witches and warlocks had made a pact with
some demon, especially with Satan.

According to demonology, there is a specific month, day of the week, and hour to call each
demon, so the invocation for a pact has to be done at the right time. Also, as each demon has
a specific function, a certain demon is invoked depending on what the conjurer is going to ask.
Theophilus of Adana, servant of two masters

The predecessor of Faustus in Christian mythology is Theofilius ("Friend of God" or "Beloved of
god") the unhappy and despairing cleric, disappointed in his worldly career by his bishop, who
sells his soul to the Devil but is redeemed by the Virgin Mary. His story appears in a Greek
version of the sixth century written by a "Eutychianus" who claims to have been a member of
the household in question.

A ninth-century Miraculum Sancte Marie de Theophilo penitente inserts a Jew as intermediary
with diabolus, his "patron", providing the prototype of a closely linked series in the Latin
literature of the West.

In the tenth century, the poet nun Hroswitha of Gandersheim adapted the text of Paulus
Diaconus for a narrative poem that elaborates Theophilus' essential goodness and internalizes
the forces of Good and Evil, in which the Jew is magus, a necromancer. As in her model,
Theophilus receives back his contract from the Virgin, displays it to the congregation, and
soon dies.

A long poem on the subject by Gautier de Coincy (1177/81236), entitled Comment
Theophilus vint a pnitence provided material for a thirteenth-century play by Rutebeuf, Le
Miracle de Thophile, where Theophilus is the central pivot in a frieze of five characters, the
Virgin and the Bishop flanking him on the side of Good, the Jew and the Devil on the side of
Evil.
Alleged diabolical pacts in history
Musicians

The idea of "selling your soul for instrumental mastery/fame" has occurred several times:

Niccol Paganini, Italian violinist, who may not have started the rumour but played
along with it.
Giuseppe Tartini, Venetian violinist and composer, who believed that his Devil's Trill
Sonata was inspired by the Devil's appearance before him in a dream.
Tommy Johnson, blues musician
Robert Johnson, blues musician, who is claimed to have met Satan at a crossroads and
signed over his soul to play the blues and gain mastery of the guitar.
Non-musicians

Johann Georg Faust, creator of the Faust legend.
Jonathan Moulton, eighteenth-century brigadier general of the New Hampshire Militia,
alleged to have sold his soul to the devil to have his boots filled with gold coins when
hung by the fireplace every month.


Metaphorical use of the term

The term "a pact with the Devil" is also used metaphorically to condemn a person or persons
perceived as having collaborated with an evil person or regime. An example of this is the still-
controversial case of Rudolf Kastner in Israel, in which the term was used in reference to
Kastner's alleged collaboration with Adolf Eichmann during the Holocaust in 1944 Hungary.
According to some, the term served to inflame public hatred against Kastner, culminating in
his assassination.


JAMAICA
2007 The Case of Marcia
Possessed or Psychotic?
BY NADINE WILSON
Sunday, June 05, 2011
SOURCE: JamaicaObserver.com

Demonic possession is a subject that can elicit a chuckle in some quarters, but is taken as a
deadly serious matter in others. Recently, some Jamaican men of the cloth have claimed that
there has been an increase in the number of cases of so-called 'demon-possession' in which
they are being asked to intervene.
Some of these pastors attribute this religious phenomenon to increasing scepticism about
spiritual matters; greater access to a range of cultural, spiritual and religious thinking and
practices via the Internet; and widespread sexual permissiveness.

Forty-eight year-old Marcia (surname withheld to protect her privacy) is convinced she was
delivered from demonic spirits in 2007 after attending a service at a tent crusade where she
was prayed over. The mother of two said she had struggled for more that 16 years with what
she calls 'demonic tendencies' and was prescribed traditional medications by doctors who
attributed her strange behaviour to mental illness.
"I was ill, I was out of my mind, I would hear like voices calling me," she told the Sunday
Observer recently. She said her family members were concerned about her because
sometimes she would be walking the streets with a machete and talking to herself.
"I went to several doctors but they didn't tell me anything concrete, they only gave me tablets
for my nerves," she said.
Marcia, who was eventually admitted to Ward 21 the psychiatric ward at the University
Hospital of the West Indies said she would roam the streets and heard voices around
September each year. However, she has not done so since attending the crusade three years
ago, where Spanish Town revival church pastor Reverend Dr Rohan Edwards prayed for her.
"He called an altar call and laid his hands on me and I began to pray, and after that, I felt a
conviction come over me and I say I am going to give my life to God," said Marcia who
pointed out that she has not had any relapse since and has therefore stopped taking her
medications.
Bishop Edwards said he has performed a number of similar 'deliverance services' over the
years and, like other pastors the Sunday Observer interviewed, he said he has seen a
dramatic increase in the number of people coming to him for help to ward off malevolent
spirits. In an average week, he said he receives about 10 requests for 'deliverance' from
people who believe they are under the influence of evil spirits, and that figure increases when
his church hosts a crusade.
"It's a lot I have dealt with, so I know exactly what I am talking about. A lot of them (demons)
are around and sometimes they are living in people's heart that you would be surprised to
know who they are living in. People sometimes look calm and cool, but when they begin to
activate, you realize that something is wrong," said Bishop Edwards.
"Some of us have that power to rebuke (demons) and we acknowledge that these powers are
around and we have the power to cast them out," he said.
Bishop Joseph Ade-Gold, founder of the Overcomers World Ministries located in Kingston and
Mandeville, claimed that the number of spiritual/demonic interventions he has had to perform
has tripled in the last year or so.
According to the pastor, who said he has dedicated the past 25 years to helping those with
spiritual disorders, a number of cases have been referred to him, not only by other pastors,
but by medical doctors, including psychiatrists, who, he claimed, cannot find medical reasons
for their patients' behaviour.
"Sometimes, in a week we get 35 persons," said Ade-Gold, whose ministry performs what are
known as 'deliverance and restoration' services for the emotionally and spiritually distressed,
and offers training in the rudiments of what it calls 'spiritual warfare'.
"We do like counselling and deliverance on spiritual issues. So somebody might go to the
hospital and they cannot find anything wrong with them, so they will come. We do deliverance
for people who have bad dreams and obeah in their lives, and people who suffer from
generational curses like those people who have businesses and their businesses cannot
survive," explained Ade-Gold.
He attributed the recent multiple murder/suicide cases the country has grappled with to
'demonic infestations' brought on by the worldwide economic recession that has robbed many
people of their income. He said men with suicidal tendencies are among those who have been
coming to him for help.
"It is because of the kind of depression that we are in. Some of the cases I have been dealing
with, it's because they've lost jobs, they have no money to do whatever they need to do, their
wives or their women leaving them creates a level of imbalances which demons take
advantage of and influence them," said the pastor, whose views have been supported by
pastors from other churches who spoke to the Sunday Observer.
"So they will come, they want to commit suicide, they want to run away, they are angry at
home and they want to kill anybody around them," he pointed out.
The calls for these deliverance services have been overwhelming for pastor of the Portmore
Lane Covenant Community Church Rev Dr Donald Stewart. He said he has even stopped using
cellular phones because the calls from persons asking for spiritual help have made it hard for
him to concentrate on his other pastoral duties.
"Deliverance entails speaking God's word and rebuking (the demon) in the name of Jesus
based on the authority that you have as a Christian, and the Holy Spirit working in you. It is
all tied to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ," explained Rev Dr Stewart, who said he
has since taken the decision to send persons who come to him for help, back to their own
pastors to perform the rites for them.
"Part of my principle is that each church must now get involved, so though I get calls
everyday, I don't particularly deal with everyone by myself," he said.
But even with some pastors now taking responsibility for their congregants' spiritual woes, Rev
Dr Stewart said he still has to work with guidance counsellors and parents to assist students
suspected of having demonic tendencies. He explained that some of these young afflicted
persons do not belong to a church and others are referred to him by doctors when
conventional medicine fails.
"I have had psychiatrists and psychologists and medical doctors referring people to me,
because those are honest enough to know that what they are dealing with is not something
where they can help the person. There are others who may not be so honest and who are
prescribing drugs, especially psychiatric drugs to people and keeping them in a prison," the
pastor said, while pointing out that not all the doctors who refer patients to him are even
Christians.
But noted psychiatrist Professor Fred Hickling poured cold water on the pastors' claims that
individuals can be possessed by evil spirits. Instead, he attributes psychotic behaviour
observed in people claiming to be demon-possessed, to mental illness.
"I have been a psychiatrist for many years and I have never seen anybody who has claimed to
be demon-possessed. I have never seen them helped by a pastor or a religious person," said
Professor Hickling, who has been practising for over 40 years.
"My clinical observations are that it's just not possible. I personally do not have any belief in
demon possession and I think when people are psychotic, something is wrong with their brain
and not with their soul," he said.
Dr Anthony Allen, a psychiatrist of over 35 years who has also studied theology, admitted
there are instances where he has referred patients to religious leaders after deep psychiatric
assessment and analysis had shown that their situation could have a spiritual connection. Still,
he said it is irresponsible for a psychiatrist to tell someone that they are 'demon possessed'.
"The typical scientist, in terms of the human scientist in medicine, psychiatrist, etc, is not
going to acknowledge from a scientific perspective that these things (demons) exist. If
somebody has a mental illness for example, they are not going to say that this is due to
demon spirits or anything like that," he said.
"The concern of the medical field really has to do with the natural phenomenon, or natural
events having to do with the body, having to do with the brain and even having to do with the
mind. So it is not the job of a psychiatrist to even be talking about anything to do with the
spiritual because they cannot prove that scientifically," he said.
The doctor said he had done research on demonic possession after the topic came up during
the treatment of patients over the years. He said there have been situations where medical
science or psychology has no way of explaining the experiences of some patients, which lead
to some doctors suggesting that the patient see someone in their religious community who is
able to deal with the phenomenon.
"You have some clergy who believe in the ministry of deliverance, in other words, praying for
people to be delivered from demonic forces who will in fact feel or observe behaviour that
might suggest a psychiatric illness and they will send that person to see a psychiatrist. You
have such responsible ministers," he said, even as he cautioned that there are some pastors
who are extremist and who take the dangerous view that anything psychiatric is demonic.
Rev Dr Stewart explained that he has had to refer people to psychiatrists in the past after
intense pre-deliverance counselling proved them psychotic instead of possessed, but, he
insisted that most of the cases he sees are legitimate cases of demonic possession.
"It is more a modernistic way of thinking, where we feel that spiritual things are of the past
and that we are in a post-Christian civilisation, some would like to say.
"There is a tendency in circles where people are very intellectual or very scientific to think that
spiritual things are really just a figment of people's imagination," he said.
Whereas evangelical pastors perform deliverance services to remove demons, those in the
Catholic and Anglican faith perform exorcisms, which are more ritualistic in nature.
Checks by the Sunday Observer revealed that there are four exorcists in the local Anglican
church fraternity, but none in the country's Roman Catholic archdiocese.
Monsignor Kenneth Richards from the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kingston, said that while local
priests are able to perform various rituals such as baptisms, an exorcist from a neighbouring
Caribbean island is brought over to remove demons from someone considered possessed.
"The demonic world is a reality that the church is aware of," he said. "Jesus' ministry was one
that confronted the demonic and the evil of this world."
The priest said individuals who visit Catholic churches for exorcisms have to undergo
psychiatric evaluations to ensure they are not mentally challenged. In most cases, he said, the
situation amounts to the individual needing psychiatric treatment and counselling. He said the
local Catholic Church has not performed an exorcism in quite a while, since there have not
been many cases coming before the church.
President of the Jamaica Council of Churches Rev Dr Paul Gardner believes that only some
pastors are gifted with the ability to deliver people from demon possession. He was not able to
say whether there has been an increase in cases coming before the churches that fall under
the JCC umbrella, but he did support the belief that persons can be possessed by demons.
"If we are going to be truthful and faithful to the scriptures, then we have to admit that there
is something called demon possession," he said, while pointing out that the Bible tells us that
Jesus and His disciples had cast out several demons.
Secretary for the Jamaica Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Milton Gregory, said
deliverance services are not widely practised by that church's local congregation. However,
prayers are usually offered for those considered possessed.
"The demonic world is real," he said. "We would never deny that, we have seen it so many
times."
Rev Dr Stewart believes demons are even active in local churches, where, he claims, up to 10
percent of the Jamaican Christian population has, at one point, been possessed by incubus --
male spirits who rape women in their sleep, and succubus -- female spirits who rape sleeping
men.
"Those are Latin words which describe demonic spirits that molest people sexually. So people
are harassed in their sleep sexually. Sometimes it's even while they are awake too," he said.
The pastor blames the surge in demon possession cases on the Internet and the movie and
cable industry which glorify pain and death. He believes it is also linked to sexual
permissiveness in the country.
"There is a lot of promiscuity and sexual permissiveness, where we think it is okay to do this,
it is okay to touch, it's okay to do that, and many times, that's where the problem is..." Rev Dr
Stewart said. "We look at some of the wrong things on the television or on the Internet, it
influences our thoughts, lustful thoughts develop, it leads to masturbation, fantasizing, and it
opens the door wide," he said.
The pastor, who said he has witnessed several near suicides in his time, is currently writing a
book on the subject of demon possession.
"I have seen some very traumatic things. I have seen people trying to throw themselves off
buildings, diving through windows on second floor buildings. I have seen people who stripped
themselves naked, doing all types of crazy sex things," he said.
"I have seen people actually trying to kill themselves with weapons, knives and those kinds of
things. I have seen people even sexually attacking the persons who are praying for them. I
have encountered people who have boxed, kicked and karate chop and so," he added.
Bishop Ade-Gold told the Sunday Observer that plans to turn his deliverance centres in
Kingston and Mandeville into deliverance hospitals have been hampered by a lack of money.
He said the establishment of deliverance hospitals would allow his team of counsellors to
better monitor those patients who have been delivered from the clutches of evil spirits.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
*The Case of Ann Cole of Hartford
*The Case of Danielle
Springs Church, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Possessed by three demons: BELIAL, MALPHAS, LEGION.

1671 The Case of Elizabeth Knapp
MASSACHUSETTS, USA
Wikipedia.org

The possession of Elizabeth Knapp of Groton, Massachusetts was documented by Samuel
Willard, a prominent preacher in the Puritan, Massachusetts Bay Colony from October 30,
1671 until January 12, 1672. More significantly, Willard sent letters to the Puritan minister
Cotton Mather who published an account of Elizabeth Knapp's possession in his Magnalia
Christi Americana.

Knapp, who was sixteen at the time was the daughter of a farmer and the servant in the
house of Willard. Her possession, which has striking resemblance to those that are seen in
Salem some twenty years later, serves as an insight into Puritan life and society.

Life in Groton

Groton, Massachusetts is located 32 miles NW of Boston. During the time of Elizabeth Knapp's
possession it was located in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1676, just four years after the
Knapp case, the town was attacked by 400 Native Americans, all but a few of the homes were
destroyed in the attack. Groton had an overwhelmingly strict religious atmosphere being
predominately Puritan, as well as holding views that women should contribute in the
community labor.

The Possession

The possession case of Elizabeth Knapp is unique in the aspect that it was documented and
approached from a thoughtful, and scientific aspect. Knapp was the servant at the household
of Samuel Willard, a prominent Reverend in the church of Groton. This became an issue
because Willard was known for his sermons about damnation and obedience to God. One
Sermon in particular states that the youth of the town should have been very careful because,
"although God is ready to receive them, the Devil is ready to endeavor them". When Knapp, a
member of his own household, began to show signs of a demonic possession, Willard took a
careful and scientific approach to the situation, which was rare for 17th century Puritan New
England. He called in a medical doctor on several occasions and tried to find a cure for her
symptoms. After they could provide no explanation for her fits he declared that it was a case
of possession. Throughout the process, Willard proved to be the "Gate Keeper" of the
possession. The Gate Keeper, in all possession cases, is the spectator to the behavior, he is
usually a person who is of high importance in the society, and determines the symptoms and
the punishments of the person who is considered to be possessed. Throughout the entire
process, as noted in his journal, Knapp seemed to have the most violent fits when he was
present. Willard carefully and meticulously documented Knapp daily from the night she first
showed signs, Monday October 30, 1671 until January 12, 1672.

Willard states that Knapp, at first, began to complain of pains throughout her body. She would
grab certain body parts, such as her leg, breast, and neck and yell out, particularly about
strangulation. She would go through emotional fits, sometimes laughing to the point of
hysterics, weeping, or screaming out. Hallucinations then followed. On several occasions she
claimed to see 'two persons' walking around her. Also she stated to have seen a man floating
around her bed. Knapp also broke out into fits, particularly at night time, and convulse on the
ground. Then she tried to throw herself into the fire. Willard notes that on the first Sabbath
day after the symptoms appeared the young girl became violent, leaping, and contorting her
body to the point where it took three to four people to hold her down. As she was throwing
these fits, she would yell out the words: "money, money, sin and misery misery!" Willard then
documented that on the night of November 2, 1671 Knapp made a confession of meeting with
the devil, a characteristic of most possession cases. She stated that for three years the devil
met with her promising her money, youth, ease from labor, and the ability to see the world.
She than claimed that he had presented her with a book of blood covenants which were signed
by other women as well. She also said the Devil had tried to get her to kill herself and others,
Willard and his family included, but she could not do what she asked. She continued with fits
and apparitions of the Devil and various other spirits until the night of November 28, in which
she had a fit lasting for 48 hours. After wards she was in a catatonic state until the night of
December 8, in which she made the confession that after being assaulted by the devil various
times, she made the pact with him, and allowed him into her bed. Willard's Journal continued
on to state that she, throughout the month of December goes in and out of violent fits, one
much worse than the next, she talks in a strange, deep voice, and made animal sounds. It is
also this during these few weeks that Willard states the Devil, "talked through her body",
calling him a rogue minister.

Willards entries do not begin again until January 10, 1672 where he writes that he met with
Knapp again. She confessed to him that the Devil had control of her body and that he was
much more powerful than she was. She stated that he also took hold of her speech and she
had no control of the things that she was saying. The next night she went into a fit of
hysterical crying and weeping in which Willard, " held her till late in the night...I held her as
long as I tarried, which was more than an hour. I left her in them. And thus she continues
speechless to this instant January 15." After this night Willard ends his documentation of the
possession case stating that he will leave it to those who are "more learned, aged, and
judicious" than he was.

Willard concluded his entries with a final four points in which he gave his final opinions about
the validity of the possession case. In the first point he stated that Knapp's distemper in no
way can be counterfeit on the grounds that it was physically impossible to fake such actions.
The second point refers to whether or not her temper was natural or diabolical, in which he
stated, because of the length of her convulsions and the strength of her fits, he believed them
to be diabolical. In the third point he concluded that even though many were skeptical of the
fact that the devil talked through the girl, he was convinced. He stated on several occasions
she spoke with her mouth closed, her throat would swell up like a balloon, and the voices that
he heard were not her own. However, in the fourth point he said he has strong doubts about
Knapp making a pact with the Devil. This is because she is so contradictory about the facts,
and what happened in her supposed meetings with the Devil. Willard went on to give several
powerful sermons in the village of Salem during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, as well as
discredited evidence of conviction for several women during the trials, stating that the trials
should be held in a "fair and legal way". After Willard stopped entries into his journal it has
been a historical mystery what happened to Knapp. However her case has been cited and used
as examples by various historians.

Possible Explanations

In the study of Witchcraft in history there has been many psychological theories that have
arisen as to why so many possession cases took place during the 17th and 18th centuries.
One theory is the strict religious atmosphere at the time. It is apparent that most possession
cases took place in areas in which religion was the predominant aspect of the society. This
could be responsible in the aspect that Knapp felt confound in her community and was
frustrated with her situations. She acted out both, mentally and physically, in the only way
that she knew, which was through religion. By saying and acting as if she was possessed by
the Devil she was rebelling against the institution which was restricting her. For example,
when Knapp stated that the Devil tried to bribe her on several occasions with fine silks and an
ease of labor, her giving in would have been her breaking down her Christian loyalties.

A second explanation of could be in regards to the dissatisfaction that Elizabeth Knapp felt
about her placement in society. Once she begun her symptoms she no longer was required to
do her work as a servant. Servants, in Puritan New England were treated harshly, especially
women who were expected to do most of the manual labor. They had to care for the entire
house and the children. She used the possession as an excuse to speak out against all those
who held authority over her, for example Willard, her master and Reverend, and her father.
The possession, in a sense, moved her up a place in society. Knapp was no longer a sixteen-
year-old girl, but an important person who was known throughout the town. No longer
considered just a child Knapp now had a place in the Puritan society which did not involve
being someone's servant.
Cotton Mathers Account
The Demonic Possession of Elizabeth Knapp
http://rjohara.net

Whoso is wisewill observe these things.
Psalm 107 (Mathers own epigraph to Book VI of the Magnalia)

Elizabeth Knapp (16551720) of Groton, Massachusetts, was the daughter of James Knapp (or
Knopp) (1626abt1699) and Elizabeth (Warren) Knapp (1629 ), both of them immigrants to
New England who settled first at Watertown, and then later removed to the new town of
Groton. Elizabeth is my seventh-great grandmother. The following account of Elizabeths
unfortunate possession by a demon in 1671 when she was sixteen years old is quoted in full
from Cotton Mathers Magnalia Christi Americana, Book VI, Chap. VII, pp. 6667 (London,
1701). In the transcription that follows, [square brackets] are original to Mathers text while
items in {braces} are my editorial insertions. Mathers account is based on a report by the
Rev. Samuel Willard, minister of Groton, in whose home Elizabeth was living as a servant
during many of these incidents.

Mathers account of Elizabeth Knapps possession is one of fourteen examples he gives of
Wonders of the invisible World that have manifested themselves in New England. His general
introduction to these examples is given here first, to provide context for the specific account of
Elizabeth Knapp which follows.

CHAP. VII. Thaumatographia Pneumatica.
Relating the Wonders of the invisible World in Preternatural Occurrences.

Miranda cano, sed sunt credenda.

WHEN Two Goats were offered unto the Lord (and only unto the Lord) on the Day of
Expiation, among the Ancient Israelites, we read that one of them was to fall by Lot unto
Azazel. Azazel cannot without some Hardship on the Sense, be taken for the Name of the
Scape-Goat it self; But it is no other than the Name of the Devil himself, as might easily be
proved from the Monuments of the greatest both Jewish and Christian Antiquities.

In the Signification of the Word Azazel there is indeed a notable Declaration of those Two
Properties that have signalizd the Devil; his being first a powerful, and then an Apostate
Spirit. [] Fortus, & [ ] Abiens, Fugiens. The Scape-Goat, presented as a Sacrifice unto the
Holy God, was orderd by him to be delivered up unto Azazel upon these two Intentions. One
Design hereof might be to intimate unto the People what would be the miserable Condition of
them, who did not by Faith in the Messiah get the Guilt of their Sins removed. They that have
their Sins lying upon them, and are led forth with the Workers of Iniquity, must become prey
to Azazel, even to Satan, unto whose Temptation they did in their Sinning yield Obedience.
And indeed our Lord has expresly told us (perhaps not without some Allusion to this Levitical
Goat) that he will send the Goats which have their Sins upon them, to be with the Devil and
his Angels.

But another and a greater Design of it, might be to represent a main Article in the dreadful
Sufferings which were to befal our Lord Messiah when he should come to suffer for our Sins.
When our Lord Jesus Christ underwent his Humiliation for us, this point was very considerable
in it; he was carried into the Wilderness, and there he was exposd unto the Buffetings and
Outrages of Azazel. The Assaults that Satan then and afterwards made on our Lord Jesus
Christ, producing a most horrible Anguish in his Mind, made such a Figure in his Conflicts for
us, that they were well worthy of a most particular Prefiguration. And one thing in the
Prefiguration must be, That the Goat for Azazel must be sent into the Desart. In the days of
Moses it seems Desarts were counted very much an Habitation of Devils: Yea, they really were
what they were counted: And for that cause, the Names of Shedim and Zijim, were put upon
them; and when the Scriptures foretel Desolations to such and such places, they still make the
Devils to be their Inhabitants.

Who can tell whether the Envy of the Devils at the Favour of God unto Men, may not
provoke them to affect Retirement from the sight of populous and prosperous Regions, except
so far as they reckon their Work of Tempting Mankind necessary to be carryd on? Or,
perhaps, it is not every Countrey, before which the Devils prefer the Desarts. Regions in which
the Devils are much servd by those Usages, either in Worship or Manners, which are pleasing
to them, are by those doleful Creatures enough resorted unto: Yea, if Sin much abound any
where, some Devils entreat that they may not be sent from thence into the Wilderness. But
Regions, like the Land of Israel, where the true God is continually prayd unto, and where the
Word of God is continually sounding, are filled with such things as are very uneasie unto the
Devils: The Devils often recede much from thence into the Wilderness, as the Devil of Mascon
would say to Mr. Perreaud the Minister that livd in the haunted House, While you go to prayer,
Ill go take a turn in the Street.

Thus to omit what Alexander Hales reports of one retiring ad loca destituta omni
Habitatore, where Spirits taught him the things which he wrote in his Book de Magicis; we
know that in Lucian the famous Magician Mithrobarzanes, with his Companions betook
themselves , , , into a Desart, woody, shady Region for
a Conversation with Spirits.

Whatever becomes of the Observation which we have hitherto been making, there has been
too much cause to observe, that the Christians who were driven into the American Desart,
which is now called New England, have to their sorrow seen Azazel dwelling and raging there
in very Tragical Instances. The Devils have doubtless felt a more than ordinary Vexation from
the Arrival of those Christians with their sacred Exercises of Christianity in this Wilderness: But
the Sovereignty of Heaven has permitted them still to remain in the Wilderness, for our
Vexation as well as their own.

Molestations from Evil Spirits, in more sensible and surprising Operations than those Finer
Methods wherein they commonly work upon the Minds of all Men, but especially of Ill Men,
have so abounded in this Countrey, that I question whether any one Town has been free from
sad Examples of them. The Neighbours have not been careful enough to Record and Attest the
prodigious Occurrences of this Importance, which have been among us. Many True and
Strange Occurrences from the invisible World, in these parts of the World, are faultily buried in
Oblivion. But some of those very stupendious Things, have had their Memory preservd in the
written Memorials of Honest, Prudent, and {catchword: Faith-; page 67} Faithful Men;
whose Veracity in the Relations cannot without great Injury be questiond.

Of these I will now offer the Publick some Remarkable Histories; for every one of which we
have had such a sufficient Evidence, that no Reasonable Man in this whole Countrey ever did
question them; and it will be unreasonable to do it in any other. For my own part, I would be
as exceedingly afraid of writing a False Thing, as of doing an Ill Thing: But have my Pen
always move in the Fear of God.

{Mathers first example, the possession of Ann Cole of Hartford, is omitted here.}

The Second Example

In the Town of Groton, one Elizabeth Knap (October 1671,) was taken after a very strange
manner; sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing, sometimes roaring, with violent Agitations,
crying out Money! Money! Her Tongue would be for many Hours together drawn like a
Semicircle, up to the Roof of her mouth; so that no Fingers applyd unto it, could remove it.
Six Men were scarce able to hold her in some of her Fits; but she would skip about the House
yelling and howling, and looking hideously.

On Dec. 17. her Tongue being drawn out of her mouth to an extraordinary Length, a
Dmon began manifestly to speak in her; for many Words were distinctly utterd, wherein are
the Labial Letters, without any motion of her Lips at all: Words also were utterd from her
Throat sometimes when her mouth was wholly shut; and sometimes Words were utterd when
her mouth was wide open; but no Organs of Speech usd therein. The chief things that the
Dmon spoke, were horrid Railings against the Godly Minister of the Town; but sometimes he
likewise belchd out most nefandous Blasphemies against the God of Heaven. And one thing
about this young Woman was yet more particularly remarkable: She cryd out in her Fits, that
a certain Woman in the Neighbourhood appeard unto her, and was the only Cause of her
Affliction.

The Woman thus cryd out upon, was doubtless an Holy, a Devout, a Vertuous Person; and
she, by the advice of her Friends, visited the Afflicted. The possessd Creature, tho she was in
one of her Fits, and had her Eyes wholly shut, yet when this innocent Woman was coming, she
discoverd her self wonderfully sensible of it, and was in grievous Agonies at her Approaches.

But this Innocent Woman thus accusd and abusd by a malicious Devil, prayd earnestly
with as well as for this possessd Creature: Whereupon coming to her self, she confessd, That
she had been deluded by Satan, and compelld by him unreasonably to think and speak Evil of
a good Neighbour without a Cause. After this, there was no further Complaint of such an ones
Apparition; but she said, some Devil in the Shape of divers, did very diversly and cruelly
torment her, and then told her, it was not He but They, that were her Tormentors.
1928 The Case of Anna Ecklund
EARLING, IOWA [1928]

The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology
By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

One of the best-documented demonic POSSESSION cases in the 20th century. The possession
of Anna Ecklund also is unusual for the combination of demonic entities within one victim.

Anna was born in the Midwest about 1882 and was raised a devout and pious Catholic. She
first began showing the symptoms of possessionrevulsion toward holy objects, inability to
enter church, and disturbing thoughts about unspeakable sexual actsat age 14, finally
becoming totally possessed in 1908. In the account of Annas travails, Begone Satan!, written
in German by the Reverend Carl Vogl and translated into English by the Reverend Celestine
Kapsner, O.S.B., Annas aunt Mina, a reputed witch, caused her possession by placing spells
on herbs used in Annas food. Father Theophilus Riesinger, a native Bavarian and a Capuchin
monk from the community of St. Anthony at Marathon, Wisconsin, successfully exorcized her
on June 18, 1912, only to have her fall prey to the Devil again after her father heaped curses
on her and wished her possessed. In 1928, when Anna was 46 years old, Father Theophilus
tried again.

Seeking a place where Anna was unknown, Father Theophilus approached his old friend,
Father F. Joseph Steiger, parish priest in Earling, Iowa. With great reluctance, Father Steiger
agreed that the exorcism could take place in the nearby convent of the Franciscan Sisters.
Anna arrived in Earling on August 17, 1928. Trouble started immediately; sensing that
someone had sprinkled holy water on her evening meal, Anna threw a fit, purring like a cat,
and refused to eat until unblessed food could be served. After that, the devils within her
always knew whether one of the nuns had tried to bless the food or drink, and they always
complained.

The ancient ritual began in earnest the next morning. Father Theophilus had several of the
strongest nuns hold Anna on a mattress laid upon an iron bed, and her clothes were bound
tightly around her to prevent her from stripping herself. With Father Theophilus first
exhortations Annas mouth clamped shut and she fell unconscious, followed almost
immediately by an extraordinary feat of levitation. Rising swiftly from the bed, she hung
onto the wall above the door like a cat, and it took great effort to pull her down. Although
Anna was unconscious and her mouth never moved throughout the sessions, voices issued
from within her, accompanied by screams, howls, and unearthly animal noises. Earling
citizens, alarmed by the outcries, gathered at the convent, ruining Father Theophilus hopes of
keeping the exorcism secret. Totaling 23 days, the exorcisms covered three sessions: from
August 18 to the 26, from September 13 to 20, and from December 15 to 23. Through it all,
Annas physical state deteriorated to the point of death. She ate no food but only swallowed
small amounts of milk or water. Nevertheless, she vomited enormous quantities of foul-
smelling debris, often resembling tobacco leaves, and spit prodigiously. Her face became
horribly disfigured and distorted, often suffusing with blood as her head swelled and
elongated, her eyes bulged, and her lips grew, reportedly, to the size of hands. Her
abdomen would swell to the point of bursting, only to retract and become so hard and
heavy that the iron bedstead would bend under the enormous weight.

In addition to the physical changes, Anna understood languages previously unknown to
her, recoiled at holy words and objects, and revealed clairvoyant knowledge by
exposing secret childhood sins of the other participants. The nuns and Father Steiger were so
frightened and troubled that none of them could stay in Annas room throughout the entire
exorcism but instead worked in shifts. Father Steiger, taunted by the devils for having agreed
to the exorcism in his parish, was especially harassed and suffered an auto accident that the
devils had predicted and apparently arranged. Only Father Theophilus, confident of his
powers, remained steadfast.

Hordes of lesser devils and avenging spirits, described as like a swarm of mosquitoes,
possessed Anna, but her principal tormentors were BEELZEBUB, Judas Iscariot, and the
spirits of her father, Jacob, and his mistress, Annas aunt Mina. Beelzebub revealed himself
first, engaging Father Theophilus in sarcastic theological conversations and acknowledging
that the curses of Jacob, Annas father, sent the devils into her at age 14. Father Theophilus
tried to reach Jacob, only to be answered by a spirit identifying himself as Judas Iscariot, who
admitted he was there to torment Anna to commit suicide and thereby go to HELL.

Jacob eventually spoke and said that he had cursed Anna for not submitting to his incestuous
advances, calling upon the devil to tempt her with every unspeakable sin against chastity. In
Begone Satan! the author describes Jacobs life as coarse and brutal, taking Annas aunt
Mina as a mistress while he was still married and repeatedly trying to seduce Anna. At his
death, a priest had administered extreme unction, but Jacob ridiculed him. The author
continues: In the judgment after death even all that was pardoned him, but (because) he had
cursed his own daughter . . . that ultimately was the guilt of his eternal damnation. And so he
was still scheming in hell how he could torture and molest his child. This Lucifer gladly
permitted him to do. Whether Annas virginity really remained intact, even at age 46, or
whether she had repressed her sexual contact with her father is unknown.

A high, falsetto voice, present from the beginning among the other voices, revealed itself as
that of Mina. God had damned her for living with Jacob and for murdering four children.
Begone Satan! suggests that the children were Minas own, but they may also have been
multiple abortions. The author describes Mina as any devils equal for malice and hate, filled
with spite and blaspheming the Blessed Sacrament.

The author remarks that the truly amazing aspects of Annas possession were her basic virtue
and pious disposition throughout her ordeal, because the devil has no power over the free will
of a human being. Sensing his eventual triumph, Father Theophilus continued to exhort the
devils to depart, and by the latter part of December 1928, they began to weaken and moan,
rather than scream, against his efforts. Father Theophilus demanded that when they returned
to hell, each should call out his name as a sign of his or her departure, and the devils
agreed.

On December 23, 1928, at about 9:00 P.M., Anna suddenly jerked up and stood erect in bed,
looking as if she were about to rise to the ceiling. Father Steiger called for the nuns to pull her
down, while Father Theophilus blessed her and roared, Depart ye fiends of hell! Begone
Satan, the Lion of Juda reigns! Anna crumpled back onto the bed as a terrible shout of
Beelzebub, Judas, Jacob, Mina followed by Hell, hell, hell filled the room, repeated
several times until the sound seemed to fade into the distance. Anna opened her eyes and
smiled, while tears of joy ran down her face and she cried, My Jesus, Mercy! Praised be Jesus
Christ!

Begone Satan! describes the end: During the first thrills of joy they were not even aware of
the terrible odor that filled the room. All the windows had to be opened, the stench was
something unearthly, simply unbearable. It was the last souvenir of the infernal devils for
those they had to abandon upon the Earth.

FURTHER READING:

Vogel, Rev. Carl. Begone, Satan! A Soul-Stirring Account ofDiabolical Possession in Iowa.
Rockford, Ill.: TAN Books and Publishers, 1973.


1949 The Mount Rainier (Cottage City) Maryland Case
USA
The Mount Rainier (Cottage City) Maryland Case"
http://fatherjoe.wordpress.com

THE NEWS BREAKS
The Washington Post article in 1949 proclaims, Priest Frees 14-Year-Old Boy Reported Held in
Devils Grip. Almost immediately the story was picked up by the other news services and
magazines. Who would think that such a thing could still happen, and in all places, modern-
day America? The story has been told and retold.
Unable to get access to archdiocesan records, William Peter Blatty produced his fictionalized
account that resulted in a blockbuster movie of 1974. One priest lamented at the time, It is
tragic that the devil should prove so popular with people when they seem so disinterested in
God. The conclusion of the film was most lamentable in that the young priest exchanges his
body for that of the child as a host to the demon and then throws himself from the window. If
the story had been true, one could logically contend that the devil was really after the priest
the entire time. In other words, the devil really won and the rituals and intercession of the
Catholic Church were proven impotent. Fortunately, such portrayals are restricted to the
movies and the real story shows that the power of Christ and of his Church can still vanquish
the demonic.
HOW IT REALLY STARTED
Unlike the movie, the story surrounded a young boy who was born June 1, 1935. He and his
parents lived just outside Washington, D.C. in Cottage City, not far from Mount Rainier,
Maryland. (Some sources claim a popular Mount Ranier location as the site of the boys home.
The house at this location has been torn down and a dance studio is now on the site. The diary
gives the Cottage City location, instead. I do not feel it appropriate to give the full address.
However, since Catholics in the past identified themselves by their parishes, we might still call
this the Mount Ranier Case. The boy converted to the Catholic faith and claimed St. James
parish as his own in Mount Ranier.) The first signs of trouble started on January 15, 1949. He
was thirteen years old. While his parents were out that evening, he and his grandmother
heard a dripping sound in the house. It only lasted for a brief period and then a picture of
Jesus on the wall began to shake as if something had bumped into it. When his parents had
returned home, a definite scratching noise could be heard under the floorboards next to his
grandmothers bed. This sound of scratching was repeated each night from about 7:00 PM
until midnight. Logically, the family figured that there must be a rodent problem. An
exterminator was called. However, despite taking up the floorboards and wall panels to spread
poison, the sound did not cease. Indeed, the disturbing noises became worse.
Some ten days afterwards the noises ceased and all believed the rodent to be dead.
Nevertheless, the boy was under the impression that he could still hear the scratching noises.
Three days later the sound became audible to the rest of the family again.
The exorcist writes: When the sound became audible again, it was no longer in the upstairs
bedroom but had moved downstairs to the boys bedroom. It was heard as the sound of
squeaking shoes along the bed and was heard only at night when the boy went to bed. The
squeaking sound continued for six nights, on the sixth night scratching again was audible.
It appears that the invitation for this spiritual invasion was inadvertently initiated through a
favorite aunt of the boy. She had died in St. Louis two weeks prior to the first registered
phenomena. It developed that the aunt of the boy and his parents had used a Ouija board,
and this probably gave the devil his first entrance. Many religious authorities are convinced
that such a so-called toy actually offers an invitation to evil spirits. Aunt Tillie had been an
enthusiast of spiritualism. Suspecting something supernatural in the sound of marching feet,
the boys mother asked (according to the exorcists journal): Is that you Aunt Tillie? She
obtained no verbal reply and continued: (evidently aware of the methods employed by
spiritualists) If this is you, knock three times. There were waves of air striking the
grandmother, mother and boy, and three distinct knocks were heard on the floor. The mother
asked again: If you are Tillie, tell me positively by knocking four times. Four distinct knocks
were heard.
As time went by, it became evident that strange occurrences and sounds seemed to follow the
boy.
An orange and a pear flew across the entire room where he was standing.
The kitchen table was upset without any movement on the boys part.
Milk and food were thrown off the table and stove.
The breadboard was thrown onto the floor.
Outside the kitchen a coat on its hanger flew across the room.
A Bible was thrown directly at the foot of the boy but did not injure him in any way.
His desk at school moved about on the floor similar to the plate on an Ouija board.

This latter evidence of telekinesis forced the boy to quit school because of embarrassment.
Things became increasingly worse at home. On one occasion the coverlet of the bed was
pulled out from under the mattress and the edges stood up above the surface of the bed in a
curled form as though held up with starch. When the bystanders touched the bedspread, the
sides fell back to normal position. It was also stated that At first everybody, including the
boy, took it as a kind of joke, but it became more than a joke. Soon thereafter, the word
LOUIS was written in deep red on the boys ribs, seeming to indicate that some invisible force
desired that the boy travel to St. Louis where his favorite aunt lived.
THE LUTHERAN MINISTER
His mother called a minister of her faith, a local Lutheran pastor. He was dubious about the
whole matter. Although suspicious of the chest message, written upside down as if self-
inflicted, he requested that the family come to his home. What happened next struck him as
defying any natural explanation. His offer to keep the boy over at his home was accepted. It
was the 17th of February in 1949. At about 10:00 PM, they decided to go to bed. The room
contained twin beds. After about ten minutes, the boys bed began to vibrate. The headboard
was banging against the frame.
The minister reported: It made a lot of racket. I thought he was shaking it but he was making
no visible movement. Seeking a practical remedy to the situation, he placed the boy in a
large overstuffed chair and sat beside him. Slowly the chair began to tilt upon its side and the
minister had to grab it before it fell over. The good pastor insisted that there was no way the
boy could be pushing the chair over since his legs were thoroughly tucked beneath him. He
then placed the boy on a scatter rug upon the floor. Certainly, this would resolve the matter
for the night. But no, the rug moved slowly until it got to the wall and then it stopped. The
poor clergyman was utterly befuddled. I remember thinking he must be doing it himself but I
realized later that would have been impossible. There was no movement of his body. The boy
was delivered home the next day. Because of his Protestant theology, the minister sought a
natural explanation. Unable to come up with one, he categorized the whole incident under
unknown forces.

FROM SHRINK TO WITCHDOCTOR TO PRIEST
A psychiatrist from Georgetown University was called in but refusing to believe in the
phenomena he simply reported that the boy was normal but somewhat high-strung. The
family complicated matters further by calling a spiritualist. However, his incantations for
dispelling spirits failed. Indeed, the situation became graver.
Having a relative married to a Catholic, the boys mother described the situation to him. His
response was If what you say is true, then you should consult a priest. The family called the
nearby parish, St. James Catholic Church. The boys father made an appointment to talk to
one of the priests. The clergyman gave him various sacramentals: holy water, blessed
candles, and some recommended prayers. Once when the mother had sprinkled the holy
water around the room, she placed the bottle on a dresser and it was picked up by the spirit
and smashed. When one of the candles was lighted, the flame shot up to the ceiling, and the
candle was extinguished for fear that the house might be set on fire. The suggested prayers
seemed to make the phenomena worse. Deciding to call back the priest, the clergyman heard
a great crashing sound. The mother of the boy told him that the telephone table she was using
had broken into a hundred pieces.
This anxious situation refused to end and matters grew tenser. The priest, Fr. E. Albert
Hughes, went to the chancellor of the archdiocese. He was warned to move slowly and not to
leap to rash judgments. The young priest explained that he had done as much. After a
meeting with the archbishop, Most Reverend Patrick A. OBoyle, he was authorized to initiate
the exorcisms. Fr. Hughes resisted, hoping that an older and more experienced man might be
chosen instead. He understood that this should be done by a very holy man because the devil
is wont to expose the sins of the priest; so the Father went to Baltimore and made a general
confession. But the devil is the father of lies, and there is a theological opinion that he is
unable to reveal sins that have been forgiven.
The archbishop insisted, the young priest had to offer the ritual. It would prove a terrible
miscalculation. Between February 27 and March 4, the boy was moved to Georgetown
University Hospital. A young man and altar server (George) who was known for his abilities in
high school football was drafted by the priest to assist him. This young man is still with us and
is a leader in the local Knights of Columbus today. He told me that he had a terrible struggle
to hold the possessed boy down. That he could spit across the room with deadly accuracy. At
one point he lost his patience and even slugged the other boy to keep him under control. He
saw himself as the popular priests body guard. The priest made him go to confession and
pledged him not to tell his mother and friends the details of the encounters. They tied the
hands and feet of the boy to the bedposts. He reacted violently to the ritual. Loose items in
the room crashed to the floor. The bed shook uncontrollably. Strenuously the large server
sought to hold the bed down. The victim was a small boy and yet he possessed incredible
strength. The priest warned his young assistant not to enter into dialogue with the boy, only
to give the required responses to the ritual words of the priest. Strange words came forth from
the restrained boy, supposedly Aramaic, a form of ancient Hebrew. Previously the boy had
taunted the priest in Latin. Objects were thrown around the room. The boy growled like an
inhuman animal. Then it happened. Somehow the boy had gotten a hand free of the
restraints. He secretly tore through the heavy mattress and ripped out a metal spring. The
server responded to the words uttered by Fr. Hughes in the ritual. At the conclusion of the
Lords Prayer, the boy attacked the priest and tore a gash into the clerics arm from his
shoulder to his wrist. Blood exploded over everything! The ritual prayer book was caked in the
priests blood! He screamed out! The exorcism had ended in failure. The priests life was saved
by the doctors and his arm had a long track of a hundred plus stitches. He would have
lingering problems with the arm and it would visibly drag at the consecration during Masses.
As an interesting aside, the young server in this episode was struck in the eye by the afflicted
boy. He would develop a black eye and it was joked that maybe the priest had socked him.
When the priest mysteriously left the parish, only he knew the true reason. The good priest
would need to recuperate from his terrible encounter and injury. After this event, colleagues of
the priest say that Fr. Hughes was never quite the same. He became quieter. He was intensely
reserved about what had happened. One remarked that it was as if he was a haunted man. He
died in 1980.
The sources are clear about this next point. Up to this time everything had been obsession,
that is, exterior to the boy, but as soon as the exorcisms began, real possession began.
THEY GO TO SAINT LOUIS
The boy expressed a desire to go to St. Louis, and since they had relatives they could visit
there, the family left with the hope of leaving their troubles behind them. Unfortunately, the
problem with the boy did not improve. Different displays were witnessed by two aunts of the
boy, four uncles and four cousins. The printing No School was seen by four people. The
swaying of the mattress, the upsetting of bedroom furniture and the scratching on the
mattress were observed by the entire group . . . Phenomena indicated that the spirit was not
the devil but the soul of deceased Tillie. The spirit confirmed again to all present that she was
Tillie by moving a heavy bed two or three feet with not one of the bystanders near the bed.
Again a priest was consulted from the closest Catholic parish. Fr. Raymond J. Bishop, S.J., a
teacher at the university came to the house on March 9. He blessed the entire house, and
used a special blessing in the boys room and on his bed. A second-class relic of St. Margaret
Mary was safety-pinned to the extreme border of the pillow. Shortly after the boy retired, the
mattress on his bed began to move back and forth in the direction of the bed uprights. The
boy lay perfectly still, and did not exert any physical effort. The movement in one direction did
not exceed more than three inches; the action was intermittent and completely subsided after
a period of approximately fifteen minutes. The next day, similar things happened. The relic
was thrown to the floor. The safety pin was open but no human hand had touched the relic.
The boy started up in fright when the relic was thrown down.
EXORCISM & BAPTISM
The next day, Friday, March 11, the priest who would perform the exorcisms visited the
family. Fr. Bishop had in turn contacted Fr. William S. Bowdern, S.J. from St. Francis Xavier
Church. He was shaken by what he observed. He brought additional relics and a crucifix.
Shortly after the boy had retired at 11:00 PM, he called downstairs that he had been
frightened by a strong force that had thrown some object against the mirror in his bedroom.
With safety pin opened, the relic of St. Margaret Mary had been thrown against the mirror and
the sound was like a pellet striking the glass. Another occurrence was a cross mark scratched
on the boys left, outer forearm. The pain was similar to that produced by a scratch of a thorn.
The cross remained evident for approximately forty-five minutes. The family telephoned the
priest in Washington, and after a few days, the priest in St. Louis brought the case to his
archbishop (Archbishop Ritter) and was authorized to continue with the exorcisms.
The symptoms of possession seemed to get worse and not better with the new exorcism
attempts beginning on March 16. The seizures took place in the evening when the boy went
to bed and would last from 8:OO to 12 Midnight or 1:00 AM, intermittently, and then the boy
would go off into a perfectly normal sleep for nine or ten hours. It was decided a few days
later to recite the prayers earlier so that everyone could get more sleep. Nevertheless, the
seizures were unabated and started about 9:00 at night and lasted until 2:00 or 3:00 AM.
Sometimes as many as ten people were required to hold the boy during seizures. He would
tear the sheets and pillows to shreds, as well as the shirts and undershirts of those who
restrained him. He was utterly wild, hitting and kicking. He even broke the nose of one of the
assisting Jesuit students. One incident had him scratching the exorcists arm so badly that he
could not lift it for a number of days.
Coming out of a seizure he would complain of feeling very hot and would ask for a glass of
water. After one of the seizures in the beginning, he said that the evil spirit seems to carry
him down into a pit about two hundred feet deep where there were intense heat and vile evil
spirits. In the beginning also he seemed to be in a long, dark cave with a tiny bit of light at the
far end; as the exorcism progressed, the lighted end seemed to grow larger and larger, in one
of the exorcisms, the spirit, in the body of the boy, pointed to one of the priests who were
assisting and said: What is the use of you being here; you will be with me in hell in 1957.
A few days passed. The boy asked to be baptized. It should be noted that his father had been
baptized a Catholic and that some of his cousins in St. Louis were Catholics. Once consulted,
the parents were agreeable. The boy was instructed and preparations were made to baptize
him in church. On the appointed morning he rose, took a shower, ate his usual breakfast and
set out for the church in a car driven by his uncle. Just before reaching the church the boy
grabbed his uncle by the neck and said: You S.O.B., you think I am going to be baptized, but
you are going to be fooled. The uncle was just able to seize the emergency brake and avert a
collision by an inch. It was realized that to baptize the boy in the church would create a scene,
so he was taken to the third floor of the rectory, which stands in back of the church but faces
Lindell Boulevard. Every time he was asked: Do you renounce Satan and all his works? he
would go into a rage. Only after several hours of repetition was the boy able to reply: I do
renounce Satan and all his works. Then it required several more hours to get the water
poured on the boys head.
After the rite of initiation, things became calm and quiet for a couple days. However, then the
demonic business started up again and worse than before. Some of the phenomenon was
quite peculiar. One was the amount of spittle that the boy could discharge: there would be
half-a-pint at one time. At times he would ask for a glass of water and it would be given to
him, although it was known what would happen. It would be spat back on the bystanders.
While the priest read the exorcisms, two others would hold a towel in front of his face to
protect his glasses, but it was useless; the spittle would go under the towel, over the towel or
around the towel and strike directly on the priests glasses, and the boys eyes would be
closed the whole time. Another phenomenon was excessive urination. During the seizures the
boy would utter the vilest obscenities, curses, blasphemies and ribald songs, all in a high
falsetto voice that was off key. It is noted that at one stage, the exorcist had to protect
himself with a pillow, for the boys head moved like a cobra, aiming non-stop with spittle for
his face.
FIRST COMMUNION
The exorcist and the family returned to the Washington, D.C. area. The boys parents were at
wits end and were suffering from sleep deprivation. Fr. Hughes tried to get the boy committed
to a sanatorium or hospital in the Washington-Baltimore area, but none would take him. It
was decided to take him to the Alexian Brothers Hospital in St. Louis. He was given
instructions in preparation for his first communion. The hope was that receiving the Eucharist
might bring the possession to an end. When the time came, it was impossible to get the Host
near his tongue, but finally, after several hours, they succeeded in placing it on his tongue and
three times he spat it out. Eventually success was achieved. This was on April 2, the first
Saturday of the month, a day dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima. The title was explained to the
boy and he showed great interest. But the seizures continued.
WHAT IS YOUR NAME?
During the exorcism, the priest asked for the first time its name. What is your name and
when will you depart? The response was simply Shut up, shut up. Later, in answer to the
question of his name, the words, Hell, Spirit, appeared in red letters on the boys chest. In
reply to the question of departure, red numbers: 4, 8, 10, 16, some Roman numerals
appeared on the boys body. He said: I will not go until a certain word is pronounced and this
boy will never say it. There also appeared a red arrow extending from the boys throat to the
bottom of his abdomen, and it was thought that the spirit might go out by the way of urine, as
has happened in some cases.
An appendage to the diary tells us that the boy would greet the priests with filthy, foul
obscenities, fluently answer the exorcists questions in Latin, a language he had never
studied. One day the boy was sitting in bed reading about Our Lady of Fatima with the book
on his knees when he was thrown into a seizure. He threw the book across the room. On
another occasion, he was given a glass of milk and threw that across the room. On one of the
final days, a Jesuit scholastic gave the boy a plate of chipped beef. He grabbed the plate,
jumped to one side of the room, and threatened to brain anyone approaching him. While one
assistant approached him from one side, the scholastic crawled under the bed to seize him.
The boy threw and smashed the dish of food against the wall.
LIBERATION AT LAST
Despite hope that the possession would end during Holy Week, it continued through Easter
Sunday with particularly violent seizures. The worst day of all was April 18, Easter Monday.
The exorcist and his assistants were becoming completely discouraged.
Suddenly, at 11:00 PM, a new voice was heard from the boy; a beautiful, rich, deep bass
voice exclaimed: Satan, Satan, go, now, now, now to the pit where you belong, in the name
of DOMINUS (the Lord). That was the word and at that moment the boy felt a tearing
sensation in his stomach, relaxed and lay perfectly quiet. He described what has happened. He
saw a brilliant figure, visible from the waist up, clothed in a close-fitting white garment which
had the appearance of scales; the hair was long and flowing in a wind; the right hand held
something like a flaming sword or light pointing downward. It was St. Michael the Archangel.
When he spoke, the evil spirit rebelled against going until the word Dominus was spoken and
at this moment the boy felt the tearing sensation in his stomach. Then at some distance down
he saw some evil spirits standing at the mouth of a cave from which flames issued. Then the
spirits reluctantly withdrew into the cave, the opening closed and across it appeared the word:
Spite. Thus the possession was ended.
CLOSING REMARKS
The diary tells us that the exorcist and his assistants observed some severe fasting, mindful
of the admonition of Christ that some devils can be driven out only by prayer and fasting.
There had been at least twenty exorcisms performed. One Jesuit involved remarked: Only by
examining the record after possession was ended, was it possible to see the meaning of the
replies (the red marks on the boys body). The numbers may have been the days on which
certain spirits departed from the boy, if there were actually more than one in his body.
The Jesuit priest, Fr. Bowdern, passed away in 1983 and his assistant and then scholastic, Fr.
Walter Halloran died from cancer March 1, 2005. The young server who tried to help Fr.
Hughes has desired to remain anonymous. An interesting side note, George (the server) tells
me that when the boy returned to Washington, he could not remember the active possession
episodes. The possessed man is still living and there has been no trouble since. He married
and had a nice family. Life went on.
A FEW ADDENDUM NEWSPAPER CITATIONS
An aunt of the boy said in a New York Times article from August 1972: (Upon the boys visit to
her home) All of a sudden the mattress starts going, just raised up in the air, and down, up
and down, and my sister hollered for me, . . . oh I tell you that mattress just raised both of us
right up in the air . . . . I happened to have a table against the wall with a vase of flowers on it
and I got out but as my nephew tried to leave, that table actually flew in front of the door and
would not let him out . . . . In the same article it quotes what a Jesuit priest confided to him,
I assure you, Gene I saw this with my own eyes the boy did not tear the Ritual book, he
dissolved it! The book vaporized into confetti and fell in small pieces to the floor!
The staff writer Jeremiah OLeary reported in the Evening Star that the boy spoke an unknown
language that sounded similar to Hebrew. A professor of Oriental languages from Catholic
University was called in and he was shocked to discover the words coming from the boys
mouth were in Aramaic, the language spoken in Palestine in Jesus day.
Materials Assembled and Retold by Father Joseph Jenkins
RECOMMENDED READING
Allen, Thomas B. POSSESSED. New York: Doubleday, 1993.

Exorcism of Roland Doe
MARYLAND, USA [1949]
Wikipedia.org

Also known as The Mount Rainier (Cottage City) Maryland Case"

The exorcism of Roland Doe refers to events surrounding the supposed possessed status and
exorcism of an anonymous American boy, which occurred in the late 1940s. Roland Doe (born
circa 1936) is the pseudonym assigned to the exorcized boy by the Catholic Church. Later the
pseudonym was changed by author Thomas B. Allen to "Robbie Mannheim". The events
reported in the media of the time and the subsequent supernatural claims surrounding those
events went on to inspire the 1971 novel The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty and the 1973
film adaptation, as well as Thomas B. Allen's 1993 historical account Possessed, a second
edition of it in 1999, and the 2000 film by the same name, based on Allen's book.

Origin of claims

Most of the information regarding "Roland Doe" and the events surrounding his alleged
possession and exorcism comes from a diary kept by the attending priest, Fr. Raymond
Bishop. At the time of the alleged events (circa mid-1949) several newspaper articles printed
anonymous reports. These were later traced back to the family's former pastor, the Reverend
Luther Miles Schulze. The pseudonym "Roland Doe" was assigned by the Catholic Church to
the boy in question. Doe has no memory of being possessed.

Thomas Allen released his book Possessed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of The
Exorcist. The book is based on two sources; Bishop's diary and the testimony of Fr. Walter H.
Halloran. Halloran was one of the last surviving eyewitnesses of the events and participated in
the exorcism.

Early life

Roland was born into a German Lutheran Christian family. During the 1940s the family lived in
Cottage City, Maryland. According to Allen, Roland was an only child and depended upon
adults in his household for playmates, primarily his Aunt Harriet. His aunt, who was a
spiritualist, introduced Roland to the Ouija board when he expressed interest in it. When
Roland was thirteen his aunt died in St. Louis. Several books suppose that Roland tried to
contact his deceased aunt via the Ouija board.
Possession and exorcism

According to Allen's book, supernatural activity began soon after Aunt Harriet's death. This
includes the sound of squeaky and marching feet as well as other strange noises. Furniture
moved on its own accord, and ordinary objects, including a vase, allegedly flew or levitated. A
container of holy water placed near him smashed to the ground. Nine priests and thirty-nine
other witnesses signed the final ecclesiastical papers documenting Roland's experience.

The frightened family turned to their Lutheran pastor, the Rev. Luther Miles Schulze, for help.
According to a report made by Reverend Schulze to The Evening Star, a Washington D.C.
newspaper, the boy was examined by both medical and psychiatric doctors, who could offer no
explanation for these disturbing events taking place. Schulze arranged for the boy to spend
the night of February 17 in his home in order to observe him. The boy slept near the minister
in a twin bed and the minister reported that in the dark he heard vibrating sounds from the
bed and scratching sounds on the wall. During the rest of the night he allegedly witnessed
some strange events, a heavy armchair in which the boy sat seemingly tilted on its own and
tipped over and a pallet of blankets on which the sleeping boy lay inexplicably moved around
the room and slapped people in the face. Schulze concluded that there was evil at work in
Roland, and a Lutheran rite exorcism would be performed on Roland.

According to the traditional story, the boy then underwent an exorcism under auspices of the
Episcopal Church (Anglican). After this, the case was referred to the Rev. Edward Hughes, a
Roman Catholic priest, who, after examining the boy at St. James Church, conducted an
exorcism on Roland at Georgetown University Hospital, a Jesuit institution.

During the exorcism, the boy inflicted a wound upon the pastor that required stitches. As a
result, the exorcism ritual was stopped and the boy went home to be with his family, where
strange welts on the boy's body led to desperation. The family then proceeded to take the
train to St. Louis. While they were in the city, Roland's cousin contacted one of his professors
at St. Louis University, the Rev. Raymond J. Bishop, SJ, who in turn spoke to the Rev. William
S. Bowdern, an associate of College Church. Together, both priests visited Roland in his
relatives' home, where they noticed his aversion to anything sacred, a shaking bed, flying
objects, and Roland speaking in a guttural voice. Fr. Bowdern sought permission from the
archbishop to have the plaguing demons cast out from the boy. Permission for Bowdern to
perform the exorcism in secret was granted by the archbishop, with the requirement that a
detailed diary be kept.

Before the exorcism ritual began, Fr. Walter Halloran was called to the psychiatric wing of the
hospital, where he was asked to assist Fr. Bowdern. The Rev. William Van Roo, a third Jesuit
priest, was also there to assist. Fr. Halloran stated that during this scene words such as "evil"
and "hell", along with other various marks, appeared on the teenager's body. Moreover,
Roland broke Fr. Halloran's nose during the process. The exorcism ritual was performed thirty
times over several weeks. When the final exorcism was complete witnesses reported loud
noise going off throughout the hospital.

After the exorcism was over, the family was no longer troubled, and moved back to their
home. The boy went on to become a successful, happily married man, a father and
grandfather.

Investigations and explanations

Halloran has noted on many occasions that he, Fr. Bowdern, and Fr. Bishop all believe the
case to be an actual case of possession.

Author Mark Opsasnick investigated these events and spoke to people involved in the case
including several people close to Roland and his family, other priests in their parish, a source
at the hospital mentioned in the claims, Thomas Allen and Father Halloran. He did not,
however, apparently speak to the allegedly-possessed boy (now, a man) "Roland Doe," or his
immediate family members.

In his article Opsasnick describes the inconsistencies he found in the reports and other
testimonies which he claims brings into question the veracity of the claims as reported in
Allen's book, especially the more fantastic and supernatural claims, such as the claim that
Mannheim spoke languages he couldn't know. According to Opsasnick, Father Halloran
admitted that he thought Roland had merely mimicked Latin words he heard the clergymen
speak. Opsasnick further claims that he found no evidence that Father Hughes ever attempted
to exorcise the boy, nor that he received a slash or injury at that time. In addition, Father
Halloran himself allegedly told Opsasnick that he did not hear the boy's voice change and that
he didn't check the boy's fingernails and see if he made the marks himself. In addition, a
friend of Roland allegedly told Opsasnick that the "supernatural" events were exaggerated and
that the spitting and bed shaking could be explained logically. Joe Nickell, another
investigative journalist/contributor from Strange Magazine, claims that the reliably reported
events were not beyond the abilities of a normal teenaged boy. Opsasnick's judgment is that
"[t]hose involved saw what they were trained to see". It has been proposed that "Roland Doe"
was simply a spoiled, disturbed bully who threw deliberate tantrums to get attention or to get
out of school.

Over the decades, psychiatric explanations for the boy's experiences have been proposed,
including dissociative identity disorder, Tourette's syndrome, schizophrenia, sexual abuse,
group hysteria and Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Terry D. Cooper, Ph.D., a psychologist, as
well as Cindy K. Epperson, a doctoral fellow at the University of Missouri, analyzed the case
and came to the conclusion that normal psychological explanations cannot account for the
claimed events. Together they wrote a book on the subject called Evil: Satan, Sin, and
Psychology. The doctors who examined Roland allegedly found no evidence of any illness or
demonstration of any classical symptoms.

Literature and film

This exorcism case inspired the 1971 novel The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. The case also
inspired the 1973 film The Exorcist, as well as the 2000 movie Possessed, which is said to be
closer to the "real" story since it is based on Allen's book. A documentary was also made of
the case, titled In the Grip of Evil.

The St. Louis Exorcism
MARYLAND, USA [1949]
The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology
By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Also known as The Mount Rainier (Cottage City) Maryland Case"

Complex POSSESSION case that inspired the novel and movie The Exorcist, variously
interpreted as one of demonic possession, POLTERGEIST activity, and delusion. Many of the
details of the case remain secret, and all of the principal EXORCISTs involved in it have died.
Some experts believe that there was no demonic possession and that the events could be
explained by poltergeist activity, Tourettes syndrome, or even mental illness. The DEMONIAC
was a 13-year-old boy, pseudonymously known as Robbie Doe. He was born in 1935 to a
family in Cottage City, Maryland, a suburban community near Washington, D.C. He had a
troubled childhood. His mother was Lutheran, and his father was a lapsed Catholic.

In January 1949 the family began to be disturbed by scratching sounds coming from the
ceilings and walls of their house. Thinking that they had mice, the Does called an
exterminator. This man could fi nd no signs of rodents, and his efforts failed to end the
scratching, which only became louder. Noises that sounded like someone walking about in
squeaky shoes began to be heard in the hall. Dishes and furniture moved for no evident
reason. Then Robbie began to be attacked. His bed shook so hard that he could not sleep.
His bedclothes were repeatedly pulled off the bed, and once, when he tried to hold on to them,
he was pulled off onto the floor after them. The Does made a connection to the recent death
on January 26, 1949, of Robbies Aunt Tillie in St. Louis, which had devastated the boy. Tillie,
a Spiritualist, had interested Robbie in the paranormal, and they had used the OUIJA board
together. Robbie may have used the Ouija to try to communicate with his dead aunt.
Convinced that an evil spirit was behind the disturbances, the Does consulted their Lutheran
minister, Luther Schulze. Schulze prayed with Robbie and his parents in their home and then
with Robbie alone in his home. He led prayers for Robbie in church. Schulze ordered whatever
was possessing the boy to leave him in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
but the affliction continued.

Robbies torments increased. He could not sleep because of the weird noises and movements
of objects day and night. In February, Schulze offered to let Robbie spend a night in his house,
to which his parents agreed. That night, Mrs. Schulze went to a guest room, while Robbie and
the Reverend retired to twin four-poster beds in the master bedroom. Some time in the night,
Schulze heard Robbies bed creaking. He grasped the bed and felt it vibrating rapidly. Robbie
himself was wide awake but was lying absolutely still.

Schulze put Robbie to sleep in an armchair, and before long, the heavy chair began to
move. It scooted backward several inches and then slammed into a wall. It turned in slow
motion and sent Robbie to the fl oor. Schulze noticed that Robbie appeared to be in a trance
and made no effort to move out of the chair. Schulze persuaded Robbies parents to send him
to Georgetown Medical Hospital, where he underwent medical and psychological evaluation
from February 28 to March 3. Robbie acted wildly and, according to some reports, the
message Go to St. Louis! appeared scratched on his skin in blood-red letters.

Robbies parents took him by train to St. Louis, where they stayed with relatives. There they
consulted Jesuits. Father Raymond J. Bishop came to the house to bless Robbie but quickly
saw that the situation was far worse than INFESTATION. Bishop consulted Father William
Bowdern, and the two went to Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter and requested an EXORCISM. The
request was granted.

Exorcisms

Robbies exorcisms began on March 16 at the home of his relatives on Roanoke Drive. More
and more, Robbie acted like someone suffering from full demonic possession. He coughed up
phlegm and drooled. Painful, bloody welts and scratches mysteriously appeared on his
body. He cursed, vomited, spit, urinated, and made physical attacks on the exorcists,
exhibiting unusual strength. He appeared to be cured and then relapsed into vile and
violent behavior. When the episodes were over, he had no recall of them.

On March 21, Bowdern had Robbie taken to the Alexian Brothers Hospital and placed in a
room in the security ward. The exorcism resumed in tight secrecy over the course of several
weeks. It is not known how many people participated. Among the witnesses were Father
William Van Roo and Father Charles OHara. Also present at various times were hospital staff
and seminarians, among them Walter Halloran, whose help Bowdern had requested.

On April 1, Robbie was taken to the St. Francis Xavier Church (no longer in existence) to be
baptized into the Catholic faith, a move that Bowdern thought would help the progress.
However, Robbie went berserk on the way to the church, and Bowdern decided not to let him
enter, lest he desecrate the premises. The boy was taken to the rectory instead. Despite his
vomiting of BLOOD and mucous, and his struggling and shouting of obscenities, the
baptism proceeded, followed eventually by a successful communion.

After several weeks of repeated progress and relapse, Robbies behavior changed for the
better. The turning point was a dream Robbie had of a fierce, sword-bearing ANGEL who made
snarling DEMONs vanish. In April, the exorcism was declared a success.

Robbie returned to Maryland with his parents and resumed a normal life with no further
episodes of any paranormal or supernatural phenomena. His father rededicated himself to
Catholicism, and his mother converted. Robbie lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Aftermath

Bishop recorded details of the exorcisms in a diary. The church never intended for the case to
be made public, but it was leaked to the media by Schulze. William Peter Blatty was a student
at Georgetown University in Washington in August 1949 when he read an Associated Press
account of the case in the Washington Post. Intrigued, he compiled as much information as he
could about it. Twenty years later, he used it as the basis for his best-selling novel The
Exorcist, changing many details and adding fictional ones.

The Exorcist was published in 1971 and was made into a film directed by William Friedkin and
released in 1973. Blatty wrote the screenplay. During the filming, most of the cast and crew
had strange experiences and misfortunes, including the news of nine deaths of people
they knew. The movie terrified audiences, some of whom consulted medical and spiritual help
out of fear of possession. Critics said the film itself was evil. The movie led to two sequels, the
second of which was directed by Blatty.

In 2000, a new film version of The Exorcist was released, written and directed again by Blatty
and Friedkin. Friedkin decided to show the face of the possessing demon, an effect which
ruined the horror for many viewers.

Divided Opinions

Numerous inaccurate stories and legends have arisen around the case, and opinions still are
divided as to what really happened. Critics have said that Robbie failed to meet criteria of
possession set by the Catholic Church: prophecy and speaking in foreign languages. In
addition, his feats of unusual strength were not thought to be characteristic of the
supernormal strength usually exhibited by demoniacs.

During his involvement, Schulze had contacted parapsychologists J. B. and Louisa Rhine of
Durham, North Carolina. The Rhines drove to St. Louis, but the phenomena had ceased by the
time they arrived. Nonetheless, Rhine thought the case was one of recurrent spontaneous
psychokinesis, a type of poltergeist activity caused by unwitting psychokinetic outbursts from
a living person. Rhine suggested that the phenomena were expressions of Robbies own
unconscious ability to influence objects in his environment and his own body through the
power of his mind.

Bowdern never spoke about the case except to acknowledge that he believed it to be a true
case of demonic possession. He died in 1983 at age 86. Bishop died in 1978 at age 72.
Halloran, who burned his copy of Bishops diary, stated that he did not believe that Robbie was
possessed, but later said he was not enough of an expert to know. Toward the end of his life,
he said mental illness probably could not explain all of the phenomena put together. Halloran
died in 2005 at age 83.

Robbie himself has remained quiet about his experiences. With the principal exorcists dead
and no further testimony from Doe himself, the case remains controversial.


FURTHER READING:

Allen, Thomas B. Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism. New York:
Doubleday, 1993. Revised edition, iUniverse, 2000.
Blatty, William Peter. William Peter Blatty on The Exorcist. New York: Bantam,
1974.
Chorvinsky, Mark. Return to the Haunted Boy: The Exorcist Case Update.
Strange Magazine 21. Available online by subscription only. URL:
http://www.strangemag.com/. Downloaded October 7, 2006.
Opsasnick, Mark. The Haunted Boy of Cottage City. Strange Magazine 20
(1999): 427.
Report of a Poltergeist. Parapsychology Bulletin 15 (1949): 23.
Taylor, Troy. The Devil Came to St. Louis: The True Story of the 1949
Exorcism. Alton, Ill.: Whitechapel Productions Press, 2006.



1980 Demon Murder Trial
Wikipedia.org
The Demon Murder Trial is the first known court case in the United States of a lawyer claiming
his client was innocent due to demonic possession. It involved the conviction, on November
24, 1981, of Arne Cheyenne Johnson, a resident of Brookfield, Connecticut, for first-degree
manslaughter of his landlord Alan Bono. In the year leading up to the attack on Bono, Johnson
had been staying with his fiancee, whose younger brother supposedly had been possessed by
demons and whose family called in the self-described demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren.
Johnson supposedly taunted and was possessed by demons from the boy, and several months
later killed his landlord during a heated conversation. His defense lawyer tried to argue in
court that he was possessed, but the judge ruled that no such defense existed, and Johnson
served 5 years of a 10 to 20 year sentence. The trial attracted media attention from around
the world.
Events preceding the attack
On July 3, 1980, Arne Johnson's fiancee, Debbie Glatzel, claimed to have discovered that her
youngest brother David woke sobbing, saying that he had a vision of an "awful beast",
describing it as "a man with big black eyes, a thin face with animal features and jagged teeth,
pointed ears, horns and hoofs", and saying it had warned him to "Beware".
In another version from "A Haunting" on Discovery Channel, both Arnie Johnson and Debbie
Glatzel were interviewed for the storyline and claimed to be eyewitnesses to the demonic
possession. Debbie said David was like a little brother to Arnie. During the interview and
reenactment Debbie cried she was still so distraught. This is important because Lorraine
Warren was subsequently sued by the Glatzels allegedly because it supposedly wasn't demonic
possession but David's mental illness which caused him to have these problems. They claimed
David started having problems after they went to clean up a rental property they had just
acquired, which unbeknownst to them had an old well in the back of the house. He was asked
to sweep the master bedroom for them. It was there that an old man in a plaid shirt and jeans
pushed him and frightened him so badly he ran outside refusing to go back inside the home.
They thought he just got bored and didn't want to help them. Later that same night when
Arnie and Debbie went back to her mother's home to live before moving into the rental home
David told them that the old man had said he would harm them if they moved into the rental
home. He said the old man was angry with him for telling them and that he was going to harm
him because of it. He told them a wild animal had scratched the front door because it was
angry at the old man. They didn't take him seriously until they went back to the rental home
and saw the scratch marks. It was then they decided not to take the rental property because it
was evil.
In yet another version from Lorraine and Ed Warren's book "Ghost Hunters" the claim was
David became possessed after his parents took him to a house to visit and he took a nap. He
awoke when an old man who was charred with hooves ("charred" and "hooves" being common
signs for a demon) wearing a plaid shirt and jeans said "Beware". It happened again at home.
His mother thought he had a nightmare but reconsidered after it reoccurred. As his visions
persisted, Debbie requested that Johnson come and stay at her family's home.
Once again in the different version from "A Haunting" Arnie Johnson was already living with
Debbie at her mother's home before moving into the rental home. In this version later that
same night after his first encounter with the old man David claimed the old man turned into a
beast at night had flown over the trees and was inside the mother's home. David claimed the
old man muttered Latin and was coming for his soul. But nobody ever saw the old man except
David. At this time the demon was invisible except to David. David kept screaming "He's
coming for me, he's coming for me" and couldn't be comforted. They heard noises but
attributed it to the wind or animals in the attic. But later on the same night David started
being beaten by the invisible entity. This started happening on a regular basis. It was then
they went to a Catholic priest for help. Later on a Catholic priest came to their house and
blessed it, but to seemingly no effect on David.
Visions began to occur in the daytime soon afterwards, in the form of an old man with a white
beard, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. Twelve days after the first incident, the family called
upon demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren of Monroe, Connecticut to assist after being
referred by their priest. Their own Parish priest felt it was demonic, but didn't want to attempt
an exorcism because of his poor health. This was one reason it was referred to other priests.
Lorraine, who claims to be clairvoyant, stated that she saw a black, misty form next to David,
indicating a malevolent presence, and that David complained of invisible hands choking him,
and the feeling of being hit. Again in the version from "A Haunting" Arnie, Debbie and their
mother had witnessed David being hit and choked by the invisible hands. They claimed that
afterwards, there were red marks on his neck. Supposedly he was possessed by more than
one demon. He also began to growl, hiss, speak in strange voices, and suddenly recite
passages from the Bible or Paradise Lost. He saw spirits and demons. Each night, the family
says that a family member would remain awake with David through sometime 30 minute long
rapid spasms and convulsions. The Warrens claim that three "lesser exorcisms" took place, the
first with four priests in attendance, and that when asked how many demons where inside
him, David listed 43 names. She also claims David had marks all over his body, levitated, and
demonstrated the supernatural ability of precognition relating to the murder Johnson would
later commit. At one point he stopped breathing, they thought he had died and they had to
briefly stop the exorcism to revive him In October 1980, the Warrens contacted Brookfield
police to warn them that the situation was becoming dangerous.
While staying with Debbie's family, Arnie Johnson supposedly taunted the demons said to be
within David to possess his own body while participating in David's exorcisms. "Take me on,
take me on instead of him" Johnson is purported to have said. In the other version from "A
Haunting" Arnie threatened the demon(s) after the family was exhausted by their constant
vigil and they witnessed yet another brutal beating on David by the demon(s). In the version
from "A Haunting" a few days later when Arnie went out to run some errands by himself he
was then attacked by the demon(s). As soon as he got in the car it went out of control. He
actually saw a demon "whom he described as looking exactly like the Devil" point to a tree. He
tried to get out of the car but the doors wouldn't open or unlock. The car was damaged but
fortunately he wasn't. Later on after David told him the Beast came out of the old well in back
of the rental property he went out to check and had another encounter with the Beast. Arnie
claims it was after looking deep into its black eyes he became truly demonically possessed. In
this version an exorcist told him this was the wrong thing to do. The Warrens claimed to have
warned him not to do this, but Johnson refused to listen (this wasn't mentioned nor was the
subsequent murder and incarceration in Arnie and Debbie's version in "A Haunting" ). As
David's condition worsened, Debbie and Johnson moved out; Debbie was hired by Alan Bono,
a new resident of the town, as a dog groomer at the Brookfield Pet Motel, and given a nearby
apartment to stay at. It was then that Johnson's behavior supposedly began to change, and
made Debbie fear that he had become possessed as well. According to Debbie, Johnson would
go into a kind of trance, where he would growl, and say he saw a beast, but later have no
memory of it.
The attack
On February 16, 1981, Johnson called in sick to his job at Wright Tree Service, claiming he
had a sore throat. He joined his girlfriend Debbie at the animal clinic where she worked along
with her sister and cousin. Alan Bono, the couple's 40 year old landlord and Debbie's employer
at the kennel, bought the whole group lunch at a local bar, with Bono, Johnson, and Debbie all
drinking wine, Bono more than the rest of the group. After lunch, the group returned to the
dog kennels, where Johnson fixed Bono's stereo, which blared noisily. Debbie then took the
girls to get pizza, but insisted they return quickly, saying "There's going to be trouble." When
they returned, Bono invited everyone up to his apartment above the kennel, and when the
television was turned on, it too was very loud, and Bono became agitated, punching his fist
into his palm. Everyone left the room at Debbie's urging, except Bono, who seized Debbie's
nine-year-old cousin Mary and would not let go. Johnson, who had walked to the car, headed
back to the apartment and told Bono to release Mary. Wanda Johnson, who recounted her
story to the police, stated that "it just broke". Mary ran for the car, as Debbie stood between
the two men. Wanda, who was holding on to Johnson, remembers he was "like stone", and
couldn't be moved. Wanda heard Johnson growling like an animal, saw a flash through the air,
and stated that "it just stopped". Johnson walked towards the woods, staring straight ahead,
and Bono continued to punch his fist into his palm, before falling on his face. Bono had
suffered "four or five tremendous wounds" according to Johnson's lawyer from a 5-inch (130
mm) pocket knife, mostly on his chest, and one that stretched from his stomach to the base of
his heart. Bono died several hours later from his wounds. Johnson was discovered two miles
(3 km) from the site of the murder and was held at the Bridgeport Correctional Center on bail
of 125,000 USD. It was the first murder in the history of Brookfield, Connecticut.
Media reaction and legal proceedings
Lorraine Warren called Brookfield police the day after the murder to tell them that Johnson
was possessed. A "media blitz" began to surround the story, and the Warrens began to spread
the story throughout the press, promising to lecture about it, write a book, and make a movie
about it through their agents at William Morris. Martin Minnella, Johnson's lawyer, said he
received calls from all over the world about the case, and news spread to the point that
Minnella was recognized on the streets of London by passersby. Minnella traveled to England
to meet with lawyers who had been involved in two similar cases (though neither ever went to
trial), planned to fly in exorcism specialists from Europe, and threatened to subpoena the
priests involved if they would not cooperate.
The trial took place in Danbury, Connecticut Superior Court beginning on October 28, 1981.
Minnella entered the unprecedented plea of not guilty by virtue of possession by the devil, but
the presiding judge, Robert Callahan, rejected Johnson's lawyer's attempt to show that
Johnson was under the influence of a demon at the time of the murder. Callahan stated that
there was no such defense, and it would be "irrelative and unscientific" to allow such
testimony, forcing the defense attorney to argue instead that Johnson acted in self-defense.
The jury thus never heard Minnella's theory. The jury deliberated for 15 hours over three days
before convicting Johnson on November 24, 1981, of first-degree manslaughter, and was
sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison, of which he served 5.
Aftermath
After he served his sentence, Johnson went on to marry his fiancee. The incident led to the
creation of a made for TV movie called The Demon Murder Case on NBC and a major motion
picture which has stalled due to internal conflicts. In 1983, Gerald Brittle, with the assistance
of Lorraine Warren, published a book about the incident entitled The Devil in Connecticut,
which Lorraine Warren says the profits of which were shared with the family. Two-thousand
dollars was paid by the book publisher to the family. Upon the books republication in 2006 by
iUniverse Inc., Carl Glatzel Jr. and David Glatzel sued the authors and book publishers for
violating their right to privacy, libel, and "intentional affliction of emotional distress"; further,
he claims the book alleges he committed criminal and abusive acts against his family and
others. Carl Glatzel Jr. has stated that the possession story was a hoax concocted by Ed and
Lorraine Warren to exploit the family and his brother's mental illness, and that the book
presents him as the villain because he disbelieved in the supernatural claims. He also asserts
that the Warrens said that the story would make the family "millionaires", and would help get
Johnson out of jail. He is currently writing a book titled Alone Through The Valley about his
version of the events surrounding his brother. Further, the publicity generated by the alleged
incident forced Carl to drop out of school, and lost friends and business opportunities.Lorraine
Warren defends her work with the family, claiming that the six priests who were involved in
the incident agreed at the time that the boy was possessed, and that the supernatural events
she described were real. Gerald Brittle, the book's author, says he wrote the book because
"the family wanted the story told", that he possesses video of over 100 hours of his interviews
with the family, and that they signed off on the book as accurate before it went to print.
Glatzel's father, Carl Glatzel Senior, denies telling the author that his son was possessed.
Johnson and his wife Debbie believe the account of demonic possession to be true, and that
Glatzel is suing to make money.

2008 The Case of Julia
Real-life Case of Demon Possession Documented
Woman levitated, spoke other languages, and showed paranormal powers
Posted: March 13, 2008
11:29 pm Eastern
Source: WND.com
An American woman who levitated, demonstrated paranormal psychic powers and spoke
foreign languages unknown to her was clearly demon possessed, according to a board-
certified psychiatrist and associate professor of clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College.
The unnamed woman, with a long history of involvement with Satanic groups, was observed
by a team of priests, deacons, several lay assistants, psychiatrists, nuns, some of whom also
had medical and psychiatric training, levitating six inches off the ground while objects flew off
shelves in the same room, according to Dr. Richard E. Gallagher, who documented the case in
the February issue of the New Oxford Review.
"Periodically, in our presence, Julia would go into a trance state of a recurring nature," writes
Gallagher. "Mentally troubled individuals often 'dissociate,' but Julia's trances were
accompanied by an unusual phenomenon: Out of her mouth would come various threats,
taunts and scatological language, phrases like 'Leave her alone, you idiot,' 'She's ours,' 'Leave,
you imbecile priest,' or just 'Leave.' The tone of this voice differed markedly from Julia's own,
and it varied, sometimes sounding guttural and vaguely masculine, at other points high
pitched. Most of her comments during these 'trances,' or at the subsequent exorcisms,
displayed a marked contempt for anything religious or sacred."
The subject would have no recollection of speaking these phrases upon recovering from the
trance-like state, according to Gallagher.
"Sometimes objects around her would fly off the shelves, the rare phenomenon of
psychokinesis known to parapsychologists," reports Gallagher. "Julia was also in possession of
knowledge of facts and occurrences beyond any possibility of their natural acquisition.
"She commonly reported information about the relatives, household composition, family
deaths and illnesses, etc., of members of our team, without ever having observed or been
informed about them," he said. "As an example, she knew the personality and precise manner
of death (i.e., the exact type of cancer) of a relative of a team member that no one could
conceivably have guessed. She once spoke about the strange behavior of some inexplicably
frenzied animals beyond her direct observation: Though residing in another city, she
commented, 'So those cats really went berserk last night, didn't they?' the morning after two
cats in a team member's house uncharacteristically had violently attacked each other at about
2 a.m."
Julia requested a Roman Catholic exorcism ritual, convinced from the beginning of her
consultations that she was under demonic attack.
"The exorcism began on a warm day in June," Gallagher recollects. "Despite the weather, the
room where the rite was being conducted grew distinctly cold. Later, however, as the entity
in Julia began to spout vitriol and make strange noises, members of the team felt themselves
profusely sweating due to a stifling emanation of heat. The participants all said they found the
heat unbearable.
"Julia at first had gone into a quiet trance-like state. After the prayers and invocations of the
Roman Ritual had been going on for a while, however, multiple voices and sounds came out
of her. One set consisted of loud growls and animal-like noises, which seemed to the
group impossible for any human to mimic. At one point, the voices spoke in foreign
languages, including recognizable Latin and Spanish. (Julia herself only speaks English, as she
later verified to us.)
"The voices were noticeably attacking in nature, and often insolent, blasphemous and highly
scatological. They cursed and insulted the participants in the crudest way. They were
frequently threatening trying, it appeared, to fight back 'Leave her alone,' 'Stop, you
whores' (to the nuns), 'You'll be sorry,' and the like.
"Julia also exhibited enormous strength. Despite the religious sisters and three others
holding her down with all their might, they struggled to restrain her. Remarkably, for about 30
minutes, she actually levitated about half a foot in the air."
The purpose of Gallagher's paper, he says, is to "document a contemporary and clear-cut case
of demonic possession." He explains that even those who doubt such a phenomenon exists
may find this case "rather persuasive."
"Possession is only one and not the most common type of demonic attack. Possession is very
rare, though not as exceedingly so as many imagine," he concludes. "So-called 'oppression,'
or 'infestation,' is less rare, though hardly frequent either, and sometimes more difficult to
discern accurately."


TRINIDAD
Moruga Composite School incident
Mass Demonic Possession Afflicts School
Chris Capps
NOVEMBER 14, 2010
Source: Unexplainable.Net

A disturbing development coming out from Moruga Composite School in Trinidad has
information that 17 girls were afflicted with a mysterious and sudden illness that resulted in
behaviors that school authorities are calling a case of mass demonic possession. The
mysterious illness afflicting the girls bore many of the symptoms of otherworldly force
including sudden superhuman strength, glossolalia, and sudden violence. Still others are
convinced that this was a case of mass hysteria and warn against the human rights violations
that may occur as a result of the incident in the name of a spiritual "cure."


The report submitted from teachers on an incident occurring on the 10th of this month
suggests that seventeen girls simultaneously reported headaches, nausea, and general ill ease
but within moments a classroom at Moruga Composite School was thrown into sudden
disarray. Trinidad Express has reported that the number may be much higher, exceeding two
dozen. The girls afflicted soon began speaking in a mysterious language and throwing some
that approached them away with an unexplainable strength. A few even attempted to throw
themselves off balconies to escape and risked injuring themselves greatly before being pulled
away when school administrators were called to the scene.

Ambulances were called and the girls eventually received medical care, but no word has been
released regarding how the incident was concluded or the wellbeing of those involved. And
while the case for demonic possession in this incident seems inescapable, there has been an
opinion leaking through in comments regarding the matter that seems to bear
mentioning. Later the girls would report that a man made of fire was chasing them down as
they were admitted to hospitals. Doctors suggest that their blood pressure was far beyond
what he considered normal. The girls reportedly were later sedated at a nearby medical
facility.

Many parents requested an exorcist be called in to assess the situation while others are
looking for psychiatric expertise. If it cannot be traced to a paranormal origin, the incident will
no doubt go down in history as an incredibly intense case of mass hysteria manifesting
physical symptoms as well as psychological ones.

Just what caused these girls to lose control and begin behaving in such a strange way is not
currently known, and there does seem to be a very real possibility that it will remain
unexplainable for quite some time. Still others will be able to point to it as evidence of a
coming major spiritual shift. Whether it is a change in the direction of good or bad, however,
remains yet to be seen.

Were these girls demonically possessed? Or was it simply an extreme case of mass
hysteria? Authorities both in the Moruga school as well as readers will likely not agree, but we
will likely be covering the case again at some future date when more information has been
gathered on it. At the moment it can be labeled only as unexplainable.

PHILIPPINES
Father Syquia
Face to face with the devil
First Posted 00:17:00 03/19/2007
http://www.inquirer.net/
MANILA, Philippines - The self-assured woman-doctor was accompanied by her father. She
had been experiencing paranormal attacks ever since, in the euphoria of a recent professional
achievement, she gave thanks to God. Previous to that, the young physician had practiced the
occult and confessed to being friends with several duwende (elves). An occultist warned her
not to pursue her plan of going to the Roman Catholic priest, Fr. Jose Francisco C. Syquia,
head of the Manila Archdiocese's Office of Exorcism. But since nobody could really help her,
she made up her mind to see the priest.
Interviewing her, Father Syquia noticed her eyes were glazed. Not a good sign, he thought,
banking on his former encounters with people in demonic possession who would usually
appear reptilian. Much later, the father of the physician complained that something was
making his hair stand, and the priest's assistants, lay people who had the gift of detecting
spirits, said they were noticing "dark spirits" hovering in the room.
But since the interview was only meant to build a probable case of possession, Father Syquia
ended the interview, urging the woman to throw away her occult paraphernalia and to start
wearing and praying the sacramentals (the rosary, brown scapular, etc.). The woman then
asked the priest to bless the water they had brought along. He obliged and started the prayer
of blessing.
"Stop!" the woman before him ordered, in a voice that was strong, brash and unearthly. When
he looked up, his suspicion was confirmed. "I was not looking at the eyes of a young woman,"
Father Syquia writes. "Her eyes were now alien and snake-like, filled with arrogance."
Suddenly, Father Syquia was face to face with the devil. The woman exhibited all the traits of
what Fr. Jordan Aumann, the Dominican spiritual master, would call as "diabolical possession":
psychiatric manifestation (her inner turmoil owing to the paranormal assaults);
parapsyshological phenomena (the audible and the serpent-like metamorphoses); and
aversion to the sacred (the vehement reaction to the blessing of the water).
The riveting account is just one of several diabolical conflicts in Fr. Syquia's "Exorcism:
Encounters with the Paranormal and the Occult" (2006, Shepherd's Voice Publications). The
book is significant because it is written by a practicing exorcist, and it comes with the
imprimatur of Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales.
Moreover, the introduction is written by the chief exorcist of Manila, the Spanish Capuchin Fr.
Mateo Goldaraz.
It is from Father Goldarez that the reader learns that exorcism is a canonical privilege; it is a
"minor order" given to select priests by bishops. "Now that I am 65 years old," he notes about
his appointment by Cardinal Rosales as chief exorcist, "God wants me to share in this
ministry." He adds: "This simple but mysterious assignment is a great grace for me; it has
introduced me to a ministry that has been practically lost through the years of 'normal'
pastoral work in the Church."
Exile and the devil
The remarks by Father Goldaraz should show that over the last decades, exorcism - and along
with it, the devil -has been practically banished from Catholic practice because it has been
perceived to be a creature of the Middle Ages.
Although a post-conciliar document of the Second Vatican Council reaffirmed the teaching on
the devil and the practice of exorcism, the positivistic outlook has prevailed in the Church.
Fr. Gabriel Amorth, until recently the chief Vatican exorcist, is quoted in this book as
complaining about the forced exile of the devil and exorcism from the Church: "Is this because
bishops and priests do not care about this? Or is it because bishops and priests do not believe
in the necessity and efficacy of this ministry?"
Judging from the imprimatur given to Father Syquia's book by Asia's most important bishop,
and the imprimatur previously given as well to Father Amorth's books on the subject by the
bishop of Rome, it seems the Church now cares.
And why shouldn't the Church care? Father Amorth administered 20,000 exorcisms in just
eight years! Jesuit exorcist Fr. Malachi Martin said there had been "a steady rise" in exorcisms
- a 750 percent increase alone from the 1960s up to the mid-1970s. Exorcisms done in mental
asylums showed that many severe "nut" cases were really demonic possessions.
Even M. Scott Peck, the non-Catholic psychiatrist and author, has revealed in his recent book
"Glimpse of the Devil" that he has taken part in exorcisms and insisted that the devil is alive
and well in a world that denies his existence and is behind many severe cases of psychosis
and sociopathology today.
But the fact that it took more than 30 years after Vatican II for the Church to revise and
reissue the Roman Ritual of Exorcism, the 400-year-old manual of prayers used by the
exorcist to drive out demons, should show an apparent conspiracy of silence to hide the devils
workings in the world.
Authoritative
Father Syquia's book is therefore important because it adds to the rather meager literature on
a controversial practice in the Church. It takes its place among such classics of Father
Amorth's and Monsignor Corrado Balducci's works on the subject.
To be sure, it's the first book on the subject by a Filipino, written with the ardor and idealism
of youth (the author is only in his 40s) as well as the scholastic but practical intelligence of a
scholar and thinker. It also comes with the authority of experience.
Father Syquia took up philosophical studies at San Carlos Major Seminary and the University
of Santo Tomas Ecclesiastical Faculty of Philosophy. He received his theological training from
the UST Ecclesiastical Faculty of Sacred Theology and obtained his Masters in Psychology from
the UST Graduate School. He obtained his licentiate (masters) in Theology from the
Angelicum, the famous pontifical university of the Dominicans in Rome.
Philosophically and theologically, therefore, Father Syquia draws from Thomistic rational
psychology and spiritual theology to probe into the invisible world of the devil and its
workings. For example, he quotes the Filipino Dominican Fr. Manuel T. Pinon on occultism as
involving "the cult of spirits and a rejection of the Creation in favor of the evil spirits, which
are an abomination of God."
Similarly, Syquia draws useful lessons to be used against the devil from spiritual theology,
such as the classic "Three Ages of the Interior Life" by the great Dominican, Fr. Reginald
Garrigou Lagrange, who wrote: "The devil can produce either nervous diseases or exterior
phenomena analogous to those of neuroses."
The devil can even produce fake trances like those induced in New Age transcendental
meditation sessions, as warned by another Dominican Thomist, the late great Father Aumann,
who wrote in his book "Spiritual Theology" about the "diabolical trance state" as "a falsification
of mystical ecstasy caused by an evil spirit."
Very practical book
Father Syquia also shares the practical bent of St. Thomas Aquinas, who wrote his major
works, the "Summa Theologica" and "Summa Contra Gentiles," as textbooks or instructionals
to be used by Dominican students.
Thus, his book is basically a summary of cases that would reveal the dangerous excesses of
people who are into occultism and the New Age movement, which exorcists and spiritual
masters like him have always warned are pathways for the devil to possess and rule their
largely ignorant practitioners.
"The first deadly secret of the New Age is that it never tells you the real identity of these
spirits," Father Syquia warns. The spirits - be they elementals, duwende or ghosts - are really
fallen angels, the devils waging a war of attrition against God and his creation.
It is the practical dimensions of "Exorcism" that make the work relevant and useful. The book
contains instructive cases not only on demonic possession and New Age dangers, but also on
folk-religious excesses, haunted houses and personal spiritual warfare.
The bibliography encourages readers to read more authoritative and scholarly literature, and
the several appendices are very helpful: They provide prayers and techniques to deliver
oneself or one's home from malevolent spirits. One appendix is a "concise handbook on
exorcism and deliverance" that includes techniques for warding off spells and curses, and
another provides a manual of powerful and beautiful prayers for spiritual warfare.
Aside from its utility, the book is a wellspring of practical wisdom. The concluding chapter
reaffirms what all the great spiritual masters of the Church have emphasized through the
centuries: that driving away demons is not the exorcist's work, it's God's. That demons are
expelled not through the power of the exorcist, but through the authority of God. As Father
Syquia declares: "Only Jesus and always Jesus."

2009 Bontoc School Incicent
BONTOC, MOUNTAIN PROVINCE
Mass Hysteria or Demonic Possession?
Gina Dizon
Posted on Aug 10, 2009
Northern Philippine Times
source: northphiltimes.com
Medical specialists attributed the fainting spells which happened to some 100 students here
the past two weeks as mass hysteria. With no medical findings of sickness among students,
the fainting and screaming were mass hysteria, Dr Elizabeth Solang told school and municipal
authorities here.
Mass hysteria is socio-psychological phenomenon of the manifestation of the same or similar
hysterical sign by more than one person. A common manifestation of mass hysteria occurs
when a group of people believe they are suffering from a similar disease or ailment. Features
of mass hysteria include no plausible cause found, ambiguous symptoms, rapid escalation of
cases- often spread by line of sight and rapid remission of symptoms.
Dr Solang said features of the Bontoc fainting phenomenon are similar to features of mass
hysteria. The cause of mass hysteria is often a baseless belief that begins small but, like a
hurricane, travels and becomes more devastating as it picks up speed.
Mass hysteria describes the spread of psychologically produced symptoms such as fainting and
screaming from person to person. In most cases, mass hysteria occurs in schools and
institutions to young women in response to group tensions or worries and often triggered by
one of two persons.
Dr. Timothy Jones of Tennesse Department of Health says that outbreaks of mass hysteria
often occur in groups experiencing physical or emotional stress. From 1973 to 1993, one half
of reported outbreaks of psychogenic illness occurred in schools, followed by factories (29
percent), towns and villages (10 percent), families and other institutions.
We talk about the mass hysteria in Tanzania where 20 girls fainted after taking their final
exams a year ago. There were more girls, (at least two thirds) than boys in the recent mass
fainting in Bontoc.
Hysteria is derived from the Greek word uterus. Hysteria was originally thought to be a
physical disorder confined to women. By the 19th century, hysteria was believed to have a
psychological origin.
Mass hysteria is also termed as mass psychogenic illness according to Dr Timothy Jones. It is
characterized by symptoms, occurring among a group of persons with shared beliefs
regarding those symptoms, that suggest organic illness but have no identifiable environmental
cause and little clinical or laboratory evidence of disease. Mass psychogenic illness typically
affects adolescents or children, groups under stress and females disproportionately more than
males.
American Medical Association says, Today, many psychiatrists feel that the term hysteria is
no longer helpful in diagnosis. In modern classification, the symptoms formerly grouped under
this term are now included in the more specific diagnostic categories of conversion disorder,
dissociative disorders, somatization disorder, and factitious disorders, and anxiety reaction.
Anxiety disorder is characterized by chronic free-floating anxiety and such symptoms as
tension or sweating or trembling or lightheadedness or irritability that has lasted for more than
six months
Dissociative disorders are defined as conditions that involve disruptions or breakdowns of
memory, awareness, identity and/or perception. The hypothesis is that symptoms can result,
to the extent of interfering with a persons general functioning, when one or more of these
functions is disrupted.
Dissociative symptoms seem to be more common in less industrialized societies, whereas the
pure anxiety symptoms are more common in industrialized ones. The crucial point is that
symptoms appear to be contagious. Usually, the sufferers have had a high level of communal
stress.
Tribal priests performed a ritual of butchering chicken and offering these to the spirits believed
to be hovering at the school grounds. The tribal priest spewed rice wine from his mouth to the
branches of an indigenous tree and let it hung at the entrance of the school.
In the case of the Bontoc mass hysteria, observations were noted about a sleeping girl who
was lifted at an angle without support until she was literally standing. Someones hair
was flying as if the victim was in front of an electric fan. A student-victim spat on a Bible,
one broke a cross.
In a related event, an outbreak of mass hysteria is reported to have struck three indigenous
communities living near the river Coco in northern Nicaragua. A total of 43 people have
reportedly fallen ill with what is known locally as grisi siknis (crazy sickness) March this year,
Nica Times reports.
Thirty four young people were affected putting them in trance and with super-human
strength. A 15-year-old girl with grisi siknis can overpower six or seven men. The men cant
detain her, and have to tie her up in bed sheets, Nica Times adds.
The people who were attacked were cured by a traditional healer using herbs and candles.
Doctors, anthropologists and sociologists who have studied this case of mass hysteria have so
far failed to come up with any clear explanation for the phenomenon which happened in
Nicaragua.
Recommendations from medical institutions who studied cases of mass hysteria among
students forward the need for separation of the affected individuals from the group for quite
some time. Psychologically, mass hysteria-related attacks cause a considerable burden on the
students and their families. In some cases, students who underwent the attacks reported
some type of adverse social or psychological consequence, such as ridicule from other
students, and strained family and interpersonal relationships.
American Medical Association in its studies says, Delayed recognition of mass hysteria led
several individuals to have diagnostic procedures and receive treatment that could have been
avoided had the similarities between these individuals been noted earlier.
Another factor may have been the reluctance of some families to consider psychological
explanations for the episodes. Its prompt recognition allows physicians to avoid unnecessary
tests and treatments and to reassure both the affected individuals and the public.

2010 Legazpi City HS incident
LEGAZPI CITY, ALBAY
20 Estudyante Sinapian ng Espirito
D. Garcia / J. Go
Thursday, 05 August 2010 00:02

Binalot ng tensyon ang city high school sa lalawigan ng Albay sa Bicol kahapon ng umaga
nang magwala at magsisigaw ang 20 estudyanteng pinaniniwalaang sinapian ng masamang
espiritu.

Ayon kay Parish priest Fr. Paulo Barandon, tinawagan siya ng mga guro ng Legazpi City High
School upang magtungo sa kanilang paaralan para suriin ang mga estudyanteng sinasabing
sinapian ng evil spirits.

Kanina may pumunta sa akin, may isang estudyante raw na nagwawala, sumisigaw. Sabi nila
sinaniban daw, [tapos] may sumunod na isa, at may sumunod pang isa, pahayag ni
Barandon.

Nang mabatid na hindi pa nabebendisyonan ang nasabing school building, sinabi ng pari na
siya ang nanguna sa pagdarasal ng school community at winisikan ng holy water ang buong
gusali.

Ngunit hindi umubra ang bendisyon dahil marami pang mga estudyante ang sinapian din ng
masamang espiritu at lahat sila ay nagsisigawan sa aniyay parang mass hysteria.

Ngayon nakikita ko medyo dumadami ang sinasabing sinaniban. Im not saying sinaniban ang
mga ito. Ang theory ko riyan, yung kanina kung malakas ang sigaw, parang iba ang ano ng
bata, karamihan ngayon parang panic ang naghahari sa kanila, aniya pa.

Gayunman, inihayag niyang ang problema ay maaaring psychological domino effect.

Duda rin siyang ang insidente ay kaso ng posesyon ng evil spirits dahil may nangyari na rin
aniya ang ganitong insidente na sinapian ang isang bata ngunit lumabas na mayroon siyang
personal na problema.

(Nagkaroon ng previous incident na) meron palang napakabigat na problemang dinadala ang
bata, hindi niya pwedeng sabihin kahit kanino kahit sa magulang di sinabi ... After that, wala
na, di na bumalik sa akin para mag-complain, paliwanag pa ng pari.

2011 Compostela NHS incident
COMPOSTELA VALLEY, DAVAO CITY
Friday, August 26, 2011
Evil spirits 'possess' 56 students
Alger P. Dura / Sun.Star Davao / Sunnex
Published in the Sun.Star Davao newspaper on August 27, 2011.
HTTP://WWW.SUNSTAR.COM.PH

DAVAO CITY -- Classes in a high school in Compostela Valley province were cancelled Friday
after evil spirits allegedly possessed 56 students.

The victims, all students of Compostela National High School, were possessed during the flag
raising ceremony, said witnesses.

The students reportedly exhibited strange and violent behavior and started ranting in front
of their classmates, teachers and local officials lead by Mayor Jessie Bolo.

"Base sa record ni Hilda Gales, miabot og 56 ka mga estudyante ang na possess sa dautang
espiritu (Based on Hilda Gales report, 56 students were possessed by the evil spirits)," Emm
Garcia-Obenieta, Compostela information and tourism officer, said in a telephone interview
with Sun.Star SuperBalita.

A village doctor from Nabunturan drove off the "bad spirits" on Thursday.

Obenieta said that after receiving reports, Bolo, along with members of the Compostela
Emergency and Response Team, immediately responded to the area.

The students were brought to Seor Santiago Parish, while others were rushed to the Holy
Infant Community in Compostela.

Obenieta said the cancellation of classes Friday was made to fully exorcise the bad spirits
inhabiting the campus.

"Karong adlawa naka-decide si Anselma Campus nga dili lang una mag-klase para di mosamot
ang trauma sa mga estudyante nga nakakita sa nahitabo kagahapon (Classes on Friday were
suspended so the other students will not be traumatized with what they have witnessed),"
Obenieta said.

She said classes will resume on August 31.

A local parish priest also conducted a Holy Mass in the campus Friday to ward off the bad
spirits inhabiting the premises.

Obenieta said parents are hopeful that the incident will not happen again.

2011 Ireneo NHS incident
GENERAL SANTOS CITY
Ilang Estudyante sa GenSan, Sinapian ng Masamang Espiritu?
Thursday, 13 October 2011 23:45

Biglang natigil ang klase ng iilang estudyante ng Ireneo National High School dahil umano sa
sunod sunod na sinapian ang ilang estudyante.

Ayon kay Pastor Ronnie Gestupa, isa ring guro sa naturang paaralan, isang mag-aaral na
babae ang bigla na lamang nagsisigaw na parang nasasaktan na umano'y sinapian ng
masamang espiritu.

Ipinagdasal ng pastor at mga guro ang naturang estudyante at matapos mahimasmasan, isa
na namang estudyante sa kabilang classroom ang sunod na sinapian umano at doon
pinuntahan din ng mga guro at katulad ng una, sumisigaw din at may sinasabi na hindi
naiintindahan.

Sinabi ni Gestupa, bago nangyari ang insidente, nagsagawa ng spirit of the glass ang mga
estudyante at posibleng nagambala ang mga masasamang espiritu kaya't binalikan ang mga
estudyante.

2011 Sta. Lucia NHS incident
CEBU
Mga Estudyante sa Cebu, Sinapian ng Masasamang Espiritu
Friday, 14 October 2011
10:06 NEWS Regional
RMN-Cebu

Mahigit dalawang Linggo nang nasuspinde ang klase sa isang paraalan sa bayan ng Asturias
lalawigan ng Cebu matapos diumanoy sinapian ng masamang espiritu ang ilang estudyante
nito.

Ayon sa presidente ng Parents-Teachers Association ng Sta. Lucia National High School,
Generis Ligaray, napapaligiran ang paaralan ng mga puno ng mangga at Gemelina at may
sementeryo pa sa likod ng school building.

Apat na babaeng estudyante ang nawalan ng malay habang ang isa ay nagwala at nagpaiba-
iba ng boses.

Nagsimula ang kakaibang ikinikilos ng mga estudyante sa nakaraang buwan nang putulin ang
ilang puno dahil sa itatayong konkretong pader.

Kasunod nito ay natatakot na ang mga estudyante na pumasok sa kanilang klase.

Isinagawa na ang isang misa at pinakukumpisal ng isang Cebuano Exorcist, Msgr. Frederick
Kriekenbeek ang mga apektadong estudyante na sinasabing sinapian ng masasamang espiritu.

2011 Tabuelan incident
CEBU
Was killer cannibal, demon, or witch?
By Atty. Pachico A. Seares
http://www.sunstar.com.ph

Thursday, May 26, 2011

IT'S interesting how residents of Bry. Villahermosa in Tabuelan, Cebu explained why a man
killed her niece, 6, and, with a window jalousy blade, carved out most of her internal organs
except heart and lungs, and ate some portions.

The theories:

(a) He must be a cannibal (from "canibales," Spanish for thirsty and cruel) who
couldn't resist the lure of human flesh;

(b) He must have been possessed by the devil, given the heinous methods and bizarre
behavior after the deed, who spoke in gibberish and falsetto;

(c) He must have gone mad, thought processes and moral values in total haywire;

Or a combination of those, variations on theme of madness and deviltry: he could be
drug-crazy, witch, or vampire.

All theories are straws in the wind, not solid explanations until Efren Matidios, 29, is examined
by doctors and priests.

There's talk of asking an exorcist-priest to find out if some mean and ugly bad spirit still lurks
in the man and hasn't migrated to a police officer (whom Matidios pointed at as the devil in a
funny episode before prosecutors).

Open and shut

To police though, it's open and shut, unlike in the Ellah Joy Pique kidnapping and homicide.
Here, the self-confessed killer is locked up and charged while in the Minglanilla grader's case,
they're still squabbling over evidence to establish probable guilt.

Motive or sanity of the perp, whether lunacy or evil had anything to do with the crime, is for
Matidios's lawyer to explore and use--and barangay folk and tabloid media to feed on and
speculate about.

2011 Encounters of Fr. Armand Tangi
CENTRAL LUZON
Close encounters with elementals
Cathy Yamsuan
Philippine Daily Inquirer 12:36 am | Monday, October 31st, 2011

The teenage boy had not eaten for days yet four grown men and his own mother could hardly
subdue him as he reacted violently to the presence of Fr. Armand Tangi of the Society of St.
Paul.

He had menacing eyes, was screaming words I could not understand, and it seemed that he
would spew vomit on me anytime. I was just waiting for it to happen, the priest said,
recalling a familiar scene in the movie The Exorcist.

The boy and his family live in a bucolic Central Luzon community, in a compound with a ladies
accessories factory and residences of its owner and his workers. A clear brook runs through
the leafy estate. It was an idyllic place until strange sightings of a white lady were reported,
the boy exhibited a bizarre behavior and the factory owners niece suddenly fell ill and
became practically paralyzed. The strange happenings, manifestations of so-called
elementals, or nature spirits, gravitating in rivers and trees, prompted the businessman to
call a psychic, who said the area used to be a Japanese garrison where beheadings occurred
during World War II.

I was told by the businessman that the psychic heard constant screams of terror. And that he
also felt that there was also a lot of tension and chaos, Tangi said.

Admitting he could not deal with the spirits, the psychic advised the businessman to call an
exorcist-priest. It was midmorning when the Makati-based Tangi arrived at the compound in
early September. He was immediately taken to a kiosk to see the boy.

He looked like a normal boy, of medium built and about 58 in height. But he looked at me in
a very intimidating way. I was actually scared of him, Tangi said.

The priest was convinced it was a case of demonic possession and decided to say Mass at the
kiosk.
Boy goes wild
Every now and then, the boy would mutter something incomprehensible but was generally
subdued. But when Tangi raised the host during the Consecration, the boy went bananas,
threw off those holding him, screamed at the priest, and spewed vomit.

It gives me goose bumps just to remember what happened, Tangi said.

After the Mass, the priest approached the boy and recited deliverance prayers, especially
those addressed to St. Michael, the archangel who defeated Lucifer, and St. Gabriel, the Prince
of the Heavenly Army tasked with leading angels in the final battle against evil spirits.

Tangi could not perform an exorcism because it requires permission from the bishop. Also, an
exorcist priest and his prayer warriors, or assistants, would have to fast and recite special
prayers for protection before they can face the possessed. After Tangi and the locals prayed
over the boy, the priest sprinkled holy water on him and anointed the boy with blessed oil.

At that time, I felt it was not a really strong demon. After the anointing, the boy already
smiled and began eating. I just hope that he would not have a relapse because when that
happens, the retaliating demon usually becomes stronger, Tangi noted.
Mummy in bed
Later, the priest was led to the businessmans ailing niece. She was in crutches in a small,
windowless room. He was shocked to see what he thought was a man wrapped in black
bandage like a mummy lying on her bed.

His neck was bent backward but his eyes were wide open and staring at me, the priest
recalled. I looked back at my companions and apparently, they did not see it because they
were not reacting, Tangi said. He turned to the bed and the vision was gone.

The room was very dark, there were absolutely no openings. And it felt very eerie just being
there, the priest said. Workers complain they feel something unusual whenever they are
near the girls quarters.

Fr. Jose Francisco Syquia, in his book Exorcism: Encounters with the Paranormal and the
Occult, notes that evil spirits prefer areas which are smelly and dirty like toilets, garbage
areas, and the like. Syquia, director of the Office of Exorcism of the Archdiocese of Manila,
says dark rooms without blessed objects like that occupied by the girl attract sinister forces.
Snake in the trees
Tangi recalled the nieces room was in total disarray. There was stuff everywhere, it was so
chaotic. She said that when she came in at night, she was always too tired to pick anything
up, the priest noted.

The businessman told Tangi that his niece used to be healthy, but she suddenly suffered a
series of illnesses that doctors could not explain and that left her practically paralyzed. Tangi
suspects that someone else was staying in the room and whoever it was might have caused
her disability. After blessing the room, he told the niece to clean up, put more lights and paint
the place white.

The priest also visited the teenagers house in an area that was well-isolated from other
factory residences and that was encircled by old trees. Old-timers claim a giant snake lives
nearby but they do not dare kill it, believing it is the real owner of the property. The
residents fear that the snakes spirit might haunt them if they kill it. Tangi did not see any
giant snake in the boys house.

But it was unusually hot inside. And as I was sprinkling holy water and my companions were
reciting Marian prayers, I heard hissing sounds. It was hard to tell where they were coming
from, he said.
Spirits could strike again
Tangi said residents told him they had eerie feelings whenever they walk around the
property. One old man told the priest that he normally saw a lady in white at night in the
area. The priest also stopped at the house of the businessman. He thought there were no evil
spirits there. It was airy because there were lots of windows. It was well-lighted, the priest
remembered. While Tangi had not heard again from the owner, he remained concerned.

There are lots of trees in the property and there is also a brook where the residents catch fish
from. It may be possible that elementals or nature spirits living in the trees or the water were
responsible for the manifestations, he said.

The priest fears these spirits can strike again.

2012 Crossing Bayabas NHS Incident
DAVAO CITY
20 Davao students 'possessed'
By Blue Cordero
Monday, September 10, 2012
http://www.sunstar.com.ph

At least 20 fourth
year female students
of the Crossing
Bayabas National High
School were believed
to have been
possessed by some
spirits when they
broke out in hysterics
around 8:45 a.m.
Monday.

The students of the
national high school
were attending the
inauguration of their
new building when the
girls started writing
and screaming, and
fighting against
restraining hands of friends, faculty members, faith healers, and religious leaders.

Some believed that the incident happened because three talisay trees, where the evil spirits
said to have lived, were cut down for the new building.
20 Davao students possessed
DAVAO. A student is restrained by a faith healer who carries with him a bottle of oil and herbs
as students, teachers, and residents had to contend with the hysterics of at least 20 fourth
year high school girls of Crossing Bayabas National High School in what is believed to have
been a possession of some spirits on Monday. (King Rodriguez)

Chief Inspector Anghel Sumagaysay, chief of the Toril Police Station, said they were having a
meeting when they were informed about the claimed demonic possession.

"Wala man hinuoy nasakitan sa maong panghitabo (No one was hurt in the incident),"
Sumagaysay said.

Religious leaders of different denominations in the area were among the first to respond,
saying prayers out loud as the girls screamed and tried to escape the restraining hands of
those surrounding them.

There were those who were carrying bottles of oil and herbs while one even sprinkled salt on
one of the screaming girls.

According to police, the students were sent home accompanied by their parents at 11:30 a.m.
Monday.

A psychiatrist, in a radio interview, refused to believe that it was a possession of spirits and
would rather say that the girls may have been undergoing some stress that led them into a
mass hysteria.

On August 2011, 56 students of Compostela National High School were also allegedly
possessed by evil spirits.

The students reportedly exhibited strange and violent behavior and started ranting in front of
their classmates, teachers and local officials.

The students were brought to Seor Santiago Parish, while others were rushed to the Holy
Infant Community in Compostela.

(Sun.Star SuperBalita Davao/Sunnex)

2012 Mandaluyong School Incident
MANILA
24 students possessed by spirits in Mandaluyong
By Non Alquitran (The Philippine Star) | Updated June 28, 2013 - 12:00am


MANILA, Philippines - At least 24 female students at a school in Mandaluyong City collapsed
yesterday morning, allegedly possessed by evil spirits, prompting school officials to cancel
classes for the rest of the day.

City police chief Senior Superintendent Florendo Quibuyen said that prior to the incident, the
second year high school students, all from the same section at the Isaac Lopez Integrated
School, had been playing spirit of the glass.

At around 9 a.m., the students collapsed one after the other.

Quibuyen said pastor Boyet Sionco prayed over some of the students, while others were
brought by their relatives to the San Felipe Church for the same purpose. After the rite, the
students regained consciousness and they all said they were back to normal, he said.

One of the students claimed that just before she lost consciousness, she saw a tall and dark
woman walking outside their classroom.

Mandaluyong students 'faked' demonic possession: official
By Camille Diola (philstar.com) | Updated June 28, 2013 - 1:15pm
http://www.philstar.com/thephilippinestar

MANILA, Philippines - The 22 grade school students apparently possessed by evil spirits that
caused the suspension of classes at a Mandaluyong school on Wednesday were only "faking,"
a school official said.

"Wala naman po talagang ganoong pangyayari ... 'Yun po yung analysis nila, na 'yung ibang
mga bata doon, parang sumasama lang sa agos na kapag umiyak yung isa, nag-iiyakan na
din," Isaac Lopez Integrated School assistant principal Loida Matic said in a radio interview.

Matic explained that a teacher in the school threatened to give failing marks to other grades 7
and 8 students who would also act possessed.

Related story: School suspends classes as 'evil spirits' possess 20 students

"Kasi isa sa mga secondary teacher yung Science teacher, nang sinabihan niya yung mga
estudyante niya 'O sige yung sasama doon, mag-iinarte, ibabagsak kong lahat.' Wala namang
nangyari sa section na 'yon," Matic said.

She added that one of the possessed students, when told by the barangay captain that his
money fell on the floor, temporarily stopped acting and picked up his money.


2012 Jaclupan NHS Incident
TALISAY CITY
Evil spirit possesses 17 students
By Jinky R. Bargio and Justin K. Vestil
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
http://www.sunstar.com.ph


ABOUT 17 students of a public national high school in Talisay City were reportedly possessed
by an evil spirit yesterday morning.

Students of the Jaclupan National High School said a fellow student reportedly saw a dark
figure looking at her while they were having their home economics class.

The figure reportedly asked her to go with him. It was then that she fainted.

The figure was also seen by other students during an all-night seminar during the weekend.

Some students said the alleged possessions reportedly started when school officials cut trees
near the area where a classroom was constructed.

Officials of the Jaclupan National High School in Barangay Jaclupan, Talisay City sought the
help of a Catholic organization that specializes in exorcising evil spirits.

But the students parents said that while the group successfully drove the evil spirits from
their children, they will not allow the students to return to school until the structure is blessed.

The incident reportedly started at 11 a.m. yesterday.

A fourth year student of the school said that while she and her classmates were having classes
in a still-unfinished classroom, one of her classmates started screaming.

Dark figure

The student said her classmate reportedly saw a dark figure walking outside the classroom
looking at her.

Six more students also reportedly showed signs of being possessed.

The teachers took the seven students, mostly girls, to the Mother of Perpetual Help Chaplaincy
just across the school.

Vilma Sajor, secretary of Barangay Jaclupan, told Sun.Star Cebu yesterday she was one of
those who saw how the possessed students screamed.

She said the students were unusually strong.

Dili gyud sila matabang, kailangan pa sila yak-an para mupuyo (It was impossible to
contain them), said Sajor.

Fr. Nestor Atillo, who heads the chaplaincy, told reporters that after the seven students were
brought to their chaplain, more students showing the same symptoms were brought to the
chaplaincy.

Atillo told the parents and teachers to bring the students to the Marys Little Children
Community in Barangay Tabunok to have them exorcised.


Infestation

The healing ministry of Msgr. Frederick Kriekenbeck worked on the students and told them to
pray.

Selfa Hu, a member of Kriekenbecks team, told reporters yesterday the possession was
caused by an infestation of a nature spirit.

She said one of the students reportedly levitated during the exorcism rites.

But Kriekenbeck said there was no possession. What took place was a result of emotional
disturbance, anger and hatred on the part of the students.

Hu said they plan to return to the school tomorrow to bless it.

Maria Imelda Valde, school principal, said the incident happened after three bagalnga trees
were cut down to make way for the construction of a school building.

It was the second time that it happened. The first one was last September, she said.

Bagalnga trees, or false dogwood or chinaberry trees, are indigenous trees that grow along
the seashore and in low and medium altitudes.

2012 Jaclupan NHS Second Wave
CEBU CITY
Possessions in Cebu continue
http://www.sunstar.com.ph

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

CEBU CITY Fourteen people, mostly high school students, were reportedly driven temporarily
mad after being possessed by evil spirits in Barangay Jaclupan, Talisay City Tuesday morning.

This happened after 17 students of the Jaclupan National High School suffered the same fate a
day earlier.

A Catholic priest known for his ability to cast out demons was sent to the school to perform
exorcism rites.

The schools principal also sought the help of the Department of Education (DepEd).

An official of the Department of Health said the agency plans to send government
psychologists to conduct stress debriefing on the affected students.

At 7 a.m. Tuesday, students were forced to evacuate the school after another series of alleged
possessions occurred there.

Maria Imelda Valde, school principal, told reporters that close to ten students were possessed
after they prayed the rosary before the start of class.

Valde said that despite what happened a day earlier, she didnt suspend classes in their school
on Tuesday in order to keep things normal in the campus.

But she didnt expect the incident to be repeated.

By the time Valde suspended classes, almost 10 students and one parent had been reportedly
possessed by demons.

A mother of one of the schools students began acting strangely after she attempted to get her
daughter out of the school.

A teacher, who refused to name herself, said majority of the students who were possessed
were reportedly driven mad by a mysterious voice calling out to them.

Magsige kuno og hunghong nila nga adto na ta (The voice told them, Come with us), the
teacher said.

But before the incident, two sisters ages 25 and 16 were reportedly brought to the Marys
Little Children Community in Barangay Tabunok, in the same city, after suffering the same
episode.

Due to what had happened, Monsignor Frederick Kriekenbeck visited the school at 11 a.m. and
said a mass.

Kriekenbeck also performed a rite of deliverance to cleanse the school and its students from
whatever evil spirits that plagued them.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Kriekenbeck told reporters that contrary to reports, the
trees growing around the area are not the source of the demonic possessions in the school.

Wala gyuy sala ang mga kahoy, kay hinimo man siya sa Ginoo (The trees have nothing to do
with it because they are Gods creations), he said.

Faith

But he blamed the failure of the community, especially the students, in professing their faith,
such as their failure to attend mass every Sunday.

He also reminded the students not to dabble in the occult and superstitious beliefs as
malignant spirits would take advantage of such practices.

After the mass, another student reportedly got possessed outside the school.

The female student was reportedly rushing toward the school to attend the mass when she
suddenly collapsed and started screaming.

When the girl was brought in, Kriekenbeck performed the rite of exorcism on her.

Valde said that due to the incident, she sought the intervention of the DepEd Talisay City
Division.

In a TV Patrol Central Visayas report Tuesday, Department of Health (DOH) Central Visayas
Director Asuncion Anden said that once they receive the report from DepEd, they will send a
team of psychologists to the area to conduct stress debriefing on the students.

Last Monday, 17 students of the same school were brought to a church after they show signs
of being possessed.

Teachers of the school said the possessions started during an all-night seminar over the
weekend.

They believed the possessions started when three bagalnga trees were cut down to make
way for the construction of a classroom for the fourth year class.

(JKV of Sun.Star Cebu)

_Title
_Location
_Source

_Text.


NICARAGUA
2009 Miskito Incident
Outbreak of mysterious grisi siknis'
Illness grips indigenous towns in Nicaragua
By Tim Rogers
MARCH 04 2009
Nica Times Staff | trogers@ticotimes.net
http://www.ticotimes.net/dailyarchive/2009_03/0304091.htm

A team of traditional indigenous healers and regional health authorities from the North Atlantic
Autonomous Region (RAAN) trekked out to visit three rural Miskito communities along the Ro
Coco on Tuesday to investigate reports of an outbreak of a mysterious collective hysteria,
known as grisi siknis, or crazy sickness.

Centuriano Knight, the regional health coordinator for the RAAN, told The Nica Times
yesterday in a phone interview that 34 people have reportedly fallen ill with grisi siknis in the
river community of Santa Fe, seven people in the nearby community of Esperanza and two in
the neighboring community of San Carlos. The outbreak of grisi siknis, which has no scientific
explanation, is the largest case of collective hysteria since a massive outbreak in the RAAN
community of Rait in 2003.

Though doctors, anthropologists and sociologists have all studied previous cases, no one has
been able to explain the phenomena, Knight said. Traditional healers and witches have
explained the mysterious illness with different theories ranging from a curse to incomplete
witchcraft.

The strange illness apparently affects young people more than old, putting people in a
strange trance and apparently giving them super-human strength, according to Knight
and other witnesses.

A 15-year-old girl with siknis can overpower six or seven men, Knight said. The men
can't detain her, and have to tie her up in bed sheets.

Knight said the illness doesn't necessarily make people violent, but it does make them
hysterical. Many of the affected will take off running madly, and other villagers can't stop
them, he said.

Sometimes, however, grisi siknis can turn violent. In the case of Rait in 2003, some of the
affected people ran around town with machetes trying to cut others.

Knight said the mysterious illness has existed in the indigenous communities since the 1960s,
but had disappeared for years until the 2003 outbreak. The illness apparently only affects
indigenous Miskito and Mayagna populations.

In 2004, the illness was cured by a local healer who treated it with herbs and other natural
medicines. The three local healers sent to the communities Tuesday will employ the same
techniques, Knight said.

SOUTH AFRICA
1906 The Case of Clara Germana Cele
SOUTH AFRICA
Wikipedia.org

Clara Germana Cele was a Christian woman, who in 1906, was said to be possessed by a
demon.

Possession

She is said to have been possessed when she was a sixteen year old school girl at St.
Michael's Mission in Natal, South Africa. The girl was an orphan of black origin and was
baptised as an infant. At the age of sixteen, the girl made a pact with Satan and this is said to
be the cause of her demonic possession. Clara later revealed this information to her confessor,
Father Hrner Erasmus. In an account written by a nun, Clara was said to be able to speak
languages of which she had no previous knowledge. This fact was also witnessed by
others, who recorded that she "understood Polish, German, French and all other languages."
The nun reported that Clara demonstrated clairvoyance by revealing the most intimate
secrets and transgressions of people with whom she had no contact. Moreover, Clara could
not bear the presence of blessed objects and seemed imbued with extraordinary
strength and ferocity, often hurling nuns about the convent rooms and beating them up.
The nun reported that the girl's cries had a savage bestiality that astonished those around her.
In regards to the girls voice, an attending nun even wrote:

No animal had ever made such sounds, neither the lions of East Africa nor the angry
bulls. At times, it sounded like a veritable herd of wild beasts orchestrated by Satan
had formed a hellish choir.

- Attending nun of St. Michael's Mission, Natal, South Africa

The girl, according to some, was said to have levitated five feet in the air, sometimes
vertically and sometimes horizontally; when sprinkled with holy water, the girl is purported to
have come out of this state of her satanic possession. According to a Lutheran Pastoral
Handbook, one possessing these symptoms is an indication that an individual is truly
possessed, rather than suffering from a mental illness. Consequently, two Roman Catholic
priests, Rev. Mansueti (Director of the St. Michael's Mission) and Rev. Erasmus (her
confessor), were appointed to perform an exorcism on Clara Germana Cele; this deliverance
lasted for two days. During the exorcism, Clara's first action was to knock the Holy Bible from
the priest's hands and grab his stole in an attempt to choke him with it. At the end of the
exorcism, it was said that the demon was forced out and the girl was healed.

Reference

The Guinness encyclopedia of ghosts and spirits.
Guinness Publishing. Retrieved 20100402.


EUROPE
1778 The Case of George Lukins
ENGLAND
Wikipedia.org

George Lukins, also known as the Yatton dmoniac, was an individual famous for his alleged
demonic possession and the subsequent exorcism that occurred when he was aged forty-four;
his case occasioned great controversy in England.

Biography

The Rev. Joseph Easterbrook, the Anglican vicar of Temple Church, was summoned on
Saturday, 31 May 1778, by Mrs. Sarah Barber, a woman who was travelling in the village of
Mendip, Yatton, in the county of Somerset. The woman told the pastor that she came across a
man by the name of George Lukins, a tailor and common carrier by profession, who had a
strange malady "in which he sang and screamed in various sounds, some of which did not
resemble a human voice; and declared, doctors could do him no service." Mrs. Barber, who
formerly resided in Yatton, attested to the clergyman that Lukins had an extraordinary good
character and attended services of worship, where he received the Church sacraments.
However, for the past eighteen years, he had been subject to atypical fits, which Lukins
believed resulted from a supernatural slap which knocked him down while he was acting in a
Christmas pageant. George Lukins was consequently taken under the care of Dr. Smith, an
eminent surgeon of Wrington, among many other physicians, who in vain, tried to help George
Lukins; moreover, after his twenty week stay at St. George's Hospital, the medical community
there pronounced him incurable. Members of the community began to think that Mr. Lukins
was bewitched and he himself declared that he himself was possessed by seven demons,
who could only be driven out by seven clergymen. Rev. Joseph Easterbook contacted
Methodist ministers in connexion with Rev. John Wesley who agreed to pray for George
Lukins:
"'Some time ago I had a letter requesting me to make one of the seven ministers to
pray over George Lukins. I cried out before God, "Lord, I am not fit for such a work; I
have not faith to encounter a demoniac." It was powerfully applied, "God in this thy
might." The day before we were to meet, I went to see Lukins, and found such faith,
that I could then encounter the seven devils which he said tormented him. I did not
doubt but deliverance would come. Suffice to say, when we met, the Lord heard
prayer, and delivered the poor man.'"
Rev. John Valton

An account of the exorcism was published in the Bristol Gazette. The newspaper reported that
George Lukins, during his alleged possession, claimed that he was the devil, made barking
noises, sung an inverted Te Deum, and was very violent. In light of these claims, on Friday,
13 June 1778, seven clergymen, including Rev. Joseph Easterbrook, accompanied George
Lukins to the vestry at Temple Church, where they performed an exorcism on the man, which
included hymn singing and prayer. The deliverance concluded when the demons were
allegedly cast out using the Trinitarian formula; the clergymen commanded the demons to
return to hell and George Lukins then exclaimed "Blessed Jesus!", praised God, recited the
Lord's prayer, and then thanked the Methodist and Anglican clergymen. Rev. Easterbrook,
when recording the events under the patronage of Rev. John Wesley, stated that the account
would be doubted in this modern era of skepticism, but pointed to "the scriptures, and other
authentic history, of ancient as well as modern times" to buttress what he felt was a valid case
of demonic possession. An article in The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Chronicle
criticized the account, stating that Lukins actually suffered from "epilepsy and St. Vitus's
dance." Dr. Feriar, a medical demonologist, criticized George Lukins as an impostor
masquerading as a demoniac. Nevertheless, after the exorcism, George Lukins was described
as calm and happy. Following this case, several pieces of literature were printed on George
Lukins, thus popularising his alleged case of diabolical possession and deliverance, despite the
original design to keep the case a secret.
1974 The Case of Michael Taylor (Ossett)
OSSETT, BRITAIN
Wikipedia.org

Michael Taylor, an individual from the British town of Ossett, is notable for his alleged demonic
possession. Christine Taylor, the wife of Michael Taylor, expressed to the Christian Fellowship
Group, of which Michael was a part, that his relationship with the lay leader of the group,
Marie Robinson, was more carnal than it at first seemed. Michael Taylor admitted that he felt
evil within him and eventually attacked Robinson verbally, who screamed back at him. During
the next meeting, Michael Taylor received an absolution, but nevertheless, his behavior
continued to become more erratic. As a result, the local vicar called in other ministers
experienced in deliverance in preparation to cast out the demons residing within the man. The
exorcism, which occurred on 56 October 1974 at St. Thames Church in Barnsley, was headed
by Father Peter Vincent, an Anglican priest of St. Thomas's in Gawber and was aided by a
Methodist clergyman, Rev. Raymond Smith.

In an all-night ceremony, the group invoked and cast out at least forty demons,
including those of incest, bestiality, blasphemy, and lewdness. At the end,
exhauseted, they allowed Taylor to go home, although they felt that at least three
demons --insanity, murder, and violence -- were still left in him.

Dr. Bill Ellis, The Pennsylvania State University

The exorcism rite, which lasted until 6 A.M., exhausted the priests, who allowed the man to
return home. Nevertheless, they cautioned that although they had cast out forty spirits from
Michael Taylor, a few remained, including the demon of murder.

While at home, Michael Taylor, brutally murdered his wife, Christine, and strangled their
poodle. He was found by a policeman, naked in the street, covered with blood. At his trial in
March, he was found to be guilty and insane. This case became highly popularised as the
"Ossett murder case of 1974.

FRANCE
1566 Miracle of Laon
LAON, FRANCE [1566]

The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology
By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Sensational POSSESSION case in Laon, France. The Catholic Church used the daily
EXORCISMs of Nicole Obry (also Aubry) before huge crowds as examples of the churchs
power over the DEVIL to support it in religious struggles with the French Huguenots. Through
Obry, BEELZEBUB claimed the Huguenots as his own people, gleefully noting that their
supposed heresies made them even more precious to him. The demon was exorcised through
repeated administration of holy wafers, a precedent in exorcism, and proved to the faithful
the danger of the threat of Huguenot reform.

The central issue dividing French Catholics and Huguenots was transubstantiation, or the Real
Presence: whether or not, during communion, the bread and wine actually became the body
and blood of Christ. This miracle occurred for Catholics, whereas Huguenots considered such
an interpretation to be idolatry. By exorcising Beelzebub with the help of holy wafers, the
Catholic Church declared a victory for the power of the presence. Obry had a troubled past
with problems of fits before she showed signs of possession in 1565, at age 15 or 16. The
daughter of a butcher in Vervins, near Laon in Picardy, she had spent eight years in a convent
at Montreuil-les-Dames. She was a dull-witted student but learned to read. Her fits probably
had physical causes, not hysteria, unlike those of many other female demoniacs. She had
suffered two severe head injuries, one from a dog bite and one from a falling tile. As a result,
she suffered from chronic headache until she was exorcised. At the time of her possession,
she had been married for a short time to a merchant, Louis Pierret. Despite her history, she
was a stunning and convincing demoniac and exhibited uncanny and genuine clairvoyance via
the possessing demons.

One day, while Obry prayed alone in church, the spirit of her maternal grandfather, Joachim
Willot, visited her. Willot entered the girl and explained that since he died suddenly after
supper and had not confessed his sins nor accomplished certain vows, his soul was in
purgatory. He asked for her help to enable him to ascend to heaven: Obry should have
masses said in his name, give alms to the poor, and make holy pilgrimages, especially to the
shrine of St. James of Compostela.

Obrys family complied but evaded the pilgrimage to St. James, perhaps because of the
expense involved. Her convulsive fits, present since Willots possession, did not improve, and
Obry blamed her familys failure to visit St. James. The family arranged a fake departure for
the pilgrimage, but Obry was not deceived. At this point, the family asked the local priest, the
schoolmaster, and a Dominican monk to conjure the spirit, who admitted he was not the soul
of Willot but his good ANGEL. Knowing this to be heresy, the priests finally made the spirit
admit he was a devil.

For two months, Obry was exorcized daily in front of ever-growing crowds. The first exorcisms
were done in Vervin, where inexperienced priests first used a handbook on baptismal
exorcism, then obtained a book of demonic exorcisms. They followed instructions to find out
the name of the demon and, when they succeeded in getting Beelzebubs name, did as the
manual directed and wrote it on a piece of paper and burned it. Beelzebub shrieked but did
not depart. The demon quickly became immune to this procedure and even remarked that it
was a waste of paper and ink.

Obry was moved to the cathedral in Laon when Beelzebub complained that a prince of his rank
could be expelled only by a bishop in a suitable location. The exorcisms continued on stage in
the cathedral for two days but moved to a private chapel to prevent mob chaos. But
Beelzebub protested again. In the account of Obrys exorcism by the Hebrew professor Jean
Boulaese in 1578, Beelzebub told the priests that it was not right to hide what God wanted to
be manifested and known to all the world, and that he would only leave Obry in that great
brothel (the cathedral), and on stage.



The exorcisms grew to two times a day, during which Obry gave an impressive demoniacal
performance, with contortions, horrible noises, blackened tongue, rigidity, and
levitation. Beelzebub commanded center attention, but 29 other demons also made
appearances. During the rituals, the priests tried to use more traditional methods, such as
holy water, relics, the sign of the cross, and prayers to the Virgin Mary, but these only
succeeded in angering Beelzebub. Only the host, or Eucharistthe body and BLOOD of
Christtamed him. By submitting to the host, Beelzebub confirmed the power of the Real
Presence. On one occasion, Beelzebub called the Eucharist Jack the White. Before this, the
Eucharist had not been used as a principal weapon in exorcisms, making this case unusual.

Obry occasionally suffered repossessions as often as 50 times a day, leading to mass
consumption of holy wafers. The host began to be regarded as medicine for her spiritual
sickness. Although he admitted that he was the father of lies, Beelzebub taunted Huguenot
doubters about Obrys possession, gleefully noting that their doubts of faith made them all the
more precious to him. Through Obry, Beelzebub also pointed out sinners in the masses
watching the exorcisms, revealing their secret, unconfessed sins. Many went to receive
confession, and some rejoined the church. On some days, thousands confessed out of sheer
fear of exposure by Beelzebub; priests were stationed everywhere in the cathedral to handle
the demand. As propaganda for the Catholics, Obrys sufferings were unparalleled.

French theologians did not use the accusations of demoniacs against the accused witch until
the 17th century. But it may have been the possession of Obry at Laon that planted the seeds
of such evidence. As well as identifying secret sinners, Beelzebub, through Obry, accused
some women of witchcraft while still in Vervins. According to the account by Barthelemy Faye,
a magistrate, Obry claimed that a gypsy woman, not a man, as some claimed, had bewitched
her early in her possession. In addition, the Huguenots continually claimed SORCERY and
MAGIC against Obrys mother, one of the exorcists, and a priest, Despinoys, who accompanied
Obry after her expulsion from Laon.

Beelzebub finally left Obry at 3:00 P.M. on Friday, February 8, 1566. After his expulsion, Obry
and her husband remained in Laon until, fearing outright religious war, the Huguenots
succeeded in barring Obry from the city. Still weak, Obry survived only on communion wafers.
She made one last bid for celebrity in 1577, when she became blind and was cured, not by the
host, but by the holy relic of John the Baptists head.

The Catholic Church, rejoicing in this miraculous affirmation of transubstantiation, used the
accounts of it to their greatest advantage. Future cases of possession and exorcisms relied on
the happenings at Laon, and even certain Huguenots, including Florimond De Raemond, the
historian of 16th-century heresy, were converted. Obrys redemption was celebrated at the
Cathedral of Laon on February 8 until the French Revolution at the close of 18th century.



FURTHER READING:

Calmet, Dom Augustin. The Phantom World: Concerning Apparitions and
Vampires. Ware, England: Wordsworth Editions in association with the Folklore
Society, 2001.
Walker, D. P. Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England
in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.


1611 Aix-en-Provence Possessions
FRANCE [1611]
Wikipedia.org

In 1611 at Aix-en-Provence (South of France), Father Louis Gaufridi was accused of causing
demonic possession in the Ursuline nuns at Aix. He was found guilty and burned at the stake
atop a pile of bushes, because they burned slower and hotter than logs. This case provided the
legal precedent for the conviction and execution of Urbain Grandier at Loudun more than 20
years later. In both cases, sexual themes dominated the manifestations of the possessions.

Diabolical invasion

The first 2025 years of the 17th century were host to the peak of accusations in France's
witchcraft hunt. During this time-frame, the number of cases involving demonic possession,
priests and nuns outnumber that of any other period.

Signs of a demon invasion were believed to appear at Aix-en-Provence during the year 1609
through the victim Madeleine de Demandolx de la Palud. Madeleine, a 17-year-old Ursuline
nun with a history of emotional instability, was returned often to the care of her parents to
recover from attacks of depression. Father Louis Gaufridi was a friend of Madeleine's family
and it is believed that he and Madeleine became lovers.

This rumor reached the ears of Sister Catherine de Gaumer, head of the Ursuline convent at
Marseilles. She passed the rumor on to Madeleine's mother, and words were conveyed to
Father Gaufridi that his attentions should cease immediately.

It was then that Madeleine was admitted to the Ursuline convent at Marseilles, under the
direct supervision of Mother de Gaumer. To de Gaumer, Madeleine revealed the full story of
her relations with Father Gaufridi. In order to prevent further damage and to halt any
association with Father Gaufridi, Madeleine was transferred to the distant convent at Aix. Two
years later, at the age of 19, Madeleine fell victim to what those around her considered to be
unmistakable demonic possession; her body was contorted, and in a fit of rage she destroyed
a crucifix.

Common convent practice at the time prescribed an exorcism to banish Madeleine's demons.
Not only were the first attempts futile, but further attempts brought damning accusations that
Father Gaufridi was a devil worshipper that had copulated with her since she was 17. Three
more nuns were soon found to be possessed by demons, and by the end of the year that
number had risen to eight. Sister Louise Capeau was considered to be the most extremely
afflicted; her ravings and bodily contortions were more hideous than Madeleine's.

Inquisition at Aix-en-Provence

With the situation at the Ursuline convent getting out of control, Father Romillon enlisted the
aid of the Grand Inquisitor Sebastien Michaelis. A Flemish exorcist, Father Domptius, was
called upon to continue attempts at removing the demons from the possessed nuns.

After Vrin accused Father Gaufridi of causing Madeleine's possession, reporting to the
amazed exorcist Father Domptius that 666 demons were in possession of her body, Gaufridi
was summoned from his parish to exorcise Sister Louise Capeau. For his efforts, the priest
was rewarded with denouncement as a sorcerer and cannibal. To the dangerous accusation,
Gaufridi replied, "If I were a witch, I would certainly give my soul to a thousand devils." Taken
by the inquisitors as a confession of guilt, Gaufridi was taken immediately to prison.

During this time, the possessed Sister Louise Capeau insisted loudly that Gaufridi had
committed every imaginable form of sexual perversion, alarming authorities into searching the
priest's rooms for magical books or objects. They found nothing incriminating, and were told
by his parish that he was a well regarded man.

After being released to his parish, Father Gaufridi demanded his name be cleared and that his
accusers be punished. The Grand Inquisitor remained determined that he would bring Gaufridi
to trial. In 1611 Gaufridi was brought before a court in Aix.

Trial at Aix-en-Provence

Court proceedings saw both Sisters Madeline and Louise behave in, according to 17th century
standards, a fashion typical of an advanced state of possession. Madeleine in particular was
seen to maniacally swing from violently denouncing Gaufridi as a devil worshipper and
sorcerer to retracting the accusations. She would return to charges of cannibalism, and then
turn to begging him for a single word of kindness. Twice, Madeleine attempted suicide after
the courts found the Devil's Mark on her body.

Father Gaufridi entered the courtroom after a series of physical and mental torture inflicted
during his time in prison. His body had been shaved in a search for the Devil's Mark, three of
which were found and used as evidence against him. A pact with the Devil was produced in
court, allegedly signed by Gaufridi's own blood. A confession was also produced, which
Gaufridi had signed in prison, extracted under torture. Included in the confession was an
admission of celebrating a Black Mass in order to gain power over women:

"More than a thousand persons have been poisoned by the irresistible attraction of my breath
which filled them with passion. The Lady of la Palud, the mother of Madeleine, was fascinated
like so many others. But Madeleine was taken with an unreasoned love and abandoned herself
to me both in the Sabbath and outside the Sabbath... I was marked at the Sabbath of my
contentment and I had Madeleine marked on her head, on her belly, on her legs, on her
thighs, on her feet..."

In court, Father Gaufridi strongly recanted the confession extracted from him by torture. In
the eyes of the court and 17th century Christians, the protest was useless: the signed
confession and alleged pact were evidence weighty enough to sentence the priest to death by
fire. Even after the sentence was given, inquisitors continued to demand the names of
Gaufridi's accomplices.

The sentence of Aix-en-Provence

April 30, 1611 was the day of Father Gaufridi's execution. With head and feet bare, a rope
around his neck, Gaufridi officially asked pardon of God and was handed over to torturers. Still
living after the torture of strappado and squassation, Gaufridi was escorted by archers while
dragged through the streets of Aix for five hours before arriving at the place of execution. The
priest was granted the mercy of strangulation before his body was burned to ashes.

Sister Madeleine Demandolx de la Palud renounced God and the saints before the church,
going so far as to renounce all prayers ever said on her behalf and immediately following
Gaufridi's execution was suddenly free of all possession. Her fellow demoniac, Sister Louise
Capeau, was possessed until she died. Both of the sisters were banished from the convent, but
Madeleine remained under the watch of the Inquisition. She was charged with witchcraft in
1642 and again in 1652. During her second trial, Madeleine was again found to have the
Devil's mark and was sentenced to imprisonment. At an advanced age, she was released to
the custody of a relative and died in 1670 at the age of 77.

Aix-en-Provence sets precedent

The Aix case was the first in which the testimony of an allegedly possessed person was taken
into account. Prior to the 17th century, a demonically possessed (demoniac) person was
considered unreliable when they laid accusations because most clerics believed that any words
spoken by the demoniac were from the mouth of "the father of lies" (John 8:44). By its very
nature, the utterance of a demoniac was not considered able to stand up as evidence.

The hysteria begun at Aix didn't end with Gaufridi's sentence and the banishment of the nuns.
In 1613, two years later, the possession hysteria spread to Lille where three nuns reported
that Sister Marie de Sains had bewitched them. Sister Marie's testimony was a near copy of
Sister Madeleine's renouncement two years earlier.

More than 20 years later, in 1634, the Aix-en-Provence possessions set precedent for the
conviction and execution of Urbain Grandier.

Contributions to Demonology

The demons Verrine and Sonneillon were first written of in the records of Aix-en-Provence
possessions. Exorcist Sebastien Michaelis wrote of Verrine as the demon of impatience,
second in the order of Thrones, and adversary of St. Dominic. He wrote of Sonneillon (who
possessed Sister Louise Capeau) as the Demon of Hate, fourth in the order of Thrones,
adversary of St. Stephen. Sonneillon proportedly tempts men with hatred against their
enemies. Centuries later, Richard Dukante's Hierarchy (1963) places Verrine as the demon of
health.


1632 Loudon Possessions
LOUDUN, FRANCE [1632]
Wikipedia.org

The Loudun possessions were a group of supposed
demonic possessions which took place in Loudun,
France, in 1634. This case involved the Ursuline nuns
of Loudun who were allegedly visited and possessed
by demons:

In 1632, Sister Jeanne Agnes and sixteen nuns of
the Ursuline convents, allegedly possessed by
demons, threw convulsions and used abusive
language. Father Jean-Joseph Surin exorcised the
demons by inviting them into his body. He lost mental
balance as a result. He inflicted injuries on himself
and attempted suicide. Describing the plight, he said
that he was unable to understand what happened to
him when the unknown spirit entered his body. He got
the feeling that he had two souls and that the alien
soul constituted a second personality.

Father Urbain Grandier was convicted of the crimes
of sorcery, evil spells, and the possessions visited
upon the Ursuline nuns, based on the words of
possessed nuns. Until the Aix-en-Provence
possessions of 1611, the words of the possessed nuns
would not have been considered valid evidence.

Early trials and conspiracy

Left: The pact allegedly signed between Urbain
Grandier and the Devil, stolen from the Devil's
cabinet of pacts by the demon Asmodeus. This
page shows the signatures of all demons in
possession of the Ursuline nuns at Loudun and
the note added by Asmodeus.


Urbain Grandier was appointed parish priest of
St-Pierre-du-Marche in Loudun, a town in
Poitiers, France, in 1617. Grandier was
considered to be a very good-looking man, and
was both wealthy and well-educated. The
combination made the priest a target for the
attention of girls in Loudun, one of whom was
Philippa Trincant, the daughter of the King's
solicitor in Loudun. It was believed by the people
of Loudun that Grandier was the father of
Trincant's child. In addition to Trincant, Grandier
openly courted Madeleine de Brou, daughter
of the King's councillor in Loudun. Most assumed
that Madeleine was Grandier's mistress after he
wrote a treatise against the celibacy of priests
for her.

Grandier was also a very well-connected man, high in political circles. When he was arrested
and found guilty for immorality on June 2, 1630, it was these connections that restored him to
full clerical duties within the same year. Presiding over the case was the Bishop of Poiters, a
man who was known to dislike Grandier and admitted to wanting him out of the parish.

Two stories exist about what happened next. Either the Bishop of Poiters approached Father
Mignon, confessor to the Ursuline nuns, and a plan was made to persuade a few of the sisters
to feign possession and denounce Grandier, or Father Mignon was approached by the Mother
Superior Jeanne des Anges (Joan of the Angels) for help.

According to the first story, Father Mignon readily persuaded the Mother Superior, Jeanne des
Anges, and another nun to comply. They would claim that Father Grandier had bewitched
them, falling into fits and convulsions, often holding their breath and speaking in tongues.

The second story claims that Jeanne had illicit dreams about Father Grandier, who appeared to
her as a radiant angel. As an angel, he enticed her to sexual acts, causing her to rave loudly
at night. Jeanne suffered flagellation and did penance for the night-time disturbances, but she
was no less troubled and soon it was found that other nuns were being haunted by
hallucinations and vulgar dreams. It was then, this version claims, that Mother Superior
Jeanne des Anges called for Father Mignon to hear her confession and purge the convent of
demons.

However it came about, Father Mignon and his aide, Father Pierre Barre, saw in the activity an
opportunity to remove Grandier.

Fathers Mignon and Barre immediately proceeded to perform exorcisms on the possessed
nuns. Several of the nuns, including Jeanne des Anges, suffered violent convulsions during the
procedure, shrieking and making sexual motions toward the priests. Following the lead of
Jeanne des Anges, many of the nuns reported illicit dreams. The accusers would suddenly
bark, scream, blaspheme, and contort their bodies. During the exorcisms, Jeanne swore that
she and the other nuns were possessed by two demons named Asmodeus and Zabulon. These
demons were sent to the nuns when Father Grandier tossed a bouquet of roses over the
convent walls.

Nearby and realizing the danger he was in, Father Grandier pleaded with the bailiff of Loudun
to isolate the nuns; the bailiff's orders were ignored, and the exorcisms and denouncements
continued. Desperate, Grandier wrote to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, who sent his personal
doctor to examine the nuns. No evidences of true possession were found, and the Archbishop
ordered the exorcisms to cease on March 21, 1633. The nuns were sequestered in their cells.

Having failed to remove Grandier, his contemporaries continued their efforts in earnest. One of
these was Jean de Laubardemont, a relative of Jeanne des Anges' and favored by the powerful
Cardinal Richelieu. Laubardemont and a Capuchin monk, Tranquille, visited the Cardinal with
news of the unsuccessful exorcisms and added further evidence against Grandier by providing
a copy of a libelous satire Grandier had written about Richelieu. Aware that a relative of his,
Sister Claire, was in the Loudun convent, Richelieu asserted his power and organized the Royal
Commission to arrest and investigate Grandier as a witch. Laubardemont was appointed head
of the commission.

Public exorcisms at Loudun

When exorcisms resumed at Loudun, they were led by the expert exorcists Capuchin Father
Tranquille, Franciscan Father Lactance, and Jesuit Father Jean-Joseph Surin, and they were
held publicly; up to 7,000 spectators attended. The priests employed dramatic commands,
threats, and rituals to both direct and encourage the nuns in their accusations against
Grandier.

Adding to the hysteria prompted by the public exorcisms were the stories told by both nuns
and Father Grandier's former lovers. As in both the Louviers possessions and the Aix-en-
Provence possessions, the claims made against Grandier were overtly sexual and showed
visible physical responses. Because they were public and dramatic, the citizens of Loudun and
surrounding areas were set against Grandier.

In addition to the dreams that Jeanne des Anges and other nuns had related, Jeanne added a
third demon to the array of possessors afflicting the nuns: Isacarron, the devil of debauchery.
After admitting to this third demon possessor, Jeanne went through a psychosomatic
pregnancy. In all, Jeanne and the other nuns claimed to be possessed by a multitude of
demons: Asmodeus, Zabulon, Isacaaron, Astaroth, Gresil, Amand, Leviatom, Behemot,
Beherie, Easas, Celsus, Acaos, Cedon, Alex, Naphthalim, Cham, Ureil, and Achas.

In an effort to clear his name, Father Grandier performed an exorcism on the nuns himself. He
spoke to them in Greek, testing their knowledge of languages previously unknown to the nuns
(a sure sign of possession). The nuns had been coached, and responded that they had been
ordered in their pact to never use Greek.

In another exorcism, performed by Father Gault, the priest obtained a promise from the
demon Asmodeus to leave one of the nuns he was possessing. Later, a devil's pact allegedly
written between the Devil and Grandier was presented to the court. In this pact, stolen from
Lucifer's cabinet of pacts by Asmodeus himself, was signed in blood by Grandier and various
demons. Asmodeus had apparently written out the same promise he'd given to Father Gault
on this pact:

"I promise that when leaving this creature, I will make a slit below her heart as long
as a pin, that this slit will pierce her shirt, bodice and cloth which will be bloody. And
tomorrow, on the twentieth of May at five in the afternoon of Saturday, I promise that
the demons Gresil and Amand will make their opening in the same way, but a little
smaller - and I approve the promises made by Leviatam, Behemot, Beherie with their
companions to sign, when leaving, the register of the church of St. Croix! given the
nineteenth of May, 1629."

Later historians would prove that this note was written in Jeanne des Anges' hand. An image
of the pact is presented at the top of this article.

Torture at Loudun

On December 7, 1633, Father Grandier was put in prison at the Castle of Angers. His body
was shaved and a successful search for devil's marks was made by inquisitors. Protests by the
Dr. Fourneau, the physician who prepared Grandier for torture, and the apothecary from
Poitiers were ignored. These protests claimed the inspection a hoax, and stated that no such
marks had been found.

Nicholas Aubin's 1693 The Cheats and Illusions of Romish Priest and Exorcists Discovered in
the History of the Devils of Loudun describes what happened next:

They sent for Mannouri the surgeon, one of [Grandier's] enemies, and the most
unmerciful of them all; when he [came] into the chamber, they stripped Grandier
stark naked, blinded his eyes, shaved him every where, and Mannouri began to search
him. When he would persuade them that the parts of his body which had been marked
by the Devil were insensible, he turned that end of the probe which was round, and he
guided it in such a manner, that not being able to enter into the flesh, nor to make
much impression, it was pushed back into the palm of his hand; the patient did not
then cry out, because he felt no pain; but when the barbarous surgeon would make
them see that the other parts of his body were very sensible, he turned the probe at
the other end, which was very sharp pointed, and thrust it to the very bone; and then
the abundance of people [outside] heard complaints so bitter, and cries so piercing,
that they [were] moved...to the heart

Other people spoke in Grandier's defense, even some of the possessed nuns proclaimed his
innocence. Laubardemont, fulfilling his duty to convict Grandier, explained that the nuns'
reactions were a ploy by Satan to save Grandier. Jeanne des Anges appeared in court with a
noose tied around her neck, violently stating that she would hang herself if she could not
recant her earlier lies. All defenses were ignored, and some defense witnesses were pressured
to keep silent. Publicly, Laubardemont announced that any citizens who testified in favour of
Grandier would be arrested as traitors to the King and have their possessions confiscated.
Many of these witnesses fled France.

While the defense witnesses were forced to flee, 72 witnesses swore evidence against
Grandier, who was denied the normal procedure of trial by a secular court. Had he been tried
by secular court, Grandier could have appealed to the Parliament of Paris. Instead, Richelieu's
committee took charge of the legal proceedings.

Grandier's trial took place in Loudun itself, and he was closely imprisoned in the converted
attic of a house there for the duration of it.

Nearly a year later, August 18, 1634, the Royal Commission found Grandier guilty of all counts
against him and passed sentence - Grandier would be burned alive at the stake:

We have ordered and do order the said Urbain Grandier duly tried and convicted of the crime
of magic, maleficia, and of causing demoniacal possession of several Ursuline nuns of this
town of Loudun, as well as of other secular women, together with other charges and crimes
resulting therefrom. For atonement of which, we have condemned and do condemn the said
Grandier to make amende honorable, his head bare, a rope round his neck, holding in his
hand a burning taper weighing two pounds, before the principle door of the church of St.
Pierre-du-March, and before that of St. Ursual of this town. There on his knees, to ask
pardon of God, the King, and the law; this done, he is to be taken to the public square of St.
Croix, and fastened to a stake on a scaffold, which shall be erected on the said place for this
purpose, and there to be burned alive...and his ashes scattered to the wind. We have ordered
and so do order that each and every article of his moveable property be acquired and
confiscated by the King; the sum of 500 livres first being taken for buying a bronze plaque on
which will be engraved the abstract of this present trial, to be set up in a prominent spot in
the said church of the Ursulines, to remain there for all eternity. And before proceeding to the
execution of the present sentence, we order the said Grandier to be submitted to the first and
last degrees of torture, concerning his accomplices.

All details of the sentence were carried out.

Torture was a commonplace effort to extract confessions from accused witches during the
seventeenth century, clearly recommended in the Malleus Maleficarum. Grandier was put to
preliminary torture almost immediately after sentence was passed upon him. Most accused
witches immediately confessed, telling their torturers exactly what they wanted to hear.
Father Grandier never confessed, maintaining his innocence even under the most severe forms
of torture. The method of torture used was the Brodequins, or Boot, which consisted of a total
of sixteen to eighteen wedges driven between planks strongly bound to his legs, designed to
slowly break the bones. He refused to name any accomplices, which drove Father Tranquille to
break both Grandier's legs.

Burning at Loudun

Father Grandier was promised that he could have the chance to speak before he was
executed, making a last statement, and that he would be hanged before the burning, an act of
mercy. Instead, the friars who carried Grandier's crippled body to the stake had drenched him
with large quantities of holy water so that his last words could not be heard, and the garotte
used for hanging had no slip knot; it couldn't tighten. Grandier was left to burn alive.

Witnesses to the execution reported that a large fly buzzed around Grandier's head,
symbolizing that Beelzebub, lord of the flies, had come to take Grandier's soul to hell.

Before Grandier perished, he did have the last word. Struggling, Grandier declared that Father
Lactance, present, would die in 30 days. To the day, Lactance did die, reportedly crying out,
"Grandier, I was not responsible for your death." Within the next five years, both Father
Tranquille and Dr. Mannouri, the inquisitor, died in delirium. Father Surin became haunted by
the exorcisms, eventually unable to eat, dress himself, walk, read, or write. He could not pray,
instead seeing visions of demons and black wings. He tried to kill himself in 1645 and only
recovered after the new head of the Jesuit College, Father Bastide, cared for Surin in 1648.
Surin would not walk again until 1657, 8 years before he died.

The possessions failed to stop after Father Grandier's execution. The exorcisms had been so
appreciated by the public of Loudun that they became a type of tourist attraction at the
convent. Nuns would lift their skirts and beg for sexual attention, beat their heads, walk on
their hands, and use obscene language. Public exorcisms would follow. These displays
continued until 1637, when the Duchess d'Aiguillon, niece to Cardinal Richelieu, reported the
fraud to her uncle. Having achieved his original goal, Richelieu terminated the inquisitions.

In 1634, Des Niau wrote the following description in his The History of the Devils of Loudun:

[The nuns] struck their chests and backs with their heads, as if they had their necks
broken, and with inconceivable rapidity; They twisted their arms at the joints of the
shoulder, the elbow, or the wrist, two or three times around. Lying on their stomachs,
they joined the palms of their hands to the soles of their feet; their faces became so
frightful one could not bear to look at them; their eyes remained open without
winking. Their tongues issued suddenly from their mouths, horribly swollen, black,
hard, and covered with pimples, and yet while in this state they spoke distinctly. They
threw themselves back till their heads touched their feet, and walked in this position
with wonderful rapidity, and for a long time. They uttered cries so horrible and so loud
that nothing like it was ever heard before. They made use of expressions so indecent
as to shame the most debauched of men, while their acts, both in exposing
themselves and inviting lewd behavior from those present would have astonished the
inmates of the lowest brothels in the country.

Some claim that it was actually Jeanne des Anges who had the public exorcisms stopped.
Jeanne allegedly had a vision that she would be freed from the Devil if she made a pilgrimage
to the tomb of St Franois of Assise. She went to Annecy, then visited Richelieu and King Louis
XIII in 1638. The demons were gone.

Jeanne des Anges remained convinced of her saintliness until she died in 1665.

Contribution to Demonology

The demon Gressil is written of for the first time in the records of the Loudon possessions.
Sebastien Michaelis would later assign Gressil the status of demon of impurity and
uncleanliness, third in the order of Thrones.

Modern notes

In 1866, Jean-Martin Charcot analyzed the case of the Loudun Possessions. His belief was that
the nuns were victims of hystero-demonopathy; sexually frustrated, they had turned their
erotic desires into dreams of demonic possession by Grandier, a handsome, charismatic man
who was known as a seducer of women.

Grandier became an enemy of Cardinal Richelieu after an anonymously published libelous
satire appeared in 1618 and was attributed to Grandier. Further actions by Grandier may have
played a major role in gathering the cardinal's anger. While in Loudun, Jean de Laubardemont
was to oversee the demolition of the town's fortifications, including the Castle of Loudun. Part
of Richelieu's program to eliminate Huguenot strongholds by destroying local fortifications, and
the success of his mission would have helped cement the cardinal's power both within the
church and within France.

Protestant (Huguenot) and Catholic residents of Loudun were both against the removal of their
battlements, which would leave them unprotected against mercenary armies. Grandier cited
the King's promise that Loudun's walls would not be destroyed and prevented Laubardemont
from demolishing the fortifications. Laubardemont promptly reported back to Richelieu with
the tale of failed exorcisms, the libelous satire, and Grandier's recent hindering of Richelieu's
plans.

Finally, another aim was achieved by the Loudun Possessions: conversion to Catholicism.
Many of the Protestant townspeople converted to Catholicism as a result of the public
exorcisms, further eroding any Huguenot sentiment in the region.

Historians today believe that the purpose of the injustice committed at Loudun was a mixture
of political ambition, the need for attention, and a basic desire to dispose of political
opponents.



1647 Louviers Possessions
FRANCE [1647]
Wikipedia.org

The possessions at Louviers (Normandy, France), similar to those in Aix-en-Provence,
occurred at the Louviers Convent in 1647. As with both the Aix case and its later counterpart
in Loudun, the conviction of the priests involved hinged on the confessions of possessed
demoniacs.

Accusations

Sister Madeleine Bavent was 18 years old in the year of 1625; the initial possession victim,
she claimed to have been bewitched by Mathurin Picard, the nunnery's director, and Father
Thomas Boulle, the vicar at Louviers. Her confession to authorities claimed that the two men
had abducted her and taken her to a witches' sabbat. There, she was married to the Devil,
whom she called Dagon, and committed sexual acts with him on the altar. Two men were
allegedly crucified and disemboweled as these acts took place.

Madeleine's confession prompted the investigation, which found that other nuns were also
victims of Picard and Boulle; they, too, had been taken to secret sabbats where sexual
intercourse with demons, particularly Dagon, took place. The confessions of these nuns were
accompanied by what investigators believed were classic signs of demonic possession:
contortions, unnatural body movements, speaking in tongues (glossolalia), obscene insults,
blasphemies, and the appearance of unexplainable wounds that vanished without aid.

Beyond mere symptoms of possession, the body of Sister Barbara of St. Michael was said to
be possessed by a specific demon named Ancitif.

Exorcisms

As in the decade earlier case at Loudun, the exorcisms at Louviers were a public spectacle.
Nearly every person present at the exorcisms was questioned by the inquisitors, and the
entire town of Louviers began exhibiting symptoms of hysteria as the cries of the nuns
undergoing exorcism rose with the screams of Father Boulle, who was tortured during the
exorcisms. Mathurin Picard had died previous to the public display.

Father Bosroger recorded the proceedings, which he would publish in 1652. In his account,
nuns were said to confess further evidence against Picard and Boulle. In addition to tempting
them into sexual acts, Satan (in the form of Picard and Boulle) had also tried leading the nuns
down the road of heresy. Appearing to the nuns as a beautiful angel, the Devil engaged them
in theological conversations so clever that they began to doubt their own teachings. When told
that this was not the same information they had been taught, Satan replied that he was a
messenger of heaven and had been sent to reveal the fatal errors in accepted dogma.

Signs of possession continued throughout the exorcisms. One witness wrote that a nun "ran
with movements so abrupt that it was difficult to stop her. One of the clerics present, having
caught her by the arm, was surprised to find that it did not prevent the rest of her body from
turning over and over as if the arm were fixed to the shoulder merely by a spring."

Punishment

As hysteria rose, it seemed inevitable that a trial would occur and Father Boulle's fate would
be sealed. During the exorcisms, though, parliament at Rouen passed sentence: Sister
Madeleine Bavent would be imprisoned for life in the church dungeon, Father Thomas Boulle
would be burnt alive, and the corpse of Mathurin Picard would be exhumed and burned.


Catalogue

After the nuns at Louviers were afflicted, authorities undertook the task of cataloguing the
symptoms of demonic possession. The treatise they developed included fifteen indications of
true possession:

To think oneself possessed.
To lead a wicked life.
To live outside the rules of society.
To be persistently ill, falling into heavy sleep and vomiting unusual objects (either
such natural objects as toads, serpents, maggots, iron, stones, and so forth; or such
artificial objects as nails, pins, etc.).
To utter obscenities and blasphemies.
To be troubled with spirits ("an absolute and inner possession and residence in the
body of the person").
To show a frightening and horrible countenance.
To be tired of living.
To be uncontrollable and violent.
To make sounds and movements like an animal.
To deny knowledge of fits after the paroxysm has ended.
To show fear of sacred relics and sacraments.
To curse violently at any prayer.
To exhibit acts of lewd exposure or abnormal strength.

Modern viewpoints

It is widely believed today that the Louviers Possessions, similar in many ways to those at Aix-
en-Provence (1611), Lille (1613), and Loudun (1634) were part of a political and religious
"show" in France.

They also differ from later cases of possession and witch-hunt hysteria like that in England and
Colonial America in that they involve lurid sex themes. During the exorcisms at Louviers, nuns
were seen to raise their habits and beg for sexual attention, use vulgar language, and make
lascivious movements. In the earlier case at Loudun, a local doctor named Claude Quillet
wrote, "These poor little devils of nuns, seeing themselves shut up within four walls, become
madly in love, fall into a melancholic delirium, worked upon by the desires of the flesh, and in
truth, what they need to be perfectly cured is a remedy of the flesh.

Most demonic possessions in France of this period (from the early to late 17th century) were
of young women and appeared most often in the convents. Physicians and psychologists today
attribute much of the activities to sexual hysteria, alluded to so long ago by Quillet.

Extreme seizures explained in the 17th century are today believed to point to epilepsy and
similar diseases. In the time-frame of the cases in France, demonic possession served as a
catchall explanation for any personality anomaly.

The Case of Antoine Gay
FRANCE
Wikipedia.org

Antoine Gay (May 31, 1790 June 13, 1871) was a Frenchman who was believed by some to
have been possessed by a demon named Isacaron.

Early life

Gay was born in Lantenay, Ain in 1790, the son of a public notary. He served in the First
Empire's military and became a carpenter by trade, settling in Lyon. A very religious man, he
desired to become a monk even during his youth. At the age of 46, he applied for entry into
the Abbey of La Trappe d'Aiguebelle, and was accepted as a lay brother. He subsequently left
the monastery due to a nervous disorder, which some claimed to be demon possession.

Allegations of demon possession

Friar Burnoud, a former superior of the Missionaries of La Salette, wrote a letter to the then-
Bishop of Grenoble in which he wrote that "We have examined Master Gay of Lyons three
times, each session lasting from one to two hours. We consider it very probable that this man
is possessed by a devil", citing various pieces of evidence including Gay disclosing "several
secret things about which he had no means of knowing" and his apparent ability to understand
Latin despite never having learned the language. A physician, one Dr. Pictet, expressed the
view that Gay enjoyed "perfect health of body and mind" but was also "under the influence of
some occult power, which we are naturally unable to detect by medical means" and that "we
remain convinced that his extraordinary state can only be attributed to possession", citing as
evidence "the fact that during our first interview with M. Gay, that extraordinary thing which
speaks through his mouth revealed the inmost secrets of our heart, told us the story of our life
from the age of twelve onwards, giving details that are known only to God, our confessor, and
ourselves."

Following Pictet's observations, Gay's friends tried to have him readmitted to the Abbey of La
Trappe, asking the abbot to perform an exorcism. The abbot refused because he was in the
diocese of Valence, while Gay was from the diocese of Lyons. Antoine Gay lived in Lyons for
the next few years, at one point being arrested as a lunatic and jailed for three months before
being released.

Fr. Chiron

Friar Marie-Joseph Chiron, who had founded a community that looked after the mentally
disturbed, took an interest in Antoine Gay, believing him to be possessed. One day, Chiron
brought Gay with him to the house of a woman nicknamed Chiquette, who was also allegedly
possessed by a demon that Chiron referred to as "Madeste". Fr. Chiron claimed that when Gay
met Chiquette, their demons began to argue with each other: "A remarkably violent dialogue
arose between the two fallen angels. The two devils sounded like mad dogs. They spoke a
totally unknown language, very softly and we understood nothing. I was later informed by
Isacaron, who translated the dispute for me, that it was on a question of precedence, as to
which was the greater of the two....the two possessed, it is needless to say, had never met
each other, but the devils in possession knew each other well. Six times during the following
days there occurred the same violent disputes, in the same unknown language, and in the
presence of several witnesses." Friar Chiron claimed afterward that "Such facts are
inexplicable except as cases of possession."

No exorcism was ever performed for Antoine Gay; he died in June 1871 in Lyons.


GERMANY
1970 The Case of Anneliese Michel
GERMANY
Wikipedia.org

Anneliese Michel
Born: September 21, 1952 Leiblfing, Bavaria, Germany
Died: July 1, 1976 (aged 23)

Anneliese Michel (September 21, 1952 July 1, 1976)
was a German Catholic woman who was said to be
possessed by demons and subsequently underwent an
exorcism. Two motion pictures, The Exorcism of Emily
Rose and Requiem, are loosely based on Michel's story.

Early life

Anneliese Michel was born on September 21, 1952, in Leiblfing, Bavaria, Germany to a strict
Catholic family. When she was sixteen, she suffered a severe convulsion and was diagnosed
with epilepsy. Soon, she began hallucinating while praying. In 1973, she suffered from
depression and began to hear voices telling her that she was damned and would rot in hell.

Psychiatric treatment

Being admitted to an unnamed psychiatric hospital did not improve Michels health. Moreover,
her depression began to deepen. She grew increasingly frustrated with medical intervention as
it did not help. Long-term medical treatment proved unsuccessful; her condition, including her
depression, worsened with time. Having centered her life around devout Catholic faith, Michel
began to attribute her condition to demonic possession. Michel became intolerant of sacred
places and objects, such as the crucifix, which she attributed to her own demonic possession.
Throughout the course of the religious rites Michel underwent, she was prescribed anti-
psychotic drugs, which she may or may not have stopped taking.

In June 1970, Michel suffered a third seizure at the psychiatric hospital she had been staying
in and was prescribed anti-convulsants for the first time. The name of this drug is not known
(Gambutrol, mentioned in a movie loosely based on her story, is a fictional drug) and it did not
bring about immediate alleviation of Michels symptoms. She also continued talking about
what she called devil faces, seen at various times of the day. Michel became convinced
that conventional medicine was of no help. Growing increasingly adamant that her illness was
of a spiritual kind, she appealed to the Church to perform an exorcism on her. That same
month, she was prescribed another drug, Aolept (pericyazine), which is a phenothiazine with
general properties similar to those of chlorpromazine: pericyazine is used in the treatment of
various psychoses, including schizophrenia and disturbed behavior. In November 1973, Michel
started her treatment with Tegretol (carbamazepine), which is an anti-seizure drug and mood
stabilizer. Michel took this medicine frequently, until shortly before her death.

Exorcism and death

Anneliese went on a pilgrimage to San Damiano with a good friend of the family, Thea Hein,
who regularly organized such pilgrimages to holy places not officially recognized by the
church. Because Anneliese was unable to walk past a crucifix and refused to drink the
water of a holy spring, her escort concluded that she was suffering from demonic
possession. Both Anneliese and her family became convinced she was possessed and
consulted several priests, asking for an exorcism. The priests declined, recommended the
continuation of medical treatment and informed the family that exorcisms required the
bishop's permission. Eventually, in a nearby town, they came across vicar Ernst Alt, who, after
seeing Anneliese, declared that she didn't look like an epileptic and that he didn't see her
having seizures. He believed she was suffering from demonic possession. Alt urged the bishop
to allow an exorcism. In September 1975, Bishop Josef Stangl granted Father Renz permission
to exorcise according to the Rituale Romanum of 1614, but ordered total secrecy. Renz
performed the first session on September 24.

Once convinced of her possession, Anneliese, her parents, and the exorcists stopped seeking
medical treatment, and put her fate solely into the
hands of the exorcism rites. Sixty-seven exorcism
sessions, one or two each week, lasting up to four
hours, were performed over about ten months in
1975 and 1976. At some point, Michel began
talking increasingly about dying to atone for the
wayward youth of the day and the apostate priests
of the modern church, and refused to eat. At her
own request, doctors were no longer being
consulted.

On July 1, 1976, Anneliese died in her sleep. The
autopsy report stated her cause of death as
malnutrition and dehydration from almost a year
of semi-starvation while the rites of exorcism were
performed. She weighed 68 pounds (30.91
kilograms).

Prosecution

After an investigation, the state prosecutor maintained that Michels death could have been
prevented even one week before she died.

In 1976, the state charged Anneliese's parents and priests Father Ernst Alt and Father Arnold
Renz with neglectful homicide. During the case Anneliese's body was exhumed and tapes were
played to the court of the exorcisms over the eleven months leading to her death. The parents
were defended by Erich Schmidt-Leichner. The state asked that no involved parties be jailed;
instead the recommended sentence for the priests was a fine. The prosecution asked the
parents be recused from punishment as they had "suffered enough".

Trial and courtroom charges

The trial started on March 30, 1978, in the district court and drew intense interest. Before the
court, the doctors claimed the woman was not possessed, although Dr. Richard Roth, who was
asked for medical help by Father Alt, allegedly said after the exorcism he witnessed on May
30, 1976, that there is no injection against the devil, Anneliese. The priests were defended
by lawyers retained by the Church, and the parents were defended by Erich Schmidt-Leichner.
Schmidt-Leichner claimed that the exorcism was legal and that the German constitution
protected citizens in the unrestricted exercise of their religious beliefs. The defense played
tapes recorded at the exorcism sessions, sometimes featuring what was claimed to be
demons arguing, as proof that Michel was indeed possessed. Both priests presented their
deeply held conviction that she was possessed and that she was finally freed by exorcism just
before she died. Ultimately, the accused were found guilty of manslaughter resulting from
negligence and were sentenced to six months in jail (which was later suspended) and three
years of probation. It was a far lighter sentence than anticipated but it was more than
demanded by the prosecution, who had asked that the priests only be fined and that the
parents be found guilty but not punished. During the trial, the major lingering issues were
related to the Church itself. A not-guilty verdict could be seen as opening the gate to more
exorcism attempts, and possibly unfortunate outcomes. But for the most part, experienced
observers believed the effect would be the opposite: that merely bringing charges of negligent
homicide against priests and parents would provoke changes and more caution in the carrying
out of exorcisms.

Exhumation

Before the trial, the parents asked the authorities for permission to exhume the remains of
their daughter. They did so as a result of a message received from a Carmelite nun from the
district of Allgu in southern Bavaria. The nun had told the parents that a vision had revealed
to her that their daughters body was still intact and that this authenticated the supernatural
character of her case. The official reason presented by the parents to authorities was that
Michel had been buried in undue hurry in a cheap coffin. Almost two years after the burial, on
February 25, 1978, her remains were replaced in a new oak coffin lined with tin.

The official reports state that the body bore the signs of consistent deterioration. The accused
exorcists were discouraged from seeing the remains of Michel. Father Arnold Renz later stated
that he had been prevented from entering the mortuary.

Legacy

Bishop Josef Stangl, who approved the exorcism and corresponded by letter on the case with
the two priests a dozen times, also was investigated by state authorities. It was decided not to
indict him or summon him to appear at the trial due to his age and poor health. The bishop
stated that his actions were all within the bounds of canon law.

Today, Michels grave in Klingenberg am Main remains a place of pilgrimage for many
Catholics who consider Anneliese Michel a devout believer who experienced extreme sufferings
to assist departed souls in purgatory, and for the conversion of sinners.

Since her death, it has been speculated that Michel may have had dissociative identity
disorder (commonly known as multiple personality disorder). Some doctors have suggested
that many of Michels symptoms are consistent with, and suggestive of, mental disorders in
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) section on dissociative
disorders, and/or with behaviors observed in patients with these disorders, such as the
temporary adoption of bizarre, rigid body postures (dystonia); the use of the first-person
plural pronoun we to describe ones self; the markedly dilated pupils not explained by any
external stimuli; full or partial amnesia; the emergence of distinct personalities among the
demons; Michels feeling as though her body was acting outside her volition
(depersonalization); fear or rejection of sexuality; the persistence of these symptoms despite
medical treatment, and in absence of any known medical cause; and many others.


External Links

Anneliese Michel Exorcism Audio with English Translation
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=9C74D823B4021461
Anneliese Michel Voice Audio
http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/emilyrose/annmichaud.mp3


Questioning the Story
http://www.chasingthefrog.com/index.html

When did Anneliese begin to experience strange
symptoms?
In 1968, when she was 17 and still in high school, Anneliese
began to suffer from convulsions. Court findings have her
experiencing her first epileptic attack in 1969. It was then that
a neurologist at the Psychiatric Clinic Wurzburg diagnosed her
with Grand Mal epilepsy. Soon, Anneliese started experiencing
devilish hallucinations while praying. She also began to hear
voices, which told her that she was damned. The court
determined that by 1973 Anneliese was suffering from
depression and considering suicide. In 1975, convinced that
she was possessed, her parents gave up on the doctors from
the psychiatric clinic. They chose to rely solely on the
exorcisms for healing (washingtonpost.com). Anneliese's
symptoms have since been compared with those of
schizophrenia, and they may have responded to treatment
(telegraph.co.uk).

Who first diagnosed Anneliese as being possessed?
The first unofficial diagnosis was made by an older woman who accompanied Anneliese on a
pilgrimage. She noticed that Anneliese avoided walking past a particular image of Jesus, and
that she refused to drink water from a holy spring. The woman also claimed that Anneliese
smelled hellishly bad (washingtonpost.com). An exorcist from a nearby town examined
Anneliese and concluded that she was demonically possessed. After two failed requests, the
rite of exorcism was finally granted by the Bishop.

Was Tom Wilkinson's character of Father
Moore based on a real person?
The movie's Father Moore was based on Father
Arnold Renz and Pastor Ernst Alt (shown at left).
Both men were assigned by the Bishop of Wurzburg,
Josef Stangl, to carry out "The Great Exorcism" on
Anneliese Michel. The foundation for this ritual was
the "Rituale Romanum", which at the time, was still
a valid 17th century Cannon Law. Father Arnold Renz
had been a former missionary in China, and Pastor
Ernst Alt was a pastor in a nearby community.
Together they carried out 67 rites of exorcism over a
period of 10 months, with one or two exorcism sessions held each week. Some sessions lasted
up to four hours (moviesonline.ca).

Did Anneliese Michel really see the faces of demons on the people around her like
Emily Rose did in the film?
According to The Washington Post, as she grew more convinced that she was possessed,
Anneliese began to see the faces of demons on the people and things around her.

What demons possessed Anneliese?
Anneliese was convinced that she had been possessed by several demons, including Lucifer,
Judas Iscariot, Nero, Cain, Hitler, and Fleischmann, a disgraced Frankish Priest from the
16th century. She also mentioned a few other damned souls who had manifested themselves
through her. (moviesonline.ca)

Did Anneliese's mother Anna support the making of the film?
No. Anneliese's mother did not support the making of The Exorcism of Emily Rose. "I don't
want to see the film and I don't know anything about it," Mrs. Michel said, who was at the
time in her eighties. Anneliese's father Josef died six years prior to the film's release.
(telegraph.co.uk)

How many people were found guilty in Anneliese Michel's death?
Anneliese's parents and the exorcists were found guilty of negligence.In the 2005 film, The
Exorcism of Emily Rose, only one of the characters, Father Richard Moore (Tom Wilkinson),
was found guilty of negligent homicide surrounding the death of Emily Rose. In the real-life
case of Anneliese Michel, which took place in 1978, there were four defendants, not just one.
They were Father Arnold Renz, Pastor Ernst Alt, and Anneliese Michel's parents, Josef and
Anna. All four were found guilty of negligent homicide and sentenced to six months in prison,
suspended with three years' probation.
(washingtonpost.com)

Is it possible that Anneliese was copying what she had seen in William Friedkin's
1973 film The Exorcist?
Director William Friedkin's film The Exorcist was released in Germany in 1974, two years prior
to the audio tapings of the exorcisms in which we hear Anneliese's recorded voice (listen
below). Even though her voice is quite chilling, it bares a striking resemblance to the growling,
barking, and inhuman voice of Linda Blair from Friedkin's film. This has caused some people to
conclude that Anneliese was simply mimicking what she had seen in the film, if she had in fact
seen the film. Upon its release in Germany, the movie created a sort of paranormal hysteria
that swept the nation. European Psychiatrists reported an increase of obsessive ideas among
their patients (moviesonline.ca). The movie however, does not provide explanation for the
years prior to 1974, in which she was experiencing numerous other afflictions that she and
those close to her had attributed to demonic possession.

What other disturbing things did Anneliese do?
Anneliese carried out a number of highly disturbing actions. She licked her own urine off the
floor. She ate flies, spiders, and coal. She bit off the head of a dead bird. In one instance,
she crawled under a table and barked like a dog for two days. She could often be heard
screaming through the walls for hours. Tearing off her clothes and urinating on the
floor became a regular occurrence. (moviesonline.ca)

Did the exorcisms cause her bodily harm?
Yes. Anneliese endured 67 rites of exorcism over a period of 10
months. Over time, the ligaments in her knees ruptured due to the
600 genuflections that she performed obsessively during each
exorcism session. A genuflection is an act of reverence consisting of
falling onto one or both knees (called a "double genuflection"). On
June 30, 1976, during her last rite of exorcism before her death, too
weak and emaciated to perform the genuflections on her own,
Anneliese's parents stood and helped carry her through the
motions. (moviesonline.ca)

Was there a doctor present during the exorcisms as in the film?
No. Around Easter time of the year that she died, Anneliese began to refuse food and drink.
Her convulsions returned with a greater ferocity. No doctors were called (time-
proxy.yaga.com). During the trial, specialists claimed that if the four accused (Father Arnold
Renz, Pastor Ernst Alt, and the parents) would have begun to force feed Anneliese a week
before her death, then she would still be alive. One of Anneliese's sisters explained to the
court during the 1978 trial that Anneliese did not want to go to a mental hospital where she
would be drugged and forced to eat (moviesonline.ca).

In her book, The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel, Felicitas D. Goodman embraces the possibility
that Anneliese was not epileptic, and that the medication the doctors had given her to control
her seizures only made her hallucinations worse.


Why did Anneliese Michel refuse to eat?
She forced herself to fast because she believed that it
would rid her of Satan's influence. At the time of her
death, she weighed only 68 lbs (telegraph.co.uk). Prior to
her death, she had spoke of dying to atone for the sins of
the wayward youth and apostate priests of the modern
church (washingtonpost.com).




What did Anneliese technically die from?
Anneliese's gravesite in Klingenberg Cemetery,
Germany.According to the autopsy, on July 1, 1976 Anneliese
Michel succumbed to the effects of severe dehydration and
malnourishment. At the time of her death, she was also
suffering from Pneumonia and a high fever (1g3.com). She was
buried next to her illegitimate sister Martha at the outer edges
of the cemetery. This area is normally reserved for illegitimate
children and suicides (telegraph.co.uk).


What were Anneliese Michel's last words?
Weak and on the verge of death, she spoke her last known words on the day before she died.
She told her exorcists "Beg for Absolution". To her mother Anna, she said, "Mother, I'm
afraid." (moviesonline.ca)

Had Anneliese been a deeply religious person prior to 'being possessed'?
Yes. Anneliese and her three sisters were raised in a strict Catholic family. Her father Josef
had considered training as a priest and three of her aunts were nuns.

Four years before Anneliese was born, her mother gave birth to an illegitimate daughter,
Martha. As a result, her mother suffered great shame and was forced to wear a black veil on
her wedding day. When Anneliese was a child, her mother encouraged her to atone for the
sins of illegitimacy through fervent devotion. When Anneliese's sister Martha died at the age of
eight during an operation to remove a kidney tumor, this likely only increased Anneliese's
desire to do penance for her mother (telegraph.co.uk).

As she grew older, Anneliese continued to suffer for the sins of others. When she was a
teenager, Anneliese slept on a bare stone floor to atone for the sins of wayward priests and
drug addicts, who could be observed sleeping on the hard ground at the local train station
(washingtonpost.com). In college at West Germany's University of Wrzburg, she hung
pictures of saints on her dorm room walls, kept a holy-water font near the door, and regularly
prayed the Rosary (time-proxy.yaga.com). As stated earlier, even close to her death she
spoke of dying to atone for the sins of the wayward youth and renegade priests.

Is it possible that the priests who performed the exorcisms provided Anneliese with
the contents of her psychotic behavior?
"Doctrinaire Induction" theorizes that it was the exorcists who provided Anneliese with the
basis for her demonic behavior. Some experts believe that this is possible. Psychiatrists who
testified during the trial spoke about the "Doctrinaire Induction", which in relation to Anneliese
explains that she accepted her behavior as a form of demonic possession, mainly because the
exorcists introduced much of the idea to her and reinforced it with each exorcism
(moviesonline.ca). In 1984, German bishops and theologians petitioned Rome to change the
exorcism rite. They concluded that speaking directly or "imperatively" to the Devil, that is, "I
command thee, unclean spirit . . . " only confirms to the patient that they are without a doubt
possessed (moviesonline.ca).
1831 Maid of Orlach Possession
ORLACH, WURTEMBERG, GERMANY

The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology
By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

The most remarkable POSSESSION case from the fi les of the German mesmerist Justinus
Kerner. The Maid of Orlach was a dairymaid over whom a White Spirit and a Black Spirit
fought for control. The spirits were those of a sinning nun and a murderous monk. In the end,
a house had to be destroyed to get rid of the possessing DEMON. The account of the maid is in
Kerners 1834 book Geschichten Besessener neurer Zeit (Histories of Modern Possession).

Strange events began in February 1831 at the farm home of a Lutheran peasant named
Grombach, who lived in the tiny village of Orlach, Wurtemberg, Germany. The activity
centered in the cowhouse and involved his daughter, Magdalene, the maid. First, the cows
were affected and poltergeist phenomena occurred. The cows would be mysteriously tied
to new spots, and their tails were braided. Grombach kept watch but caught no visible
person in the act. Magdalene one day received a sharp blow to one of her ears that sent her
cap flying. From February 8 through February 11, mysterious fires broke out in the cow
house. Then, Magdalene heard a child whimpering in the cottage house, but none could be
seen.

A shadowy gray apparition of a woman appeared to Magdalene against a wall in the cow
house. The spirit, which became known as the White Spirit, said the fires had been caused by
an evil spirit, but that she had protected the family. She said that 400 years earlier, she had
been a 14-year-old girl who was sent against her will to a convent, where she had committed
a sin she could not reveal. She told Magdalene that the house must be destroyed by March
5 the following year. It told her, Flee from the house! Flee from the house! If it is not pulled
down before the fifth of March of the coming year a misfortune will happen to you . . . promise
me that you will do it! The girl agreed.

The White Spirit appeared frequently to the maid until May. It also spoke in religious
language and prayed the 112th Psalm. It read Magdalenes thoughts and accurately predicted
future events. No one but she could see it. In May, the White Spirit announced that she would
not be able to visit for some time, and Magdalene would be persecuted by the Black Spirit,
her evil companion. Magdalene should never answer him, no matter what happened.

The Black Spirit took various guises, such as frogs, a black cat, dogs, a headless horse, and
disembodied male voices that followed the maid, mocking her. Then, it began showing up as a
monk, tempting her with questions. The Black Spirit sometimes imitated the voices of
neighbors in order to trick the girl into answering, but she held fast in her silence to him.

A bag of coins mysteriously appeared in the barn, and the Black Spirit said he put it there to
compensate the maid for the box on the ear. Soon, the White Spirit appeared and told the
maid that the money must be given to the poor. It was.

After this, the Black Spirit intensified his attacks on Magdalene. He appeared as a bear on July
15 and threatened to plague her if she would not answer him. From then on, he appeared in
various monstrous, animalistic shapes, promising her money and threatening her with torture.

On August 21, the Black Spirit appeared as a horrible animal with its neck in the middle
of its body. The maid fainted and was unconscious for several hours. The fainting episodes
happened again on the following days. She could answer questions while entranced but could
not remember anything when she awakened. She said that the Black Spirit came upon her and
then disappeared when the White Spirit arrived.

On August 23, the White Spirit said she would protect Magdalene from harm but urged her to
proceed with demolishing the familys house, to end her suffering. The spirit said that the
Black Spirit would take complete possession of her, but that she, the White Spirit, would take
Magdalene away to a place of safety when that happened. These developments fi nally
prompted Magdalenes father to begin tearing down the house.

Beginning on August 25, Magdalene fell under intensified attacks from the Black Spirit, who
was able to take over her body and speak through her mouth. A description of the manner of
possession is as follows:

In the midst of her work she would see the figure of a man clothed in a monks frock,
which seemed to be made from black mist, approach and say, when she refused to answer his
questions: Now I will enter thy body in spite of thee. Then she always felt him tread on her
left side, seize her with five cold fi ngers at the back of the neck and then enter her body. She
lost consciousness and individuality. Her voice was no longer her own, but that of the monks.
The speeches which she uttered when in this state were worthy of a demon. Magdalene lay
during the whole time with her head sunk towards her left side, and her eyes firmly closed; if
the eyelids were raised the pupils would be discovered upwards. The left foot
constantly moved up and down upon the ground throughout the attack, which frequently
lasted four or five hours.

TRAUGOTT KONSTANTIN OESTERREICH stated of these occurrences:

He (the possessing spirit) speaks of her, he knows quite well that she is alive, but he pretends
that she is not there, but it is he who is there, and he pours out abuse and calumnies against
the girl herself, whom he never calls anything except the sow. During these fits the spirit of
darkness now utters through her words worthy of a mad demon, things which have no place in
this true-hearted maid, curses upon the Holy Scriptures, the Redeemer, and all the saints.

Her transformation of personality was so marked, said Oesterreich, that it was exactly as if a
stronger man drove the owner from his house and looked out of the window at his ease,
making himself at home. Magdalenes head would move from side to side while the Black
Spirit was in her and then flop to the right when it left. If a Bible was placed nearby, the Black
Spirit hissed like a serpent and tried to spit on it.

Magdalene remembered nothing from the attacks, except a faint memory of having attended
church, presumably the way she perceived the protection of the White Spirit. Her left foot
always went cold during the attacks, while her right foot stayed warm. But upon awakening,
she could walk normally and felt nothing wrong with either foot.

Magdalene was taken to doctors, who said she had a natural illness and prescribed pills or
medications, but none helped her. Finally Grombach took her to see Kerner. He tried magnetic
passes two or three times, but the Black Spirit immediately neutralized them with
countermovements of the girls hands. Kerner recommended prayer and a sparse diet.
Magdalene did not respond to those, either, but Kerner was confi dent the matter would
resolve itself according to the White Spirits promise of a cure by March 5.

Word spread about the girls afflictions, and crowds would gather to watch her when she was
possessed. On March 4, the day before the White Spirits deadline, the White Spirit appeared
to the maid at six in the morning. She confessed her sins: She had been seduced by the monk
who was now the Black Spirit and had lived with him. When she tried to reveal his wickedness,
he had murdered her. While the spirit spoke, a phantom black dog appeared and spit fire. The
White Spirit reached her hand toward the maid, who touched it with a handkerchief. The cloth
sparkled and then exhibited holes that matched a palm print.

The White Spirit said she was now freed from earthly concerns and said farewell. The maid
was taken to a neighbors house, where the Black Spirit took possession, during which the girl
ate no food. A huge crowd gathered to witness this and to question the demon, which gave
accurate answers.

Deliverance occurred when the Black Spirit prayed during the night of March 4 and for the first
time could say the words JESUS, Bible, church, and heaven. He confessed all of his crimes,
including murders. He said there is a reckoning after death, and he must appear at the
judgment seat a second time after he departed the maid.

The last wall of the Gromlach cottage was destroyed at 11:30 on the morning of March 5. The
Black Spirit left Magdalene in an astounding transformation back to radiant health. She was
never troubled again.

Old bones were found in the debris of the house, including those of children, who people
assumed were the victims of the monk.

FURTHER READING:


Oesterreich, Traugott K. Possession and Exorcism. Secaucus, N.J: University
Books, 1966.
Stead, W. T. Borderland: A Casebook of True Supernatural Stories. Hyde Park,
N.Y.: University Books, 1970.

The Exorcism by Johann Blumhardt
GERMANY [19th century]
Wikipedia.org

Johann Christoph Blumhardt (18051880) was
a German Lutheran theologian and the father of
Christoph Blumhardt. The elder Blumhardt was
educated for the Lutheran ministry and, after
several years teaching in a missionary training
school, became pastor in Mttlingen, an obscure
village of Wrttemberg, southern Germany. His
career was uneventful until, in 1842, he had to
deal with one of his parishioners, a young woman,
Gottlieben Dittus, who suffered some sort of
severe nervous disorder and whose household was
visited with strange psychic phenomena.
Blumhardt concluded that the case was of a kind
with those reported in the New Testament as
demon possession. After two months of pastoral
care and reverent hesitation, discovering that he
had no wisdom or power that could help, he and
the girl prayed together: Lord Jesus, help us. We
have watched long enough what the devil does;
now we want to see what the Lord Jesus can do.
This prayer-battle continued for almost two years
without changethe situation deteriorating, if
anything.

Finally came the moment of crisis. At a point when Blumhardts prayer and the girls trouble
were at a pitch, Gottliebens sister (who had recently come under demonic attack herself) in a
strange voice suddenly uttered the cry, Jesus Is Victor! and it was all over. Gottlieben later
became a servant in the Blumhardt household and lived there the rest of her life; but she was
never troubled again. Blumhardt understood the voice to be that of the demons who had just
been conquered and expelled. There is much in this story at which modern readers inevitably
will look askance (as in the story to follow as well); but it must be said that both of the
Blumhardts were solid, unflappable characters with nothing of the fanatic about them.

The Case of Theobald and Joseph Bruner (Burner)
GERMANY [19th century]

The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology
By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

French case considered a classic example of demonic POSSESSION and EXORCISM. Two
brothers, Theobald and Joseph Bruner of Illfurt (Illfurth), Alsace, exhibited all the accepted
signs of diabolic interferencecontortions, blasphemies, levitation, speaking in
unknown languages, revulsion toward holy objects, and clairvoyancewhile the DEVIL
was successfully driven out through organized rituals.

Theobald (Thiebaut), born in 1855, and Joseph, born in 1857, fi rst began displaying unusual
and frightening behavior in September 1865. Confined mostly to their beds for the next two
years, the boys would entwine their legs, sometimes every two or three hours, in knots so
tight that no human pressure could unentangle them. They would stand on their
heads for hours, bend completely backward; become rigid; and undergo attacks of
vomiting, expelling great quantities of yellow foam, seaweed, and foul-smelling
feathers.

The boys levitated as well, rising upward while remaining seated or in bed. Sometimes
their mother, seated on the bed while it rose off the floor, would be thrown into the corner.
Their room was unbearably hot, although no stove was lit; only by sprinkling holy water on
the bed did the rooms temperature return to normal. Furniture flew about the room, the
drapes would fall down by themselves, and the windows would burst open. The entire
house shook, as if from an earthquake.

More disturbing were the boys increasing fascination with the Devil and hatred of holy
objects. They would draw devilish faces on the walls by their bed and talk to them.
Rosaries or sacred relics placed on or under their bed would send the boys into hysterical fits,
hiding under the covers and screaming blasphemies. The blessed host was particularly
loathsome, and pictures of the Virgin Mary, or even the mention of her name, drove the boys
crazy. According to the records kept by the local priest, Father Karl (Charles) Brey, if a
clergyman or pious Catholic visited the house, the possessed children crawled hastily under a
table or bed, or jumped out the window. But when someone of less fervent faith entered, the
boys were delighted, proclaiming, That one is one of ours. They should all be like that!

The final proof of their possession was the boys ability to speak in foreign languages
English, Latin, and various Spanish dialectsunknown to them and to display paranormal, or
clairvoyant, knowledge of outside events. Father Brey told that two hours before one
woman died, Theobald knelt in his bed and acted as if he were ringing a mourning bell. On
another occasion, Theobald rang his imaginary mourning bell for an entire hour, claiming it
was for the death of Gregor Kunegel. Kunegels daughter happened to be in the house and
angrily denied her fathers death, protesting that he was not even ill but working as a mason
on a new seminary building. Theobald answered that the man had fallen, as indeed he had,
and broken his neck.

It was about four years until the Bruners and Father Brey agreed on a diagnosis of demonic
possession and convinced Father Breys bishop to approve an exorcism. Finally, Theobald was
sent to the St. Charles Orphanage at Schiltigheim, near Strasbourg, on October 3, 1869. Held
by three strong men and forced to stand before the altar, Theobald remained silent for three
days (other accounts say two), only drooling a thick yellow froth. On the fourth day, he roared
in a horrible voice that he had arrived and was furious. When the nun asked who had come,
the Devil in Theobald answered, I am the Lord of Darkness! At that point, Theobald was
placed in a straitjacket, as he began tearing his clothes and breaking everything in reach.
Finally, after the exorcist, Father Stumpf, again called upon the Virgin, Theobald screamed in
agony and pitched forward in a deep sleep. When he became conscious, he was himself again
and had no memory of the previous three days.

Father Brey himself exorcized Joseph, also in the orphanage, on October 27. After only three
hours of frantic struggling and screaming, the Devil released him. As was Theobald, Joseph
was surprised to find himself in church and did not remember his ordeal.

Unfortunately, the boys did not live long, peaceful lives. Theobald died two years later, at age
16, while Joseph died in 1882 at age 25.

FURTHER READING:

Oesterreich, Traugott K. Possession and Exorcism. Secaucus, N.J: University Books, 1966.



AUSTRIA
1583 Vienna Possession
VIENNA, AUSTRIA

The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology
By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Teenaged girl possessed of more than 12,000 DEMONs, allegedly sent by her grandmother.
The Vienna Possession case has political overtones of anti-Protestant propaganda.

In 1583, a 16-year-old girl in the village of Manx near Vienna, Austria, began suffering from
severe cramps. She was determined by local authorities to be possessed and was sent to
Vienna to the Jesuit chapel of St. Barbara for EXORCISM. After eight weeks of intense daily
exorcisms, the priests succeeded in expelling 12,652 DEMONS, one of the highest numbers
on record in demonic possession cases. The thousands of demons who had possessed her
made her so heavy that she could scarcely be carried from place to place. The wagoner who
transported her every day from the hospital to the chapel said that she seemed to be made of
lead and iron, and the horses sweated profusely in pulling her cart.

The priests, of course, sought to assign blame. The girl told them that she was often in the
company of her grandmother, Elisabeth Pleinarcher, who took her to Lutheran weddings and
church services. The priests pressured her to state that Pleinarcher kept demons in the forms
of flies in a bottle, and she had used these against the girl.

The confession enabled Kaspar Neubeck, the bishop of Vienna, to arrest Pleinarcher. The 70-
year-old woman was imprisoned and tortured until she said that her granddaughters story
was true that she had accomplished the possession by sending the DEVIL into an APPLE that
she had given the girl to eat. Pleinarcher also confessed to attending SABBATs for 50 years.
She had copulated with the Devil in the forms of a cat, a goat, and even a ball of thread.
Pleinarcher was tied to the tail of a horse and dragged through Vienna to the Richplatz, where
she was burned alive.

Not long after the execution, a Jesuit priest, Georg Scherer, preached a lengthy sermon about
the case, urging Viennese officials to increase their diligence against WITCHCRAFT.

FURTHER READING:

Lea, Henry Charles. Materials toward a History of Witchcraft.Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1939.

VATICAN
2009 The St. Peters Square Incident
Pope chased demons from St. Peters Squareexorcist
Agence France-Presse
11:13 pm | Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
http://www.inquirer.net

VATICAN CITYA blessing by Pope Benedict XVI exorcised the devil from two howling men
during a general audience in St. Peters Square in 2009, a leading Catholic exorcist says in an
upcoming book.

Extracts from the book by Gabriele Amorth, a well-known exorcist for the diocese of Rome
who has already written two books on treating demonic afflictions, were published in
Panorama magazine on Thursday.

The Vatican has denied that the pope performed an exorcism on the men.

Amorth said two of his helpers brought the men, known only as Giovanni and Marco, to the
audience to see the pope, where they began to shake, becoming increasingly agitated and
showing violent signs of being possessed.

When one of the helpers asked Giovanni to control himself, he said, I am not Giovanni in a
voice that was not his own, before throwing himself on the floor along with Marco when the
popes car arrived, Amorth said.

The two possessed men fell to the floor and banged their heads on the ground. The Swiss
guards watched but did nothing, perhaps they have seen how the possessed react when faced
by the pope before? Amorth said.

The pope began to wave to the crowd and Giovanni and Marco started to howl, drool, shake
and fly into a rage. The pope did not get flustered, he raised an arm and blessed the four
people.

The possessed were then hit by a wild jolt, their whole bodies were hit. They flew three
meters backwards and howled no longer, he said.

The Vaticans spokesman Federico Lombardi told AFP that the pope had no idea who the men
were or that they were there that day.

Even if the facts are true, its not correct to talk about an exorcism by the pope, who was not
warned or aware of their presence. There is no connection, and the pope had no intention to
perform an exorcism, he said.

Exorcism is an ancient practice of evicting demons from a person or place, and exists in
several religions.

John Paul II is said to have performed several exorcisms in the Vatican in 1982 and 2000.

2013 The Case of Angelo
Vatican denies video footage shows pope exorcism
Agence France-Presse
12:56 am | Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013
http://www.inquirer.net

VATICAN CITY The Vatican on Tuesday denied that Pope Francis had performed an exorcism
after an Italian religious television channel said footage of the pontiff blessing a boy in a
wheelchair showed he had.

The Holy Father did not intend to perform any exorcism, Vatican spokesman Federico
Lombardi said in a statement, after the claims by TV 2000, which is owned by the Italian
bishops conference.

As he often does with sick and suffering people who are presented to him, he simply intended
to pray for the suffering person, Lombardi said.

The channel quoted exorcists saying there was no doubt the pope was either reciting a prayer
for freeing from the devil or performing an exorcism.

The footage recorded by Vatican television shows the pontiff briefly laying both hands on the
boys head on the sidelines of a Pentecost ceremony on Sunday.

The boy is seen shaking opening his mouth as if screaming for a few seconds.

TV 2000 director Dino Boffo issued an apology on Tuesday, saying I unconsciously gave the
go ahead for the publication of a piece of news that was true but only partly so, because the
Pope denies having performed an exorcism.

The Vaticans former chief exorcist Gabriele Amorth said Sunday that Francis act was an
exorcism alright and if Father Lombardi denies this, he clearly does not have a clue.

That was a real exorcism and what is more, the boy the pope exorcised came to me today,
Amorth said in a radio interview quoted in La Stampa dailys Vatican Insider insert.

His name is Angelo and he is possessed by four demons. I performed a long exorcism on
him, he added.

Amorth insisted that the popes gesture does qualify as an exorcism because an exorcism is
also performed by placing ones hands on a persons head and praying, without resorting to
written exorcisms.

TV2000, which has previously aired claims that the popes predecessors John Paul II and
Benedict XVI also exorcised the devil, is to broadcast a special program on Friday devoted to
the popes struggle against the devil and his seductions.

Exorcism is an ancient practice of driving out demons from a person or place, and exists in
several religions including in Roman Catholicism, where it is treated with huge scepticism by
many believers.

OTHER
*The Case of David Berkowitz







Mass Hysteria




The following pages contain several accounts of various types of mass
hysteria.
Mass hysteria
Wikipedia.org

Mass hysteriaother names include collective hysteria, group hysteria, or collective
obsessional behavioris the manifestation of the same or similar hysterical symptoms by
more than one person. A common manifestation of mass hysteria occurs when a group of
people believe they are suffering from a similar disease or ailment. sometimes referred to as
Mass Psychogenic Illness or epidemic hysteria.

Characteristics

Mass hysteria presenting as collective symptoms of disease is sometimes referred to as Mass
Psychogenic Illness or epidemic hysteria. Mass hysteria typically begins when an individual
becomes ill or hysterical during a period of stress. After this initial individual shows symptoms,
others begin to manifest similar symptoms, typically nausea, muscle weakness, fits or
headache.

Sightings of modern religious miracles are often attributed to mass hysteria.

Specific examples

In 2007 near Chalco, a working-class suburb of Mexico City, mass hysteria resulted in
a massive outbreak of unusual symptoms suffered by adolescent female students at
Children's Village School, a Catholic boarding-school. The afflicted students had
difficulty walking and were feverish and nauseated.

In 2008 in Tanzania, about 20 female school pupils began to faint in a schoolroom,
collapsing to the floor and losing consciousness, while others after witnessing this
sobbed, yelled and ran around the school. A local education officer was quoted in news
reports saying that such events are "very common here".

In 2009 in Fort Worth, Texas, 34 people were sent to the hospital after they
complained about having symptoms when they mistakenly thought they had been
exposed to carbon monoxide.

Mass Sociogenic Illness
Mass Hysteria
by Marc D. Feldman, M.D.
http://selfhelpmagazine.com

Witch Hunts & the Winds of Rumor

Salem, Massachusetts is famous for its 1692 "witch hunts." Sparked by the accusations of four
young girls, a Puritan community already fearful of eternal damnation became panicked into
believing that witches were among them. By the time the events came to an end, more than
20 people had been convicted: 19 were hanged, one was pressed to death under huge stones,
and four others died in prison.

Even as late as 1957, the small Massachusetts community was paying restitution to the
families of those who had become the victims of so-called "mass hysteria" (Bartholomew,
1995).

The cause of mass hysteria is often a baseless belief that begins small but, like a hurricane,
travels and becomes more devastating as it picks up speed. Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds"
radio broadcast in 1938 is a well known example of the power of a false idea gone berserk.

Though the play was announced as fictional several times, panic still spread throughout the
country as millions became convinced that the Martians were taking over the Earth.

From our perch distant in time, we might view these episodes as rather quaint. Believing
ourselves to be more enlightened, we're likely to bristle at any suggestion that we too can be
overwhelmed by misguided passions. In reality, the Internet and other new communication
technologies allow us not only to spread information as fast as it is generated, but to transmit
it even before it has been verified. This creates a climate ripe for runaway rumors.

How does a normal person, or a small group of people, or even an entire community get swept
up into the conviction that an off-hand remark is a terrifying reality?

Mass Sociogenic Illness

"Mass sociogenic illness" (MSI), a form of mass hysteria, demonstrates the process. In MSI,
mere sight and sound, like disabling viruses, can make so many people feel so sick that within
minutes an entire town's ambulances are summoned. One such case occurred in a summer
program in Florida for disadvantaged kids (Desenclos, Gardner, & Horan, 1992).

Every day at noon, the 150 children gathered in a dining hall where they were served pre-
packaged lunches. As lunch began one day, a girl complained that her sandwich didn't taste
right: she felt nauseated, and came back from the restroom reporting that she had thrown up.
Others began to complain that their stomachs hurt too and that the sandwiches really did
taste funny.

Then a number of them described having headaches, tingling in their hands and feet, and
abdominal cramping. The supervisor, obviously worried about all the complaints, announced to
the horrified children that the food might be poisoned. They were told to stop eating
immediately.

Within 40 minutes, 63 children were sick. More than 25 of them had vomited. Ambulances
were called and the children had to be divided up among three different hospitals.

But an hour later, it was all over. Every examination and test performed on the children was
normal. Meal samples were analyzed, but no bacteria or pesticides were detected. Food
processing and storage techniques had been faultless. And no one had become ill at any of the
other 68 sites at which the very same food was served. Unmistakably, these children were
victims of MSI.

The Reasons

Looking back, doctors recognized that the statement of the first girl had precipitated a small
chorus of complaints. Her reason for the remark may have simply been the momentary feeling
of lightheadedness many of us get at times. Regardless, it proved very powerful. The number
of victims, all suggestible children, multiplied as an authority figure, the supervisor,
announced that the food might indeed be tainted.

Typical of settings ripe for mass hysteria, the summer program itself was already an unsettled
environment. Two days earlier, a newspaper article had reported on management and
financial problems within the youth center, and the children seemed to have picked up on the
anxiety of the staff.
Containing the Fear

Mass hysteria is best countered through prevention or very early intervention. The most
powerful tool is for a calm authority figure to give clear and accurate information repeatedly,
and to remain visible and available to provide updates and reassurance. In contrast, a
message that is dramatic and menacing, as in the Florida case, is guaranteed to have a
catastrophic result.

Thankfully, mass hysteria occurs infrequently. Still, it has common characteristics that the
general public should know. For instance, in MSI, even though the individuals involved appear
and feel ill, all the lab tests and physical exams are normal. Second, hyperventilation,
dizziness, and fainting are almost invariable. Third, the symptoms spread through the group
with blazing speed. And fourth, though "relapses" can occur if the same factors all conspire
again, the long-term outcome is excellent.

If people are aware of the phenomenon and know its features, they will be better able to
overcome the main obstacle: accepting that there is no actual basis to their frightening beliefs
and physical symptoms.

References

Marc D. Feldman, M.D. is the co-author of "Patient or Pretender: Inside the Strange World of
Factitious Disorders" (1994) and co-editor of "The Spectrum of Factitious Disorders" (1996).

Dancing mania
Wikipedia.org

Dancing mania (also known as dancing plague, choreomania, St John's Dance and, historically,
St. Vitus' Dance) was a social phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe
between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people, sometimes thousands at a
time, who danced uncontrollably and bizarrely. They would also scream, shout, and sing, and
claim to have visions or hallucinations. The mania affected men, women, and children, who
danced until they collapsed from exhaustion. One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen,
Germany, in 1374, and it quickly spread throughout Europe; one particularly notable outbreak
occurred in Strasbourg in 1518.

Affecting thousands of people across several centuries, dancing mania was not a one-off
event, and was well documented in contemporary reports. It was nevertheless poorly
understood, and remedies were based on guesswork. Generally, musicians accompanied
dancers, to help ward off the mania, but this tactic sometimes backfired by encouraging more
to join in. There is no consensus among modern-day scholars as to the cause of dancing
mania. The several theories proposed range from religious cults being behind the processions
to people dancing to relieve themselves of stress and put the poverty of the period out of their
minds. It is, however, understood as a mass psychogenic illness in which the occurrence of
similar physical symptoms, with no known physical cause, affect a large group of people as a
form of social influence.

Definition

"Dancing mania" is derived from the term "choreomania", from the Greek choros (dance) and
mania (madness), and is also known as "dancing plague". The term was coined by Paracelsus,
and the condition was initially considered a curse sent by a saint, usually St John the Baptistor
St Vitus, and was therefore known as "St Vitus' Dance" or "St John's Dance". Victims of
dancing mania often ended their processions at places dedicated to that saint, who was prayed
to in an effort to end the dancing; incidents often broke out around the time of the feast of St
Vitus. St Vitus' Dance was diagnosed, in the 17th century, as Sydenham chorea. Dancing
mania has also been known as epidemic chorea and epidemic dancing. A disease of the
nervous system, chorea is characterized by symptoms resembling those of dancing mania,
which has also rather unconvincingly been considered a form of epilepsy. Scientists have
described dancing mania as a "collective mental disorder", "collective hysterical disorder", and
"mass madness".

Outbreaks

The earliest known outbreak of dancing mania occurred in the 7th century, and it reappeared
many times across Europe until about the 17th century, when it stopped abruptly. One of the
earliest known incidents occurred sometime in the 1020s in Bernburg, where 18 peasants
began singing and dancing around a church, disturbing a Christmas Eve service. Further
outbreaks occurred during the 13th century, including one in 1237 in which a large group of
children travelled from Erfurt to Arnstadt, jumping and dancing all the way, in marked
similarity to the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Another incident, in 1278, involved
about 200 people dancing on a bridge over the River Meuse in Germany, resulting in its
collapse. Many of the survivors were restored to full health at a nearby chapel dedicated to St
Vitus. The first major outbreak of the mania occurred between 1373 and 1374, with incidents
reported in England, Germany and the Netherlands. On 24 June 1374, one of the biggest
outbreaks began in Aix-la-Chapelle, Aachen (now Germany), before spreading to other places
such as Cologne, Flanders, Franconia, Hainaut, Metz, Strasbourg, Tongeren, Utrecht, and to
countries such as Italy and Luxemburg. Further episodes occurred in 1375 and 1376, with
incidents in France, Germany and Holland, and in 1381 there was an outbreak in Augsburg.
Further incidents occurred in 1418 in Strasbourg, where people fasted for days and the
outbreak was probably caused by exhaustion. In another outbreak, in 1428 in Schaffhausen, a
monk danced to death and, in the same year, a group of women in Zurich were reportedly in a
dancing frenzy. One of the biggest outbreaks occurred in July 1518, in Strasbourg (see
Dancing Plague of 1518), where a woman named Frau Troffea began dancing in the street;
within four days she had been joined by 33 others, and within a month there were 400, many
of whom suffered heart attacks and died. Further incidents occurred during the 16th century,
when the mania was at its peak: in 1536 in Basel, involving a group of children; and in 1551
in Anhalt, involving just one man. In the 17th century, incidents of recurrent dancing were
recorded by professor of medicine Gregor Horst, who noted:

Several women who annually visit the chapel of St. Vitus in Drefelhausen... dance madly all
day and all night until they collapse in ecstasy. In this way they come to themselves again and
feel little or nothing until the next May, when they are again... forced around St. Vitus' Day to
betake themselves to that place... one of these women is said to have danced every year for
the past twenty years, another for a full thirty-two.

Dancing mania appears to have completely died out by the mid-17th century. According to
John Waller, although numerous incidents were recorded, the best documented cases are the
outbreaks of 1374 and 1518, for which there is abundant contemporary evidence.

Characteristics

The outbreaks of dancing mania varied, and several characteristics of it have been recorded.
Generally occurring in times of hardship, up to tens of thousands of people would appear to
dance for hours, days, weeks, and even months. Women have often been portrayed in modern
literature as the usual participants in dancing mania, although contemporary sources suggest
otherwise. Whether the dancing was spontaneous, or an organized event, is also debated.
What is certain, however, is that dancers seemed to be in a state of unconsciousness, and
unable to control themselves.

In his research into social phenomena, author Robert Bartholomew notes that contemporary
sources record that participants often did not reside where the dancing took place. Such
people would travel from place to place, and others would join them along the way. With them
they brought customs and behaviour that were strange to the local people. Bartholomew
describes how dancers wore "strange, colorful attire" and "held wooden sticks". Robert Marks,
in his study of hypnotism, notes that some decorated their hair with garlands. However, not all
outbreaks involved foreigners, and not all were particularly calm. Bartholomew notes that
some "paraded around naked" and made "obscene gestures". Some even had sexual
intercourse. Others acted like animals, and jumped, hopped and leaped about. They hardly
stopped, and some danced until they broke their ribs and subsequently died. Throughout,
dancers screamed, laughed, or cried, and some sang. Bartholomew also notes that observers
of dancing mania were sometimes treated violently if they refused to join in. Participants
demonstrated odd reactions to the colour red; in A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century
Germany, Midelfort notes they "could not perceive the color red at all", and Bartholomew
reports "it was said that dancers could not stand... the color red, often becoming violent on
seeing [it]". Bartholomew also notes that dancers "could not stand pointed shoes", and that
dancers enjoyed their feet being hit. Throughout, those affected by dancing mania suffered
from a variety of ailments, including chest pains, convulsions, hallucinations, hyperventilation,
epileptic fits, and visions. In the end, most simply dropped down, overwhelmed with
exhaustion. Midelfort, however, describes how some ended up in a state of ecstasy. Typically,
the mania was contagious but it often struck small groups, such as families, and individuals.

In Italy, a similar phenomenon was tarantism, in which the victims were said to have been
poisoned by a tarantula or scorpion. Its earliest known outbreak was in the 13th century, and
the only antidote known was to dance to particular music to separate the venom from the
blood. It occurred only in the summer months. As with dancing mania, people would suddenly
begin to dance, sometimes affected by a perceived bite or sting and were joined by others,
who believed the venom from their own old bites was reactivated by the heat or the music.
Dancers would perform a tarantella, accompanied by music which would eventually "cure" the
victim, at least temporarily. Some participated in further activities, such as tying themselves
up with vines and whipping each other, pretending to sword fight, drinking large amounts of
wine, and jumping into the sea. Some died if there was no music to accompany their dancing.
Sufferers, typically, had symptoms resembling those of dancing mania, such as headaches,
trembling, twitching and visions. As with dancing mania, participants apparently did not like
the colour black, and women were reported to be most affected. Unlike dancing mania,
tarantism was confined to Italy and southern Europe. It was common until the 17th century,
but ended suddenly, with only very small outbreaks in Italy until as late as 1959. A study of
the phenomenon in 1959 by religious history professor Ernesto de Martino revealed that most
cases of tarantism were probably unrelated to spider bites. Many participants admitted that
they had not been bitten, but believed they were infected by someone who had been, or that
they had simply touched a spider. The result was mass panic, with a "cure" that allowed
people to behave in ways that were, normally, prohibited at the time. Despite their
differences, tarantism and dancing mania are often considered synonymous.
Reactions

Music was typically played during outbreaks of dancing mania, as it was thought to remedy
the problem. A painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger, after drawings by his father. As the
real cause of dancing mania was unknown, many of the treatments for it were simply hopeful
guesses, although some did seem effective. The 1374 outbreak occurred only decades after
the Black Death, and was treated in a similar fashion: dancers were isolated, and some were
exorcised. People believed that the dancing was a curse brought about by St Vitus; they
responded by prayingand making pilgrimages to places dedicated to Vitus. Prayers were also
made to St John the Baptist, who others believed also caused the dancing. Others claimed to
be possessed by demons, or Satan, therefore exorcisms were often performed on dancers.
Bartholomew notes that music was often played while participants danced, as that was
believed to be an effective remedy, and during some outbreaks musicians were even
employed to play. Midelfort describes how the music encouraged others to join in however,
and thus effectively made things worse, as did the dancing places that were sometimes set
up.

Explanations

Numerous hypotheses have been proposed for the causes of dancing mania, and it remains
unclear whether it was a real illness or a social phenomenon. One of the most prominent
theories is that victims suffered from ergot poisoning, which was known as St Anthony's Fire in
the Middle Ages. During floods and damp periods, ergots were able to grow and affect rye and
other crops. Ergotism can cause hallucinations, but cannot account for the other strange
behaviour most commonly identified with dancing mania. Other theories suggest that the
symptoms were similar to encephalitis, epilepsy, and typhus, but as with ergotism, those
conditions cannot account for all symptoms. Numerous sources discuss how dancing mania,
and tarantism, may have simply been the result of stress and tension caused by natural
disasters around the time, such as plagues and floods. Hetherington and Munro describe
dancing mania as a result of "shared stress"; people may have danced to relieve themselves
of the stress and poverty of the day, and in so doing, attempted to become ecstatic and see
visions.

Another popular theory is that the outbreaks were all staged, and the appearance of strange
behaviour was due to its unfamiliarity. Religious cults may have been acting out well-
organised dances, in accordance with ancient Greek and Roman rituals. Despite being banned
at the time, these rituals could be performed under the guise of uncontrollable dancing mania.
Justus Hecker, a 19th-century medical writer, described it as a kind of festival, where a
practice known as "the kindling of the Nodfyr" was carried out. This involved jumping through
fire and smoke, in an attempt to ward off disease. Bartholomew notes how participants in this
ritual would often continue to jump and leap long after the flames had gone.
It is certain that many participants of dancing mania were psychologically disturbed, but it is
also likely that some took part out of fear, or simply wished to copy everyone else. Sources
agree that dancing mania was one of the earliest-recorded forms of mass hysteria, and
describe it as a "psychic epidemic", with numerous explanations that might account for the
behaviour of the dancers.

Although dancing mania was something confined to its period, some have identified modern-
day activities that display some of its characteristics. Bartholomew believes that raving, an
activity which became popular in the latter half of the 20th century, features characteristics of
dancing mania. For example, raves may involve activities that onlookers consider odd (such as
partying all night), the use of drugs to bring on hallucinations, and participants who are part of
a subculture.

Dancing Plague of 1518
STRASBOURG, FRANCE
Wikipedia.org

The Dancing Plague (or Dance Epidemic) of
1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred
in Strasbourg, France (then part of the Holy
Roman Empire) in July 1518. Numerous people
took to dancing for days without rest, and, over
the period of about one month, some of the
people died from heart attack, stroke, or
exhaustion.


Event

The outbreak began in July 1518, when a
woman, Frau Troffea, began to dance fervently
in a street in Strasbourg. This lasted somewhere
between four to six days. Within a week, 34
others had joined, and within a month, there
were around 400 dancers. Some of these people
eventually died from heart attack, stroke, or
exhaustion.

Historical documents, including "physician
notes, cathedral sermons, local and regional
chronicles, and even notes issued by the
Strasbourg city council" are clear that the
victims danced. It is not known why these people danced to their deaths.

As the dancing plague worsened, concerned nobles sought the advice of local physicians, who
ruled out astrological and supernatural causes, instead announcing that the plague was a
"natural disease" caused by "hot blood." However, instead of prescribing bleeding, authorities
encouraged more dancing, in part by opening two guildhalls and a grain market, and even
constructing a wooden stage. The authorities did this because they believed that the dancers
would only recover if they danced continuously night and day. To increase the effectiveness of
the cure, authorities even paid for musicians to keep the afflicted moving. Some of the
dancers were taken to a shrine, where they sought a cure for their affliction.

Modern explanations

Mass psychogenic illness

Historian John Waller thinks that the dancing epidemic was caused by mass psychogenic
illness (MPI), a manifestation of mass hysteria that is often preceded by extreme levels of
psychological distress. Waller states that famine had been prevalent in the region for some
time, caused by very cold winters, very hot summers, crop frosts, and violent hailstorms. Mass
deaths followed from malnutrition, and those who survived were forced to kill their farm
animals, take out loans, and perhaps even beg in the streets. In addition to food shortages,
diseases such as smallpox, syphilis, leprosy, and "the English sweat" (a new disease) afflicted
the populace, as well as "spiritual despair on a scale unknown for generations." This series of
events might have triggered the MPI.

Ergotism

It has been suggested that the cause of the plague was ergotism, which results from
consuming ergot-laced bread. Ingestion of ergot, a psychotropic mold that grows on rye, can
lead to delirium, hallucinations, and seizures, as well as other symptoms. While today this is
called ergotism, contemporaneously it was known as "Saint Anthony's fire." However, another
symptom of ergotism is loss of blood supply to the limbs, making coordinated movement like
dancing difficult; as such, Waller considers it to be an unlikely cause of the plague.

Ecstatic ritual

Sociologist Robert Bartholomew of James Cook University in Australia contends that the dance
was part of an "ecstatic ritual of a heretical sect." This explanation is questioned by Waller,
who believes "there is no evidence that the dancers wanted to dance," citing recorded
evidence that the dancers showed expressions of "fear and desperation."

Chorea

Chorea, which can be present in epilepsy or a variety of other nervous system disorders, can
be characterised by quick, patterned muscular contractions, or sometimes slower, stormy,
writhing motions (athetosis). In a 1931 Time article, it was suggested that victims of "Saint
Vitus's dance" (in this context, Sydenham's chorea)who are most often childrenwere
brought before images of St. Vitus when they were stricken with convulsions. Saint Vitus's
dance has become the term used for the dancing manias of medieval times (as well as for
Sydenham's chorea or chorea in general). Saint Vitus is primarily invoked to protect against
epilepsy, a disorder characterised by recurrent unprovoked seizures.

Catholic legend says that invoking the wrath of St. Vitus could provoke compulsive dancing (or
that dancing before an image of St. Vitus would imbue good health for the following year).
However, this explanation does not support how so many cases of chorea could arise
simultaneously in the population, nor how so many adults were affected.

Further reading

Backman, Eugene Louis (1977) [First published in 1952]. Religious Dances in the Christian
Church and in Popular Medicine. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0837196787.
Waller, John (2008). A Time to Dance, A Time to Die: The Extraordinary Story of the
Dancing Plague of 1518. Thriplow: Icon Books. ISBN 978-1848310216.
Waller, John (2009). The Dancing Plague: The Strange, True Story of an Extraordinary Illness.
Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, Inc.. ISBN 978-1-4022-1943-6.

Hindu Milk Miracle
Wikipedia.org
The Hindu milk miracle was a phenomenon, considered by many Hindus as a miracle, which
occurred on September 21, 1995. Before dawn, a Hindu worshiper at a temple in south New
Delhi made an offering of milk to a statue of Ganesha. When a spoonful of milk from the bowl
was held up to the trunk of the statue, the liquid was seen to disappear, apparently taken in
by the idol. Word of the event spread quickly, and by mid-morning it was found that statues of
the entire Hindu pantheon in temples all over North India were taking in milk.
By noon the news had spread beyond India, and Hindu temples in Britain, Canada, Dubai, and
Nepal among other countries had successfully replicated the phenomenon, and the Vishva
Hindu Parishad (an Indian Hindu organisation) had announced that a miracle was occurring.
The apparent miracle had a significant effect on the areas around major temples; vehicle and
pedestrian traffic in New Delhi was dense enough to create a gridlock lasting until late in the
evening. Many stores in areas with significant Hindu communities saw a massive jump in sales
of milk, with one Gateway store in England selling over 25,000 pints of milk, and overall milk
sales in New Delhi jumped over 30%. Many minor temples struggled to deal with the vast
increase in numbers, and queues spilled out into the streets, reaching distances of over a mile.
It should be possible to replace this non-free image with a freely licensed one. If you can,
please do so as soon as is practical.Seeking to explain the phenomenon, scientists from India's
Ministry of Science and Technology travelled to a temple in New Delhi and made an offering of
milk containing a food colouring. As the level of liquid in the spoon dropped, the scientists
hypothesized that after the milk disappeared from the spoon, it coated the statue beneath
where the spoon was placed. With this result, the scientists offered capillary action as an
explanation; the surface tension of the milk was pulling the liquid up and out of the spoon,
before gravity caused it to run down the front of the statue. This explanation did nothing to
reduce the numbers of faithful rushing to the temples, however, and queues of people carrying
pots, pans, and buckets of milk continued to gather. Suzanne Goldenberg, a Delhi-based
journalist, reported that: "Inside the darkened shrine, people held stainless steel cups and clay
pots to the central figure of the five-headed Shiva, the destroyer of evil, and his snake
companion, and watched the milk levels ebb. Although some devotees force-fed the idol
enthusiastically, the floor was fairly dry."
To those who believed in the miracle, further proof was offered when the phenomenon seemed
to cease before the end of the day, with many statues refusing to take more milk even before
noon. A small number of temples outside of India reported the vikramaditya and effect
continuing for several more days, but no further reports were made after the beginning of
October. However, skeptics hold the incident to be an example of mass hysteria. The story
was picked up, mostly as a novelty piece, by news services around the world, including CNN,
the BBC, the New York Times and the Guardian.
2006 miracle
The miracle allegedly occurred again on 20-21 August 2006 in almost exactly the same
fashion, although initial reports seem to indicate that it occurred only with statues of Ganesh,
Shiva, and Durga. The first reported occurrence was on the evening of the 20th in the city of
Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, from where it quickly spread throughout India. However, rationalists
are heavily skeptical about the issue, attributing it to capillary action yet again. The
phenomenon had reappeared only days after reports of sea water turning sweet that led to
mass hysteria in Mumbai.

2010 miracle
Trinidad Express Newspaper reported on 22 September, 2010 that Ganesh murtis (statues of
Hindu god Ganesh) "drank" or accepted milk at Om Shanti Mandir, Cunjal Road, Princes Town,
Trinidad on 21 September, 2010 on the occasion of the holy period of Ganesh Utsav.
References
Suzanne Goldenberg, "India's gods milk their faithful in a brief 'miracle'", The Guardian,
September 22, 1995.
David Wooding, "Cow do they do that?", The Sun, September 22, 1995.
Tim McGirk, "India's thirsty statues drink the nation dry", The Independent, September 22,
1995
Meenhal Baghel, "Awed devotees witness Shiva miracle across country", The Asian Age,
September 22, 1995.
Shaveta Bansal, "Devotees Throng Temples To See Hindu Deities Drinking Milk", All
Headline News, August 21, 2006
"Milk-drinking gods just plain science", Press Trust of India, August 21, 2006
Ariti Jankie (Sep 22, 2010). "Ganesh murtis 'drink' milk". Trinidad Express.
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Ganesh_murtis__drink__milk_-103591304.html.
External links
BBC archive footage showing a believer feeding a statue of Ganesha
A believers' website devoted to the "Milk Miracle"
Video Footage: http://www.milkmiracle.com/html/miracle.html#Video
January 13-14 2008 Phenomenon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exoCi2N2VxA


Holinwell Incident
UNITED STATES
Inside Out - East Midlands: Monday September 22, 2003
http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/

The Hollinwell incident is one of the biggest ever unexplained mysteries in the Midlands. But
was it a case of mass hysteria or something more sinister?

The Hollinwell Incident remains one of the strangest events ever to happen in Great Britain.
Even though it took place over twenty years ago, the incident continues to puzzle experts and
the local community alike.

At the time it was put down to mass hysteria not seen since the days of the Beatles. But this
was a marching band competition in Nottinghamshire.

There are those who still believe something more sinister was responsible for what became
known as The Hollinwell Incident.

Inside Out investigates this strange event in which hundreds of children collapsed and needed
hospital treatment following a brass band and marching competition.


Falling Like Nine Pins

It was a summer Sunday morning at a show ground near Kirkby
in Ashfield. Children had travelled from all over the East
Midlands for a Junior Brass and Marching Band competition.

But the showground was soon to resemble a battle field. Band
members began to collapse. At first in ones and twos and then
by the dozens.

One witness on the day,Terry Bingham remembers, "They fell
down like nine pins. We didn't know what was happening."


Contamination?

Water companies were quick to check supplies weren't contaminated.

Were workers near the site several weeks earlier responsible? Was it a gas leak of some sort?

There was also talk of radio waves and even UFO's being responsible for what was happening
that day.

Officials drew a blank. Most victims made a quick recovery and only nine children were kept in
hospital overnight.

But what happened made national and international news. Suddenly crop spraying became the
favourite culprit. But after a brief inquiry the official theory blamed mass hysteria as the most
likely cause. Then the report was filed away and forgotten until now.

Eye Witness Reports

Inside Out has tracked down some of the people who were there on the day. We have
discovered that the chemicals sprayed on the field which were thought to have been harmless
at the time have since been banned by the Government.

So could a pesticide, which contained the now banned tridemorph, have contributed to the
Hollinwell Incident ? After all, many local people were deeply suspicious of the official inquiry
conclusion.

Tridemorph is classified by the World Health Organisation as Class II - a 'moderately
hazardous' pesticide. It is harmful if swallowed and irritating to eyes and skin.

Is it possible that the pesticide caused other side-effects such as fainting and malaise? It's
hard to tell so long after the Hollinwell incident.

Mass Hysteria?

Some commentators still believe that the Hollinwell Incident could have been caused by mass
hysteria. Medical studies suggest that outbreaks of mass hysteria share some common
characteristics. The most significant is the susceptibility of women, especially young women
grouped together in institutions such as schools or clubs.

The type of symptoms common during outbreaks of mass hysteria include:

fainting
nausea and general malaise
abdominal pain and convulsions
headaches
tremors and hyperventilation

These are often manifestations of anxiety and hyperventilation. Many outbreaks are sparked
off by a specific incident which gives rise to anxiety. Another feature of mass hysteria
outbreaks is their short duration - the majority last just a few hours. The Hollinwell Incident
certainly displayed some of these characteristics.

A Frightening Puzzle

So was mass hysteria to blame for hundreds of children collapsing at Hollinwell? Or was it a
case of pesticide spraying or chemicals being breathed in by the children?

It's a puzzle that's hard to unravel twenty years after the event, and one which we'll never be
able to solve for sure until new evidence comes to light.

John Frum
Wikipedia.org

John Frum (or Jon Frum, or John From) is a figure associated with cargo cults on the island
of Tanna in Vanuatu. He is often depicted as an American World War II serviceman, who will
bring wealth and prosperity to the people if they follow him. He is sometimes portrayed as
black, sometimes as white; from David Attenborough's report of an encounter: "'E look like
you. 'E got white face. 'E tall man. 'E live 'long South America."

History

The religion centering on John Frum arose in the late 1930s, when Vanuatu was known as the
New Hebrides. The movement was heavily influenced by existing religious practice in the
Sulphur Bay area of Tanna, particularly the worship of Keraperamun, a god associated with
Mount Tukosmera, Tanna's highest mountain. In some versions of the story, a native named
Manehivi, under the alias "John Frum", began appearing among the native people of Tanna
while dressed in a Western coat, making promises of houses, clothes, food, and transport.
Others contend that John Frum was a kava-induced spirit vision. Said to be a manifestation of
Keraperamun, John Frum promised the dawn of a new age, in which all white people, including
missionaries, would leave the New Hebrides, and that the native Melanesians would gain
access to the material wealth that white people enjoyed. For this to happen, however, the
people of Tanna had to reject all aspects of European society (money, Western education,
Christianity, work on copra plantations) and return to traditional kastom (a word for native
Tannese customs).

In 1941, followers of John Frum rid themselves of their money in a frenzy of spending, left the
missionary churches, schools, villages and plantations, and moved further inland to participate
in traditional feasts, dances and rituals. European colonial authorities sought to suppress the
movement, arresting Frum, humiliating him publicly, imprisoning him, and ultimately exiling
him, along with other leaders of the cult, to another island in the archipelago.

Despite this, the movement gained popularity in the early 1940s, when some 300,000
American troops were stationed in the New Hebrides during the Second World War, bringing
with them large amounts of supplies, or "cargo". After the war, and the departure of the
Americans, followers of John Frum built symbolic landing strips to encourage American
aeroplanes to once again land and bring them "cargo". Versions of the cult that emphasize the
American influence interpret "John Frum" as a corruption of "John from (America)" (although it
could be John from anywhere), and credit the presence of black Americans as influencing the
idea that John Frum could be black.

In 1957, a leader of the John Frum movement, Nakomaha, created the "Tanna Army", a non-
violent, ritualistic organisation which organised military-style parades, their faces painted in
ritual colours, and wearing white t-shirts with the letters "T-A USA" (Tanna Army USA). This
parade still takes place every year on February 15.

The cult is still active today. The followers believe that John Frum will come back on a
February 15 (the year of his return is not known), a date which is observed as "John Frum
Day" in Vanuatu.

In the late 1970s, John Frum followers opposed the imminent creation of an independent,
united nation of Vanuatu. They objected to a centralised government which they feared would
favour Western modernity and Christianity, felt to be detrimental to local customs. The John
Frum movement has its own political party, led by Song Keaspai. On John Frum Day in
February 2007, the John Frum Movement celebrated its 50th anniversary. Chief Isaak Wan
Nikiau, its leader, was quoted by the BBC from years past as saying that John Frum was "our
God, our Jesus," and would eventually return.

Hysterical contagion
Wikipedia.org

Hysterical contagion occurs when a group of people show signs of a physical problem or
illness, when in reality there are psychological and social forces at work.

Hysterical contagion is a strong form of social contagion, which describes the copycat effect of
imitative behaviour based on the power of suggestion and word of mouth influence,
because the symptoms often include those associated with clinical hysteria.

The June bug epidemic serves as a classic example of hysterical contagion. In 1962 a
mysterious disease broke out in a dressmaking department of a US textile factory. The
symptoms included numbness, nausea, dizziness, and vomiting. Word of a bug in the
factory that would bite its victims and develop the above symptoms quickly spread.

Soon sixty two employees developed this mysterious illness, some of whom were hospitalized.
The news media reported on the case. After research by company physicians and experts from
the US Public Health Service Communicable Disease Center, it was concluded that the case
was one of mass hysteria.

While the researchers believed some workers were bitten by the bug, anxiety was likely the
cause of the symptoms. No evidence was ever found for a bug which could cause the above
flu-like symptoms, nor did all workers demonstrate bites.

Workers concluded that the environment was quite stressful; the plant had recently opened,
was quite busy and organization was poor. Further, most of the victims reported high levels of
stress in their lives. Social forces seemed at work too.

Of the 62 employees that reported symptoms, 59 worked on the first shift, 58 worked in the
same area, and 50 of the 62 cases occurred in the two consecutive days after the media
supposedly sensationalized the event. Most of the employees who became sick took days off
to recuperate.

June Bug Epidemic
Wikipedia.org

The June bug epidemic serves as a classic example of hysterical contagion.
In 1962 a mysterious disease broke out in a dressmaking department of a US textile factory.
The symptoms included numbness, nausea, dizziness, and vomiting. Word of a bug in the
factory that would bite its victims and develop the above symptoms quickly spread.

Soon sixty two employees developed this mysterious illness, some of whom were hospitalized.
The news media reported on the case. After research by company physicians and experts from
the US Public Health Service Communicable Disease Center, it was concluded that the case
was one of mass hysteria.

While the researchers believed
some workers were bitten by the
bug, anxiety was likely the cause
of the symptoms. No evidence
was ever found for a bug which
could cause the above flu-like
symptoms, nor did all workers
demonstrate bites.

Workers concluded that the
environment was quite stressful;
the plant had recently opened,
was quite busy and organization
was poor. Further, most of the
victims reported high levels of
stress in their lives. Social forces
seemed at work too.

Of the 62 employees that
reported symptoms, 59 worked
on the first shift, 58 worked in
the same area, and 50 of the 62 cases occurred in the two consecutive days after the media
supposedly sensationalized the event. Most of the employees who became sick took days off
to recuperate.

Further reading

"The June Bug: A Study of Hysterical Contagion" by Alan C. Kerckhoff, Kurt W. Back

Mass Fainting in Exam
TANZANIA
Mass Fainting in Tanzanian exam
Last updated at 15:39 GMT, Thursday, 11 September 2008
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/

Junior school pupils in Tanzania experienced a mass fainting fit while taking their final year
exams, an educational official has told the BBC.

The 20 girls at Ali Hassan Mwinyi School in Tabora started fainting after finishing their first
paper.

"I'm not a specialist but I imagine this was a case of mass hysteria that does happen in some
of the schools," Midemo Paul Makungu said.

He said it only affected the girls, some of whom took 40 minutes to revive.

"There was chaos, crying, screaming, running after that first paper," Mr Makungu, Tabora's
educational officer, told the BBC News website.

More than 140 Standard Seven pupils were taking the national exam at the school in the north
of the country.

He said special arrangements were made so that those who had fainted could finish the other
two papers they had that day.

"They eventually finished at 11pm," he said.

It is not the first such incident at the school - over the last month there have been several
mass fainting fits amongst the girl pupils.

"Normally this happens in girls' secondary schools. It is very common here," Mr Makungu said.
Parents Angry at Mystery Fainting
Last Updated: Thursday, 13 May, 2004, 11:02 GMT 12:02 UK
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/

There is disquiet in southern Tanzania over an illness
causing young girls at a primary school to faint.

Last week the school was forced to close for three
days after 18 students fainted in one day. Angry
parents have protested to the school, accusing
teachers of bewitching their children, after doctors
found nothing medically wrong with them. But a
medical officer says the phenomenon may be caused
by a neurosis related to local links with witchcraft.
One of the girls to be affected by the fainting is
Harriet Salewa, an 11-year-old pupil at the Maendeleo
Primary School in Iringa.
Only girls affected
"I've been falling down at school," she says. "I feel dizzy, and lose consciousness."
"I'm unable to talk, to walk, to hear, and I feel as if things are crawling all over me, starting
from my feet, and disappearing in my head."
The first girls to be affected by the illness fainted in January. Teachers say only girls under 16
were affected, in the mixed school of more than 800 pupils. At first, four girls were said to be
fainting on a daily basis, they said, but there was a dramatic increase when 18 were taken ill
on one day. Some 27 girls are said to have been affected in total, and some of them have also
fainted at home.
The BBC's Vicky Ntetema, who has visited the school, says the illness is the talk of the town.
The faintings apparently occur only in the afternoon. Our correspondent says some people
have linked this to the girls hearing the imam's call to Muslim afternoon prayers at 1pm. Some
parents have accused teachers of putting spells on the girls.
"These are hurtful remarks against teachers, who depend on their students to earn a living,"
says headmistress Christobela Halifani.
Cause unclear
Doctors say there is no logical explanation for their fainting. Dr Ezekiel Mpuya, the medical
officer in Iringa, says medical examinations had found "no physical abnormality or organic
damage" in the girls.
"We realised they were suffering from neurosis, which happens in adolescent-aged students at
times," he said.
"It is believed that at that school, there are some beliefs that relate to witchcraft.
"I think that is what gives the students the stress to develop the outbreak."

Mass Fainting in Cinemas
Saw III
UNITED STATES
Audiences Faint at Cinemas
Thursday 2nd November 2006, 12:36PM GMT.
By Mike Woods
http://www.expressandstar.com/

It is the horror film turning the stomachs of movie audiences across the West Midlands.

Today cinemas in the region revealed they are having to dish out water to queasy audiences.
Staff also are regularly experiencing people fainting and in one case even had to call an
ambulance. The cause of the mass hysteria is Saw III.

The 18 certificate horror flick is based on the theme of torture, in which a twisted man
teaches criminals and everyday people the value of life by putting them through terrifying
physical pain. There is plenty of gore, but also psychological twists that have had audiences
recoiling.

Paramedics were this week called to the Showcase Cinema in Walsall when a youth passed
out. Audience members also rushed to the aid of one man who fainted during a showing at the
Odeon at Merry Hill. Sarah Sharpe, spokeswoman for Cineworld in Wednesfield, said: Weve
had a couple of people who came out from the film feeling squeamish. They had a glass of
water and went back in. In Stafford, two or three people walked out of showings at the Apollo
because they could not stomach the violence.

Audiences across the country are also finding the film hard to stomach. Five cinema-goers
needed ambulances and one was taken to hospital after screenings in Stevenage,
Peterborough and Cambridge on Friday. East Anglian Ambulance Trust spokesman Matthew
Ware said: As well as collapses, we have had reports of people running screaming from the
cinemas. It appears to have sent film-goers over the edge.
But the phenomenon of physical reactions to screen gore is not new. On its release in 1973,
The Exorcist caused mass hysteria, with people screaming, fainting and ambulance crews
called to screenings.

New World Order
In conspiracy theory, the term New World Order or NWO refers to the emergence of a
totalitarian one-world government.
The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power
elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian
world governmentwhich replaces sovereign nation-statesand an all-encompassing
propaganda that ideologizes its establishment as the culmination of history's progress.
Significant occurrences in politics and finance are speculated to be orchestrated by an unduly
influential cabal operating through many front organizations. Numerous historical and current
events are seen as steps in an on-going plot to achieve world domination through secret
political gatherings and decision-making processes.
Prior to the early 1990s, New World Order conspiracism was limited to two American
countercultures, primarily the militantly anti-government right, and secondarily fundamentalist
Christians concerned with end-time emergence of the Antichrist. Skeptics, such as Michael
Barkun and Chip Berlet, have observed that right-wing populist conspiracy theories about a
New World Order have now not only been embraced by many seekers of stigmatized
knowledge but have seeped into popular culture, thereby inaugurating an unrivaled period of
people actively preparing for apocalyptic millenarian scenarios in the United States of the late
20th and early 21st centuries. These political scientists are concerned that this mass hysteria
could have what they judge to be devastating effects on American political life, ranging from
widespread political alienation to escalating lone-wolf terrorism.
History of the term
During the 20th century, many statesmen, such as Woodrow Wilson and Winston
Churchill, used the term "new world order" to refer to a new period of history evidencing a
dramatic change in world political thought and the balance of power after World War I and
World War II. They all saw these periods as opportunities to implement idealistic proposals for
global governance in the sense of new collective efforts to address worldwide problems that go
beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to solve, while always respecting the right of
nations to self-determination. These proposals led to the creation of international
organizations, such as the United Nations and NATO, and international regimes, such as the
Bretton Woods system and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which were calculated
both to maintain a balance of power in favor of the United States as well as regularize
cooperation between nations, in order to achieve a peaceful phase of capitalism. These
creations in particular and liberal internationalism in general, however, would always be
criticized and opposed by American ultraconservative business nationalists from the 1930s on.
In the aftermath of the two World Wars, progressives welcomed these new international
organizations and regimes but argued they suffered from a democratic deficit and therefore
were inadequate to not only prevent another global war but also foster global justice. The
United Nations was designed in 1945 by U.S. bankers and State Department planners, and
was always intended to remain a free association of sovereign nation-states, not a transition
to democratic world government. Thus, activists around the globe formed a world federalist
movement hoping in vain to create a "real" new world order.
In the 1940s, British writer and futurist H. G. Wells would go further than progressives by
appropriating and redefining the term "new world order" as a synonym for the establishment
of a technocratic world state and planned economy. Despite the popularity of his ideas in some
state socialist circles, Wells failed to exert a deeper and more lasting influence because he was
unable to concentrate his energies on a direct appeal to intelligentsias who would, ultimately,
have to coordinate a Wellsian new world order.
During the Red Scare of 19471957, agitators of the American secular and Christian right,
influenced by the work of Canadian conspiracy theorist William Guy Carr, increasingly
embraced and spread unfounded fears of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Jews being the driving
force behind an "international communist conspiracy". The threat of "Godless communism" in
the form of a state atheistic and bureaucratic collectivist world government, demonized as a
"Red Menace", therefore became the main focus of apocalyptic millenarian conspiracism. The
Red Scare would shape one of the core ideas of the political right in the United States which is
that liberals and progressives with their welfare-state policies and international cooperation
programs such as foreign aid supposedly contribute to a gradual process of collectivism that
will inevitably lead to nations being replaced with a communist one-world government.
In the 1960s, right-wing populist individuals and groups with a producerist worldview, such as
members of the John Birch Society, disseminated a great deal of conspiracy theories
claiming that the governments of both the United States and the Soviet Union were controlled
by a cabal of corporate internationalists, greedy bankers and corrupt politicians intent on using
the United Nations as the vehicle to create the "One World Government". This right-wing anti-
globalist conspiracism would fuel the Bircher campaign for U.S. withdrawal from the U.N..
American writer Mary M. Davison, in her 1966 booklet The Profound Revolution, traced the
alleged New World Order conspiracy to the creation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System in
1913 by international bankers, who she claimed later formed the Council on Foreign Relations
in 1921 as the shadow government. At the time the booklet was published, "international
bankers" would have been interpreted by many readers as a reference to a postulated
"international Jewish banking conspiracy" masterminded by the Rothschilds.
Claiming that the term "New World Order" is used by a secretive elite dedicated to the
destruction of all national sovereignties, American writer Gary Allen, in his 1971 book None
Dare Call It Conspiracy, 1974 book Rockefeller: Campaigning for the New World Order and
1987 book Say "No!" to the New World Order, articulated the anti-globalist theme of much
current right-wing populist conspiracism in the U.S.. Thus, after the fall of communism in the
early 1990s, the main demonized scapegoat of the American far right shifted seamlessly from
crypto-communists who plotted on behalf of the Red Menace to globalists who plot on behalf
of the New World Order. The relatively painless nature of the shift was due to growing right-
wing populist opposition to corporate internationalism but also in part to the basic underlying
apocalyptic millenarian paradigm, which fed the Cold War and the witch-hunts of the McCarthy
period.
In his 11 September 1990 Toward a New World Order speech to a joint session of the U.S.
Congress, President George H. W. Bush described his objectives for post-Cold-War global
governance in cooperation with post-Soviet states:
Until now, the world weve known has been a world divideda world of barbed wire
and concrete block, conflict and cold war. Now, we can see a new world coming into
view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order. In the
words of Winston Churchill, a "world order" in which "the principles of justice and fair
play ... protect the weak against the strong ..." A world where the United Nations,
freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfill the historic vision of its founders. A
world in which freedom and respect for human rights find a home among all nations.
The New York Times observed that progressives were denouncing this new world order as a
rationalization for American imperial ambitions in the Middle East, while conservatives rejected
new security arrangements altogether and fulminated about any possibility of U.N. revival.
However, Chip Berlet, an American investigative reporter specializing in the study of right-
wing movements in the U.S., writes:
When President Bush announced his new foreign policy would help build a New World
Order, his phrasing surged through the Christian and secular hard right like an electric
shock, since the phrase had been used to represent the dreaded collectivist One World
Government for decades. Some Christians saw Bush as signaling the End Times
betrayal by a world leader. Secular anticommunists saw a bold attempt to smash US
sovereignty and impose a tyrannical collectivist system run by the United Nations.
American televangelist Pat Robertson with his 1991 best-selling book The New World Order
became the most prominent Christian popularizer of conspiracy theories about recent
American history as a theater in which Wall Street, the Federal Reserve System, Council on
Foreign Relations, Bilderberg Group, and Trilateral Commission control the flow of events from
behind the scenes, nudging us constantly and covertly in the direction of world government for
the Antichrist.
Observers note that the galvanization of right-wing populist conspiracy theorists, such as
Linda Thompson, Mark Koernke and Robert K. Spear, into militancy led to the rise of the
militia movement, which spread its anti-government ideology through speeches at rallies and
meetings, through books and videotapes sold at gun shows, through shortwave and satellite
radio, and through fax networks and computer bulletin boards. However, overnight AM radio
shows and viral propaganda on the Internet is what most effectively contributed to their
extremist political ideas about the New World Order finding their way into the previously
apolitical literature of many Kennedy assassinologists, ufologists, lost land theorists, and, most
recently, occultists. The worldwide appeal of these subcultures then transmitted New World
Order conspiracism like a "mind virus" to a large new audience of seekers of stigmatized
knowledge from the mid-1990s on. Hollywood conspiracy-thriller televisions shows and films
also played a role in introducing a vast popular audience to various fringe theories related to
New World Order conspiracism (black helicopter, FEMA concentration camps, etc.), which
were previously confined to radical right-wing subcultures for decades. The 1993-2002
television series X-Files, the 1997 film Conspiracy Theory and the 1998 film The X-Files: Fight
the Future are often cited as notable examples.
After the turn of the century, specifically during the late-2000s financial crisis, many politicians
and pundits, such as Gordon Brown, and Henry Kissinger, used the term "new world order"
in their advocacy for a comprehensive reform of the global financial system and their calls for
a "New Bretton Woods", which takes into account emerging markets such as China and India.
These declarations had the unintended consequence of providing fresh fodder for New World
Order conspiracism, and culminated in talk show host Sean Hannity stating on his Fox News
Channel program Hannity that "conspiracy theorists were right". Fox News in general, and its
opinion show Glenn Beck in particular, have been repeatedly criticized by progressive media
watchdog groups for not only mainstreaming the New World Order conspiracy theories of the
radical right but possibly agitating its lone wolves into action.
In 2009, American film directors Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel released New World Order, a
critically acclaimed documentary film which explores the world of conspiracy theorists, such as
American radio host Alex Jones, who are committed to exposing and vigorously opposing what
they perceive to be an emerging New World Order. The growing dissemination and popularity
of conspiracy theories has created an alliance between right-wing populist agitators, such as
Alex Jones, and hip hop musics left-wing populist rappers, such as KRS-One, Professor Griff of
Public Enemy, and Immortal Technique, which illustrates how anti-elitist conspiracism creates
unlikely political allies in efforts to oppose the political system.

Conspiracy theories
There are numerous systemic conspiracy theories through which the concept of a New World
Order is viewed. The following is a list of the major ones in relatively chronological order:
End Time
Since the 19th century, many apocalyptic millennial Christian eschatologists, starting with
John Nelson Darby, have feared a globalist conspiracy to impose a tyrannical New World
Order as the fulfillment of prophecies about the "end time" in the Bible, specifically in the Book
of Ezekiel, the Book of Daniel, the Olivet discourse found in the Synoptic Gospels, and the
Book of Revelation. They assert that people who have made a deal with the Devil to gain
wealth and power have become pawns in a supernatural chess game to move humanity into
accepting an utopian world government, which rests on the spiritual foundations of a
syncretic-messianic world religion, that will later reveal itself to be a dystopian world empire,
which imposes the imperial cult of an Unholy Trinity Satan, the Antichrist and the False
Prophet. In many contemporary Christian conspiracy theories, the False Prophet will either be
the last pope of the Catholic Church (groomed and installed by an Alta Vendita or Jesuit
conspiracy) or a guru from the New Age movement or even the leader of an elite
fundamentalist Christian organization like the Fellowship, while the Antichrist will either be the
president of the European Union or the secretary-general of the United Nations or even the
caliph of a pan-Islamic state.
Some of the most vocal critics of end-time conspiracy theories come from within Christianity.
In 1993, historian Bruce Barron wrote a stern rebuke of apocalyptic Christian conspiracism in
the Christian Research Journal, when reviewing Robertson's 1991 book The New World Order.
Another critique can be found in historian Gregory S. Camp's 1997 book Selling Fear:
Conspiracy Theories and End-Times Paranoia. Religious studies scholar Richard T. Hughes
argues that "New World Order" rhetoric libels the Christian faith since the "New World Order",
as defined by Christian conspiracy theorists, has no basis in the Bible whatsoever and that, in
fact, this idea is not only unbiblical; it is anti-biblical and fundamentally anti-Christian
because, by misinterpreting key passages in the Book of Revelations, it turns a comforting
message about the coming kingdom of God into one of fear, panic and despair in the face of
an allegedly approaching one-world government. Progressive Christians, such as preacher-
theologian Peter J. Gomes, caution conservative Christians that a "spirit of fear" can distort
scripture and history by dangerously combining biblical literalism, apocalyptic timetables,
demonization, and oppressive prejudices; while Camp warns of the "very real danger that
Christians could pick up some extra spiritual baggage" by credulously embracing conspiracy
theories. They therefore call on Christians who indulge in conspiracism to repent.

Freemasonry
Freemasonry is one of the world's oldest secular fraternal organizations, which arose in late
16th- to early 17th-century Britain. Over the years a number of allegations and conspiracy
theories have been directed towards Freemasonry, including the allegation that Freemasons
have a hidden political agenda and are conspiring to bring about a New World Order, a
world government organized according to Masonic principles and/or governed only by
Freemasons.
The esoteric nature of Masonic symbolism and rites led to Freemasons being first accused of
secretly practicing Satanism in the late 1700s. The original allegation of a conspiracy within
Freemasonry to subvert religions and governments in order to take over the world
traces back to Scottish author John Robison, whose reactionary conspiracy theories crossed
the Atlantic, and during the 1800s influenced outbreaks of Protestant anti-Masonry in the
United States. In the 1890s, French writer Lo Taxil wrote a series of pamphlets and books,
denouncing Freemasonry, charging their lodges with worshiping Lucifer as the Supreme Being.
Despite the fact that Taxil admitted that his claims were all a hoax, they were and are believed
and repeated by numerous conspiracy theorists, and had a huge influence on subsequent anti-
Masonic claims about Freemasonry.
Some conspiracy theorists would eventually speculate that some of the Founding Fathers of
the United States, such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, of
having Masonic sacred geometric designs interwoven into American society,
particularly in the Great Seal of the United States, the United States one-dollar bill, the
architecture of National Mall landmarks, and the streets and highways of Washington, D.C., as
part of a master plan. Accordingly, colonial American Freemasons are portrayed as having
embraced Bavarian Illuminism and used the power of the occult to bind their planning of a
government in conformity with the plan of the "Masonic God" because of their belief that the
"Great Architect of the Universe" has tasked the United States with the eventual establishment
of the "Kingdom of God on Earth" a Masonic world theodemocracy with New Jerusalem as
its capital city and the Third Temple as its holiest site the initially utopian New World Order
presided over by a Masonic Messiah.
Freemasons rebut these claims of Masonic conspiracy. Freemasonry, which promotes
rationalism, places no power in occult symbols themselves, and it is not a part of its principles
to view the drawing of symbols, no matter how large, as an act of consolidating or controlling
power. Furthermore, there is no published information establishing the Masonic membership of
the men responsible for the design of the Great Seal. The Latin phrase "novus ordo seclorum",
appearing on the reverse side of the Great Seal since 1782 and on the back of the one-dollar
bill since 1935, means "New Order of the Ages" and only alludes to the beginning of an era
where the United States is an independent nation-state, but is often mistranslated by
conspiracy theorists as "New World Order". Lastly, Freemasons argue that, despite the
symbolic importance of the Temple of Solomon in their mythology, they have no interest in
rebuilding it, especially since "it is obvious that any attempt to interfere with the present
condition of things [on the Temple Mount] would in all probability bring about the greatest
religious war the world has ever known".
Although the European continental branch of Freemasonry has organizations that allow
political discussion within their Masonic Lodges and a few operate as active political lobbies for
secularist causes, as exemplified by the Grand Orient of France, Masonic researcher Trevor W.
McKeown argues:
The accusation that Freemasonry has a hidden agenda to establish a Masonic
government ignores several facts. While agreeing on certain Masonic Landmarks, the
many independent and sovereign Grand Lodges act as such, and do not agree on
many other points of belief and practice. Also, as can be seen from a survey of famous
Freemasons, individual Freemasons hold beliefs that span the spectrum of politics. The
term "Masonic government" has no meaning since individual Freemasons hold many
different opinions on what constitutes a good government.

Illuminati
The Order of the Illuminati was an Enlightenment-age secret society founded by university
professor Adam Weishaupt on 1 May 1776, in Upper Bavaria, Germany. The movement
consisted of advocates of freethought, secularism, liberalism, republicanism and gender
equality, recruited in the German Masonic Lodges, who sought to teach rationalism through
mystery schools. In 1785, the order was infiltrated, broken up and suppressed by the
government agents of Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, in his preemptive campaign to
neutralize the threat of secret societies ever becoming hotbeds of conspiracies to overthrow
the Bavarian monarchy and its state religion, Roman Catholicism.
In the late 18th century, reactionary conspiracy theorists, such as Scottish physicist John
Robison and French Jesuit priest Augustin Barruel, began speculating that the Illuminati
survived their suppression and became the masterminds behind the French Revolution and the
Reign of Terror. The Illuminati were accused of being subversives who were attempting to
secretly orchestrate a revolutionary wave in Europe and the rest of the world in order to
spread the most radical ideas and movements of the Enlightenment anti-clericalism,
anti-monarchism, and anti-patriarchalism and create a world noocracy and cult of reason.
During the 19th century, fear of an Illuminati conspiracy was a real concern of European ruling
classes, and their oppressive reactions to this unfounded fear provoked in 1848 the very
revolutions they sought to prevent.
During the interwar period of the 20th century, fascist propagandists, such as British
revisionist historian Nesta Helen Webster and American socialite Edith Starr Miller, not
only popularized the myth of an Illuminati conspiracy but claimed that it was a subversive
secret society which serves the Jewish elites that supposedly propped up both finance
capitalism and Soviet communism in order to divide and rule the world. American
evangelist Gerald Burton Winrod and other conspiracy theorists within the fundamentalist
Christian movement in the United States which emerged in the 1910s as a backlash against
the principles of Enlightenment secular humanism, modernism, and liberalism became the
main channel of dissemination of Illuminati conspiracy theories in America. Right-wing
populists, such as members of the John Birch Society, subsequently began speculating that
some collegiate fraternities (Skull and Bones), gentlemen's clubs (Bohemian Club) and think
tanks (Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission) of the American upper class are
front organizations of the Illuminati, which they accuse of plotting to create a New World
Order through a one-world government.
Skeptics argue that evidence would suggest that the Bavarian Illuminati was nothing more
than a curious historical footnote since there is no evidence that the Illuminati survived its
suppression in 1785.

Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an antisemitic canard, originally published in Russian in
1903, alleging a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to achieve world domination. The text purports
to be the minutes of the secret meetings of a cabal of Jewish masterminds, which has coopted
Freemasonry and is plotting to rule the world on behalf of all Jews because they believe
themselves to be the chosen people of God. The Protocols incorporate many of the core
conspiracist themes outlined in the Robison and Barruel attacks on the Freemasons, and
overlay them with antisemitic allegations about anti-Tsarist movements in Russia. The
Protocols reflect themes similar to more general critiques of Enlightenment liberalism by
conservative aristocrats who support monarchies and state religions. The interpretation
intended by the publication of The Protocols is that if one peels away the layers of the Masonic
conspiracy, past the Illuminati, one finds the rotten Jewish core.
The Protocols has been proven by polemicists, such as Irish journalist Philip Graves in a
1921 The Times article, and British academic Norman Cohn in his 1967 book Warrant for
Genocide, to be both a hoax and a clear case of plagiarism. There is general agreement that
Russian-French writer and political activist Matvei Golovinski fabricated the text for Okhrana,
the secret police of the Russian Empire, as a work of counter-revolutionary propaganda prior
to the 1905 Russian Revolution, by plagiarizing it, almost word for word in some passages,
from The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, a 19th century satire against
Napoleon III of France written by French political satirist and Legitimist militant Maurice Joly
Responsible for feeding many antisemitic and anti-Masonic mass hysterias of the 20th century,
The Protocols is widely considered to be influential in the development of conspiracy theories
in general and New World Order conspiracism in particular, and reappears repeatedly in
contemporary conspiracy literature. For example, the authors of the 1982 controversial book
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail concluded that The Protocols was the most persuasive piece
of evidence for the existence and activities of the Priory of Sion. They speculated that this
secret society was working behind the scenes to establish a theocratic "United States of
Europe". Politically and religiously unified through the imperial cult of a Merovingian Great
Monarch supposedly descended from a Jesus bloodline who occupies both the
throne of Europe and the Holy See, this "Holy European Empire" would become the
hyperpower of the 21st century. Although the Priory of Sion, itself, has been exhaustively
debunked by journalists and scholars as a hoax, some apocalyptic millenarian Christian
eschatologists who believe The Protocols is authentic became convinced that the Priory of Sion
was a fulfillment of prophecies found in the Book of Revelation and further proof of an anti-
Christian conspiracy of epic proportions signaling the imminence of a New World Order.
Skeptics argue that the current gambit of contemporary conspiracy theorists who use The
Protocols is to claim that they "really" come from some group other than the Jews such as
fallen angels or alien invaders. Although it is hard to determine whether the conspiracy-
minded actually believe this or are simply trying to sanitize a discredited text, skeptics argue
that it doesn't make much difference, since they leave the actual, antisemitic text unchanged.
The result is to give The Protocols credibility and circulation when it deserves neither.

Round Table
During the second half of Britain's "imperial century" between 1815 and 1914, English-born
South African businessman, mining magnate, and politician Cecil Rhodes advocated the
British Empire reannexing the United States of America and reforming itself into an "Imperial
Federation" to bring about a hyperpower and lasting world peace. In his first will, of 1877,
written at the age of 23, he expressed his wish to fund a secret society (known as the Society
of the Elect) that would advance this goal:
To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the
true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout
the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of
colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are
attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British
settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates,
the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the
Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago,
the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of
America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of
Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together
the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power
as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity.
In his later wills, a more mature Rhodes abandoned the idea and instead concentrated on
what became the Rhodes Scholarship, which had British statesman Alfred Milner as one of its
trustees. Established in 1902, the original goal of the trust fund was to foster peace among
the great powers by creating a sense of fraternity and a shared world view among future
British, American, and German leaders by having enabled them to study for free at the
University of Oxford.
Milner and British official Lionel George Curtis were the architects of the Round Table
movement, a network of organizations promoting closer union between Britain and its
self-governing colonies. To this end, Curtis founded the Royal Institute of International
Affairs in June 1919 and, with his 1938 book The Commonwealth of God, began advocating for
the creation of an imperial federation that eventually reannexes the U.S., which would be
presented to Protestant churches as being the work of the Christian God to elicit their support.
The Commonwealth of Nations was created in 1949 but it would only be a free association of
independent states rather than the powerful imperial federation imagined by Rhodes, Milner
and Curtis.
The Council on Foreign Relations began in 1917 with a group of New York academics who were
asked by President Woodrow Wilson to offer options for the foreign policy of the United States
in the interwar period. Originally envisioned as a group of American and British scholars and
diplomats, some of whom belonging to the Round Table movement, it was a subsequent group
of 108 New York financiers, manufacturers and international lawyers organized in June 1918
by Nobel Peace Prize recipient and U.S. secretary of state, Elihu Root, that became the Council
on Foreign Relations on 29 July 1921. The first of the councils projects was a quarterly journal
launched in September 1922, called Foreign Affairs. The Trilateral Commission was founded in
July 1973, at the initiative of American banker David Rockefeller, who was chairman of the
Council on Foreign Relations at that time. It is a private organization established to foster
closer cooperation among the United States, Europe and Japan. The Trilateral Commission is
widely seen as a counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations.
In the 1960s, right-wing populist individuals and groups with a producerist worldview, such as
members of the John Birch Society, were the first to combine and spread an
ultraconservative business nationalist critique of corporate internationalists networked through
think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations with a grand conspiracy theory casting
them as front organizations for the Round Table of the "Anglo-American
Establishment", which are financed by an "international banking cabal" that has supposedly
been plotting from the late 19th century on to impose an oligarchic new world order through a
global financial system. Anti-globalist conspiracy theorists therefore fear that international
bankers are planning to eventually subvert the independence of the U.S. by subordinating
national sovereignty to a strengthened Bank for International Settlements.
The research findings of historian Carroll Quigley, author of the 1966 book Tragedy and Hope,
are taken by both conspiracy theorists of the American Old Right (Cleon Skousen) and New
Left (Carl Oglesby) to substantiate this view, even though he argued that the Establishment
is not involved in a plot to implement a one-world government but rather British and
American benevolent imperialism driven by the mutual interests of economic elites in the
United Kingdom and the United States. Quigley also argued that, although the Round Table
still exists today, its position in influencing the policies of world leaders has been much
reduced from its heyday during World War I and slowly waned after the end of World War II
and the Suez Crisis. Today the Round Table is largely a ginger group, designed to consider and
gradually influence the policies of the Commonwealth of Nations, but faces strong opposition.
Furthermore, in American society after 1965, the problem, according to Quigley, was that no
elite was in charge and acting responsibly.
Larry McDonald, the 2nd president of the John Birch Society and a conservative Democratic
member of the United States House of Representatives who represented the 7th congressional
district of Georgia, wrote a forward for Allen's 1976 book The Rockefeller File, wherein he
stated:
The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government,
combining super-capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their
control ... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot,
international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent.
In his 2002 autobiography Memoirs, Rockefeller wrote:
For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum
have seized upon well-publicized incidents ... to attack the Rockefeller family for the
inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic
institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best
interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists'
and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global
political and economic structureone world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand
guilty, and I am proud of it.
Barkun argues that this statement is partly facetious (the claim of "conspiracy" and "treason")
and partly serious the desire to encourage trilateral cooperation among the U.S., Europe,
and Japan, for example an ideal that used to be a hallmark of the internationalist wing of
the Republican Party known as "Rockefeller Republicans" in honor of Nelson Rockefeller
when there was an internationalist wing. The statement, however, is taken at face value and
widely cited by conspiracy theorists as proof that the Council on Foreign Relations uses its role
as the brain trust of American presidents, senators and representatives to manipulate them
into supporting a New World Order in the form of a one-world government.
In a 13 November 2007 interview with Canadian journalist Benjamin Fulford, Rockefeller
countered:
I don't think that I really feel that we need a world government. We need
governments of the world that work together and collaborate. But, I can't imagine that
there would be any likelihood or even that it would be desirable to have a single
government elected by the people of the world ... There have been people, ever since
I've had any kind of position in the world, who have accused me of being ruler of the
world. I have to say that I think for the large part, I would have to decide to describe
them as crackpots. It makes no sense whatsoever, and isn't true, and won't be true,
and to raise it as a serious issue seems to me to be irresponsible.
Some American social critics, such as Laurence H. Shoup, argue that the Council on Foreign
Relations is an "imperial brain trust", which has, for decades, played a central behind-the-
scenes role in shaping U.S. foreign policy choices for the post-WWII international order and
the Cold War, by determining what options show up on the agenda and what options do not
even make it to the table; while others, such as G. William Domhoff, argue that it is in fact a
mere policy discussion forum, which provides the business input to U.S. foreign policy
planning. The latter argue that it has nearly 3,000 members, far too many for secret plans to
be kept within the group; all the council does is sponsor discussion groups, debates and
speakers; and as far as being secretive, it issues annual reports and allows access to its
historical archives. However, all these critics agree that historical studies of the council show
that it has a very different role in the overall power structure than what is claimed by
conspiracy theorists.

Open Conspiracy
In his 1928 book The Open Conspiracy British writer and futurist H. G. Wells promoted
cosmopolitanism and offered blueprints for a world revolution and world brain to establish a
technocratic world state and planned economy. Wells warned, however, in his 1940 book
The New World Order that:
... when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy,
there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an
efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people ... will hate the new world
order, be rendered unhappy by the frustration of their passions and ambitions through
its advent and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise,
we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of
them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.
Wells' books were influential in giving a second meaning to the term "new world order", which
would only be used by both state socialist supporters and anti-communist opponents for
generations to come. However, despite the popularity and notoriety of his ideas, Wells failed
to exert a deeper and more lasting influence because he was unable to concentrate his
energies on a direct appeal to intelligentsias who would, ultimately, have to coordinate the
Wellsian new world order.

New Age
British neo-Theosophical occultist Alice Bailey, one of the founders of the so-called New Age
movement, prophesied in 1940 the eventual victory of the Allies of World War II over the
Axis powers (which occurred in 1945) and the establishment by the Allies of a political and
religious New World Order. She saw a federal world government as the culmination of Wells'
Open Conspiracy but favorably argued that it would be synarchist because it was guided by
the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom, intent on preparing humanity for the mystical
second coming of Christ, and the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. According to Bailey, a
group of ascended masters called the Great White Brotherhood works on the "inner planes"
to oversee the transition to the New World Order but, for now, the members of this Spiritual
Hierarchy are only known to a few occult scientists, with whom they communicate
telepathically, but as the need for their personal involvement in the plan increases, there will
be an "Externalization of the Hierarchy" and everyone will know of their presence on Earth.
Bailey's writings, along with American writer Marilyn Ferguson's 1980 book The Aquarian
Conspiracy, contributed to conspiracy theorists of the Christian right viewing the New Age
movement as the "false religion" that would supersede Christianity in a New World Order.
Skeptics argue that the term "New Age movement" is a misnomer, generally used by
conspiracy theorists as a catch-all rubric for any new religious movement that is not
fundamentalist Christian. By their lights, anything that is not Christian is by definition actively
and willfully anti-Christian.
Paradoxically, since the 2000s, New World Order conspiracism is increasingly being embraced
and propagandized by New Age occultists, who are people bored by rationalism and drawn to
stigmatized knowledge such as alternative medicine, astrology, quantum mysticism,
spiritualism, and theosophy. Thus, New Age conspiracy theorists, such as the makers of
documentary films like Esoteric Agenda, claim that globalists who plot on behalf of the New
World Order are simply misusing occultism for Machiavellian ends, such as adopting 21
December 2012 as the exact date for the establishment of the New World Order in order to
take advantage of the growing 2012 phenomenon, which has its origins in the fringe
Mayanist theories of New Age writers Jos Argelles, Terence McKenna, and Daniel
Pinchbeck.
Skeptics argue that the connection of conspiracy theorists and occultists follows from their
common fallacious premises. First, any widely accepted belief must necessarily be false.
Second, stigmatized knowledge what the Establishment spurns must be true. The result
is a large, self-referential network in which, for example, some UFO religionists promote anti-
Jewish phobias while some antisemites practice Peruvian shamanism.

Fourth Reich
Conspiracy theorists often use the term "Fourth Reich" simply as a pejorative synonym for the
"New World Order" to imply that its state ideology and government will be similar to
Germany's Third Reich. However, some conspiracy theorists use the research findings of
American journalist Edwin Black, author of the 2009 book Nazi Nexus, to claim that some
American corporations and philanthropic foundations whose complicity was pivotal to the
Third Reich's war effort, Nazi eugenics and the Holocaust are now conspiring to build a
Fourth Reich.
Conspiracy theorists, such as American writer Jim Marrs, claim that some ex-Nazis, who
survived the fall of the Greater German Reich, along with sympathizers in the United States
and elsewhere, given safe haven by organizations like ODESSA and Die Spinne, have been
working behind the scenes since the end of World War II to enact at least some of the
principles of Nazism (e.g., militarism, imperialism, widespread spying on citizens,
corporatism, the use of propaganda to manufacture a national consensus) into culture,
government, and business worldwide, but primarily in the U.S.. They cite the influence of ex-
Nazi scientists brought in under Operation Paperclip to help advance aerospace
manufacturing in the U.S. with technological principles from Nazi UFOs, and the acquisition
and creation of conglomerates by ex-Nazis and their sympathizers after the war, in both
Europe and the U.S.
This neo-Nazi conspiracy is said to be animated by an "Iron Dream" in which the American
Empire, having thwarted the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy and overthrown its Zionist Occupation
Government, gradually establishes a Fourth Reich formally known as the "Western
Imperium" a pan-Aryan world empire modeled after Adolf Hitler's New Order which
reverses the "decline of the West" and ushers a golden age of white supremacy.
Skeptics argue that conspiracy theorists grossly overestimate the influence of ex-Nazis and
neo-Nazis on American society, and point out that political repression at home and imperialism
abroad have a long history in the United States that predates the 20th century. Some political
scientists, such as Sheldon Wolin, have expressed concern that the twin forces of democratic
deficit and superpower status have paved the way in the U.S. for the emergence of an
inverted totalitarianism which contradicts many principles of Nazism.

Alien Invasion
Since the late 1970s, extraterrestrials from other habitable planets or parallel dimensions
(such as "Greys") and intraterrestrials from Hollow Earth (such as "Reptilians") have been
included in the New World Order conspiracy, in more or less dominant roles, as in the theories
put forward by American writers Stan Deyo and Milton William Cooper, and British writer
David Icke.
The common theme in these conspiracy theories is that aliens have been among us for
decades, centuries or millennia, but a government cover-up enforced by Men in Black
has shielded the public from knowledge of a secret alien invasion. Motivated by speciesism
and imperialism, these aliens have been and are secretly manipulating developments and
changes in human society in order to more efficiently control and exploit human beings. In
some theories, alien infiltrators have shapeshifted into human form and move freely
throughout human society, even to the point of taking control of command positions in
governmental, corporate, and religious institutions, and are now in the final stages of their
plan to take over the world. A mythical covert government agency of the United States code-
named Majestic 12 is often imagined to be the shadow government which collaborates with
the alien occupation and permits alien abductions, in exchange for assistance in the
development and testing of military "flying saucers" at Area 51, in order for U.S. armed forces
to achieve full-spectrum dominance.
Skeptics, who adhere to the psychosocial hypothesis for unidentified flying objects, argue that
the convergence of New World Order conspiracy theory and UFO conspiracy theory is a
product of not only the era's widespread mistrust of governments and the popularity of the
extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs but of the far right and ufologists actually joining forces.
Barkun notes that the only positive side to this development is that, if conspirators plotting to
rule the world are believed to be aliens, traditional human scapegoats (Freemasons, Illuminati,
Jews, etc.) are downgraded or exonerated.

Brave New World
Antiscience and neo-Luddite conspiracy theorists emphasize technology forecasting in their
New World Order conspiracy theories. They speculate that the global power elite are
reactionary modernists pursuing a transhumanist agenda to develop and use human
enhancement technologies in order to become a "posthuman ruling caste", while change
accelerates toward a technological singularity a theorized future point of discontinuity when
events will accelerate at such a pace that normal unenhanced humans will be unable to predict
or even understand the rapid changes occurring in the world around them. Conspiracy
theorists fear the outcome will either be the emergence of a Brave New World-like dystopia
a "Brave New World Order" or the extinction of the human species.
Democratic transhumanists, such as American sociologist James Hughes, counter that many
influential members of the American Establishment are bioconservatives strongly opposed to
human enhancement, as demonstrated by President Bush's Council on Bioethics's proposed
international treaty prohibiting human cloning and germline engineering. Furthermore, he
argues that conspiracy theorists underestimate how fringe the transhumanist movement really
is.

Postulated implementations
Just as there are several overlapping or conflicting theories among conspiracists about the
nature of the New World Order, so are there several beliefs about how its architects and
planners will implement it:
Gradualism
Conspiracy theorists generally speculate that the New World Order is being implemented
gradually, citing the formation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System in 1913; the League of
Nations in 1919; the International Monetary Fund in 1944; the United Nations in 1945;
the World Bank in 1945; the World Health Organization in 1948; the European Union
and the euro currency in 1993; the World Trade Organization in 1998; the African Union
in 2002; and the Union of South American Nations in 2008 as major milestones.
An increasingly popular conspiracy theory among American right-wing populists is that the
hypothetical North American Union and the amero currency, proposed by the Council on
Foreign Relations and its counterparts in Mexico and Canada, will be the next implementation
of the New World Order. The theory holds that a group of shadowy and mostly nameless
international elites are planning to replace the federal government of the United States with a
transnational government. Therefore, conspiracy theorists believe the borders between
Mexico, Canada and the United States are in the process of being erased, covertly, by a group
of globalists whose ultimate goal is to replace national governments in Washington, D.C.,
Ottawa and Mexico City with a European-style political union and a bloated E.U.-style
bureaucracy.
Skeptics argue that the North American Union exists only as a proposal contained in one of a
thousand academic and/or policy papers published each year that advocate all manner of
idealistic but ultimately unrealistic approaches to social, economic and political problems. Most
of these get passed around in their own circles and eventually filed away and forgotten by
junior staffers in congressional offices. Some of these papers, however, become touchstones
for the conspiracy-minded and form the basis of all kinds of unfounded xenophobic fears
especially during times of economic anxiety.
For example, in March 2009, as a result of the late-2000s financial crisis, the People's Republic
of China and the Russian Federation pressed for urgent consideration of a new international
reserve currency and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development proposed
greatly expanding the I.M.F.'s Special Drawing Rights. Conspiracy theorists fear these
proposals are a call for the U.S. to adopt a single global currency for a New World Order.
Judging that both national governments and global institutions have proven ineffective in
addressing worldwide problems that go beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to
solve, some political scientists critical of New World Order conspiracism, such as Mark C.
Partridge, argue that regionalism will be the major force in the coming decades, pockets of
power around regional centers: Western Europe around Brussels, the Western Hemisphere
around Washington, D.C., East Asia around Beijing, and Eastern Europe around Moscow. As
such, the E.U., the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and the G-20 will likely become more
influential as time progresses. The question then is not whether global governance is gradually
emerging, but rather how will these regional powers interact with one another.
Coup d'tat
American right-wing populist conspiracy theorists, especially those who joined the militia
movement in the United States, speculate that the New World Order will be implemented
through a dramatic coup d'tat by a "secret team", using black helicopters, in the U.S. and
other nation-states to bring about a totalitarian world government controlled by the United
Nations and enforced by troops of foreign U.N. peacekeepers. Following the Rex 84 and
Operation Garden Plot plans, this military coup would involve the suspension of the
Constitution, the imposition of martial law, and the appointment of military
commanders to head state and local governments and to detain dissidents.
These conspiracy theorists, who are all strong believers in a right to keep and bear arms, are
extremely fearful that the passing of any gun control legislation will be later followed by the
abolishment of personal gun ownership and a campaign of gun confiscation, and that the
refugee camps of emergency management agencies such as F.E.M.A. will be used for the
internment of suspected subversives, making little effort to distinguish true threats to the New
World Order from pacifist dissidents.
Before year 2000 some survivalists wrongly believed this process would be set in motion by
the predicted Y2K problem causing societal collapse. Since many left-wing and right-wing
conspiracy theorists believe that the September 11 attacks were a false flag operation
carried out by the United States intelligence community, as part of a strategy of tension to
justify political repression at home and preemptive war abroad, they have become convinced
that a more catastrophic terrorist incident will be responsible for triggering Executive Directive
51 in order to complete the transition to a police state.
Skeptics argue that unfounded fears about an imminent or eventual gun ban, military coup,
internment, or U.N. invasion and occupation are rooted in the siege mentality of the
American militia movement but also an apocalyptic millenarianism which provides a basic
narrative within the political right in the U.S., claiming that the idealized society (i.e.,
constitutional republic, Jeffersonian democracy, "Christian nation", "white nation") is thwarted
by subversive conspiracies of liberal secular humanists who want "Big Government" and
globalists who plot on behalf of the New World Order.
Mass surveillance
Conspiracy theorists concerned with surveillance abuse believe that the New World Order is
being implemented by the cult of intelligence at the core of the surveillance-industrial complex
through mass surveillance and the use of Social Security numbers, the bar-coding of retail
goods with Universal Product Code markings, and, most recently, RFID tagging via
microchip implants.
Claiming that corporations and government are planning to track every move of consumers
and citizens with RFID as the latest step toward a 1984-like surveillance state, consumer
privacy advocates, such as Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, have become Christian
conspiracy theorists who believe spychips must be resisted because they argue that modern
database and communications technologies, coupled with point of sale data-capture
equipment and sophisticated ID and authentication systems, now make it possible to require a
biometrically associated number or mark to make purchases. They fear that the ability to
implement such a system closely resembles the Number of the Beast prophesied in the Book
of Revelation.
In January 2002, the Information Awareness Office (IAO) was established by the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to bring together several DARPA projects
focused on applying information technology to counter asymmetric threats to national
security. Following public criticism that the development and deployment of these technologies
could potentially lead to a mass surveillance system, the IAO was defunded by the United
States Congress in 2003. The second source of controversy involved IAOs original logo, which
depicted the "all-seeing" Eye of Providence atop of a pyramid looking down over the globe,
accompanied by the Latin phrase scientia est potentia (knowledge is power). Although
DARPA eventually removed the logo from its website, it left a lasting impression on privacy
advocates. It also inflamed conspiracy theorists, who misinterpret the "eye and pyramid" as
the Masonic symbol of the Illuminati, an 18th-century secret society they speculate continues
to exist and is plotting on behalf of a New World Order.
American historian Richard Landes, who specializes in the history of apocalypticism and was
co-founder and director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, argues that
new and emerging technologies often trigger alarmism among millenarians and even the
introduction of Gutenberg's printing press in 1436 caused waves of apocalyptic thinking. The
Year 2000 problem, bar codes and Social Security numbers all triggered end-time
warnings which either proved to be false or simply were no longer taken seriously once the
public became accustomed to these technological changes. Civil libertarians argue that the
privatization of surveillance and the rise of the surveillance-industrial complex in the United
States does raise legitimate concerns about the erosion of privacy. However, skeptics of mass
surveillance conspiracism caution that such concerns should be disentangled from secular
paranoia about Big Brother or religious hysteria about the Antichrist.
Occultism
Conspiracy theorists of the Christian right, starting with British revisionist historian Nesta
Helen Webster, believe there is an ancient occult conspiracy started by the first
mystagogues of Gnosticism and perpetuated by their alleged esoteric successors, such as the
Kabbalists, Cathars, Knights Templar, Hermeticists, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and,
ultimately, the Illuminati which seeks to subvert the Judeo-Christian foundations of the
Western world and implement the New World Order through a one-world religion that
prepares the masses to embrace the imperial cult of the Antichrist. More broadly, they
speculate that globalists who plot on behalf of a New World Order are directed by occult
agencies of some sort: unknown superiors, spiritual hierarchies, demons, fallen angels and/or
Lucifer. They believe that these conspirators use the power of occult sciences (numerology),
symbols (Eye of Providence), rituals (Masonic degrees), monuments (National Mall
landmarks), buildings (Manitoba Legislative Building) and facilities (Denver International
Airport) to advance their plot to rule the world.
For example, in June 1979, an unknown benefactor under the pseudonym "R. C. Christian"
had a huge granite megalith built in the U.S. state of Georgia, which acts like a compass,
calendar, and clock. A message comprising ten guides is inscribed on the occult structure in
many languages to serve as instructions for survivors of a doomsday event to establish a more
enlightened and sustainable civilization than the one which was destroyed. The "Georgia
Guidestones" have subsequently become a spiritual and political Rorschach test onto which
any number of ideas can be imposed. Some New Agers and neo-pagans revere it as a ley-line
power nexus while a few conspiracy theorists are convinced that they are engraved with the
New World Order's anti-Christian "Ten Commandments". Should the Guidestones survive
for centuries as their creators intended, many more meanings could arise, equally unrelated to
the designers original intention.
Skeptics argue that the demonization of Western esotericism by conspiracy theorists is rooted
in religious intolerance but also in the same moral panics that have fueled witch trials in the
Early Modern period, and satanic ritual abuse allegations in the United States.
Population control
Conspiracy theorists believe that the New World Order will also be implemented through the
use of human population control in order to more easily monitor and control the movement of
individuals. The means range from stopping the growth of human societies through
reproductive health and family planning programs, which promote abstinence,
contraception and abortion, or intentionally reducing the bulk of the world population
through genocides by mongering unnecessary wars, through plagues by engineering
emergent viruses and tainting vaccines, and through environmental disasters by
controlling the weather (HAARP, chemtrails), etc. Conspiracy theorists argue that globalists
plotting on behalf of a New World Order are neo-Malthusians who engage in overpopulation
and climate change alarmism in order to create public support for coercive population control
and ultimately world government.
Skeptics argue that fears of population control can be traced back to the traumatic legacy of
the eugenics movement's "war against the weak" in the United States during the first decades
of the 20th century but also the Second Red Scare in the U.S. during the late 1940s and
1950s, and to a lesser extent in the 1960s, when activists on the far right of American politics
routinely opposed public health programs, notably water fluoridation, mass vaccination and
mental health services, by asserting they were all part of a far-reaching plot to impose a
socialist or communist regime. Their views were influenced by opposition to a number of
major social and political changes that had happened in recent years: the growth of
internationalism, particularly the United Nations and its programs; the introduction of social
welfare provisions, particularly the various programs established by the New Deal; and
government efforts to reduce inequalities in the social structure of the U.S..
Mind control
Social critics accuse governments, corporations, and the mass media of being involved in the
manufacturing of a national consensus and, paradoxically, a culture of fear due to the
potential for increased social control that a mistrustful and mutually fearing population might
offer to those in power. The worst fear of some conspiracy theorists, however, is that the New
World Order will be implemented through the use of mind controla broad range of tactics
able to subvert an individual's control of his or her own thinking, behavior, emotions, or
decisions. These tactics are said to include everything from Manchurian candidate-style
brainwashing of sleeper agents (Project MKULTRA, "Project Monarch") to engineering
psychological operations (water fluoridation, subliminal advertising, "Silent Sound Spread
Spectrum", MEDUSA) and parapsychological operations (Stargate Project) to influence the
masses. The concept of wearing a tin foil hat for protection from such threats has become
a popular stereotype and term of derision; the phrase serves as a byword for paranoia and is
associated with conspiracy theorists.
Skeptics argue that the paranoia behind a conspiracy theorist's obsession with mind control,
population control, occultism, surveillance abuse, Big Business, Big Government, and
globalization arises from a combination of two factors, when he or she: 1) holds strong
individualist values and 2) lacks power. The first attribute refers to people who care deeply
about an individual's right to make their own choices and direct their own lives without
interference or obligations to a larger system (like the government), but combine this with a
sense of powerlessness in one's own life, and one gets what some psychologists call "agency
panic", intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy to outside forces or regulators.
When fervent individualists feel that they cannot exercise their independence, they experience
a crisis and assume that larger forces are to blame for usurping this freedom.
Alleged conspirators
According to Domhoff, many people seem to believe that the United States is ruled from
behind the scenes by a conspiratorial elite with secret desires, i.e., by a small secretive
group that wants to change the government system or put the country under the control of a
world government. In the past the conspirators were usually said to be crypto-communists
who were intent upon bringing the United States under a common world government with the
Soviet Union, but the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991 undercut that theory. Domhoff notes
that most conspiracy theorists changed their focus to the United Nations as the likely
controlling force in a New World Order, an idea which is undermined by the powerlessness of
the U.N. and the unwillingness of even moderates within the American Establishment to give it
anything but a limited role.
Although skeptical of New World Order conspiracism, political scientist David Rothkopf argues,
in the 2008 book Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making, that the
world population of 6 billion people is governed by an elite of 6,000 individuals. Until the
late 20th century, governments of the great powers provided most of the superclass,
accompanied by a few heads of international movements (i.e., the Pope of the Catholic
Church) and entrepreneurs (Rothschilds, Rockefellers). According to Rothkopf, in the early
21st century, economic cloutfueled by the explosive expansion of international trade, travel
and communicationrules; the nation-state's power has diminished shrinking politicians to
minority power broker status; leaders in international business, finance and the defense
industry not only dominate the superclass, they move freely into high positions in their
nations' governments and back to private life largely beyond the notice of elected legislatures
(including the U.S. Congress), which remain abysmally ignorant of affairs beyond their
borders. He asserts that the superclass' disproportionate influence over national policy is
constructive but always self-interested, and that across the world, few object to corruption
and oppressive governments provided they can do business in these countries.
Viewing the history of the world as the history of warfare between secret societies,
conspiracy theorists go further than Rothkopf, and other scholars who have studied the global
power elite, by claiming that established upper-class families with "old money" who
founded and finance the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Club, Club of Rome, Council on Foreign
Relations, Rhodes Trust, Skull and Bones, Trilateral Commission, and similar think tanks and
private clubs, are illuminated conspirators plotting to impose a totalitarian New World Order
the implementation of an authoritarian world government controlled by the United
Nations and a global central bank, which maintains political power through the
financialization of the economy, regulation and restriction of speech through the concentration
of media ownership, mass surveillance, widespread use of state terrorism, and an all-
encompassing propaganda that creates a cult of personality around a puppet world leader and
ideologizes world government as the culmination of history's progress.
Marxists, who are skeptical of right-wing populist conspiracy theories, also accuse the global
power elite of not having the best interests of all at heart, and many intergovernmental
organizations of suffering from a democratic deficit, but they argue that the superclass are
plutocrats only interested in brazenly imposing a neoliberal or neoconservative new world
order the implementation of global capitalism through economic and military coercion to
protect the interests of transnational corporations which systematically undermines the
possibility of a socialist one-world government. Arguing that the world is in the middle of a
transition from the American Empire to the rule of a global ruling class that has emerged from
within the American Empire, they point out that right-wing populist conspiracy theorists,
blinded by their anti-communism, fail to see is that what they demonize as the "New World
Order" is, ironically, the highest stage of the very capitalist economic system they defend.
American intellectual Noam Chomsky, author of the 1994 book World Orders Old and New,
often describes the new world order as a post-Cold-War era in which "the New World gives the
orders". Commenting on the 1999 US-NATO bombing of Serbia, he writes:
The aim of these assaults is to establish the role of the major imperialist powers
above all, the United Statesas the unchallengeable arbiters of world affairs. The
"New World Order" is precisely this: an international regime of unrelenting pressure
and intimidation by the most powerful capitalist states against the weakest.

Criticisms
Skeptics of New World Order conspiracy theories accuse its proponents of indulging in the
furtive fallacy, a belief that significant facts of history are necessarily sinister; conspiracism, a
world view that centrally places conspiracy theories in the unfolding of history, rather than
social and economic forces; and fusion paranoia, a promiscuous absorption of fears from any
source whatsoever.
Domhoff, a research professor in psychology and sociology who studies theories of power,
writes in a March 2005 essay entitled There Are No Conspiracies:
There are several problems with a conspiratorial view that don't fit with what we know
about power structures. First, it assumes that a small handful of wealthy and highly
educated people somehow develop an extreme psychological desire for power that
leads them to do things that don't fit with the roles they seem to have. For example,
that rich capitalists are no longer out to make a profit, but to create a one-world
government. Or that elected officials are trying to get the constitution suspended so
they can assume dictatorial powers. These kinds of claims go back many decades now,
and it is always said that it is really going to happen this time, but it never does. Since
these claims have proved wrong dozens of times by now, it makes more sense to
assume that leaders act for their usual reasons, such as profit-seeking motives and
institutionalized roles as elected officials. Of course they want to make as much money
as they can, and be elected by huge margins every time, and that can lead them to do
many unsavory things, but nothing in the ballpark of creating a one-world government
or suspending the constitution.
Partridge, a contributing editor to the global affairs magazine Diplomatic Courier, writes in a
December 2008 article entitled One World Government: Conspiracy Theory or Inevitable
Future?:
I am skeptical that global governance could come much sooner than that [200
years], as [journalist Gideon Rachman] posits. For one thing, nationalismthe
natural counterpoint to global governmentis rising. Some leaders and peoples
around the world have resented Washingtons chiding and hubris over the past two
decade of American unipolarity. Russia has been re-establishing itself as a great
power; few could miss the national pride on display when China hosted the Beijing
Olympics this summer; while Hugo Chavez and his ilk have stoked the national flames
with their anti-American rhetoric. The departing of the Bush Administration could
cause this nationalism to abate, but economic uncertainty usually has the opposite
effect. [...] Another point is that attempts at global government and global
agreements have been categorical failures. The WTOs Doha Round is dead in the
water, Kyoto excluded many of the leading polluters and a conference to establish a
deal was a failure, and there is a race to the bottom in terms of corporate taxes
rather than an existing global framework. And, where supranational governance
structures exist, they are noted for their bureaucracy and inefficiency: The UN has
been unable to stop an American-led invasion of Iraq, genocide in Darfur, the slow
collapse of Zimbabwe, or Irans continued uranium enrichment. That is not to belittle
the structure, as I deem it essential, but the systems flaws are there for all to see.
Although some cultural critics see superconspiracy theories about a New World Order as
"postmodern metanarratives" that may be politically empowering, a way of giving ordinary
people a narrative structure with which to question what they see around them, skeptics argue
that conspiracism leads people into cynicism, convoluted thinking, and a tendency to feel it is
hopeless even as they denounce the alleged conspirators.
The activities of conspiracy theorists (talk radio shows, books, websites, documentary videos,
conferences, etc.) unwittingly draw enormous amounts of energy and effort away from serious
criticism and activism directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their institutional
background. That is why conspiracy-focused movements (JFK, UFO, 9/11 Truth) are treated
far more tolerantly by centers of power than is the norm for serious critical and activist work
of truly left-wing progressives who are marginalized from mainstream public discourse.
Marxists, such as the members of the U.S. Party for Socialism and Liberation, reject
conspiracy theories in general and New World Order conspiracism in particular because it
produces false consciousness and cultism. They argue:
Conspiracy theories lack any true analysis of the systemic class forces at work that
oppress billions of people each day. They do not point to imperialism and capitalism as
the main problems, instead ascribing society's ills to a few leaders from imperialist
countries that are somehow above the class systems under which we live. Such
theories are not only false, anti-Marxist and truly reductive of historythey are
dangerous diversions that keep people from aiming their anger and hatred toward the
system that actually causes oppression throughout the world.
Marxists conclude that the real solution is something right-wing populist conspiracy theorists
would never advocate or contemplate: democratic socialism.
Concerned that the improvisational millennialism of most conspiracy theories about a New
World Order might motivate lone wolves to engage in leaderless resistance leading to
domestic terrorist incidents like the Oklahoma City bombing, Barkun writes:
The danger lies less in such beliefs themselves ... than in the behavior they might
stimulate or justify. As long as the New World Order appeared to be almost but not
quite a reality, devotees of conspiracy theories could be expected to confine their
activities to propagandizing. On the other hand, should they believe that the
prophesied evil day had in fact arrived, their behavior would become far more difficult
to predict.
Warning of the threat to American democracy posed by right-wing populist movements led by
demagogues who mobilize support for mob rule or even a fascist revolution by exploiting the
fear of conspiracies, Berlet writes:
Right-wing populist movements can cause serious damage to a society because they
often popularize xenophobia, authoritarianism, scapegoating, and conspiracism. This
can lure mainstream politicians to adopt these themes to attract voters, legitimize acts
of discrimination (or even violence), and open the door for revolutionary right-wing
populist movements, such as fascism, to recruit from the reformist populist
movements.
Hughes, a professor of religion, warns that no religious idea has greater potential for shaping
global politics in profoundly negative ways than "the new world order". He writes in a February
2011 article entitled Revelation, Revolutions, and the Tyrannical New World Order:
The crucial piece of this puzzle is the identity of the Antichrist, the tyrannical figure
who both leads and inspires the new world order. [...] for many years, rapture
theologians identified the Soviet Union as the Antichrist. But after Sept. 11, they
became quite certain that the Antichrist was closely connected with the Arab world and
the Muslim religion. This means, quite simply, that for rapture theologians, Islam
stands at the heart of the tyrannical "new world order." Precisely here we discover
why the idea of a "new world order" has such potential to move global politics in
profoundly negative directions, for rapture theologians typically welcome war with the
Islamic world. As Bill Moyers wrote of the rapture theologians, "A war with Islam in the
Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed -- an essential conflagration
on the road to redemption." Further, rapture theologians co-opt the United States as a
tool in their cosmic vision -- a tool God will use to smite the Antichrist and the enemies
of righteousness. This is why Tim LaHaye, co-author of the best-selling series of end-
times books, could lend such strong support to the American invasion and occupation
of Iraq. By virtue of that war, LaHaye believed, Iraq would become "a focal point of
end-times events." Even more disturbing is the fact that rapture theologians blissfully
open the door to nuclear holocaust. Rapture theologians have always held that God
will destroy his enemies at the end of time in the Great Battle of Armageddon. But
since World War II, they have increasingly identified Armageddon with nuclear
weaponry, thereby lending biblical inevitability to the prospects of nuclear annihilation.
As one prophecy writer put it, "The holocaust of atomic war would fulfill the
prophecies."
Criticisms of New World Order conspiracy theorists also come from within their own
community. Despite believing themselves to be "freedom fighters", many right-wing populist
conspiracy theorists hold views that are incompatible with their professed libertarianism, such
as dominionism, white supremacism, and even eliminationism. This paradox has led Icke, who
argues that Christian Patriots are the only Americans who understand the truth about the New
World Order (which he believes is controlled by a race of reptilians known as the "Babylonian
Brotherhood"), to reportedly tell a Christian Patriot group:
I don't know which I dislike more, the world controlled by the Brotherhood, or the one
you want to replace it with.


Sweet Seawater Incident
MUMBAI, INDIA

2006 Mumbai Sweet Seawater Incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Mumbai_sweet_seawater_incident
The 2006 Mumbai "sweet" seawater incident was a phenomenon during which residents of
Mumbai claimed that the water at Mahim Creek, one of the most polluted creeks in India that
receives thousands of tonnes of raw sewage and industrial waste every day, had suddenly
turned sweet. Within hours, residents of Gujarat claimed that seawater at Teethal beach had
turned sweet as well. it was a strange incident as it was very un usual
Reactions
In the aftermath of the incidents, local authorities feared the possibility of a severe outbreak
of water-borne diseases, such as gastroenteritis. The Maharashtra Pollution Control Board had
warned people not to drink the water, but despite this many people had collected it in bottles,
even as plastic and rubbish had drifted by on the current. The Municipal Corporation of
Greater Mumbai had ordered a bacteriological report into the "sweet" water, but suspected
that "contamination in the water might have been reduced due to the waters from Mithi river
flowing into the mouth of Mahim Bay".
Possible explanations
Geologists at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay offered the explanation that water
turning sweet is a natural phenomenon. Continuous rainfall over the preceding few days had
caused a large pool of fresh water to accrue in an underground rock formation near to the
coast, which then discharged into the sea as a large "plume" as fractures in the rocks
widened. Because of the differences in density, the discharged fresh water floated on top of
the salt water of the sea and spread along the coast. Over time, the two would mix to become
normal sea water once more.
According to Valsad District Collector D Rawal the reason for the water in Gujarat tasting less
salty than usual was that because of the monsoon, two rivers Auranga and Banki were in
spate and were flowing into the sea in the region.
Timeline of events
August 18, 8 p.m.: Devotees head to Mahim Creek amid rumors that the seawater is less salty
than usual. Many attribute the phenomenon to divine intervention, particularly because the
"miracle" is taking place at the shrine of Haji Maqdoom Baba.
August 19, Midnight: Thousands begin to bottle and drink the water despite desperate pleas
by political leaders and health officials who state that the water could be polluted by toxins.
August 19, 1 a.m.: Police arrive as more devotees arrive to experience the "miracle."
August 19, 10:30 a.m.: The tide turns and people admit that the water is "less sweet".
August 19, 2 p.m.: The phenomenon ends as people acknowledge that the water has turned
salty again.
References
"Hundreds drink "sweet seawater"". BBC News. 2006-08-19.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5266092.stm.
"People taste "sweet" sea water in Mumbai". The Times of India. 2006-08-19.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1907898.cms.
"Authorities fear "sweet" water could cause diseases". The Hindu (Mumbai). 2006-08-20.
http://hinduonnet.com./holnus/484200608201421.htm.
"IIT geologists say Mahim miracle a natural phenomenon". The Hindu. 2006-08-20.
http://hinduonnet.com./holnus/008200608200340.htm.
Rathin Das (2006-08-19). "Sweet water miracle in Gujarat too". Hindustan Times
(Ahmedabad). http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1772777,000900040003.htm.

Hundreds Drink 'Sweet Seawater'
Last Updated: Saturday, 19 August 2006, 10:46 GMT 11:46 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5266092.stm.

Hundreds of people flocked to a beach in the Indian city of Mumbai after reports the seawater
had turned sweet.

Several people who drank the muddy water from the Arabian Sea said it had been changed by
a miracle and could now cure illnesses.

Authorities in Mumbai said they collected samples for testing but warned against drinking the
polluted water because of health risks.

Many saw it as a blessing from Makhdoom Ali Mahimi, a 13th Century Sufi saint.
Sewage and waste
"This water is definitely sweet. We see it as a blessing from Baba (Holy Saint)," a man called
Rafique told news agency AFP.
"I will carry this back for my two sons and my parents," he added.
Reuters news agency reported seeing a man bathing a young boy in a creek near the beach,
which it said receives thousands of tons of raw sewage and industrial waste every day.
Others, the agency said, were seen gathering water as rubbish and plastic drifted past.
Mumbai officials said the water could have taken on a sweet taste for several reasons,
including an inflow of fresh water - or pollution, Reuters reported.
Last year, Mumbai residents flocked to a local beach after reports diamonds were washing
ashore. Police said it was fragments of glass.

Monkey Man Incident
NEW DELHI, INDIA

'Monkey Man' Fears Rampant in New Delhi
May 16, 2001 Posted: 1:58 p.m. EDT (1758 GMT)
CNN.com

NEW DELHI, India -- "Monkey man" hysteria has swept the Indian capital following the
confirmation that injuries sustained by victims are animal bites.

Indian media has reported that two terrified residents have fallen to their death on hearing
that an ape-like attacker was nearby.

Police said Wednesday that they were no closer to solving the mystery of an ape-like creature
which residents accuse of clawing and biting dozens of people in New Delhi suburbs over the
past fortnight.

"We have consulted doctors about the bites and they said they were by some animal," Joint
Commissioner of Police Suresh Roy told Reuters news agency.

"The information we have is pointing towards an animal. But we checked with the local zoo
and they said no animal had escaped from there."

Reports -- including hoax calls -- were so prolific that police ran short of vehicles following up
complaints.

Police have blamed the panic on uneducated poor people, many of them superstitious and
strong believers in the supernatural. Their fears may be exacerbated by sweltering heat and
darkness due to electricity cuts.

"It seems a group of people in masks are terrorizing people," the Statesman newspaper
quoted an unidentified police officer as saying.
Short man beaten for fitting description
Police urged the state-run power company to ensure uninterrupted power supply from dawn to
dusk so that panicked residents would feel safer with the lights on.

The power-starved capital routinely has power cuts during the sweltering summer.

"It is nothing but mass hysteria. We have increased patrolling in areas which have reported
such cases," said Manoj Kumar Lal, deputy commissioner of police in east Delhi.

The public's fear of the monkey man is so great that residents of Noida, a New Delhi suburb,
caught and beat up a 4-foot-tall wandering Hindu mystic, mistaking him for the simian terror,
the Statesman said.

The mystic, identified only as Jamir, was found by a crowd of people in a nearby forest
performing some rituals, beaten up and handed to the police.
Varying descriptions

The collective hysteria
claimed a second life
early Tuesday after a
pregnant woman
sleeping on her terrace
was woken by
neighbours shouting:
"The monkey has
come!."

The woman fell down a
staircase and died in
hospital.

Two nights earlier, an
industrial worker died in
similar circumstances
when he leapt in terror
from a building at
Noida, a southeastern
suburb.

Roy said there had
been no reports of
injuries in the affected
areas Tuesday night.

Two indentikit portraits put together with the help of the creature's victims suggested it was
human.

One showed a swarthy broad-faced bearded man with a flat nose, thick lips and a piercing
stare. The other, which could hardly have been more different, portrayed a narrow-faced man
with a receding hairline, a scrappy moustache and dark glasses.

The Indian Express quoted a resident of Noida as saying that a creature "as small as a cat" bit
her fingers, and two of her husband's teeth were knocked out by a "metallic hand."

Two houses away, there was a different story.

"It was a monkey alright, and about four foot tall, but as soon as I grabbed it, it turned itself
into a cat with tawny, glowing eyes," the newspaper quoted a resident as saying.

Monkeys run wild in New Delhi and on the outskirts of the city. Sometimes they pounce on
unsuspecting pedestrians or enter houses.

Chaos in Delhi: Monkey Man Madness
Douglas Chapman
The recent monster-inspired panic in India has historical precedents, such as Spring-Heeled
Jack, but has been more dangerous than most of them.
Descriptions of the Monkey Man of India, first mentioned in police calls on May 13, 2001, have
shown little consistency. So far, some described the entity as having a metal claw or claws,
while others likened it to a cat with glowing eyes. Another claimed it had flaming red eyes and
that green lights glowed upon its chest. These descriptions were but a few among many.
Whether the creature that so many feared was like a monkey is a matter of dispute. Witness
claims also described it as agile and feline, as a bandaged figure, or as a helmeted thing.
Even more unusual theories made it out to be a foreign robot assassin. A thirty-five-year-old
shopkeeper named Anim Keshri thought it to be a remote-controlled computerized creature --
since how else could it leap four stories and disappear?
May Mayhem
During May, dozens of individuals were said to have been hurt in its attacks, and two took
fatal leaps because they heard the "monster" was nearby. In daily newspapers, photos of
scratched victims upset New Delhi residents.
Early during the flap, on the night of May 14, fifty attacks were reported, according to the May
17 edition of The Australian. (Numbers vary widely in news reports.) The scare had at this
point moved from its origins in Ghaziabad to a number of areas in East Delhi.
Early May 15, at 2:30 A.M., a pregnant woman in East Delhi fell down some stairs after being
awakened by the shouts of neighbors saying that the monkey had arrived. She died in a
hospital, having been one of the two aformentioned jumping fatalities. That same night (late
Monday/early Tuesday), police received 13 distress calls from the New Usmanpur area.
As of May 17, police in Delhi had taken more than 40 -- perhaps as many as 65 according to
other accounts -- calls reporting depredations of this alleged Monkey Man since May 13, from
many sections of the city.
Third World Tensions
Contributing to the situation were three factors that afflict Third World cities in particular: the
presence of many illiterate and superstitious rural immigrants, a modern mass media, and a
high population density. These added to the elements that could inflame imaginations in the
hot darkness.
"Jokes" increased the tension. In Nangloi, a rat bite was claimed to be the work of the Monkey
Man. (That surely must have left everyone laughing.)
One doctor was arrested on May 19 after having scared his neighbors by throwing down an
inflated surgical glove which had been smeared with brown hair dye.
A senior police officer of the Delhi police, quoted in the Daily Pioneer circa May 16, said, "The
whole drama was very carefully enacted by the anti-social elements who wanted to test the
nerves of the Delhi Police." They blamed this alleged sabotage on Pakistan's Inter Services
Intelligence, for whom the "mischief mongers" were reportedly causing the terror.
A nine-year-old named Arjun Bajaj believes the Monkey Man is a black-masked fellow with
springs in his shoes -- and a button which he uses to vanish. Bajaj admits to thinking that
perhaps the first one was the doctor with the glove, but is frightened of others like him.
Elements of Legend
It seems probable that elements of the mace-equipped Hindu monkey god of legend,
Hanuman, have found their way into the public's conceptions because of his monkey elements
-- with his mace being related to the metal claw of the alleged Monkey Man. Other
contributing factors include sleeping outdoors, heat, darkness, crowding and fearfulness,
which combine to increase the panic. Suresh Roy, police Joint Commissioner in Delhi, spoke to
ABCNEWS.com about how seriously the resultant injuries had to be taken. Police have been
posted on rooftops, areas have been kept well lit from dusk to dawn despite the routine power
cuts, and border checks have been instituted at the city's points of entry. Public meetings
have also been organized. What is more, Delhi police have been told to shoot the Monkey Man
on sight.
Roy told the Reuters news agency that bites attributed to the thing were actually animal bites,
according to consulted physicians.
Two "identikit" portraits that have been made of the "entity" are not really monkey-like, as
one shows a staring hairy "man" with a swarthy complexion and flat nose, while the other one
shows a narrow-faced, mustached "man" in dark glasses.
But if the being is a man, "he" is a short one, about four feet tall. "He" does not act like a
monkey. Real monkeys have, of course, jumped on pedestrians and invaded homes, but have
not attacked in the manner of the entity reported in Delhi.
Mass Confusion
In all this confusion, false identifications have been made. A four-foot-tall wandering Hindu
mystic named Jamir was beaten up by residents of the nearby suburb of Noida, before being
handed over to police.
A van driver in Delhi was set upon and given multiple fractures in the early A.M. hours of
Friday, May 18, by people who thought him to be the Monkey Man.
Three thousand extra men in Delhi were assigned by police, as of May 21, to track down the
Monkey Man. Police also offered a reward equaling $1,065 U.S. dollars (in rupees) for the
creature's capture.
The terror has spread beyond that city, but with a difference.
Villagers in Assam have been terrorized by a wolflike Bear Man. As of May 27, more than a
dozen people claimed they were attacked by it. The creature is alleged to make itself invisible
before its attacks, and it is said to vanish when trapped in a ray of light. (There were power
outages in Assam as well.) The Army, after investigation, could not substantiate any of these
peoples' claims. The Assam Science Society, likewise, dismissed any such creature's existence
in the district.
Kalyan Chakravarty, the Deputy Commissioner in Assam, noted the fueling of the panic by the
Delhi Monkey Man stories. The Indian Express newspaper reported that villagers in the Nalbari
district have, like their Delhi counterparts, organized watch groups.
Explanations abound. Nirmal Ghosh, in the May 23 Straits Times, writes about how the
Monkey Man appeared to be a combination of much of what frightens people: its eyes were
red and glowed, it could alter its shape, it was strong and agile, and it could see in the
darkness -- it was thus a mixture of beast, criminal and supernatural being. Things were out
of control for those who thought they saw it, because of their conditions of poverty, and this
only increased their anxieties.
Whatever the explanation(s), the beast seems amazingly malleable and, indeed, prolific. One
Delhi resident spoke how it was a monkey until it turned into a cat when grabbed. (It was, of
course, likely a feline in the first place.) One criminal took advantage of the situation. He wore
a mask so that witnesses would think that he was just one more Monkey Man.
What could well have started as some monkeys in Ghaziabad may have later been abetted,
like in the above case, by humans. By May 23, 324 police complaints had been received in
Delhi, of which 260 were discovered to be hoaxes. By that time, officers considered the
Monkey Man to be a man, not any other creature.
Informed Conclusions
What can one make of all the entire situation? In the May 25 Wall Street Journal -- Europe,
Lionel Tiger, a Rutgers professor of anthropology, comments that the Monkey Man taps into
something also resonant with Westerners -- "a deep vein of interest in the ghoulish and
disastrous...." Life is a risk, whether one lives in India or the United States. Tiger notes how
Western fears of cloning and genetically modified foodstuffs tap into the fear of possible
genetically altered humans, which Tiger calls "monkey-men of our own devising."
Paul Cropper, in his e-mailed "Weird Crypto-Stuff 2001: Monkey Man Mania!" (May 17, 2001),
writes, "My own take on the Indian material is that it will turn out to be a case of mass
hysteria, fuelled by rumour, fear, pranksters and a few New Delhi monkeys...."
These monkeys may have appeared taller than they were -- seeming up to three or four feet
tall under the circumstances.
Kenneth Wright, in a piece titled "On the Trail of an Uncanny Creature" in The Herald of May
23, wonders if the "mass hysteria" was as mass as it was purported to be: "No-one wants to
be the only chap on the street who hasn't seen what all his neighbours have." Wright
compares the Monkey Man with 1800s London's Spring-Heeled Jack, an alleged Victorian
jumping semi-humanoid often said to have breathed fire and who was reportedly witnessed by
reputable people.
Lest one judge other societies too harshly, Wright writes about communal irrationality being
prevalent in the West, as witness the popularity of dubious "alternative medicines" and the
recent bright idea of investing pension funds in Internet start-ups.
Sources: Times of India, 5/14/01, 5/20/01; 5/25/01; ABCNEWS.com, 5/16/01; CNN.com,
5/16/01; The Hindu, 5/16/01 and 5/17/01; Independent, 5/16/01; Reuters News Service,
5/16/01; The Australian, 5/17/01; Courier Mail (Queensland), 5/17/01; Washington Post,
5/21/01; ChannelNewsAsia, 5/23/01; The Herald, 5/23/01; Straits Times, 5/23/01; Wall
Street Journal -- Europe, 5/25/01; India Express News Service, 5/26/01 (Guwahati); Ananova
News Service, 5/27/01; also The Daily Pioneer circa 5/16/01, and Paul Cropper's Weird
Crypto-Stuff.

*South Sea Company bubble of 17111720
*Mississippi Company bubble of 17191720
*Dutch tulip mania of the early seventeenth century

War of the Worlds
The Halloween myth of the War of the Worlds panic
By Professor W Joseph Campbell American University, Washington DC
http://www.bbc.co.uk

Mass panic and hysteria swept the United
States on the eve of Halloween in 1938,
when an all-too-realistic radio
dramatisation of The War of the Worlds
sent untold thousands of people into the
streets or heading for the hills.

Orson Welles would later go on to direct
Citizen Kane

The radio show was so terrifying in its
accounts of invading Martians wielding
deadly heat-rays that it is remembered like no other radio programme.

Or, more accurately, it is misremembered like no other radio programme.

Radio unreality

The panic and terror so routinely associated with The War of the Worlds dramatisation did not
come close to a nationwide dimension that night 73 years ago.

Sure, some Americans were frightened or disturbed by what they heard. But most listeners,
overwhelmingly, were not. They recognised it for what it was - a clever and entertaining radio
play.

The War of the Worlds dramatisation was the inspiration of Orson Welles, director and star of
the Mercury Theatre on the Air, an hour-long programme that aired on Sunday evenings on
CBS Radio.

Welles was 23 years old, a prodigy destined for lasting fame as director and star of the 1941
motion picture, Citizen Kane.

His adaptation of The War of the Worlds, a science fiction thriller written by HG Wells and
published in 1898, was little short of brilliant.

Further radio dramatisations of War of the
Worlds spread, including this British
production in 1952

What made the show so compelling was
the use of simulated on-the-scene radio
reports telling of the first landing of
Martian invaders near Princeton, New
Jersey, and their swift and deadly advance
to New York City.

American audiences had become
accustomed to news reports interrupting radio programmes. They had heard them often
during the war scare in Europe in late summer and early autumn of 1938.

Welles played on this familiarity to stunning effect. In doing so, he created a delicious and
tenacious media myth.

Newspaper headlines across America told of the terror that Welles' show supposedly created.

"Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact," declared the New York Times. "Radio
Fake Scares Nation," cried the Chicago Herald and Examiner. "US Terrorized By Radio's 'Men
From Mars,'" said the San Francisco Chronicle.

Exaggerated effect

Yet we know from several sources that the reports of thousands of panic-stricken Americans
were wildly exaggerated.

Hadley Cantril, a Princeton University psychologist, estimated that six million people listened
to The War of the Worlds dramatisation. Of that number, perhaps 1.2 million listeners were
"frightened" or "disturbed" by what they heard, Mr Cantril figured.


"Frightened" and "disturbed," of course, are hardly synonymous with "panic-stricken." Overall,
Mr Cantril's data signal that most listeners, by far, were not upset by the show.

Close reading of contemporaneous newspaper reports also reveals the fright that night was
highly exaggerated.

Newspapers presented sweeping claims about thousands or even millions of panic-stricken
Americans, but offered little supporting documentation.

Most newspapers printed dispatches sent by wire services such as the Associated Press, which
extrapolated widespread fear from small numbers of scattered, anecdotal accounts.

Newspapers, moreover, reported no deaths or serious injuries related to The War of the
Worlds broadcast: had panic and hysteria seized America that night, the mayhem surely would
have caused many deaths and injuries.

For newspapers, the so-called "panic broadcast" brought newspapers an exceptional
opportunity to censure radio, a still-new medium that was becoming a serious competitor in
providing news and advertising.

Newspaper leader columns in the days immediately after the broadcast helped deepen the
impression that Welles' programme had sown hysteria.

"Radio is new but it has adult responsibilities," chided the New York Times. "It has not
mastered itself or the material it uses."

Despite its wobbly basis, the myth of mass panic remains steadfastly attached to The War of
the Worlds programme. It is part of the lore of Orson Welles, the bad-boy genius who did his
best work before he turned 30.

And it's a tale just too delectable not to be true.



W Joseph Campbell is a professor at American University in Washington, DC. He wrote about
the myth of The War of the Worlds programme in his latest book, Getting It Wrong. He often
writes about media myths at his blog, Media Myth Alert.


*Penis Panic

A penis panic is a mass hysteria
event or panic in which male
members of a population suddenly
experience the belief that their
genitals are getting smaller or
disappearing entirely. Penis panics
have occurred around the world,
most notably in Africa and Asia.
Local beliefs in many instances
assert that such physical changes
are often fatal. In cases where the
fear of the penis being retracted is
secondary to other conditions,
psychological diagnosis and
treatments are under development.
It is becoming increasingly clear that
these forms of mass hysteria are
more common than previously
thought. Injuries have occurred when stricken men have resorted to apparatus such as
needles, hooks, fishing line, and shoe strings, to prevent the disappearance of their penises.
An epidemic struck Singapore in 1967, resulting in thousands of reported cases. Government
and medical officials alleviated the outbreak only by a massive campaign to reassure men of
the anatomical impossibility of retraction together with a media blackout on the spread of the
condition.

*Soap Opera Hysteria




Morangos com Acar is a Portuguese youth soap opera, which is very popular in Portuguese
communities, especially amongst children and teenagers, aiming to depict the adventures of
typical Portuguese youths. In May, 2006, an outbreak of the Morangos com Acar Virus was
reported in Portuguese schools. 300 or more students at 14 schools reported similar
symptoms to those experienced by the characters in a recent episode. These included rashes,
difficulty breathing, and dizziness, forcing some schools to close. The Portuguese National
Institute for Medical Emergency dismissed the illness as mass hysteria. This story concerned
some parents because of the major influence this series has on the kids and teens that watch,
it was in newspaper and magazines articles and elsewhere.

Tanganyika laughter epidemic
Wikipedia.org

The Tanganyika laughter epidemic
of 1962 was an outbreak of mass
hysteria, or Mass Psychogenic
Illness (MPI), rumored to have
occurred in or near the village of
Kashasha on the western coast of
Lake Victoria in the modern
nation of Tanzania (formerly
Tanganyika) near the border of
Kenya.



The incident

The laughter epidemic began on January 30, 1962, at a mission-run boarding school for girls
in Kashasha. The laughter started with three girls and spread haphazardly throughout the
school, affecting 95 of the 159 pupils, aged 1218. Symptoms lasted from a few hours to 16
days in those affected. The teaching staff were not affected but reported that students were
unable to concentrate on their lessons. The school was forced to close down on March 18,
1962.

After the school was closed and the students were sent home, the epidemic spread to
Nshamba, a village that was home to several of the girls. In April and May, 217 people had
laughing attacks in the village, most of them being school children and young adults. The
Kashasha school was reopened on May 21, only to be closed again at the end of June. In June,
the laughing epidemic spread to Ramashenye girls middle school, near Bukoba, affecting 48
girls. Another outbreak occurred in Kanyangereka and two nearby boys schools were closed.

The Tanganyika laughter epidemic is sometimes understood as implying that thousands of
people were continuously laughing for months. However this may not have been the case.
Other reports tell that the epidemic consisted of occasional attacks of laughter among groups
of people and the laughter was incapacitating when it struck. Scientists have confirmed that
laughter can be contagious.

The school from which the epidemic sprang was sued; the children and parents transmitted it
to the surrounding area. Other schools, Kashasha itself, and another village, comprising
thousands of people, were all affected to some degree. Six to eighteen months after it started,
the phenomenon died off. The following symptoms were reported on an equally massive scale
as the reports of the laughter itself: pain, fainting, respiratory problems, rashes, attacks of
crying, random screaming. In total 14 schools were shut down and 1000 people were affected.

Further reading

Hempelmann, Christian F. (March 2007). "The Laughter of the 1962 Tanganyika Laughter
Epidemic" (abstract). HUMOR - International Journal of Humor Research

Witch Hunts
Wikipedia.org

Salem Witchcraft Trials

In 1692, three pre-teen girls from prominent families in
Salem Village (now Danvers, Massachusetts) accused a
West Indian slave of being a witch. These allegations
were not the first incidents of witch-baiting in New
England; in previous years, several dozen persons were
accused of Satanic practices and three were hanged.

Book engraving of "Witch Hunter", Matthew Hopkins.

The 17th century was still an age in which people at all
educational levels believed that an individual could sell
his soul to the Devil in return for vast powers of
witchcraft. Among the believers were such notables as
the Rev. Cotton Mather, Puritanism's leading light in America. A book he had written, which
described the powers and behavior of witches, fell into the girls' hands and may have
prompted them to act.

Salem execution

The slave Tituba was flogged and she
confessed to practicing witchcraft. Her trial
touched off a fire storm of charges and
countercharges; one neighbor used an
allegation against another to settle a
simmering feud. At the height of the hysteria,
more than 150 people were accused. Plainly
innocent people attempted to avoid the noose
by confessing to such activities as having
sexual relations with the Devil and flying on
broomsticks.

Mather used his influence to mold the
proceedings, at least in the early stages. The
five-man court that heard the witchcraft
charges contained three members of Mathers
congregation. The minister also wrote to the
judges to urge them to admit spectral
evidence, statements made by spirits to the
victims of witchcraft.

In the summer of 1692, Mather traveled to Salem to witness the execution of George
Burroughs, a former minister who had been found guilty of consorting with the Devil. To the
amazement of all assembled, the convicted man stood on the scaffold and was able to recite
the Lords Prayer without error an act thought to be impossible for anyone who had sold his
soul. Many in the crowd urged that the execution be stopped, but Mather intervened,
reminding the witnesses that the accused had been duly convicted by a court. Burroughs was
hanged in accordance with his sentence.

The tide turned against the frenzy only when prosperous and influential members of the
community began to be the targets of accusations. They used their authority to call off the
special court in the fall of 1692. By that time, 15 women and four men had been hanged. One
man, Giles Corey, refused to enter a plea. He was bound and placed on the ground; heavy
rocks were piled on his chest to induce him to speak. His only remark, it was reported, was to
gasp, "More weight!" The authorities obliged and Corey was pressed to death.

Later historical studies of the Salem hysteria have revealed that those most often accused of
witchcraft were women at the fringe of society those who had few children and friends,
those who had quarreled with their neighbors and those single women who had accumulated
wealth or property. The events in Salem demonstrated how a volatile mixture of religion, fear
and jealousy could erupt into frenzy. The Salem trials marked the last time a person was
executed for witchcraft in America.

In British Isles
Witches of Warboys (15891593)
North Berwick witch trials (1590)
Pendle witches (1612)
Northamptonshire witch trials (1612)
Samlesbury witches (1612)
Witches of Belvoir (1619)
Bury St. Edmunds witch trials (1645, 1662, 1655 & 1694)
Bideford witch trial (1684)
Paisley witches (1696)
Islandmagee witch trial (1711)
In France
Aix-en-Provence possessions (1611)
Loudun possessions (1634)
Louviers Possessions (1647)
Poison affair (1679)
In Germany
Wiesensteig witch trial (15621563)
Trier witch trials (15811593)
Fulda witch trials (16031606)
Ellwangen witch trial (16111618)
Wrzburg witch trial (16261631)
Bamberg witch trials (16261631)
Witch trial of Fuersteneck (1703)
In Scandinavia
Kge Huskors (16081615)
Finspng witch trial (1617)
Vard witch trials (1621)
Ramsele witch trial (1634)
Kirkjubl witch trial (1656)
Vard Witch Trials (16621663)
Mora witch trial (1669)
Torsker witch trials (1675)
Elsewhere in Europe
Valais witch trials (14281447)
Val Camonica witch trials (1505, 1518)
Fairy witch trials of Sicily
Benandanti
Basque witch trials (1609)
Roermond witch trial (1613)
Spa witch trial (1616)
Werewolf witch trials
Witch trial of Nogaredo (16461647)
Salzburg witch trials (16751681)
Northern Moravia witch trials (1678)
Liechtenstein witch trials (16791682)
Szeged witch trials (17281729)
Doruchowo witch trial (1783)
Other
Salem witch trials (16921693)







Miracles



When things are almost impossible, these people can do it.


Jesus Christ
Year 2000 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia

Jesus of Nazareth, a 1st-century Jewish teacher who was crucified by the Romans, is believed
by Christians to be the Christ or Messiah through whom God was revealed to the world and
whose death reconciles the world to God.

Knowledge of Jesus (Yeshua or Joshua) as an historical person is provided mainly by the New
Testament (especially the Gospels). From this source and a few references in other works of
the 1st and 2d centuries, the following consensus can be drawn. Jesus was born in Roman-
ruled Palestine during the reign of the Roman emperor Augustus (27 - 14) and grew up in
the Galilean village of Nazareth. Associated early in his career with John the Baptist, he
gathered around him a group of disciples attracted by his interpretation of Jewish law and his
miracles, especially his exorcisms and healing of the sick. Jesus' criticisms of Jewish religious
leaders, coupled with the political rhetoric he used in announcing that God's rule was about to
replace human rule, led to mounting opposition toward him in both the Jewish and Roman
establishments. Arrested in Jerusalem, he was tried, condemned, and executed as a claimant
to Jewish kingship. This death by crucifixion, a form of execution used by the Romans to
punish non-Roman citizens who threatened Roman authority, took place when Pontius Pilate
was Roman governor of Judea ( 26-36). Jesus' followers subsequently claimed that God had
raised him from the dead, and Christianity, the movement launched in his name, quickly
spread throughout the Mediterranean world. The Roman emperors Claudius and Nero took
actions to suppress Christianity in the middle of the 1st century, and by the end of the
century, Jewish authorities in Palestine had adopted policies aimed at sharply differentiating
Christians from Jews.

Jesus in the Gospels

The Gospel accounts vary in the information they provide about Jesus. The Gospels according
to Mark and John concentrate on the story of his public activity and teachings. The Gospels of
Matthew and Luke furnish accounts of his birth and childhood. All, however, agree on the
essential features of his life.

Performed Miracles

Exorcised Demons
Accounts where Jesus delivered men from demon possession:

Of many (Matthew 8:16)
Mary (or Magdalene) possessed by seven demons (Luke 8:1-3)
A demon possessed boy (Matthew 17:14-18)
A demon possessed man who was blind and mute (Matthew 12:22)
A demon possessed man in Capernaum (Mark 4:31-37)
A Canaanite womans daughter (Matthew 15:21-28)
Two men of Gadarenes possessed by Legion (Matthew 8:28-34)


Healed the Sick

According to Matthew 4:23-24:

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of
the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him
spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases,
those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the
paralyzed; and he healed them.

There were many accounts where Jesus healed the sick, including:

A blind beggar (Luke 18:35-43)
Two blind men (Matthew 9:27-31)
The blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52)
A mute (Matthew 9:32-33)
A man with leprosy (Matthew 8:1-4)
Ten men with leprosy (Luke 17:11-19)
A man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body (Luke 14:1-4)
A Centurions servant with paralysis (Matthew 8:5-13)
A crippled woman (Luke 12:10-13)
Peters mother-in-law with fever (Matthew 8:14-15)
A woman suffering from bleeding (Matthew 9:20-22)
The blind and the lame at the temple (Matthew 21:14)
The servant of a high priest whose right ear was cut off (Luke 22:47-51)
A disabled man in Bethesda (John 5: 1-15)

Levitation

This happened outside Bethany after he had risen from death. (Luke 24:50-51)

Materialization by multiplication of Bread and Fish

Jesus feeds the five thousand (Matthew 14:13-21)
Jesus feeds the four thousand (Matthew 15:29-39)


Transmutation by turning water into wine

Jesus turns water into wine in a wedding banquet in Cana, Galilee (John 2:1-12)


Transfiguration

The Gospels according to Matthew (17:1-13), Mark (9:2-13), and Luke (9:28-36) describe an
occasion on which Jesus took his disciples Peter, James, and John to a mountaintop
(traditionally Mount Tabor, although Mount Hermon is preferred by many scholars) and there
appeared "transfigured" (manifesting glory) with Moses and Elijah. The Transfiguration is
understood by Christians as a testimony that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies of
the Messiah. The Feast of the Transfiguration is observed on Aug. 6.

Walks on water

Jesus walks on water (Matthew 14:22-33)


Raised the Dead

Accounts of people whose were restored to life:

A dead girl (Matthew 9:18-26)
Lazarus (John 11: 1-44)


Rose from the Dead

Jesus appeared to his disciples after his death. (Luke 24:36-49)



Cannabis linked to Biblical Healing
Monday, 6 January, 2003, 19:18 GMT

Jesus Christ and his apostles may have used a cannabis-based anointing oil to help cure
people with crippling diseases, it has been claimed.

Researchers in the United States say the oil used in the early days of the Christian church
contained a cannabis extract called kaneh-bosem. They suggest the extract, which is
absorbed into the body when placed on the skin, could have helped cure people with a variety
of physical and mental problems.

The medical use of cannabis during that time is supported by archaeological records,
according to Chris Bennet.

The author of the article, published in the US drugs magazine High Times, says his findings
are based on a study of scriptural texts.

Wide use

The article does not question the validity of the miracles reported in the Bible but rather
examines whether the early Christian Church may have made use of substances with an active
medical effect. It does not rule out the role played by blind faith in Christ.

Chris Bennett said cannabis was widely used at the time to heal the sick.
"The medical use of cannabis during that time is supported by archaeological records."

He said the ancient anointing oil contained high levels of cannabis extract.
"The holy anointing oil, as described in the original Hebrew version of the recipe in Exodus,
contained over six pounds of keneh-bosum - a substance identified by respected etymology,
linguists anthropologists, botanists and other researchers as cannabis extracted into about six
quarts of olive oil along with a variety of other fragrant herbs.

"The ancient annointed ones were literally drenched in this potent mixture."

Miracles

Mr Bennett suggested the drug may have played a role in some healing miracles carried out
by Jesus and his disciples. He wrote: "In the ancient world, diseases such as epilepsy were
attributed to demonic possession To cure somebody of such an illness, even with the aid of
certain herbs was considered exorcism or miraculous healing.

"Interestingly, cannabis has been shown to be effective in the treatment of not only epilepsy
but many of the other ailments that Jesus and the disciples healed people of such as skin
diseases, eye problems and menstrual problems."

Mr Bennett said the findings suggested that it was unchristian to persecute people who used
cannabis.

"If cannabis was one of the main ingredients of the ancient Christian anointing oil, as history
indicates, and receiving this oil is what made Jesus the Christ and his followers Christians,
then persecuting those who use cannabis could be considered anti-Christ."


However, Christian groups in the United States have rejected Mr Bennett's claims.

They have insisted that the arguments made in the article are lame.
In a response to the article published on JesusJournal.com, critics said: "As many of us know
firsthand, Jesus often becomes the final hope for the pharmacologically impaired."
John Cunyus, the author of a book on Christian healing, said: "Well, the Bible does say that
St. Stephen was stoned... but perhaps not in that sense!"







Mysterious Coincidences




It might really be a coincidence or someone is just trying to reenact a certain incident from
the past.
Lone Survivor: Hugh Williams
http://socyberty.com

On December 5, 1664, a boat sank while crossing the Menai Strait in the Irish Sea. Just one of
the 81 passengers survived, a man named Hugh Williams. On December 5, 1785, another
boat sank in the same place. The only survivor: a man named Hugh Williams. On August 5,
1820, 24 passengers in a stricken vessel drowned. One man was saved. His name was Hugh
Williams.

The Fate of Richard Parker
Wikipedia.org

Richard Parker, a 17 year old cabin boy aboard the doomed yacht Mignonette in 1884, was
killed by his 3 shipmates after 19 days adrift in a life boat with little food and water. After
killing the ailing cabin boy, the shipmates subsequently cannibalized his remains. The 3
shipmates were rescued after 35 days afloat at sea in a life boat. Strangely enough, Edgar
Allan Poe predicted these future events in his 1838 fictitious novel The Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym of Nantucket, in which a young cabin boy named Richard Parker was killed and
eaten by his crewmates after the Nantucket ship was lost at sea.

The Fate of Jean Marie Dubarry
http://socyberty.com


On February 13, 1746, a Frenchman, Jean Marie Dubarry, was executed for the murder of
his father. Precisely 100 years later, on February 13, 1846, another Frenchman, also named
Jean Marie Dubarry, was executed for the murder of his father.

Thief Boguskovsky
http://socyberty.com

Early in 1938 playwright A. J. Talbot published a one act comedy, Chez Boguskovsky, in
which a man named Boguskovsky steals a painting from the Louvre in Paris. On August 15,
1939, a painting was stolen from the Louvre. The name of the thief: Boguskovsky.

It might really be a coincidence or someone was able to create a fascinating story by just
trying to link other things to certain incidents.

Curse of Robert Todd Lincoln
http://socyberty.com

Robert Todd Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln, was present at Fords Theater in
Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, when his father was assassinated. He was also nearby on
July 2, 1881, when President James Garfield was shot at the Baltimore and Potomac railroad
station in Washington. And on September 6, 1901, he just happened to be a few feet away
when President William McKinley was shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New
York.
Class Conscious Babies
http://socyberty.com

In 1906 six babies were born on board the German ship Grosser Kurfurst, sailing from Bremen
to New York: one in first class, twins in second class, and triplets in third class.

Films Heralding Disaster
http://socyberty.com

Film writer and producer Irwin Allen has made a specialty of disaster movies, and their
production has often coincided with real-life versions of the disasters they feature. In The
Poseidon Adventure an ocean liner capsizes. The movie opened late in 1972, the same year
the luxury ship Queen Elizabeth capsized.

In 1974, the year that The Towering Inferno premiered, three skyscrapers in Brazil caught
fire. And in 1980 Allens film about a volcanic eruption, When Time Ran Out, coincided with
the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington.

Hershey and the Chocolate Factory
http://socyberty.com

In 1974, at the Pepperidge Farm plant in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, an employee was killed
when he fell into a vat of chocolate. His name was Robert C.H. Hershey.

Clark and the Cursed 23
Wikipedia.org

Robert Anton Wilson cites William S. Burroughs as being the first person to believe in the 23
enigma. Wilson, in an article in Fortean Times, related the following story:

I first heard of the 23 enigma from William S Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch,
Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark,
around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without
an accident. That very day, Clarks ship had an accident that killed him and everybody
else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of
the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an
airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another captain Clark and the flight was Flight
23.

Greenberry Hill
http://socyberty.com


English politician and justice of the peace Sir Edmund
Berry Godfrey was found murdered on October 17, 1678.
His body had been left in a ditch on Greenberry Hill in
London. Three men were arrested and tried for the crime.
Their names were Robert Green, Henry Berry, and
Lawrence Hill.

Counterclaims:
The place Greenberry Hill was named after the three
men: Robert Green, Henry Berry, and Lawrence Hill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Berry_Godfrey



Gossens Diary
http://socyberty.com

One day in 1952 the oboist Lon Goossens lost his
pocket diary in a field near his home. A year later he was
walking across the same field and discovered the diary,
by then battered by wind and rain. Goossens noticed that
newspaper had been used to stiffen the covers. When he
pulled it out, Goossens found himself reading an extract
from a gossip column. The subject: his own marriage, 19
years earlier.


Dj vu
Wikipedia.org


Dj vu (French pronunciation: [dea vy] ( listen), literally "already seen") is the experience of
feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though
the exact circumstances of the prior encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined. The
term was coined by a French psychic researcher, mile Boirac (18511917) in his book
L'Avenir des sciences psychiques ("The Future of Psychic Sciences"), which expanded upon an
essay he wrote while an undergraduate. The experience of dj vu is usually accompanied by
a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eeriness", "strangeness", "weirdness",
or what Sigmund Freud calls "the uncanny". The "previous" experience is most frequently
attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience has
genuinely happened in the past.

Scientific research

The most likely explanation of dj vu isn't that it is an act of "precognition" or "prophecy",
but rather that it is an anomaly of memory, giving the false impression that an experience is
"being recalled". This explanation is supported by the fact that the sense of "recollection" at
the time is strong in most cases, but that the circumstances of the "previous" experience
(when, where, and how the earlier experience occurred) are quite uncertain or believed to be
impossible. Likewise, as time passes, subjects can exhibit a strong recollection of having the
"unsettling" experience of dj vu itself, but little or no recollection of the specifics of the
event(s) or circumstance(s) they were "remembering" when they had the dj vu experience.
In particular, this may result from an overlap between the neurological systems responsible
for short-term memory and those responsible for long-term memory (events which are
perceived as being in the past). The events would be stored into memory before the conscious
part of the brain even receives the information and processes it.

Another hypothesis being explored is that of vision. The hypothesis suggests that one eye may
record what is seen fractionally faster than the other, creating the "strong recollection"
sensation upon the "same" scene being viewed milliseconds later by the opposite eye.
However, this hypothesis fails to explain the phenomenon when other sensory inputs are
involved, such as hearing or touch. If one, for instance, experiences dj vu of someone
slapping the fingers on his left hand, then the dj vu feeling is certainly not due to his right
hand experiencing the same sensation later than his left hand since his right hand would never
receive the same sensory input. Also, people with only one eye still report experiencing dj
vu or dj vcu (a rare disorder of memory, similar to persistent dj vu). The global nature
of the phenomenon can therefore at least in certain cases be narrowed down to the brain itself
(i.e., one hemisphere being late compared to the other one).

Links with disorders

Early researchers tried to establish a link between dj vu and serious psychopathology such
as schizophrenia, anxiety, and dissociative identity disorder, and failed to find the experience
of some diagnostic value. There does not seem to be a special association between dj vu
and schizophrenia or other psychiatric conditions. The strongest pathological association of
dj vu is with temporal lobe epilepsy. This correlation has led some researchers to speculate
that the experience of dj vu is possibly a neurological anomaly related to improper electrical
discharge in the brain. As most people suffer a mild (i.e. non-pathological) epileptic episode
regularly (e.g. a hypnagogic jerk, the sudden "jolt" that frequently, but not always, occurs just
prior to falling asleep)it is conjectured that a similar (mild) neurological aberration occurs in
the experience of dj vu, resulting in an erroneous sensation of memory. For someone who
regularly has such seizures, there is typically a feeling of dj vu associated with whatever
sensations (particularly sounds) may be occurring nearby.

Pharmacology

Certain drugs increase the chances of dj vu occurring in the user. Some pharmaceutical
drugs, when taken together, have also been implicated in the cause of dj vu. Taiminen and
Jskelinen (2001) reported the case of an otherwise healthy male who started experiencing
intense and recurrent sensations of dj vu upon taking the drugs amantadine and
phenylpropanolamine together to relieve flu symptoms. He found the experience so interesting
that he completed the full course of his treatment and reported it to the psychologists to write
up as a case study. Due to the dopaminergic action of the drugs and previous findings from
electrode stimulation of the brain (e.g. Bancaud, Brunet-Bourgin, Chauvel, & Halgren, 1994).
Taiminen and Jskelinen speculate that dj vu occurs as a result of hyperdopaminergic
action in the mesial temporal areas of the brain. Many scientists are still working towards the
actual link of dj vu with hypnagogic epilepsy.


Memory-based explanations

The similarity between a dj-vu-eliciting stimulus and an existing, but different, memory
trace may lead to the sensation. Thus, encountering something which evokes the implicit
associations of an experience or sensation that cannot be remembered may lead to dj vu. In
an effort to experimentally reproduce the sensation, Banister and Zangwill (1941) used
hypnosis to give participants posthypnotic amnesia for material they had already seen. When
this was later re-encountered, the restricted activation caused thereafter by the posthypnotic
amnesia resulted in three of the 10 participants reporting what the authors termed
"paramnesias". Memory-based explanations may lead to the development of a number of non-
invasive experimental methods by which a long sought-after analogue of dj vu can be
reliably produced that would allow it to be tested under well-controlled experimental
conditions. Cleary suggests that dj vu may be a form of familiarity-based recognition
(recognition that is based on a feeling of familiarity with a situation) and that laboratory
methods of probing familiarity-based recognition hold promise for probing dj vu in
laboratory settings. Another possible explanation for the phenomenon of dj vu is the
occurrence of "cryptomnesia", which is where information learned is forgotten but
nevertheless stored in the brain, and similar occurrences invoke the contained knowledge,
leading to a feeling of familiarity because of the situation, event or emotional/vocal content,
known as "dj vu"...

Related phenomena

Jamais vu

Jamais vu (from French, meaning "never seen") is a term in psychology which is used to
describe any familiar situation which is not recognized by the observer.

Often described as the opposite of dj vu, jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the
observer's impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that
he or she has been in the situation before. Jamais vu is more commonly explained as when a
person momentarily does not recognize a word, person, or place that they already know.
Jamais vu is sometimes associated with certain types of aphasia, amnesia, and epilepsy.

Theoretically, as seen below, a jamais vu feeling in a sufferer of a delirious disorder or
intoxication could result in a delirious explanation of it, such as in the Capgras delusion, in
which the patient takes a person known by him or her for a false double or impostor. If the
impostor is himself, the clinical setting would be the same as the one described as
depersonalisation, hence jamais vus of oneself or of the very "reality of reality", are termed
depersonalisation (or surreality) feelings.

Times Online reports:

Chris Moulin, of the University of Leeds, asked 95 volunteers to write out "door" 30
times in 60 seconds. At the International Conference on Memory in Sydney last week
he reported that 68 percent of the volunteers showed symptoms of jamais vu, such as
beginning to doubt that "door" was a real word. Dr. Moulin believes that a similar brain
fatigue underlies a phenomenon observed in some schizophrenia patients: that a
familiar person has been replaced by an impostor. Dr. Moulin suggests they could be
suffering from chronic jamais vu.

Presque vu (Tip of the tongue)

Dj vu is similar to, but distinct from, the phenomenon called tip of the tongue, a situation in
which when one cannot recall a familiar word or name, but with effort one eventually recalls
the elusive memory. In contrast, dj vu is a feeling that the present situation has occurred
before, but the details are elusive because the situation never happened before.

Presque vu (from French, meaning "almost seen") is the sensation of being on the brink of an
epiphany. Often very disorienting and distracting, presque vu rarely leads to an actual
breakthrough. Frequently, one experiencing presque vu will say that they have something "on
the tip of my tongue".

Presque vu is often cited by people who suffer from epilepsy or other seizure-related brain
conditions, such as temporal lobe lability. This is described as a glitch of neuropatic nerves in
the brain, mainly in the left hemisphere.

Dj entendu

Dj entendu, (literally "already heard") is the experience of feeling sure that one has already
heard something, even though the exact details are uncertain and were perhaps imagined.

The Bible Code
http://www.csicop.org

Hidden Messages and the Bible Code
Dave Thomas
Volume 21.6, November / December 1997

Hidden messages can be found anywhere, provided the seeker is willing and able to harvest
the immense field of possibilities. But do they mean anything?


Bible Code: The Book

A new book entitled The Bible Code (Drosnin 1997)
came out last June and has occupied the bestseller
lists since then. It is written by journalist Michael
Drosnin, who claims that the Hebrew Bible contains
a very complex code that reveals events that took
place thousands of years after the Bible was
written. Drosnin contends that some foretold events
later happened exactly as predicted.

The book has been reviewed widely and has
stimulated pieces in Newsweek and Time. Drosnin
has also been making the rounds of the talk-show
circuit, including the Oprah Winfrey Show in June.
Time said that Warner has reportedly bought the
movie rights (Van Biema 1997).

Drosnins technique is heavily based on that of
Eliyahu Rips of Hebrew University in Israel, who
published an article entitled Equidistant Letter
Sequences in the Book of Genesis in the journal
Statistical Science (Witztum, Rips, and Rosenburg 1994). Like Rips, Drosnin arranges the
304,805 Hebrew letters of the Bible into a large array. Spaces and punctuation marks are
omitted, and words are run together one after another. A computer looks for matches to
selected names or words by stepping to every nth letter in the array. One can go forward or
backward; and for each value of step distance, n, there are n different starting letters.
Drosnins match for Yitzhak Rabin had a step value n equal to 4,772.

Roswell and UFO

Both Rips and Drosnin work with the original Hebrew characters, which are said to have been
given by God to Moses one character at a time, with no spaces or punctuation, just as they
appear in the code. The code is considered to exist only in the Hebrew Bible and not in
translations or any other books. The code concept, however, can be easily demonstrated with
English characters. Consider the following verse from the King James Version (KJV) of the
Book of Genesis:

31:28 And hast not suffered me to kiss my sons and my daughters? thou hast now
done foolishly in so doing.




If you start at the R in daughters, and skip over three letters to the O in thou, and three
more to the S in hast, and so on, the hidden message Roswell is revealed! This message
has a step value of 4, as shown in Figure 1.

When Drosnin finds a name or word match for a given step value n, he then rearranges the
letters into a huge matrix (which he calls a crossword puzzle). The matrix is n letters wide,
and inside this puzzle, the letters for the hidden message line up together vertically.
(Sometimes, a slightly different procedure is used to make the hidden word run diagonally,
every other row, and so forth.) The analyst or the computer can then look for more keyword-
related hits around the given hidden word. Secondary matches can be picked off vertically,
horizontally, or diagonally. Drosnin found the word Dallas (connected with keywords
President Kennedy) in one of his puzzles by starting at a D, and then picking the next letters
by moving one space over to the right and three spaces down several times.





An example of such a matrix for the Roswell mention in KJV Genesis appears in Figure 2.
The letters of Roswell now appear vertically at the center of the puzzle. The actual matrix of
unique letters is only four characters wide here (dashed box), but I took the liberty of showing
extra letters for context. A companion hidden message UFO is indicated within circle
symbols. This UFO is itself a hidden message with a step value of 12. Drosnin accepts any
such messages, even words running horizontally (i.e., the actual words of the Bible strung
together). If either Roswell or UFO had been found encoded in the Hebrew Bible, Drosnin
would not have hesitated to use words from the direct text as a match (for example, the
words thou hast now done foolishly.)




The unusual pairing of Roswell and UFO is shown in linear form in Figure 3. This match is
as stunning as any described in Drosnins book yet none claim that the Bible code would
have translated gracefully over to the KJV Genesis.

Drosnin claims mathematical proof that no human could have encoded the Bible in this way
(Drosnin 1997, 50-51). He says, I do not know if it is God, but adds that the code proves
we are not alone.

Hidden Messages

Some believe that these messages in the Hebrew Bible are not just coincidence they were
put there deliberately by God. But if someone finds a hidden message in a book, a song
played backwards, funny-looking Martian mesas, or some other object or thing, does that
prove someone else put the message there intentionally? Or might the message exist only in
the eyes of the beholder (and in those of his or her followers)? Does perception of meaning
prove the message was deliberately created?
Most of the data cited in favor of the purported intelligent alien construction of the Face on
Mars is based on mathematical relationships among various Martian structures and locations.
For example, author Richard Hoagland finds the Cydonian ratio (the face lies on the
Cydonia plains region of Mars), e/p, in the tangent of the faces latitude of 40.868 degrees
north, in the ratios of angles of the D&M; Pyramid, and in numerous other places (Hoagland
1992). Does that mean the face and city on Mars were designed for the express purpose
of spreading that very message? Hoagland emphatically says, Yes! My inner skeptic says,
Not so fast!

In my research into such phenomena, I have found
numerous instances of Hoaglands Martian ratios on
objects we know were not designed or built by
aliens, such as the U.S. Capitol rotunda (ligure 4).
Does that prove that Martians built this structure?
Or is this phenomenon related mainly to the
determination and skill of the person looking for a
special message? Any special message?

There are dozens of books about Nostradamus. In
one (Hewitt and Lorie 1991), the authors find
hidden predictions by scrambling the seers
quatrains (in French, no less), and then decoding
according to an extremely complicated and
mysterious formula. The back cover prominently
displays one such unscrambled prediction: 1992
George Bush re-elected. (Wrong.) The authors
should have known that its much safer to find
hidden predictions of events that have already
happened.

Some critics of Drosnin say the journalist is just
data mining. Mathematician Brendan McKay of
Australian National University and his colleagues
searched Hebrew texts besides the Bible. They
found fifty-nine words related to Chanukah in the
Hebrew translation of War and Peace. But McKay doesn't think someone engineered this
remarkable feat for his or anyones benefit. Since then, McKay has responded to the following
challenge Drosnin made in Newsweek:

When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister
encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them (Begley 1997).
McKay found assassination predictions in Moby Dick for Indira Gandhi, Rene Moawad, Leon
Trotsky, Rev. M. L. King, and Robert F. Kennedy.
[http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html]

Eliyahu Rips himself has denied Drosnins implication that they worked together, and has said,
I do not support the book as it is or the conclusions it derives (Van Biema 1997).

Hidden Names in KJV Genesis and Edwards v. Aguillard

I have very recently carried out a study on finding hidden names in both the KJV Genesis and
the U.S. Supreme Courts 1987 ruling on Edwards v. Aguillard (a well-known ruling on
creationism, hereafter referred to as simply Edwards). I used the same set of rules for both
the KJV Genesis (about 150,000 characters) and Edwards (about 100,000 characters). I
loaded a list of preselected names and let the computer search for each one in turn, for
equidistant letter sequences with step distances from 2 to 1,000, and for every possible
starting letter. I searched forward only.

One would expect that special biblical messages hidden in the Hebrew Bible would simply not
make it into the King James Version, much less into Edwards. And since the Hebrew alphabet
doesn't include vowels, it should be much harder to find matches in the English texts, because
an additional character match is required for each vowel.

Drosnins control was the Hebrew text of War and Peace. Drosnin claims that when they
searched for words (such as comet, Jupiter, etc.) in the Bible, they often found them
there, but not in War and Peace.

I picked a set of names carefully. The list contained five names of four letters, five of five
letters, five of six letters, five of seven letters, and five of either eight or nine letters. I was
more whimsical in my choice of subjects and chose talk show hosts, scientists, and just plain
folks as well as political or historical figures. I found thousands of hidden occurrences of these
names in both Genesis and Edwards. The results appear in Table 1.

It is striking that tens of thousands of hidden occurrences were found for the twenty-five
names submitted, for both Genesis and Edwards. More matches were found in the former, but
it does have 50,000 more letters to work with. Another important observation is immediately
apparent in Table 1 short names like Leno or Reed were found much more frequently
than long names like Gingrich or Matsumura. ("Matsumura is, of course, Molleen
Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education, in Berkeley, and Romero is
Albuquerque boxer Danny Romero). Martin Gardner was found hidden in Edwards, much as
Gardner anticipated could happen in his discussion of gematria and the work of Rips and his
colleagues (Gardner 1997).


The results are clear and compelling, and certainly not surprising. It is much easier to find
short names than long names. There might be thousands of occurrences of the four-letter
name Rich, for example. But matching Gingrich is much harder, since few or none of the
thousands of instances of Rich will be preceded by Ging at exactly the right step locations.
But there are 2,554 hidden occurrences of Newt in KJV Genesis, so one could imagine that
the Speaker of the House is certainly mentioned copiously.

There is, of course, another factor in the success of hidden word searches. Simply put, some
letters are more common than others. Figures 5a and 5b give the relative frequencies for the
letters in Genesis and Edwards.

There is, of course, another factor in the success of hidden word searches. Simply put, some
letters are more common than others. Figures 5a and 5b give the relative frequencies for the
letters in Genesis and Edwards.

The charts show that certain letters (such as A, D, E, H, I, N, O, R, S, and T) appear more
often than others. Obviously, words made with these hot letters (such as Reed, Deer,
Stalin, or Hitler) have a better chance of being found than words containing any cool
letters like J or Q. Rosie had 202 Genesis matches, more than the 49 for Oprah but
Oprah contains a cool P. (I also searched for Harpo, which is just Oprah backwards, and
found 62 hits).

When I performed a separate search for Roswell in KJV Genesis, I only found one hidden
match for this seven-letter word. But I found 5,812 matches for UFO, 187 for disk, 5 for
MOGUL, 4,798 for NYU, 2 for weather, 1,552 for gear, 77 for crash, 4 for dummy,
295 for alien, and 2 for saucer. I couldn't find Roswell in Edwards at steps of 1,000 or
less, but I did find most of the others, and in similar numbers.

Nazi and Hitler

How Unusual Are Paired Messages?

Drosnin and others sometimes admit that finding isolated hidden names or messages can be
the product of random chance. But they claim that finding linked pairs or triples of names or
words is so improbable that doing so proves the supernatural, divine, or alien origin of the
"message. In Drosnins words,

Consistently, the Bible code brings together interlocking words that reveal related
information. With Bill Clinton, President. With the Moon landing, spaceship and Apollo
11. With Hitler, Nazi. With Kennedy, Dallas.

In experiment after experiment, the crossword puzzles were found only in the Bible.
Not in War and Peace, not in any other book, and not in ten million computer-
generated test cases. (Drosnin 1997, 26)

Perhaps there was a bug in Drosnins computer program. Or perhaps he didn't really want to
find hidden message pairs outside of the Hebrew Bible. All I know is that I was able to easily
produce complex hidden messages in all the texts I worked with.

I developed a computer program that takes various words already located as hidden codes
(such as Hitler and Nazi) and plays them against each other to find the best-linked pairs.
The starting letters and equidistant steps provide all the necessary information, provided one
learns how to manipulate it.




I then used this approach to develop the puzzles shown in Figure 6a (Genesis, step = 500)
and Figure 6b (Edwards, step = 157), both with direct coded linkages of Hitler and Nazi.
These puzzles are striking counterexamples of Drosnins claims.

In response to Drosnins challenge, I decided to look for Hitler and Nazi linked in Tolstoys
War and Peace as well. I found an English translation of the epic novel on the Internet, and
downloaded the first twenty-four chapters of Book 1, giving me about 167,000 characters. By
the time I got to steps of just 750, I already had found more than half a dozen excellent
puzzle linkages of Hitler and Nazi. The best appears in Figure 7: this entire puzzle text
spans just five paragraphs of Chapter 2 of Book 1 of Tolstoys novel.



Drosnin uses many methods to improve the odds of impossible-by-chance linkages. For one,
he uses horizontal words taken directly from the original text. For example, when Drosnin
found Clinton linked to president, the word president was just the Hebrew word for
chief, taken from its actual context in the original Bible. Secondly, Drosnin found some
hidden dates referring to the Hebrew calendar; for example, Gulf War activity on January 18,
1991, was found in the words 3rd Shevat. But, he found other dates referring to the
Gregorian calendar, such as that of the Oklahoma City bombing, which was linked in the Bible
by the hidden date Day 19, and interpreted as a reference to both April 19, 1995, the date
of the bombing, and April 19, 1993 (Waco). And finally, Drosnin takes full advantage of the
eccentricities of the Hebrew language, in which words can be condensed and letters
occasionally dropped.







My study generated several other examples that are just as spectacular, and just as unlikely
(if not more so), than most of Drosnins matches. Now, Drosnin and his colleagues would
probably say that the Roswell/UFO connection in KJV Genesis was just a lucky break and
couldn't happen again. But I found 5,812 hidden UFOs in Genesis, and dozens of these
happen to be flying right around and through the hidden word Roswell. As the puzzle step is
changed, linked matches appear and disappear with astonishing frequency. Three such
examples appear in Figure 8, for steps of 88, 589, and 753. Hoagland claims multiple
discoveries of the same hidden message are indicative of redundancy used by the code-
maker to assure us the message is real (Hoagland 1992). But all that is really happening here
is that codes can be engineered made to happen. You just have to know how to harvest the
field of possibilities.
Regis



Figure 9 is another striking linkage I found in KJV Genesis, 42:18 through 45:21. Here, the
name Regis appears at a step distance of 808, but also at a step of 810, which makes a nice
X pattern if the puzzle step is 809. (Perhaps someone should notify Regis Philbin and agents
Mulder and Scully).

If you work at any given puzzle for a while, large numbers of unexpected names and words
invariably turn up. Consider the puzzle of Figure 10. This text is a contiguous rendition of
Genesis 41:38-46. This particular puzzle is easy for the reader to verify manually, since it has
a relatively small step of 40. The puzzle itself is 41 characters wide, so the rightmost column
is a repetition of the leftmost. I used the computer to find several diagonal messages here:
Deer, Regis, Nazi, Leno, Dole. Many vertical messages were simple enough to be
found just by poring over the puzzle: for example, Oprah, here, Leia, Hale, sent,
nude, pure, hate, data, Roe, Reed, Meg, hood, pins (snip), Deion, and
lone. Newt is in there too, but at an offbeat step that makes for a jilted arrangement. And
then, there are all those horizontal words too!

I suspect that with diligence, one could find enough matches to make almost all of the
characters in the puzzle parts of hidden words. The puzzle below is literally dripping with
additional hidden surprises. Rips himself appears in spirit read backwards. Pour, Alan,
and sash run vertically. And diagonal messages of varying complexity lurk everywhere. Can
you find the apes swinging between data and Reed"? Love intersecting with nude"?
How about Ares, reel, deft, lion, dogs, pony, hard, diet, trace, card, Poe,
and wart"? They are all in there and more.

There are dozens of linked messages in the puzzle above. But how are we to know which
words are linked by the secretive author? Is the real message Nazi sent pure hate here, or
is it Deion pins nude Oprah? All of these hits are authentic, encoded names that have lurked
inside the text of the King James Version of Genesis for hundreds of years. But the whimsical
combinations they appear in show that these surprises are simply lucky breaks, and not
authentic messages from above.

What Are the Odds, Really?

Drosnin and his colleagues say that getting linked matches by coincidence is statistically
impossible and cite the odds against such coincidences as more than 3,000 to 1 (and
sometimes much more). Using numbers like these, the Bible code promoters try to convince
their readers that the existence of God is now proven statistically beyond the shadow of a
doubt, simply because they can find linked pairs like Clinton and chief in the same general
area of the Bible.
But their core conclusions are based on severely flawed probability arguments. Drosnins
formulation of the improbability of the occurrence of linked pairs is implicitly based on the
assumption that you have only one opportunity to get the match. But, with the help of the
computer, Drosnin gets to take advantage of billions of opportunities.

Lets look at Drosnins approach with a lottery analogy. The probability of winning a lottery
with a single ticket is very small, and Drosnin says the probability of getting an improbable
match (such as Clinton and president) is also very small. But what happens if you buy
more than one ticket?

In the New Mexico Daily Millions lottery, the odds of winning the $1 million jackpot with just
one ticket are about ten million to one against. With two tickets, the odds plummet, to about
five million to one. If you buy one million tickets, your odds drop to only about ten to one
against. And if you invest $10 million in tickets, the odds become approximately two to one in
your favor! Most people can't afford to buy millions of tickets. Those who do have that kind of
money usually don't dump it on the lottery, because you almost always end up losing.

But in Drosnins game, you don't have to win more than you lose. You don't even have to
break even. All you need for success is to win every once in a while. And, you can have what
amounts to millions of free lottery tickets simply by running a computer program, or poring
over crossword-puzzle printouts. Drosnin routinely tests billions of letter sequences for
matches to selected words or names, and goes to steps of many thousands. By using steps
lower than 1,000 only, I limited myself to using only about 3 percent of the potential of
Genesis or Edwards. Brendan McKay (in personal communication) showed me how to find
hidden words much more efficiently, and a search of KJV Genesis at all possible steps for my
list of twenty-five names came up with over one million additional matches. These include six
hits for Clinton, fifteen for Gardner, three for Hillary and Einstein, and two for
Kennedy.

Conclusion

The promoters of hidden-message claims say, How could such amazing coincidences be the
product of random chance? I think the real question should be, How could such coincidences
not be the inevitable product of a huge sequence of trials on a large, essentially random
database?

Once I learned how to navigate in puzzle-space, finding incredible predictions became a
routine affair. I found comet, Hale, and Bopp linked in KJV Genesis, along with forty
and died, which could be interpreted as an obvious reference to Heavens Gate. I found
Trinity, Los Alamos, atom, and bomb encoded together in Edwards, in a section
containing references to security, test, and anti-fascist. And I found Hitler linked to
Nazi dozens of times in several books. When I set out to engineer a hidden code link of
code and bogus in KJV Genesis, I was able to produce sixty closely linked pairs. And every
single one of these pairs could fit inside a reasonably sized puzzle.

The source of the mysterious Bible code has been revealed its homo sapiens.
Now somebody go tell Oprah.

References

Begley, Sharon. 1997. Seek and ye shall find. Newsweek, June 9, pp. 66-67.
Drosnin, Michael. 1997. The Bible Code. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Gardner, Martin. 1997. Farrakhan, Cabala, Baha'i, and 19. Skeptical Inquirer 21 (2):
16-18, 57.
Hewitt, V. J., and Peter Lorie. 1991. Nostradamus: The End of the Millennium. New
York: Simon and Schuster.
Hoagland, Richard C., 1992. The Monuments of Mars: A City on the Edge of Forever.
Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books.
Van Biema, David. 1997. Deciphering Gods plan. Time, June 9, p. 56.
Witztum, Doron, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenburg. 1994. Equidistant letter
sequences in the Book of Genesis. Statistical Science 9 (3).

Dave Thomas
Dave Thomas, a physicist and mathematician, is president of New Mexicans for Science and
Reason and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He is currently a
scientist/programmer at IRIS/PASSCAL in Socorro, New Mexico.




Mysterious Cases



These are cases which are left unexplained or have been deemed
inconclusive.

Animals Encased in Stone
http://paranormal.about.com


In 1821, Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine carried an unusual item about a stone mason named
David Virtue who made an astonishing discovery while working on a large chunk of rock that
had come from about 22 feet below the surface. Upon breaking it open "he found a lizard
embedded in the stone. It was coiled up in a round cavity of its own form, being an exact
impression of the animal. It was about an inch and a quarter long, of a brownish yellow color,
and had a round head, with bright sparkling projecting eyes. It was apparently dead, but after
being about five minutes exposed to the air it showed signs of life. It soon ran about with
much celerity."

There are numerous documented accounts of such findings, mostly involving frogs, toads or
lizards. Most often the animals come out alive. And very often there is an imprint of their skin
or shape on the cavity in which they are entombed. And this raises a number of interesting
questions: How could the animal have gotten in there and survived? How did rock - which
geology tells us takes hundreds if not thousands of years to form - take shape around the
animal? How long could the animal have been in there?

http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa022299.htm

Cattle Mutilations
http://www.cosmostv.org/

Cattle mutilation (also known as bovine excision) is the apparent killing and then mutilation
of cattle under unusual or anomalous circumstances. Sheep and horses have allegedly been
mutilated under similar circumstances.

A hallmark of these incidents is the surgical nature of the mutilation, and unexplained
phenomena such as the complete draining of the animal's blood, loss of internal organs with
no obvious point of entry, and surgically precise removal of the reproductive organs and anal
coring. Another reported event is that the animal is found 'dumped' in an area where there are
no marks or tracks leading to or from the carcass, even when it is found in soft ground or
mud. The surgical-type wounds tend to be cauterized by an intense heat and made by very
sharp/precise instruments, with no bleeding evident. Often flesh will be removed to the bone
in an exact manner, consistent across cases, such as removal of flesh from around the jaw
exposing the mandible.

Since the time that reports of purported animal mutilations began, the causes have been
attributed variously to natural decomposition, normal predators, cryptid predators (like the
Chupacabra), extraterrestrials, secretive governmental or military agencies, and cults.
"Mutilations" have been the subject of two independent federal investigations in the United
States.
History

Charles Fort collected many accounts of cattle mutilations that occurred in England in the late
19th and early 20th centuries.

Reports of mutilated cattle first surfaced in the United States in the early 1960s when it was
allegedly largely confined to the states of Pennsylvania and Kansas.The phenomena remained
largely unknown outside cattle raising communities until 1967, when the Pueblo Chieftain in
Pueblo, Colorado published a story about a horse named Lady who was mutilated in
mysterious circumstances, which was then picked up by the wider press and distributed
nationwide; this case was also the first to feature speculation that extraterrestrial beings and
unidentified flying objects were associated with mutilation.

The Lady/Snippy mutilation

The first allegedly strange death of
livestock comes from near Alamosa,
Colorado, in 1967. The real name of
the animal was Lady, but the media
quickly adopted the name "Snippy"
(the name of another horse at the
ranch), which stuck.

On September 7 of that year, Agnes
King and her son Harry noted that
Lady, a three-year-old horse, had not
returned to the ranch at the usual time
for her water. This was unusual, given
the heat and the arid conditions.
Harry found Lady on September 9. Her
head and neck had been skinned and
defleshed, the bones were white and clean. To King, the cuts on Lady seemed to have been
very precise. There was no blood at the scene, according to Harry, and there was a strong
medicinal odor in the air.

The next day, Harry and Agnes returned to the scene with Agnes brother and sister-in-law,
Mr. and Mrs. Berle Lewis. They found a lump of skin and horse flesh; when Mrs. Lewis touched
it, the flesh oozed a greenish fluid which burned her hand. They also reported the discovery of
fifteen "tapering, circular exhaust marks punched into the ground" over an area of some 5000
square yards. (Saunders and Harkins, 156) The medicinal odor had weakened somewhat, but
was still present.

Mrs. Lewis contacted the United States Forest Service, and Ranger Duane Martin was sent to
investigate. Among other tasks, Martin "checked the area with a civil defense Geiger counter.
He reported finding a considerable increase in radioactivity about two city blocks from the
body." (Saunders and Harkins, 157) Later, Martin would state, "The death of this saddle pony
is one of the most mysterious sights Ive ever witnessed ... Ive seen stock killed by lightning,
but it was never like this."

After trying to interest other authorities with little success, Mrs. Lewis turned to her
professional connections: she wrote occasionally for the Pueblo Chieftain. Her account of
Lady's strange death was published in that newspaper, and was picked up by the Associated
Press on October 5, 1967. Soon, much of the United States knew the tale of Ladys death, and
reports of UFOs were made from others in Colorado.

That same day, an account by Superior Court Judge Charles E. Bennett of Denver, Colorado,
saw publication. Bennett and his wife claimed to have witnessed three reddish-orange rings in
the sky. They maintained a triangular formation, moved at a high speed, and made a
humming sound. (Saunders and Harkins, 157) The civilian UFO research group NICAP
became involved in the case as well, and some people speculated that UFOs were somehow
involved with Snippys death.

Shortly thereafter, an anonymous Denver pathologists account of his necropsy saw
publication. Ladys brain and abdominal organs were missing, he said, and there was no
material in the spinal column. The pathologist insisted on anonymity, he said, due to fear his
reputation would be damaged with involvement in such a high-profile case.
The Condon Committee, then at the University of Colorado, sent its coordinator, Robert Low,
to investigate. Low brought in Dr Robert O. Adams, head of Colorado State Universitys
Veterinary and Biomedical Science School.


Adams examined Lady and the evidence. He concluded there were "No unearthly causes, at
least not to my mind." (Saunders and Harkins, 164) Adams noted a severe infection in Ladys
hindquarters, and speculated that someone had come across the dying horse and slit its throat
in order to end its misery. Then, Adams said, scavengers had inflicted the rest of the damage
to the horse.

To some, this settled the question, but Mrs. Lewis argued that Adams conclusions failed to
account for the lack of blood at the scene and the medicinal odor.

Low reported that hed located the "anonymous pathologist"; Low said that the man was
"widely misquoted" and was furthermore not a pathologist. The man's opinions of Snippy's
death generally matched Adams', said Low. Jerome Clark later identifies the anonymous man
as hematologist John H. Altshuler.
Later developments
By the mid 1970s, mutilated cattle were reported in 15 states, from Montana and South
Dakota in the north, to New Mexico and Texas in the south.

Democratic senator Floyd K. Haskell contacted the FBI asking for help in 1975 due to public
concern regarding the issue. He claimed there had been 130 mutilations in Colorado alone.

Horse-ripping

Horse-ripping, or horse slashing, is a similar phenomenon in which horses are murdered, often
involving mutilation of their genitalia and slashing of the flank or neck. Horse-ripping seems to
be a European phenomenon, with 160 reported incidents in Britain between 1983 and 1993,
and 300 incidents in Germany between 1992 and 1998.Causes remain uncertain and actual
convictions are rare, though a man has been convicted in the Netherlands for a large number
of such attacks on horses and ponies, along with the murder of a homeless person and the
attempted murder of several other humans.

Physical characteristics

In most cases mutilation wounds appear to be clean,
and carried out surgically. Mutilated animals are
usually, though not always reported to have been
drained of blood, and have no sign of blood in the
immediate area or around their wounds.

George E. Onet, a doctor of veterinary microbiology
and cattle mutilation investigator claims that
allegedly mutilated cattle are avoided by large
scavengers "such as coyotes, wolves, foxes, dogs,
skunks, badgers, and bobcats" for several days after
its death. Similarly, domestic animals are also
reported to be "visibly agitated" and "fearful" of the
carcass.
In FBI records from 1975, mutilations of the eye
occurred in 14 percent of cases, mutilation of the
tongue in 33 percent of cases, mutilation of the
genitals in 74 percent of cases, and mutilation of the
rectum in 48 percent of cases.According to a later
survey taken by the National Institute for Discovery
Science (NIDS), mutilation of the eye occurred in 59
percent of cases, mutilation of the tongue in 42
percent of cases, the genitals in 85 percent of cases, and the rectum in 76 percent of cases.

According to Dr. Howard Burgess, nearly 90 percent of mutilated cattle are between four and
five years old.

Some mutilations are said to occur in very brief periods. A 2002 NIDS report relates a 1997
case from Utah. Two ranchers tagged a specific calf, then continued tagging other animals in
the same pasture. The ranchers were, at the most, about 300 yards from the calf. Less than
an hour later, the first calf was discovered completely evisceratedmost muscle and all
internal organs were missing. There was no blood, entrails, or apparent disturbance at the
scene. Independent analysts both uncovered marks on the calf's remains consistent with two
different types of tools: a large, machete-type blade, and smaller, more delicate scissors.
The absence of tracks or footprints around the site of the mutilated carcass is often considered
a hallmark of cattle mutilation. However, in some cases, strange marks or imprints near the
site have been found. In the famous "Snippy" case, there was an absolute absence of tracks in
a 100 ft radius of the carcass (even the horse's own tracks disappeared within 100 ft of the
body.) But within this radius several small holes were found seemingly "punched" in the
ground and two bushes were absolutely flattened.In Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, June
1976, a "trail of suction cup-like impressions" were found leading from a mutilated three-year-
old cow. The indentations were in a tripod form, 4 inches in diameter, 28 inches apart, and
disappeared 500 feet from the dead cow. Similar incidents were reported in the area in 1978.


Laboratory reports
Laboratory reports carried out on some mutilated animals have shown unusually high or low
levels of vitamins or minerals in tissue samples, and the presence of chemicals not normally
found in animals. However, not all mutilated animals display these anomalies, and those that
do have slightly different anomalies from one another. On account of the time between death
and necropsy, and a lack of background information on specific cattle, investigators have often
found it impossible to determine if these variations are connected to the animals' deaths or
not.

In one case documented by New Mexico police and the FBI, an 11 month old cross Hereford-
Charolais bull, belonging to a Mr. Manuel Gomez of Dulce, New Mexico, was found mutilated
on March 24, 1978. It displayed 'classic' mutilation signs, including the removal of the rectum
and sex organs with what appeared to be a sharp and precise instrument and its internal
organs were found to be inconsistent with a normal case of death followed by predation.

Both the liver and the heart were white and
mushy. Both organs had the texture and
consistency of peanut butter -Gabriel L
Veldez, New Mexico Police

The animal's heart as well as bone and
muscle samples were sent to the Los Alamos
Scientific Laboratory for microscopic and
bacteriological studies, while samples from
the animal's liver were sent to two separate
private laboratories.

Los Alamos detected the presence of
naturally occurring Clostridium bacteria in
the heart, but was unable to reach any conclusions because of the possibility that the bacteria
represented postmortem contamination. They did not directly investigate the heart's unusual
color or texture.

Samples from the animal's liver were found to be completely devoid of copper and to contain 4
times the normal level of zinc, potassium and phosphorus. The scientists performing the
analysis were unable to explain these anomalies.

Blood samples taken at the scene were reported to be "light pink in color" and Did not clot
after several days while the animal's hide was found to be unusually brittle for a fresh death
(the animal was estimated to have been dead for 5 hours) and the flesh underneath was found
to be discolored.

None of the laboratories were able to report any firm conclusions on the cause of the blood or
tissue damage. At the time, it was suggested that a burst of radiation may have been used to
kill the animal, blowing apart its red blood cells in the process. This hypothesis was later
discarded as subsequent reports from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory later confirmed the
presence of anti-coagulants in samples taken from other cows mutilated in the region.

U.S. governmental explanation

After coming under increasing public pressure, Federal authorities launched a comprehensive
investigation of the mutilation phenomena. In May 1979, the case was passed on to the FBI,
which granted jurisdiction under Title 18 (codes 1152 and 1153). The investigation was
dubbed "Operation Animal Mutilation."

The investigation was funded by a US$44,170 grant from the Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration, and was headed by FBI agent Kenneth Rommel. It had five key objectives:
To determine the reliability of the information on which the grant was based, which
entailed gathering as much information as possible about the cases reported in New
Mexico prior to May 1979
To determine the cause of as many mutilations as possible, especially those reported
in New Mexico
To determine if livestock mutilations as described constitute a major law enforcement
problem
If these mutilations do constitute a major law enforcement problem, to determine the
scope of the problem and to offer recommendations on how to deal with it
If it is shown that the mutilation phenomenon is not a law enforcement problem, to
recommend that no further law enforcement investigations be funded.


Rommel's final report was 297 pages long and cost approximately US$45,000. It concluded
that mutilations were predominantly the result of natural predation, but that some contained
anomalies that could not be accounted for by conventional wisdom. The FBI was unable to
identify any individuals responsible for the mutilations.Details of the investigation are now
available under the Freedom of Information Act.

Prior to the involvement of the FBI, the ATF launched their own investigation of the
phenomenon. It concluded further investigation was necessary, but was unable to determine
what was behind the phenomena. The scope of the ATF investigation was limited to a single
suspected cause.

Both federal investigations were preceded (and followed, to some extent) by a state level
investigation carried out by enforcement officials in New Mexico. This investigation reported
finding evidence that some mutilated animals had been tranquilized and treated with an anti-
coagulant prior to their mutilation. It also contended that alleged surgical techniques
performed during mutilations had become 'more professional' over time. However, officers in
charge were unable to determine responsibility or motive.

The ATF investigation was headed by ATF Agent Donald Flickinger. The New Mexico
investigation was headed by Officer Gabriel L Veldez of the New Mexico Police, with the
assistance of Cattle Inspector Jim Dyad and Officer Howard Johnston of the New Mexico
Department of Game and Fish.

Natural causes

While many unconventional explanations have been put forward to explain cattle mutilations,
a variety of scientists, veterinary workers and knowledgeable observers (including farmer and
other agricultural workers) have suggested more conventional ideas, most of which revolve
around the hypothesis that 'mutilated' animals died of natural causes and were subjected to
known terrestrial phenomena including the action of predators, parasites and scavengers.

Missing or mutilated mouth, lips, anus and genitalia are explained as:

Contraction of missing/damaged areas due to dehydration.
The actions of small scavengers and burrowing parasites seeking to enter or consume
the body in areas where skin is at its thinnest.

Missing/mutilated eyes and soft internal organs are explained as:

The action of carrion feeding insects such as blowflies, and opportunistic or carrion
birds such as vultures and buzzards which are known to direct themselves toward an
animal's eyes, and to enter the body through the openings of the mouth and anus in
order to feed on soft internal organs.

Absence of blood is explained as:

Blood pooling in the lowest points in the body where it will break down into its basic
organic components.
Blood that is external to the body, or in the area of a wound being consumed by
insects or reduced by solar desiccation.

Surgical incisions in the skin are explained as:

Tears in the skin created when it is stretched by postmortem bloat and/or as
dehydration causes the animal's hide to shrink and split, often in linear cuts.
Incisions caused by scavengers or predators, possibly exacerbated by the above.

The hypothesis that natural phenomena account for most mutilation characteristics has been
validated by a number of experiments, including one cited by long-time scientific skeptic
Robert T. Carroll, conducted by Washington County (Arkansas) Sheriff's Department. In the
experiment, the body of a recently deceased cow was left in a field and observed for 48 hours.
During the 48 hours, postmortem bloating was reported to have caused incision-like tears in
the cow's skin that matched the "surgical" cuts reported on mutilated cows, while the action of
blowflies and maggots reportedly matched the soft tissue damage observed on mutilated
cows. No explanation was made however, for the entire absence of any blood.
Experiments have also been conducted to compare the different reactions of surgically cut
hide/flesh and predated hide/flesh to natural exposure.They demonstrated pronounced
differences between surgical cut and non surgical cuts over time. This article does not address
tearing due to bloating.

Some ranchers have disputed the more scientifically mainstream "natural caues hypothesis"
on the grounds that the mutilated animals often fall outside of the normal categories of natural
deaths by predation or disease.One reason cited is that that the animals were healthy and
showed no sign of disease prior to death, and were large and strong enough not to be a likely
target for a predator. In some cases, ranchers have reported that the mutilated cattle were
among the healthiest and strongest animals in their herd. Other critics of the accepted position
include investigators involved in paranormal and UFO research organizations, such as
"National Institute for Discovery Science" which report the discovery of anomalies in
necropsies which, they claim, cannot be explained by natural processes.
Human intervention
Animal cruelty and Human activity

It is alternatively hypothesised that cattle mutilations are the result of two unrelated deviant
phenomena. The bulk of mutilations are the result of predation and other natural processes,
and those with anomalies that cannot be explained in this way are the work of humans who
derive pleasure or sexual stimulation from mutilating animals.

Attacks against animals are a recognized phenomenon. There have been many recorded cases
around the world, and many convictions. Typically the victims of such attacks are cats, dogs
and other family pets,and the actions of humans are usually limited to acts of cruelty such as
striking, burning or beating animals. However, attacks have also been recorded against larger
animals, including sheep, cows and horses.Humans, particularly those with sociopathic
disorders, have been found to have mutilated animals in elaborate ways using knives or
surgical instruments.

On April 20, 1979, Dr. C Hibbs of the New Mexico State Veterinary diagnostics Laboratory
spoke before a hearing chaired by Senator Harrison Schmitt. Dr. Hibbs testified that mutilation
fell into three categories, one of which was animals mutilated by humans. FBI records did not
record the percentage of mutilated animals that fell into this category.

The standard criminal charge for mutilating an animal, including cattle, is animal cruelty.
Cults
Closely related to the deviant hypothesis is the hypothesis that cattle mutilations are the
result of cult activity.However, contrary to the deviancy hypothesis, which holds that cattle are
mutilated at random by individual deviants, the cult hypothesis holds that cattle mutilations
are coordinated acts of ritual sacrifice carried out by organized groups.

Beliefs held by proponents of the cult hypothesis vary, but may include:

That the apparent absence of blood at mutilation sites may indicate cult members
harvest it
That organs have been removed from cattle for use in rituals
That unborn calves have been harvested from mutilated cattle.

The hypothesis that cults were responsible for cattle mutilation was developed in the U.S.
during the 1970s, a time of growing national concern over cults issues.It became a social
phenomenon in areas where cattle were being mutilated and there were several panics when it
was claimed that cattle mutilations were a 'warm up' in preparation for human sacrifices.
In 1975, the US Treasury Department assigned Donald Flickinger to investigate the existence
of connections between cults and the mutilation of cattle. The operation came under the
jurisdiction of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Flickinger recorded a number of 'unusual' incidents and circumstantial evidence, but was
unable to find sufficient evidence of cult involvement for the ATF to take further action.Media
reports of the time reported his investigation was dropped when it was determined cattle
deaths were not a prelude to a co-ordinated campaign against elected officials by cult
members.

However, there were various reports during the time of menacing groups prowling around
mutilation sites. In September 1975, a forestry service employee in Blaine County, Idaho,
reported seeing a group of people in black hooded robes. Several cattle were found mutilated
in the area the following day. On October 9, 1975, a motorist on U.S Highway 95 in northern
Idaho, in an area of frequent cattle mutilation, reported to police that some 15 masked
individuals formed a roadblock with linked arms, forcing him to turn around.

Public interest in the cult hypothesis waned during the 1980s, but interest was maintained by
proponents such as the Colorado based television evangelist Bob Larson, who campaigned to
raise public awareness of links between cattle mutilations and cult activity through his ministry
and radio shows.

Another proponent of the cult hypothesis is Montana author Roberta Donovan. In her 1976
publication "Mystery Stalks the Prairie" she documents the experiences of Deputy Sheriff Keith
Wolverton of Great Falls, Cascade County, investigating cattle mutilations with suspected cult
involvement.

Since the beginning of the cult hypothesis, law enforcement agents in several states and
provinces, including Alberta, Idaho, Montana, and Iowa have reported evidence implicating
cults in several instances of cattle mutilations.but does not prove involvement beyond
reasonable doubt.

During their investigations, the FBI and the ATF were unable to find appropriate evidence,
including signs of consistency between mutilations, to substantiate that the animals had been
the victims of any form of ritual sacrifice or organized mutilation effort. They were also unable
to determine how or why a cult would perform procedures that would result in the anomalies
reported in some necropsies, or to verify that the anomalies were 1) connected to the
mutilations themselves 2) the result of human intervention.

In most cases, mutilations were either ruled due to natural causes, or the cattle were too far
decayed for any useful conclusions to be drawn. Some cases of cult hysteria were traced back
to fabrication by individuals unrelated to the incident. In one case it was concluded that claims
had been falsified by a convict seeking favorable terms on his sentence in exchange for
information. In another case, claims were traced back to local high school students who had
circulated rumors as a joke.
Shell-shock
During the early 1970s one of the hypotheses that emerged to explain cattle mutilations was
that they were being perpetrated by shell-shocked Vietnam veterans who were recreating
scenes of torture that they had either seen committed against US troops by Vietnamese
guerrillas, or that they had themselves committed against Vietnamese fighters.

Unconventional explanations
Government/military experimentation

In his 1997 article Dead Cows I've Known, cattle mutilation researcher Charles T. Oliphant
speculates cattle mutilation to be the result of covert research into emerging cattle diseases,
and the possibility they could be transmitted to humans.

Oliphant posits the NIH, CDC, or other federally funded bodies, may be involved, and they are
supported by the US military. Part of his hypothesis is based on allegations that human
pharmaceuticals have been found in mutilated cattle, and on the necropsies that show cattle
mutilations commonly involve areas of the animal that relate to input, output and
reproduction. To support his hypothesis, Oliphant cites a previous case in which plain clothes
military officers, traveling in unmarked vehicles, entered a research facility in Reston, Virginia,
to secretly retrieve and destroy animals that were contaminated with a highly infectious
disease.

Additionally, a 2002 NIDS report relates the eyewitness testimony of two Cache County, Utah,
police officers. The area had seen many unusual cattle deaths, and ranchers had organized
armed patrols to surveil the unmarked aircraft which they claimed were associated with the
livestock deaths. The police witnesses claim to have encountered several men in an unmarked
U.S. Army helicopter in 1976 at a small community airport in Cache County. The witnesses
asserted that after this heated encounter, cattle mutilations in the region ceased for about five
years.

Biochemist Colm Kelleher,who has investigated several purported mutilations first-hand,
argues that the mutilations are most likely a clandestine U.S. Government effort to track the
spread of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow disease") and related diseases, such
as scrapie.

Theories of government involvement in cattle mutilation have been further fueled by "black
helicopter" sightings near mutilation sites. On April 8, 1979, three police officers in Dulce, New
Mexico, reported a mysterious aircraft which resembled a U.S. military helicopter hovering
around a site following a wave of mutilation which claimed 16 cows. On July 15, 1974, two
unregistered helicopters, a white helicopter and a black twin-engine aircraft, opened fire on
Robert Smith Jr. while he was driving his tractor on his farm in Honey Creek, Iowa. This attack
followed a rash of mutilations in the area and across the nearby border in Nebraska.The
reports of "helicopter" involvement have been used to explain why some cattle appear to have
been "dropped" from considerable heights.
Aliens and UFOs

Various hypotheses suggest cattle mutilations have been committed by aliens gathering
genetic material for unknown purposes. Most of these hypotheses are based on the premise
that earthly entities could not perform such clean dissections in such a short space of time
without being seen or leaving evidence behind at the mutilation site, and around laboratory
reports suggesting the use of unconventional cutting tools and other unexpected phenomena
Some suggest that as cows make up a significant part of the global human diet a study is
being carried out on this element of the human food chain. Numerous speculative theories
abound, but others center on possible specific nutrient requisites, hormone procurement,
species propagation (reproduction), and rote experimentation on mammalian populations.

Specimen gathering for disease research

In his 1999 publication The AIDS-ET Connection UFO researcher Phillip S Duke proposes the
hypothesis that aliens have been using commercial cattle stocks to incubate and research the
HIV/AIDS virus.

Duke claims cattle blood is harvested in order to obtain virus samples and identifies some of
the mutilation sites on carcasses (primarily the anus and genitals) as being the HIV/AIDS
transmission sites in humans, or as likely sites for tissue sampling to take place. He also
speculates that mutilations of the ear are the result of aliens removing tracking implants.
To support his hypothesis, Duke cites findings by Texas A&M University Professor James
Womack, that humans and cattle share substantial number of chromosomes, and he
expressed the belief these similarities makes them the logical choice for large scale biological
incubation and experimentation on subjects for human pathogens, in the same way that
horses have been used to produce Tetanus treatments.

HIV has only one natural host, humans, and logically would require a genetically
similar animal host for replication -Philip S Duke.

This hypothesis is inconsistent with the accepted medical knowledge about the origin of AIDS
and that the primates from which the strains of HIV are believed to have originated through
zoonosis, would have higher genetic similarity to humans. The broader genetic similarity of
cattle (or indeed all mammals) to humans does not necessarily translate into the proper
immunologic markers for virus transmission.
Dyatlov Pass Incident
Wikipedia.org

Dyatlov Pass, Russia
Coordinates: 614517N 592746E / 61.75472N 59.46278E / 61.75472; 59.46278

The Dyatlov Pass incident refers to an event that resulted in the deaths of nine ski hikers in
the northern Ural mountains on the night of February 2, 1959. It happened on the east
shoulder of the mountain Kholat Syakhl ( ) (a Mansi name, meaning Mountain of
the Dead). The mountain pass where the incident occurred has since been named Dyatlov
Pass ( ) after the group's leader, Igor Dyatlov ( ). The lack of
eyewitnesses has inspired much speculation. Soviet investigators determined only that "a
compelling unknown force" had caused the deaths. Access to the area was barred for skiers
and other adventurers for three years after the incident. The chronology of the incident
remains unclear due to the lack of survivors.

Investigators at the time determined that the hikers tore open their tent from within,
departing barefoot in heavy snow. Though the corpses showed no signs of struggle, two
victims had fractured skulls, two had broken ribs, and one woman with a missing tongue.
According to sources, four of the victims' clothing contained substantial levels of radiation.
There is no mention of this in contemporary documentation; it only appears in later
documents.

Background

A group was formed for a ski trek across the northern Urals in Sverdlovsk Oblast
( ). The group, led by Igor Dyatlov, consisted of eight men and two
women.

Most were students or graduates of Ural Polytechnical Institute (
, ), now Ural State Technical University:

Igor Dyatlov ( ), the group's leader
Zinaida Kolmogorova ( )
Lyudmila Dubinina ( )
Alexander Kolevatov ( )
Rustem Slobodin ( )
Yuri Krivonischenko ( )
Yuri Doroshenko ( )
Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolle ( -)
Alexander Zolotarev ( )
Yuri Yudin ( )


The goal of the expedition was to reach Otorten (), a mountain 10 kilometers north of
the site of the incident. This route, at that season, was estimated as "Category III", the most
difficult. All members were experienced in long ski tours and mountain expeditions.

The group arrived by train at Ivdel (), a
city at the center of the northern province of
Sverdlovsk Oblast on January 25. They then
took a truck to Vizhai () - the last
inhabited settlement so far north. They started
their march towards Otorten from Vizhai on
January 27. The next day, one of the members
(Yuri Yudin) was forced to go back because of
illness. The group now consisted of nine people.

Diaries and cameras found around their last
camp made it possible to track the group's
route up to the day preceding the incident. On
January 31, the group arrived at the edge of a
highland area and began to prepare for
climbing. In a woody valley they cached surplus
food and equipment which would be used for
the trip back. The following day (February 1),
the hikers started to move through the pass. It seems they planned to get over the pass and
make camp for the next night on the opposite side, but because of worsening weather
conditions, snowstorms and decreasing visibility, they lost their direction and deviated west,
upward towards the top of Kholat Syakhl. When they realized their mistake, the group decided
to stop and set up camp there on the slope of the mountain.


The Search

It had been agreed beforehand that Dyatlov
would send a telegraph to their sports club as
soon as the group returned to Vizhai. It was
expected that this would happen no later than
February 12, but when this date had passed and
no messages had been received, there was no
reactiondelays of a few days were common in
such expeditions. Only after the relatives of the
travelers demanded a rescue operation did the
head of the institute send the first rescue
groups, consisting of volunteer students and
teachers, on February 20. Later, the army and
police forces became involved, with planes and
helicopters being ordered to join the rescue
operation.

On February 26, the searchers found the
abandoned camp on Kholat Syakhl. The tent
was badly damaged. A chain of footprints could be followed, leading down towards the edge of
nearby woods (on the opposite side of the pass, 1.5 km north-east), but after 500 meters they
were covered with snow. At the forest edge, under a large old cedar, the searchers found the
remains of a fire, along with the first two bodies, those of Krivonischenko and Doroshenko,
shoeless and dressed only in their underwear. Between the cedar and the camp the searchers
found three more corpsesDyatlov, Kolmogorova and Slobodinwho seemed to have died in
poses suggesting that they were attempting to return to the camp. They were found
separately at distances of 300, 480 and 630 meters from the cedar tree.

Searching for the remaining four travelers took more than two months. They were finally
found on May 4, under four meters of snow, in a ravine in a stream valley further into the
wood from the cedar tree.


Yuri Yudin hugging Lyudmila Dubinina as
he prepares to leave the group due to
illness, as Igor Dyatlov looks on



Skiers setting up camp at about 5. p.m. on
Feb. 2, 1959. Photo taken from a roll of
film found at the camp


The Investigation

A legal inquest had been started immediately
after finding the first five bodies. A medical
examination found no injuries which might have
led to their deaths, and it was concluded that
they had all died of hypothermia. One person
had a small crack in his skull, but it was not
thought to be a fatal wound.

An examination of the four bodies which were
found in May changed the picture. Three of
them had fatal injuries: the body of Thibeaux-
Brignolle had major skull damage, and both
Dubunina and Zolotarev had major chest
fractures. According to Dr. Boris
Vozrozhdenny, the force required to cause such
damage would have been extremely high. He
compared it to the force of a car crash. Notably,
the bodies had no external wounds, as if they
were crippled by a high level of pressure. One woman was found to be missing her tongue.
There had initially been some speculation that the indigenous Mansi people might have
attacked and murdered the group for encroaching upon their lands, but investigation indicated
that the nature of their deaths did not support this thesis; the hikers' footprints alone were
visible, and they showed no sign of hand-to-hand struggle.

Though the temperature was very low (around 25 to 30C) with a storm blowing, the
dead were dressed only partially. Some of them had only one shoe, while others had no shoes
or wore only socks. Some were found wrapped in snips of ripped clothes which seemed to be
cut from those who were already dead. However, up to 25 percent of hypothermia deaths are
associated with so-called "Paradoxical undressing". This typically occurs during moderate to
severe hypothermia, as the person becomes disoriented, confused, and combative. They may
begin discarding their clothing, which, in turn, increases the rate of heat loss.

Journalists reporting on the available parts of the inquest files claim that it states:

Six of the group members died of hypothermia and three of fatal injuries.
There were no indications of other people nearby apart from the nine travelers on
Kholat Syakhl, nor anyone in the surrounding areas.
The tent had been ripped open from within.
The victims had died 6 to 8 hours after their last meal.
Traces from the camp showed that all group members left the camp of their own
accord, on foot.
To dispel the theory of an attack by the indigenous Mansi people, Dr. Boris
Vozrozhdenny stated that the fatal injuries of the three bodies could not have been
caused by another human being, "because the force of the blows had been too strong
and no soft tissue had been damaged".
Forensic radiation tests had shown high doses of radioactive contamination on the
clothes of a few victims.

The final verdict was that the group members all died because of a "compelling unknown
force". The inquest ceased officially in May 1959 due to the "absence of a guilty party". The
files were sent to a secret archive, and the photocopies of the case became available only in
the 1990s, with some parts missing.



A view of the tent as the rescuers found it
on Feb. 26, 1959. The tent had been cut
open from inside, and most of the skiers
had fled in socks or barefoot.

The Controversy

Some researchers claim some facts were missed, perhaps ignored, by officials:

After the funerals, relatives of the deceased claimed that the skin of the victims had a
strange brown tan.

In a private interview, a former investigating officer said that his dosimeter had shown
a high radiation level on Kholat Syakhl, and that this was the reason for the radiation
found on the bodies. However, the source of the contamination was not found.

Another group of hikers (about 50 kilometers south of the incident) reported that they
saw strange orange spheres in the night sky to the north (likely in the direction of
Kholat Syakhl) on the night of the incident. Similar "spheres" were observed in Ivdel
and adjacent areas continually during the period of February to March 1959, by
various independent witnesses (including the meteorology service and the military).

Some reports suggest that there was a lot of scrap metal in the area, leading to
speculation that the military had utilized the area secretly and might be engaged in a
cover-up.

Aftermath

In 1967, Sverdlovsk writer and journalist Yuri Yarovoi ( ) published the novel Of
the highest rank of complexity ( ) which was inspired by this
incident. Yarovoi had been involved in the search for Dyatlov's group and the inquest,
including acting as an official photographer for the search campaign and in the initial stage of
the investigation, and so had insight into the events. The book was written in the Soviet era
when the details of the accident were kept secret, and Yarovoi avoided revealing anything
beyond the official position and well-known facts. The book romanticized the accident and had
a much more optimistic end than the real events only the group leader was found deceased.
Yarovoi's colleagues say that he had alternative versions of the novel, but both were declined
due to censorship. Since Yarovoi's death in 1980 all his archives, including photos, diaries and
manuscripts, have been lost.

Some details of the tragedy became publicly available in 1990 due to publications and
discussions in Sverdlovsk's regional press. One of the first authors was Sverdlovsk journalist
Anatoly Guschin ( ). Guschin reported that police officials gave him special
permission to study the original files of the inquest and use these materials in his publications.
He noticed that a number of pages were excluded from the files, as was a mysterious
"envelope" mentioned in the case materials list. At the same time photocopies of some of the
case files started to circulate among other unofficial researchers.

Guschin summarized his studies in the book The price of state secrets is nine lives (
- ). Some researchers criticized it due to its concentration on the
speculative theory of a "Soviet secret weapon experiment", but the publication aroused the
public discussion, stimulated by interest in the paranormal. Indeed, many of those who
remained silent for 30 years reported new facts about the accident. One of them was the
former police officer Lev Ivanov ( ), who led the official inquest in 1959. In 1990 he
published an article along with his admission that the investigation team had no rational
explanation of the accident. He also reported that he received direct orders from high-ranking
regional officials to dismiss the inquest and keep its materials secret after reporting that the
team had seen "flying spheres". Ivanov personally believes in a paranormal explanation -
specifically, UFOs.

In 2000, a regional TV company produced the documentary film "The mystery of Dyatlov
Pass" (" "). With the help of the film crew, a Yekaterinburg writer,
Anna Matveyeva ( ), published the fiction/documentary novella of the same
name. A large part of the book includes broad quotations from the official case, diaries of
victims, interviews with searchers and other documentaries collected by the film-makers. The
narrative line of the book details the everyday life and thoughts of a modern woman (an alter
ego of the author herself) who attempts to resolve the case.

In September 2011, Ancient Aliens on the History Channel featured a lengthy segment on the
Dyatlov Pass incident.

Despite its fictional narrative, Matveyeva's book remains the largest source of documentary
materials ever made available to the public regarding the incident. In addition, the pages of
the case files and other documentaries (in photocopies and transcripts) are gradually
published on a web forum for enthusiastic researchers:

http://pereval1959.forum24.ru/

The Dyatlov Foundation has been founded in Yekaterinburg (), with the help of
Ural State Technical University, led by Yuri Kuntsevitch ( ). The foundation's
aim is to convince current Russian officials to reopen the investigation of the case, and to
maintain the "Dyatlov Museum" to perpetuate the memory of the dead hikers.

Ergotism
Wikipedia.org

Ergotism is the effect of long-term ergot poisoning, traditionally due to the ingestion of the
alkaloids produced by the Claviceps purpurea fungus which infects rye and other cereals, and
more recently by the action of a number of ergoline-based drugs. It is also known as
ergotoxicosis, ergot poisoning and Saint Anthony's Fire. Ergot poisoning is a proposed
explanation of bewitchment.

Causes

The toxic ergoline derivatives are found in ergot-based drugs (such as methylergometrine,
ergotamine or, previously, ergotoxine). The deleterious side-effects occur either under high
dose or when moderate doses interact with potentiators such as azithromycin.

Historically, eating grain products contaminated with the fungus Claviceps purpurea also
caused ergotism.

Finally, the alkaloids can also pass through lactation from mother to child, causing ergotism in
infants.
Symptoms

The symptoms can be roughly divided into convulsive symptoms and gangrenous symptoms.

Convulsive symptoms

Convulsive symptoms include painful seizures and spasms, diarrhea, paresthesias, itching,
headaches, nausea and vomiting. Usually the gastrointestinal effects precede central nervous
system effects. As well as seizures there can be hallucinations resembling those produced by
LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide, to which the ergot alkaloid ergotamine is an immediate
precursor and therefore shares some structural similarities), and mental effects including
mania or psychosis. The convulsive symptoms are caused by clavine alkaloids.

Gangrenous symptoms

The dry gangrene is a result of vasoconstriction induced by the ergotamine-ergocristine
alkaloids of the fungus. It affects the more poorly vascularized distal structures, such as the
fingers and toes. Symptoms include desquamation or peeling, weak peripheral pulses, loss of
peripheral sensation, edema and ultimately the death and loss of affected tissues.
Vasoconstriction is treated with vasodilators.

History

Epidemics of the disease were identified throughout history, though the references in classical
writers are inconclusive. Rye, the main vector for transmitting ergotism, was not grown much
around the Mediterranean. When Fuchs 1834 separated references to ergotism from erysipelas
and other afflictions, he found the earliest reference to ergotism in the Annales Xantenses for
the year 857: "a Great plague of swollen blisters consumed the people by a loathsome rot, so
that their limbs were loosened and fell off before death."

In the Middle Ages, the gangrenous poisoning was known as ignis sacer ("holy fire") or "Saint
Anthony's fire", named after monks of the Order of St. Anthony who were particularly
successful at treating this ailment. The 12th century chronicler Geoffroy du Breuil of Vigeois
recorded the mysterious outbreaks in the Limousin region of France, where the gangrenous
form of ergotism was associated with the local Saint Martial as much as Saint Anthony.

The blight, named from the cock's spur it forms on grasses, was identified and named by
Denis Dodart, who reported the relation between ergotized rye and bread poisoning in a letter
to the French Royal Academy of Sciences in 1676 (John Ray mentioned ergot for the first time
in English the next year), but "ergotism", in this modern sense, was first recorded in 1853.

Notable epidemics of ergotism occurred up into the 19th century. Fewer outbreaks have
occurred since then due to rye being carefully monitored in developed countries.

There is evidence of ergot poisoning serving a ritual purpose in the ritual killing of certain bog
bodies. Found in peat swamps, Grauballe Man and Tollund Man have been preserved so well
that large amounts of rotten cereals and weeds have been extracted from their stomachs,
clearly showing force-feeding and primitive sedation.

When milled, the ergot is reduced to a red powder, obvious in lighter grasses but easy to miss
in dark rye-flour. In less wealthy countries, ergotism still occurs; an outbreak in Ethiopia
occurred in mid-2001 from contaminated barley. Whenever there is a combination of moist
weather, cool temperatures, delayed harvest in lowland crops and rye consumption, an
outbreak is possible.

Poisonings due to consumption of seeds treated with mercury compounds are sometimes
misidentified as ergotism, possibly including the case of mass-poisoning in the French village
Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951. The incident is described in John Grant Fuller's book The Day of St
Anthony's Fire.

According to Snorri Sturluson, in his Heimskringla, King Magnus, son of King Harald
Sigurtharson, who was the half brother of Saint King Olaf Haraldsson, died from ergotism
shortly after the Battle of Hastings.

Salem witchcraft accusations

The convulsive symptoms that can be a result of consuming ergot-tainted rye have also been
said to be the cause of accusations of bewitchment that spurred the Salem witch trials. This
medical explanation for the theory of bewitchment is one first propounded by Linnda R.
Caporael in 1976 in an article in Science. In her article, Caporael points out that the convulsive
symptoms, such as crawling sensations in the skin, tingling in the fingers, vertigo, tinnitus
aurium, headaches, disturbances in sensation, hallucination, painful muscular contractions,
vomiting and diarrhea, as well as psychological symptoms, such as mania, melancholia,
psychosis and delirium, were all symptoms reported in the Salem witchcraft records. Caporael
also notes the abundance of rye in the region as well as perfect climate conditions for the
tainting of rye. In 1982 historian Mary Matossian revitalized Caporaels theory in her article in
American Scientist. In her article, Matossian builds on Caporaels theories and also notes that
according to English folk tradition all the symptoms of bewitchment resemble the ones
exhibited in those afflicted with ergot poisoning.

The medical explanation of ergotism causing bewitchment has been subject to debate, and
has been criticized by several scholars. Within a year of Caporaels article, the historians
Spanos and Gottlieb rebutted Caporaels theory in the same journal. In Spanos and Gottliebs
rebuttal to Caporaels article, they concluded that there are several flaws in the explanation of
ergot poisoning as a result of accusations of bewitchment. The most notable flaw is that if
the food supply was contaminated, the symptoms would have occurred on a house-by-house
basis, not just in particular individuals. Spanos and Gottlieb also note the fact that ergot
poisoning has additional symptoms not mentioned by those claiming affliction and that the
proportion of children afflicted were less than in a typical ergotism epidemic. Other problems
have also been raised with Caporaels theory. The anthropologist H. Sidky noted the problem
that ergotism had existed for centuries before the Salem witch trials, and that its symptoms
would have been recognizable during the time of the Salem witch trials.
Spontaneous human combustion
Wikipedia.org

Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) describes reported cases of the burning of a living
human body without an apparent external source of ignition. There have been about 200
cited cases worldwide over a period of around 300 years.

There are also many hypotheses which attempt to explain the various cases of human
spontaneous combustion:

Paranormal explanations (e.g., a ghost or divine intervention)
Natural explanations based on an unknown and otherwise unobserved phenomenon
(e.g., production of abnormally concentrated gas or raised levels of blood alcohol
cause spontaneous ignition)
Natural explanations that involve an external source of ignition (e.g., the victim
dropped a cigarette)

Objections to natural explanations typically refer to the degree of burning of the body with
respect to its surroundings. Indeed, one of the common markers of a case of SHC is that the
body or part of it suffered an extraordinarily large degree of burning, with surroundings
or lower limbs comparatively undamaged. These objections have been resolved by
experiments into the "wick effect", in which the body smoulders slowly over a long period
leaving little residue, just as a candle slowly burns and evaporates its wax. Despite scientific
evidence, supernatural explanations of spontaneous human combustion remain popular.

Characteristics

The spontaneous combustion of people (i.e. death from a fire originating within the victim's
body without a direct external cause) is a theorised explanation for a number of unexplained
cases, some of which are well-documented and many of which are not. The more convincing
cases share the following characteristics:

The body is completely or almost completely incinerated, while nearby furniture that should
normally have been damaged under such temperatures remains intact. Damage is limited to
the victim's clothing, to the area of the floor or furniture on which they died, and to the ceiling
above the corpse. The torso is the focus of the fire, and if remains are found these are of the
extremities, such as the feet. There are no traces of fire accelerant, and the fire does not have
an evident external cause. The victim is typically alone at the time of death, and is thought to
have been alive when the fire started, despite showing little sign of having struggled.

Suggested explanations

Many hypotheses attempt to explain how SHC might occur but according to those that rely on
current scientific understanding, incidents that might appear as spontaneous combustion
actually had an external source of ignition and the likelihood of true spontaneous human
combustion is quite low. Benjamin Radford, science writer and deputy editor of the science
magazine Skeptical Inquirer, casts doubt on the plausibility of spontaneous human
combustion, If SHC is a real phenomenon (and not the result of an elderly or infirm person
being too close to a flame source), why doesn't it happen more often? There are 5 billion
people in the world, and yet we don't see reports of people bursting into flame while walking
down the street, attending football games, or sipping a coffee at a local Starbucks.

Natural explanations

Almost all cases of SHC involve persons with low mobility, due to advanced age or obesity,
along with poor health. Victims show a high likelihood of dying in their sleep, or of being
unable to move once they had caught fire.

Cigarettes are often seen as the source of fire, as dropped cigarettes are the leading cause of
house fires in the USA. Natural causes such as heart attacks may lead to the victim dying,
subsequently dropping the cigarette, which after a period of smouldering can ignite the
victim's clothes.

The "wick effect" hypothesis suggests that a small external flame source, such as a burning
cigarette, chars the clothing of the victim at a location, splitting the skin and releasing
subcutaneous fat, which is in turn absorbed into the burned clothing, acting as a wick. This
combustion can continue for as long as the fuel is available. This hypothesis has been
successfully tested with animal tissue (pig) and is consistent with evidence recovered from
cases of human combustion. The human body typically has enough stored energy in fat and
other chemical stores to fully combust the body; even lean people have several pounds of fat
in their tissues. This fat, once heated by the burning clothing, wicks into the clothing much as
candle wax (which was originally made of animal fat) wicks into a lit candle wick to provide the
fuel needed to keep the wick burning.

Scalding can cause burn-like injuries, including death, without setting fire to clothing. Although
not applicable in cases where the body is charred and burnt, this has been suggested as a
cause in at least one claimed SHC-like event.

Unverified natural phenomena

Another hypothesis suggests high-energy particles or gamma rays coupled with susceptibilities
in the potential victim (e.g., increased alcohol in the blood) triggers the initial reaction. This
process may use no external oxygen to spread throughout the body, since it may not be an
oxidation-reduction reaction. However, no reaction mechanism has been proposed, nor has a
source for the high-energy particles.

The victim is an alcoholic and has been smoking while drinking or shortly after drinking a
strong spirit. There are claims that this raises the blood alcohol level to a point where it
ignites; however, this theory is considered implausible (Ignition of alcoholic substances
generally requires a mixture of around 40% ethyl alcohol by volume, whereas death by alcohol
poisoning occurs at only 0.5% alcohol concentration in the blood). However, this does
introduce the probability that the victim falls asleep while holding a lit cigarette.

Another hypothesis is that both clothing and the person are ignited by a static electric
discharge. A person walking across a carpet can build up sufficient charge and voltage to
create a spark. It is unlikely that this could start a clothing fire, as although the voltage can be
high (several thousand volts), the stored energy is very low (typically less than a joule).
Proponents of this hypothesis say that records show there has never been a recorded case of a
naked SHC victim.

Possible cases

Deaths

Some cited cases include:

Polonus Vorstius (Italy, 1470)
Nicole Millet (France, 1725)
Cornelia di Bandi (Italy, 1731)
Phyllis Newcombe (United Kingdom, 1938)
Mary Reeser (United States, 1951)
Anna Martin (United States, 1957)
Helen Conway (United States, 1964)
John Irving Bentley (United States, 1966)
Robert Francis Bailey (United Kingdom, 1967)
Ginette Kazmierczak (France, 1977)
Henry Thomas (Wales, 1980)
Jeannie Saffin (England, 1982)
George I. Mott (United States, 1986)
Michael Faherty (Ireland, 2010)

Survivors

Two examples of people surviving static flash events are given in a book on SHC. Author John
Heymer claims that the two subjects, Debbie Clark and Susan Motteshead, speaking
independently and with no knowledge of each other, give similar histories.

In September 1985, Debbie Clark was walking home when she noticed an occasional flash of
blue light. As she claimed, "It was me. I was lighting up the driveway every couple of steps.
As we got into the garden I thought it was funny at that point. I was walking around in circles
saying, 'Look at this, mum, look!' She started screaming and my brother came to the door and
started screaming and shouting 'Have you never heard of spontaneous human combustion?'"
Her mother, Dianne Clark, responded, "I screamed at her to get her shoes off and it [the
flashes] kept going so I hassled her through and got her into the bath. I thought that the bath
is wired to earth. It was a blue light, you know, what they call electric blue. She thought it was
fun, she was laughing."

In winter 1980, Cheshire, England, resident Susan Motteshead was standing in her kitchen,
wearing flame-resistant pajamas, when she was suddenly engulfed in a short-lived fire that
seemed to have ignited the fluff on her clothing but burned out before it could set anything
properly alight. In addition, Jack Angel claims to have survived an SHC-like event.

Jack Angel is an individual who claimed to be a victim of spontaneous human combustion.
Angel says that, on November 12, 1974, while working as a clothing salesman in Savannah,
Georgia, U.S., he parked in a hotel parking lot (in his trailer/showroom) and went to sleep. He
claims to have awoken four days later, and noticed strange burn marks on his body. His right
hand, he says, appeared to be burned from the wrist up to the fingertips. Says Angel, "It was
just burned, blistered...And I had this big explosion in my chest. It left a hell of a hole. I was
burned...on my ankle, and up and down my back, in spots." Angel claims not to have felt any
pain after waking up, so he showered and dressed as usual. Nothing in his trailer appeared to
be burnt, and both his clothing and bedding appeared normal. Angel asserts that he then
walked over to the hotel, where he collapsed on the floor. Angel woke up in a hospital, now
experiencing immense pain. None of the doctors could explain what had happened to the man.
The burning seemed to have happened in the tissue inside of his hand, and then continued up
the inside of his arm. Angel's hand became infected and had to be amputated. Meanwhile, the
trailer was searched, and still no signs of fire damage were found. This version of Angel's story
contradicts a 1975 testimony delivered to the Fulton County Superior Court in a civil-action
suit filed by Angel's attorney: in the suit, Angel claimed instead to have been sprayed by
"scalding hot water" after trying to fix his motorhome's water pressure. Angel appeared and
narrated his story to That's Incredible! television program.

External links
A BBC article describing the experiment
"HowStuffWorks 'How Spontaneous Human Combustion Works'"

Premature burial
Wikipedia.org

Premature burial, also known as live burial, burial alive, or vivisepulture, means to be buried
while still alive. Animals or humans may be buried alive accidentally or intentionally.
Intentional burial may occur as a form of torture, murder, or execution; it may also occur with
consent of the victim as a part of a stunt (with the intention to escape) or as a form of suicide.
The victim may also be buried by others in the mistaken assumption that they are dead. Live
burial is said to be one of the most widespread of human fears.
Biology

Premature burial leads to death through one or more of the following: asphyxiation,
dehydration, starvation, or (in cold climates) hypothermia. Although human survival may be
briefly extended in some environments as body metabolism slows, in the absence of oxygen,
which is likely to be within one or two hours from burial time based on the consumption level,
loss of consciousness will take place within two to four minutes and death by asphyxia within
five to fifteen minutes. Permanent brain damage through oxygen starvation is likely after a
few minutes, even if the person is rescued before death. If fresh air is accessible in some way,
survival is more likely to be in the order of days in the absence of serious injury.

A person trapped with air to breathe can thus last a considerable time, and burial has been
used as a very cruel method of execution (as in case of Vestal Virgins who violated the oath of
celibacy), lasting sufficiently long for the victim to comprehend and imagine every stage of
what is happening (being trapped in total darkness with very limited or no movement) and to
experience great psychological and physical torment including extreme panic. The medical
term for the irrational fear of being buried alive is taphephobia.
Unintentional
A burial vault built c. 1890 with internal
escape hatches to allow the victim of
accidental premature burial to escape.

At least one (almost certainly apocryphal)
report of accidental burial dates back to
the thirteenth century. The philosopher
John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) was
reportedly, upon the reopening of his
tomb, found outside his coffin with his
hands torn and bloody after attempting to
escape.

Revivals of supposed "corpses" have been
triggered by dropped coffins, grave
robbers, embalming, and attempted dissections. Fearing premature burial, George
Washington, on his deathbed, made his servants promise not to bury him until two days after
his death. Folklorist Paul Barber has argued that the incidence of unintentional live burial has
been overestimated, and that the normal effects of decomposition are sometimes
misinterpreted as signs that the person whose remains are being exhumed revived in his or
her coffin, but patients have nevertheless been documented as accidentally being bagged,
trapped in a steel box, or sent to the morgue after erroneously being declared dead as late as
the 1890s.

Newspapers have reported cases of exhumed corpses who appear to have been accidentally
buried alive. On February 21, 1885, The New York Times gave a disturbing account of such a
case. The victim was a man from Buncombe County whose name was given as "Jenkins." His
body was found turned over onto its front inside the coffin, with much of his hair pulled out.
Scratch marks were also visible on all sides of the coffin's interior. His family were reportedly
"distressed beyond measure at the criminal carelessness" associated with the case.

Another similar story was reported in The Times on January 18, 1886, the victim of this case
being described simply as a "girl" named "Collins" from Woodstock, Ontario, Canada. Her body
was described as being found with the knees tucked up under the body, and her burial shroud
"torn into shreds."

"Safety coffins" have been devised to prevent premature burial, although there is no evidence
that any has ever been successfully used to save an accidentally buried person. On 5
December 1882, J. G. Krichbaum received US Patent 268693 for his "Device For Life In Buried
Persons". It consisted of a movable periscope-like pipe which provided air and, when rotated
or pushed by the person interred, indicated to passersby that someone was buried alive. The
patent text refers to "that class of devices for indicating life in buried persons", suggesting
that such inventions were common at the time.

Count Karnice-Karnicki of Belgium, after witnessing the revival of a friend's daughter as her
coffin was lowered into the ground, patented a rescue device in 1897, which mechanically
detected chest movement to trigger a flag, lamp, bell, and fresh air.

Along similar lines, in the United Kingdom, various systems were developed to save those
buried alive, including breakable glass panels in the coffin lid and pulley systems which would
raise flags or ring bells on the surface. Without air supply, as in the Italian model, this
naturally would be useless without vigilant guards above ground. As such, undertakers were
hired to stay in the graveyard at night to watch out for such signals. In 1890, a family
designed and built a burial vault at the Wildwood Cemetery in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, with
an internal hatch to allow the victim of accidental premature burial to escape. The vault had
an air supply and was lined in felt to protect a panic-stricken victim from self-inflicted injury
before escape. Bodies were to be removed from the casket before interment.

Execution
Chinese civilians being buried alive during the Nanking
Massacre

In ancient Rome, a Vestal Virgin convicted of violating
her vows of celibacy was "buried alive" by being sealed
in a cave with a small amount of bread and water,
ostensibly so that the goddess Vesta could save her
were she truly innocent. This practice was, strictly
speaking, immurement (i.e., being walled up and left to
die) rather than premature burial. According to
Christian tradition, a number of saints were martyred
this way, including Saint Castulus and Saint Vitalis of
Milan. In medieval Italy, unrepentant murderers were
buried alive. This practice is referred to in passing in
canto XIX of Dante's Inferno.

In ancient China, during the Warring States period, 400,000 soldiers of the Kingdom of Zhao
are supposed to have been buried alive after they surrendered to the armies of Qin in the
Battle of Changping in 260 BC. During the reign of the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi
it is said that approximately 400 to 700 scholars were buried alive near the capital in Burning
of books and burying of scholars. They were condemned for saving books from destruction
after an imperial ban on the classics, ordered by the emperor in order to strengthen his reign
and secure his legitimization, by eliminating other social and historical narratives. After the
emperor's death, the warlord Xiang Yu defeated Qin's armies at the Battle of Julu in 207 B.C.,
and is said to have ordered that the 200,000 surviving Qin soldiers be buried alive.

Within the Holy Roman Empire a variety of offenses like rape, infanticide and theft could be
punished with live burial. For example the Schwabenspiegel, a law code from the 13th
century, specified that the rape of a virgin should be punished by live burial (whereas the
rapist of woman was to be beheaded). Female murderers of their own family, or of their own
employers, could also risk to be buried alive. In Augsburg 1505, a 12 year old boy and a 13
year old girl were found guilty of killing their master, in conspiracy with the cook. The boy was
beheaded, the girl and the cook were buried alive beneath the gallows. The jurist Henke
observes that in the Middle Ages, live burial of women guilty of infanticide was a "very
frequent" punishment in city statutes and Landrechten. For example he notes those in Hesse,
Bohemia, Tyrol. The "Berlinisches Stadtbuch" records that 10 women between 1412-47 were
buried alive there, and as late as in 1583, the archbishop of Bremen promulgated (alongside
with the somewhat milder 1532 Constitutio Criminalis Carolina punishment of drowning) live
burial as an alternate execution method for mothers found guilty of infanticide. As noted in, a
woman buried alive would then afterwards be impaled through the heart.This combined
punishment of live burial+impalement was practiced in Nuremberg until 1508 also for women
found guilty of theft, but the city council decided in 1515 that the punishment was too cruel,
and opted for drowning instead. Impalement was, however, not always mentioned together
with live burial. Eduard Osenbrggen relates how a live burial of a woman convicted of
infanticide could be carried out, and actually occurred, for example, in a case in Ensisheim
from 1570:

Das Urtheil befahl dem Nachrichter, die Thterin lebendig in das Grab zu legen,
"und zwo Wellen Dornen, die eine under, die ander uff sie, -, doch das es Irn zuvor ein
Schssel uff das Angesicht legen, in welche er ein Loch machen und ihr durch dasselb
(damit sie desto lenger leben und bemelte bse Misshandlung abbiesen mge) ein Ror
in Mund geben, volgens uff sie drey spring thun und sie darnach mit Erden bedecken
solle"

The verdict commanded the executioner to place the perpetrator in the grave alive,
"and place two layers of thorns, the one beneath, the other above her. Prior to that he
should place a bowl over her face, in which he had made a hole, and to give her
through that (in order that she would live for a longer time and expiate the evil act she
was condemned for) a tube into the mouth, then jump three times upon her, and
lastly cover her with earth

Dieter Furcht speculates that the impalement was not so much to be regarded as an execution
method, but as a way to prevent the condemned to become an avenging, undead
Wiedergnger.

In Denmark, in the 1269 promulgated Ribe city statute, a female thief was to be buried alive,
and in the law by Queen Margaret I, adulterous women were to be punished with premature
burial, men with beheading.

In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in feudal Russia, live burial as execution
method was known as "the pit" and used against women who were condemned for killing their
husbands. During World War II, Japanese soldiers were documented to have buried Chinese
civilians alive, notably during the Nanking Massacre.

This kind of execution was used by Nazis against Soviet people during World War II.

There are also accounts of the Khmer Rouge using premature burials as a form of execution in
the Killing Fields.

During Mao Zedong's regime, there are accounts that premature burials were used in
executions.

In July 2012, a deformed baby girl was allegedly buried alive by her father in Khanewal,
Pakistan.

Voluntary burial

On rare occasions, people have willingly arranged to be buried alive, reportedly as a
demonstration of their controversial ability to survive such an event. In one story taking place
around 1840, Sadhu Haridas, an Indian fakir, is said to have been buried in the presence of a
British military officer and under the supervision of the local maharajah, by being placed in a
sealed bag in a wooden box in a vault. The vault was then interred, earth was flattened over
the site and crops were sown over the place for a very long time. The whole location was
guarded day and night to prevent fraud and the site was dug up twice in a ten-month period
to verify the burial, before the fakir was finally dug out and slowly revived in the presence of
another officer. The fakir said that his only fear during his "wonderful sleep" was to be eaten
by underground worms. According to current medical science, it is not possible for a human to
survive for a period of ten months without food, water, and air. According to other sources the
entire burial was 40 days long. The Indian government has since made the act of voluntary
premature burial illegal, because of the unintended deaths of individuals attempting to
recreate this feat.

During his career, Hungarian-American magician and escapologist Harry Houdini performed
two variations on a "Buried Alive" stunt/escape. The first was near Santa Ana, California in
1917, and it almost cost Houdini his life. Houdini was buried, without a casket, in a pit of earth
six feet deep. He became exhausted and panicky trying to dig his way to the surface and
called for help. When his hand finally broke the surface, he fell unconscious and had to be
pulled from the grave by his assistants. Houdini wrote in his diary that the escape was "very
dangerous" and that "the weight of the earth is killing."

Houdini's second variation on Buried Alive was an endurance test designed to expose a
mystical Egyptian performer who claimed to use supernatural powers to remain in a sealed
casket for an hour. Houdini bettered that claim on August 5, 1926, by remaining in a sealed
casket submerged in the swimming pool of New York's Hotel Shelton for an hour and a half.
Houdini claimed he did not use any trickery or supernatural powers to accomplish this feat,
just controlled breathing.

The practice of being buried alive is not uncommon in Russia; in 2010 a man died after being
buried alive to try and overcome his fear of death when he was crushed to death by the earth
on top of him. The following year, another Russian died after being buried overnight in a
makeshift coffin "for good luck".
Myths and legends

St. Oran was a druid living on the Island of Iona in Scotland's Inner Hebrides. He became a
follower of St. Columba, who brought Christianity to Iona (and mainland Europe) from Ireland
in 563 AD. When St. Columba had repeated problems building the original Iona Abbey, citing
interferences from the Devil, St. Oran offered himself as a human sacrifice and was buried
alive. He was later dug up and found to be still alive, but he uttered such words describing
what of the afterlife he had seen and how it involved no heaven or hell, that he was ordered to
be covered up again. The building of the abbey went ahead, untroubled, and St. Oran's chapel
marks the spot where the saint was buried.

In the fourteenth through nineteenth centuries, a popular tale about premature burial in
European folklore was the "Lady with the Ring". In the story, a woman who was prematurely
buried awakens to frighten a grave robber who is attempting to cut a ring off her finger.

The TV show MythBusters tested the myth to see if someone could survive being buried alive
for two hours before being rescued. Host Jamie Hyneman attempted the feat, but when his
steel coffin began to bend under the weight of the earth used to cover it, the experiment was
aborted. The MythBusters also tested whether someone could batter their way out of a buried
coffin (as in Kill Bill Volume 2), and decided it was not remotely possible.
Cases of Life After Death

Dead Woman Alive After Two Days
Dead woman comes alive after two days in Kerala
http://www.deccanherald.com/
downloaded 14 November 2012

Thiruvananthapuram, June 24, DHNS:

A woman, who was ''certified dead two days back'' by the police and the body taken for post
mortem suddenly came alive in a stunning incident at Paravoor in Kochi on Thursday.

T C Mani, 68, a retired school teacher was living alone for the last nine years at a house she
bought at Poosarippadi following differences with her family. Her husband had retired from
Kerala State Road Transport Corporation and the couple had two children. According to the
police, Mani spoke to her daughter on Monday last.

However, neighbours noticed that the newspapers and even milk of two days were lying
unattended on her doorsteps on Wednesday. The police, who were called in, broke open the
first floor door and got inside. They found Mani lying unconscious inside the toilet and there
was a foul smell, according to sub-inspector P Sreekumaran Nair.

The police team after detailed inspection announced to the relatives that Mani had been dead
for two days. They allowed the husband, children and some local people to inspect the body.

Since it was too late in the night, the police postponed the inquest procedures to Thursday
morning and left after posting a guard at the site. Manis son was called to the station and a
case of unnatural death was registered after recording his statement.

The next morning when the body was taken out for post mortem, Mani began to move and let
out a wail to the utter disbelief of the onlookers. She was soon rushed to hospital in the same
ambulance which was intended to carry her body.

At Paravoor government hospital, doctors gave her emergency care. It was found that she had
puss in her nose and swelling on her knees. Scanning of her head also revealed that she had a
head injury. Following this, Mani was shifted to Ernakulam Medical Centre for a better
treatment.

Manis death certificate given by the police has come in for severe criticism and an inquiry is
on to ascertain the serious lapse.


Dead Baby Alive After 12 Hours
Argentina Baby Alive After 12 Hours In Morgue
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/world/

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina A mother in Argentina says she fell to her knees in shock after
finding her baby alive in a coffin in the morgue nearly 12 hours after the girl had been
declared dead.

Analia Bouter named her newborn Luz Milagros, or "Miracle Light." The tiny girl, born three
months premature, was in critical but improving condition Wednesday in the same hospital
where the staff pronounced her stillborn on April 3.

The case became public Tuesday when Rafael Sabatinelli, the deputy health minister in the
northern province of Chaco, announced in a news conference that five medical professionals
involved have been suspended pending an official investigation.

Bouter told the TeleNoticias TV channel in an interview Tuesday night that doctors gave her
the death certificate just 20 minutes after the baby was born, and that she still hasn't received
a birth certificate for her tiny girl.

Bouter said the baby was quickly put in a coffin and taken to the morgue's refrigeration room.
Twelve hours passed before she and her husband were able to open the coffin to say their last
goodbyes.

She said that's when the baby trembled. She thought it was her imagination then she
realized the little girl was alive and dropped to her knees on the morgue floor in shock.
A morgue worker quickly picked up the girl and confirmed she was alive. Then, Bouter's
brother grabbed the baby and ran to the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit, shouting for
the doctors. The baby was so cold, Bouter said, that "it was like carrying a bottle of ice."

A week later, the baby is improving. Bouter said she still has many unanswered questions
about what happened. She said she had given birth normally to four other children and
doesn't understand why doctors gave her general anesthesia this time. She said she also
doesn't know why she wasn't allowed to see her baby before it was put into a coffin.

She said she had to insist on going to the morgue's refrigeration room, where she brought her
sister's cellphone to take a picture of the newborn for the funeral. Her husband struggled to
open the lid, and then stepped aside to let her see inside.

"I moved the coverings aside and saw the tiny hand, with all five fingers, and I touched her
hand and then uncovered her face," she said in the TeleNoticias interview. "That's where I
heard a tiny little cry. I told myself I was imagining it it was my imagination. And then I
stepped back and saw her waking up. It was as if she was saying `Mama, you came for me!'
"That was when I fell to my knees. My husband didn't know what to do. We were just crying
and I laughed and cried, cries and laughter. We must have seemed crazy."

She says the family plans to sue the staff at Hospital Perrando in the city of Resistencia for
malpractice, and still wants answers. But they've been focused for now on their little girl,
whom she described as amazingly healthy despite being born after just 26 weeks of gestation.
So far, she hasn't needed oxygen or other support commonly provided to preemies, she said.

"I'm a believer. All of this was a miracle from God," she told Telam, Argentina's state news
agency.

Reincarnation

The Case of Sukla
http://nitaaiveda.com/Soul_Science_God_Philosophy/Your_Secret_Journey/Reincarnation_and_Scie
nce/Real_Case_History_Of_Reincarnation.htm

The case history of Sukla, a little girl from West Bengal is one of the 3000 in the files of Dr Ian
Stevenson. When Sukla Gupta was a year and a half old and barely able to talk, she used to
cradle a pillow and address it as "Minu". Minu, she said, was her daughter. Sukla, over the
next three years, recollected her previous life events, which show that Minu actually was her
daughter in a previous life.Sukla was the daughter of a railway worker in Kampa, a village in
West Bengal. Sukla often talked not only about her daughter, Minu, but also about her
husband, "the father of Minu" (a good Hindu wife avoids speaking of her husband by name).
She also talked about his younger brothers Khetu and Karuna. They all lived, she said, at
Rathtala in Bhatpara.

Sukla's family, the Guptas, knew Bhatpara slightly - it was a city about 11 miles south, but
they had never heard of a place called Rathtala, nor of the people Sukla had named. Yet Sukla
developed a desire to go there, and she insisted that if her Parents didn't take her she would
go alone.

Sri K. N. Sen Gupta, Sukla's father, talked about the matter with some friends. He also
mentioned it to one of his railway co-workers, Sri. S. C. Pal, an assistant station master. Sri.
Pal lived near Bhatpara and had two cousins there. Through these cousins he learned that
Bhatpara indeed had a district called Rathtala. He also learned of a man there named Khetu.
Khetu had had a sister-in-law named Mana who had died several years before, in 1948,
leaving behind an intant daughter named Minu. Sri Sen Gupta decided to investigate further.
With the consent of that family, he arranged for a visit to Rathtala. Sukla said that she could
show the way to the house.So, in 1959, when Sukla was a little more than five, Sri Sen Gupta
and five other members of his family journeyed with her to Bhatpara. When they arrived,
Sukla took the lead. Avoiding various possible wrong turns, she brought them straight to the
house of Sri Amritalal Chakravarty, allegedly her father-in-law in her past life.

As the party approached, Sri Chakravarty happened to be out on the street. When Sukla saw
him, she looked down shyly, following the usual custom for a young woman in the presence of
an older male relative. But when Sukla went to enter the house she was confused. She didn't
seem to know the right entrance. Her confusion however made sense; after the death of
Mana (Sukla's name in previous life) the entrance had been moved from the main street to an
alley on the side. And the party soon found that Sukla recognized not only the house, but also
the people in it, including those she said were her mother-in-law, her brothers-in-law, her
husband, and her daughter. Inside Amritalal Chakravarty's house, Sukla found herself in a
room with some 20 or 30 people. When she was asked, "Can you point out your husband?",
she correctly indicated Sri Haridhana Chakravarty. Further when Sukla went to Mana's room,
she showed the cot she used previously as Mana. And tears came to Sukla's eyes, when she
saw her old sewing machine, the one that Mana had previously used.

Sukla and Haridhana Chakravarty were to meet again several times, and Sukla always longed
for these meetings. When he was to visit her house, Sukla told her family to make him a meal
with prawns and buli. She said that this was his favorite food. Her family did what she said
and later found that she had chosen correctly. Sukla behaved toward Haridhana Chakravarty
like a perfect Hindu wife. After he ate his meal, she would eat whatever food was left on his
plate, as a devoted Hindu wife would do. But she never ate food from the Plate of anyone else.

Suspicion 1 - Imagination

Spontaneous speech of small children of around 6 could be due to their overactive
imagination, as they often like to Pretend to be" someone else. Young children can be easily
influenced to believe anything, and it is well known that children are highly impressionable as
well.

Refutation:

The "cases of the reincarnation type" studied by Stevenson were not isolated incidents but
were varied cases studied in depth by Stevenson over a period of 30 years from the 1960s
into the 1990s. He and his colleagues found that in about half of over 3,000 cases in his files,
the "other people" that these children "pretended to be" were often historically specific people
who had died before the children were born.Moreover in certain cases, the children who
remembered their past lives profoundly were just beginning to learn their native tongue in this
life. Still they were able to speak fluently the language of their past life, a language with which
they had no contact whatsoever in this life.

Suspicion 2: Cryptomnesia (hidden memory)

Psychologists know that our minds record more than we consciously remember. Under
hypnosis, an old man may vividly describe his fifth birthday party, an event for which his
normal consciousness has lost all the details. So the hypothesis of cryptomnesia supposes that
what appears to be memories of a past life are merely memories of something one had heard
or read earlier in this life but has now consciously forgotten. This may in fact be the best
explanation for many of the "past-life regressions" now becoming popular in journeys through
hypnosis.

Refutation:

Sukla is a girl less than five years old. And her recollections of a past life took place not under
hypnosis but as part of her usual waking consciousness. Moreover, Sukla did not just recall
information - she actually recognized people, people who in this life were complete strangers.
She recognized Mana's mother-in-law from a group of 30 people. She pointed out Mana's
brother-in-law Kshetranath, and she knew his nickname, "Khetu". She also recognized another
brother-in-law, whose nickname was "Kuti". But she identified him correctly by his given
name, Karuna, which even his neighbors did not know. She also said that her first child, a son,
had died while still an infant. This was true for the life of Mana. And Sukla tearfully recognized
Mana's daughter, Minu, and showered her with affection. What more is required?

Suspicion 3: ESP (Extra Sensory Perception)

Research has clearly shown that there is such a thing as ESP. In rigidly controlled
experiments, the late Dr J B Rhine and other parapsychologists have shown persuasive
evidence for telepathy (the ability to read another person's thoughts) and clairvoyance (the
ability to perceive objects and events without using your senses). And experiments have
shown that both telepathy and clairvoyance can work over long distances.

Refutation:

"If ESP is to be applied to Sukla's case, then this five-year-old girl should not only have
incredible psychic powers, but she would also have to use them to zero in one on a specific
amily in an unfamiliar city and learn intimate details of their lives. She would also have to be
selective about what her psychic radar picked out, so that she would "remember", for
example, the location of her father-in-law's house but be unaware that the entrance had
changed, since that took place after Mana's death. And then, for purposes yet unknown, Sukla
would have to mold what she learned into a drama in which she immersed herself in the role
of the departed Mana.

Most dramatic in Sukla's case were her strong maternal emotions towards Minu. From
babyhood Sukla had played at cradling Minu in her arms, and after she learned to talk she
spoke of her longing to be with Minu. Sukla's meeting with Minu had all the appearances of a
tearful reunion between mother and daughter. Once Mana's cousin tested Sukla by falsely
telling her that Minu, away in Rathtala, was ill with a high fever. Sukla began to cry frantically
and it took a long time for her family to reassure her that Minu was actually well. Dr
Stevenson remarks, "Although Minu was twelve and Sukla was only five, within this limitation,
Sukla exactly acted the role of a mother towards a beloved daughter." Thus after taking many
other possibilities into account, Dr Stevenson submits that this case can be understood only by
taking reincarnation into consideration.

The Case of Kumkum Verma
http://www.netplaces.com/past-life-experience/selected-case-studies/ the-case-of-kumkum-
verma.htm

Kumkum Verma, a girl from in India, began talking about a previous life at the age of three-
and-a-half. She said that she had lived in Darbhanga, a city of 200,000 people that was
twenty-five miles away from her village, and that Urdu Bazar was the name of the section of
the city where she had been. Her father, an educated man who was a landowner, homeopathic
physician, and author, did not know anyone in Urdu Bazar, a commercial district where small
businessmen, artisans, and craftsmen lived.

Kumkum asked her family to call her Sunnary, which means beautiful, and made many
statements about the previous life. Her aunt made notes of some of them six months before
anyone tried to identify the previous personality. Dr. Stevenson, who met Kumkums family
when she was nine years old, obtained an English translation of extracts of the notes, but he
was unable to get the complete notebook, because it had been lost after being loaned to
someone. The extracts listed eighteen statements that Kumkum made that all proved to be
correct for the previous personality, including the name of Urdu Bazar, her sons name and the
fact that he worked with a hammer, her grandsons name, the name of the town where her
father lived, the location of his home near mango orchards, and the presence of a pond at her
house. She had correctly stated that she had an iron safe at her house, a sword hanging near
her cot, and a snake near the safe to which she fed milk.

Kumkums father eventually talked about her statements to a friend who lived in Darbhanga.
That friend had an employee from the Urdu Bazar section of the city, who was able to identify
the previous personality, Sunnary or Sundari Mistry, whom Kumkum seemed to be
describing. The previous personalitys family belonged to a relatively low artisan class and
would have been quite unlikely to have social contact with a family with the education and
social status of Dr. Vermas family. In fact, they had little contact even after the case
developed. The previous personalitys grandson visited Kumkums family twice. Dr. Verma
went to Urdu Bazar once to meet the previous personalitys family, but he never allowed
Kumkum to go. Apparently he was not proud of his daughters claim to have been a
blacksmiths wife in her previous life.

One interesting note is that Kumkum said that she died during an altercation and that her
stepsons wife had poisoned her. Sundari, who died quite unexpectedly five years before
Kumkum was born, was preparing to be a witness for her son in his suit against her second
husband, involving the sons belief that his stepfather had misappropriated his deceased
fathers money, when she died. No autopsy was performed, and Kumkums statement that she
was poisoned remained unverified.

Also of note is that Kumkum spoke with an accent different from that of her family. The family
associated it with the lower classes of Darbhanga and reported that in addition, Kumkum used
some unusual expressions that seemed related to them as well.


The Case of Lurancy Vennum
http://www.mysteriouspeople.com

In the latter part of the 19th century, during the heyday of
Spiritualism, the case of the 'spiritual possession' of
Lurancy Vennum attracted a great deal of publicity.
Lurancy was a young girl from Illinois who claimed to be a
reincarnation of another teenager called Mary Roff, who
had died 15 years earlier. Through the spirit of Mary she
claimed that she was able to recall in detail a past life with
the Roff family and their friends, leading many to believe
she was indeed, spiritually at least, Mary Roff.

Was Lurancy Vennum really the reincarnation of Mary Roff?

The Story of Mary Roff

Mary Roff was born in Warren County, Indiana, on 8
October, 1846. When she was thirteen years old the family
moved to Watseka, about 70 miles south of Chicago, Illinois. By that time Marys health had
been badly weakened by epileptic fits, which she suffered from about twice a day. In spring,
1865, in an attempt to escape from depression caused by her health, she tried to commit
suicide by slashing her wrists. Her parents found her unconscious from loss of blood and called
a doctor. When Mary eventually regained consciousness she became so violent that it took
several adults to hold her down in bed. She was delirious for five days, after whichh she
suddenly became calm and slept for fifteen hours. She awoke to find bandages covering her
eyes to protect them from her unconscious scratching;
but instead of removing them, she discovered that she
seemed to be able to see as easily while blindfolded as
she had before.

Family friends, including A.J. Smith, editor of the
Danville Times, and the Reverend J.H. Rhea, witnessed
Mary Roff, heavily blindfolded, accurately read to them
the contents of a sealed letter in the editors pocket,
and arrange, correctly, a pile of old letters which she
could not see. The amazed editor wrote a long, detailed
account of the incidence in his paper.

Slowly, however, the young girls health deteriorated,
and before long doctors advised her parents to put her
in a mental institution. They refused and decided to care
for her themselves. They took her with them when they
visited friends in Peoria, Illinois, for the 4th of July
holiday in 1865. While there Mary complained of a
terrible headache and went to her room. A few minutes
later they found her unconscious on the floor in a pool
of blood and rushed her to the asylum, where she died
on the afternoon of 5 July.

Lurancy Vennum sees Angels

On the day of Mary Roffs death, Lurancy Vennum was a fifteen-month-old baby living on her
parents farm in Iowa. She had been born Mary Lurancy Vennum, on 16 April 1864, at Milford
Township, Iroquois Co, Illinois. In 1871, the family moved to a farm seven miles south of
Watseka. This was nearly six years after the death of Mary Roff; so there is no possibility that
Lurancy Vennum could ever have seen Mary. Lurancy was a normal, healthy child of thirteen
when the twelfth anniversary of Mary Roffs death occurred on 5 July 1877. Next morning she
told her parents - There were people in my room last night and they kept calling Rancy!
Rancy! and I could feel their breath on my face. A week after this incident Lurancy was
helping her mother stitch a broken seam in a carpet when she suddenly straightened herself
up and said - Maw, I feel bad; I feel mighty queer!

Seconds later she became rigid and fell unconscious for five hours. This began to happen
every day and usually consisted of Lurancy lying stiff, with only a faint pulse, her breath slow
and weak, and her temperature below normal. She suffered from excruciating abdominal pains
and would murmur about strange visions which usually involved what she called 'angels'.
Sometimes the attacks lasted up to eight hours, during which time Lurancy would speak in
different voices, though when she awoke, she would remember nothing.

A Spiritualist Investigates

Doctors thought her mentally ill and could do nothing for her, only recommending that she be
sent to the State Insane Asylum in Peoria. At this time the Spiritualist movement was at its
height of popularity and news of the strange girl brought many curious visitors to see her. Mr.
and Mrs. Asa B. Roff, the parents of Mary Roff and apparently Spiritualists themselves, heard
about the case and were reminded of their own daughters similar problems. They visited the
Vennums and persuaded them to allow a Dr. E. Winchester Stevens of Janesville, Wisconsin, a
medical doctor and an advocate of Spiritualism, to investigate the case.

Dr. Stevens visited the family, and found Lurancy sitting in a chair near the stove, with her
elbows on her knees, her hands under her chin, and feet curled up on the chair, eyes staring
wildly. For a while there was silence, broken only when Dr. Stevens moved his chair. At this
Lurancy savagely warned him not to come any closer. She was surly and refused to be
touched, calling her father Old Black Dick and her mother Old Granny.

During these trances Lurancy was apparently taken over by a range of unpleasant 'spirits' or
entities, including an angry old woman called Katrina Hogan and a young man called Willie
Canning. After some unintelligible conversation she had another fit, which Dr. Stevens relieved
by hypnotizing her. She then calmed down and said that she had been controlled by evil
spirits.

Dr. Stevens encouraged her to try and find a better control, after which she mentioned the
names of several people who had died, eventually saying that there was one who wanted to
come. Her name was Mary Roff. Marys father was present, and agreed to let her come, which
she apparently did, astounding the whole company with the details she gave of the Roffs
house.


The 'Spiritual Possession' of Lurancy Vennum

It was after this, in February, 1878, that the control of
Lurancy, or the 'spiritual possession' as some researchers
have called it, began. Far from being sullen and aggressive
the girl became mild, passive and polite, not recognizing her
own family, but instead asking to be taken home. On
hearing of the extraordinary change in the girl, Mrs. Roff and
her daughter, Mrs. Minerva Alter, Marys sister, went to visit
Lurancy. Lurancy was looking out of the window of her house
at the time and when she saw them coming down the street
exclaimed - There comes my ma and sister Nervie!- the
latter being the name Mary used to call Mrs. Alter when a
young girl. When they came into the house she hugged them
and cried for joy. After this incident Lurancy became
progressively more homesick and continually begged to be
taken 'home' to the Roffs.

Hoping that it might help their daughters recovery, the
Vennums allowed their daughter to be taken into the Roff home. When asked how long she
would remain there, Lurancy answered that the angels would let her stay until some time in
May. She had never been in the house before but, remarkably, seemed to know everything
about it. She also spoke almost daily of particular incidents in Mary Roffs life, she recognized
family members and friends, identified her favourite clothes and belongings and recounted
past event known only to the family.


For fifteen weeks Lurancy Vennum lived as Mary Roff among her family and friends, and
everything she did convinced people that she was the real Mary Roff, whom she had never
known. When Mrs. Roff asked her if she recalled the family moving to Texas in 1857 (when
Mary was eleven) the girl responded promptly that she remembered it well, particularly seeing
the Indians along the Red River and playing with the young daughters of a family named
Reeder, who were among the same travelling party. The Roffs also tested her with a velvet
head dress Mary used to wear; which she recognized immediately.

The stay at Mr. Roffs was beneficial to her physical condition, which continued to improved,
and her mental health, though she seemed not to recognize or know anything about her own
family or their friends and neighbours. When Mr. and Mrs. Vennum and their children visited
her she treated them as strangers, though after frequent visit she learned to love them as
friends. She was generally happy in her new home and often went out with Mrs. Roff to visit
the leading families of the city, who soon became convinced that the girl was not insane but a
normal, well-mannered child.

Occasionally, Mary would go back to heaven, and leave the body in a state of trance, and
after eight or nine weeks, the personality of Lurancy would occasionally return partially for a
few minutes, and once seems to have taken full possession for a brief time


Lurancy's Past Life

Dr. Stevens often asked Mary about her former life, and on one occasion she told him about
cutting her arm, and asked if he had seen where she did it. After receiving a negative answer,
she started to pull up her sleeve to show him the scar, but suddenly stopped, as if realizing
something suddenly, and quickly said - Oh, this is not the arm; that one is in the ground, and
carried on to describe where it was buried, how she witnessed it done, and who was standing
around at the time.

Lurancy often spoke of seeing Dr. Stevenss daughter Emma Angelia Stevens in heaven; she
told him she was happy there. She physically described the girl, who had died in March 1849,
and the details were accurate even down to an X-shaped scar on the cheek resulting from
surgery after an infection. She also correctly described Dr. Stevens home in Janesville,
Wisconsin, where she had never been, and gave the names and ages of his children.

While all this was happening Mary was asked where the real Lurancy Vennum was. She told
them that Lurancy was away, being treated, and would come back when she was restored to
health, both mentally and physically. When Lurancy was ready to return, Mary must leave.

The 'Return' of Lurancy

On 7 May, 1878 , Mary told the Roff family that it would soon be time for her to leave, as
Lurancy Vennum was getting better and would return. Then, on 21 May, after fourteen weeks,
thus fulfilling the prophecy which Mary had made when first taking control, she tearfully bade
everyone goodbye and left. Lurancy was back for good and she asked Mrs. Roff to take her
home. When she arrived she met her parents and brothers, hugging and kissing them in tears
of happiness, and was completely content to be in her own surroundings again. She told her
family that the past fifteen weeks seemed like a dream to her. Back in her own house Lurancy
became, in the words of her mother perfectly and entirely well and natural . . . Lurancy has
been smarter, more intelligent, more industrious, more womanly, and more polite than
before.

Her parents gave Dr. Stevens and Mr. and Mrs. Roff the credit for her complete cure and
believed that if Lurancy had remained at home she would have died, or have been sent to the
insane asylum. Her mother added: Several of the relatives of Lurancy, including ourselves,
now believe she was cured by spirit power, and that Mary Roff controlled the girl. In July,
1878, Dr. Stevens pronounced Lurancy in sound health, both mentally and physically. He
received a pencil-written letter from her, in which she thanked him for his patience and help.
Apparently, the handwriting in this letter bore no resemblance at all to other recent writings of
Lurancy when she was Mary Roff.

In January 1882, now an attractive young woman, Lurancy Vennum married George Binning,
a New York born farmer of English parentage, from near Watseka. They moved to Rawlins Co,
Kansas, in 1884, where she became the mother of eleven children (she was to have thirteen
altogether). Occasionally, it is said that Mary would take control of her again, but as she was
not in an encouraging environment for such things she never developed her mediumistic
powers further. George Binning died in Long Beach, California on 21 November, 1916.

In the thirties Lurancy used to travel by train to visit her sister Florence in Medicine Lodge,
Kansas at least once, and sometimes twice a year. Her great niece, Joyce Wesbrooks,
remembers a family visit to her and her daughter Daisy in Long Beach in 1938. In 1940 she
was a seventy-six-year-old woman who preferred not to talk about those fifteen weeks in the
1870s when she had mystified science. Lurancy died in Los Angeles, California on 30 August
1952. Joyce Wesbrooks' son, William Wesbrooks, a successful director and playwright, has
written a play about Lurancy entitled Before I Wake. This was first performed in Gettysburg,
PA, at Gettysburg College, in May, 1981. The initial performances were attended by many of
Lurancy's relatives.


The Society for Psychical Research Investigates

Dr. Richard Hodgson, a sceptical member of investigated the case and visited Watseka on 12
April, 1890, questioning the main witnesses who remained in the neighborhood. He also
attempted to get some direct statements from Lurancy (Mrs. George Binning) but received no
answer to his inquiries. Dr. Stevens wrote a book called The Watseka Wonder about the case
based on his personal knowledge, and William James, American psychologist and brother of
the novelist Henry James, also investigated and reported his findings in depth.

Evidence is certainly not lacking in the
case of Lurancy Vennum, it attracted
wide attention at the time and
contemporary newspapers in and
around Chicago devoted a lot of space
to it. But what really happened? Were
the Roff and Vennum families involved
in an elaborate hoax? Or was Lurancy
somehow able to fool, not only her own
family and that of Mary Roff, but the
investigators as well? On the other
hand, If she was genuine, are the only
possible explanations reincarnation or
spiritual possession?


The families involved seemed to think Lurancy was indeed possessed by the spirit of Mary
Roff. Richard Hodgson, who worked with Morton Prince in the Christine Beauchamp multiple
personality case at the end of the 19th century, suggested that Mary Roff could be a
secondary personality of Lurancy Vennums. If so, we can discount reincarnation, spiritual
possession or any other 'paranormal' explanation for the case. However, the problem still
remains of how Lurancy obtained the detailed knowledge she is said to have possessed. The
same problem applies if the whole thing was an elaborate hoax. Where and how did she obtain
the detailed information about people, places and events she knew nothing about? If this
mystery could be explained then we would be much closer to understanding this case of
alleged 'spiritual possession'.



Sources and Further Reading

Edwards, Frank. Strange People, London, Pan Books Ltd, 1966. pp126-133.
Myers, F.W.H. Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, New York,
University Books, 1961 (1903). Pp66-72
St. Clair, David. Child Possessed. London, Corgi. 1979. (Published in U.S. in 1977 as
Watseka)
Shirley, R. The Problem of Rebirth. London, Rider &Co. 1936, pp90-95.
Wilson, Colin. Poltergeist! Sevenoaks, Kent, New English Library, 1981, pp71-3.


The Case of Pepe Veraldi
http://socyberty.com/

One January day in 1939 seventeen-year old Maria
Talarico was walking with her grandmother thought her
hometown of Catanzaro, in Southern Italy. As the two
passed a bridge, Maria suddenly stopped, started at the
riverbank, and collapsed. Only after being taken home did
she recover consciousness and then astonished her
family by addressing her mother in a gruff male voice.

You are not my mother, she said. My mother lives in
the wooden hut, and her name is Catarina Veraldi, I am
Pepe.

Pepe Veraldi had drowned himself nearly three years
previously, on February 13, 1936. His body had been
found under the bridge where Maria had collapsed. Had
his spirit taken over Marias body?

Maria asked for a piece of paper and wrote a few words in
Veraldis handwriting. She then demanded wine and
cigarettes, and began to play cards with the people
gathered around her, calling them Toto, Rosario, Elio, and
Damiano names of the dead mans friends.

Matters took an even more surprising turn when Veraldis mother arrived. Still speaking in
Veraldis voice, Maria declared: My friends murdered me; they threw me into the river. Then
as I lay there, they beat me with a piece of iron and tried to make the whole thing look like
suicide.

Maria then fled from the house, ran to the bridge, and threw herself off of it, shouting Leave
me alone! Why are you beating me?

On the ground below, she lay in precisely the same position as had Veraldi when he had been
found. The dead mans mother approached Maria and commanded that her son leave the girls
body. Maria opened eyes, looked about, and stood up. She had returned to normal; Veraldi
was gone.

Unexpected Proof

No one knew what to make of the bizarre incident at first. The police report on Veraldis death
suggested that he might have died in the way the possessed girl had described. But the
friends she had named could not, or would not, cast further light on the mystery. Besides,
Toto had immigrated to South America; Elio was dead.

Then in 1951 Toto, otherwise known as Luigi Marchete, wrote to Veraldis mother from
Tucuman, Argentina; he confessed to the murder of her son. In the letter, Marchete told of the
attention Veraldi had been giving to Lillina. Marchetes wife. Marchete had beaten Veraldi with
an iron bar, with fatal results. After he and his three friends had tried to make the death look
like suicide, Marchete had fled to Argentina. To ease his conscience, he was now leaving the
fortune he had made to the victims mother.

The letter confirmed Marias extraordinary episode 12 years before. The spirit of Pepe Veraldi
had, it seems, briefly taken possession of the body of Maria Talarico in order to reveal the true
circumstances of his death.

The Tunguska Event
http://www.cosmostv.org/

The Tunguska event, or Tunguska explosion,
was an enormously powerful explosion that
occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska
River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia,
at about 7:14 a.m. KRAT (0:14 UT) on June 30
1908.

Trees knocked over by the Tunguska blast.
Photograph from the Soviet Academy of
Science 1927 expedition led by Leonid Kulik

The explosion is believed to have been caused
by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet
fragment at an altitude of 510 kilometres (36 mi) above the Earth's surface. Different
studies have yielded varying estimates of the object's size, with general agreement that it was
a few tens of metres across.

The number of scholarly publications on the problem of the Tunguska explosion since 1908
may be estimated at about 1,000 (mainly in Russian). Many scientists have participated in
Tunguska studies, the best-known of them being Leonid Kulik, Yevgeny Krinov, Kirill
Florensky, Nikolay Vasiliev, and Wilhelm Fast.

Although the meteoroid or comet burst in the air rather than hitting the surface, this event is
still referred to as an impact. Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 to as high as
30 megatons of TNT (21130 PJ), with 1015 megatons of TNT (4263 PJ) the most likely
roughly equal to the United States' Castle Bravo thermonuclear bomb tested on March 1,
1954, about 1,000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and
about one-third the power of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.The
explosion knocked over an estimated 80 million trees covering 2,150 square kilometres (830
sq mi). It is estimated that the shock wave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the
Richter scale. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan
area.This possibility has helped to spark discussion of asteroid deflection strategies.

The Tunguska event is the largest impact event over
land in Earth's recent history.Impacts of similar size
over remote ocean areas would have gone unnoticed
before the advent of global satellite monitoring in the
1960s and 1970s.

The Southern swampthe epicentre of the Tunguska
explosion, in 2008

At around 7:17 a.m. local time, Tungus natives and
Russian settlers in the hills northwest of Lake Baikal
observed a column of bluish light, nearly as bright as the Sun, moving across the sky. About
10 minutes later, there was a flash and a sound similar to artillery fire. Eyewitnesses closer to
the explosion reported the sound source moving east to north. The sounds were accompanied
by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows hundreds of kilometres
away. The majority of witnesses reported only the sounds and the tremors, and not the
sighting of the explosion. Eyewitness accounts differ as to the sequence of events and their
overall duration.

The explosion registered on seismic stations across Eurasia. In some places the shock wave
would have been equivalent to an earthquake of 5.0 on the Richter scale. It also produced
fluctuations in atmospheric pressure strong enough to be detected in Great Britain. Over the
next few days, night skies in Asia and Europe were aglow; it has been theorized that this was
due to light passing through high-altitude ice particles formed at extremely cold temperatures,
a phenomenon that occurs when the Space Shuttle re-enters the Earth's atmosphere.In the
United States, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Mount Wilson Observatory
observed a decrease in atmospheric transparency that lasted for several months, from
suspended dust.

Selected eyewitness reports

Testimony of S. Semenov, as recorded by Leonid Kulik's expedition in 1930.

At breakfast time I was sitting by the house at Vanavara Trading Post (65
kilometres/40 miles south of the explosion), facing north. [...] I suddenly saw that
directly to the north, over Onkoul's Tunguska Road, the sky split in two and fire
appeared high and wide over the forest (as Semenov showed, about 50 degrees up
expedition note). The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire northern side was
covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn't bear it, as if my
shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat. I
wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a
strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few metres. I lost my senses for a
moment, but then my wife ran out and led me to the house. After that such noise
came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the earth shook, and when I was
on the ground, I pressed my head down, fearing rocks would smash it. When the sky
opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in
the ground like pathways, and it damaged some crops. Later we saw that many
windows were shattered, and in the barn a part of the iron lock snapped.

Testimony of Chuchan of Shanyagir tribe, as recorded by I.M. Suslov in 1926.

We had a hut by the river with my brother Chekaren. We were sleeping. Suddenly we
both woke up at the same time. Somebody shoved us. We heard whistling and felt
strong wind. Chekaren said, 'Can you hear all those birds flying overhead?' We were
both in the hut, couldn't see what was going on outside. Suddenly, I got shoved again,
this time so hard I fell into the fire. I got scared. Chekaren got scared too. We started
crying out for father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There was noise beyond
the hut, we could hear trees falling down. Chekaren and I got out of our sleeping bags
and wanted to run out, but then the thunder struck. This was the first thunder. The
Earth began to move and rock, wind hit our hut and knocked it over. My body was
pushed down by sticks, but my head was in the clear. Then I saw a wonder: trees
were falling, the branches were on fire, it became mighty bright, how can I say this, as
if there was a second sun, my eyes were hurting, I even closed them. It was like what
the Russians call lightning. And immediately there was a loud thunderclap. This was
the second thunder. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our Sun was
shining brightly as usual, and suddenly there came a second one!

Chekaren and I had some difficulty getting out from under the remains of our hut.
Then we saw that above, but in a different place, there was another flash, and loud
thunder came. This was the third thunder strike. Wind came again, knocked us off our
feet, struck against the fallen trees.
We looked at the fallen trees, watched the tree tops get snapped off, watched the
fires. Suddenly Chekaren yelled 'Look up' and pointed with his hand. I looked there
and saw another flash, and it made another thunder. But the noise was less than
before. This was the fourth strike, like normal thunder.
Now I remember well there was also one more thunder strike, but it was small, and
somewhere far away, where the Sun goes to sleep.


Sibir newspaper, July 2, 1908

On the 17th of June, around 9am in the morning, we observed an unusual natural
occurrence. In the north Karelinski village(about four miles) north of Kirensk, and
heard to the north east some kind of artillery barrage, that repeated in intervals of 15
minutes at least 10 times. In Kirensk in a few buildings in the walls facing north east
window glass shook.

Siberian Life newspaper, July 27, 1908

"When the meteorite fell, strong tremors in the ground were observed, and near the
Lovat village of the two strong explosions were heard, as if from large-caliber
artillery."

Kezhemskoe village
On the 17th an unusual atmospheric event was observed. At 7:43 the noise akin to a strong
wind was heard. Immediately afterwards a horrific thump sounded, followed by an earthquake
which literally shook the buildings, as if they were hit by a large log or a heavy rock. The first
thump was followed by a second, and then a third. Then the interval between the first and the
third thumps were accompanied by an unusual underground rattle, similar to a railway upon
which dozens of trains are travelling at the same time. Afterwards for 5 to 6 minutes an exact
likeness of artillery fire was heard: 50 to 60 salvoes in short, equal intervals, which got
progressively weaker. After 1.5 - 2 minutes after one of the "barrages" six more thumps were
heard, like cannon firing, but individual, loud and accompanied by tremors.

The sky, at the first sight, appeared to be clear. There was no wind and no clouds. However
upon closer inspection to the north, i.e. where most of the thumps were heard, a kind of an
ashen cloud was seen near the horizon which kept getting smaller and more transparent and
possibly by around 2-3 p.m. completely disappeared.
There was little scientific curiosity about the impact at the time, possibly due to the isolation of
the Tunguska region. If there were any early expeditions to the site, the records were likely to
have been lost during the subsequent chaotic years World War I, the Russian Revolution of
1917 and the Russian Civil War.

The first recorded expedition arrived at the scene more than a decade after the event. In
1921, the Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik, visiting the Podkamennaya Tunguska River basin
as part of a survey for the Soviet Academy of Sciences, deduced from local accounts that the
explosion had been caused by a giant meteorite impact. He persuaded the Soviet government
to fund an expedition to the Tunguska region, based on the prospect of meteoric iron that
could be salvaged to aid Soviet industry. Kulik's party eventually undertook an expedition in
1927.

Photograph from Kulik's 1927 expeditionUpon arrival, Kulik made arrangements with the local
Evenki hunters to guide his party to the impact site. Reaching the explosion site was an
extremely arduous task. Upon reaching an area just south of the site, the superstitious Evenki
hunters would go no further, fearing what they called the Valleymen. Kulik had to return to
the nearby village, and his party was delayed for several days while they sought new guides.

The spectacle that confronted Kulik as he stood on a ridge overlooking the devastated area
was overwhelming. To the explorers' surprise, no crater was to be found. There was instead
around ground zero a vast zone (8 kilometers across) of trees scorched and devoid of
branches, but standing upright. Those farther away had been partly scorched and knocked
down in a direction away from the centre. Much later, in the 1960s, it was established that the
zone of leveled forest occupied an area of some 2150 square kilometers, its shape resembling
a gigantic spread-eagled butterfly with a wingspan of 70 kilometers and a body length of
55 kilometers. Upon closer examination, Kulik located holes which he erroneously concluded
were meteorite holes; however, he did not have the means at this time to excavate the holes.

During the next ten years there were three more expeditions to the area. Kulik found several
dozens of little pothole bogs, each some 10 to 50 meters in diameter, that he thought might
be meteoric craters. After a laborious exercise in draining one of these bogs (the so-called
Suslovs crater, 32 meters in diameter), he found there was an old stump on the bottom,
ruling out the possibility that it was a meteoric crater. In 1938, Kulik arranged for an aerial
photographic survey of the area covering the central part of the leveled forest (some 250
square kilometers).The negatives of these aerial photographs (1500 negatives, each 18 x 18
cm) were burned in 1975 by order of Yevgeny Krinov, then Chairman of the Committee on
Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It was done under the pretext that they were a
fire hazard, but the truth may have been the active dislike by official meteorite specialists of
anything associated with an unyielding enigma. However, positive imprints could be preserved
for further studies in the Russian city of Tomsk.

Despite the large amount of devastation, there was no crater to be seen.

Expeditions sent to the area in the 1950s and 1960s found microscopic silicate and magnetite
spheres in siftings of the soil. Similar spheres were predicted to exist in the felled trees,
although they could not be detected by contemporary means. Later expeditions did identify
such spheres in the resin of the trees. Chemical analysis showed that the spheres contained
high proportions of nickel relative to iron, which is also found in meteorites, leading to the
conclusion they were of extraterrestrial origin. The concentration of the spheres in different
regions of the soil was also found to be consistent with the expected distribution of debris
from a meteorite airburst. Later studies of the spheres found unusual ratios of numerous other
metals relative to the surrounding environment, which was taken as further evidence of their
extraterrestrial origin.

Chemical analysis of peat bogs from the area also revealed numerous anomalies considered
consistent with an impact event. The isotopic signatures of stable carbon, hydrogen, and
nitrogen isotopes at the layer of the bogs corresponding to 1908 were found to be inconsistent
with the isotopic ratios measured in the adjacent layers, and this abnormality was not found in
bogs located outside the area. The region of the bogs showing these anomalous signatures
also contains an unusually high proportion of iridium, similar to the iridium layer found in the
KT boundary. These unusual proportions are believed to result from debris from the
impacting body that deposited in the bogs. The nitrogen is believed to have been deposited as
acid rain, a suspected fallout from the explosion.
Meteoroid airburstThe leading scientific explanation for the explosion is the airburst of a
meteoroid 610 kilometres (46 miles) above Earth's surface.

Meteoroids enter Earth's atmosphere from outer space every day, usually travelling at a speed
of more than 10 kilometres per second (6 miles/sec or 21,600 mph). The heat generated by
compression of air in front of the body (ram pressure) as it travels through the atmosphere is
immense and most meteoroids burn up or explode before they reach the ground. Since the
second half of the 20th century, close monitoring of Earth's atmosphere has led to the
discovery that such meteoroid airbursts occur rather frequently. A stony meteoroid of about
10 metres (30 ft) in diameter can produce an explosion of around 20 kilotons, similar to that
of the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and data released by the U.S. Air Force's Defense
Support Program indicate that such explosions occur high in the upper atmosphere more than
once a year. Tunguska-like megaton-range events are much rarer. Eugene Shoemaker
estimated that such events occur about once every 300 years.
Blast patternsThe explosion's effect on the trees near ground zero was replicated during
atmospheric nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s. These effects are caused by the shock
wave produced by large explosions. The trees directly below the explosion are stripped as the
blast wave moves vertically downward, while trees further away are knocked over because the
blast wave is travelling closer to the horizontal when it reaches them.

Soviet experiments performed in the mid-1960s, with model forests (made of matches on wire
stakes) and small explosive charges slid downward on wires, produced butterfly-shaped blast
patterns strikingly similar to the pattern found at the Tunguska site. The experiments
suggested that the object had approached at an angle of roughly 30 degrees from the ground
and 115 degrees from north and had exploded in mid-air.
Asteroid or comet?The composition of the Tunguska body remains a matter of controversy. In
1930, the British astronomer F.J.W. Whipple suggested that the Tunguska body was a small
comet. A cometary meteorite, being composed primarily of ice and dust, could have been
completely vaporized by the impact with the Earth's atmosphere, leaving no obvious traces.
The comet hypothesis was further supported by the glowing skies (or "skyglows" or "bright
nights") observed across Europe for several evenings after the impact, possibly explained by
dust and ice that had been dispersed from the comet's tail across the upper atmosphere. The
cometary hypothesis gained a general acceptance amongst Soviet Tunguska investigators by
the 1960s.

In 1978, astronomer ubor Kresk suggested that the body was a fragment of the short-
period Comet Encke, which is responsible for the Beta Taurid meteor shower: the Tunguska
event coincided with a peak in that shower, and the approximate trajectory of the Tunguska
impactor is consistent with what would be expected from such a fragment. It is now known
that bodies of this kind explode at frequent intervals tens to hundreds of kilometres above the
ground. Military satellites have been observing these explosions for decades.

In 1983, astronomer Zdenk Sekanina published a paper criticizing the comet hypothesis. He
pointed out that a body composed of cometary material, travelling through the atmosphere
along such a shallow trajectory, ought to have disintegrated, whereas the Tunguska body
apparently remained intact into the lower atmosphere. Sekanina argued that the evidence
pointed to a dense, rocky object, probably of asteroidal origin. This hypothesis was further
boosted in 2001, when Farinella, Foschini, et al. released a study suggesting that the object
had arrived from the direction of the asteroid belt.

Proponents of the comet hypothesis have suggested that the object was an extinct comet with
a stony mantle that allowed it to penetrate the atmosphere.

The chief difficulty in the asteroid hypothesis is that a stony object should have produced a
large crater where it struck the ground, but no such crater has been found. It has been
hypothesized that the passage of the asteroid through the atmosphere caused pressures and
temperatures to build up to a point where the asteroid abruptly disintegrated in a huge
explosion. The destruction would have to have been so complete that no remnants of
substantial size survived, and the material scattered into the upper atmosphere during the
explosion would have caused the skyglows. Models published in 1993 suggested that the stony
body would have been about 60 metres across, with physical properties somewhere between
an ordinary chondrite and a carbonaceous chondrite.

Christopher Chyba and others have proposed a process whereby a stony meteorite could have
exhibited the behavior of the Tunguska impactor. Their models show that when the forces
opposing a body's descent become greater than the cohesive force holding it together, it blows
apart, releasing nearly all its energy at once. The result is no crater, and damage distributed
over a fairly wide radius, all of the damage being blast and thermal.

Three-dimensional numerical modelling of the Tunguska impact done by Utyuzhnikov and
Rudenko in 2008 supports the comet hypothesis. According to their results, the comet matter
dispersed in the atmosphere, while the destruction of the forest was caused by the shock
wave.

During the 1990s, Italian researchers extracted resin from the core of the trees in the area of
impact to examine trapped particles that were present during the 1908 event. They found high
levels of material commonly found in rocky asteroids and rarely found in comets.

In research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists contend that the
impact was caused by a comet because of the sightings of noctilucent clouds following the
impact, a phenomenon caused by massive amounts of water vapor in the upper atmosphere.
They compared the noctilucent cloud phenomenon to the exhaust plume from the NASA space
shuttle Endeavour.

Lake Cheko

In June 2007, it was announced that scientists from the University of Bologna had identified a
lake in the Tunguska region as a possible impact crater from the event. They do not dispute
that the Tunguska body exploded in midair but believe that a one-meter fragment survived
the explosion and impacted the ground. Lake Cheko is a small, bowl-shaped lake
approximately 8 kilometres north-northwest of the hypocenter. The hypothesis has been
disputed by other impact crater specialists.A 1961 investigation had dismissed a modern origin
of Lake Cheko, saying that the presence of metres-thick silt deposits at the lake's bed
suggests an age of at least 5,000 years; but more recent research suggests that only a meter
or so of the sediment layer on the lake bed is "normal lacustrine sedimentation," a depth
indicating a much younger lake of about 100 years. Acoustic-echo soundings of the lake floor
provide support for the hypothesis that the lake was formed by the Tunguska event. The
soundings revealed a conical shape for the lake bed, which is consistent with an impact crater.
Magnetic readings indicate a possible meter-sized chunk of rock below the lake's deepest point
that may be a fragment of the colliding body. Finally, the lake's long axis points to the
hypocenter of the Tunguska explosion, about 7.0 km away.Work is still being done at Lake
Cheko to determine its origins.

The conclusions of the Italian scientist were published on the website of the University of
Bologna. The main points are that "Cheko, a small lake located in Siberia close to the
epicentre of the 1908 Tunguska explosion, might fill a crater left by the impact of a fragment
of a Cosmic Body. Sediment cores from the lake's bottom were studied to support or reject
this hypothesis. A 175-cm-long core, collected near the center of the lake, consists of an
upper cca. 1-m-thick sequence of lacustrine deposits overlaying coarser chaotic material.
210Pb and 137Cs indicate that the transition from lower to upper sequence occurred close to
the time of the Tunguska Event. Pollen analysis reveals that remains of aquatic plants are
abundant in the top post-1908 sequence but are absent in the lower pre-1908 portion of the
core. These results, including organic C, N and 13C data, suggest that Lake Cheko formed at
the time of the Tunguska Event."
Speculative hypotheses
The behaviour of meteorites in the Earth's atmosphere was less well understood during the
early decades of the 20th century. Due to this, as well as the paucity of relevant data resulting
from Soviet secrecy during the Cold War, a great many other hypotheses for the Tunguska
event have sprung up, none of which are accepted by the scientific community.

Comet 2005NB56
One study "suggests that a chunk of Comet 2005NB56 caused the 510 megaton fireball,
bouncing off the atmosphere and back into orbit around the sun." The scientists involved in
the study claim that the object that caused the event will pass close to Earth again in 2045.

Natural H-bomb
In 1989, Serge J.D. D'Alessio and Archie A. Harms suggested that some of the deuterium in a
comet entering the Earth's atmosphere may have undergone a nuclear fusion reaction,leaving
a distinctive signature in the form of carbon-14. They concluded that any release of nuclear
energy would have been almost negligible. Independently, in 1990, Csar Sirvent proposed
that a deuterium comet, i.e., a comet with an anomalous high concentration of deuterium in
its composition, could have exploded as a natural hydrogen bomb, generating most of the
energy released. The sequence would be first a mechanical or kinetic explosion, triggering a
thermonuclear reaction. These proposals are inconsistent with our knowledge of the
composition of comets and of the temperature and pressure conditions necessary for initiating
a nuclear fusion reaction. Studies have found the concentration of radioactive isotopes in the
blast region to be inconsistent with those expected following a nuclear explosion, fusion or
otherwise.

Edward Drobyshevski, generally considered a fringe scientist, has suggested that the event
was caused by the explosion of the hydrogen-saturated part of the nucleus of a comet that
struck the Earth's atmosphere, with most of the remaining comet nucleus surviving, and
possibly continuing to orbit the sun.

Black hole
In 1973, Albert A. Jackson and Michael P. Ryan, physicists at the University of Texas,
proposed that the Tunguska event was caused by a small (around 1017 kg to 1019 kg) black
hole passing through the Earth. This hypothesis is flawed, as there was no so-called exit event
a second explosion occurring as the black hole, having tunnelled through the Earth, shot
out the other side on its way back into space. Based on the direction of impact, the exit event
would have occurred in the North Atlantic, closer than the impact event to the seismic
recording stations that collected much of the evidence of the event. The hypothesis also fails
to account for evidence that cosmic material was deposited by the impacting body, including
dust trails in the atmosphere and the distribution of high-nickel magnetic spherules around the
impact area.

Antimatter
In 1941, Lincoln LaPaz, and later in 1965, Clyde Cowan, Chandra R. Atluri, and Willard F.
Libby suggested that the Tunguska event was caused by the annihilation of a chunk of
antimatter falling from space.As with the other hypotheses described in this section, this does
not account for the mineral debris left in the area of the explosion.

The Wardenclyffe Tower
Oliver Nichelson suggested that the Tunguska explosion may have been the result of an
experiment by Nikola Tesla using the Wardenclyffe Tower, performed during one of Admiral
Robert Peary's North Pole expeditions.

This theory failed to gain many adherents owing to the lack of positive evidence, the presence
of meteoroid fragments in soils and trees from the time, and the fact that the Wardenclyffe
Tower was largely or entirely inactive at that time.

Alien spaceship crash
A number of theories based on UFOs have claimed that the Tunguska event was the result of
the activities of extraterrestrial beings, including an exploding alien spaceship or even an alien
weapon going off to "save the Earth from an imminent threat". These claims appear to
originate from a science fiction story "The Explosion" written by the Soviet engineer Alexander
Kazantsev in 1946, in which a nuclear-powered Martian spaceship, trying to land on the Earth,
meets with a disaster and blows up in mid-air. Kazantsev never visited Hiroshima, but his idea
of the above-ground explosion of the Tunguska space body was inspired by the news about
the nuclear explosion over that Japanese city, as well as by his talks with some leading Soviet
nuclear physicists.

Many events in Kazantsev's tale, which was intended as pure fantasy, were subsequently
confused with the actual occurrences at Tunguska. The nuclear-powered UFO hypothesis was
adopted by the TV critics Thomas Atkins and John Baxter in their book The Fire Came By
(1976). The television series The Secret KGB UFO Files (Phenomenon: The Lost Archives) in
1998, broadcast on Turner Network Television, referred to the Tunguska event as "the Russian
Roswell" and claimed that crashed UFO debris had been recovered from the site. In 2004, a
group from the Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation claimed to have found the
wreckage of an alien spacecraft at the site. In 2009, Dr. Yuri Labvin, the president of the
Tunguska Spatial Phenomenon Foundation repeated these claims, based upon findings of
quartz slabs with strange markings on them found at the site, which, he claims, represent the
remnants of an alien spaceship's control panel.

Geophysical hypothesis
Astrophysicist Wolfgang Kundt has suggested the Tunguska event was caused by the sudden
release and subsequent explosion of 10 million tons of natural gas from within the Earth's
crust. The similar verneshot hypothesis has also been suggested as a possible cause of the
Tunguska event.
Unexplained Hums
http://paranormal.about.com

Citizens in Britain and portions of the Southwestern U.S. have been complaining about a
maddening hum that just won't go away. And researchers have been unable to pinpoint its
source. Not everyone can hear the low-pitched hum, and those who do say that it seems
artificial in nature - and is driving them crazy. In 1977, a British newspaper received nearly
800 letters from people complaining of loss of sleep, irritability, deteriorating health, and ility
to read or study because of the incessant hum.

Most famous in the U.S. is the Taos Hum. There the annoyance was so acute for the
"hearers" in Taos, New Mexico that they banded together in 1993 and petitioned Congress to
investigate and help them find the source of the noise. No conclusive causes were discovered.
One prevailing theory holds that the hum is created by a military communications system used
to contact submarines.

http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa031599.htm





Mysterious Disappearances
Wikipedia.org




The following pages contain some of the most profound stories of
mysterious disappearances.

D. B. Cooper


D. B. Cooper is the name popularly used to refer to
an unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727
aircraft in the airspace between Portland, Oregon and
Seattle, Washington on November 24, 1971. He
extorted $200,000 in ransom and parachuted to an
uncertain fate. Despite an extensive manhunt and an
exhaustive (and ongoing) FBI investigation, the
perpetrator has never been located or positively
identified. The case remains the only unsolved airline
hijacking in American aviation history.

The suspect purchased his airline ticket under the
alias Dan Cooper, but due to a news media
miscommunication he became known in popular lore
as "D. B. Cooper." Hundreds of leads have been
pursued in the ensuing years but no conclusive
evidence has ever surfaced regarding Cooper's true identity or whereabouts, and the bulk of
the ransom money has never been recovered. Numerous theories of widely varying plausibility
have been proposed by experts, reporters, and amateur enthusiasts.

While FBI investigators have insisted from the beginning that Cooper probably did not survive
his risky jump, the agency maintains an active case filewhich has grown to more than 60
volumesand continues to solicit creative ideas and new leads from the public. "Maybe a
hydrologist can use the latest technology to trace the $5,800 in ransom money found in 1980
to where Cooper landed upstream," suggested Special Agent Larry Carr, leader of the
investigation team since 2006. "Or maybe someone just remembers that odd uncle."

Hijacking

The event began mid-afternoon on Thanksgiving eve, November 24, 1971, at Portland
International Airport in Portland, Oregon. A man carrying a black attach case approached the
flight counter of Northwest Orient Airlines. He identified himself as "Dan Cooper" and
purchased a one-way ticket on Flight 305, a 30-minute trip to Seattle, Washington.

Cooper boarded the aircraft, a Boeing 727100 (FAA registration N467US), and took seat 18C
(18E by some accounts, 15D by another) in the rear of the passenger cabin. He lit a cigarette
and ordered a bourbon and soda. Onboard eyewitnesses recalled a man in his mid-forties,
between 5 feet 10 inches (1.78 m) and 6 feet 0 inches (1.83 m) tall. He wore a black
lightweight raincoat, loafers, a dark suit, a neatly pressed white collared shirt, a black necktie,
and a mother of pearl tie pin.

Flight 305, approximately one-third full, took off on schedule at 2:50 pm, local time (PST).
Cooper passed a note to Florence Schaffner, the flight attendant situated nearest to him in a
jumpseat attached to the aft stair door. Schaffner, assuming the note contained a lonely
businessman's phone number, dropped it unopened into her purse. Cooper leaned toward her
and whispered, "Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb."

The note was printed in neat, all-capital letters with a felt pen. It read, approximately, "I have
a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being
hijacked." Schaffner did as requested, then quietly asked to see the bomb. Cooper cracked
open his briefcase long enough for her to glimpse eight red cylinders ("four on top of four")
attached to wires coated with red insulation, and a large cylindrical battery. After closing the
case he dictated his demands: "I want $200,000 in unmarked 20-dollar bills. I want two back
parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want a fuel truck ready to refuel. No
funny stuff or Ill do the job." Cooper then ordered Schaffner to convey his instructions to the
cockpit. When she returned, he was wearing dark sunglasses.

Flight 305's pilot, William Scott, contacted Seattle-Tacoma Airport air traffic control, which
informed local and Federal authorities. The 36 other passengers were informed that their
arrival in Seattle would be delayed due to a "minor mechanical difficulty." Northwest Orient's
president, Donald Nyrop, authorized payment of the ransom, and ordered all Northwest
employees to cooperate fully with the hijacker. The aircraft circled Puget Sound for
approximately two hours to allow Seattle police and the FBI time to collect Coopers
parachutes and ransom money (and mobilize emergency personnel).

Schaffner recalled that Cooper appeared to be familiar with the local terrain; at one point he
remarked, "Looks like Tacoma down there," as the aircraft flew above it. He also mentioned,
correctly, that McChord Air Force Base was only a 20-minute drive from Seattle-Tacoma
Airport. Schaffner described him as calm, polite, and well-spoken, not at all consistent with
the stereotypes (enraged, hardened criminals or "take-me-to-Cuba" political dissidents)
popularly associated with air piracy at the time. Tina Mucklow, another flight attendant,
agreed. "He wasn't nervous," she told investigators later. "He seemed rather nice. He was
never cruel or nasty. He was thoughtful and calm all the time." He ordered a second bourbon
and water, paid his drink tab (and insisted Schaffner keep the change), and offered to request
meals for the flight crew during the stop in Seattle.

FBI agents assembled the ransom money from several Seattle-area banks10,000 unmarked
20-dollar bills, many with serial numbers beginning with the letter "L" indicating issuance by
the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, most carrying a "Series 1969-C" designationand
made a microfilm photograph of each of them. Cooper rejected the military-issue parachutes
initially offered by authorities, demanding instead civilian parachutes with manually-operated
ripcords. Seattle police obtained them from a local skydiving school.

Passengers released

At 4:39 pm Cooper was informed that his demands had been met and the aircraft landed at
Seattle-Tacoma Airport at 5:45 pm. Cooper instructed Scott to taxi the jet to an isolated,
brightly-lit section of the tarmac and extinguish lights in the cabin to deter police snipers.
Northwest's Seattle operations manager, Al Lee, approached the aircraft in street clothes (to
avoid the possibility that Cooper might mistake his airline uniform for that of a police officer)
and delivered the cash-filled knapsack and parachutes to Mucklow via the aft stairs. Once the
delivery was completed, Cooper permitted all passengers, Schaffner, and senior flight
attendant Alice Hancock to leave the plane.

During refueling Cooper outlined his flight plan to the cockpit crew: a southeast course toward
Mexico City at the minimum air speed possible without stalling the aircraft (approximately 100
knots (190 km/h; 120 mph)) at a maximum 10,000 foot (3,000 m) altitude. To ensure a
minimum speed he specified that the landing gear remain down, in the takeoff/landing
position, and the wing flaps be lowered 15 degrees. To ensure a low altitude he ordered that
the cabin remain unpressurized. Copilot William Rataczak informed Cooper that the aircraft's
range was limited to approximately 1,000 miles (1,600 km) under the specified flight
configuration, which meant they would have to refuel once again before entering Mexico.
Cooper and the crew discussed options and agreed on Reno, Nevada as the refueling stop.
Finally, Cooper directed that the plane take off with the rear exit door open and its staircase
extended. Northwest's home office objected on grounds that it was unsafe to take off with the
aft staircase down. Cooper countered that it was indeed safe, but he would not argue the
point; he would lower it himself once they were airborne.

An FAA official requested a face-to-face meeting with Cooper aboard the aircraft, which was
denied. The refueling process was delayed, reportedly due to a vapor lock in the fuel tanker
truck's pumping mechanism, and Cooper became suspicious. However, he allowed a
replacement tanker truck to continue the refuelingand a third one after that, when the
second ran dry. By the time Cooper finished inspecting the ransom money and parachutes,
refueling had been completed.


LEFT: Boeing 727 with the aft airstair open

At approximately 7:40 pm the 727 took off with only
Cooper, pilot Scott, flight attendant Mucklow, copilot
Rataczak, and flight engineer H.E. Anderson aboard.
Two F-106 fighter aircraft scrambled from nearby
McChord Air Force Base followed behind the airliner,
one above it and one below, out of Cooper's view. A
Lockheed T-33 trainer, diverted from an unrelated
Air National Guard mission, also shadowed the 727
until it ran low on fuel and turned back near the
Oregon-California border.

After takeoff, Cooper told Mucklow to join the rest of the crew in the cockpit and remain there
with the door closed. As she complied, Mucklow observed Cooper tying something around his
waist. At approximately 8:00 pm a warning light flashed in the cockpit, indicating that the aft
airstair apparatus had been activated. The crew's offer of assistance via the aircraft's intercom
system was curtly refused. The crew soon noticed a subjective change of air pressure,
indicating that the aft door was open.

At approximately 8:13 pm the aircraft's tail section sustained a sudden upward movement,
significant enough to require trimming to bring the plane back to level flight. At approximately
10:15 pm, Scott and Rataczak landed the 727, with the aft airstair still deployed, at Reno
Airport. FBI agents, state troopers, sheriff's deputies, and Reno police surrounded the jet, as it
had not yet been determined with certainty that Cooper was no longer aboard; but an armed
search quickly confirmed that he was gone.

Investigation

Aboard the airliner FBI agents recovered 66 unidentified latent fingerprints, Cooper's black
clip-on tie and mother of pearl tie clip, and two of the four parachutes, one of which had been
opened and two shroud lines cut from its canopy. Eyewitnesses in Portland, Seattle, and Reno,
and all individuals who personally interacted with Cooper, were interrogated. A series of
composite sketches was developed.

Local police and FBI agents immediately began questioning possible suspects. One of the first
was an Oregon man with a minor police record named D. B. Cooper, contacted by Portland
police on the off-chance that the hijacker had used his real name, or the same alias in a
previous crime. His involvement was quickly ruled out; but an inexperienced wire service
reporter (Clyde Jabin of UPI by most accounts, Joe Frazier of AP by others), rushing to meet
an imminent deadline, confused the eliminated suspect's name with the pseudonym used by
the hijacker. The mistake was picked up and repeated by numerous other media sources, and
the moniker "D. B. Cooper" became lodged in the public's collective memory.

A precise search area was difficult to define, as even small differences in estimates of the
aircraft's speed, or the environmental conditions along the flight path (which varied
significantly by location and altitude), changed Cooper's projected landing point considerably.]
An important variable was the length of time he remained in free fall before pulling his rip
cordif indeed he succeeded in opening a parachute at all. Neither of the Air Force fighter
pilots saw anything exit the airliner, either visually or on radar, nor did they see a parachute
open; but at night, with extremely limited visibility and cloud cover obscuring any ground
lighting below, an airborne human figure clad entirely in black clothing could easily have gone
undetected. The T-33 pilots never made visual contact with the 727 at all.

An experimental re-creation was conducted using the same aircraft hijacked by Cooper in the
same flight configuration, piloted by Scott. FBI agents, pushing a 200-pound (91 kg) sled out
of the open airstair, were able to reproduce the upward motion of the tail section described by
the flight crew at 8:13 pm. Based on this experiment, it was concluded that 8:13 was the
most likely jump time. At that moment the aircraft was flying through a heavy rainstorm over
the Lewis River in southwestern Washington.

Initial extrapolations placed Cooper's landing area on the southernmost outreach of Mount St.
Helens, a few miles southeast of Ariel, Washington, near Lake Merwin, an artificial lake formed
by a dam on the Lewis River. Search efforts focused on Clark and Cowlitz Counties,
encompassing the terrain immediately south and north, respectively, of the Lewis River in
southwest Washington. FBI agents and Sheriff's deputies from those counties searched large
areas of the mountainous wilderness on foot and by helicopter. Door-to-door questioning and
searches of local farmhouses were also carried out. Other search parties ran patrol boats along
Lake Merwin and Yale Lake, the reservoir immediately to its east. No trace of Cooper, or any
of the equipment presumed to have left the aircraft with him, was found.

The FBI also coordinated an aerial search, using fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters from the
Oregon Army National Guard, along the entire flight path (known as Victor 23 in standard
aviation terminology but "Vector 23" in most Cooper literature) from Seattle to Reno. While
numerous broken treetops and several pieces of plastic and other objects that, from the air,
resembled parachute canopies were sighted and investigated, nothing relevant to the hijacking
was found.

In early 1972, after the spring thaw, teams of FBI agents aided by some 200 Army soldiers
from Fort Lewis, along with Air Force personnel, National Guard troops, and civilian volunteers,
conducted another thorough ground search of Clark and Cowlitz Counties for eighteen days in
March, and then an additional eighteen days in April. Electronic Explorations Company, a
marine salvage firm, used a submarine to search the 200-foot (61 m) depths of Lake Merwin.
Two local women stumbled upon a skeleton (overlooked by searchers) in an abandoned
structure in Clark County; it was later identified as the remains of a female teenager who had
been abducted and murdered several weeks before. Ultimately, the search operation
arguably the most extensive, and intensive, in U.S. historyuncovered no significant material
evidence related to the hijacking.

Later developments

Subsequent analyses called the original landing zone estimate into question: Scott, who was
flying the aircraft manually because of Cooper's speed and altitude demands, later determined
that his flight path was significantly farther east than initially assumed. Additional data from a
variety of sourcesin particular Continental Airlines pilot Tom Bohan, who was flying four
minutes behind Flight 305indicated that the wind direction factored into drop zone
calculations had been wrong, possibly by as much as 80 degrees. This and other supplemental
data suggested that the actual drop zone was probably south-southeast of the original
estimate, in the drainage area of the Washougal River.

"I have to confess," wrote retired FBI chief investigator Ralph Himmelsbach in his 1986 book,
"if I [were] going to look for Cooper, I would head for the Washougal." The Washougal Valley
and its surroundings have been searched by multiple private individuals and groups in
subsequent years. To date, nothing directly traceable to the hijacking has been found.


Search for ransom money

In late 1971 the FBI distributed lists of the ransom serial numbers to financial institutions,
casinos, race tracks, and other businesses routinely conducting significant cash transactions,
and to law enforcement agencies around the world. Northwest Orient offered a reward of 15
percent of the recovered money, to a maximum of $25,000. In early 1972 U.S. Attorney
General John Mitchell released the serial numbers to the general public.

In 1972 two men used counterfeit 20-dollar bills printed with Cooper serial numbers to swindle
$30,000 from a Newsweek reporter named Karl Fleming in exchange for an interview with a
man they falsely claimed was the hijacker.

In early 1973, with the ransom money still missing, The (Portland) Oregon Journal republished
the serial numbers and offered $1,000 to the first person to turn in a ransom bill to the
newspaper or any FBI field office. In Seattle, the Post-Intelligencer made a similar offer with a
$5,000 reward. The offers remained in effect until Thanksgiving, 1974, and while there were
several near-matches, no genuine bills were found.

In 1975 Northwest Orient's insurer, Global Indemnity Co., complied with an order from the
Minnesota Supreme Court and paid the airline's $180,000 claim on the ransom money.

Statute of limitations

In 1976 discussion arose over impending expiration of the statute of limitations on the
hijacking. Most published legal analysis agreed that it would make little difference, as
interpretation of the statute varies considerably from case to case and court to court, and a
prosecutor could argue that Cooper had forfeited immunity on any of several valid technical
grounds. The question was rendered moot in November when a Portland grand jury returned
an indictment against "John Doe, aka Dan Cooper" for air piracy and violation of the Hobbs
Act. In effect the indictment formally initiated prosecution of the hijacker that can be
continued, should he be apprehended, at any time in the future.

Physical evidence

In the autumn of 1978 a placard containing instructions for lowering the aft stairs of a 727,
later verified to be from the hijacked airliner, was found by a deer hunter near a logging road
about 13 miles (21 km) east of Castle Rock, Washington, well north of Lake Merwin but within
the basic path of Flight 305.


LEFT: Portion of Brian Ingram's 1980 discovery

In February 1980 an eight-year-old boy named
Brian Ingram, vacationing with his family on the
Columbia River about 9 miles (15 km) downstream
from Vancouver, Washington and 20 miles (32 km)
southwest of Ariel, uncovered three packets of the
ransom cash, significantly disintegrated but still
bundled in rubber bands, as he raked the sandy
riverbank to build a campfire. FBI technicians
confirmed that the money was indeed a portion of
the ransom, two packets of 100 bills each and a
third packet of 90, all arranged in the same order as
when given to Cooper.

The discovery launched multiple new rounds of conjecture, and ultimately raised many more
questions than it answered. Initial statements by investigators and scientific consultants were
founded on the assumption that the bundled bills washed freely into the Columbia River from
one of its many connecting tributaries. An Army Corps of Engineers hydrologist noted that the
bills had disintegrated in a "rounded" fashion, and were matted together, indicating that they
had indeed been deposited by river action, as opposed to having been deliberately buried. If
so, it confirmed that Cooper had not landed near Lake Merwin, nor in any other part of the
Lewis River, which feeds into the Columbia well downstream from the discovery site; and it
lent credence to supplemental speculation placing the drop zone near the Washougal River,
which merges with the Columbia upstream from the discovery site.

But the "free floating" hypothesis presented its own difficulties: It did not explain the ten bills
missing from one packet, nor was there a logical reason that the three packets would have
stayed together after separating from the rest of the money. In addition, Ralph Himmelsbach,
the FBI chief investigator, observed that bundles floating downstream would have had to wash
up on the bank "within a couple of years" of the hijacking; otherwise the rubber bands would
have long since deteriorated. Evidence, however, suggested that the bills arrived at the area
of their discovery, a beachfront known as Tina's Bar, no earlier than 1974, the year of a Corps
of Engineers dredging operation on that stretch of the river. Geologist Leonard Palmer of
Portland State University found two distinct layers of sand and sediment between the clay
deposited on the river bank by the dredge and the sand layer in which the bills were buried,
indicating not only that the bills could not have been unearthed by the dredge itself, but that
they arrived well after dredging had been completed.

Multiple alternate theories were advanced: Some surmised that the money had been found at
a distant location by someone (or possibly even a wild animal), carried to the river bank, and
reburied there. There was also the possibility that the money had been found on the riverbank
earlier, perhaps before the dredging, and buried in a superficial sand layer at a later time. The
sheriff of Cowlitz County proposed that Cooper accidentally dropped a few of the bundles on
the airstair, which then blew off the aircraft after he jumped, and fell into the Columbia River.
One local newspaper editor opined that Cooper, knowing he could never spend the money,
simply dumped it in the river or buried it there (and possibly elsewhere) himself. No
hypothesis offered to date satisfactorily explains all of the existing evidence; the means by
which the money arrived on the river bank remains unknown.

In 1981 a human skull was unearthed along the same riverbank during excavations in search
of additional evidence. Forensic pathologists eventually determined that it belonged to a
woman, possibly of Native American ancestry.

In 1986, after protracted negotiations, the recovered bills were divided equally between
Ingram and Northwest Orient's insurer; the FBI retained 14 examples as evidence. Ingram
sold fifteen of his bills at auction in 2008 for about $37,000. To date, none of the
approximately 9,700 remaining bills has turned up, in hiding or in circulation, anywhere in the
world. Their serial numbers remain available online for public search.

In 1988 a portion of a parachute was raised from the bottom of the same stretch of the
Columbia River, but FBI experts determined that it could not have been Cooper's. In 2008,
children unearthed another parachute near Amboy, Washington, about 6 miles (10 km) due
south of Lake Merwin, which proved to be of World War II-era military origin. The Columbia
River ransom money and the airstair instruction placard remain the only bona fide physical
evidence from the hijacking ever found outside of the aircraft.


Subsequent FBI disclosures

In late 2007 the FBI announced that a partial DNA profile had been obtained from three
organic samples found on the clip-on tie left behind by the hijacker. The Bureau also made
public a file of previously-unreleased evidence, including Cooper's 1971 plane ticket from
Portland to Seattle (price: $18.52 plus tax, total $20.00, paid in cash); and it disclosed that
Cooper chose the older of the two primary parachutes supplied to him, rather than the
technically superior professional sport parachute.

Furthermore, from the two reserve parachutes given him, Cooper selected a "dummy" an
unusable unit with an inoperative ripcord intended for classroom demonstrations, despite the
fact that it had clear markings identifying it to any experienced skydiver as non-functional.
(Cooper cannibalized the other, functional reserve parachute, possibly using its shrouds to tie
the money bag shut, and to secure the bag to his body, as witnessed by Mucklow.) The FBI
added that inclusion of the dummy reserve parachute, one of four obtained in haste from a
Seattle skydiving school, was accidental. The agency also posted previously unreleased
composite sketches and fact sheets, along with a request to the general public for information
which might lead to Cooper's positive identification.

Pending investigation

In March 2009 the FBI disclosed that a paleontologist named Tom Kaye had assembled a team
including a scientific illustrator, a metallurgist, and Brian Ingram, the discoverer of the
Columbia River ransom money. They have initiated a multifocal investigation which includes
soil, water, and other experiments on the Columbia River and some of its tributaries. Using
technology unavailable in 1971, such as satellite maps and GPS, they are attempting to
relocate the exact point of Ingram's 1980 discovery, and then determine if the money floated
freely to that location over time or was found elsewhere and reburied there. Other team
members are retracing the 727's flight path from Seattle to Reno to more precisely estimate
Cooper's landing zone. Others are using electron microscopy to examine pollen found on
Cooper's tie in hopes of pinpointing a specific region of the country from which it may have
come.

The "copycat" hijackings

Cooper was not the first to attempt air piracy for personal gain; only two weeks prior, a man
named Paul Cini did it aboard an Air Canada DC-8 over Montana. (He was overpowered by the
crew when he put down his gun to strap on the parachute.) However, Cooper inspired a flurry
of imitators, as often happens "when a perpetrator seems to have gotten away with it." Most
"copycats" struck during the year that followed. Some notable examples:

Garrett Brock Trapnell hijacked a TWA airliner en route from Los Angeles to New
York City in January 1972. He demanded $306,800 in cash, the release of Angela
Davis, and an audience with President Richard Nixon. After the aircraft landed at
Kennedy Airport he was shot and wounded by FBI agents before being arrested.

Richard McCoy, Jr., a former Army Green Beret, hijacked a United Airlines 727-100
in April 1972 after it left Denver, Colorado, diverted it to San Francisco, then bailed
out over Utah with $500,000 in ransom money. He landed safely, but was arrested
two days later.

Frederick Hahneman used a handgun to hijack an Eastern Airlines 727 in Allentown,
Pennsylvania in May, demanded $303,000, and eventually parachuted into Honduras,
his country of birth. A month later, with the FBI in pursuit and a $25,000 bounty on
his head, he surrendered to the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa.

Robb Dolin Heady, a paratrooper and Vietnam veteran, stormed a United Airlines
727 in Reno in early June, extorted $200,000 and two parachutes, and jumped into
darkness near Lake Washoe, about 25 miles (40 km) south of Reno. Police found
Heady's car (sporting a U.S. Parachute Association bumper sticker) parked near the
lake and arrested him as he returned to it the next morning.

Martin McNally, an unemployed service station attendant, used a submachine gun in
late June to commandeer an American Airlines 727 en route from St. Louis to Tulsa,
then diverted it eastward to Indiana and bailed out with $500,000 in ransom. McNally
lost the ransom money as he exited the aircraft, but landed safely near Peru, Indiana
and was apprehended a few days later in a Detroit suburb.

In all, a total of 15 hijackings similar to Cooper's were attempted over the course of 1972.
Only Cooper, however, has eluded capture or identification.

Theories and conjectures

In the years since the hijacking the FBI has periodically made public some of its working
hypotheses and tentative conclusions about the case, drawn from witness testimony and the
scarce physical evidence.

The official physical description remains unchanged and is considered reliable. Flight
attendants Schaffner and Mucklow, who spent the most time with Cooper, were interviewed
separately on the same night in separate cities, and gave nearly identical descriptions: 5 feet
10 inches (1.78 m) to 6 feet 0 inches (1.83 m) tall, 170 to 180 pounds (77 to 82 kg), mid-
40s, with close-set piercing brown eyes. Passengers and other eyewitnesses gave very similar
descriptions.

Agents believe that Cooper was familiar with the Seattle area and may have been an Air Force
veteran, based on testimony that he recognized the city of Tacoma from the air as the jet
circled Puget Sound, and his accurate comment to flight attendant Mucklow that McChord Air
Force Base was approximately 20 minutes' driving time from the Seattle-Tacoma Airporta
detail most civilians would not know, or comment upon. His financial situation was very likely
desperate: Extortionists and other criminals who steal large amounts of money nearly always
do so, according to experts, because they need it urgently; otherwise, the crime is not worth
the considerable risk. (A minority opinion is that Cooper was "a thrill seeker" who made the
jump "just to prove it could be done.")

Agents theorize that he took his alias from a popular French comic book series of the 1970s
featuring the fictional hero Dan Cooper, a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot who took part in
numerous heroic adventures, including parachuting. (One cover from the series, reproduced
on the FBI web site, depicts test pilot Cooper skydiving in full paratrooper regalia.) Because
the Dan Cooper comics were never translated into English nor imported to the US, they
speculate that he may have encountered them during a tour of duty in Europe.

They believe that he was a careful and shrewd planner: He asked for four parachutes to force
the assumption that he might compel a hostage to jump with him, thus ensuring he would not
be deliberately supplied with sabotaged equipment. The amount and form of the ransom (if
sources are correct that he specified 20-dollar bills) appear also to have been carefully
calculated in advance: 50- or 100-dollar bills would have drawn attention and been too difficult
to pass, and a larger quantity of 20-dollar bills would have been too heavy and bulky for his
jump.

Cooper was apparently quite familiar with the 727-100 aircraft: It was the ideal choice at the
time, not only for its aft airstair, but also the high, aftward placement of all three engines,
allowing a reasonably safe jump without risk of immediate incineration by jet exhaust. It had
"single-point fueling" capability, a recent innovation which allowed all tanks to be refueled
rapidly through a single fuel port. It also had the ability (unusual for a commercial jet airliner)
to remain in slow, low-altitude flight without stalling; and Cooper knew how to control its air
speed and altitude without entering the cockpit, where he could have been overpowered by
the three pilots. In addition, Cooper was familiar with important details, such as the
appropriate flap setting of 15 degrees (which was unique to that aircraft), and the typical
refueling time. He knew that the aft airstair could be lowered during flighta fact never
disclosed to civilian flight crews since there was no situation on a passenger flight that would
make it necessaryand that its operation, by a single switch in the rear of the cabin, could not
be overridden from the cockpit. He may even have known, particularly if he served in Vietnam
or had friends who did, that the Central Intelligence Agency had been using 727s to drop
agents and supplies behind enemy lines in Vietnam.

The Bureau feels strongly, however, that he lacked crucial skydiving skills and experience. "We
originally thought Cooper was an experienced jumper, perhaps even a paratrooper," said
Special Agent Carr, the current chief investigator. "We concluded after a few years this was
simply not true. No experienced parachutist would have jumped in the pitch-black night, in the
rain, with a 200-mile-an-hour wind in his face, wearing loafers and a trench coat. It was
simply too risky. He also missed that his reserve 'chute was only for training, and had been
sewn shutsomething a skilled skydiver would have checked." He also failed to bring or
request a helmet, and he chose to jump with the older and technically inferior of the two
primary parachutes supplied to him.

Assuming Cooper was not a paratrooper, and was an Air Force veteran, Carr believes he could
have been an aircraft cargo loader. Such an assignment would have given him knowledge and
experience in the aviation industry; and because Air Force loaders throw cargo out of flying
aircraft, they wear emergency parachutes in case they accidentally fall out. The rudimentary
jump training loaders receive would have given Cooper a working knowledge of parachutes
but "not necessarily sufficient knowledge to survive the jump he made."

Indeed, the Bureau has argued from the beginning that Cooper did not survive his jump.
"Diving into the wilderness without a plan, without the right equipment, in such terrible
conditions, he probably never even got his 'chute open," said Carr. Even if he did land safely,
agents contend, survival in the mountainous terrain would have been all but impossible
without an accomplice at a predetermined landing point, which would have required a
precisely-timed jump, necessitating, in turn, cooperation from the flight crew. There is no
evidence that Cooper had any such help from the crew, nor any clear idea where he was when
he jumped into the overcast darkness.

Joseph Force Crater

Joseph Force Crater (January 5, 1889 after
August 6, 1930) was a judge in New York City
who disappeared on the night of August 6, 1930.
He was last seen leaving a restaurant on 45th
Street. He had stated earlier that he was
planning to attend a Broadway show. His
disappearance became one of the most famous
in American history and pop culture, and earned
him the title of "The Missingest Man in New
York".

Early life and legal career

Crater was born on January 5, 1889, in Easton,
Pennsylvania, the eldest of four children born to
Frank Ellsworth Crater and the former Leila
Virginia Montague. He was educated at Lafayette
College (Class of 1910) and Columbia University.

He was an Associate Judge of the New York
Supreme Court for New York County. He had been appointed to the state bench by then-
Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt just four months before disappearing on August 6, 1930.

Disappearance

Receiving a phone call while on vacation

In the summer of 1930, Judge Crater and his wife, Stella Mance Wheeler, were vacationing at
their summer cabin at Belgrade, Maine. In late July, he received a telephone call. He offered
no information to his wife about the content of the call, other than to say that he had to return
to the city "to straighten those fellows out".

The next day, he arrived at his 40 Fifth Avenue apartment but instead of dealing with
business, he made a trip to Atlantic City with his mistress, a showgirl named Sally Lou Ritz. He
returned to Maine on August 1, and traveled back to New York on August 3. Before making
this final trip, he promised his wife he would return by her birthday, on August 9. Crater's wife
stated that he was in good spirits and behaving normally when he departed for New York City.
On the morning of August 6, Crater spent two hours going through his files in his courthouse
chambers. He then had his assistant, Joseph Mara, cash two checks for him that amounted to
U.S. $5,150 (equivalent to about $67,753 in today's funds). At noon, he and Mara carried two
locked briefcases to his apartment and he let Mara take the rest of the day off.

A ticket to see Dancing Partner

Later that evening, Crater went to a Broadway ticket agency and bought one seat for a
comedy called Dancing Partner that was playing that night at the Belasco Theatre. He then
went to Billy Haass Chophouse at 332 West 45th Street for dinner. There, he ate dinner with
Sally Lou Ritz and a friend of his who was a lawyer. The lawyer later told investigators that
Crater was in a good mood that evening and gave no indication that anything was bothering
him. The dinner ended a little after 9 pm, a short time after the curtain rose on the show for
which Crater bought a ticket, and the small group went outside.


Last known sighting

Crater's two dinner companions entered a taxi outside the restaurant. Both later testified
before a grand jury that they last saw Crater walking down the street (this differs from the
popular story that Crater entered a taxi and waved to his companions before speeding away).
What happened to him after that remains a mystery. Theories about his disappearance have
suggested that he was murdered, that he ran off with another woman, or that he had been
involved in corrupt practices which were about to be revealed.

Delayed responses to disappearance

There was no immediate reaction to Judge Crater's disappearance. When he did not return to
Maine for 10 days, his wife began making calls to their friends in New York, asking if anyone
had seen him. Only when he failed to appear for the opening of the courts on August 25 did
his fellow justices become alarmed. They started a private search but failed to find any trace.
The police were finally notified on September 3 and after that, the missing judge was front-
page news.

Nationwide investigation

The story captivated the nation and a massive investigation was launched. The official
investigations started vigorously, but quickly slowed. Detectives discovered that the judge's
safe deposit box had been emptied and the two briefcases that Crater and his assistant had
taken to his apartment were missing. These promising leads were also quickly bogged down
by the thousands of false reports coming from people claiming to have seen the missing man.
Crater's wife later found the missing money in a dresser drawer in her home, along with a
note from the judge.

In October, a grand jury began examining the case, calling 95 witnesses and amassing 975
pages of testimony. Interestingly, Mrs. Crater refused to appear before the grand jury. The
conclusion was that "The evidence is insufficient to warrant any expression of opinion as to
whether Crater is alive or dead, or as to whether he has absented himself voluntarily, or is the
sufferer from disease in the nature of amnesia, or is the victim of crime."

None of the investigations succeeded in discovering the judge's fate or possible whereabouts.
His caseMissing Persons File No. 13595was officially closed in 1979.

It is sometimes claimed that Sally Lou Ritz disappeared in August or September 1930, but this
is not the case. Ritz was interviewed in late September 1930 in Youngstown, Ohio, where she
had gone "to be with her sick father." As late as July 1937, Ritz was interviewed by police in
Beverly Hills.

Mrs. Crater

Judge Crater married Stella Mance Wheeler in 1917. Crater was her lawyer in her divorce
action against her first husband; they married seven days after the divorce was finalized.
During the initial phase of the private search and even after police were notified and began
their nationwide search, Mrs. Crater remained at their vacation home in Belgrade Lakes,
Maine, until January 20, 1931. It was then that she allegedly discovered checks, stocks and
bonds and a note written by the Judge in a drawer that had been empty when police checked
earlier. Without Crater's income, Mrs. Crater was unable to maintain residence at their
fashionable Fifth Avenue apartment and was evicted. By July 1937 when she petitioned to
have the Judge declared officially dead, the judge's apparent widow was impoverished and
reportedly living on $12 per week (equivalent to approximately $184 in today's funds) she
earned as a telephone operator in Belgrade Lakes, Maine.

It would seem that before the Judge was declared legally dead, Mrs. Crater remarried in
Elkton, Maryland, on April 23, 1938 to Carl Kunz, electrical engineer, of New York. Kunz' first
wife had hanged herself only eight days before the wedding. The Judge was declared legally
dead in absentia in 1939 and Mrs. Crater then received $20,561 in life insurance (worth
approximately $325,121 in today's funds). Mrs. Crater separated from Kunz in 1950, and died
in 1969 aged 70. Her own account of the Crater case, in which she expressed her belief that
Crater had been murdered, was written with Oscar Fraley, newspaperman and freelancer and
published by Doubleday in 1961.

Recent information

On August 19, 2005, authorities revealed that they had received notes left by Stella Ferrucci-
Good after her death at age 91. The writings identified a location near West Eighth Street in
Coney Island, Brooklyn, at the current site of the New York Aquarium, where the woman
claimed the judge was buried under the boardwalk. Moreover, the notes identified Crater's
killers as NYPD officers Robert Good (her husband) and Charles Burns, also bodyguard of Abe
Reles of Murder, Inc. and Burns's brother Frank, a cab driver.

Police reported that no records had been found to indicate that skeletal remains were
discovered at that site when it was excavated in the 1950s. Richard J. Tofel, the author of
Vanishing Point: The Disappearance of Judge Crater and the New York He Left Behind,
expressed skepticism of Ferrucci-Good's account.


Anastasia Nikolaevna

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia
(Russian:
, Velikaya Knyazhna Anastasiya Nikolayevna
Romanova) (June 18 [O.S. June 5] 1901 July 17, 1918)
was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia,
the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife
Alexandra Fyodorovna.

Anastasia was a younger sister of Grand Duchess Olga,
Grand Duchess Tatiana, and Grand Duchess Maria, and was
an elder sister of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia.
She was murdered with her family on July 17, 1918, by
forces of the Bolshevik secret police.

Persistent rumors of her possible escape have circulated
since her death, fueled by the fact that the location of her
burial was unknown during the decades of Communist rule.
The mass grave near Ekaterinburg which held the remains
of the Tsar, his wife, and three daughters was revealed in
1991, but the bodies of Alexei Nikolaevich and one of his sisterseither Anastasia or her older
sister Mariawere not discovered there.

Her possible survival has been entirely disproven. In January 2008, Russian scientists
announced that the charred remains of a young boy and a young woman found near
Ekaterinburg in August 2007 were most likely those of the thirteen-year-old Tsarevich and one
of the four Romanov grand duchesses. Russian forensic scientists confirmed on April 30, 2008,
that the remains were those of the Tsarevich Alexei and one of his four sisters. In March 2009
the final results of the DNA testing were published by Dr. Michael Coble of the US Armed
Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, proving conclusively that the remains of all four Grand
Duchesses have now been accounted for, and no one escaped.

Several women have falsely claimed to have been Anastasia, the most notorious of whom was
Anna Anderson. Anderson's body was cremated upon her death in 1984, but DNA testing in
1994 on available pieces of Anderson's tissue and hair showed no relation to DNA of the
Imperial family.

Life and childhood

When Anastasia was born, her parents and extended family were disappointed to have a
fourth daughter, because they wanted a son who would be heir to the throne. Tsar Nicholas II
went for a long walk to compose himself before going to visit Tsarina Alexandra and the
newborn Anastasia for the first time. One meaning of her name is "the breaker of chains" or
"the prison opener." The fourth grand duchess received her name because, in honor of her
birth, her father pardoned and reinstated students who had been imprisoned for participating
in riots in St. Petersburg and Moscow the previous winter. Another meaning of the name is "of
the resurrection," a fact often alluded to later in stories about her rumored survival.
Anastasia's title is most precisely translated as "Grand Princess," meaning that Anastasia, as
an "Imperial Highness" was higher in rank than other Princesses in Europe who were "Royal
Highnesses." "Grand Duchess" became the most widely used translation of the title into
English from Russian.

The Tsar's children were raised as simply as possible. They slept on hard camp cots without
pillows, except when they were ill, took cold baths in the morning, and were expected to tidy
their rooms and do needlework to be sold at various charity events when they were not
otherwise occupied. Most in the household, including the servants, generally called the Grand
Duchess by her first name and patronym, Anastasia Nikolaevna, and did not use her title or
"Her Imperial Highness." She was occasionally called by the French version of her name,
"Anastasie," or by the Russian nicknames "Nastya," "Nastas," or "Nastenka." Other family
nicknames for Anastasia were "Malenkaya," meaning "little (one)," or "shvibzik," the Russian
word for "imp." Anastasia also had a deformity of her left foot, as did famous imposter, Anna
Anderson.

Living up to her nicknames, young Anastasia grew into a vivacious and energetic child,
described as short and inclined to be chubby, with blue eyes and strawberry-blonde hair.
Margaretta Eagar, a governess to the four Grand Duchesses, said one person commented that
the toddler Anastasia had the greatest personal charm of any child he had ever seen.

While often described as gifted and bright, she was never interested in the restrictions of the
school room, according to her tutors Pierre Gilliard and Sydney Gibbes. Gibbes, Gilliard, and
ladies-in-waiting Lili Dehn and Anna Vyrubova described Anastasia as lively, mischievous, and
a gifted actress. Her sharp, witty remarks sometimes hit sensitive spots.

Anastasia's daring occasionally exceeded the limits of acceptable behavior. "She undoubtedly
held the record for punishable deeds in her family, for in naughtiness she was a true genius,"
said Gleb Botkin, son of the court physician Yevgeny Botkin, who later died with the family at
Ekaterinburg. Anastasia sometimes tripped the servants and played pranks on her tutors. As a
child, she would climb trees and refuse to come down. Once, during a snowball fight at the
family's Polish estate, Anastasia rolled a rock into a snowball and threw it at her older sister
Tatiana, knocking her to the ground. A distant cousin, Princess Nina Georgievna, recalled that
"Anastasia was nasty to the point of being evil," and would cheat, kick and scratch her
playmates during games; she was affronted because the younger Nina was taller than she
was. She was also less concerned about her appearance than her sisters. Hallie Erminie Rives,
a best-selling American author and wife of an American diplomat, described how 10-year-old
Anastasia ate chocolates without bothering to remove her long, white opera gloves at the St.
Petersburg opera house.

Anastasia and her older sister Maria were known within the family as "The Little Pair." The two
girls shared a room, often wore variations of the same dress, and spent much of their time
together. Their older sisters Olga and Tatiana also shared a room and were known as "The Big
Pair." The four girls sometimes signed letters using the nickname, OTMA, which was derived
from the first letters of their first names.

Despite her energy, Anastasia's physical health was sometimes poor. The Grand Duchess
suffered from the painful condition hallux valgus (bunions), which affected both of her big
toes. Anastasia had a weak muscle in her back and was prescribed twice-weekly massage. She
hid under the bed or in a cupboard to put off the massage. Anastasia's older sister, Maria,
reportedly hemorrhaged in December 1914 during an operation to remove her tonsils,
according to her paternal aunt Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, who was
interviewed later in her life. The doctor performing the operation was so unnerved that he had
to be ordered to continue by Maria's mother, Tsarina Alexandra. Olga Alexandrovna said she
believed all four of her nieces bled more than was normal and believed they were carriers of
the hemophilia gene, like their mother. Symptomatic carriers of the gene, while not
hemophiliacs themselves, can have symptoms of hemophilia including a lower than normal
blood clotting factor that can lead to heavy bleeding. DNA testing on the remains of the royal
family proved conclusively in 2009 that Alexei suffered from Hemophilia B, a rarer form of the
disease. His mother and one of his sisters, identified by the Russians as Anastasia and by
Americans as Maria, were carriers. Anastasia potentially would have passed on the disease if
she had lived to have children. Anastasia, like all her family, doted on the long-awaited heir
Tsarevich Alexei, or "Baby," who suffered frequent attacks of hemophilia and nearly died
several times.

Association with Grigori Rasputin

Her mother relied on the counsel of Grigori Rasputin, a Russian peasant and wandering starets
or "holy man," and credited his prayers with saving the ailing Tsarevich on numerous
occasions. Anastasia and her siblings were taught to view Rasputin as "Our Friend" and to
share confidences with him. In the autumn of 1907, Anastasia's aunt Grand Duchess Olga
Alexandrovna of Russia was escorted to the nursery by the Tsar to meet Rasputin. Anastasia,
her sisters and brother Alexei were all wearing their long white nightgowns.

Grand Duchess Anastasia with her mother, Tsarina
Alexandra, in about 1908. Courtesy: Beinecke Library.

"All the children seemed to like him," Olga Alexandrovna
recalled. "They were completely at ease with him."
Rasputin's friendship with the Imperial children was
evident in some of the messages he sent to them. In
February 1909, Rasputin sent the imperial children a
telegram, advising them to "Love the whole of God's
nature, the whole of His creation in particular this earth.
The Mother of God was always occupied with flowers
and needlework."

However, one of the girls' governesses, Sofia Ivanovna
Tyutcheva, was horrified in 1910 that Rasputin was
permitted access to the nursery when the four girls
were in their nightgowns and wanted him barred. Nicholas asked Rasputin to avoid going to
the nurseries in the future. The children were aware of the tension and feared that their
mother would be angered by Tyutcheva's actions. "I am so afr(aid) that S.I. (governess Sofia
Ivanovna Tyutcheva) can speak...about our friend something bad," Anastasia's twelve-year-
old sister Tatiana wrote to their mother on March 8, 1910. "I hope our nurse will be nice to our
friend now." Alexandra eventually had Tyutcheva fired.

Tyutcheva took her story to other members of the family. While Rasputin's visits to the
children were, by all accounts, completely innocent in nature, the family was scandalized.
Tyutcheva told Nicholas's sister, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia, that Rasputin
visited the girls, talked with them while they were getting ready for bed, and hugged and
patted them. Tyutcheva said the children had been taught not to discuss Rasputin with her
and were careful to hide his visits from the nursery staff. Xenia wrote on March 15, 1910 that
she couldn't understand "...the attitude of Alix and the children to that sinister Grigory (whom
they consider to be almost a saint, when in fact he's only a khlyst!)"

In the spring of 1910, Maria Ivanovna Vishnyakova, a royal governess, claimed that Rasputin
had raped her. Vishnyakova said the empress refused to believe her account of the assault,
and insisted that "everything Rasputin does is holy." Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna was
told that Vishnyakova's claim had been immediately investigated, but instead "they caught the
young woman in bed with a Cossack of the Imperial Guard." Vishnyakova was kept from
seeing Rasputin after she made her accusation and was eventually dismissed from her post in
1913.

However, rumours persisted and it was later whispered in society that Rasputin had seduced
not only the Tsarina but also the four grand duchesses. The gossip was fueled by ardent, yet
by all accounts innocent, letters written to Rasputin by the Tsarina and the four grand
duchesses which were released by Rasputin and which circulated throughout society. "My
dear, precious, only friend," wrote Anastasia. "How much I should like to see you again. You
appeared to me today in a dream. I am always asking Mama when you will come...I think of
you always, my dear, because you are so good to me ..."

This was followed by circulation of pornographic cartoons, which depicted Rasputin having
relations with the Empress, her four daughters and Anna Vyrubova. After the scandal, Nicholas
ordered Rasputin to leave St. Petersburg for a time, much to Alexandra's displeasure, and
Rasputin went on a pilgrimage to Palestine. Despite the rumors, the imperial family's
association with Rasputin continued until his murder on December 17, 1916. "Our Friend is so
contented with our girlies, says they have gone through heavy 'courses' for their age and their
souls have much developed," Alexandra wrote to Nicholas on December 6, 1916.

In his memoirs, A.A. Mordvinov reported that the four Grand Duchesses appeared "cold and
visibly terribly upset" by Rasputin's death, and sat "huddled up closely together" on a sofa in
one of their bedrooms on the night they received the news. Mordvinov recalled that the young
women were in a gloomy mood and seemed to sense the political upheaval that was about to
be unleashed. Rasputin was buried with an icon signed on its reverse by Anastasia, her mother
and her sisters. She attended his funeral on December 21, 1916, and her family planned to
build a church over the site of Rasputin's grave. After they were killed by the Bolsheviks, it
was discovered Anastasia and her sisters were all wearing amulets bearing Rasputin's picture
and a prayer.

World War I and revolution

During World War I Anastasia, along with her sister Maria, visited wounded soldiers at a
private hospital on the grounds at Tsarskoye Selo. The two teenagers, too young to become
Red Cross nurses like their mother and elder sisters, played games of checkers and billiards
with the soldiers and tried to uplift their spirits. Felix Dassel, who was treated at the hospital
and knew Anastasia, recalled that the grand duchess had a "laugh like a squirrel," and walked
rapidly "as though she tripped along."

In February 1917, Nicholas II abdicated the throne and Anastasia and her family were placed
under house arrest at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo during the Russian Revolution.
As the Bolsheviks approached, Alexander Kerensky of the Provisional Government had them
moved to Tobolsk, Siberia. After the Bolsheviks seized majority control of Russia, Anastasia
and her family were moved to the Ipatiev House, or House of Special Purpose, at
Yekaterinburg.

The stress and uncertainty of captivity took their toll on Anastasia as well as her family.
"Goodby," she wrote to a friend in the winter of 1917. "Don't forget us." At Tobolsk, she wrote
a melancholy theme for her English tutor, filled with spelling mistakes, about Evelyn Hope, a
poem by Robert Browning about a young girl: "When she died she was only sixteen years old,"
Anastasia wrote. "Ther(e) was a man who loved her without having seen her but (k)new her
very well. And she he(a)rd of him also. He never could tell her that he loved her, and now she
was dead. But still he thought that when he and she will live [their] next life whenever it will
be that ..."

At Tobolsk, she and her sisters sewed jewels into their clothing in hopes of hiding them from
their captors, since Alexandra had written to warn them that she, Nicholas and Maria had been
searched upon arriving in Ekaterinburg, and had items confiscated. Their mother used
predetermined code words "medicines" and "Sednev's belongings" for the jewels. Letters from
Demidova to Tegleva gave the instructions. Pierre Gilliard recalled his last sight of the children
at Yekaterinburg: "The sailor Nagorny, who attended to Alexei Nikolaevitch, passed my
window carrying the sick boy in his arms, behind him came the Grand Duchesses loaded with
valises and small personal belongings. I tried to get out, but was roughly pushed back into the
carriage by the sentry. I came back to the window. Tatiana Nikolayevna came last carrying her
little dog and struggling to drag a heavy brown valise. It was raining and I saw her feet sink
into the mud at every step. Nagorny tried to come to her assistance; he was roughly pushed
back by one of the commisars ..." Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden told of her sad last glimpse
of Anastasia: "Once, standing on some steps at the door of a house close by, I saw a hand
and a pink-sleeved arm opening the topmost pane. According to the blouse the hand must
have belonged either to the Grand Duchess Marie or Anastasia. They could not see me through
their windows, and this was to be the last glimpse that I was to have of any of them!"
Grand Duchesses Anastasia, Maria, and Tatiana
Nikolaevna at Tsarskoye Selo in the spring of 1917.

However, even in the last months of her life, she found
ways to enjoy herself. She and other members of the
household performed plays for the enjoyment of their
parents and others in the spring of 1918. Anastasia's
performance made everyone howl with laughter,
according to her tutor Sydney Gibbes. In a May 7, 1918
letter from Tobolsk to her sister Maria in Yekaterinburg,
Anastasia described a moment of joy despite her
sadness and loneliness and worry for the sick Alexei:
"We played on the swing, that was when I roared with
laughter, the fall was so wonderful! Indeed! I told the
sisters about it so many times yesterday that they got
quite fed up, but I could go on telling it masses of times ... What weather we've had! One
could simply shout with joy." In his memoirs, one of the guards at the Ipatiev House,
Alexander Strekotin, remembered Anastasia as "very friendly and full of fun," while another
guard said Anastasia was "a very charming devil! She was mischievous and, I think, rarely
tired. She was lively, and was fond of performing comic mimes with the dogs, as though they
were performing in a circus." Yet another of the guards, however, called the youngest grand
duchess "offensive and a terrorist" and complained that her occasionally provocative
comments sometimes caused tension in the ranks. Anastasia and her sisters learned how to
do their own laundry and assisted the cook in making bread while they were in captivity at the
Ipatiev House.

In the summer, the privations of the captivity, including their closer confinement at the Ipatiev
House negatively affected the family. According to some accounts, at one point Anastasia
became so upset about the locked, painted windows that she opened one to look outside and
get fresh air. A sentry reportedly saw her and fired, narrowly missing her. She did not try
again. On July 14, 1918, local priests at Yekaterinburg conducted a private church service for
the family. They reported that Anastasia and her family, contrary to custom, fell on their
knees during the prayer for the dead, and that the girls had become despondent, hopeless,
and no longer sang the replies in his service. Noticing this dramatic change in their demeanor
since his last visit, one priest told the other, "Something has happened to them in there." But
the next day, on July 15, 1918, Anastasia and her sisters appeared in good spirits as they
joked and helped move the beds in their shared bedroom so that cleaning women could clean
the floors. They helped the women scrub the floors and whispered to them when the guards
weren't watching. Anastasia stuck her tongue out at Yakov Yurovsky, the head of the
detachment, when he momentarily turned his back and left the room.

Anastasia was executed along with her family by a firing squad in the early morning of July
17, 1918. The execution was carried out by forces of the Bolshevik secret police under the
command of Yurovsky.

Captivity and execution

After the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917, Russia quickly disintegrated into civil war.
Negotiations for the release of the Romanovs between their Bolshevik (commonly referred to
as 'Reds') captors and their extended family, many of whom were prominent members of the
Royal Houses of Europe, stalled. As the Whites (loyalists still faithful to the Tsar and the
principles of autocracy) advanced toward Yekaterinburg the Reds were in a precarious
situation. The Reds knew Yekaterinburg would fall to the better manned and equipped White
Army. When the Whites reached Yekaterinburg, the Imperial Family had simply disappeared.
The most widely accepted account was that the family had been murdered. This was due to an
investigation by White Army Investigator Nicholas Sokolov, who came to the conclusion based
on items that had belonged to the family being found thrown down a mine shaft at Ganina
Yama.

The "Yurovsky Note," an account of the event filed by Yurovsky to his Bolshevik superiors
following the murders, was found in 1989 and detailed in Edvard Radzinsky's 1992 book The
Last Tsar. According to the note, on the night of the murders the family was awakened and
told to dress. They were told they were being moved to a new location to ensure their safety
in anticipation of the violence that might ensue when the White Army reached Yekaterinburg.
Once dressed, the family and the small circle of servants who had remained with them were
herded into a small room in the house's sub-basement and told to wait. Alexandra and Alexei
sat in chairs provided by guards at the empress' request. After several minutes, the
executioners entered the room, led by Yurovsky. Yurovsky quickly informed the Tsar and his
family that they were to be executed. The Tsar had time to say only "What?" and turn to his
family before he was killed by several bullets to the chest (not, as is commonly stated, to the
head; his skull, recovered in 1991, bears no bullet wounds). The Tsar, the empress and two
menservants were killed in the first episode of gunfire; Marie, Dr Botkin and the empress'
maid Demidova were wounded. Thick smoke had filled the room from so many weapons being
fired at close quarters, as well as from plaster dust released from the walls by bullets. To allow
the haze to clear, the gunmen left the room for some minutes, leaving all the victims behind.
When the gunman returned, Dr Botkin was shot and the Tsarevich Alexei was slaughtered, one
gunman repeatedly trying to shoot or stab the boy in the torso. The jewels sewn in his clothes
protected him, and finally another gunman fired two shots into his head. Tatiana and Olga
were then killed by single bullets to the head.

Grand Duchesses Tatiana and Anastasia and the dog
Ortino in captivity at Tsarskoe Selo in the spring of
1917.

The last victims, Maria, Anastasia and the maid
Demidova, were on the floor beneath the room's one
window. As the gunman approached, Maria stood and
struggled with Ermakov as he tried to stab her. The
jewels in her clothing shielded her, and Ermakov
claimed that he killed her with a shot to the head.
Ermakov then struggled with Anastasia, failed to stab
her, and said he killed her, too, with a shot to the head.
Maria's skull shows no trace of bullet wounds and it is
unclear how she died. Ermakov was quite drunk during the murders and possibly his shot only
creased Maria's scalp, knocking her unconscious and producing considerable blood flow, but
not killing her. Then, as the bodies were taken out of the cellar room, two of the grand
duchesses showed signs of life. One sat up and screamed, throwing her arm over her head,
while the other, bleeding from the mouth, moaned and moved slightly. Since the head wounds
inflicted on Olga and Tatiana were instantly fatal, it is likely that Maria, perhaps only
unconscious, was the sister who screamed, while Anastasia may still have been able to move
and moan. Although Ermakov's archived statement does not say so, he told his wife that
Anastasia was finished off with bayonets, while Yurovsky wrote that as the bodies were carried
out, one or more of the girls cried out and were clubbed on the back of the head. But again,
the back of Maria's skull shows no traces of violence, and Anastasia's burned and fragmented
remains, identified in 2009, offer no clues to the cause of her death.

False reports of survival and identification of Romanov remains

Anastasia's supposed survival was one of the celebrated mysteries of the 20th century. Anna
Anderson, the most notorious Anastasia impostor, first surfaced publicly between 1920 and
1922. She contended that she had feigned death amongst the bodies of her family members
and servants, and was able to make her escape with the help of a compassionate guard who
rescued her from amongst the corpses after noticing that she was still alive. Her legal battle
for recognition from 1938 to 1970 continued a lifelong controversy and was the longest
running case ever heard by the German courts where it was officially filed. The final decision
of the court was that Anderson had not provided sufficient proof to claim the identity of the
grand duchess.

Anderson died in 1984 and her body was cremated. DNA tests were conducted in 1994 on a
tissue sample from Anderson located in a hospital and the blood of Prince Philip, Duke of
Edinburgh, a grandnephew of Empress Alexandra. According to Dr. Gill who conducted the
tests, "If you accept that these samples came from Anna Anderson, then Anna Anderson could
not be related to Tsar Nicholas or Tsarina Alexandra." Anderson's mitochondrial DNA was a
match with a great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska, a missing Polish factory worker. Some
supporters of Anderson's claim acknowledged that the DNA tests proving she could not have
been the Grand Duchess had "won the day."

Anna Anderson was one of at least ten women who claimed to be Anastasia. Some other
lesser known claimants were Nadezhda Ivanovna Vasilyeva and Eugenia Smith. Two young
women claiming to be Anastasia and her sister Maria were taken in by a priest in the Ural
Mountains in 1919 where they lived as nuns until their deaths in 1964. They were buried
under the names Anastasia and Maria Nikolaevna.

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna in captivity at
Tobolsk in the spring of 1918.

Rumors of Anastasia's survival were embellished with
various contemporary reports of trains and houses being
searched for 'Anastasia Romanov' by Bolshevik soldiers
and secret police. When she was briefly imprisoned at
Perm in 1918, Princess Helena Petrovna, the wife of
Anastasia's distant cousin, Prince Ioann Konstantinovich
of Russia, reported that a guard brought a girl who
called herself Anastasia Romanova to her cell and asked
if the girl was the daughter of the Tsar. Helena Petrovna said she did not recognize the girl
and the guard took her away. Although other witnesses in Perm later reported that they saw
Anastasia, her mother Alexandra Fyodorovna and sisters in Perm after the murder, that story
is now widely discredited as nothing more than a rumor. Ironically, it now appears that rumors
started to hide the fact that the family was dead actually fueled the rumors they were alive. A
few days after they had been murdered, the German government sent several telegrams to
Russia demanding 'the safety of the princesses of German blood'. Russia had recently signed a
peace treaty with the Germans, and did not want to upset them by letting them know the
women were dead, so they told them they had been moved to a safer location. This may well
be the source of the 'Perm' stories.

In another incident, eight witnesses reported the recapture of a young woman after an
apparent escape attempt in September 1918 at a railway station at Siding 37, northwest of
Perm. These witnesses were Maxim Grigoyev, Tatiana Sitnikova and her son Fyodor Sitnikov,
Ivan Kuklin and Matrina Kuklina, Vassily Ryabov, Ustinya Varankina, and Dr. Pavel Utkin, a
physician who treated the girl after the incident. Some of the witnesses identified the girl as
Anastasia when they were shown photographs of the grand duchess by White Russian Army
investigators. Utkin also told the White Russian Army investigators that the injured girl, whom
he treated at Cheka headquarters in Perm, told him, "I am the daughter of the ruler,
Anastasia." Utkin obtained a prescription from a pharmacy for a patient named "N" at the
orders of the secret police. White Army investigators later independently located records for
the prescription. During the same time period in mid-1918 there were several reports of young
people in Russia passing themselves off as Romanov escapees. Boris Soloviev, the husband of
Rasputin's daughter Maria, defrauded prominent Russian families by asking for money for a
Romanov impostor to escape to China. Soloviev also found young women willing to
masquerade as one of the grand duchesses to assist in deceiving the families he had
defrauded.

Some biographers' accounts speculated that the opportunity for one or more of the guards to
rescue a survivor existed. Yakov Yurovsky demanded that the guards come to his office and
turn over items they had stolen following the murder. There was reportedly a span of time
when the bodies of the victims were left largely unattended in the truck, in the basement and
in the corridor of the house. Some guards who had not participated in the murders and had
been sympathetic to the grand duchesses were reportedly left in the basement with the
bodies.


From left to right, Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia,
Tsar Nicholas II, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of
Russia and Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia in
captivity at Tobolsk in the winter of 1917.

Courtesy: Beinecke Library

There were also reports from Bulgaria of the survival of
Anastasia and her younger brother Tsarevich Alexei. In 1953,
Peter Zamiatkin, who was reportedly a member of the guard of
the Russian Imperial Family, told a 16-year-old fellow hospital
patient that he had taken Anastasia and Alexei to his birth
village near Odessa at the request of the Tsar. After the
assassination of the rest of the royal family, Zamiatkin reportedly escaped with the children
via ship, sailing from Odessa to Alexandria. The alleged survivors, "Anastasia" and "Alexei,"
reportedly lived out their lives under assumed names in the Bulgarian town of Gabarevo near
Kazanlak. The Bulgarian Anastasia claimant called herself Eleonora Albertovna Kruger and died
in 1954.

Romanov graves

In 1991, the presumed burial site of the Imperial family and their servants was excavated in
the woods outside Yekaterinburg. The grave had been found nearly a decade earlier, but was
kept hidden by its discoverers from the Communists who still ruled Russia when the grave was
originally found. The grave only held nine of the expected eleven sets of remains. DNA and
skeletal analysis matched these remains to Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of
the four Grand Duchesses (Olga, Tatiana and Maria). The other remains, with unrelated DNA,
correspond to the family's doctor (Yevgeny Botkin), their valet (Alexei Trupp), their cook (Ivan
Kharitonov) and Alexandra's maid (Anna Demidova). The late forensic expert Dr. William
Maples decided that the Tsarevitch Alexei and Anastasia's bodies were missing from the
family's grave. Russian scientists contested this conclusion, however, claiming that it was the
body of Maria that was missing. The Russians identified Anastasia by using a computer
program to compare photos of the youngest grand duchess with the skulls of the victims from
the mass grave. They estimated the height and width of the skulls where pieces of bone were
missing. American scientists found this method inexact.

American scientists thought the missing body to be Anastasia because none of the female
skeletons showed the evidence of immaturity, such as an immature collarbone, undescended
wisdom teeth, or immature vertebrae in the back, that they would have expected to find in a
seventeen year old. In 1998, when the remains of the Imperial Family were finally interred, a
body measuring approximately 5'7" was buried under the name of Anastasia. Photographs
taken of her standing beside her three sisters up until six months before the murders
demonstrate that Anastasia was several inches shorter than all of them.


Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia aboard
the Rus, the ship that ferried her to Yekaterinburg in
May 1918. This is the last known photograph of
Anastasia

The account of the "Yurovsky Note" indicated that two
of the bodies were removed from the main grave and
cremated at an undisclosed area in order to further
disguise the burials of the Tsar and his retinue, if the
remains were discovered by the Whites, since the body
count would not be correct. Searches of the area in
subsequent years failed to turn up a cremation site or
the remains of the two missing Romanov children.
However, on August 23, 2007, a Russian archaeologist
announced the discovery of two burned, partial skeletons at a bonfire site near Yekaterinburg
that appeared to match the site described in Yurovsky's memoirs. The archaeologists said the
bones are from a boy who was roughly between the ages of ten and thirteen years at the time
of his death and of a young woman who was roughly between the ages of eighteen and
twenty-three years old. Anastasia was seventeen years and one month old at the time of the
assassination, while her sister Maria was nineteen years, one month old and her brother Alexei
was two weeks shy of his fourteenth birthday. Anastasia's elder sisters Olga and Tatiana were
twenty-two and twenty-one years old respectively at the time of the assassination. Along with
the remains of the two bodies, archaeologists found "shards of a container of sulfuric acid,
nails, metal strips from a wooden box, and bullets of various caliber." The bones were found
using metal detectors and metal rods as probes.

DNA testing by multiple international laboratories such as the Armed Forces DNA Identification
Laboratory and Innsbruck Medical University confirmed that the remains belong to the
Tsarevich Alexei and to one of his sisters, proving conclusively that all family members,
including Anastasia, died in 1918. The parents and all five children are now accounted for, and
each has his or her own unique DNA profile. However, in the article Dr. Michael D. Coble (et
al.) wrote (see Supporting Information, in comments to Fig. S1):

The identification of either Maria or Anastasia was not possible by DNA analysis alone.

It should be mentioned that a well publicized debate over which daughter, Maria (according
to Russian experts) or Anastasia (according to US experts), has been recovered from the
second grave cannot be settled based upon the DNA results reported here. In the absence of a
DNA reference from each sister, we can only conclusively identify Alexei the only son of
Nicholas and Alexandra.

Sainthood

In 2000, Anastasia and her family were canonized as passion bearers by the Russian Orthodox
Church. The family had previously been canonized in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church
Abroad as holy martyrs. The bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their
daughters were finally interred in the St. Catherine Chapel at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in
St. Petersburg on July 17, 1998, eighty years after they were murdered.

Benjamin Bathurst

Benjamin Bathurst (born 1784) was a British diplomatic envoy who disappeared from the
White Swan inn in the town of Perleberg, Germany, during the Napoleonic Wars. A reward of
1,000 was offered by the British government (a vast sum of money in those days) for
information leading to his return and was doubled by Bathurst's family and even contributed to
by Prince Frederick of Prussia, who took great interest in the case, to no avail. It was thought
he may have been murdered by French espionage agents who were monitoring his activity,
and Bathurst's family even went so far as to approach the Emperor Napoleon himself about
the disappearance, who swore he knew nothing more about it than he had read in the
newspapers of the day. The town of Perleberg was also known to have a strong criminal
element at the time and another theory was that he was snatched away and murdered, given
that he was a man of obvious wealth. In 1852, forty-one years after Bathurst's disappearance,
a male human skeleton with a fractured skull was discovered when a house some 300 m from
the White Swan inn was demolished. Bathurst's sister travelled to Perleberg but was unable to
identify the remains. Bathurst's disappearance is referenced in several works of science fiction
and the paranormal, most of which describe him falling into a portal leading to some other
place, time, or alternate timeline.

Mary Celeste

The Mary Celeste was a ship discovered in December 1872 abandoned and unmanned in the
Atlantic. The crew were never seen or heard from again and what happened to them is the
subject of much speculation. Their fate is regarded as one of the greatest maritime mysteries
of all time. Some say the crew was thrown overboard by a large wave, but no remains were
ever found.

Flannan Isles Mystery

The Flannan Isles mystery was the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers in 1900 who
vanished from their duty stations, leaving behind equipment important to surviving the hostile
conditions at that location and time of year. However, the official explanation for the
disappearances was mundane, concluding that the men were swept out to sea by a freak
wave.


Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce (born 1842) was an American editorialist, journalist, short-story writer and
satirist. Today, he is best known for his short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and
his satirical dictionary The Devil's Dictionary. In October 1913, the septuagenarian Bierce
departed Washington, D.C., for a tour of his old Civil War battlefields. By December he had
proceeded on through Louisiana and Texas, crossing by way of El Paso into Mexico, which was
in the throes of revolution. In Ciudad Jurez he joined Pancho Villa's army as an observer, and
in that role participated in the battle of Tierra Blanca. Bierce is known to have accompanied
Villa's army as far as the city of Chihuahua. After a last letter to a close friend, sent from there
December 26, 1913, he vanished without a trace, becoming one of the most notable
disappearances in American literary history. There is no evidence to support speculation that
he went to the Grand Canyon, found a remote spot and shot himself. Investigations into his
fate have proved fruitless, and despite an abundance of theories his end remains shrouded in
mystery.

Amelia Earhart

During an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe in 1937, Amelia Earhart
and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland
Island. Fascination with her life, career and disappearance continues to this day. No confirmed
remains or debris have ever been found.

B-47 disappearance

On 10 March 1956 four B-47 Stratojets left MacDill Air Force Base in Florida for a non-stop
flight to Ben Guerir Air Base in Morocco and completed their first aerial refueling without
incident. After descending through cloud to begin their second refueling, over the
Mediterranean Sea at 14,000 ft, the aircraft manned by Captain Robert H. Hodgin (31,
commander), Captain Gordon M. Insley (32, observer), and 2nd Lt. Ronald L. Kurtz (22, pilot)
failed to make contact with the tanker. Neither the aircraft nor wreckage from it was ever
found.

Frederick Valentich

Frederick Valentich disappeared in 1978 while piloting a Cessna 182L light aircraft over Bass
Strait to King Island, Australia. In his last radio contact, Valentich reported an unusual aircraft
was following his, and his last words were: "It is hovering and it's not an aircraft." No trace of
Valentich or his aircraft was ever found, and an Australian Department of Transport
investigation concluded that the reason for the disappearance could not be determined.

Triangle-related Incidents

See Bermuda Triangle, Devils Sea, Michigan Triangle






Strange People, Mysterious
Abilities


Youve seen a lot of them in movies.
Youve read about them in comic books.
You thought they dont exist.

Well, guess again.

Ambidexterity
Wikipedia.org

Ambidexterity is the state of being equally adept in the use of both left and right appendages
(such as the hands). It is one of the most famous varieties of cross-dominance. People that
are naturally ambidextrous are rare, with only one out of one hundred people being naturally
ambidextrous. The degree of versatility with each hand is generally the qualitative factor in
determining a person's ambidexterity.

In modern times, it is more common to find people considered ambidextrous who were
originally left handed and who learned to be ambidextrous either deliberately or during
childhood institutions such as schools, jobs where right-handed habits are often emphasized or
required. Also, since many everyday devices (such as can openers and scissors) are
asymmetrical and designed for right-handed people, many left-handers learn to use them
right-handedly due to the rarity or lack of left-handed models. Thus, left-handed people are
much more likely to develop motor skills in their non-dominant hand than right-handers (who
are not subjected to left-favoring devices). Right-handers may become ambidextrous due to
an injury of their right hand or arm. Ambidexterity is often encouraged in activities requiring a
great deal of skill in both hands, such as knitting, typing on a computer, juggling, swimming,
percussion, keyboard music, baseball, lacrosse, surgery, boxing, martial arts and basketball.

Etymology

The word "ambidextrous" is derived from the Latin roots ambi-, meaning "both," and dexter,
meaning "right" or favorable. Thus, "ambidextrous" is literally "right / favorable on both
sides." The term ambidexter in English was originally used in a legal sense of jurors who
accepted bribes from both parties for their verdict.

In sports
Baseball

Ambidexterity is highly prized in the sports of baseball, football, and basketball. "Switch
hitting" is the most common phenomenon, and is highly prized because a batter usually has a
higher statistical chance of successfully hitting the baseball when it is thrown by an opposite-
handed pitcher. Therefore, an ambidextrous hitter can bat from whichever side is most
advantageous to him in that situation. Pete Rose, who had more hits than anyone else in the
history of Major League Baseball, was a switch hitter.

Ambidextrous pitchers also exist. Tony Mullane won 284 games in the 19th century. Elton
Chamberlain and Larry Corcoran were also notable ambidextrous pitchers. In the modern
era Greg A. Harris is the only major league pitcher to pitch with both his left and his right arm.
A natural right-hander, by 1986 he could throw well enough with his left hand that he felt
capable of pitching with either hand in a game. Harris wasn't allowed to throw left-handed in a
regular-season game until September 28, 1995, the next-to-last game of his career. Against
the Cincinnati Reds in the ninth inning, Harris (then a member of the Montreal Expos) retired
Reggie Sanders pitching right-handed, then switched to his left hand for the next two hitters,
Hal Morris and Ed Taubensee, who both batted left-handed. Harris walked Morris but got
Taubensee to ground out. He then went back to his right hand to retire Bret Boone to end the
inning. One Division I NCAA pitcher, Pat Venditte formerly of the Creighton Bluejays, now
with the New York Yankees Class AA affiliate Trenton Thunder , regularly pitches with both
arms.

Billy Wagner was a natural right-handed pitcher in his youth, but after breaking his throwing
arm twice, he taught himself how to use his left arm by throwing nothing but fastballs against
a barn wall. He became a dominant left-handed relief pitcher, most known for his 100+ MPH
fastball. In his 1999 season, Wagner captured the National League Relief Man of the Year
Award as a Houston Astro.

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Brett Cecil is naturally right-handed, but starting from a very early
age, threw with his left. As such, he writes and performs most tasks with the right side of his
body, but throws with his left.
Snooker

In cue sports, players can reach farther across the table if they are able to play with either
hand, since the cue must either be placed on the left or the right side of the body. English
snooker player Ronnie O'Sullivan is unique amongst the current ranks of top snooker
professionals, in that he is able to play to world standard with either hand. While he lacks
power in his left arm, his ability to alternate hands allows him to take shots that would
otherwise require awkward cueing. When he first displayed this ability in the 1996 World
Championship against the Canadian player Alain Robidoux, Robidoux accused him of
disrespect. O'Sullivan responded that he played better with his left hand than Robidoux could
with his right. O'Sullivan was summoned to a disciplinary hearing in response to Robidoux's
formal complaint, where he had to prove that he could play to a high level with his left hand.
He played three frames of snooker against former world championship runner-up Rex
Williams, winning all three. The charge of bringing the game into disrepute was subsequently
dropped.
Other sports

In combat sports fighters may choose to face their opponent with either the left shoulder
forward in a right-handed stance ("orthodox") or the right shoulder forward in a left-handed
stance ("south-paw"), thus a degree of cross dominance is useful.

In Association football, being able to kick with either foot provides more options for both
passing and scoring, as well as the ability to play up both wings. Therefore, players with the
ability to use their weaker foot with proficiency are valuable in any team. Luis Javier Garcia
Sanz, Wesley Sneijder and David Villa are all examples of ambidextrous footballers, but
none perhaps as notable as Pedro and Hernanes.

In Rugby League and Rugby Union being ambidextrous is an advantage when is comes to
passing the football between teammates as well as being able to use both feet by the halves is
an advantage in gaining field position by kicking the ball ahead.

In skateboarding, being able to skate successfully with not only one's dominant foot forward
but also the less dominant one is called "switch skating" and is a prized ability. Notable switch
skateboarders include Eric Koston, Guy Mariano, Jereme Rodgers, Paul Rodriguez Jr.,
and Bob Burnquist. Similarly, surfers who ride equally well in either stance are said to be
surfing "switch-foot." Also, snowboarding at the advanced level requires the ability to ride
equally well in either stance.

In American football, it is especially advantageous to be able to use both arms. Ambidextrous
receivers can make one-handed catches with either hand; quarterbacks can roll out of the
pocket and throw with either arm, confusing the defense; linemen can hold their shoulders
square and produce an equal amount of power with both arms; and punters can handle a bad
snap and roll out and punt with either leg, limiting the chance of a block.

In Cricket, it is also beneficial to be able to use both arms.Ambidextrous fielders can make one
handed catches or throws with either hand.

Receivers and corners can play on both the strong and weak sides equally if they do not have
a preference.

In professional sports car racing, drivers who participate in various events in both the United
States and Europe will sometimes encounter machines with the steering wheel mounted on
different sides of the car. While steering ability is largely unaffected, the hand used for shifting
changes. This is further complicated by the fact that the shift pattern relative to the driver
changes, e.g. a gear change that requires moving the lever toward the driver in a left-hand-
drive vehicle becomes a movement away from the driver in a right-hand-drive vehicle. A
driver skilled in shifting with the opposite hand is at an advantage.

In Drum & Bugle corps and Drum & Bell corps, Snare drummers, Quads(Tenors), and Bass
Drummers need to be somewhat ambidextrous. Since they have to abide by what the
composer/arranger has written, they have to learn to play their piece starting with either left
or right.

Other examples of ambidextrous athletes

In boxing, Manny Pacquiao has a southpaw stance on the ring even though he is really right-
handed outside the ring.

In tennis, a player may be able to reach balls on the backhand side more easily if they're able
to use the weaker hand. Perfect examples of players who are ambidextrous include Luke
Jensen and Maria Sharapova. Rafael Nadal uses his right hand for writing, but plays tennis
with left. There are many players who are naturally right handed but play lefty and vice versa.
Evgenia Kulikovskaya is also an ambidextrous player, Kulikovskaya played with two forehands
and no backhand, switching her racket hand depending on where the ball was coming.

Some players find cross-dominance advantageous in golf, especially if a left-handed player
utilizes right-handed clubs. Having more precise coordination with the left hand is believed to
allow better-controlled, and stronger drives.

In golf, Mac O'Grady was a touring pro who played right-handed, yet could play "scratch" (no
handicap) golf left-handed. He lobbied the USGA for years to be certified as an amateur "lefty"
and a pro "righty" to no avail.

Although not ambidextrous, Phil Mickelson and Mike Weir are both right-handers who golf left-
handed; Ben Hogan was the opposite, being a natural left-hander who played golf right-
handed. This is known as cross-dominance or mixed-handedness. Katelyn Johnson is a famous
ambidextrous women's golf player.

In athletics, Jonathan Edwards, a now-retired British triple jumper who still holds the world
record in that event, was known to be able to kick with either foot while he played rugby. He
displayed unprecedented ambidexterity while jumping off either foot during his competitive
jumps.

In rugby union Jonny Wilkinson is a prime example of a player who is equally good at
kicking off both feet, for example he normally place kicks using his left, but dropped the goal
that won the Rugby World Cup in 2003 with his right.

In basketball the player may choose to make a pass or shot with the weaker hand. NBA stars
David Lee, Derrick Rose, Andrew Bogut and Michael Beasley, are ambidextrous players.
Bogut is stronger in the post with his left handed hook shot than he is with his natural right,
Brothers Marc Gasol and Pau Gasol can make hook shots with both right and left hand while
both their dominant hand is right. Los Angeles Lakers left-handed point guard Derek Fisher
used to dunk with his right hand for his early years. Candace Parker, forward for the WNBA
Sparks team, also has equal dominance with both hands.

Ice hockey players may shoot from the left or right side of the body. For the most part, right-
handed players shoot left, and likewise, most left-handed players shoot right as the player will
often wield the stick one-handed. The dominant hand is typically placed on the top of the stick
to allow for better stickhandling and control of the puck. Players who learn the game in the
USA will generally play with their stronger hand in the middle of the stick, thus putting more
power into slapshots. Gordie Howe was one of few players capable of doing both, although this
was at a time when the blade of the stick was not curved.

Another ice hockey player, goaltender Bill Durnan, was nicknamed "Dr. Strangeglove" for his
ability to catch the puck with either hand. This feat won him the Vezina Trophy, then for the
National Hockey League's goalie with the lowest goals-against average, six times out of only
seven seasons. He had developed this ability playing for church-league teams in Toronto and
Montreal to make up for his poor lateral movement.

Field hockey players are forced to play right-handed. The rules of the game denote that the
ball can only be struck with the flat side of the stick. Perhaps to avoid confusing referees, a
left-handed stick does not exist. Chelsie Homer is also a famous female ice hockey
ambidextrous player.

Cricket - Sachin Tendulkar uses his left hand for writing, but bats and bowls with right
hand. There are many players who are naturally right handed but bat left and vice versa.
Sourav Ganguly uses his right hand for righting but bats with his left hand.

In figure skating, most skaters who are right-handed spin and jump to the left, and vice versa
for left-handed individuals. Olympic Champion figure skater John Curry notably performed his
jumps in one direction (anti-clockwise) while spinning predominantly in the other. Very few
skaters have such an ability to perform jumps and spins in both directions, and it is now
considered a "difficult variation" in spins under the ISU Judging System to rotate in the non-
dominant direction. Michelle Kwan used an opposite-rotating camel spin in some of her
programs as a signature move. No point bonus exists for opposite direction jumps or bi-
directional combination jumps, despite their being much harder to perfect.

Although it is quite uncommon, in badminton, ambidextrous players such as Uddhav Naik are
able to switch the racquet between their hands, often to get to the awkward backhand corner
quickly. As badminton can be a very fast sport, at professional levels of play, players might
not have time to switch the racquet, as this disrupts their reaction time.

Tools

With respect to tools, ambidextrous may be used to mean that the tool may be used equally
well with either hand; an "ambidextrous knife" refers to the opening mechanism on a folding
knife. It can also mean that the tool can be interchanged between left and right in some other
way, such as an "ambidextrous headset," which can be worn on either the left or right ear. As
an opposite example, scissors are made specifically for use in one hand, and will not cut
properly if used in the other hand. Left-handed as well as ambidextrous scissors are nowadays
available.

Knitting

In knitting, the use of two needles, the knitter must learn to use both needles seamlessly.
Several factors also lead to ambidexterity, the chief one being if a person either favors their
left hand over their right or if they learned to crochet before learning to knit. In that case,
they either use the English method of knitting or learn to use the form of knitting more
common in the United States.

Firearms

Many modern small arms employ ambidextrous design to accommodate both the right- and
left-handed operator. This is advantageous for marketing the weapon to military or law
enforcement units because the weapons are distributed in a large scale. This eliminates the
need for training left-handed operators to adapt to a right-handed weapon.

Androphagi
Wikipedia.org

Androphagi (Greek : "" for "man-eaters") was an ancient nation of cannibals north
of Scythia (according to Herodotus), probably in the forests between the upper waters of the
Dnepr and Don. These people may have assisted the Scythians when King Darius the Great led
a Persian invasion into what is now Southern Russia to punish the Scythians for their raids into
the Achaemenid Empire.

Due to a false etymology, a popular belief is that they were most likely Finns the obsolete
name of Nenets people, Samoyed, has a similar meaning in Russian: "self-eater".

The Gutasaga tells of the blts on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea:

Firi an tima oc lengi eptir sian. Trou menn a hult. oc a hauga. wi. oc. stafgara.
oc a haiin gu. blotau air synnum oc dydrum sinum Oc filei. mi matj oc
mundgati. et gieru air eptir wantro sinnj. land alt. hafi sir hoystu blotan mi fulki.
ellar hafi huer riiungr. sir. En smeri ing hafu mindri blotan me filei. matj. Oc
mungati. sum haita sunautar. i et air suu allir saman.

This is roughly translated:

Before this time, and a long time thereafter, they believed in groves and barrows,
sanctuaries, and sacred enclosures and in the pagan gods. They sacrificed their sons,
daughters and cattle, and practiced blts with food and drink. This they did due to
their superstition. The whole country (the althing) had the largest blt with sacrifice of
people, otherwise every trithing had its blt and smaller things had smaller blts with
cattle, food and drinks. They were called food-, or cooking-brethren, because they
prepared the meals together.

Frau Troffea the Dancer
Wikipedia.org

The Dancing Plague (or Dance Epidemic) of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in
Strasbourg, France (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) in July 1518. Numerous people took
to dancing for days without rest, and, over the period of about one month, some of the people
died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.


The outbreak began in July 1518, when a woman, Frau Troffea, began to dance fervently in a
street in Strasbourg. This lasted somewhere between four to six days. Within a week, 34
others had joined, and within a month, there were around 400 dancers. Some of these people
eventually died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.

Historical documents, including "physician notes, cathedral sermons, local and regional
chronicles, and even notes issued by the Strasbourg city council" are clear that the victims
danced. It is not known why these people danced to their deaths.

See Dancing Plague of 1518

Heralds
Augurs
Wikipedia.org

The augur was a priest and official in the classical world, especially ancient Rome and Etruria.
His main role was to interpret the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds: whether they
are flying in groups/alone, what noises they make as they fly, direction of flight and what kind
of birds they are. This was known as "taking the auspices." The ceremony and function of the
augur was central to any major undertaking in Roman societypublic or privateincluding
matters of war, commerce, and religion.

The Roman historian Livy stresses the importance of the augurs: "Who does not know that
this city was founded only after taking the auspices, that everything in war and in peace, at
home and abroad, was done only after taking the auspices?"

Etymology and derivatives

The derivation of the word augur is uncertain; ancient authors believed that it contained the
words avi and geroLatin for "directing the birds"but historical-linguistic evidence points
instead to the root aug-, "to increase, to prosper."

'Come then,' Tarquin said angrily, 'Deduce when they make up in bed, if your augury
can, whether what I have in my mind right now is possible.' And when Navius, expert
in augury that he was, immediately said that it would happen, Tarquin replied: 'Well, I
thought that you would cut a whetstone with a sharp knife. Here, take this and do
what your birds have predicted would be possible.' And Navius, hardly delaying at all,
took the whetstone and cut it.

Livy, 1.35.2

The story is illustrative of the role of the augur: he does not predict what course of action
should be taken, but through his augury he finds signs on whether or not a course already
decided upon meets with divine sanction and should proceed.

Public role

Roman augurs were part of a collegium of priests who shared the duties and responsibilities of
the position. At the foundation of the Republic in 510 BC, the patricians held sole claim to this
office; by 300 BC, the office was open to plebeian occupation as well. Senior members of the
collegium put forth nominations for any vacancies, and members voted on whom to co-opt.

In the Regal period tradition holds that there were three augurs at a time; by the time of
Sulla, they had reached fifteen in number.

Augury sought the divine will regarding any proposed course of action which might affect
Rome's pax, fortuna and salus (peace, good fortune and wellbeing). Political, military and civil
actions were sanctioned by augury, historically performed by priests of the college of augurs
and by haruspices on behalf of senior magistrates. The presiding magistrate at an augural rite
thus held the right of augury (ius augurii). Magistracies (which included senior military and
civil ranks) were therefore religious offices in their own right, and magistrates were directly
responsible for the pax, fortuna and salus of Rome and everything that was Roman.

The effectiveness of augury could only be judged retrospectively; the divinely ordained
condition of peace (pax deorum) was an outcome of successful augury. Those whose actions
had led to divine wrath (ira deorum) could not have possessed a true right of augury (ius
augurum). Of all the protagonists in the Civil War, only Octavian could have possessed it,
because he alone had restored the pax deorum to the Roman people. Lucan, writing during
the Principate, described the recent Civil War as "unnatural" - a mirror to supernatural
disturbances in the greater cosmos. His imagery is apt to the traditional principles of augury
and its broader interpretation by Stoic apologists of the Imperial cult. In the Stoic cosmology,
pax deorum is the expression of natural order in human affairs.

According to Cicero, the auctoritas of ius augurum included the right to adjourn and overturn
the process of law: consular election could be - and was - rendered invalid by inaugural error.
For Cicero, this made the augur the most powerful authority in the Republic. Cicero himself
was co-opted into the college only late in his career.

In the later Republic, augury came under the supervision of the college of pontifices, a
priestly-magistral office whose powers were increasingly woven into the cursus honorum. The
office of pontifex maximus eventually became a de facto consular prerogative. When his
colleague Lepidus died, Augustus assumed his office as pontifex maximus, took priestly control
over the State oracles (including the Sibylline books), and used his powers as censor to
suppress the circulation of "unapproved" oracles.

Augurs, auguria and auspices

In ancient Rome the auguria were considered to be in equilibrium with the sacra ("sacred
things" or "rites") and were not the only way by which the gods made their will known. The
augures publici (public augurs) concerned themselves only with matters related to the state.

According to Varro they used to distinguish five kinds of territory: ager Romanus, ager
Gabinus, ager peregrinus, ager hosticus, ager incertus: these distinctions clearly point to the
times of the prehistory of Latium and testify the archaic quality of the art of augury.

The jus augurale (augural law) was rigorously secret, therefore very little about the technical
aspects of ceremonies and rituals has been recorded. We have only the names of some
auguria (augural rites): e.g. the augurium salutis which took place once a year before the
magistrates and the people, in which the gods were asked whether it was auspicious to ask to
for the welfare of the Romans, the augurium canarium and the vernisera auguria. The first one
required the sacrifice of red dogs and took place before wheat grains were shelled but not
before they had formed. Of the second we know only the name that implies a ritual related to
the harvest.

Augurium and auspicium are terms used indifferently by the ancient. Modern scholars have
debated the issue at length but have failed to find a distinctive definition that may hold for all
the known cases. By such considerations Dumezil thinks that the two terms refer in fact to two
aspects of the same religious act: auspicium would design the technical process of the
operation, i.e. aves spicere, looking at the birds. His result would be the augurium, i.e. the
determination , acknowledgement of the presence of the *auges, the favour of the god(s), the
intention and the final result of the whole operation. In Varro's words "Agere augurium, aves
specit", "to conduct the augurium, he observed the birds". Since auguria publica and
inauguations of magistrates are strictly connected to political life this brought about the
deterioration and abuses that condemned augury to progressive and inarrestable debasement,
stripping it of all religious value.

The role of the augur was that of consulting and interpreting the will of gods about some
course of action such as accession of kings to the throne, of magistrates and major sacerdotes
to their functions (inauguration) and all public enterprises.

The prototype of the ritual of inauguration of people is described in Livy's relation of the
inauguration of king Numa Pompilius. The augur asks Jupiter (signa belong to Jupiter): "Si fas
est... send me a certain signum", the augur listed the auspicia he wanted to see coming.
When they appeared Numa was declared king.

Technically the sky was divided into four sections or regions: dextera, sinistra, antica and
postica (right, left, anterior and posterior).

Before taking the auspicia impetrativa ("requested" or "sought" auspices; see below) the
templum, or sacred space within which the operation would take place had to be established
and delimited (it should be square and have only one entrance) and purified (effari, liberare).

The auspicia were divided into two categories: requested by man (impetrativa) and offered
spontaneously by the gods (oblativa). During a ceremony the enunciation of the requested
auspicia was technically called legum dictio. Magistrates endowed by the law with the right of
spectio (observation of auspices) would establish the requested the auspicium. To the augur
was reserved the nuntiatio i.e. announcing the appearance of auspicia oblativa that would
require the interruption of the operation.

The science of interpretation of signs was vast and complex.

Only some species of birds (aves augurales) could yield valid signs whose meaning would vary
according to the species. Among them were ravens, woodpeckers, owls, oxifragae, eagles.

Signs from birds were divided into alites, from the flight, and oscines, from the voice. The
alites included region of the sky, height and type of flight, behaviour of the bird and place
where it would rest.

The oscines included the pitch and direction of the sound.

Since the observation was complex conflict among signs was not uncommon.

A hierarchy among signs was devised: e.g. a sign from the eagle would prevail on that from
the woodpecker and the oxifraga (parra).

Observation conditions were rigorous and required absolute silence for validity of the
operation.

Both impetrativa and oblativa auspices could be divided into five classes: ex caelo
(thunder,lightning), ex avibus, ex tripudiis (attitude to food and feeding manner of the sacred
chickens), ex quadrupedibus (dog, horse, wolf, fox), ex diris (ominous events).

During the last centuries of the republic the auspices ex caelo and ex tripudiis supplanted
other types, as they could be easily used in a fraudulent way, i.e. bent to suit the desire of the
asking person. It sufficed to say that the augur or magistrate had heard a clap of thunder to
suspend the convocation of the comitia.

Cicero condemned the fraudulent use and denounced the decline in the level of knowledge of
the doctrine by the augurs of his time.

In fact the abuse developed from the protective tricks devised to avoid being paralysed by
negative signs. For an instance see the conversation between king Numa and Jupiter in Ovid,
Fasti III, 339-344.

Against the negative auspicia oblativa the admitted procedures included:

1. actively avoiding to see them.
2. repudiare refuse them through an interpretative sleight of hands.
3. non observare by assuming one had not paid attention to them.
4. naming something that in fact had not appeared.
5. choosing the time of the observation (tempestas) at one's will.
6. making a distinction between observation and formulation (renunciatiatio).
7. resorting to acknowledging the presence of mistakes (vitia).
8. repeating the whole procedure.

Attus Navius

Contrary to other divinatory practices present in Rome (e.g. haruspicina, consultation of the
libri Sibyllini) augury appears to be autochthonous and originally Latin or Italic. The art has its
roots in the prehistory of the Italic people and is attested in the Iguvine Tables (avif aseria)
and among other Latin tribes. The very story or legend of the foundation of Rome is based on
augury, i.e. the ascertaining of the will of gods through observation of the sky and of birds.
Romulus and Remus indeed acted as augurs and Romulus was considered a great augur
throughout the course of his life.

The character that best represented and portrayed the art however was Attus Navius. His
story is related by Cicero. He was born into a very poor family. One day he lost one of his
pigs. He then promised the gods that if he found it, he would offer them the biggest grapes
growing in his vineyard. After recovering his pig he stood right at the middle of his grape yard
facing South. He divided the sky into four sections and observed birds: when they appeared
he walked in that direction and found an extraordinary large grape that he offered to the gods.

His story was immediately famous and he became the augur of the king (see above the
episode with king Tarquinius narrated by Livy). Henceforth he was considered the patron of
the augurs.



Cumean Sibyl
Wikipedia.org

The ageless Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a
Greek colony located near Naples, Italy.

The word sibyl comes (via Latin) from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess.
There were many Sibyls in different locations throughout the ancient world. The importance of
the Cumaean Sibyl in the legends of early Rome as codified in Virgil's Aeneid VI, the Cumaean
Sibyl became the most famous among the Romans, because she was near to Roma. The
Erythraean Sibyl from modern day Turkey was famed among Greeks, as was the oldest
Hellenic oracle, Sibyl of Dodona, possibly dating to the second millennium BCE according to
Herodotus favored in the east.

The Cumaean Sibyl is one of the four sibyls painted by Raphael at Santa Maria della Pace (see
gallery below.) She was also painted by Andrea del Castagno (Uffizi Gallery, illustration right),
and in the Sistine Ceiling of Michelangelo her powerful presence overshadows every other
Sibyl, even her younger and more beautiful sisters, such as the Delphic Sibyl.

There are various names for the Cumaean Sibyl besides the "Herophile" of Pausanias and
Lactantius or the Aeneid's "Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus": "Amaltheia", "Demophile" or
"Taraxandra" are all offered in various references.

Ancient Roman prophecies

The excellent story of the acquisition of the Sibylline Books by Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the
semi-legendary last king of the Roman Kingdom, or Tarquinius Priscus, is one of the famous
mythic elements of Roman history.

Centuries ago, concurrent with the 50th Olympiad not long before the expulsion of Rome's
kings, an old woman "who was not a native of the country" (Dionysius) arrived incognita in
Rome. She offered nine books of prophecies to King Tarquin; and as the king declined to
purchase them, owing to the exorbitant price she demanded, she burned three and offered the
remaining six to Tarquin at the same stiff price, which he again refused, whereupon she
burned three more and repeated her offer. Tarquin then relented and purchased the last three
at the full original price, whereupon she "disappeared from among men" (Dionysius).

The books were thereafter kept in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill, Rome, to be
consulted only in emergencies. The temple burned down in the 80s BC, and the books with it,
necessitating a re-collection of Sibylline prophecies from all parts of the empire (Tacitus 6.12).
These were carefully sorted and those determined to be legitimate were saved in the rebuilt
temple. The Emperor Augustus had them moved to the Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill,
where they remained for most of the remaining Imperial Period.

The Books were burned in AD 405 by the General Flavius Stilicho, who was a Christian and
regarded the books as Pagan and therefore evil. At the time of the Visigothic invasion five
years later in AD 410, certain Pagan apologists bemoaned the loss of the books, claiming that
the invasion of the city was evidence of the wrath of the Pagan gods over the destruction of
the books.

The Cumaean Sibyl is featured in the works of, among others, Virgil (The Eclogues, The
neid), Ovid (Metamorphoses) and Petronius (The Satyricon).

Stories recounted in Virgil's neid

The Cumaean Sibyl prophesied by singing the fates and writing on oak leaves. These would
be arranged inside the entrance of her cave but, if the wind blew and scattered them, she
would not help to reassemble the leaves to form the original prophecy again.

The Sibyl was a guide to the underworld (Hades), its entry being at the nearby crater of
Avernus. Aeneas employed her services before his descent to the lower world to visit his dead
father Anchises, but she warned him that it was no light undertaking:

Trojan, Anchises' son, the descent of Avernus is easy.
All night long, all day, the doors of Hades stand open.
But to retrace the path, to come up to the sweet air of heaven,
That is labour indeed. (Aeneid 6.126-129.)

Stories recounted in Ovid's Metamorphoses

Although she was a mortal, the Sibyl lived about a thousand years. This came about when
Apollo offered to grant her a wish in exchange for her virginity; she took a handful of sand and
asked to live for as many years as the grains of sand she held. Later, after she refused the
god's love, he allowed her body to wither away because she failed to ask for eternal youth.
Her body grew smaller with age and eventually was kept in a jar (ampulla). Eventually only
her voice was left (Metamorphoses 14; compare the myth of Tithonus).

Medieval Christianity

In the Middle Ages, both the Cumaean Sibyl and Virgil were considered prophets of the birth of
Christ, because the fourth of Virgil's Eclogues appears to contain a Messianic prophecy by the
Sibyl. In it, she foretells the coming of a savior possibly a flattering reference to the poet's
patron whom Christians identified as Jesus. and this was seized on by early Christians as
suchone reason why Dante Alighieri later chose Virgil as his guide through the underworld in
The Divine Comedy. Similarly, Michelangelo prominently featured the Cumaean Sibyl in the
Sistine Chapel among the Old Testament prophets, as had earlier works such as the Tree of
Jesse miniature in the Ingeberg Psalter (c. 1210).

Virgil may have been influenced by Hebrew texts, according to Tacitus, amongst others.

Constantine, the Christian emperor, in his first address to the assembly, interpreted the whole
of The Eclogues as a reference to the coming of Christ, and quoted a long passage of the
Sibylline Oracles (Book 8) containing an acrostic in which the initials from a series of verses
read: Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour Cross.

The cave at Cumae

The famous cave known as the Antro della Sibilla was discovered by Amedeo Maiuri in
1932, the identification of which he based on the description by Virgil in the 6th book of the
Aeneid, and also from the description by an anonymous author known as pseudo-Justin.(
Verg. Aen. 6. 4599; Ps-Justin, 37). The cave is a trapezoidal passage over 131 m long,
running parallel to the side of the hill and cut out of the volcanic tuff stone. An innermost
chamber, where the Sibyl was thought to have prophesied.

A nearby tunnel through the acropolis now known as the "Crypta Romana" (part of Agrippa
and Octavian's defenses in the war against Sextus Pompey) was previously identified as the
Grotto of the Sibyl.

The inner chamber was later used as an burial chamber during the 4th or 5th century AD (M.
Napoli 1965, 105) by people living at the site.

Primary sources
Virgil, Aeneis vi.268 ff
Isidore, Etymologiae viii.8.5
Servius, In Aeneida vi.72, 321
Lactantius, Divinae institutiones i.6.1011
Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium ii.16, 17, 18
Human Lightning Rod
http://paranormal.about.com

Roy Cleveland Sullivan was a Forest Ranger in Virginia who had an incredible attraction to
lightning... or rather it had an attraction to him. Over his 36-year career as a ranger, Sullivan
was struck by lightning seven times - and survived each jolt, but not unscathed. When struck
for the first time in 1942, he suffered the loss of a nail on his big toe. Twenty-seven years
passed before he was struck again, this time by a bolt that singed his eyebrows off. The next
year, in 1970, another strike burned Sullivan's left shoulder. Now it looked as though lightning
had it out for poor Roy, and people were starting to call him The Human Lightning Rod. He
didn't disappoint them. Lightning zapped him again in 1972, setting his hair on fire and
convincing him to keep a container of water in his car, just in case. The water came in handy
in 1973 when, seemly just to taunt Sullivan, a low-hanging cloud shot a bolt of lightning at his
head, blasting him out of his car, setting his hair on fire and knocking off a shoe. The sixth
strike in 1976 injured his ankle, and the seventh strike in 1977, got him when he was fishing,
and put him in the hospital for treatment of chest and stomach burns. Lightning may not have
been able to kill Roy Sullivan, but perhaps the threat of it did. He took his own life in 1983.
Two of his lightning-singed ranger hats are on display at Guinness World Exhibit Halls.


Electromagnetic People

Angelique Cottin
http://paranormal.about.com

For just a 10-week period in 1846, 14-year-old French girl Angelique Cottin's mere presence
made the needles of compasses spin wildly; objects as heavy as furniture would slide away
from her if she tried to touch them; objects near her would vibrate unnaturally.

Inga Gaiduchenko
http://paranormal.about.com

Inga Gaiduchenko, a 14-year-old Soviet student was also highly magnetic. Before members of
the Moscow Technological Institute, she showed how spoons and pens stuck to her hands.
Even non-metallic objects such as china plates and books were affected.

Sally Wallbank
http://hubpages.com

Sally Wallbank of Lancashire in the UK, can power a light bulb with her hands. But shed gladly
give up her amusing party trick to be rid of a condition which has:

Blown the motors in six washing machines and five vacuum cleaners.
Wiped her mortgage record from the banks computer when she went to complain about
their fees.
Caused a cash register to charge two-thousand-dollars for a lettuce.
Stopped every car she has travelled in due to electrical systems failure.
Caused both her husband and herself to scream in pain as they were severely zapped
while making love.

Sallys condition gets worse when she is annoyed or aroused. Soaking her hands in water
brings some relief.

UK Sisters
http://hubpages.com

Two sisters in the UK glow and discharge lightening the size and shape of tennis balls
whenever they sit together. They also enjoy shooting their younger sister who doesnt have
the same ability - with lightening balls.

Pauline Shaw
http://hubpages.com

Pauline Shaw in London has destroyed every appliance in her house but her specialty is
light-bulbs. Whenever she walks beneath one be it on or off it instantly explodes.

Jacqueline Priestman
http://hubpages.com

In 1980, at the age of twenty-two, Cheshire woman Jacqueline Priestman, suddenly noticed
she was changing the channels on her TV set without touching it. Sparks would leap from
electrical sockets when she went to use them and walking outdoors became fraught with peril.
Whenever Jacqueline touched something made of metal, shed get an electric shock. By 1984,
Jacqueline had wrecked more than twenty-four vacuum cleaners and local service-men were
refusing to visit her home. Dr. Michael Shallis, an Oxford University scientist who studied
Jacqueline, discovered she had more than ten-times the normal level of static electricity
bottled up inside her and it was actually capable of transmitting small lightening bolts.
Miroslaw Magola
http://www.abovetopsecret.com

In his book True Life Encounters (1998, p.14), Keith Tutt reports on another magnetic man
called Miroslaw Magola who was born in Poland in the 1960s. Magola apparently not only has
the ability to attract metal, ceramic and wooden objects to his body, but originally claimed
that he could also levitate. Tutt claims that Magola appeared on an English television program,
called Beyond Belief, in 1996 but was unable to levitate, although his other abilities apparently
created strong public interest. Magola claims to have learnt to increase the strength of his
magnetic abilities so that when he was "investigated by Dr Friedbert Karger of the Max Planck
Institute in Germany" in January 1997, he was able to demonstrate the ability "to pick up a
cup from the floor without touching it, and to control its suspension in mid-air" (Tutt, 1998,
p.15).

Frank McKinstry
http://www.abovetopsecret.com

Vincent Gaddis describes the 1889 case of Frank McKinstry, from Joplin, Missouri, who was
supposedly a good dowser, but whose body was charged with a strange energy. "His charge
was so strong in the early morning that he had to keep moving. If he stopped even for a
second, he became fixed to the ground and had to wait until a helpful passer-by would pull
one of his legs free. There would be a small faint flash and the grip would be broken.

Jennie Morgan
http://www.abovetopsecret.com

Jennie Morgan lived near Sedalia, Missouri, in 1895, a frail, nervous girl then in her middle
teens. The phenomenon which attracted so much attention to her was not noticeably present
until she was about 14 years old. Then, for no apparent reason, Jennie suddenly behaved like
a powerful storage battery. Sparks flew from her finger tips when she reached for the pump
handle, and the voltage was so high that the spark was painful to her. The sparks were doubly
painful to anyone who chanced to touch her under conditions which enabled the electricity to
leap through their bodies. Needless to say, Jennie had few close friends. She regarded the
phenomenon as a curse, principally because the family cat was one of her favorite pets and
the cat avoided her like the plague after it recieved a few shocks. Jennie's strange electrical
endowment faded by the time she reached maturity, and she became another normal young
woman, much to her delight.

Caroline Clare
http://www.abovetopsecret.com

In 1877, when she was seventeen years old, Caroline Clare of Bondon, Ontario was a
strapping 190 pounder who lived with her parents and 6 brothers and sisters. She became ill,
lost her appetite and began to waste away. Doctors could find nothing seriously wrong with
her, but she continued to dwindle until her weight dropped to slightly less than 90 pounds.
Then she underwent a mental change as drastic and as baffling as the physical change had
been, for Caroline began suffering from seizures - or convulsions - as some of the doctors
described them. While in this state, body rigid, eyes fixed and staring, she would mumble at
great length of far away places and scenes which she had never visited. It made no sense to
those around her, for this simple child had never been outside her native town. For a year and
a half she remained in this condition before she took a turn for the better, but it was not an
unmixed blessing, for when her physical and mental health returned to normal, she discovered
that she had acquired an unwanted propensity for shocking people who merely touched her.
Oddly enough, she not only emitted considerable voltage, but she seemed to be magnetized
as well, for when she picked up any metal article susceptible to magnetic attraction, she could
not let go of it; someone had to forcibly pull the article from her open hand. The curse of the
annoying electrical charge left Caroline when she reached maturity, simply fading gradually, to
return no more. Her case was studied by the physicians and a report was made to the Ontario
Medical Association in the summer of 1879.

Antoine Timmer
http://www.jb-graphics%20com/thestrange/


In 1938 Mrs Antoine Timmer went to New York with high high hopes of winning a $10,000
prize offered for demonstrating a psychic phenomenon not reproducible by trickery. The
demonstration was organised by the Universal Council for Psychic Research, headed by the
famous stage magician Joseph Dunninger. Mrs Timmer, seeking to understand her singular
ability herself, showed how spoons and other small objects stuck to her hands and could only
be removed by a vigorous tug. Her claim was dismissed because Dunninger said that he could
do what she did with a concealed thread. Nonetheless, there were no allegations of trickery
against Antoine Timmer - and she no doubt went away as puzzled by her magnetic hands as
when she came. On their part, the council missed a chance to explore a truly unexplained
phenomenon.

Brain Clements
http://www.jb-graphics%20com/thestrange/


The Daily Mirror of 23 March 1967 told the story of Brain Clements, known to his friends as
'Flash Gordon'. Clements was so highly charged that he had to discharge his voltage into
metal furniture before he touched anyone. The previous week the Sunday Express of 19 March
1967 reported the miserable life of Mrs.Grace Charlesworth, who had been tormented by
electric shocks in her house for two years after having lived there uneventfully for 40 years.
She said: 'Sometimes they have swung me round bodily and in the night my head has started
to shake as though i was using a pneumatic drill. One day sparks ran up the walls.' Curiously,
it was only Mrs. Charlesworth who was affected; her husband was aware only of an occasional
humming noise.

Freaky Newborns
http://www.jb-graphics%20com/thestrange/


In January 1869, the doctor who delivered a baby in St. Urbain, France, said the infant was
charged up 'like a Leyden jar' (a type of electrostatic condenser). The baby shocked all who
touched him, and luminous rays emanated from his fingers. This peculiarly endowed baby had
a brief life, dying in his ninth month. Douglas Hunt records two similar but non-fatal cases in
Prediction magazine (January 1953). In the first instance, a doctor received a sharp shock
while delivering a baby. The baby's 'electrification' lasted 24 hours, during which time he was
actually used to charge a Leyden jar, and sparks issued from him. The second infant gave off
a 'feeble white light' and caused ' vibrations' in small metal objects brought near his hands or
feet.

Louis Hamburger
http://www.jb-graphics%20com/thestrange/

Vincent Gaddis mentioned a 16 year old Louis Hamburger, who, in 1890, was a student in
Maryland, USA. When the tips of his fingers were dry,he could pick up heavy objects simply by
touching them. Pins would dangle from his open hand as though from a magnet, and a
vigorous shake to send them flying. His favorite demonstration was to place his fingers against
a glass beaker full of iron fillings and pull the filings up the inside of the beaker by moving his
fingers up the outer surface.


New York State Prison inmates with botulinus
http://www.jb-graphics%20com/thestrange/

An astonishing report was made in 1920 by Dr.Julius Ransom, chief physician at a state prison
in New York, after 34 inmates developed botulinus poisoning. During convalescence, one of
them screwed up a piece of paper and tried to throw it away, but the paper stuck fast to his
hand. Investigation showed that the man was carrying a high static charge, and so were all of
his fellow sufferers. They could deflect compass needles and make a suspended steel tape
sway by moving there hands towards and away from it.The phenomena ceased when the men
recovered.

Lady from New Hampshire
http://www.jb-graphics%20com/thestrange/

There is also evidence that atmospheric and geomagnetic conditions may play a part in the
strange phenomena of electric people. Consider the case of 'a lady of great respectability',
reported in the American Journal of Science (1838) by her physician Dr. Willard Hosford. She
was age 30, of a nervous temperament and sedentary habits, and the wife of a prominent
man in Orford, New Hampshire. For two years she had suffered from acute rheumatism and an
unknown aliment called 'unseated neuralgia. The electrical phenomena began on the evening
of 25 January 1837 when she was feeling strange. She happened to pass her hand over her
brother's face and, as she did so, vivid sparks shot from her fingers, to the astonishment of
both. When she stood on a thick carpet, the sparks could be seen and heard discharging into
objects near her hands- they were brilliant and shocking, felt by the woman and anyone she
touched. The conditions favourable to bringing on the phenomena included hot weather with
temperature around 80 degrees F (27 degrees C). Then the sparks would be about 1 1/2
inches (4 centimeters) long, coming at the rate of 4 a minute. Thinking the woman's silk
clothes were generating the charges, Dr. Hosford had her wear all cotton apparel. As a
control, her sister wore silk. The woman's electricity was not reduced, and her sister remained
normal. The electric charges, which caused her much discomfort lasted about six weeks, after
which she was 'relived of most of her neuralgia and other corporeal infirmities, and was in
better health than she had been for many years'.

Annie May Abbott
http://www.jb-graphics%20com/thestrange/

Perhaps the most famous 19th-century 'electric girl' was Annie May Abbott, who toured the
world as 'The Little Georgia Magnet' in the late 1880's and the early 1890s. On the stage in
London in 1891, she raised a chair with a heavy man seated in it merely by touching it with
the palm of her hand. Though she weighted only 7 stone (45 kilograms), groups of men could
not lift her in a chair when she resisted it. In Japan she overcame the attempts of the huge
and skillful Sumo wrestlers to budge her from where she stood, just as she could 'neutralize
their strenuous efforts to lift any small object upon which she had lightly rested her fingers.

Mary Richardson
http://www.jb-graphics%20com/thestrange/

Another immovable was Mary Richardson, who gave performances in Liverpool in September
1921. She was easily lifted one minute, and then six men would fail to move her even slightly.
Her touch could knock men across the stage. A.C. Holms, the Scottish physical researcher, rut
his hand on Mary's shoulder while a line of 13 men pushed against her and his hand, and he
felt no pressure at all from their push. He was convinced somehow the force exerted against
her was neutralized or shunted, perhaps in another dimension.

Others

Liew Thow Lin
Leonid Tenkaev
Nikolai Suvorov
Frank McKinstry

Firewalking
Wikipedia.org

Firewalking is the act of walking barefoot over a
bed of hot embers or stones.

Firewalking has been practiced by many people
and cultures in all parts of the world, with the
earliest known reference dating back to Iron Age
India c. 1200 BC. It is often used as a rite of
passage, as a test of an individual's strength and
courage, or in religion as a test of one's faith.

Today, it is often used in corporate and team-
building seminars and self-help workshops as a confidence-building exercise. Firewalking
implies the belief that the feat requires the aid of a supernatural force, strong faith, or on an
individual's ability to focus on "mind over matter". Modern physics has largely debunked this
however, showing that the amount of time the foot is in contact with the ground is not enough
to induce a burn, combined with the fact that coal is not a very good conductor of heat.

History

Firewalking is practiced

by the Sawau clan in the Fijian Islands
by the followers of Shia sect in Islam on the 9th and 10th days of the Muharram (First
Month in the Islamic Calendar), to mourn the death of Hussain Who was the son of
Hazrat Ali and Sayyeda Fatima (The daughter of Muhammad)
by Eastern Orthodox Christians in parts of Greece (see Anastenaria) and Bulgaria (see
nestinarstvo), during some popular religious feasts.
by fakirs and similar persons,
!Kung Bushmen of the African Kalahari desert have practiced firewalking since their
tribal beginnings. (The !Kung use fire in their healing ceremonies.)
by (mainly) Hindu Indians in South Asia and their diaspora in South Africa, Malaysia
and Singapore who celebrate the Thimithi festival
by little girls in Bali in a ceremony called Sanghyang dedari, in which the girls are said
to be possessed by beneficent spirits.
by Japanese Taoists and Buddhists
by tribes throughout Polynesia and documented in scientific journal (with pictures and
chants) between 1893-1953.
in management seminars and motivational seminars as in the case of Blaze
Firewalking, Alan Lowis, Peggy Dylan, Tolly Burkan, Martin Sterling, Motivation In
Business, Anthony Robbins, Stu Wilde, David Moore, Fred Shadian, Charles Horton,
Kevin Montes,Scott Bell,Vincent j Kellsey, MIB-Unlimited.

Walking on fire has existed for several thousand years, with records dating back to 1200 B.C.
Cultures across the globe, from Greece to China, used firewalking for rites of healing,
initiation, and faith. Firewalking became popular in America during the 1970s when author
Tolly Burkan began a campaign to demystify the practice. He offered evening firewalking
courses that were open to anyone in the general public. The demand for firewalking classes
became so great that in 1984 Burkan began training instructors. Recently, in the United
States, firewalking is used by businesses to build teamwork and as a so-called alternative
health remedy.


Explanation

When two bodies of different temperatures meet, the hotter body will cool off, and the cooler
body will heat up, until they are separated or until they meet at a temperature in between.
What that temperature is, and how quickly it is reached, depends on the thermodynamic
properties of the two bodies. The important properties are temperature, density, specific heat
capacity, and thermal conductivity.

The square root of the product of thermal conductivity, density, and specific heat capacity is
called thermal effusivity, and tells how much heat energy the body absorbs or releases in a
certain amount of time per unit area when its surface is at a certain temperature. Since the
heat taken in by the cooler body must be the same as the heat given by the hotter one, the
surface temperature must lie closer to the temperature of the body with the greater thermal
effusivity. The bodies in question here are human feet (which mainly consist of water) and
burning coals.

Due to these properties, David Willey, professor of physics, says he believes firewalking is
explainable in terms of basic physics and is not supernatural or paranormal. However, he
adds, "The 120 foot walk done by Sara Raintree and Jim Jarvis, and reports of longer walks
and people remaining stationary for extended periods on the coals are currently under
investigation by the author." Willey notes that most fire-walks occur on coals that measure
about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (550 degrees Celsius), but he once recorded someone
walking on 1,800-degree (1,000 C) coals.

Additionally, Jearl Walker has postulated that walking over hot coals with wet feet may
insulate the feet due to the Leidenfrost effect.

Factors that prevent burning

Factors that act together to prevent the foot from burning

Water has a very high specific heat capacity (4.184 kJ/K kg), whereas coals have a
very low one. Therefore the foot's temperature tends to change less than the coal's.
Water also has a high thermal conductivity, and on top of that, the rich blood flow in
the foot will carry away the heat and spread it. On the other hand, coal has a poor
thermal conductivity, so the hotter body consists only of the parts of the coal which
are close to the foot.
When the coal cools down, its temperature sinks below the flash point, so it stops
burning, and no new heat is generated.
Firewalkers do not spend very much time on the coals, and they keep moving.
Calluses on the feet may offer an additional level of protection, even if only from pain;
however, most people do not have calluses that would make any significant difference.


Risks when doing firewalking improperly

There are risks when doing firewalking improperly

People have burned their feet when they remained in the fire for too long, enabling the
thermal conductivity of the coals to catch up.
One is more likely to be burned when running through the coals since running pushes
one's feet deeper into the embers, resulting in the top of the feet being burnt.
Foreign objects in the coals may result in burns. Metal is especially dangerous since it
has a high thermal conductivity.
Coals which have not burned long enough can burn feet more quickly. Coals contain
water, which increases their heat capacity as well as their thermal conductivity. The
water must be evaporated already when the firewalk starts.
Wet feet can cause coals to cling to them, increasing the exposure time.

Notably in 2002, twenty managers of the KFC fast food chain in Australia received treatment
for burns caused by firewalking. However, this exercise in firewalking was practiced over
timber, a more efficient heat conductor than charcoal.

Glossolalia
Wikipedia.org

Glossolalia or speaking in tongues is the fluid vocalizing (or, less commonly, the writing) of
speech-like syllables, often as part of religious practice. The significance of glossolalia has
varied with time and place, with some considering it a part of a sacred language. It is most
prominently practiced within Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, but it is practiced in
non-Christian religions as well. Others believe that the vocalizations are meaningless and cite
hypnosis, mental illness, and social learning as scientific explanations.

Glossolalia also sometimes refers to xenoglossy, which is speaking in a natural language that
was previously unknown to the speaker.

Etymology

"Glossolalia" is constructed from the Greek word , itself a compound of the words
(glossa), meaning "tongue" or "language" and (lale), "To speak, talk, chat,
prattle, or to make a sound". The Greek expression (in various forms) appears in the New
Testament in the books of Acts and 1 Corinthians.

"Speaking in tongues" has been used at least since the translation of the New Testament into
Middle English in the Wycliffe Bible in the 14th century. Frederic William Farrar first used the
word "glossolalia" in 1879.

Linguistics

In 1972, William J. Samarin, a linguist from the University of Toronto, published a thorough
assessment of Pentecostal glossolalia that became a classic work on its linguistic
characteristics. His assessment was based on a large sample of glossolalia recorded in public
and private Christian meetings in Italy, Holland, Jamaica, Canada and the USA over the course
of five years; his wide range included the Puerto Ricans of the Bronx, the Snake Handlers of
the Appalachians, and Russian Molokan in Los Angeles.

Samarin found that glossolalic speech does resemble human language in some respects. The
speaker uses accent, rhythm, intonation and pauses to break up the speech into distinct units.
Each unit is itself made up of syllables, the syllables being formed from consonants and vowels
taken from a language known to the speaker:

It is verbal behavior that consists of using a certain number of consonants and vowels[...]in
a limited number of syllables that in turn are organized into larger units that are taken apart
and rearranged pseudogrammatically[...]with variations in pitch, volume, speed and intensity.

[Glossolalia] consists of strings of syllables, made up of sounds taken from all those that
the speaker knows, put together more or less haphazardly but emerging nevertheless as
word-like and sentence-like units because of realistic, language-like rhythm and melody.

That the sounds are taken from the set of sounds already known to the speaker is confirmed
by others. Felicitas Goodman, a psychological anthropologist and linguist, also found that the
speech of glossolalists reflected the patterns of speech of the speaker's native language.

Samarin found that the resemblance to human language was merely on the surface, and so
concluded that glossolalia is "only a facade of language". He reached this conclusion because
the syllable string did not form words, the stream of speech was not internally organised,
and most importantly of all there was no systematic relationship between units of speech
and concepts. Humans use language to communicate, but glossolalia does not. Therefore he
concluded that glossolalia is not "a specimen of human language because it is neither
internally organized nor systematically related to the world man perceives". On the basis of his
linguistic analysis, Samarin defined Pentecostal glossolalia as "meaningless but phonologically
structured human utterance, believed by the speaker to be a real language but bearing no
systematic resemblance to any natural language, living or dead".

Practitioners of glossolalia may disagree with linguistic researchers and claim that they are
speaking human languages (xenoglossia). Felicitas Goodman studied a number of Pentecostal
communities in the United States, the Caribbean and Mexico; these included English, Spanish
and Mayan speaking groups. She compared what she found with recordings of non-Christian
rituals from Africa, Borneo, Indonesia and Japan. She took into account both the segmental
structure (such as sounds, syllables, phrases) and the supra-segmental elements (rhythm,
accent, intonation), and concluded that there was no distinction between what was practiced
by the Pentecostal Protestants and the followers of other religions.

Glossolalia in Christianity

Theological Explanations

In Christianity, a supernatural explanation for glossolalia is advocated by some and rejected
by others.

Glossolalists could, apart from those practicing glossolalia, also mean all those Christians
who believe that the Pentecostal/charismatic glossolalia practiced today is the "speaking in
tongues" described in the New Testament. They believe that it is a miraculous charism or
spiritual gift. Glossolalists claim that these tongues can be both real, unlearned languages
(i.e., xenoglossia) as well as a "language of the spirit", a "heavenly language", or perhaps the
language of angels.

Cessationists believe that all the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased to occur early
in Christian history, and therefore that the speaking in tongues practised today is simply the
utterance of meaningless syllables. It is neither xenoglossia nor miraculous, but rather learned
behavior, possibly self-induced. These believe that what the New Testament described as
"speaking in tongues" was xenoglossia, a miraculous spiritual gift through which the speaker
could communicate in natural languages not previously studied.

Proponents of each viewpoint use the biblical writings and historical arguments to support
their positions.

Biblical practice

There are five places in the New Testament where speaking in tongues is referred to explicitly:

Mark 16:17, which records the instructions of Christ to the apostles, including his
description that "they will speak with new tongues" as a sign that would follow "them
that believe" in him. Many scholars take Mark 16:8 as the original ending and believe
the ending (Mark 16:9-20) was written later.
Acts 2, which describes an occurrence of speaking in tongues in Jerusalem at
Pentecost, though with various interpretations.
Acts 10:46, when the household of Cornelius in Caesarea spoke in tongues, and those
present compared it to the speaking in tongues that occurred at Pentecost.
Acts 19:6, when a group of approximately a dozen men spoke in tongues in Ephesus
as they received the Holy Spirit while the apostle Paul laid his hands upon them.
1 Cor 12, 13, 14, where Paul discusses speaking in "various kinds of tongues" as part
of his wider discussion of the gifts of the Spirit; his remarks shed some light on his
own speaking in tongues as well as how the gift of speaking in tongues was to be used
in the church.

Other verses by inference may be considered to refer to 'speaking in tongues', such as Isaiah
28:11, Romans 8:26 and Jude 20.

The biblical account of Pentecost in the second chapter of the book of Acts describes the sound
of a mighty rushing wind and "divided tongues like fire" coming to rest on the apostles. The
text further describes that "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in
unknown languages." It goes on to say in verses 5-11 that when the Apostles spoke, each
person in attendance "heard their own language being spoken." Therefore, the gift of speaking
in tongues refers to the Apostles' ability to speak in their native language while the people
listening heard "them declaring the wonders of God in [their] own tongues." Glossolalists and
cessationists both recognize this as xenoglossia, a miraculous ability that marked their
baptism in the Holy Spirit. Something similar (although perhaps not xenoglossia) took place on
at least two subsequent occasions, in Caesarea and Ephesus.

The Apostle Paul instructed the church in Corinth about speaking in tongues in his discussion
of the gifts of the Spirit in a letter to them. His purpose was to encourage them to value the
gift, but not too highly; to practice it, but not abuse it. In the letter, Paul commands church
brethren, "Do not forbid to speak in tongues" (1 Cor 14:39), while warning them that "all
things must be done properly and in an orderly manner" He further expresses his wishes that
those to whom he wrote "all spoke with tongues" (1 Cor 14:5) and claims himself to speak
with tongues more than any in the church at Corinth ("I thank God I speak with tongues more
than you all" 1 Cor 14:18). At the same time he argues that not everyone can speak in
tongues (1 Cor 12:29) and discourages simultaneous speaking in tongues directed at people
rather than God, lest unbelievers should think that the assembled believers were "mad" (1 Cor
14:23, 27). Tongues, says Paul, is speaking to God, rather than men ("in the Spirit he speaks
mysteries" (1 Cor 14:2)). Paul claims that speaking in tongues edifies the person speaking (1
Cor 14:4), that it is the action of a praying speaker's spirit (as opposed his or her
understanding, see 1 Cor 14:14), and that praying in tongues serves both to bless God as well
as to give thanks (1 Cor 14:16-17). However, he also expressed a preference for prophecy
over speaking in tongues, unless [a speaker in tongues] interprets, so that the church may be
edified(1 Cor 14:5). Paul also gave instructions that, unless there was an interpreter present,
the speaker should "keep quiet in the church", and speak only to himself and to God (1 Cor
14:27-28).

Glossolalists and cessationists generally agree that the primary purpose of the gift of speaking
in tongues was to mark the Holy Spirit being poured out. At Pentecost the Apostle Peter
declared that this gift, which was making some in the audience ridicule the disciples as drunks,
was the fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel which described that God would pour out his Spirit
on all flesh (Acts 2:17).

Despite these commonalities, there are significant variations in interpretation.

Universal. The traditional Pentecostal view is that every Christian should expect to be
baptized in the Holy Spirit, the distinctive mark of which is glossolalia. While most Protestants
agree that baptism in the Holy Spirit is integral to being a Christian, others believe that it is
not separable from conversion and no longer marked by glossolalia. Pentecostals appeal to the
declaration of the Apostle Peter at Pentecost, that "the gift of the Holy Spirit" was "for you and
for your children and for all who are far off" (Acts 2:38-39). Cessationists reply that the gift of
speaking in tongues was never for all (1 Cor 12:30). In response to those who say that the
Baptism in the Holy Spirit is not a separate experience from conversion, Pentecostals appeal to
the question asked by the Apostle Paul to the Ephesian believers "Have ye received the Holy
Ghost since ye believed?" (Acts 19:2).
One gift. Different aspects of speaking in tongues appear in Acts and 1 Corinthians, such
that the Assemblies of God declare that the gift in Acts "is the same in essence as the gift of
tongues" in 1 Corinthians "but different in purpose and use". They distinguish between
(private) speech in tongues when receiving the gift of the Spirit, and (public) speech in
tongues for the benefit of the church. Others assert that the gift in Acts was "not a different
phenomenon" but the same gift being displayed under varying circumstances. The same
description - 'speaking in tongues' - is used in both Acts and 1 Corinthians, and in both cases
the speech is in an unlearned language.
Direction. The New Testament describes tongues largely as speech addressed to God, but
also as something that can potentially be interpreted into human language, thereby "edifying
the hearers" (1 Cor 14:5,13). At Pentecost and Caesarea the speakers were praising God (Acts
2:11; 10:46). Paul referred to praying, singing praise, and giving thanks in tongues (1 Cor
14:14-17), as well as to the interpretation of tongues (1 Cor 14:5), and instructed those
speaking in tongues to pray for the ability to interpret their tongues so others could
understand them (1 Cor 14:13). While some limit speaking in tongues to speech addressed to
God - "prayer or praise", others claim that speech in tongues is revelation from God to the
church, and when interpreted into human language by those embued with the gift of
interpretation of tongues for the benefit of others present, may be considered equivalent to
prophecy.
Music. Musical interludes of glossolalia are sometimes described as singing in the Spirit.
Some hold that singing in the Spirit is identified with singing in tongues in 1 Corinthians
14:13-19, which they hold to be "spiritual or spirited singing", as opposed to "communicative
or impactive singing" which Paul refers to as "singing with the understanding".
Sign for unbelievers (1 Cor 14:22). Some assume that tongues are "a sign for
unbelievers that they might believe", and so advocate it as a means of evangelism. Others
point out that Paul quotes Isaiah to show that "when God speaks to people in language they
cannot understand, it is quite evidently a sign of God's judgment"; so if unbelievers are baffled
by a church service they cannot understand because tongues are spoken without being
interpreted, that is a "sign of God's attitude", "a sign of judgment".
Comprehension. Some say that speech in tongues was "not understood by the speaker"
Others assert that "the tongues-speaker normally understood his own foreign-language
message". This last comment seems to have been made by someone confusing the "gift of
tongues" with the "gift of the interpretation of tongues, which is specified as a different gift in
the New Testament, but one that can be given to a person who also has the gift of tongues. In
that case, a person understands a message in tongues that he has previously spoken in an
unknown language."

Church practice

A.D. 100 to 400

20th century Pentecostalism was not the earliest instance of "speaking in tongues" in church
history, but earlier examples are few; in church history and writing after the New Testament,
it had never been regarded as orthodox until the rise of Pentecostalism.

References to speaking in tongues by the Church fathers are rare. Except for Irenaeus' 2nd-
century reference to many in the church speaking all kinds of languages 'through the Spirit',
and Tertullian's reference in 207 AD to the spiritual gift of interpretation of tongues being
encountered in his day, there are no other known first-hand accounts of glossolalia, and very
few second-hand accounts among their writings.

What we do have are general remarks that Christ had given the gifts of the Spirit to the
church, and that the gifts in general remained in the church.

For the prophetical gifts remain with us, even to this present time. (Justin Martyr,
c.150)

Now, it is possible to see amongst us women and men who possess gifts of the
Spirit of God. (Justin Martyr, c.150)

The Fathers also recount the lists of gifts of the Spirit recorded in the New Testament.

This is He who places prophets in the Church, instructs teachers, directs tongues,
gives powers and healings, does wonderful works, often discrimination of spirits,
affords powers of government, suggests counsels, and orders and arranges whatever
other gifts there are of charismata; and thus make the Lords Church everywhere, and
in all, perfected and completed. (Novatian, c.200-c.258)

For God hath set same in the Church, first apostlessecondly prophetsthirdly
teachersnext mighty works, among which are the healing of diseases and gifts of
either speaking or interpreting divers kinds of tongues. Clearly these are the Churchs
agents of ministry and work of whom the body of Christ consists; and God has
ordained them. (Hilary of Poitiers, 360)

There is one instance of a Father apparently recording that he had heard some in the church
speaking all kinds of languages through the Spirit:

In like manner we do also hear many brethren in the Church, who possess
prophetic gifts, and who through the Spirit speak all kinds of languages, and bring to
light for the general benefit the hidden things of men, and declare the mysteries of
God. (Irenaeus, c.180)

Tertullian in an anti-heretical apologetic alludes to instances of the 'interpretation of tongues'
as one among several examples of 'spiritual gifts' common enough in his day to be easily
encountered and provide evidence that God was at work in the church:

Let Marcion then exhibit, as gifts of his god, some prophets, such as have not
spoken by human sense, but with the Spirit of God, such as have both predicted
things to come, and have made manifest the secrets of the heart; let him produce a
psalm, a vision, a prayer -- only let it be by the Spirit, in an ecstasy, that is, in a
rapture, whenever an interpretation of tongues has occurred to him; let him show to
me also, that any woman of boastful tongue in his community has ever prophesied
from amongst those specially holy sisters of his. Now all these signs (of spiritual gifts)
are forthcoming from my side without any difficulty, and they agree, too, with the
rules, and the dispensations, and the instructions of the Creator; therefore without
doubt the Christ, and the Spirit, and the apostle, belong severally to my God. Here,
then, is my frank avowal for any one who cares to require it. (Tertullian, c.207)

There were unorthodox movements that may have engaged in glossolalia. For example,
Montanus was accused (by his opponents) of ecstatic speech that some have equated to
glossolalia:

He became possessed of a spirit, and suddenly began to rave in a kind of ecstatic
trance, and to babble in a jargon, prophesying in a manner contrary to the custom of
the Church which had been handed down by tradition from the earliest times.
(Eusebius, d.c.339)

Their hostility to such a practice demonstrates that the mainstream (the anti-Montanists)
regarded it as false, and would never have practised it. Indeed, "after the first or perhaps the
second century, there is not record of it in any Orthodox source, and it is not recorded as
occurring even among the great Fathers of the Egyptian desert, who were so filled with the
Spirit of God they performed numerous astonishing miracles, including raising the dead".

However, Eusebius' words demonstrate that he still regards the gift of prophesying as being a
normal part of church life, so he is clearly not a cessationist.

Chrysostom regarded the whole phenomenon of 'speaking in tongues' as not only something
that was not practised in his own day, but was even obscure.

This whole phenomenon [of speaking in tongues] is very obscure, but the obscurity
is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being
such then as used to occur but now no longer take place. And why do they not happen
now? Why look now, the cause too of the obscurity hath produced us again another
question: namely, why did they then happen, and now do so no more? (Chrysostom,
344-407)

Augustine of Hippo regarded speaking in tongues (that is, xenoglossia) as a gift for the
apostolic church alone, and argued that this was evident from the fact that his contemporaries
did not see people receiving that gift in their own day.

In the earliest times, "the Holy Ghost fell upon them that believed: and they spake
with tongues", which they had not learned, "as the Spirit gave them utterance". These
were signs adapted to the time. For there behooved to be that betokening of the Holy
Spirit in all tongues, to shew that the Gospel of God was to run through all tongues
over the whole earth. That thing was done for a betokening, and it passed away. In
the laying on of hands now, that persons may receive the Holy Ghost, do we look that
they should speak with tongues? Or when he laid the hand on infants, did each one of
you look to see whether they would speak with tongues, and, when he saw that they
did not speak with tongues, was any of you so strong-minded as to say, These have
not received the Holy Ghost; for, had they received, they would speak with tongues as
was the case in those times? If then the witness of the presence of the Holy Ghost be
not given through these miracles, by what is it given, by what does one get to know
that he has received the Holy Ghost? Let him question his own heart. If he love his
brother, the Spirit of God dwelleth in him. (Augustine of Hippo, 354-430)

Augustine did, however, recognise a phenomenon he called jubilation - sounds of exaltation
without words; commentators such as Richard Hogue speculate that the practice of singing in
the spirit persisted in Augustine's era, although xenoglossia was no longer extant among
Christian:

Behold, he giveth as it were the tune of thy song; seek not words as if thou
couldest explain whereby God is pleased. Sing with jubilation: for this is to sing
skilfully unto God, to sing with jubilation. What is it to sing with jubilation ? To be
unable to understand, to express in words, what is sung in the heart. For singers,
either in the harvest, or in the vineyard, or in any other busy work, after they have
begun in the words of their hymns to exult and rejoice, being as it were filled with so
great joy, that they cannot express it in words, then turn from actual words, and
proceed to sounds of jubilation. The jubilee is a sound signifying that the heart
laboureth with that which it cannot utter. And whom beseemeth that jubilation, but
the Ineffable God? For He is Ineffable, Whom thou canst not speak; and if thou canst
not speak Him, and oughtest not to keep Him silent, what remaineth to thee but
jubilation ; that the heart may rejoice without words, and the boundless extent of joy
may have no limits of syllables? Sing skilfully unto Him with jubilation.
Augustine of Hippo on the 33 Psalm

A.D. 400 to 1900

5th century St. Patrick of Ireland (c. 387493), in The Confession of St. Patrick, records
hearing a strange language being prayed by the Holy Spirit in a dream. St. Patrick says in his
book:

And another night God knows, I do not, whether within me or beside me most
words which I heard and could not understand, except at the end of the speech it was
represented thus: 'He who gave his life for you, he it is who speaks within you.' And
thus I awoke, joyful.

And on a second occasion I saw Him praying within me, and I was as it were, inside
my own body , and I heard Him above methat is, above my inner self. He was
praying powerfully with sighs. And in the course of this I was astonished and
wondering, and I pondered who it could be who was praying within me. But at the end
of the prayer it was revealed to me that it was the Spirit. And so I awoke and
remembered the Apostle's words: "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for
we know not how to pray as we ought. But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with
sighs too deep for utterance [Romans 8:26]." And again: "The Lord our advocate
intercedes for us [Romans 8:27].

12th century Bernard of Clairvaux, commenting on Mark 16:17 ("they will speak in new
tongues"), asked: "For who is there that seems to have these signs of the faith, without which
no one, according to this Scripture, shall be saved?" He explained that these signs were no
longer present because there were greater miracles the transformed lives of believers.

12th century Hildegard of Bingen is reputed to have spoken and sung in tongues. Her
spiritual songs were referred to by contemporaries as "concerts in the Spirit."

1265 Thomas Aquinas wrote about the gift of tongues in the New Testament, which he
understood to be an ability to speak every language, given for the purposes of missionary
work. He explained that Christ did not have this gift because his mission was to the Jews, "nor
does each one of the faithful now speak save in one tongue"; for "no one speaks in the
tongues of all nations, because the Church herself already speaks the languages of all
nations".

14th century The Moravians are referred to by detractors as having spoken in tongues.
John Roche, a contemporary critic, claimed that the Moravians "commonly broke into some
disconnected Jargon, which they often passed upon the vulgar, 'as the exuberant and
resistless Evacuations of the Spirit'".

17th century The French Prophets: The Camisards also spoke sometimes in languages that
were unknown: "Several persons of both Sexes," James Du Bois of Montpellier recalled, "I
have heard in their Extasies pronounce certain words, which seem'd to the Standers-by, to be
some Foreign Language." These utterances were sometimes accompanied by the gift of
interpretation exercised, in Du Bois' experience, by the same person who had spoken in
tongues.

17th century Early Quakers, such as Edward Burrough, make mention of tongues speaking
in their meetings: "We spoke with new tongues, as the Lord gave us utterance, and His Spirit
led us".
1817 In Germany, Gustav von Below, an aristocratic officer of the Prussian Guard, and his
brothers, founded a charismatic movement based on their estates in Pomerania, which may
have included speaking in tongues.

19th century Edward Irving and the Catholic Apostolic Church. Edward Irving, a minister in
the Church of Scotland, writes of a woman who would "speak at great length, and with
superhuman strength, in an unknown tongue, to the great astonishment of all who heard, and
to her own great edification and enjoyment in God". Irving further stated that "tongues are a
great instrument for personal edification, however mysterious it may seem to us."

19th century The history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church),
contains extensive references to the phenomenon of speaking in tongues by Brigham Young,
Joseph Smith and many others. At the 1836 dedication of the Kirtland Temple the dedicatory
prayer asks that God grant them the gift of tongues and at the end of the service Brigham
Young speaks in tongues, another elder interprets it and then gives his own exhortation in
tongues. Many other worship experiences in the Kirtland Temple prior to and after the
dedication included references to people speaking and interpreting tongues. In describing the
beliefs of the church in the Wentworth letter, Joseph Smith identified a belief of the "gift of
tongues" and "interpretation of tongues". Sidney Rigdon had disagreements with Alexander
Campbell regarding speaking in
tongues, and later joined the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-
day Saints. The practice of
glossolalia by the Latter-day
Saints seems to have been much
more restrained than in many
other contemporary movements.
Young, Smith, and numerous
other early leaders frequently
cautioned against the public
exercise of glossolalia unless
there was someone who could
exercise the corresponding
spiritual gift of interpretation of
tongues, so that listeners could be
edified by what had been said.
Although the Latter-day Saints
believe that speaking in tongues
and the interpretation of tongues
are alive and well in the Church,
modern Mormons are much more likely to point to the way in which LDS missionaries are
trained and learn foreign languages quickly, and are able to communicate rapidly, on their
missions, as evidence of the manifestation of this gift. The visitor at LDS church services will
never hear spontaneous, incomprehensible glossolalia as s/he might at a Pentecostal service.

20th century to present


During the 20th century, glossolalia would primarily become associated with Pentecostalism
and the later charismatic movement. The holiness preachers Charles Parham and William
Seymour are credited as co-founders of the movement. It was Parham who formulated the
doctrine of "initial evidence". After studying the Bible, Parham came to the conclusion that
speaking in tongues was the Bible evidence that one had received the baptism with the Holy
Spirit.

In 1900, Parham opened Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas, where he taught initial
evidence. During a service on January 1, 1901, a student named Agnes Ozman asked for
prayer and the laying on of hands to specifically ask God to fill her with the Holy Spirit. She
became the first of many students to experience glossolalia, coincidentally in the first hours of
the 20th century. Parham followed within the next few days. Parham called his new movement
the Apostolic Faith. In 1905, he moved to Houston and opened a Bible school there. One of his
students was William Seymour, an African-American preacher. In 1906, Seymour traveled to
Los Angeles where his preaching ignited the Azusa Street Revival. This revival is considered
the birth of the global Pentecostal movement. Witnesses at the Azusa Street Revival wrote of
seeing fire resting on the heads of participants, miraculous healings in the meetings, and
incidents of speaking in tongues being understood by native speakers of the language.
According to the first issue of William Seymore's newsletter, "The Apostolic Faith," from 1906:

A Mohammedan, a Soudanese by birth, a [m]an who is an interpreter and speaks
six[t]een languages, came into the meetings at Azusa Street and the Lord gave him
messages which none but himself could understand. He identified, interpreted and
wrote [a] number of the languages.

Parham and his early followers believed that speaking in tongues was xenoglossia, and some
followers traveled to foreign countries and tried to use the gift to share the Gospel with non-
English-speaking people. These attempts consistently resulted in failure and many of Parham's
followers rejected his teachings after being disillusioned with their attempts to speak


Headline about the "Weird babel of tongues" and other
behavior at Azusa Street, from a 1906 Los Angeles
Times newspaper.

unlearned foreign languages. Despite these setbacks, belief in xenoglossia persisted into the
latter half of the 20th century among Pentecostal groups.

The revival at Azusa Street lasted until around 1915. From it grew many new Pentecostal
churches as people visited the services in Los Angeles and took their new found beliefs to
communities around the United States and abroad. During the 20th century, glossolalia
became an important part of the identity of these religious groups. During the 1960s, the
charismatic movement within the mainline Protestant churches and among charismatic Roman
Catholics would adopt some Pentecostal beliefs, and the practice of glossolalia would spread to
other Christian denominations. The discussion regarding tongues has permeated many
branches of the Protestantism, particularly since the widespread Charismatic Movement in the
1960s. Many books have been published either defending or attacking the practice.

Because Pentecostal and charismatic beliefs are not monolithic, there is not complete
theological agreement on speaking in tongues. Generally, however, it is agreed that speaking
in tongues is a spiritual gift that can be manifested as either a human language or a heavenly
supernatural language in three ways . The "sign of tongues" refers to xenoglossia, wherein
one speaks an actual language he has never learned. The "gift of tongues" refers to a
glossolalic utterance spoken by an individual and addressed to a congregation of, typically,
other believers. Lastly, "praying in the spirit" is typically used to refer to glossolalia as part of
personal prayer. Many Pentecostals and charismatics adhere to Paul's words in 1 Corinthians
14 which established guidelines on the public use of glossolalia in the church at Corinth.

The gift of tongues is often referred to as a "message in tongues". This use of glossolalia
requires an interpretation so that the gathered congregation can understand the message.
This is accomplished by the interpretation of tongues, another spiritual gift. There are two
schools of thoughts concerning the nature of a message in tongues. One school of thought
believes it is always directed to God as prayer, praise, or thanksgiving but is spoken in for the
hearing and edification of the congregation. The other school of thought believes that a
message in tongues can be a prophetic utterance inspired by the Holy Spirit. In this case, the
speaker delivers a message to the congregation on behalf of God.

In addition to praying in the Spirit, many Pentecostal and charismatic churches practice what
is known as singing in the Spirit.

Non-Christian practice

Other religious groups been observed to practice some form of theopneustic glossolalia. It is
perhaps most commonly in Paganism, Shamanism, and other mediumistic religious practices.
In Japan, the God Light Association used to practice glossolalia to cause adherents to recall
past lives.

Glossolalia has even been postulated as an explanation for the Voynich manuscript.

Certain Gnostic magical texts from the Roman period have written on them unintelligible
syllables such as "t t t t n n n n d d d d d..." etc. It is conjectured that these may be
transliterations of the sorts of sounds made during glossolalia. The Coptic Gospel of the
Egyptians also features a hymn of (mostly) unintelligible syllables which is thought to be an
early example of Christian glossolalia.

In the 19th century, Spiritism was developed by the work of Allan Kardec, and the
phenomenon was seen as one of the self-evident manifestations of spirits. Spiritists argued
that some cases were actually cases of xenoglossia (from Greek,xenos, stranger; and glossa,
language. When one speaks in a language unknown to him).

Glossolalia has also been observed in the Voodoo religion of Haiti, as well as in the Hindu
Gurus and Fakirs of India.

Scientific explanations

Scientific explanations for these physical and psychological phenomena have been suggested,
including mental illness, hypnosis, and learned behavior.

Neuroscience

In 2006, the brains of a group of individuals were scanned while they were speaking in
tongues. Activity in the language centers of the brain decreased, while activity in the
emotional centers of the brain increased. Activity in the area of control decreased, which
corresponds with the reported experience of loss of control. There were no changes in any
language areas, suggesting that glossolalia is not associated with usual language function.
Other brain wave studies have also found that brain activity alters in glossolalia.

Mental illness

As Pentecostalism expanded in the 20th century and attracted the attention of the wider
world, psychologists initially thought of glossolalia in pathological terms, thinking that it was
caused by mental illness. In 1927 George Cutten described speakers in tongues as people of
low mental abilities.

This explanation was effectively refuted in 1969 by a team from the University of Minnesota,
who conducted an extensive study covering the United States, Mexico, Haiti and Colombia;
they reached practitioners among Pentecostals, other Protestant groups, and Roman Catholics.

Cutten's contentions concerning psychopathology, quoted and re-quoted through
the years, have taken on an aura of fact among non-Pentecostal churchmen who are
critical of the movement. His assumption that glossolalia is linked to schizophrenia and
hysteria has not been supported by any empirical evidence.

Subsequently, a 2003 statistical study in the religious journal Pastoral Psychology concluded
that, among the 991 male evangelical clergy sampled, glossolalia was associated with stable
extroversion, and contrary to some theories, completely unrelated to psychopathology.

Hypnosis

Some kind of hypnosis or trance has often been suggested as the explanation for glossolalia.
Much glossolalia takes place in heightened states, whether in Pentecostal Christian or non-
Christian contexts. But glossolalia does not require a state of hypnosis or trance. An
experiment was conducted in which 12 experienced glossolalists performed with eyes open
and without accompanying kinetic activity (such as trembling or shaking) or any residual
disorientation. Moreover glossolalia is not only displayed in group situations. The Minnesotan
study found that "after the initial experience of glossolalia, most Pentecostals speak with
tongues as frequently, if not more frequently, alone in private prayer", including some for the
first time. These findings rule out hypnosis by another, although self-hypnosis may play a
part.

A New Zealand researcher, Heather Kavan, found that whether a person experienced trance or
hypnosis depended on the type of group with which they were affiliated. Kavan found that
most New Zealand Pentecostals and Charismatics did not experience trance except during the
baptism of the spirit. However, meditators in a yoga-based purification group experienced
frequent intense trances, of which glossolalia was an occasional manifestation. Kavan
suggested that there are two types of glossolalia spontaneous and context-dependent and
the former is more likely to occur in groups that are radical, experiential and charismatically
led.

Learned behavior

The material explanation arrived at by a number of studies is that glossolalia is "learned
behavior". What is taught is the ability to produce language-like speech. This is only a partial
explanation, but it is a part that has withstood much testing. It is possible to train novices to
produce glossolalic speech. One experiment with 60 undergraduates found that 20%
succeeded after merely listening to a 60-second sample, and 70% succeeded after training:

Our findings that glossolalia can be easily learned through direct instruction, along
with demonstrations that tongue speakers can initiate and terminate glossolalia upon
request and can exhibit glossolalia in the absence of any indexes of trance[] support
the hypothesis that glossolalia utterances are goal-directed actions rather than
involuntary happenings.

That glossolalia can be learned is also seen in the traces left behind by teachers. An
investigation by the Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn showed that the influence of a
particular leader can shape a group's glossolalia: where certain prominent glossolalists had
visited, whole groups of glossolalists would speak in his style of speech.



Lazarus Syndrome
Wikipedia.org

Lazarus syndrome or autoresuscitation after failed cardiopulmonary resuscitation is the
spontaneous return of circulation after failed attempts at resuscitation. Its occurrence has
been noted in medical literature at least 25 times since 1982. Also called Lazarus
phenomenon, it takes its name from Lazarus who, in the New Testament account, was raised
from the dead by Jesus.

Occurrences of the syndrome are extremely rare and the causes are not well understood. One
theory for the phenomenon is that a chief factor (though not the only one) is the buildup of
pressure in the chest as a result of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The
relaxation of pressure after resuscitation efforts have ended is thought to allow the heart to
expand, triggering the heart's electrical impulses and restarting the heartbeat. Other possible
factors are hyperkalemia or high doses of epinephrine.

Cases

A 61-year-old woman from Delaware, USA, who was given "multiple medicines and
synchronized shocks", but never regained a pulse. She was declared dead but was
discovered in the morgue to be alive and breathing. She sued the medical center
where it happened for damages due to physical and neurological problems stemming
from the event.

A 66-year-old man suffering from a suspected abdominal aneurysm. During treatment
for this condition, the patient suffered cardiac arrest and received chest compressions
and defibrillation shocks for 17 minutes. Vital signs did not return; the patient was
declared dead and resuscitation efforts ended. Ten minutes later, the surgeon felt a
pulse. The aneurysm was successfully treated and the patient fully recovered with no
lasting physical or neurological problems.

A 27-year-old man in the UK went into cardiac arrest after overdosing on heroin and
cocaine. After 25 minutes of resuscitation efforts, the patient was verbally declared
dead. About a minute after resuscitation ended, a nurse noticed a rhythm on the heart
monitor and resuscitation was resumed. The patient recovered fully.

An 18-year-old woman in Missouri, USA, attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping
medication. Resuscitation was attempted, but failed, and she was declared dead.
Seven minutes later, her heart started beating and she started breathing on her own
again, though she was comatose. The woman regained consciousness 5 days later and
was oblivious to what had happened.

A 45 year-old woman in Colombia was pronounced dead, as there were no vital signs
showing she was alive. Later, a funeral worker noticed the woman moving and alerted
his co-worker that the woman should go back to the hospital.

A 65-year old man in Malaysia came back to life two-and-a-half hours after doctors at
a Penang hospital pronounced him dead. He died three weeks later.

Implications

The Lazarus Syndrome raises ethical issues for doctors, who must determine when medical
death has occurred, resuscitation efforts should end, and post-mortem procedures such as
autopsies and organ harvesting may take place. One doctor wrote, "Perhaps it is a supreme
hubris on our part to presume that we can reliably distinguish the reversible from the
irreversible, or the salvageable from the nonsalvageable."

Medical literature has recommended observation of a patient's vital signs for five to ten
minutes after cessation of resuscitation before certifying death.


Miracle Man Sai Baba
Wikipedia.org

Sai Baba of Shirdi (September 28, 1835 October 15,
1918), also known as Shirdi Sai Baba, was an Indian
guru, yogi, and fakir who is regarded by his Hindu and
Muslim devotees as a saint. Many Hindu devotees
including Hemadpant who wrote the famous Shri Sai
Satcharitra consider him an incarnation of Lord Krishna
while other devotees consider him as an incarnation of
Lord Dattatreya. Many devotees believe that he was a
Satguru, an enlightened Sufi Pir, or a Qutub. He is a well-
known figure in many parts of the world, but especially in
India, where he is much revered.

Sai Baba's real name is unknown. The name "Sai" was
given to him upon his arrival at Shirdi, a town in the
west-Indian state of Maharashtra, by Mhalsapati, a
devotee of Kandoba Raya at the temple stairs where he
first saw him. No information is available regarding his
birth and place of birth. Sai baba never spoke about his
past life, though he did mention to several devotees like
Shyama that their relationship exists since 72 births.

S is of Sanskrit origin, meaning "Sakshat Eshwar" or the
divine. The honorific "Baba" means "father; grandfather; old man; sir" in Indo-Aryan
languages. Thus Sai Baba denotes "holy father" or "saintly father".

Sai Baba remains a very popular saint, and is worshiped by people around the world. He had
no love for perishable things and his sole concern was self-realization. He taught a moral code
of love, forgiveness, helping others, charity, contentment, inner peace, and devotion to God
and guru. Sai Baba's teaching combined elements of Hinduism and Islam: he gave the Hindu
name Dwarakamayi to the mosque he lived in, practiced Hindu and Muslim rituals, taught
using words and figures that drew from both traditions, and was buried in Shirdi. One of his
well known epigrams, "Sabka Malik Ek" ("One God governs all"), is associated with Islam and
Sufism. He always uttered "Allah Malik" ("God is King").

Sai Baba is revered by several notable Hindu religious leaders. Some of his disciples became
famous as spiritual figures and saints, such as Mhalsapati, a priest of Kandoba temple in
Shridi, Upasni Maharaj, Saint Bidkar Maharaj, Saint Gangagir, Saint Jankidas Maharaj, and
Sati Godavari Mataji.

Early years

Little has been officially documented on the early life of Shirdi Sai Baba.

Baba reportedly arrived at the village of Shirdi in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra,
British India, when he was about 16 years old. It is generally accepted that Sai Baba stayed in
Shirdi for three years, disappeared for a year, and returned permanently around 1858.

Return to ShirdI

in 1858 Sai Baba returned to Shirdi. Around this time he adopted his famous style of dress
consisting of a knee-length one-piece robe (kafni) and a cloth cap. Ramgir Bua, a devotee,
testified that Sai Baba was dressed like an athlete and sported 'long hair flowing down to the
end of his spine' when he arrived in Shirdi, and that he never had his head shaved. It was only
after Baba forfeited a wrestling match with one Mohdin Tamboli that he took up the kafni and
cloth cap, articles of typical Sufi clothing. This attire contributed to Baba's identification as a
Muslim fakir, and was a reason for initial indifference and hostility against him in a
predominantly Hindu village. According to B.V. Narasimhaswami, a posthumous follower who
was widely praised as Sai Baba's "apostle", this attitude was prevalent up to 1854 even among
some of his devotees in Shirdi.

For four to five years Baba lived under a neem tree, and often wandered for long periods in
the jungle around Shirdi. His manner was said to be withdrawn and uncommunicative as he
undertook long periods of meditation. The Shri Sai Satcharita recounts the reaction of the
villagers:

The people of the village were wonder-struck to see such a young lad practicing hard penance,
not minding heat or cold. By day he associated with no one, by night he was afraid of nobody.

He was eventually persuaded to take up residence in an old and dilapidated mosque and lived
a solitary life there, surviving by begging for alms, and receiving itinerant Hindu or Muslim
visitors. In the mosque he maintained a sacred fire which is referred to as a dhuni, from which
he gave sacred ashes ('Udhi') to his guests before they left. The ash was believed to have
healing and apotropaic powers. He performed the function of a local hakim, and treated the
sick by application of ashes. Sai Baba also delivered spiritual teachings to his visitors,
recommending the reading of sacred Hindu texts along with the Qur'an. He insisted on the
indispensability of the unbroken remembrance of God's name (dhikr, japa), and often
expressed himself in a cryptic manner with the use of parables, symbols and allegories.

Sai Baba participated in religious festivals and was also in the habit of preparing food for his
visitors, which he distributed to them as prasad. Sai Baba's entertainment was dancing and
singing religious songs.

After 1910 Sai Baba's fame began to spread in Mumbai. Numerous people started visiting him,
because they regarded him as a saint with the power of performing miracles, or even as an
Avatar. They built his first temple at Bhivpuri, Karjat.

Teachings and practices

Sai Baba opposed all persecution
based on religion or caste. He
was an opponent of religious
orthodoxy Christian, Hindu and
Muslim. Although Sai Baba
himself led the life of an ascetic,
he advised his followers to lead
an ordinary family life.

In his personal practice, Sai Baba
observed worship procedures
belonging to Hinduism and
Islam; he shunned any kind of
regular rituals but allowed the
practice of namaz, chanting of
Al-Fatiha, and Qur'an readings at
Muslim festival times.
Occasionally reciting the Al-Fatiha himself, Baba also enjoyed listening to moulu and qawwali
accompanied with the tabla and sarangi twice daily.

Sai Baba encouraged his devotees to pray, chant God's name, and read holy scriptures. He
told Muslims to study the Qur'an, and Hindus to study texts such as the Ramayana, Bhagavad
Gita, and Yoga Vasistha. He advised his devotees and followers to lead a moral life, help
others, love every living being without any discrimination, and develop two important features
of character: faith (Shraddha) and patience (Sabr). He criticized atheism. In his teachings, Sai
Baba emphasized the importance of performing one's duties without attachment to earthly
matters, and of being content regardless of the situation.

Sai Baba interpreted the religious texts of both Islam and Hinduism. He explained the meaning
of the Hindu scriptures in the spirit of Advaita Vedanta. His philosophy also had numerous
elements of bhakti. The three main Hindu spiritual paths Bhakti Yoga, Jnana Yoga, and
Karma Yoga influenced his teachings.

Sai Baba said that God penetrates every thing and every being. He emphasized the complete
oneness of God which was very close to the Islamic tawhid and the Hindu doctrine of the
Upanishads. Sai Baba said that the world is transient, and that only God and his gifts are
eternal. He emphasized the importance of devotion to God bhakti and surrender to his will.
He also talked about the need of faith and devotion to one's spiritual guru. He said that
everyone was the soul and not the body. He advised his followers to develop a virtuous
character, and taught them that all fate was determined by karma.

Sai Baba left no written works. His teachings were typically short, pithy sayings rather than
elaborate discourses. Sai Baba would ask his followers for money (dakshina), some of which
he would give to the poor and other devotees the same day, and the rest was used to buy
wood to maintain Dhuni. According to his followers, this was done to rid them of greed and
material attachment.

Sai Baba encouraged charity, and stressed the importance of sharing. He said: "Unless there
is some relationship or connection, nobody goes anywhere. If any men or creatures come to
you, do not discourteously drive them away, but receive them well and treat them with due
respect. Shri Hari (God) will certainly be pleased if you give water to the thirsty, bread to the
hungry, clothes to the naked, and your verandah to strangers for sitting and resting. If
anybody wants any money from you and you are not inclined to give, do not give, but do not
bark at him like a dog." Other favorite sayings of his were: "Why do you fear when I am here",
and "He has no beginning... He has no end."

http://saiamrithadhara.com/

Sai Baba made twelve assurances to his devotees:

1. Whosoever puts their feet on Shirdi soil, their sufferings will come to an end.
2. The wretched and miserable will rise to joy and happiness as soon as they climb the
steps of the mosque Dwarakamayi.
3. I shall be ever active and vigorous even after leaving this earthly body.
4. My tomb shall bless and speak to the needs of my devotees.
5. I shall be active and vigorous even from my tomb.
6. My mortal remains will speak from my tomb.
7. I am ever living to help and guide all who come to me, who surrender to me, and who
seek refuge in me.
8. If you look at me, I look at you.
9. If you cast your burden on me, I shall surely bear it.
10. If you seek my advice and help, it shall be given to you at once.
11. There shall be no want in the house of my devotee.
12. If you take a step towards me, I will take 100 steps towards you

Worship and devotees

The Shirdi Sai Baba movement began in the 19th century,
while he was living in Shirdi. A local Khandoba priest -
Mhalsapati Nagre - is believed to have been his first devotee.
In the 19th century Sai Baba's followers were only a small
group of Shirdi inhabitants and a few people from other parts
of India. The movement started developing in the 20th
century, with Sai Baba's message reaching the whole of India.
During his life, Hindus worshiped him with Hindu rituals and
Muslims considered him to be a saint. In the last years of Sai
Baba's life, Christians and Zoroastrians started joining the
Shirdi Sai Baba movement.

Shirdi is among the major Hindu places of pilgrimage. The
first Sai Baba temple is situated at Bhivpuri, Karjat. The Sai
Baba Mandir (Hindu temple) in Shirdi is visited by around
twenty thousand pilgrims a day and during religious festivals
this number can reach up to a hundred thousand. Shirdi Sai
Baba is especially revered and worshiped in the states of
Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Gujarat.

The Shirdi Sai movement has spread to the Caribbean and to countries such as the United
States, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore. The Shirdi Sai Baba movement is one of the main
Hindu religious movements in English-speaking countries.

Sai Baba had many disciples and devotees:

Nana Saheb Chandorkar: Deputy Collector legend has it that Sai Baba saved this
man's daughter from labor complications.
Ganapath Rao: police constable who resigned to become an ascetic,and also known as
DasGanu, He was an itinerant who spread Sai Baba's message.
Tatya Patil: had immense faith in Sai Baba and served him until Sai Baba took
samadhi. Sai Baba used to treat Tatya Patil as His nephew.
Baija Mai kote patil: Sai Baba treated her as His elder sister and equivalent to
mother.She was Tatya Patil's mother.
Haji Abdul baba: He served Sai Baba until Sai Baba died in 1918.
Madhav Rao Deshpande: Later known as Shama, one of the staunch devotees of Sai
Baba.
Govindrao Raghunath Dabholkar (Hemadpant): Sai Baba allowed him to write the Shri
Sai Satcharita.
Mahalsapati Chimanji Nagare : A priest of Khandoba Temple.
RadhaKrishna Mai: A great devotee of Baba, cleaned the temple every day and looked
after Baba's needs.

108 Shirdi Sai Baba Slogans (mantras) are sung by devotees in praise of him as worship.

Reported miracles

Sai Baba's millions of disciples and devotees believe that he performed many miracles such
as:
Bilocation
Levitation
Mindreading
Materialization
Exorcisms
making the river Yamuna
entering a state of Samdhi at will
lightning lamps with water
removing his limbs or intestines and sticking them back to his body (khandayoga)
curing the incurably sick
appearing beaten when another was beaten
after death rising on third day like Jesus Christ
preventing a mosque from falling down on people
helping his devotees in a miraculous way

He also gave Darshan (vision) to people in the form of Rama, Krishna, Vithoba and many
other Gods depending on the faith of devotees.

According to his followers he appeared to them in dreams after his death, and gave them
advice. His devotees have documented many stories.

Historical sources

Biographers of Sai Baba (e.g. Govindrao Raghunath Dabholkar, Acharya Ekkirala Bharadwaja,
Smriti Srinivas, Antonio Rigopolous) have based their writing on primary sources. One such
source is the Shirdi Diary by Ganesh Shrikrishna Khaparde, which describes every day of the
author's stay at Shirdi.

Speculation about the unknown episodes of Sai Baba's life are primarily based on his own
words.

The most important source about Sai's life is the Shri Sai Satcharita, written in Marathi in
1916 by Govindrao Raghunath Dabholkar, whom Sai Baba nicknamed Hemadpant. Consisting
of 53 chapters, it describes Sai Baba's life, teachings, and miracles. The book compares Sai
Baba's love to a mother's love: caring and loving, but reprimanding when needed. It describes
Baba's lifestyle, his selfless attitude, and his love for his devotees. The book describes how
one should surrender one's egoism at God's feet and trust one's guru. It explains how God is
supreme and His devotees should trust Him and love Him. It teaches that God is omnipresent
in all living things, so that everything on Earth must be treated with love and respect.

Sri Sai Baba and His Teachings by Acharya Ekkirala Bharadwaja is an in-depth study of Sai
Baba's life routine and activities. B.V. Narasimhaswamiji has written important books such as
Sri Sai Baba's Charters and Sayings and Devotee's Experiences of Sai Baba.

In various religions

Hinduism

During Sai Baba's life, the Hindu saint Anandanath of Yewala declared Sai Baba a spiritual
"diamond". Another saint, Gangagir, called him a "jewel". Sri Beedkar Maharaj greatly revered
Sai Baba, and in 1873, when he met him he bestowed the title Jagad guru upon him. Sai Baba
was also greatly respected by Vasudevananda Saraswati (known as Tembye Swami). He was
also revered by a group of Shaivic yogis, to which he belonged, known as the Nath-Panchayat.

Other religions

In Islam, Sai Baba mainly appears in Sufism as a Pir. Meher Baba declared Baba to be a
Qutub-e-Irshad - the highest of the five Qutubs, a "Master of the Universe" in the spiritual
hierarchy. Sai Baba is also worshipped by prominent Zoroastrians such as Nanabhoy
Palkhivala and Homi Bhabha, and has been cited as the Zoroastrians' most popular non-
Zoroastrian religious figure.

Meher Baba met Sai Baba only once in his lifetime, during World War I, in December 1915.
Meher Baba was still a youngster named Merwan Sheriar Irani when he met Sai Baba for a few
minutes during one of Sai Baba's processions in Shirdi. This event is considered as the most
significant in Meher Baba's life. Shri Sai Satcharita (Sai Baba's life story), makes no mention of
Meher Baba. But in Lord Meher, the life story of Meher Baba, there are innumerable references
to Sai Baba. Meher Baba credited his Avataric advent to Upasni, Sai Baba, and three other
Perfect Masters Hazrat Babajan, Hazrat Tajuddin Baba, and Narayan Maharaj.

Notable disciples

Sai Baba left behind no spiritual heirs and appointed no disciples, and did not even provide
formal initiation (diksha), despite requests. Some disciples of Sai Baba achieved fame as
spiritual figures, such as Upasni Maharaj of Sakori. After Sai Baba died, his devotees offered
the daily Aarti to Upasni Maharaj when he paid a visit to Shirdi, two times within 10 years.

Sathya Sai Baba (19262011) claimed to be a reincarnation of Sai Baba; he had a
considerable number of followers in the 20th century.

In culture
Sacred art and architecture

In India, its a common sight to find a Sai Baba temple in any city or town, in every large city
or town there is at least one temple dedicated to Sai Baba. There are even some in towns and
cities outside India. In the mosque in Shirdi in which Sai Baba lived, there is a life-size portrait
of him by Shama Rao Jaykar, an artist from Mumbai. Numerous monuments and statues
depicting Sai Baba, which serve a religious function, have also been made. One of them, made
of marble by a sculptor named Balaji Vasant Talim, is in the Samadhi Mandir in Shirdi where
Sai Baba was buried. In Sai Baba temples, his devotees play various kinds of devotional
religious music, such as aarti.

Stamp

Indian Postal Service released a Sai Baba commemorative stamp in May 2008.

On July 30, 2009, the New and Renewable Energy Minister Farooq Abdullah inaugurated what
has been acclaimed as the largest solar steam system in the world, at the Shirdi shrine. The
Shri Sai Baba Sansthan Trust paid an estimated Rs.1.33 crore for the system, Rs.58.4 lakh of
which was paid as a subsidy by the renewable energy ministry. It is said the system can cook
20,000 meals per day for pilgrims visiting the temple.

Stigmata
Wikipedia.org

Hands with Stigmata, depicted on a Franciscan church in Lienz,
Austria

Stigmata (singular stigma) are bodily marks, sores, or
sensations of pain in locations corresponding to the crucifixion
wounds of Jesus, such as the hands and feet. In some cases,
rope marks on the wrists have accompanied the wounds on the
hands.

The term originates from the line at the end of Saint Paul's
Letter to the Galatians where he says, "I bear on my body the
marks of Jesus." Stigmata is the plural of the Greek word
stigma, meaning a mark or brand such as might have been used
for identification of an animal or slave. An individual bearing
stigmata is referred to as a stigmatic or a stigmatist.

Stigmata are primarily associated with the Roman Catholic faith. Many reported stigmatics are
members of Catholic religious orders. St. Francis of Assisi was the first recorded stigmatic in
Christian history. For over fifty years Padre Pio of Pietrelcina of the Order of Friars Minor
Capuchin reported stigmata which were studied by several 20th century physicians, whose
independence from the Church is not known. The observations were reportedly unexplainable
and the wounds never became infected.

A high percentage (perhaps over 80%) of all stigmatics are women. In his Stigmata: A
Medieval Phenomenon in a Modern Age, Edward Harrison suggests that there is no single
mechanism whereby the marks of stigmata were produced.

Description

Reported cases of stigmata take various forms. Many show some or all of five Holy Wounds
that were, according to the Bible, inflicted on Jesus during his crucifixion: wounds in the wrists
and feet, from nails, and in the side, from a lance. Some stigmatics display wounds to the
forehead similar to those caused by the Crown of Thorns. Stigmata as crown of thorns
appearing in the 20th century, e.g. on Marie Rose Ferron have been repeatedly photographed.
Other reported forms include tears of blood or sweating blood, and wounds to the back as
from scourging.

Many stigmata show recurring bleeding that stops and then starts, at times after receiving
Holy Communion and a large percentage of stigmatics have shown a high desire to frequently
receive Holy Communion. A relatively high percentage of stigmatics also exhibit Inedia, living
with minimal (or no) food or water for long periods of time, except for the Holy Eucharist, and
some exhibit loss of weight.

The ecstasy and sufferings usually began for the Saints who suffered stigmata starting on
Thursday and ending on Friday afternoon around 3 or 4 o' clock. All the recipients of this
mystical wounding suffered dreadfully. Many of the stigmatics experienced cruel rejection and
suspicion before their wounds were authenticated. Saints who suffered stigmata were carefully
watched day and night so that tampering with the wounds could not be performed. When
these methods were used, a number of false stigmatics were exposed. Sometimes this
stigmata became invisible on express request and prayers by the Saints who suffered
them.[8]
Some stigmatics claim to feel the pain of wounds with no external marks; these are referred
to as invisible stigmata. In other claims, stigmata are accompanied by extreme pain. Some
stigmatics' wounds do not appear to clot, and stay fresh and uninfected. The blood from the
wounds is said, in some cases, to have a pleasant, perfumed odor, known as the Odour of
Sanctity.

Individuals who have obtained the stigmata are many times described as ecstatics. At the time
of receiving the stigmata they are overwhelmed with emotions.

No case of stigmata is known to have occurred before the thirteenth century, when the
depiction of the crucified Jesus in Western Christendom emphasized his humanity.

In his paper Hospitality and Pain, Christian theologian Ivan Illich states: "Compassion with
Christ... is faith so strong and so deeply incarnate that it leads to the individual embodiment of
the contemplated pain." His thesis is that stigmata result from exceptional poignancy of
religious faith and desire to associate oneself with the suffering Messiah.

Specific cases

St. Francis of Assisi

St. Francis of Assisi is the first recorded stigmatic in
Christian history. In 1224, two years before his death, he
embarked on a journey to Mt. La Verna for a forty day fast.
One morning near the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross,
a six winged angel allegedly appeared to Francis while he
prayed. As the angel approached, Francis could see that
the angel was crucified. He was humbled by the sight, and
his heart was filled with elation joined by pain and
suffering. When the angel departed, Francis was
purportedly left with wounds in his hands, feet, and side as
if caused by the same lance that pierced Christs side. The
image of nails immediately appeared in his hands and feet,
and the wound in his side often seeped blood.

St. Francis' first biographer, Thomas of Celano, reports the
event as follows in his 1230 First Life of St. Francis:

"When the blessed servant of God saw these things he was filled with wonder, but he did not
know what the vision meant. He rejoiced greatly in the benign and gracious expression with
which he saw himself regarded by the seraph, whose beauty was indescribable; yet he was
alarmed by the fact that the seraph was affixed to the cross and was suffering terribly. Thus
Francis rose, one might say, sad and happy, joy and grief alternating in him. He wondered
anxiously what this vision could mean, and his soul was uneasy as it searched for
understanding. And as his understanding sought in vain for an explanation and his heart was
filled with perplexity at the great novelty of this vision, the marks of nails began to appear in
his hands and feet, just as he had seen them slightly earlier in the crucified man above him.
His wrists and feet seemed to be pierced by nails, with the heads of the nails appearing on his
wrists and on the upper sides of his feet, the points appearing on the other side. The marks
were round on the palm of each hand but elongated on the other side, and small pieces of
flesh jutting out from the rest took on the appearance of the nail-ends, bent and driven back.
In the same way the marks of nails were impressed on his feet and projected beyond the rest
of the flesh. Moreover, his right side had a large wound as if it had been pierced with a spear,
and it often bled so that his tunic and trousers were soaked with his sacred blood."


Pio of Pietrelcina

A young Padre Pio showing the stigmata.

For over fifty years Padre Pio of Pietrelcina reported stigmata which
were studied by several 20th century physicians, whose
independence from the Church is not known. The observations
were reportedly unexplainable and the wounds never became
infected. His wounds healed once, but reappeared. The wounds
were examined by Luigi Romanelli, chief physician of the City
Hospital of Barletta, for about one year. Dr. Giorgio Festa, a private
practitioner, also examined them in 1920 and 1925. Professor
Giuseppe Bastianelli, physician to Pope Benedict XV, agreed that
the wounds existed but made no other comment. Pathologist Dr.
Amico Bignami of the University of Rome also observed the
wounds, but could make no diagnosis. Both Bignami and Dr.
Giuseppe Sala commented on the unusually smooth edges of the
wounds and lack of edema. Dr. Alberto Caserta took X-rays of the hands in 1954 and found no
abnormality in the bone structure.

Scientific research

Some modern research has indicated stigmata are of hysterical origin, or linked to dissociative
identity disorders, especially the link between dietary constriction by self-starvation,
dissociative mental states and self-mutilation, in the context of a religious belief. Anorexia
nervosa cases often display self-mutilation similar to stigmata as part of a ritualistic, obsessive
compulsive disorder. A relationship between starvation and self-mutilation has been reported
amongst prisoners of war and during famines. A psychoanalytic study of stigmatic Therese
Neumann has suggested that her stigmata resulted from post-traumatic stress symptoms
expressed in unconscious self-mutilation through abnormal autosuggestibility.

In his Stigmata: A Medieval Phenomenon in a Modern Age, Edward Harrison suggests that
there is no single mechanism whereby the marks of stigmata were produced. Harrison found
no evidence from a study of contemporary cases that the marks were supernatural in origin.
He concluded, however, that marks of natural origin need not be hoaxes. Some stigmatics
marked themselves in attempt to suffer with Christ as a form of piety. Others marked
themselves accidentally and their marks were noted as stigmata by witnesses. Often marks of
human origin produced profound and genuine religious responses. Harrison also noted that the
male-to-female ratio of stigmatics, which for many centuries had been of the order of 7 to 1,
had changed over the last 100 years to a ratio of 5:4. Appearance of stigmata frequently
coincided with times when issue of authority loomed large in the Church. What was significant
about stigmatics was not that they were predominantly men, but that they were non-ordained.
Having stigmata gave them direct access to the body of Christ without requiring the
permission of the Church through the Eucharist. Only in the last century have priests been
stigmatized.

From the records of St. Francis physical ailments and symptoms, Dr. Edward Hartung
concluded in 1935 that he knew what health problems plagued the holy man. Hartung
believed that he had an eye ailment known as trachoma, but also had quartan malaria.
Quartan malaria infects the liver, spleen, and stomach, causing the victim intense pain. One
complication of quartan malaria occasionally seen around Franciss time is known as purpura,
a purple hemorrhage of blood into the skin. Purpuras usually occur symmetrically, so each
hand and foot would have been affected equally. If this were the case of St. Francis, he would
have been afflicted by ecchymoses, an exceedingly large purpura. The purple spots of blood
may have been punctured while in the wilderness and therefore appear as an open wound like
that of Christ.

Non-Christian stigmata

Bodily stigmata have been reported in a number of religious traditions.

Among the Warao of the Orinoco Delta, a contemplator of tutelary spirits may mystically
induce the development of "openings in the palms of his hands." That these tutelary spirits are
presented by the "itiriti snake" makes for a close analogue with the Seraph who endowed
Francis of Assisi with his stigmata.
Buddhist "stigmata" are regularly indicated in Buddhist art.

Notable stigmatics

Blessed Lucia Brocadelli of Narni
Saint Catherine of Ricci
Saint Catherine of Siena
Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich
Saint Francis of Assisi
Saint Gemma Galgani
Saint Veronica Giuliani
Saint John of God
Saint Faustina Kowalska
Saint Marie of the Incarnation
Marie Rose Ferron
Marcelline Pauper, one of the Sisters of Charity of Nevers
Marthe Robin
Therese Neumann
Saint Pio of Pietrelcina
Saint Rita of Cascia
Zlatko Sudac

Telekinesis


Nina Kulagina
http://paranormal.about.com

Nina Kulagina became one of the most famous psychics in the Soviet Union in the 1960s
because of her amazing feats of telekinesis or psychokinesis. In films (mentioned in the U.S.
Defence Intelligence Agency report from 1978) smuggled out of the country, Kulagina was
shown to be able to move small objects placed before her on a table. Under close scientific
observation, Kulagina would hold her hands a few inches above the objects, and in a few
moments they would begin to slide across the table top. Wooden matches, small boxes,
cigarettes and Plexiglas would all react to her intense concentration. At times, objects would
continue to move even when she took her hands away. In the early 1970s, Kulagina was even
recruited by the Soviet government to see if she could somehow help a sick Nikita
Khrushchev.

Martin Caidin
Wikipedia.org

Martin Caidin (19271997), the author whose 1972 novel Cyborg was used as the basis for
the television series The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, claimed to be able to
cause movement by means of telekinesis in one or multiple small tabletop "energy wheels,"
also known as psi wheels beginning in the mid 1980s. Parapsychologist Loyd Auerbach, a
friend of Caidin's who sometimes accompanied him in demonstrations and workshops,
reiterated a strong endorsement of him in his June 2004 Fate magazine column: "Martin
Caidin was capable of moving things with his mind." James Randi offered to test Caidin's
claimed abilities in 1994. In September 2004, Randi wrote: "He frantically avoided accepting
my challenge by refusing even the simplest of proposed control protocols, but he never tired
of running on about how I would not test him."

Uri Geller
Wikipedia.org

Uri Geller (1946 XXXX), the Israeli famous for his spoon bending demonstrations, allegedly
by PK. Geller has been caught many times using sleight of hand and according to author
Terence Hines, all his effects have been recreated using conjuring tricks.

Many of India's "godmen" have claimed macro-PK abilities and demonstrated apparently
miraculous phenomena in public, although as more controls are put in place to prevent
trickery, fewer phenomena are produced.

Miroslaw Magola
Wikipedia.org

Miroslaw Magola (1958 XXXX), alias "Magnetic Man," born in Poland and now living in
Germany. He claims he can lift objects off the floor, transport them through the air and force
them to stick to his body - all using the power of his mind. "I load myself with energy (I
connect myself to it) and at the same time I wish for the object to raise" he says of his power.
On the UK television programme Beyond Belief in February 1996, he was unable to perform
any levitation effects. On the television show "Stan Lee's Superhumans" in September 2010
however, marked changes to Miroslaw Magola's brain waves, skin conductance and
temperature were recorded during one of his demonstrations. He was investigated by Dr.
Friedbert Karger of the Max Planck Institute and Dr. David Lewis (psychologist), a
neurophysiologist at MindLab, one of the United Kingdom's leading neuro-research centers and
Dr. Konstantin Korotkov, professor of Physics at St. Petersburg State Technical University in
Russia. James Randi has tested similar "magnetic men" and women around the world and
remains unconvinced the effect observed in Magola is related to psychokinesis.

Matthew Manning (1955 XXXX) of the United Kingdom was the subject of laboratory
research in the United States and England involving PK in the late 1970s and today claims
healing powers.

Eusapia Palladino
Wikipedia.org

Eusapia Palladino (18541918, alternate spelling: Eusapia Paladino) was an Italian medium
who allegedly could cause objects to move during seances and was endorsed by world famous
magician Howard Thurston (18691936), who said he witnessed her levitation of a table.
Felicia Parise, an American medical laboratory technician who allegedly was able to repeatedly
demonstrate telekinetic movement of small objects beginning in the 1970s, in the first
reported instance spontaneously, and then with practice by intense conscious intention. She
said her inspiration for making the attempt was in viewing the black-and-white films of Nina
Kulagina performing similar feats. Some of the items Parise reportedly caused movement in
were a plastic pill container, compass needle, and pieces of aluminum foil (the latter two
under a bell jar filmed by a magician). During the height of her fame in the early 1970s, the
National Enquirer tabloid newspaper in the United States, then printed in all black and white,
featured her in a large photo on its cover seated at a table attempting to perform telekinesis
with the headline: "First American to Move Objects with the Mind." Parise eventually retired
from performing telekinesis due to the physical stress on her body.

Swami Rama
Wikipedia.org

Swami Rama (19251996), a yogi skilled in controlling his heart functions who was studied at
the Menninger Foundation in the spring and fall of 1970, and was alleged by some observers
at the foundation to have telekinetically moved a knitting needle twice from a distance of five
feet. Although Swami Rama wore a facemask and gown to prevent allegations that he moved
the needle with his breath or body movements, and air vents in the room had been covered,
at least one physician observer who was present at the time was not convinced and expressed
the opinion that air movement was somehow the cause.

Telepathy


Vladimir Durov
http://paranormal.about.com

Vladimir Durov was no ordinary animal trainer. As a veteran performer in a Russian circus, he
claimed to use a remarkable method for communicating with his canine coworkers - through
telepathy. Professor W. Bechterev, head of the institute for the Investigation of the Brain in
St. Petersburg, decided to test Durov's claim. Bechterev created a list of tasks that he wanted
one of Durov's dogs to perform in a specific order, without any time for training. After hearing
or reading the list of tasks, Durov went to his fox terrier, Pikki, took his head in his hands and
stared straight into the little dog's eyes - psychicly transferring his thoughts directly into
Pikki's brain. Durov released the dog and it immediately went about performing the assigned
tasks. Thinking that perhaps Durov was giving the dog subtle clues with his eyes, the test was
repeated with a new set of tasks, but this time with Durov blindfolded. Pikki still responded to
his psychic commands.


Time Slip
Wikipedia.org

A time slip (also called a timeslip) is an alleged paranormal phenomenon in which a person, or
group of people, travel through time via unknown means. As with all paranormal phenomena,
the objective reality of such experiences is disputed.

Cases

Ghosts of Versailles

One of the best-known, and earliest, examples of a time slip was reported by two English
women, Charlotte Anne Moberly (16 September 1846 - 7 May 1937) and Eleanor Jourdain
(18631924), the principal and vice-principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford, who claimed they
slipped back in time in the gardens of the Petit Trianon at Versailles from the summer of 1901
to the period of the French Revolution.

The Vanishing Hotel

A widely-publicised case from October 1979, described in the ITV television series Strange But
True, concerned the Simpsons and the Gisbys, two English married couples driving through
France en route to a holiday in Spain. They claimed to have stayed overnight at a curiously
old-fashioned hotel and decided to break their return journey at the same hotel but were
unable to find it. Photographs taken during their stay, which were in the middle of a roll of
film, were missing, even from the negative strips, when the pictures were developed.

Other cases

More recent reports include a series of accounts of apparent time slips in the area of Bold
Street, Liverpool from the 1990s to the present day. Andrew MacKenzie, of the Society for
Psychical Research, investigated several British cases, including an experience in which three
naval cadets appeared to travel back in time to Kersey in Suffolk at a time when it was a
medieval plague village, and one in which a Scottish woman experienced the aftermath of the
Dark Age Battle of Nechtanesmere in 685 AD.


Characteristics

Feeling of unreality

Many time slip witnesses report that, at the start of their experience of the phenomena, their
immediate surroundings take on an oddly flat, underlit and lifeless appearance, and normal
sounds seem muffled. This is sometimes accompanied by feelings of depression and unease.
In some respects, this facet of the phenomenon is similar to the Oz Factor identified by British
UFO researcher Jenny Randles in some reports of encounters with supposed extraterrestrial
craft.

Moberly's account of her experience at Versailles records:

We walked briskly forward, talking as before, but from the moment we left the lane
an extraordinary depression had come over me, which, in spite of every effort to
shake off, steadily deepened. There seemed to be absolutely no reason for it; I was
not at all tired, and was becoming more interested in my surroundings. I was anxious
that my companion should not discover the sudden gloom upon my spirits, which
became quite overpowering on reaching the point where the path ended, being
crossed by another, right and leftEverything suddenly looked unnatural, therefore
unpleasant; even the trees behind the building seemed to have become flat and
lifeless, like a wood worked in tapestry. There were no effects of light and shade, and
no wind stirred the trees. It was all intensely still.

Jourdain's report of the same event states that:

there was a feeling of depression and loneliness about the place. I began to feel as
if I were walking in my sleep; the heavy dreaminess was oppressive.

Ability to interact

Reports vary as to whether those experiencing time slips can take an active part in the event,
interacting with the time being "visited". In the Versailles case, the two ladies were apparently
seen, and spoken to, by people they saw. The British holidaymakers in 1979 went further,
staying in a hotel and eating dinner and breakfast in the course of their experience. Both these
cases are also unusually prolonged experiences, taking place over at least several hours.

In other cases, the subject is a passive observer of the "past" scene, and it seems that the
"typical" time slip lasts only a matter of a few minutes.

Pyrokinesis
'Firestarter' child found in Antique?
ANTIQUE
ABS-CBNnews.com
Posted at 07/22/2011 10:55 PM | Updated as of 07/23/2011 12:21 PM

MANILA, Philippines A small town in Antique province has received attention after a 3-year-
old girl was discovered to allegedly have the rare ability to create, foresee, and control fires.

Residents of San Jose de Buenavista said Rose (not her real name) has been able to predict
fire that will occur at an exact time. Several of these instances were caught on video.

Even Hon. Rony Molina, mayor of San Jose de Buenavista, attested to the phenomenon.

I have experienced na kapag sinabi ng bata na masusunog ang unan, after a while,
nasusunog nga ang unan, Molina said.

The childs father, who is a tricycle driver, witnessed his daughters supposed ability.

He said his daughter warned him that his tricycle will catch fire and even gave an exact time.

Although the father was initially skeptical, he became a believer when the tire of his tricycle
indeed caught fire at the exact time given by his daughter.

Roses rare ability has been likened to pyrokinesis," or the ability to ignite, control, and
extinguish fires using only the mind.

However, experts said there is no scientific study to prove that pyrokinesis is possible.

Wala namang mekanismo para magsalin ng energy from the mind papunta doon sa bagay o
sa fuel, said Percival Almoro, of the National Institute of Physics in U.P. Diliman.

The phenomenon has prompted Roses parents to have their daughter baptized.

During the baptism, however, an incident occurred that disrupted the rites.

Nasunog yung papel na nakadikit sa bulletin board ng simbahan. May paniwala yung
karamihan na itong bata ay sinusundan ng masasamang ispiritu kahit saan siya magpunta,
said Paul Petinglay, a reporter from Bombo Radyo in Antique.



The incident was caught on
video by one of the child's
godmothers.

Psychic Joe Guia said the fires
may have been created by evil
spirits.

When Guia attempted to conduct
a psychic study, one of his
books also got burned.









Rose also has burn marks and wounds on her skin because of the fires.

Witnesses and experts remain baffled whether if the fires were created by the child's mind, or
if they came from other elements.

Three-year-old alleged firestarter sparks amazement in Philippines
Authorities say she can set objects ablaze without touching them
ANTIQUE
Gilbert P. Felongco
Correspondent Published: 00:00 March 5, 2011

Manila: A three-year-old girl in Central Philippines' Antique province has been drawing the
attention of locals for her alleged extraordinary ability to set fire to objects without touching
them and to predict fire.

According to reports, police had cordoned off the residence of the three-year-old girl on orders
of Mayor Ronie Molina of San Jose town after people came flocking to see the child who
according to the town's executive has the capability to set fire to objects without touching
them.

It is a "one of a kind. A new experience for us. Beyond explanation. I am at a loss," Molina
was quoted in an interview by published by the community paper The Daily Guardian.

Molina visited the child after word spread of her ability to set objects on fire without touching
them.

The local official was sitting in the receiving room of the child's house when she blurted that
something was about to burn.

Unique experience

Sure enough a shirt that had been left in the clothesline outside the house to dry suddenly
burst into flames. "Nobody touched it or was even close to it. It just started in seconds. The
shirt was on fire," Molina said.

Earlier, news spread in Antique a province famed for its mysticism-ridden folklore about
the fire-starting child.

The child's father, a motorised-rickshaw driver, recalled the time when he was with her
daughter when she told him that something was going to burn at 9am.

The father did not heed his daughter's words but to his surprise, her prediction came true and
the spare tyre of his motorcycle burned.

He checked his watch and it was 9am.

Local mystics tried to look for explanations on the mysterious occurrences. Some had said that
she has the ability to predict when a fire would happen or possesses occult power while others
said that she has "pyrokenesis," or the ability to set objects on fire without touching them.

Whatever the explanation, Molina said he is not taking chances and has put a fire truck on
standby close to the child's house.

*Regeneration



John Dee
BBC News

You would be forgiven for thinking that Manchester's scientific explosion came with the
Industrial Revolution, as names like Joule, Dalton and Crompton forged a new world of
discovery.

Yet long before mills changed Manchester forever, one of England's most famous early
scientists made his home in the city.

Born in 1527, John Dee was one of the Elizabethan era's greatest minds, investigating
everything from mathematics and astronomy to philosophy and alchemy in his life. But it was
his fascination with magic that would lead to his arrival in the North West in his latter years.
A magician and scientist
Through his life, John Dee held some lofty posts. He was the royal astrologer for Mary Tudor,
cast a horoscope to determine the date of Queen Elizabeth's coronation and advised explorers
on navigation and geometry. Such things brought him great repute, but at the same time, he
dabbled in the occult, and these experiments saw him imprisoned for heresy in 1555. Upon
release, he kept an appearance of respectability, allowing him access to the higher echelons of
society, while privately continuing his investigations.

By 1581, he was working with Edward Kelley on a series of mystical experiments using crystal
balls, which the pair would claim allowed them to talk to angels. Taking instruction from their
heavenly guides, they travelled Europe together for much of the following decade, parting only
when Kelley reported instructions from the angels that Dee found distasteful.
To Manchester and salvation?
Upon returning to England, Dee found his home ruined - attacked by people who had heard of
his occult research - and petitioned the Queen for help.

The rumours around Dee meant Elizabeth could only do so much for him and she requested
that the Archbishop of Canterbury offer him a post as Warden of the Manchester Collegiate
Church (what would become the Cathedral).

Dee took up the offer and moved north in 1896. Despite his work with the occult, John was a
deeply pious man and, on his arrival, involved himself with church life, while also working as a
surgeon.

The Lancashire Seven
His reputation followed him though and within a year, he was asked to treat the Lancashire
Seven, a number of children alleged to be suffering from demonic possession.

For whatever reason, Dee refused - a move that would turn out to be shrewd, as the surgeon
who did take up the case ended up sentenced to death.

Interestingly, the judge who issued the verdict borrowed books on witchcraft and demons
from Dee to research the case.
Satan comes to Chet's
The scorch mark on the table in Chetham's Audit
Room
It wasn't the only time that demons were linked
with Dee in Manchester. In fact, one rumour arose
which linked him to the biggest of them all, the
Devil himself.
Dee lived in Chetham's School, which at the time
was Christ's College, home to the priests of the
Church - and a table from Dee's time there still
exists in the Audit Room, bearing evidence of the
story which dogged the warden.

Upon it is a circular burn mark - a mark which, it is
said, was made by the hoof of Satan, after Dee
supposedly summoned the Devil.


Leaving the city
Whatever the truth, the stain on Dee's character was immovable and with the death of
Elizabeth in 1603 and the rise of witch-hunts, he found his influence was waning.

Furthermore, the congregation of the church wanted rid of him, as they disliked his sermons
and choice of curates.

He made an attempt to clear his name, petitioning the new king, James I, but his request was
denied, meaning he had to leave Manchester in disgrace and return to his family home in
Mortlake, Surrey.

As a final insult and injury, an epidemic of plague in the city prior to his departure took the
lives of his wife and two of his daughters.

In a time when magic and science went hand in hand, there is no doubt that, with Dee's
departure, went one of the minds of the age and, despite the rumors, one of Manchester's first
scientists.

Nikola Tesla
Wikipedia.org

Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: ; 10 July 1856 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-
American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known
for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply
system.

Tesla gained experience in telephony and electrical engineering before emigrating to the
United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison. He soon struck out on his own with financial
backers, setting up laboratories/companies to develop a range of electrical devices. His
patented AC induction motor and transformer were licensed by George Westinghouse, who
also hired Tesla as a consultant to help develop a power system using alternating current.
Tesla is also known for his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and
Colorado Springs which included patented devices and theoretical work used in the invention
of radio communication, for his X-ray experiments, and for his ill-fated attempt at
intercontinental wireless transmission in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.

Tesla's achievements and his abilities as a showman demonstrating his seemingly miraculous
inventions made him world-famous. Although he made a great deal of money from his
patents, he spent a lot on numerous experiments. He lived for most of his life in a series of
New York hotels although the end of his patent income and eventual bankruptcy led him to
live in diminished circumstances. Tesla still continued to invite the press to parties he held on
his birthday to announce new inventions he was working and make (sometimes unusual)
statements. Because of his pronouncements and the nature of his work over the years, Tesla
gained a reputation in popular culture as the archetypal "mad scientist". He died in room 3327
of the New Yorker Hotel on 7 January 1943.

Tesla's work fell into relative obscurity after his death, but since the 1990s, his reputation has
experienced a comeback in popular culture. His work and reputed inventions are also at the
center of many conspiracy theories and have also been used to support various
pseudosciences, UFO theories and New Age occultism. In 1960, in honor of Tesla, the General
Conference on Weights and Measures for the International System of Units dedicated the term
"tesla" to the SI unit measure for magnetic field strength.



The Shakers
Year 2000 Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia

Beginning in England at a Quaker revival in 1747, the United Society of Believers in Christ's
Second Appearing, also known as the Millennial Church, or the Alethians, came to be called
Shakers because of the trembling induced in them by their religious fervor. Led by James
and Jane Wardley, the so-called Shaking Quakers were a minor religious sect until Ann Lee
became the head of the movement.

Mother Ann, as she was known, believed that she had received the feminine principle of the
deity. Following imprisonment for her unorthodox views, she experienced a vision and led
(1774) a small group to the United States, where they established (1776) a community at
Watervliet, N.Y. Mother Ann made a number of converts, and after her death (1784) they
established further communities under the leadership of Joseph Meacham and Lucy Wright. By
1826 there were 18 Shaker communities with about 6,000 members in 8 states. Their peak
period was 1840-60. As revivalism declined after the Civil War, so did the fortunes of the
communities. By 1980 the Shakers were almost extinct.

The Shakers believed in Mother Ann as the source of God's fullest revelation to humankind.
Other doctrines and practices included celibacy, open confession of sins, communal sharing of
possessions, pacifism, equality of the sexes, and consecrated labor. They rejected Calvinist
ideas of predestination and emphasized free will. In their well-organized, self-sufficient
communities segregated from the outside world, the Shakers worshiped in unusual ways;
dancing, ecstatic shouting, and trances were held to be proof of the Holy Spirit's presence.

The furniture and other goods that the Shakers made for themselves are remarkable for
simplicity of design and fine craftsmanship; they have become highly valued collectors' items.

Henry Warner Bowden

Bibliography: Andrews, Edward D., The People Called Shakers, 2d ed. (1984); Andrews,
Edward D. and Faith, Work and Worship among the Shakers (1974; repr. 1983); Campion, N.
R., Mother Ann Lee (1990); Emlen, R. P., Shaker Village Views (1987); Faber, D., The Perfect
Life: The Shakers in America (1974); Giles, J. H., The Believers (1990); Patterson, D. W., The
Shaker Spiritual (1979); Rocheleau, P., and Sprigg, J., Shaker Built (1995); Skees, Suzanne,
God among the Shakers (1998); Sprigg, June, By Shaker Hands (1975; repr. 1990) and
Simple Gifts: A Memoir of a Shaker Village (1998); Sprigg, June , and Larkin, David, Shaker:
Life, Work, and Art (1987; repr. 1991); Stein, S. J., The Shaker Experience in America: A
History of the United Society of Believers (1992); White, Anna, and Taylor, Leila S., Shakerism
(1904; repr. 1991); Whitson, Robley, ed., The Shakers: Two Centuries of Spiritual Reflections
(1983).