The Bottom Drawer

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Even a quick glance through certain pages on the net will take you into a very weird and wonderful world in which our normal understanding of reality is turned on its head. How much is true? We don't know and everybody has to use their own judgement as to what is acceptable to them. In other words, how far are you prepared to go in suspending your personal disbelief? Our personal defence's can be very powerful indeed and despite what we may see as the most convincing evidence, a barrier of disbelief rises to protect us from something that we are uncomfortable with because it as at odds with what the logical side of our brain is telling us must be true. This can be very deep seated indeed, often our attitudes are moulded at an early age through our education, family background and religion. For example, even if we profess to have no particular religious leaning, we cannot help but be affected by what one communicator described as being "the remnants of religion."

There are many cases that demand our attention, no matter how unbelievable and bizarre they may seem. They are the ones that have been scientifically investigated and hard evidence is presented for peer review. Whether this is accepted is different matter, but the empirical evidence is undeniable.

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

- Sherlock Holmes,
In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's
The Sign of Four

We will draw your attention to just three such cases and leave you to follow these up if you wish. The first we were only reminded of recently, when attending a lecture given by a senior Society of Psychical Research http://www.spr.ac.uk member Maurice Grosse .He was part of a team of scientists that investigated the 'Enfield Poltergeist' case in the early 1970's and in addition to the SPR reports, the incident was published in a book entitled "This House is Haunted" by co-researcher Guy Lyon Playfair.
This is probably the most investigated case of its kind in the world and many may remember it being widely reported in the press, both broad sheet and tabloid here in the UK and abroad. In this respect it is notable because the SPR were called in by a tabloid newspaper, the Daily Mirror, their hard nosed reporter and photographer had gone down to Enfield with every intention of exposing a fraud, only to be presented with furniture flying around the room on its own!

Maurice Grosse was called in, expecting to be involved for a week or two at the most and ended up staying for eighteen months, living in the house for much of the time. Independently verified evidence of levitation, dematerialisation, apports, Telekinetic movements, trance communication, (by the mother as well as the children) possession, knocks, raps and many other things occurred in a very normal council house in Essex. The family concerned was very poor and consisted of a single mother, her two daughters and a son. Their educational standard was low and the son had difficulties with his speech. (Not when in trance however!) In fact they had only one children's book in the house and that ended up in the neighbours bedroom on one occasion after being dropped by the eldest daughter, who was holding it as she passed through the wall!

The second case is that of the Scole Experimental Group, www.psisci.force9.co.uk who's sessions produced the most extraordinary physical phenomena in the five years that they sat. Again it was investigated by an SPR team of researchers who validated what they where witnessing and finding, including the most mind numbing images that appeared on unexposed and unwrapped 35mm film! The findings were published a 452 page report to the SPR by the researchers; the late Professor Arthur Ellison, Montague Keen and David Fontana. A more digestible account of the research was published by Grant and Jane Solomon. in The Scole Experiment.

Although we have no personal experience of the third case, it is notable for the reasons stated and it comes under the heading of 'Very High Strangeness'
It concerns a ranch in Utah in the United States. There was so much activity at this site that the whole ranch was purchased by the National Institute of Discovery Science, (NIDS) http://www.nidsci.org who turned it into one giant open air laboratory. If you can think of any bizarre paranormal activity, its occurred at this ranch. A very good overview of proceedings was written by investigative journalist George Knapp and entitled Path of the Skin walkers. (parts 1 & 2, plus comment) The articles were published in the Las Vegas Mercury and the UK's UFO Magazine.

Caution: Some may find the content and nature of these two articles distressing.

Since writing this piece a number of things have changed, including the closure of UFO Magazine following the sad passing of its editor Graham W. Birdsall. The Las Vagas Mercury article has now gone to archive and is difficult to retreive, but can be found at: http://www.aliendave.com/UUFOH_TheRanch.html
where a huge amount of information can be found on this really strange area of investigation.
George Knapp, together with co-author and researcher, Colm Kelleher have also written a book relating to the case untitled "Hunt For The Skinwalkers" since the original article was published and can be found through the usual on-line retailers.

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