History of Zoltar

Could it be that the popular fairground machines, immortalised in the film 'Big' were based on a real person?

Swami Kaladhar Subhash was a renowned fakir and fortune teller on the streets of Jaipur in the early 1900s. It was said he could know the innermost thoughts and desires of a man by simply by touching his forehead.

A rare photograph of Kaladhar Subhash.

Through his profound knowledge of Vedic astrology, Kaladhar Subhash was thought to be able to tell the entire history and destiny of those who came to him for advice. Those who saw him described him as gentle and softly spoken, and said he lived by the mantra: "Do not impose your opinions; better express your wisdom".

In the 1920s, a struggling English magician, John Pimm, took to the stage in London's West End, performing illusions and "question answering" in the character of 'Kaladar'. It is believed he was inspired by tales of the Swami he had heard from his mother - who had been profoundly affected by meeting the great man while living in India. The show became very successful and toured the world, even enjoying a short run on Broadway.

John Pimm, performing as 'Kaladar'.

In the 1950s, an American fairground and Wild West sideshow operator named James Graham created the first 'Kadar' machine, inspired by bill posters he had seen of Pimm's Broadway show. He later re-branded the machines as 'Zoltar' when they entered mass production in the early 1960s, believing the 'Z' to be a more appealing letter than 'K'.

Transphysical Mediumship

Incredible displays by Mychael Shane - Transphysical Medium. Powerful answers to unseen questions and physical apports from another realm! Incredible!

The Incredible Electric Man

A bright spark from China has discovered he can conduct powerful electrical currents through his body without suffering pain or injury.

Ma Xiangang found his powers when he accidentally touched live cables carrying 220 volts during an attempt to fix his household wiring.

He claims that he is now addicted to feeling electricity coursing through his body, saying it makes him feel "energetic".

Scientific investigations of this real-life X-Man have revealed the secret may lie in his hands. The skin of his hands is much rougher and drier than others, functioning like a pair of insulated gloves.

Scientists say his tough skin prevents most of the electricity from entering Ma's body. The actual current passing through Ma's body only contains six milliamperes, while the safety limits for ordinary people is 8-10 milliamperes.

Mind Control - the easy way

For those who doubt that mind control is possible - just watch how easily humans can be manipulated to act in irrational ways:

Catcher In The Rye as a Manchurian Trigger

In the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA conducted a series of experiments in extreme psychological techniques, under the banner "MK Ultra". These experiments explored mind control through drugs, hypnosis and other conditioning techniques, tested on human subjects.

The project was officially shut down in 1973, when the then director of the CIA Richard Helms destroyed almost all records pertaining to the controversial and often illegal activities carried out in its name.

In its 20 year history, MK Ultra had seen the surreptitious administration of drugs and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as various forms of torture used on US and Canadian citizens. It is widely believed that the project lives on to this day through Psi-Ops schemes with deceptively banal codenames such as 'Bluebird', 'Artichoke' and 'Paperclip'.

One of the stated aims of 'MK Ultra' was the creation of unwitting assassins - 'Manchurian Candidates' - who would be conditioned to kill targets without knowing why, using trigger words, sights or situations.

Many believe that J. D. Salinger's seminal novel 'The Catcher in the Rye' was used as such a trigger in order to arrange the assassination of John Lennon by Mark David Chapman, the attempted shooting of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley Jr. and a host of other, lower profile events - including a high-school shooting and the murder of minor film star Rebecca Schaefer.

'The Catcher in the Rye' was found in the possession of both Hinkley and Chapman after their respective rampages. In fact, when the New York City police apprehended Chapman in the aftermath of Lennon's assassination, he was sitting glassy-eyed and zombified, calmly reading Salinger's book. It was later revealed that Chapman had attempted to legally change his name to Holden Caulfield in the days before the event.

Was the book used to trigger post-hypnotic control, as the Queen of Hearts did in Richard Condon's novel 'The Manchurian Candidate'? Its popularity would make it easily available at short notice in almost any location. Its tale of a disaffected teenage boy may tap into the male psyche, creating a feeling of familiarity that leaves subjects open to manipulation.

Although there is little evidence to prove this theory, there are strong suggestions that mind-controlled killers could be a reality. Robert Kennedy's assassin Sirhan Sirhan has long maintained his innocence, claiming to be an involuntary participant in the crime as he had been subjected to "sophisticated hypno-programing and memory implantation techniques which rendered him unable to consciously control his thoughts and actions at the time the crimes were being committed".

Daemonic possession in the freezer aisle?

Not sure what to make of this one. If it's a hoax, it seems remarkably well done. When I first saw the video, my initial thought was that the guy must be suffering some sort of seizure. But watch the reflection in the glass at the end, just before the apparent poltergeist activity.

Strange stuff indeed...

Black Shuck

On 4 August 1577, at Blythburgh in Suffolk, a large black dog with malevolent flaming eyes is said to have burst in through the church doors to a clap of thunder. As large, some say, as a calf, the dog was known as Black Shuck, the Devil's own dog.

He ran up the nave, past a large congregation, killing a man and boy and causing the church steeple to collapse through the roof. As the dog left, he left scorch marks on the north door which can be seen at the church to this day.

Another encounter on the same day at nearby Bungay was described in 'A Straunge and Terrible Wunder' by the Reverend Abraham Fleming in 1577:

"This black dog, or the divel in such a linenesse (God hee knoweth al who worketh all,) running all along down the body of the church with great swiftnesse, and incredible haste, among the people, in a visible fourm and shape, passed between two persons, as they were kneeling uppon their knees, and occupied in prayer as it seemed, wrung the necks of them bothe at one instant clene backward, in somuch that even at a mome[n]t where they kneeled, they stra[n]gely dyed."

Adams was a clergyman from London, and therefore probably only published his account based on exaggerated aural accounts. Other local accounts attribute the event to Satan himself (Abrahams calls the animal "the Divel in such a likeness". The scorch marks on the door are referred to by the locals as "the devil’s fingerprints", and the event is remembered in this verse:

"All down the church in midst of fire, the hellish monster flew, and, passing onward to the quire, he many people slew."

But the gigantic hound does not only terrorise churches.  W. A. Dutt, in his 1901 book 'Highways & Byways in East Anglia' has this to say about Black Shuck:

"He takes the form of a huge black dog, and prowls along dark lanes and lonesome field footpaths, where, although his howling makes the hearer's blood run cold, his footfalls make no sound. You may know him at once, should you see him, by his fiery eye; he has but one, and that, like the Cyclops', is in the middle of his head. But such an encounter might bring you the worst of luck: it is even said that to meet him is to be warned that your death will occur before the end of the year. So you will do well to shut your eyes if you hear him howling; shut them even if you are uncertain whether it is the dog fiend or the voice of the wind you hear. Should you never set eyes on our Norfolk Snarleyow you may perhaps doubt his existence, and, like other learned folks, tell us that his story is nothing but the old Scandinavian myth of the black hound of Odin, brought to us by the Vikings who long ago settled down on the Norfolk coast."

According to some legends, the dog's appearance bodes ill to the beholder - for example in the Malden and Dengue area of Essex, the most southerly point of sightings, where seeing Black Shuck is believed to mean the observer has less than a year to live. Other stories tell of death or illness in the families of those who see the malevolent beast. However, more often than not, stories tell of Black Shuck terrifying his victims, but leaving them alone to continue living normal lives.

It is also very likely that Black Shuck was the inspiration for literature's most infamous canine: Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Hound of the Baskervilles'.

In 1901 the author returned from South Africa suffering from typhoid fever. In order to recuperate, he decided to take a golfing holiday in North Norfolk. He was accompanied by his friend the journalist Bertram Fletcher Robinson and stayed at the now demolished Royal Links Hotel in Cromer.

During their visit to Cromer, Conan Doyle and Betram Fletcher Robinson  had dinner with Benjamin Bond Cabbell at Cromer Hall. During dinner Cabbell told them about his ancestor, Richard Cabbell - Lord of Brook Manor and Buckfastleigh - who had been killed by a devilish dog. The story went that Richard Cabbell's wife had been unfaithful and that, after beating her, she had fled out onto Dartmoor. Cabbell pursued her and stabbed her - but while committing the murder his wife's faithful dog attacked him and  tore out his throat. The ghost of the dog was said to haunt Dartmoor and to reappear to each generation of the Cabbell family. It is clear that Richard Cabbell became the model for the evil Hugo Baskerville in Conan Doyle's classic tale.

There is also another fascinating Norfolk connection - namely that the  coachman who drove Conan Doyle to Cromer Hall was apparently called Baskerville. Conan Doyle often drew his character's names from real life.

Also, Conan Doyle would almost certainly have been aware too of the East Anglian legend of Black Shuck - the terrible Hound which terrorised parts of the county and was said to haunt Beeston Bump - which is not far from Cromer.

Interestingly, Conan Doyle's description of Baskerville Hall bears an uncanny likeness to Cromer Hall:

 "The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat-of-arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenellated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke."

The Society for Psychical Research - Card Guessing

Decades before Joseph Rhine's famous experiments at Duke University, a scientific approach to testing Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP) and other psychic phenomena was already being undertaken in England by the Society for Psychical Research (SPR).

The organisation was founded in the late 19th Century, with the stated aim of understanding "events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal by promoting and supporting important research in this area" and to "examine allegedly paranormal phenomena in a scientific and unbiased way".

I was introduced to the SPR, which still continues its work today, by a friend of mine who had read a number of their publications and was keen to recreate some of their early experiments.

In particular, he was interested in pursuing their "Closed Deck" experiments - conducted using playing cards. Because a pack of cards (with Jokers removed) contains 52 known "targets", it is a simple matter to calculate the odds of correct guesses, in order to see if a significant result has occurred.

Harry Price, who joined the society in the 1920s, wrote in his book '50 Years of Psychical Research': "The easiest, most simple, and cheapest way to test whether a person has ESP is by means of cards - especially playing cards - and for this reason they have been used by experimenters from the very earliest days."

Some experimenters would ask the subject to form an impression of the card as a whole (suit and value), while others would try to send and receive the colour, suit and value separately and analyse the success rates in each.

The image below is an excerpt from 'Experiments in Psychical Research' by John Coover, showing results from one of the early card guessing sessions:

SPR founder Sir William Fletcher Barrett, in his book 'Psychical Research' wrote that he conducted 260 trials with a subject trying to receive an impression of a playing card and saw a success rate of one in nine, rather than the one in 52 you would expect with pure guesswork.

"These and many other experiments made later on were submitted to one of the highest authorities on the Calculus of Probabilities, Professor Edgeworth," he wrote. "Mr Edgeworth, as the result of his calculations, stated that chance coincidence is certainly ruled out and 'the recorded observations must have resulted from collusion on the part of those concerned or from thought-transference'."

Such impressive results were too tempting. Over the course of several months, my friend and I spent hundreds of hours on card guessing. Our results were, to put it bluntly, rubbish compared to Sir William's. My friend showed little ability, with results often below the level expected with pure guesswork. My results were consistently a little better than guesswork, but not by much.

Disappointed with our apparent lack of any psychic ability, we quickly scaled back both our expectations and the scale of our tests, focussing only on the colour of each card rather than the suit and the value. We also slowed down and began consciously taking more time to let an impression form. My friend's results stayed the same - running around 45% correct (less than you'd expect from blind guesswork) but my own results improved dramatically.

On one run through the pack I recorded 41 correctly identified colours out of 52 cards. Over dozens of runs I was averaging 66% correct. My knowledge of statistics is shaky, but my calculations suggest that while this success rate is exciting to me, it is probably not statistically significant proof of my psychic capabilities.

One point of interest came out of our later experiments, my results were a lot more impressive when I took the time to put myself in a relaxed, open state of mild hypnosis. I wasn't in a deep trance, but what I would call a 'receptive state' wherein I find it easier to listen to my own sense of intuition.

So there you go. An easy test of psychic ability that anyone can replicate. If you carry out your own experiments, please do contact me with your results - I'd be fascinated to hear how it goes for you.

"You would call it murder" - possessing spirit speaks.

A Canadian murder trial caught my eye last year, when police described how a "spirit entity" spoke through the main suspect during questioning.

Police in British Columbia found the body of Richard Falardeau in a suitcase in the attic of a home in Surrey. Ernest Allan Hosack, 40, was charged with second-degree murder in connection with Falardeau's death.

The details of the case were both gristly and bizarre.

Falardeau, 54, met Hosack at a coffee shop in Surrey in June 2008 and invited him to share the attic apartment he was renting. Falardeau was described as "a stocky man with scruffy, greyish white hair and a thick French accent".

He lived in the stuffy attic apartment for nearly 10 months before his brother reported him missing in the summer of 2008, bringing officers from a missing-persons unit to Falardeau's home to look for him on a hot August morning.

What they found was horrific. Clouds of flies swarmed in the sweltering attic and, when they ventured deeper inside, they uncovered Falardeau's headless torso stuffed inside a suitcase in a closet. His thumbs, anus, scrotum and testes were found in plastic bags in the refrigerator freezer. His skull, with some hair and part of the spine still attached, was found three months later, in tall, marshy grass in a hollow nearby.

But when police asked Hosack where he put Falardeau's head, they said their reply came from "an entity" purporting to be Hosack's long-dead grandfather. This spirit told them the head could be found "In the Y next to the Z. Next to Zion. You don't want to go."

A spokesman described the 12-hour police interview as "chock-a-block" full of delusions. Hosack spoke of nuclear cutting wire, more efficient ways to wage war, light-speed engines and other machines he claimed to have designed. He believed "crack-heads" were stealing his ideas, which would later turn up on TV.

Hosack talked to the police about "dead souls", angels waiting to be released, and how Falardeau fell into darkness "because he was looking at something that wasn't his to behold."

Toward the end of the interview, Hosack spoke of "The Entity". Speaking in a voice claiming to be that of his dead grandpa, Hosack told police Falardeau's thumbs and genitals were put in the freezer. This was "hold-back" information - known only to the police - and confirmed Hosack's guilt.

The voice told police Falardeau's thumbs, genitals and head were "sent to different places in hell to be torn apart". The thumbs were removed, he explained, so Falardeau "won't be able to meddle in anything."

Hosack's grandpa voice said Falardeau died "faster than he ever thought possible" and that his grandson saw him "snap his head like a twig".

He said he "appropriated" Falardeau's soul and then "scattered" it. "You would call it murder," he told the police.

Is it just me, or does this all sound terrifyingly similar to ideas explored in David Lynch's chilling soap-opera pastiche "Twin Peaks". Killer BOB anyone?

Mayan artefacts document alien contact.

Just a couple of months ago, the Mexican government caused a stir when it released images of Mayan artefacts bearing carvings that seemed to strongly suggest contact with beings from other worlds.

An 'Intellihub' newswire press release said:

CALAKMUL, MEXICO — Newly-released Mayan artefacts, dating back at least 1300-years appear to reveal that the human race is not alone and highly advanced technologies including space travel have likely existed for quite some time.
Not only does this documentation released by the Mexican government seem to show the existence of an explorer race, some interpreters suggest it may also reveal the roots of mankind.
Some commentators consider the government’s presentation of the information to be a major step forward, hoping it could prompt other governments around the world to be more forthcoming with such information, turning the tide in the UFO and extraterrestrial research community for good.

So what does the image show us? Well here's my interpretation:
[1] The two circles near the centre of the artefact suggest a planet, possibly Earth.
[2] This could be interpreted as a spacecraft of some type - in the classic "saucer"/"mushroom cap" shape.
[3] This shape suggests a comet or asteroid - possibly heading towards the central planet (Earth?).
[4] Unclear. Some commentators have suggested that this could be a specially-designed spacecraft which is deflecting the meteor from its path.
[5] This appears to be a figure in a space suit and helmet.
[6] Another "saucer" type space craft. The lines from the top could suggest that the figure in [5] is housed in the top of this craft.

Mexican government minister Luis Augusto García Rosado, has gone on the record to confirm the discovery of extraterrestrial life. In a statement, he spoke of contact “between the Mayans and extraterrestrials, supported by translations of certain codices, which the government has kept secure in underground vaults for some time”. He also spoke of “landing pads in the jungle that are 3,000 years old”.

Apparently there are more revelations to come as the Mexican government releases more artefacts.

Is anybody there?

Welcome to the "World of the Strange and Paranormal" blog.

I'll be posting links and articles about the unusual, the bizarre, the borderline unbelievable.

I don't claim to be an expert in any of this stuff, but I have spent a significant amount of the past few years researching occult knowledge, esoteric beliefs, myths, legends and conspiracy theories. In this time I have taken part in séances, ESP testing, ghost-hunts, UFO-spotting tours, Wiccan rituals and other curious activities. Hopefully, if you share my fascination for these topics, you will find plenty to enjoy in these pages as they evolve.

The first real article will follow soon.