In the summer of 1936, Mr. William Holt, a wealthy manufacturer of Chicago, was living temporarily in a little town of central New York.Mr. Holt had had "trouble with his wife," from whom he had parted a year before. Whether the trouble was anything more serious than "incompatibility of temper," he is probably the only living person that knows: He is not addicted to the vice of confidences. Yet he has related the incident herein set down to at least one person without exacting a pledge of secrecy. He is now living in Europe.
One evening he had left the house of a brother whom he was visiting, for a stroll in the country. His mind was occupied with reflections on his domestic infelicities and the distressing changes that they had wrought in his life.
He was so deep in thought that Holt became lost, knowing only that he had passed beyond the town limits. So he simply turned around and went back the way that he had come.
Before he had gone far he observed that the landscape was growing more distinct—was brightening. Everything was suffused with a soft, red glow in which he saw his shadow projected in the road before him.
"The moon is rising," he said to himself. Then he remembered that it was about the time of the new moon, and if that tricky orb was in one of its stages of visibility it had set long before. He stopped and faced about, seeking the source of the rapidly broadening light. As he did so, his shadow turned and lay along the road in front of him as before. The light still came from behind him. That was surprising; he could not understand. Again he turned, and again, facing successively to every point of the horizon. Always the shadow was before—always the light behind, "a still and awful red."
Holt was astonished—"dumfounded" is the word that he used in telling it—yet seemed to have retained a certain intelligent curiosity. To test the intensity of the light whose nature and cause he could not determine, he took out his watch to see if he could make out the figures on the dial. They were plainly visible, and the hands indicated 11:25 p.m.
At that moment the mysterious illumination suddenly flared to an intense, an almost blinding splendor, flushing the entire sky, extinguishing the stars and throwing the monstrous shadow of himself across the landscape. In that unearthly illumination he saw near him, but apparently in the air at a considerable elevation, the figure of his wife, clad in her nightgown and holding the figure of his child. Her eyes were fixed upon his with an expression which he afterward professed was "not of this life."
The flare was momentary, followed by black darkness, in which, however, the apparition still showed white and motionless; then by insensible degrees it faded and vanished. Holt could only see the upper half of the woman's figure: Nothing was seen below the waist.
In the dawn of the morning Holt found himself entering the village at a point opposite to that at which he had left it. He soon arrived at the house of his brother, who hardly knew him. He was wild-eyed, haggard and gray as a rat. Almost incoherently, he related his night's experience.
"Go to bed, my poor fellow," said his brother, "and wait. We shall hear more of this."
An hour later came the predestined telegram. Holt's dwelling in one of the suburbs of Chicago had been destroyed by fire. Her escape cut off by the flames, his wife had appeared at an upper window, her child in her arms. There she had stood, motionless, apparently dazed. Just as the firemen had arrived with a ladder, the floor had given way, and she was seen no more.
The moment of this culminating horror was 11:25 p.m., standard time.
In 1901 divers working off the isle of Antikythera found the remains of a clocklike mechanism 2,000 years old. The mechanism now appears to have been a device for calculating the motions of stars and planets by Derek J. de Solla Price
Among the treasures of the Greek National Archaeological Museum in Athens are the remains of the most complex scientific object that has been preserved from antiquity. Corroded and crumbling from 2,000 years under the sea, its dials, gear wheels and inscribed plates present the historian with a tantalizing problem. Because of them we may have to revise many of our estimates of Greek science. By studying them we may find vital clues to the true origins of that high scientific technology which hitherto has seemed peculiar to our modern civilization, setting it apart from all cultures of the past.
From the evidence of the fragments one can get a good idea of the appearance of the original object. Consisting of a box with dials on the outside and a very complex assembly of gear wheels mounted within, it must have resembled a well- made 18ih-century clock. Doors hinged to the box served to protect the dials, and on all available surfaces of box, doors and dials there were long Greek inscriptions describing the operation and construction of the instrument. At least 20 gear wheels of the mechanism have been preserved, including a very sophisticated assembly of gears that were mounted eccentrically on a turntable and probably functioned as a sort of epicyclic or differential, gear-system.
Nothing like this instrument is preserved elsewhere. Nothing comparable to it is known. from any ancient scientific text or literary allusion. On the contrary, from all that we know of science and technology in the Hellenistic Age we should have felt that such a device could not exist. Some historians have suggested that the Greeks were not interested in experiment because of a contempt-perhaps induced by the existence of the institution of slavery-for manual labor. On the other hand it has long been recognized that in abstract mathematics and in mathematical astronomy they were no beginners but rather "fellows of another college" who reached great heights of sophistication. Many of the Greek scientific devices known to us from written descriptions show much mathematical ingenuity, but in all cases the purely mechanical part of the design seems relatively crude. Gearing was clearly known to the Greeks, but it was used only in relatively simple applications. They employed pairs of gears to change angular speed or mechanical ad- vantage, or to apply power through a right angle, as in the water-driven mill.
Even the most complex mechanical devices described by the ancient writers Hero of Alexandria and Vitruvius contained only simple gearing. For example, the taximeter used by the Greeks to measure the distance travelled by the wheels of a carriage employed only pairs of gears (or gears and worms) to achieve the necessary ratio of movement. It could be argued that if the Greeks knew the principle of gearing, they should have had no difficulty in constructing mechanisms as complex as epicyclic gears. We now know from the fragments in the National Museum that the Greeks did make such mechanisms, but the knowledge is so unexpected that some scholars at first thought that the fragments must belong to some more modern device.
Can we in fact be sure that the device is ancient? If we can, what was its purpose? What can it tell us of the ancient world and of the evolution of modern science? To authenticate the dating of the fragments We must. tell the story of their discovery, which involves the first (though inadvertent) adventure in underwater archaeology. Just before Easter in 1900 a party of Dodecanese sponge-divers were driven by storm to anchor near the tiny southern Greek island of Antikythera (the accent is on the "kyth," pronounced to rhyme with pith). There, at a depth of some 200 feet, they found the wreck of an ancient ship. With the help of Greek archaeologists the wreck was explored; several fine bronze and marble statues and other objects were recovered. The finds created great excitement, but the difficulties of diving without heavy equipment were immense, and in September, 1901, the "dig' was abandoned. Eight months later Valerios StaÎs, an archaeologist at the National Museum, was examining some calcified lumps of corroded bronze that had been set aside as possible pieces of broken statuary. Suddenly he recognized among them the fragments of a mechanism.
It is now accepted that the wreck occurred during the first century B.C. Gladys Weinberg of Athens has been kind enough to report to me the results of several recent archaeological examinations of the amphorae, pottery and minor objects from the ship. It appears from her report that one might reason-ably date the wreck more closely as 65 B.C. ±15 years. Furthermore, since the identifiable objects come from Rhodes and Cos, it seems that the ship may have. been voyaging from these islands to Rome, perhaps without calling at the Greek mainland.
The fragment that first caught the eye of StaÎs was one of the corroded, inscribed plates that is an integral part of the Antikythera mechanism, as the device later came to be called. StaÎs saw immediately that the inscription was ancient. In the opinion of the epigrapher Benjamin Dean Meritt, the forms of the letters are those of the 'first century B.C.; they could hardly be older than 100 B.C. nor younger than the time of Christ. The dating is supported by the content of the inscriptions. The words used and their astronomical sense are all of this period. For example, the most extensive and complete piece of inscription is part of a parapegma (astronomical calendar) similar to that written by one Geminos, who is thought to have lived in Rhodes about 77 B.C. We may thus be reasonably sure that the mechanism did not find its way into the wreck at some later period. Furthermore, it cannot have been very old when it was taken aboard the ship as booty or merchandise.
As soon as the fragments had been discovered they were examined by every available archaeologist; so began the long and difficult process of identifying the mechanism and determining its function. Some things were clear from the beginning. The unique importance of the object was obvious, and the gearing was impressively complex. From the inscriptions and the dials the mechanism was correctly identified as an astronomical device. The first conjecture was that it was some kind of navigating instrument – perhaps an astrolabe (a sort of circular star-finder map also used for simple observations). Some thought that it might be a small planetarium of the kind that Archirnedes is said to have made. Unfortunately the fragments were covered by a thick curtain of calcified material and corrosion products, and these concealed so much detail that no one could be sure of his conjectures or reconstructions. There was nothing to do but wait for the slow and delicate work of the Museum technicians in cleaning away this curtain. Meantime, as the work proceeded, several scholars published accounts of all that was visible, and through their labors a general picture of the mechanism began to emerge. On the basis of new photographs made for me by the Museum in 1955 I realized that the work of cleaning had reached a point where it might at last be possible to take the work of identification to a new level. Last summer, wilt the assistance of a grant from the American Philosophical Society, I was able to visit Athens and make a minute examination of the fragments. By good fortune George Stamires, a Greek epigrapher, was there at the same time; he was able to give me invaluable help by deciphering and transcribing much more of the inscriptions than had been read before. We are now in the position of being able to "join" the fragments and to see how they fitted together in the original machine and when they were brought up from the sea [see illustration]. The success of this work has been most significant, for previously it had been supposed that the various dials and plates had been badly squashed together and distorted. It now appears that most of the pieces are very nearly in their original places, and that we have a much larger fraction of the complete device than had been thought. This work also provides a clue to the puzzle of why the fragments lay unrecognized until StaÎs saw them. When they were found, the fragments were probably held together in their original positions by the remains of the wooden frame of the case. In the Museum the waterlogged wood dried and shriveled. The fragments then fell apart, revealing the interior of the mechanism, with its gears and inscribed plates. As a result of the new examinations we shall in due course be able to publish a technical account of the fragments and of the construction of the instrument. In the meantime we can tentatively summarize some of these results and show how they help to answer the question. What is it? There are four ways of getting at the answer First, if we knew the details of the mechanism, we should know what it did. Second, if we could read the dials, we could tell what they showed. Third, if we could understand the inscriptions, they might tell us about the mechanism. Fourth, if we knew of any similar mechanism, analogies might be helpful. All these approaches must be used, for none of them is complete.
The geared wheels within the mechanism were mounted on a bronze plate. On one side of the plate we can trace all the gear wheels of the assembly and can determine, at least approximately, how many teeth each had and how they meshed together. On the other side we can do nearly as well, but we still lack vital links that would provide a complete picture of the gearing. The general pattern of the mechanism is nonetheless quite clear. An input was provided by an axle that came through the side of the casing and turned a crown-gear wheel. This moved a big, four-spoked driving-wheel that was connected with two trains of gears that respectively led up and down the plate and were connected by axles to gears on the other side of the plate. On that side the gear-trains continued, leading through an epicyclic turntable and coming eventually to a set of shafts that turned the dial pointers. When the input axle was turned, the pointers all moved at various speeds around their dials.
Certain structural features of the mechanism deserve special attention. All the metal parts of the machine seem to have been cut from a single sheet of low-tin bronze about two millimeters thick; no parts were cast or made of another metal. There are indications that the maker may have used a sheet made much earlier–uniform metal plate of good quality was probably rare and expensive. All the gear wheels have been made with teeth of just the same angle (60 degrees) and size, so that any wheel could mesh with any other. There are signs that the machine was repaired at least twice; a spoke of the driving wheel has been mended, and a broken tooth in a small wheel has been replaced. This indicates that the machine actually worked. The casing was provided with three dials, one at the front and two at the back. The fragments of all of them are still covered with pieces of the doors of the casing and with other debris. Very little can be read on the dials, but there is hope that they can be cleaned sufficiently to provide information that might be decisive. The front dial is just clean enough to say exactly what it did. It has two scales, one of which is fixed and displays the names of the signs of the zodiac; the other is on a movable slip ring and shows the months of the year. Both scales are carefully marked off in degrees. The front dial fitted exactly over the main driving-wheel, which seems to have turned the pointer by means of an eccentric drum-assembly. Clearly this dial showed the annual motion of the sun in the zodiac. By means of key letters inscribed on the zodiac scale, corresponding to other letters on the parapegma calendar plate, it also showed the main risings and settings of bright stars and constellations throughout the year.
The back dials are more complex and less legible. The lower one had three slip rings; the upper, four. Each had a little subsidiary dial resembling the "seconds" dial of a watch. Each of the large dials is inscribed with lines about every six degrees, and between the lines there are letters and numbers. On the lower dial the letters and numbers seem to record "moon, so many hours; sun, so many hours"; we therefore suggest that this scale indicates the main lunar phenomena of phases and times of rising and setting. On the upper dial the inscriptions are much more crowded and might well present information on the risings and settings, stations and retrogradations of the planets known to the Greeks (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn).
Some of the technical details of the dials are especially interesting. The front dial provides the only known extensive specimen from antiquity of a scientifically graduated instrument. When we measure the accuracy of the graduations under the microscope, we find that their average error over the visible 45 degrees is about a quarter of a degree. The way in which the error varies suggests that the arc was first geometrically divided and then subdivided by eye only. Even more important, this dial may give a means of dating the instrument astronomically. The slip ring is necessary because the old Egyptian calendar, having no leap years, fell into error by 1/4 day every year; the month scale thus had to be adjusted by this amount. As they are preserved the two scales of the dial are out of phase by 13½ degrees. Standard tables show that this amount could only occur in the year 80 B.C. and (because we do not know the month) at all years just 120 years (i.e., 30 days divided by 1/4 day per year) before or after that date. Alternative dates are archaeologically unlikely: 200 B.C. is too early; 40 A.D. is too late. Hence, if the slip ring has not moved from its last position, it was set in. 80 B.C. Furthermore, if we are right in supposing that a fiducial mark near the month scale was put there originally to provide a means of setting that scale in case of accidental movement, we can tell more. This mark is exactly 1/2 degree away from the present position of the scale, and this implies that the mark was made two years before the setting. Thus, although the evidence is by no means conclusive, we are led to suggest that the instrument was made about 82 B.C., used for two years (just long enough for the repairs to have been needed) and then taken onto the ship within the next 30 years.
The fragments show that the original instrument carried at least four large areas of inscription: outside the front door, inside the back door, on the plate between the two back dials and on the parapegma plates near the front dial. As I have noted, there are also inscriptions around all the dials, and furthermore each part and hole would seem to have had identifying letters so that the pieces could be put together in the correct order and position. The main inscriptions are in a sorry state and only short snatches of them can be read. To provide an idea of their condition it need only be said that in some cases a plate has completely disappeared, leaving behind an impression of its letters, standing up in a mirror image, in relief on the soft corrosion products on the plate below. It is remarkable that such inscriptions can be read at all.
But even from the evidence of a few complete words one can get an idea of the subject matter. The sun is mentioned several times, and the planet Venus once; terms are used that refer to the stations and retrogradations of planets; the ecliptic is named. Pointers, apparently those of the dials, are mentioned. A line of one inscription signfficantly records "76 years, 19 years." This refers to the well-known Calippic cycle of 76 years, which is four times the Metonic cycle of 19 years, or 235 synodic (lunar) months. The next line includes the number "223," which refers to the eclipse cycle of 223 lunar months.
Putting together the information gathered so far, it seems reasonable to suppose that the whole purpose of the Antikythera device was to mechanize just this sort of cyclical relation, which was a strong feature of ancient astronomy. Using the cycles that have been mentioned, one could easily design gearing that would operate from one dial having a wheel that revolved annually, and turn by this gearing a series of other wheels which would move pointers indicating the sidereal, synodic and draconitic months. Similar cycles were known for the planetary phenomena; in fact, this type of arithmetical theory is the central theme of Seleucid Babylonian astronomy, which was transmitted to the Hellenistic world in the last few centuries B.C. Such arithmetical schemes are quite distinct from the geometrical theory of circles and epicycles in astronomy, which seems to have been essentially Greek. The two types of theory were unified and brought to their peak in the second century A.D. by Claudius Ptolemy, whose labors marked the triumph of the new mathematical attitude toward geometrical models that still characterizes physics today.
The Antikythera mechanism must therefore be an arithmetical counterpart of the much more familiar geometrical models of the solar system which were known to Plato and Archimedes and evolved into the orrery and the planetarium. The mechanism is like. a great astronomical clock without an escapement, or like a modern analogue computer which uses mechanical parts to save tedious calculation. It is a pity that we have no way of knowing whether the device was turned automatically or by hand. It might have been held in the hand and turned by a wheel at the side so that it would operate as a computer, possibly for astrological use. I feel it is more likely that it was permanently mounted, perhaps set in a statue, and displayed as an exhibition piece. In that case it might well have been turned by the power from a water clock or some other device. Perhaps it is just such a wondrous device that was mounted inside the famous Tower of Winds in Athens. It is certainly very similar to the great astronomical cathedral clocks that were built all over Europe during the Renaissance.
It is to the prehistory of the mechanical I clock that we must look for important analogies the Antikythera mechanism and for an assessment of its significance. Unlike other mechanical devices, the clock did not evolve from the simple to the complex. The oldest clocks of which we are well informed were the most complicated. All the evidence points to the fact that the clock started as an astronomical showpiece that happened also to indicate the time. Gradually the timekeeping functions became more important and the device that showed the marvelous clockwork of the heavens became subsidiary. Behind the astronomical clocks of the 14th century there stretches an unbroken sequence of mechanical models of astronomical theory. At the head of this sequence is the Antikythera mechanism. Following it are instruments and clocklike computers known from Islam, from China and India and from the European Middle Ages. The importance of this line is very great, because it was the tradition of clock- making that preserved most of man's skill in scientific fine mechanics. During the Renaissance the scientific instrument-makers evolved from the clockmakers. Thus the Antikythera mechanism is, in a way, the venerable progenitor of all our present plethora of scientific hardware.
A significant passage in this story has to do with the astronomical computers of Islam. Preserved complete at the Museum of History of Science at Oxford is a 13th-century Islamic geared calendar-computer that has various periods built into it, so that it shows on dials the various cycles of the sun and moon. This design can be traced back, with slightly different periods but a similar arrangement of gears, to a manuscript written by the astronomer al-Biruni about 1000 A.D. Such instruments am much simpler than the Antikythera mechanism, but they show so many points of agreement in technical detail that it seems clear they came from a common tradition. The same 60-degree gear teeth are used; wheels are mounted on square-shanked axles; the geometrical layout of the gear assembly appears comparable. It was just at this time that Islam was drawing on Greek knowledge and rediscovering ancient Greek texts. It seems likely that the Antikythera tradition was part of a large corpus of knowledge that has since been lost to us but was known to the Arabs. It was developed and transmitted by them to medieval Europe, where it .became the foundation for the whole range of subsequent invention in the field of clockwork.
On the one hand the Islamic devices knit the whole story together, and demonstrate that it is through ancestry and not mere coincidence that the Antikythera mechanism resembles a modern clock. On the other hand they show that the Antikythera mechanism was no flash in the pan but was a part of an important current in Hellenistic civilization. History has contrived to keep that current dark to us, and only the accidental underwater preservation of fragments that would otherwise have crumbled to dust has now brought it to light. It is a bit frightening to know that just before the fall of their great civilization the ancient Greeks had come so close to our age, not only in their thought, but also in their scientific technology.
Rebuilding of the machine of Anticythère: it is the result of research of the pr. Derek de Solla Price, in collaboration with the National Scientific Research Center Démokritos and the physicist CH Karakalos who carried out the x-ray tomography of the original and the mechanism reconstituted to show their operation. Price built a rectangular box of 0.33 X 0.17 X 0.10 m with plates of information and protection, carrying Greek inscriptions of planets. The mechanism is a complex set of 32 gears of various sizes, turning at different speeds. The mechanism was offered by the pr. Price to the national Museum in 1980 and remains the reference for the study of the original despite the fact that its construction has been subject to much criticism. National archaeological museum, Athens, n°BE 109/1980.
WHEN a Greek sponge diver called Elias Stadiatos discovered the wreck of a cargo ship off the tiny island of Antikythera in 1900, it was the statues lying on the seabed that made the greatest impression on him. He returned to the surface, removed his helmet, and gabbled that he had found a heap of dead, naked women. The ship's cargo of luxury goods also included jewellery, pottery, fine furniture, wine and bronzes dating back to the first century BC. But the most important finds proved to be a few green, corroded lumps—the last remnants of an elaborate mechanical device.
The Antikythera mechanism, as it is now known, was originally housed in a wooden box about the size of a shoebox, with dials on the outside and a complex assembly of bronze gear wheels within. X-ray photographs of the fragments, in which around 30 separate gears can be distinguished, led the late Derek Price, a science historian at Yale University, to conclude that the device was an astronomical computer capable of predicting the positions of the sun and moon in the zodiac on any given date. A new analysis, though, suggests that the device was cleverer than Price thought, and reinforces the evidence for his theory of an ancient Greek tradition of complex mechanical technology.
Michael Wright, the curator of mechanical engineering at the Science Museum in London, has based his new analysis on detailed X-rays of the mechanism using a technique called linear tomography. This involves moving an X-ray source, the film and the object being investigated relative to one another, so that only features in a particular plane come into focus. Analysis of the resulting images, carried out in conjunction with Allan Bromley, a computer scientist at Sydney University, found the exact position of each gear, and suggested that Price was wrong in several respects.
In some cases, says Mr Wright, Price seems to have “massaged” the number of teeth on particular gears (most of which are, admittedly, incomplete) in order to arrive at significant astronomical ratios. Price's account also, he says, displays internal contradictions, selective use of evidence and unwarranted speculation. In particular, it postulates an elaborate reversal mechanism to get some gears to turn in the right direction.
Since so little of the mechanism survives, some guesswork is unavoidable. But Mr Wright noticed a fixed boss at the centre of the mechanism's main wheel. To his instrument-maker's eye, this was suggestive of a fixed central gear around which other moving gears could rotate. This does away with the need for Price's reversal mechanism and leads to the idea that the device was specifically designed to model a particular form of “epicyclic” motion.
The Greeks believed in an earth-centric universe and accounted for celestial bodies' motions using elaborate models based on epicycles, in which each body describes a circle (the epicycle) around a point that itself moves in a circle around the earth. Mr Wright found evidence that the Antikythera mechanism would have been able to reproduce the motions of the sun and moon accurately, using an epicyclic model devised by Hipparchus, and of the planets Mercury and Venus, using an epicyclic model derived by Apollonius of Perga. (These models, which predate the mechanism, were subsequently incorporated into the work of Claudius Ptolemy in the second century AD.)
A device that just modelled the motions of the sun, moon, Mercury and Venus does not make much sense. But if an upper layer of mechanism had been built, and lost, these extra gears could have modelled the motions of the three other planets known at the time—Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. In other words, the device may have been able to predict the positions of the known celestial bodies for any given date with a respectable degree of accuracy, using bronze pointers on a circular dial with the constellations of the zodiac running round its edge.
Mr Wright devised a putative model in which the mechanisms for each celestial body stack up like layers in a sandwich, and started building it in his workshop. The completed reconstruction, details of which appeared in an article in the Horological Journal in May, went on display this week at Technopolis, a museum in Athens. By winding a knob on the side, celestial bodies can be made to advance and retreat so that their positions on any chosen date can be determined. Mr Wright says his device could have been built using ancient tools because the ancient Greeks had saws whose teeth were cut using v-shaped files—a task that is similar to the cutting of teeth on a gear wheel. He has even made several examples by hand.
How closely this reconstruction matches up to the original will never be known. The purpose of two dials on the back of the device is still unclear, although one may indicate the year. Nor is the device's purpose obvious: it may have been an astrological computer, used to speed up the casting of horoscopes, though it might just as easily have been a luxury plaything. But Mr Wright is convinced that his epicyclic interpretation is correct, and that the original device modelled the entire known solar system.
The Greeks had a word for it
That tallies with ancient sources that refer to such devices. Cicero, writing in the first century BC, mentions an instrument “recently constructed by our friend Poseidonius, which at each revolution reproduces the same motions of the sun, the moon and the five planets.” Archimedes is also said to have made a small planetarium, and two such devices were said to have been rescued from Syracuse when it fell in 212BC. This reconstruction suggests such references can now be taken literally.
It also provides strong support for Price's theory. He believed that the mechanism was strongly suggestive of an ancient Greek tradition of complex mechanical technology which, transmitted via the Arab world, formed the basis of European clockmaking techniques. This fits with another, smaller device that was acquired in 1983 by the Science Museum, which models the motions of the sun and moon. Dating from the sixth century AD, it provides a previously missing link between the Antikythera mechanism and later Islamic calendar computers, such as the 13th century example at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. That device, in turn, uses techniques described in a manuscript written by al-Biruni, an Arab astronomer, around 1000AD.
The origins of much modern technology, from railway engines to robots, can be traced back to the elaborate mechanical toys, or automata, that flourished in the 18th century. Those toys, in turn, grew out of the craft of clockmaking. And that craft, like so many other aspects of the modern world, seems to have roots that can be traced right back to ancient Greece.
Every summer Contactees -- people who believe they have communicated with god-like space people -- flock to the Rocky Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation, held on the University of Wyoming campus in Laramie. All these people have remarkable stories to tell: stories of personal transformation that sound like classic religious experiences in Space Age guise.
One of the stories is told by Merry Lynn Noble, by her own admission once "one of the leading call girls in the western United States." She was also an alcohol and drug addict seeking to change her life through spiritual studies. In February 1982, exhausted and depressed, she visited her parents in Montana. One evening, as they were driving in the country, a flying saucer appeared, bathing the car in light.
Noble's parents, who "were just frozen there," seemed unaware of the UFO's presence. Meanwhile, Merry Lynn in her astral body was being drawn into the craft, where she felt "absolute ecstasy, total peace, womblike warmth. . . . 'I'm so glad to leave that body,' I thought." She communicated telepathically with a "presence" who gave her a "new soul, with new energy, new humility." The next thing she knew, she was jolted back into her physical body.
From that moment her life began to change for the better. She found a good job and joined Alcoholics Anonymous, where she met the man whom she would marry. Her psychic contact with the extraterrestrial she met aboard the saucer continues, and she has written an unpublished autobiography, Sex, God and UFOs.
On the evening of September 19, 1961, while driving home to Portsmouth through rural New Hampshire, Barney and Betty Hill sighted a pancake-shaped UFO with a double row of windows. At one point they stopped their car, and Barney got out for a better look. As the UFO tilted in his direction, he saw six uniformed beings inside. Suddenly frightened, the Hills sped away, but soon a series of beeps sounded, their vehicle started to vibrate, and they felt drowsy. The next thing they knew, they were hearing beeps again. The UFO was gone. When they arrived home, it was two hours later than they expected; somehow, the Hills had lost two hours.
A series of disturbing dreams and other problems led the Hills to seek psychiatric help. Between January and June 1964, under hypnosis, they recounted the landing of the UFO, the emergence of its occupants, their abduction into the craft, and separately experienced medical examinations. In 1965 a Boston newspaper reported the story, which in 1967 became the subject of a best-selling book, John G. Fuller's The Interrupted Journey. On October 20, 1975, NBC television broadcast a docudrama, The UFO Incident, about the experience.
Most everyone has heard of the UFO abduction of the Hills. At the time it shocked even hard-core ufologists. Nothing quite like it had ever been recorded. Ufologists did know of a bizarre December 1954 incident from Venezuela: Four hairy UFO beings allegedly tried to drag a hunter into their craft, only to be discouraged when his companion struck one of them on the head with the butt of his gun. In any case, ufologists traditionally viewed with suspicion claims of on-board encounters with UFO crews. Those kinds of stories were associated with "contactees," who were regarded, with good reason, as charlatans who peddled long-winded tales of meetings with godlike "Space Brothers." The Hills, however, had a sterling personal reputation, and they returned from their experience with no messages of cosmic uplift.
The late comedian Jackie Gleason's second wife Beverly tells a strange story that she swears is true. One evening in 1973, she writes in an unpublished book on their marriage, Gleason returned to her Florida home badly shaken. After first refusing to tell her why he was so upset, Gleason confided that earlier in the day his friend President Richard Nixon had arranged for him to visit Homestead Air Force Base in Florida.
Upon his arrival armed guards took Gleason to a building at a remote location on the site. There, Gleason, who harbored an intense interest in UFOs, saw the embalmed bodies of four alien beings, two feet long, with small bald heads and big ears. He was told nothing about the circumstances of their recovery. He swore his wife to secrecy, but after their divorce Beverly freely discussed the story.
In the mid-1980s, when ufologist Larry Bryant sued the U.S. government to get it to reveal its UFO secrets, he tried without success to subpoena Gleason.
One night in 1974, from a Cessna Citation aircraft, one of America's most famous citizens saw a UFO.
There were four persons aboard the plane: pilot Bill Paynter, two security guards, and the governor of California, Ronald Reagan. As the airplane approached Bakersfield, California, the passengers called Paynter's attention to a strange object to their rear. "It appeared to be several hundred yards away," Paynter recalled. "It was a fairly steady light until it began to accelerate. Then it appeared to elongate. Then the light took off. It went up at a 45-degree angle-at a high rate of speed. Everyone on the plane was surprised. . . . The UFO went from a normal cruise speed to a fantastic speed instantly. If you give an airplane power, it will accelerate-but not like a hot rod, and that's what this was like."
A week later Reagan recounted the sighting to Norman C. Miller, then Washington bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. Reagan told Miller, "We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light. We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens." When Miller expressed some doubt, a "look of horror came over [Reagan]. It suddenly dawned on him . . . that he was talking to a reporter." Immediately afterward, according to Miller, Reagan "clammed up."
Reagan has not discussed the incident publicly since.
"Have We Visitors from Space?" Life magazine asked in an article in its April 7, 1952, issue. It was a question people all over the world were asking in wonder or fear or both. What, short of intruders from other worlds, could explain the presence in the Earth's atmosphere of objects that looked like structured craft but which performed in ways unimaginably beyond the capacity of earthly rockets and airplanes?
photo of j. allen hynek
Intercontinental U.F.O. Galactic Spacecraft Research and Analytic Network Archives
The pioneering UFO work of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, now deceased, is carried on by many ufologists hoping to uncover the secret of Roswell and other UFO encounters.
Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh -- who had discovered the planet Pluto in 1930 -- was numbered among those who had seen flying saucers. On the evening of August 20, 1949, he, his wife, and his mother-in-law saw a "geometrical group of faint bluish-green rectangles of light" apparently attached to a larger "structure." He said of the experience, "I have done thousands of hours of night sky watching, but never saw a sight so strange as this."
In 1952, in an informal survey of 44 of his fellow astronomers, J. Allen Hynek of Project Blue Book learned that five had seen UFOs. "A higher percentage than among the public at large," Professor Hynek noted in an internal Air Force memorandum. Fear of ridicule kept most scientists silent about their sightings, however. In a 1976 survey of members of the American Astronomical Society, 62 admitted to having had UFO experiences; only one of the scientists made a public report of his sighting.
One astronomer more than any other would be associated with the UFO phenomenon: Professor Hynek. In 1948 the Air Force asked Hynek -- as a faculty member at Ohio State University, he was the astronomer closest to Dayton, Ohio, the location of the UFO project's headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (AFB) -- to look at the UFO reports it was gathering to determine which of them resulted from misidentification of astronomical phenomena such as meteors, comets, planets, and stars.
To the extent he had given the subject any thought, Hynek was deeply skeptical of flying saucers. Yet four years later, he confessed in a lecture to colleagues that some reports were indeed "puzzling." The "steady flow of reports, often made in concert by reliable observers," merited scientific attention, not ridicule. "Ridicule is not a part of the scientific method," Hynek said, "and the public should not be taught that it is."
Dead" Physicist Explains Communication Difficulties
During a recent segment of the Lisa Williams show ("Talking with the Dead") on the Lifetime channel, two sisters and a brother appeared to be receiving a very evidential reading from Williams as their mother communicated through Williams' clairvoyance. The three were affirming nearly everything Williams said and the two women were in tears. When Williams said she was losing contact with their mother, one of the sisters asked if she had given her name. Williams paused and then said she had not.
No doubt the skeptics watching the program had a good laugh, asking how Williams could get so much evidential information and not get a simple name. Probably few of them stopped to think that the fact she didn't get the name works against both the fraud and telepathy theories. Certainly if she or her staff had done some research beforehand, as the skeptics allege, she would at least have the mother's name. And it is likely that the sister who asked the question had her mother's name in mind for Williams to telepathically receive, if that is the way she gets her information.
At times, Williams does get names; at other times she doesn't. The problem with getting names was discussed in a previous blog (see "Why John Edward Struggles with Names" listed under at right; click on "popular"). However, I recently came upon another credible source. It confirms and adds to the previous discussion.
Beginning July 26, 1925, Lady Barrett, otherwise known as Dr. Florence Barrett, dean of the London School of Medicine for Women, began receiving messages from her late husband, Sir William Barrett, who had died on May 26, 1925 at age 80, through the mediumship of Gladys Osborne Leonard, the renowned London medium. Sir William had spent nearly 40 years as a professor of physics in the Royal College of Science at Dublin and was knighted in 1912 for his scientific work, which included developing a silicon-iron alloy known as stalloy, used in the commercial development of the telephone and transformers, and also doing pioneering research on entoptic vision, leading to the invention of the entoptiscope and a new optometer. Sir William was also a psychical researcher when alive and was instrumental in the formation of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in 1882.
Lady Barrett was not a gullible grieving widow. She went to see Mrs. Leonard only after a member of the SPR told her that her husband had communicated at a recent sitting with Mrs. Leonard. While Lady Barrett was well aware of Mrs. Leonard's reputation as a credible medium, she proceeded cautiously. As a respected obstetrician and Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, she had her own reputation to protect. At that first sitting on July 26, Lady Barrett received some very evidential information - information which she was certain could not have been known to Mrs. Leonard or researched - including details of Sir William's last moments in his physical shell and mention of a leg problem he had been experiencing just before his death. Over the next 11 years, Lady Barrett sat with Mrs. Leonard every few months, and in a 1937 book, Personality Survives Death, she published some of the transcripts of her sittings.
"Sometimes I lose some memory of things from coming here," Sir William told her in a February 8, 1927 sitting. "I know it in my own state but not here." He went on to liken it to having a dream in the physical state and to explain that when he goes back to the spirit world after a sitting he realizes that he did not get everything through that he wanted to. He further explained that when we die, the subconscious and the conscious join up, making a complete mind that knows and remembers everything. However, when he has to lower his vibration to communicate with her, he leaves the subconscious behind and must rely on what was his conscious memory. He said the subconscious is housed within the etheric body.
"There are two lives here: one I can tell you about and you can understand, and one I cannot tell you about till you come over," Sir William told his widow. She asked him which life was higher and he replied that it was the life he could not tell her about. "I cannot come with and as my whole self, I cannot," he added, saying that he cannot make his fourth dimensional self the same as the third dimensional self. "It is like measuring a third dimension by its square feet instead of by its cubic feet."
Lady Barrett occasionally visited mediums other than Mrs. Leonard. At one sitting, apparently with a clairvoyant, Sir William identified himself as "William" rather than "Will," as she knew him. This made her suspicious that it was not him. At a sitting with Mrs. Leonard on November 5, 1929 Lady Barrett asked him about this. Sir William explained the problem. "If you go to a medium that is new to us, I can make myself known by giving you through that medium an impression of my character and personality, my work on earth and so forth," he related. "Those can all be suggested by thought impressions, ideas; but if I want to say, ‘I am Will,' I find that is much more difficult than giving you a long comprehensive study of my personality. ‘I am Will' sounds so simple, but you understand that in this case the word ‘Will' becomes a detached word. If I wanted to express an idea of my scientific interests I could do it in twenty different ways. I should probably begin by showing books, then giving impressions of the nature of the book and so on, till I had built up a character impression of myself, but ‘I am Will' presents difficulties."
The same problem presented itself with her name when he called her "Florrie" at one sitting, whereas he had called her only "Flo" when alive. Sir William explained that he couldn't get "Flo" through the medium's mind.
In a 1931 sitting, Sir William could get only the letter "B" through to describe her brother from Bristol who had recently passed over (his actual name is not stated in the book, so it is unclear as to whether "B" stands for his name, brother, or Bristol). He told her that he was helping her brother adjust to his new reality, mentioning that her brother kept saying "But you are dead, you are dead, you are dead," and assumed he was dreaming. It was not until several other "dead" relatives and friends greeted him that he began to realize that he had "died."
On another occasion, Sir William tried to explain that a message would reach his widow from Leonora Piper of America. However, he could only get "P" from "oversea" through the medium's mind. It was not until the message was delivered from Mrs. Piper in Boston that Lady Barrett understood the reference. "The actual phrasing, therefore, in some places cannot be regarded word for word as that of the communicator himself, but as that of the control operating through the medium," Lady Barrett explained in the Introduction to the book.
All the while, Sir William was able to get bits of personal information through to Lady Barrett so that she would know it was him For example, at one sitting, he told her that he saw her take down a picture from the wall a few days earlier. There was much personal information that came through, but Lady Barrett did not feel it should go in the book.
Sir William explained that the ability to communicate between planes depended upon the ability of the spirit communicator to lower his vibration and for the "living" person on earth to raise her or his vibration. Some people can raise their vibrations better than others and some of them are called mediums. On the subject of vibration, Sir William said that he now understood the so-called physical resurrection of Christ. "Through living in the most spiritual vibration, He was able to raise the vibrations of the physical so that there was no body to dispose of at His death - or as we prefer to say, at His transition," he explained.
Most of the communication came through Feda, Mrs. Leonard spirit control, as Sir William often struggled to lower his vibrations, and it was necessary for Feda to act as a go-between. Occasionally, however, Sir William was able to lower his vibrations and directly control Mrs. Leonard. At those time, Feda's high-pitched voice, which was nothing like Mrs. Leonard's, gave way to Sir William's deeper voice. On several occasions, when it appeared that Sir William was very emotional, he broke through in the direct voice (his actual voice emanating from outside the medium's body). On one such occasion, Lady Barrett recorded him as saying, "Life is far more wonderful than I can ever tell you, beyond anything I ever hoped for; it exceeds all my expectations."
Several years ago, I stayed in a small apartment adjoining an old cabin. The property was far from city lights, and on clear nights, the shadows could be a little spooky. Sometimes, especially in the dark evenings of the fall and early winter, I had the uncanny sense that I wasn't alone.One night, while I was in the apartment, I heard a muffled thump that seemed to come from inside the cabin. Ordinarily, I would have dismissed the sound as the settling of the century-old building. But it was an eerily still night, and I already found the terrain around the cabin unnerving after dark. After hearing the sound several times, I started to wonder whether something supernatural was at work, but I hesitated to investigate.
In the morning, I heard the sound again while I was outside. When I turned to see what it was, I saw an apple rolling across the grass. Testing a theory, I picked up the apple and dropped it. The sound was identical to the one that had frightened me the night before.
In daylight, looking at the fallen apples under a tree, the idea that the cabin could be haunted seemed silly. But dark nights and old buildings can cause even the most skeptical people to wonder about the existence of ghosts. According to a 2005 Gallup poll, more than a third of Americans believe that houses can be haunted, and about 32 percent believe specifically in ghosts [Source: The Gallup Poll News Service].
According to believers, a ghost is the spirit of a dead person that either has not moved on to the afterlife or has returned from it. The definition of "spirit" can vary. Some describe it as a person's soul, while others believe it is an energetic imprint that a person leaves on the world.
Humans have believed in -- or been skeptical about -- ghosts for thousands of years. They're even mentioned in the oldest known written work of literature, "The Epic of Gilgamesh." Ghost stories are part of most cultures' folklore, although the details vary considerably from region to region.
The Death of Ghosts?
Reports of ghosts bearing the news of deaths or disasters were frequent in the Victorian era, but they seem to be less common today. Researchers have offered a couple of possible explanations for this drop-off in supernatural messengers:
* People no longer report seeing the spirits of loved ones for fear of appearing crazy.
* Improvements in communication, like telephones and e-mail, have made it unnecessary for ghosts to intervene in human communication.
Ghostly Encounters
People describe ghostly encounters in lots of different ways. People see apparitions or strange lights, sense a presence in a room, hear noises or feel a sudden drop in temperature. They smell a deceased relative's favorite breakfast cooking in the kitchen or hear a favorite song playing while the stereo is off. Objects fall from shelves and doors open and close on their own. The electricity goes haywire, causing lights to flicker or televisions to turn on and off by themselves. Sometimes, people don't experience anything unusual at all, but they notice strange apparitions or shapes when they look at pictures they've taken.
Some ghost stories involve visible apparitions that are bound to specific locations or families. These ghosts often appear as a warning that someone is going to die. They aren't always human -- some take the form of animals. Similarly, some reports of ghosts involve apparitions that inform friends or family members of recent deaths or impending crises. Some paranormal researchers classify this as a form of telepathy rather than an actual ghost.
Other ghosts are reported to be the spirits of people who died violently or suddenly; they may re-enact their deaths or try to seek vengeance. For example, some people believe that North Carolina's Brown Mountain Lights -- flickering lights that appear on the slope of the mountain -- are the spirits of Native Americans who died in battle. Sometimes, ghostly reproductions of inanimate objects, like sunken ships or crashed cars, reappear after accidents or tragedies.
Then, there are the ghosts who are simply sticking around, either unwilling or unable to leave the Earth. Paranormal researchers often refer to these ghosts as earthbound spirits. An earthbound ghost may haunt a specific location, like its home, its favorite place to visit or the place that it died. It may be trying to pass a message to friends or loved ones, to complete a task that it started while alive or to hold on to its home or possessions. Some researchers and mediums claim to be able to encourage these sprits to let go of their ties to the Earth and move on to a spiritual realm.
For a lot of people, seeing, hearing or sensing a ghost is enough to prove their existence. But researchers have found several possible explanations for the phenomena most often attributed to ghosts. We'll look at them in the next section.
Orb Photography
Some paranormal researchers believe that photographs containing orbs, or unexplained spots of light, are signs of ghostly activity. Some describe orbs as a specific step in a ghost's manifestation [Source: Utah Ghost Research & Investigation]. Orbs are visible in pictures but invisible to the naked eye because the spirits react to infrared light from the automatic focus. Skeptics, however, think orbs have a physical cause, such as:
* The camera's flash reflecting off of dust particles or moisture in the air
* Water spots on the camera's lens
* Defects in digital cameras' sensors
* Developing or printing errors
Ghosts and Electrical Fields
In some haunted locations, researchers have measured magnetic fields that are stronger than normal or which exhibit unusual fluctuations. These may be localized phenomena that stem from electronic equipment or geological formations, or they may be part of the Earth's magnetic field.
Some paranormal investigators think of this as proof of a supernatural presence -- the ghosts create the field. Others suggest that these fields can interact with the human brain, causing hallucinations, dizziness or other neurological symptoms. Some researchers have theorized that this is one of the reasons people report more ghostly activity at night. Because of the way the solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetosphere, the planet's magnetic field stretches out on the side that's in darkness. Some researchers hypothesize that this expanded field interacts more strongly with people's brains.
Medical researchers have also studied the effects of electrical fields on people's brains. Electrical stimulation to the angular gyrus of the brain, for example, can cause the sensation of someone behind you mimicking your movements. Electrical stimulation to different parts of the brain has also caused people to hallucinate or seem to have near-death experiences.
Temperature
Cold spots are a common phenomenon in buildings that are thought to be haunted. People describe sudden drops in temperature or localized cold areas in an otherwise warm room. Often, researchers can trace the cold spot to a specific source, like a drafty window or a chimney. The sensation of a lower temperature can also come from reduced humidity. In Wiseman's study at Mary King's Close, the locations reported to be haunted were significantly less humid than those that were not.
Low-frequency Sound Waves
Several experiments have demonstrated that low-frequency sound waves, known as infrasound, can cause phenomena that people typically associate with ghosts. This includes feelings of nervousness and discomfort as well as a sense of a presence in the room. The sound waves may also vibrate the human eye, causing people to see things that are not there. Usually, these waves have frequencies of less than 20 Hz, so they are too low-pitched for people to actually perceive. Rather than noticing the sound itself, people notice its effects.
Sometimes, researchers can locate the source of the sound. The article "The Ghost in the Machine" by Vic Tandy and Tony Lawrence describes a low-frequency standing wave originating from a fan. The sound wave disappeared after the researchers modified the fan's housing. When the wave dissipated, so did the symptoms of haunting in the building. You can learn more about infrasound at the Infrasonic site.
The most skeptical researchers believe that all ghostly phenomena have rational explanations. Those who try to prove the existence of ghosts, however, claim that while some events have rational explanations, others can only be supernatural in origin. Regardless of whether ghosts are real, many people find them fascinating. This fascination has a number of likely causes, from curiosity about what happens to people after death to the comforting idea that deceased loved ones are still nearby. Ghost stories, like urban legends, can also express people's fears about the unknown and caution people about the consequences of actions.
On the other hand, in its Science and Engineering Indicators report, the National Science Board (NSB) asserts that belief in the paranormal can be dangerous. According to the NSB, belief in the paranormal is a sign of reduced critical thinking skills and a reduced ability to make day-to-day decisions. However, since it's virtually impossible to prove that something does not exist, people will probably continue to believe in ghosts and haunted houses, especially since unexplained events aren't likely to go away anytime soon.
Below i am giving you a short description of Ghosts, Poltergeists, Haunted Places
Though ghost sightings and ghost pictures are often dismissed by scientists, ghost stories date back thousands of years and span numerous cultures. In fact, one of the first documented ghost sightings occurred in Athens, Greece, around 50 A.D.
Ghost sightings have also been documented in religious texts. For instance, the Bible and the Hebrew Torah both contain references to ghosts.
In this section, we'll discuss ghosts. We'll take an in-depth look at haunted houses, apparitions and poltergeists. Our articles will also examine the history of ghosts and provide information on ghost skeptics.
Haunted Houses
When ghosts are said to inhabit houses, the houses are referred to as haunted houses. Always popular attractions during Halloween celebrations, haunted houses are considered by many to be real and potentially threatening.
Some believers in the paranormal content that apparitions can often be seen in locations that they frequented when they were alive. Thus, it would make sense that a ghost would choose to visit his former home. Often, such tragic events as murders and suicides have occurred in haunted houses. Accidental deaths have also been associated with haunted houses.
Unexplained incidents, such as the unaided movement of objects or the slamming of doors, are often said to occur in haunted houses. Some of the scariest ghost pictures are also taken in haunted houses.
The house located at 112 Ocean Ave. in Amityville, New York, is one of the many famous haunted houses.
Apparitions
To many people, a ghost and an apparition are the same thing. However, for others, the term "ghost" refers to a disembodied soul, which may be revealed as a mist or a cloud, while the term "apparition" refers to a supernatural spirit that most often appears in human form.
Thus, an apparition of a deceased person will likely look much like the person did when he was alive.
Interestingly, though many people associate apparitions with the deceased, apparitions may also take the form of people who are still currently living.
Poltergeist
When people hear the term "poltergeist," many immediately think of the scary movie trilogy of the same name. However, the word "poltergeist" refers to a spirit that is generally mischievous and occasionally malicious.
The word, which comes from the German words "poltern" (to knock) and "geist" (spirit), refers to the spirits' tendency to make noise. Poltergeist activity often includes throwing and moving objects.
Essentially, a haunted house is a place in which ghost sightings or ghost activities have been reported. Ghost activity includes an extremely wide range of paranormal events, from noises such as speaking, screaming and footsteps to poltergeist activity during which doors slam shut, objects move and people think they see ghosts.
For a house or building to gain a reputation for being haunted, all it requires are tales of ghostly goings-on. In fact, a haunted house rarely receives any scientific corroboration. Like urban myths, haunted house legends are typically spread through tales and stories told from one person to another.
Famous Haunted Houses in the U.S.
Athens, Ohio has been called one of the most haunted towns in the world by the British Physical Society. Athens boasts a vast number of ghost stories. There are five cemeteries in Athens, and, when connected by a line, they form a pentagon (an occult symbol representing magic and power) with Ohio University in its center.
Ohio University itself is reportedly one of the most haunted college campuses in the United States. The University owns most of the land around the building that used to be the state hospital, a building with many ghost accounts. Athens is said to be a haven for Satanists and occult followers. In the 1850s, the town was home to a large number of spiritualists.
Haunted Andleberry Estate
One of the more famous haunted houses in pop culture is the Andleberry Estate, in Clovis, California. This mansion is reportedly haunted by residents of the sanitarium, of which the mansion used to be a part. The owner says he has heard ghost activity and has felt ghosts breathing on him.
Many different groups, including paranormal investigators, LiveSciFi.TV and a local news station have all visited the mansion. In total, paranormal investigators at the site have recorded:
* doors that slam by themselves
* electronic voice phenomenon (EVP), a paranormal event recorded by some form of electronic media, like a tape recorder
* over 22 different spirits.
For many people, EVPs are proof that ghost activity is real and not fabricated legend.
Haunted Everything Else
Alcatraz, located on an island in San Francisco Bay, no longer operates as a maximum-security prison but is open to visitors interested in its history. Many visitors report hearing screams, cell doors slamming, footsteps and other ghostly activity.
Hotel Chelsea, in Manhattan, is one of New York’s more infamous landmarks due to its rich history of deaths and reports of ghost activity. Guests tell tales of seeing the ghost of Sex Pistols band member, Sid Vicious, in the elevator. Sid was suspected of brutally murdering his girlfriend in the hotel and later died of a heroin overdose.
Sid’s friend, Dee Dee Ramone, recounts a feeling of unease in the hotel after Sid’s death. Other Hotel Chelsea ghosts include the writer Thomas Wolfe and poet Dylan Thomas. One wonders how they get on with Sid.
Visiting Haunted Houses
A number of different Web sites list the details and locations of supposedly haunted houses (and haunted everything else, for that matter). Those interested in haunted houses across the United States and throughout the world can see haunted house pictures on the Internet. The Internet provides a great alternative to the high expense of traveling to different sites. And, it just might be safer too.
vThe word conjuration (from Latin 'conjure', 'conjurare', to swear together) can be interpreted in several different ways: as an invocation or evocation (the latter in the sense of binding by a vow); as an exorcism; or as an act of illusionism. The word is often used synonymously with "invocation", although the two are not synonyms. One who performs conjurations is called a conjurer or conjuror.
The conjuration of the ghosts or souls of the dead for the purpose of divination is called necromancy.
When it is said that a person is calling upon or conjuring misfortune or disease, it is due to the ancient belief that personified diseases and misfortune as evil deities, spirits or demons that could enter a human or animal body; see demon possession.
Conjuration is a very common mystic practice in the Middle East, most commonly found in Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq. Many practice it to settle personal grudges or for healing, personal enhancement, or foretelling the future. There are also those who will sell their services as conjurers to others.
Islam strongly forbids the use of conjuration, because it is seen as an unholy procedure, and therefore to perform it is to give an insult to God. It is also considered to, in the end, harm people more than help them: those who regularly contact demons are believed to go mad through overdosing on power, or being possessed (since demons are thought to be short-tempered beings, and given the opportunity might overpower and enslave the one who summoned them).
Conjuration is such a widespread phenomenon in these regions that special television shows and satellite channels have started broadcasting about it. People will phone in to these shows to ask the resident conjurers to aid them in some way -- by showing them how to make charms, for example, or how to conjure by themselves. Though it is obvious that what is going on is conjuration, the conjurers tend to portray themselves as men of religion to add an air of respectability.
Islam has strongly forbidden this new development, with many imams stating that it is more dangerous than going to a conjurer to get service, because it teaches people how to conjure, and by the time the Dajjal arrives at the end of days people will not be able to differentiate between him and Isa, as the Dajjal would impose himself as Isa and trick those who are weak in belief.
True recurring dreams are noted to have the same scenes or are at
least nearly identical. Nightmares are similar to recurring dreams
with the exception that nightmares may contain different storylines
while maintaining the same theme.
Each of these dream types hold the same function, however.
Recurring dreams attempt to alert each of us to specific "signs" in
our lives and continue to do so until we actually receive and
understand its purpose. Once we accept what the dream is trying toconvey and acknowledge its true meaning, the recurring dreams will
cease. Please note that if similar life issues arise, in the future,
the recurring dream may replay itself to aid in that instance as well.
Below are some examples of questions one can ask him/herself when
faced with a recurring dream.
1. Are my recurring dreams manifesting from a desire in waking life?
If so, am I acknowledging the desire or repressing it? Is there a way
to bring it to fruition, to obtain results to my wish?
2. Are my dreams linked to emotions such as anxiety or fear? Can I
uncover the emotion's source?
3. Do any symbols stick out in my mind? If so, what do I think those
symbols mean?
4. Does anything in my dream resemble waking life? If so, what
specifically does it seem to mirror?
5. What are my reactions and feelings when I wake up? Why might this be, and is there anything specifically in the dream that may be
causing this?
These dreams may appear as frustrating because they do recur, however one must know that it is for the betterment of his/her own well-being.
So please heed these statements: Pay close attention to the themes and individual symbols and see how it relates to waking life. Do not look upon the recurring dream lightly for the subconscious is only trying to strengthen the person as a whole. Furthermore, it is best not to ignore these dreams because they will only get worse.
A pentagram (sometimes known as a pentalpha or pentangle or, more formally, as a star pentagon) is the shape of a five-pointed star drawn with five straight strokes. The word pentagram comes from the Greek word πεντάγραμμον (pentagrammon), a noun form of πεντάγραμμος (pentagrammos) or πεντέγραμμος (pentegrammos), a word meaning roughly "five-lined" or "five lines".
Pentagrams were used symbolically in ancient Greece and Babylonia. The pentagram has magical associations, and many people who practice Neopagan faiths wear jewelry incorporating the symbol. Christians once more commonly used the pentagram to represent the five wounds of Jesus, and it also has associations within Freemasonry.
The pentagram has long been associated with the planet Venus, and the worship of the goddess Venus, or her equivalent. It is also associated with the Roman word lucifer, which was a term used for Venus as the Morning Star, associated with the bringer of light and knowledge. It is most likely to have originated from the observations of prehistoric astronomers. When viewed from Earth, successive inferior conjunctions of Venus plot a nearly perfect pentagram shape around the zodiac every eight years.
The word "pentacle" is sometimes used synonymously with "pentagram", although their technical usages are different, and their etymologies may be unrelated.
The first known uses of the pentagram are found in Mesopotamian writings dating to about 3000 BC. The Sumerian pentagrams served as pictograms for the word "UB," meaning "corner, angle, nook; a small room, cavity, hole; pitfall," suggesting something very similar to the pentemychos (see below on the Pythagorean use for what pentemychos means). In René Labat's index system of Sumerian hieroglyphs/pictograms it is shown with two points up.In the Babylonian context, the edges of the pentagram were probably orientations: forward, backward, left, right, and "above".[citation needed] These directions also had an astrological meaning, representing the five planets Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Saturn, and Venus as the "Queen of Heaven" (Ishtar) above.[citation needed]
Pythagoreans
he Pythagoreans called the pentagram ύγιεια Hygieia ("health"; also the Greek goddess of health, Hygieia), and saw in the pentagram a mathematical perfection (see Geometry section below).
The five vertices were also used by the medieval neo-pythagoreans (whom one could argue were not pythagoreans at all) to represent the five classical elements:
* ύδωρ, Hydor, water
* Γαια, Gaia earth
* ίδέα, Idea or ίερόν, Hieron "a divine thing"
* έιλή, Heile, heat (fire)
* άήρ, Aer, air
The vertices were labeled in the letters of υ-γ-ι-ει-α. The ordering (clockwise or counter-clockwise) and starting vertex varied.
The ancient Pythagorean pentagram was drawn with two points up and represented the doctrine of Pentemychos. Pentemychos means "five recesses" or "five chambers", also known as the pentagonas — the five-angle, and was the title of a work written by Pythagoras's teacher and friend Pherecydes of Syros. It was also the "place" where the first pre-cosmic offspring had to be put in order for the ordered cosmos to appear. The pentemychos is in Tartaros, also known as "The Gates of Hell".[citation needed]
In very early Greek thought, Tartaros (or Chaos, according to Hesiod) was the primordial Darkness from which the cosmos is born. While it was locked away after the emergence and ordering of the cosmos, it still continued to have an influence. In fact, it was known as "the subduer of both gods and men" (Homer), and it was from this that the world got its "psyche" (soul) and its "daimon". The Boundless Darkness held influence through Mychos or Krater. Apart from being the gateway from "there" to "here" it was also a way in the opposite direction, from "here" to "there", as is evident in the many tales about how Greek heroes, philosophers and mystics descended through Krater to Tartaros/Hades (the distinction between the two was very optional back then) in quest for Wisdom. The Underworld as the source of wisdom was the rule.
Tartaros was also later seen as the "chthonic realm" where all the enemies of the cosmic order were locked away, also called the "prison-house" of Zeus. It was said to lay outside of the aither over which Zeus had lordship; what we today would call space, back then called "Zeus' defense-wall," yet it was also beneath the earth. Plato (in Cratylus) said that the aither had a penetrating power that permeates the whole world, and he found it both inside and outside of our bodies. The pentemychos is outside, or in-side, of the aither.
In the play Medea by Euripides, the sorceress Medea calls upon Hecate with the words, "By that dread queen whom I revere before all others and have chosen to share my task, by Hecate who dwells within my inmost chamber, not one of them shall wound my heart and rue it not." Note that she speaks of the Heart. The inmost chamber is the Mychos. Normally, Hecate and Persephone are portrayed solely as the rulers of the Underworld. In Medea, however, Hecate is called the Lady of Tartaros, Phulada (Guardian), Propulaia (Before the Gates), Kleidophoros (Key-bearer) and Kleidoukhos (Key-holder, Priestess). This Underworld of the Greeks and Pythagoreans is also the "inmost chamber" and the Core of Inner Being.
European occultism
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and others perpetuated the popularity of the pentagram as a magic symbol, keeping the Pythagorean attributions of elements to the five points. By the mid-19th century a further distinction had developed amongst occultists regarding the pentagram's orientation. With a single point upwards it depicted spirit presiding over the four elements of matter, and was essentially "good". However the other way up was considered evil.
"A reversed pentagram, with two points projecting upwards, is a symbol of evil and attracts sinister forces because it overturns the proper order of things and demonstrates the triumph of matter over spirit. It is the goat of lust attacking the heavens with its horns, a sign execrated by initiates."
"Let us keep the figure of the Five-pointed Star always upright, with the topmost triangle pointing to heaven, for it is the seat of wisdom, and if the figure is reversed, perversion and evil will be the result
The pentagram was used as a Christian symbol for the five senses,and if the letters S, A, L, V, and S are inscribed in the points, it can be taken as a symbol of health (from Latin salus).
Medieval Christians believed it to symbolise the five wounds of Christ. The pentagram was believed to protect against witches and demons.
The pentagram figured in a heavily symbolic Arthurian romance: it appears on the shield of Sir Gawain in the 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. As the poet explains, the five points of the star each have five meanings: they represent the five senses, the five fingers, the five wounds of Christ
he five joys that Mary had of Jesus (the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Assumption), and the five virtues of knighthood which Gawain hopes to embody: noble generosity, fellowship, purity, courtesy, and compassion.
Probably due to misinterpretation of symbols used by ceremonial magicians, it later became associated with Satanism and subsequently rejected by most of Christianity sometime in the twentieth century
Satanists use a pentagram with two points up, often inscribed in a double circle, with the head of a goat inside the pentagram. This is referred to as the Sigil of Baphomet. They use it much the same way as the Pythagoreans, as Tartaros literally translates from Greek as a "Pit" or "Void" in Christian terminology (the word is used as such in the Bible, referring to the place where the fallen angels are fettered). The Pythagorean Greek letters are most often replaced by the Hebrew letters לויתן forming the name Leviathan. Less esoteric LaVeyan Satanists use it as a sign of rebellion or religious identification, the three downward points symbolising rejection of the holy Trinity.
Many Neopagans, especially Wiccans, use the pentagram as a symbol of faith similar to the Christian cross or the Jewish Star of David. It is not, however, a universal symbol for Neopaganism, and is rarely used by Reconstructionists. Its religious symbolism is commonly explained by reference to the neo-Pythagorean understanding that the five vertices of the pentagram represent the four elements with the addition of Spirit as the uppermost point. As a representation of the elements, the pentagram is involved in the Wiccan practice of summoning the elemental spirits of the four directions at the beginning of a ritual.
The outer circle of the circumscribed pentagram is sometimes interpreted as binding the elements together or bringing them into harmony. The Neopagan pentagram is generally displayed with one point up, partly because of the "inverted" goat's head pentagram's association with Satanism; however, within traditional forms of Wicca a pentagram with two points up is associated with the Second Degree Initiation and in this context has no relation to Satanism.
Because of a perceived association with Satanism and also because of negative societal attitudes towards Neopagan religions and the "occult", many United States schools have sought to prevent students from displaying the pentagram on clothing or jewelryIn public schools, such actions by administrators have been determined to be in violation of students' First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.
The pentagram is the official symbol of the Bahá'í Faith.
In the Bahá'í Faith, the pentagram is known as the Haykal (Arabic: "temple"), and it was initiated and established by the Báb. Both Báb and Bahá'u'lláh wrote various works in the form of a pentagram.
Thelema
Aleister Crowley also made use of the pentagram and in his Thelemic system of magick: an adverse or inverted pentagram represents the descent of spirit into matter, not the triumph over matter which was considered evil as taught by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Samael Aun Weor
Samael Aun Weor used the Pentagram to represent man's Atman, or Internal Christ. When a man's limbs are outstretched thus that his feet are planted on the ground while his head is situated atop his body it creates the omnipotent symbol of the pentagram. Through the Mantra "Klim, Krishna, Govindaya, Gopijana, Vallebayah, Swahah" one's inner being is said to be awakened and come to the initiate's aid. Aun Weor stated that no demon could resist the power of this mantra, since one's Logos cannot be overcome by a demon of any stature.
In contrast to representing one's Logos, the inverted pentagram represents one's Umbral Guardian, the malignant antithesis of the divine father. When the pentagram's inferior rays point upwards, it represents Satan. This symbol is therefore shown above as the goat of the Witches' Sabbath, which serves as a call to the vast columns of demons.
While a solid five-pointed star is found on many flags, the pentagram is relatively rare. It appears on two national flags, those of Ethiopia and Morocco and in some coats of arms.
According to Ivan Sache, on the Moroccan flags, the pentagram represents the link between God and the nation.It is also possible that both flags use the pentagram as a symbol of King Solomon (see Seal of Solomon), the archetypal wise king of Jewish, Christian and Muslim lore.
Order of the Eastern Star
The Order of the Eastern Star, a fraternal organization associated with Freemasonry, has employed a point-down pentagram as its symbol, with the five isosceles triangles of the points colored red, blue, yellow, white and green. This is an older form of the order's emblem and it is now more commonly depicted with the central pentagon rotated 36° so that it is no longer strictly a pentagram.
pentagram is the simplest regular star polygon. The pentagram contains ten points (the five points of the star, and the five vertices of the inner pentagon) and fifteen line segments. It is represented by the Schläfli symbol {5/2}. Like a regular pentagon, and a regular pentagon with a pentagram constructed inside it, the regular pentagram has as its symmetry group the dihedral group of order 10
Palmistry (palm reading) is known by the Greek word, chiromancy, which is defined as foretelling the future through the study of the palm. The practice of palmistry was practiced as far back as 5000 years ago, and is traced back to Indian or Hindu roots. It then spread to China, Greece, Egypt, Persia, and Tibet as well as to other parts of Europe.
It originally began as a method of counseling, and personality assessment through the reading of one’s palm to obtain information such as emotional tendencies, fears, blockages, and strengths. Palmistry is used to help get in touch with the mind-body connection and to know the patterns set up for negative or positive thinking. The idea is to know what patterns are set up within the person that are negative and to replace those to a more positive way of thinking.
The practice has been considered as a pseudoscience which means a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific, according to the definition of Webster. At one time, the practice was taught in schools of higher learning because it was considered a science.
Palmistry – How is palm reading used?
Palmistry teaches that the hands are the road map of our lives. Every part of the hand contains markers to points on the map which the nervous system has created. There is an astrological reading related to each of our fingers. Through readings, the palm reader tells us even to the size of our Saturn finger how responsible you are. When these astrological signs are found, it is possible to understand yourself and others by simple observations of thumb size, length, lines, and skin color.
Palmistry – What are the spiritual concerns?
The practice of palmistry is a form of divination or part of the occult, and is directly associated with astrology and not science. Deuteronomy 18:10-12 says, "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you."
If practiced, there are dangers in its use -- physical, psychological, and spiritual damage.
In addition, risks include false medical diagnosis and predictions of disaster or death based on what the palmist supposedly sees in the hands. It has been noted that it is not good practice for a palm reader to predict death or serious illnesses from reading your palm yet it is done just the same. Much unwarranted anxiety is caused by false predictions.
Are you struggling with a big decision or wondering how your future will play out? Why not talk to the God of the universe? Ask God to show you what to do. He says, “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you" (Psalm 32:8).
Earth Gnomes
The nature spirits of the Earth are called Gnomes.
Subgroups:
Brownies
Dryads
Durdalis
Earth Spirits
Elves
Hamadryads
Pans
Pygmies
Sylvestres
Satyrs
Fire: Salamanders
The salamanders are the spirit of fire. Without these beings, fire
cannot exist. You cannot light a match without a salamander's being
present. There are many families of salamanders, differing in size,
appearance, and dignity. Some people have seen them as small balls of
light, but most commonly they are perceived as being lizard-like in
shape and about a foot or more in length.
The salamanders are considered the strongest and most powerful of all
the elementals. Their ruler is a magnificent flaming being called
Djin. Those who have seen him say that he is terrible, yet
awe-inspiring in appearance.
Salamanders have the ability to extend their size or diminish it, as
needed. If you ever need to light a campfire in the wilderness, call
to the salamanders and they will help you.
It has also been said that salamanders (and the other elemental
beings) can be mischievous at times. For example, a fiery temper and
inharmonious conditions in a person's home can cause these beings to
make trouble. They are like children in that they don't fully
understand the results of their actions. They are greatly affected, as
are all nature spirits, by human humankind's thinking.
Air: Sylphs
The sylphs are the air spirits. Their element has the highest
vibratory rate of the four (beside earth, fire, water). They live
hundreds of years, often reaching one thousand and never seeming to
get old. They are said to live on the tops of mountains. The leader of
the sylphs is a being called Paralda who is said to dwell on the
highest mountain of Earth.
Sylphs often assume human form but only for short periods of time. The
vary in size from being as large as a human to being much smaller.
They are volatile and changeable. The winds are their particular
vehicle. The work through the gases and ethers of the Earth and are
kindly toward humans.
They are usually seen with wings, looking like cherubs or fairies.
Because of their connection to air, which is associated with the
mental aspect, one of their functions is to help humans receive
inspiration. The sylphs are drawn to those who use their minds,
particularly those on creative arts.
Water: Undines
The undines are the elemental beings that compose water. They are able
to control, to a great degree, the course and function of the water
element.
Etheric in nature, they exist within the water itself and this is why
they can't be seen with the normal physical vision. These beings are
beautiful to look at and are very graceful.
They are often seen riding the waves of the ocean. They can also be
found in rocky pools and in marshlands. They are clothed in a shimmery
substance looking like water but shinning with all the colors of the
sea, with green predominating. The concept of the mermaid is connected
with these elemental beings.
The undines also work with the plants that grow under the water and
with the motion of water. Some undines inhabit waterfalls, others live
in rivers and lakes. Every fountain has its nymph. Every ocean has its
oceanids.
The undines closely resemble humans in appearance and size, except for
those inhabiting smaller streams and ponds. The undines often live in
coral caves under the ocean or on the shores of lakes or banks of
rivers. Smaller undines live under lily pads.
The undines work with the vital essences and liquids of plants,
animals, and human beings. They are present in everything containing
water. There are many families of undines, as the chart indicates.
The ruler of the undines is a called Necksa. The undines love, serve,
and honor her unceasingly. They are emotional beings, very friendly
and open to being of service to human beings.
The smaller undines are often seen as winged beings that people have
mistakenly called fairies. Those winged beings are seen near flowers
that grow in watery areas. They have gossamer wings and gossamer
clothing.
Court Case Work
If You Need To Receıve More Lenıency From The Court, Call On The Angel Peelee. Call Hım Three Tımes By Name, And Tell Hım To Influence The Judge To Vıew Your Case Kındly And To Reduce Your Sentence. Wıthın 24 Hours You Wıll See Change. If You Are Not Incarcerated But Need To Go To Court, Stand In Front Of Your Door At Sunset And Make A Cross In The Ground Wıth Your Rıght Index Fınger As You Do Thıs, Call Out The Prosecutor's Name. Spıt Into The Cross. Then Whırl Three Steps Forward, Then Three Steps Backwards. Go Into Your House And Shut The Door Wıthout Lookıng Back. The Prosecutor Wıll Be Calm And Peacea
xExtrasensory perception is a collective term for various hypothetical mental abilities. These abilities (along with other paranormal phenomena) are also referred to as psi.
The major types of ESP are:
* Telepathy - the ability to read another person's thoughts
* Clairvoyance - the ability to "see" events or objects happening somewhere else
* Precognition - the ability to see the future
* Retrocognition - the ability to see into the distant past
* Mediumship - the ability to channel dead spirits
* Psychometry - the ability to read information about a person or place by touching a physical object
A closely related psi phenomenon, not technically part of ESP, is telekinesis, the ability to alter the physical world with mind power alone.
All of these abilities are based on the idea that human beings can perceive things beyond the scope of known bodily senses. This concept has been around since the beginning of human civilization, under many different names, but the modern conception didn't develop until the first half of the 20th century. The term ESP itself was coined in 1934, by Duke University professor J.B. Rhine, one of the first respected scientists to conduct paranormal research in a university laboratory.
ESP believers around the world have different ideas of how these abilities manifest themselves. Some people believe everybody possesses these abilities, and we involuntarily experience moments of ESP all the time. Others say only a handful of psychics, shamans or mediums have the special power, and that they can only access this power when they put themselves into a special mental state. Most believers think that everybody has the potential for ESP, but that some people are more in tune with their paranormal abilities than others.
Believers also disagree on how ESP actually works. One theory says that, like our ordinary senses, ESP is energy moving from one point to another point. Typically, proponents of this theory say ESP energy takes the form of electromagnetic waves -- just like light, radio and X-ray energy -- that we haven't been able to detect scientifically.
This theory was fairly popular in the early 20th century, but it's out of favor today due to several inherent problems. For one thing, the explanation only accounts for telepathy, not clairvoyance or precognition. Presumably, if the information travels as electromagnetic energy, it has to be sent by someone -- it has to travel from mind to mind. It doesn't explain how information would move through time or from an object to a mind.
Secondly, the theory doesn't jibe with what we know about ourselves and the universe. In most reported cases of telepathy, ESP works totally independent of distance. That is, the power of the "signal" is the same whether the transmitting mind and the receiving mind are in the same room or on opposite sides of the earth. No other form of energy behaves this way, skeptics point out, so it doesn't make sense that "psi waves" would either. Furthermore, it seems strange that we haven't found any unexplained sense organs in the body that might pick up on this energy, nor any evidence of the energy waves themselves.
In light of these problems, the prevailing theory among believers today is that ESP is a result of something beyond the known physical world. For example, many people view it as "spillover" from another reality. According to this theory, in addition to the physical universe we are consciously aware of, we all exist in another dimension that has completely different governing laws. Time and space work very differently in the other reality, allowing us to know about other people's thoughts, distant events or things that haven't happened yet in the physical reality. Normally, our awareness of this plane of existence is completely unconscious, but every once in a while, the conscious mind picks up on this information.
Needless to say, this theory is also completely outside our scientific understanding of the world. But, according to the theory's proponents, it's not supposed to fit into that conception. Like the concepts of God or an afterlife, the hypothetical reality would not rely on the physical laws of the universe. It would depend on the existence of a soul of some sort.
So, given that it's completely at odds with our understanding of the world, why do so many people believe in ESP? In the next section, we'll find out some of the reasons for this belief, and we'll see what scientific evidence supports it.
According to those who practice channeling, it is the contemporary term for spiritism. Channeling has been present since ancient times when people sought advice from the spirit world -- like the oracles in Roman and Greek times who sought advice from the fates. There are accounts in the Bible of ancient people seeking out mediums and wizards who would whisper and mutter (Isaiah 8:19). Some say that the modern renaissance of spiritism can be attributed to Emmanuel Swedenborg, who lived from 1688-1722 and had a large following. Kate and Margaret Fox started an American spiritualist movement in 1848. The sisters received messages from the recently deceased as the spirits tapped their tabletop, rapping out a message using the alphabet. Channeling has become a popular activity in this present age. The Hollywood culture has helped the spread of its popularity. Many religious cults make use of channeling, including shamanism, voodoo, and other New Age groups.
Channeling – Practices and beliefs
The practices and beliefs for channeling are varied. Tools used in channeling are tarot cards, Ouija boards, and trance media. The medium reads tarot cards and remains conscious while seeking a spirit to channel information through the cards. When the medium uses a trance media, the medium is not aware of his/her surrounding and must be told later what the spirit had spoken through them.
The basis of the channeling practices and beliefs, and the messages given by spirits through those channels is that there is not a one omnipotent God; creator of heaven and earth. The belief system of channeling explains that there are multiple layers of consciousness and many spirit beings in various stages of evolution or development.
Channeling – Christian response
What does God have to say about channeling practices? The Bible says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). This means that God was outside of time and space to be able to create time and space and everything in the universe -- visible and invisible. He is separate from His creation. It is true that God is present everywhere, but everything is not God.
In the Ten Commandments, God says, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). This statement implies there are other spirits out there acting as gods. These are spirits that God created who later sinned and turned against Him. People seeking mediums to hear the spirits speak, and channelers allowing the spirits to speak through them are in essence elevating those spirits as though they were God; thereby, breaking the first commandment.
Since the future hasn't happened yet, there is no power here on earth that can tell us what's in store. In order to have a hope for the future and gain the wisdom to make sound decisions now, we must tap into the power of the Creator of the universe -- the only One who knows our future -- God.