My two postings about Creating Your Own Reality (11/29/2006 and 11/30/2006) produced an interesting crop of comments and stories. Requests were received for other well-documented instances of things that don't figure large in the standard, dreary histories. I guess I just got caught up in the Christmas series and forgot about it. My last little trifle about Roswell must have triggered the memory.
Here then are a few well documented examples of many hundreds that are well-known to those who have done any research. If you just dropped in by accident and think that only Big Macs and Big Bank Balances are important and that only freaks think differently, then go on to another article. All these things happened.
The history of science, particularly that of physics and geology is full of instances where data was observed and then either discounted, because it didn't fit current theories, or noted and lost for years in files, until flexible minds caught up with Nature.
Remember the crowds that went to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Many of them had the craving to be shown that there is more to life than the hum-drum; that we are not just biological machines following a predictable path from cradle to grave.
There are many records and authenticated historical instances of the kind of things dealt with in that and subsequent movies and books. Some have already been classed as encounters of that kind.
Probably the best documented old time case in America was that of David Lang of Tennessee. Judge Peck came to visit Lang on September 23rd, 1880. He drove his buggy to the Lang farm in Gallatin, accompanied by Lang's brother-in-law.
About a quarter of a mile from the farm was a long lane by the 40 acre meadow.
Judge Peck saw David Lang in the meadow. Lang waved, and began walking toward the farmhouse. Suddenly he disappeared.
Judge Peck saw this, the brother-in-law saw this, and so did Mrs. Lang and the two children, George and Sarah, who were watching the buggy from the farmhouse. All five witnesses rushed to the spot where Lang had vanished, in case he had fallen into a hole.
The ground was as dry and hard as a very hot summer could make it, and there was no hole. The alarm was given and neighbors helped search every inch of the surrounding countryside.
David Lang was never seen again. That is not the end of the story however. The following year found George and Sarah again in the field where their father had disappeared.
At the spot where he vanished was a 20-foot circle of thick, coarse grass, where the cattle had stopped eating at some barrier perceptible to them at any rate. On impulse the children began calling their father's name, and heard a man's voice calling for help in reply. They brought their mother, and she too was answered though the voice sounded far away.
Some time later Mrs. Lang rented the farm to Judge Peck, on condition that the 40-acre meadow be left empty in case her husband reappeared. He never did.
Now this happened. The fact that neither we nor the Great James Randy can explain it, or explain it away is not a strong enough reason to disbelieve all the evidence from the witnesses.
And even just one extraordinary happening should show that there are some things we don't know. But there have been hundreds of instances, sometimes involving hundreds of people simultaneously.
Some of you in my vintage may remember that there was a war between China and Japan in 1937. After the fall of Shanghai the Japanese advanced on Nanking despite the hand wringing and whining of the League of Nations.
The colonel in charge of defending Nanking was Li Fu Sien, who decided to make a last stand at Nanking in December 1937. Reinforcements were brought in, and 3000 men were deployed in a two mile line to defend the vital bridge over the Yangtze River. The troops were prepared to fight the hated invaders, and they had heavy artillery support.
At dawn the colonel was awakened by his aide with the news that no contact could be made with his army defending the bridge. When they went to investigate personally, the positions were bare of men. The guns were there, but no men. Of the 3000 men, only about a hundred remained, camped very near to the bridge. They had heard nothing all night, and the sentries on the bridge had seen nobody pass.
There was no time to discuss the problem, because the Japanese army crossed the river, and the massacre of thousands of civilians in Nanking took place with almost incredible savagery. Only the Chinese records noted the 3000 men. The Japanese records don't mention them at all. The mystery would have been given more attention but for the overwhelming bitterness of the Sino-Japanese war.
In the summer of 1906 a Lang-type disappearance occurred in England, involving another 40 acre field. The family were the Vaughans who lived about a mile from Gloucester, in Southwest England.
Three of the Vaughan children, a boy and two younger sisters, disappeared while walking across the field. For three days the whole area was thoroughly combed. On the fourth day they were discovered asleep in a ditch in the same field that had been empty for three days.
The childrer remembered nothing from the time they entered the field to the time they woke up. The official mind is typified by the police who suspected kidnapping by the ploughman who found them.
You may have read my article about how the psychic Edgar Cayce helped the police in a murder case and was accused of the murder by the detective in charge on the grounds that only the murderer could possibly know that much about the crime. Cayce refused to help the police again after that incident.
The Vaughan boy was interviewed in the late 1940's by a researcher in occult phenomena. He verified that he still had absolutely no idea about what happened.
Many of you have read the book The Interrupted Journey by the investigative reporter John Fuller. (He is the writer who revealed the facts about Arigo the healer.) It is the story of how Betty and Barney Hill, drove from Canada to New Hampshire in Sept. 1961. They saw a bright object like a star moving downward in the sky. Through binoculars it seemed to be some kind of spacecraft, or advanced aircraft.
The couple drove off, but began to feel sleepy, and woke up an hour later about 35 miles down the road. On realizing that they had both lost an hour of time and 35 miles of space without any recollection, the couple went to see Dr. Benjamin Simons, a neurosurgeon, who hypnotized each of them separately to restore their lost hour.
Their stories were the same. The car engine stopped when the strange craft approached. They had each been taken aboard what seemed to be a spacecraft and were medically examined before being returned to their vehicle, further down the road.
Another historical incident occurred in October 1593, when a strange Spanish soldier suddenly appeared in Mexico City. He wore an unusually splendid uniform, and carried a different kind of gun from those issued in Mexico City at the time.
When questioned, he said that his orders were to mount guard over the Governor's palace in Manila, his army base, since the Governor had been killed the night before.
He knew, he said, that this wasn't the right palace and that he obviously wasn't in the Philippines; so he just did his best and stood guard over the nearest palace.
He was put in jail, only to be released when a boat from the Philippines, two months later, brought news to Mexico that the Governor had been murdered—on the night previous to the soldier's appearance.
And lastly, there is the case of Benjamin Bathurst, who was the British ambassador to the court of Francis I of Austria. On November 21st, 1809, he was with his secretary and valet, who had come to see him off on his journey to London. He walked round the post horses and never reappeared.
The startled servants began a search at once, because ambassadors, particularly British ambassadors, don't do undignified things like vanishing. But he was never seen again. There are many hundreds of such incidents reported, and available for those who want to know.
At the moment they can't be explained. The labels: UFO, space warp, and teleportation are NOT explanations, they are labels which decrease the psychological tensions caused by the unknown.
They explain nothing, and can actually be a disservice to efforts to find explanations. Men, being what they are, end up arguing about the theories until the facts are totally forgotten. This often happens in discussions about reincarnation and evolution for example.
