Heading Deep Out Proctor: Not sure I believe any of this stuff.

These are the weird disconnected ends of the un-filed pile. Before I get to them, I think that it's time to explain to newbie readers of this blog why the term "Out Proctor" is used here --- it probably makes the communication of how I feel about some of the anomalies a little clearer.

After my youth, my family moved to a small town on the Ohio River in West Virginia, a place that was never my own home [just beginning my "independence" sort of, though family has always been the rock.] Somewhat absurdly, this little town had a littler "suburb": Proctor, WV. One of my sisters lives there with her husband still today. There was a saying all around that part of the river that if you go "Out Proctor" [i.e. drive from the river up into the deep recesses of Proctor Hollow {"Holler" in West Virginianese}], the people Out Proctor get odder and odder to the point where you're not sure what to expect.

I always thought that this was pretty hilarious, and when I started doing this blog it dawned on me that we were going Out Proctor all the time --- sometimes far deeper than others. "Out Proctor" became for this blog a statement that I thought that the anomaly or idea that we were discussing at the moment was in a very high strangeness zone, but not necessarily unreal. "Out Proctor" is a place where one can, perhaps at the risk of one's sanity, bravely adventure on, ready to accept whatever deserves acceptance, and not apologize for the interest shown it.

There is one other less-used phrase that is connected with this: "All-The-Way-Fool." This was a valuable mindset taught me by one of my students. That wise young fellow had a difficult future-planning task in one of my classes on futuristic urban planning. He concluded that there were three ways to approach plans. A: you could play it safe and conservative. B: you could compromise between the "common wisdom" and what really was needed. Or C: you could risk the rejection of the establishment and actually design something which would work. He called "C": All-The-Way-Fool.

My student was right. When the establishment idea doesn't cut it, and when just massaging the common way is an exercise in a compromise dance of cowardice, then, to be an authentic solver of issues and difficulties, and even mysteries, one must go all the way fool. There are times, rarely, on this blog where I see no establishment way to go on the mysteries, no easy compromise, and yet some real clarity seems to be coming into view. On those rare occasions, I, inspired by my student, happily if a bit nervously, go all the way fool myself [mostly within the UFO subject, but sometimes elsewise.]

On these things today, I'll be probing into Darkest Deepest Proctor [at least on a few of them], but not selling the ranch all-the-way-fool.

Here's one that I'd like to be true but can't see it. The great Hindenburg zeppelin was destroyed in the famous accident in 1937. Ever since then there have been claims that people on the site have experienced ghostly phenomena, mainly related to the crew and attending persons who were killed there. I can't comment about that --- maybe so.

The SITU clipping here was about something different. It claimed that a named commercial airline pilot flying across the Atlantic in 1986 saw an airship large, silvery, and cigar-shaped approaching his plane. As the two crafts passed close-by one another, the word "HINDENBURG" was clearly readable. The claim was that the passenger gondola was lighted, and one could see persons onboard.

There are very few types of anomalous claims that I like more [gut feeling, now] than these seeming "timeslips" cases. The wondrous level of the Universe would be significantly enhanced by their reality. But I can find no other reference to this anywhere and the source at hand is the world's worst source for any of these types of things: The Weekly World News.

Sigh.... thankfully, there are many other timeslip cases out there which are better documented.

A bit more down to Earth: 1978. A boy and his dog had grown up together in a village in Rhode Island. When the son grew into early adulthood, he took the dog and said goodbye to his disapproving parents and drove west to Aspen, CO. The son, Dexter, wanted the life of the ski slopes and the high mountain air and brushing against high society, but those sentiments were apparently not shared by his dog, Jess.

Jess was tied to a leash most of the time in accordance with the fussy laws. There came a day when Dexter came to check on Jess and found only the remnants of the leash. Jess was gone and never to be found.

Back in Rhode Island eighteen months later, Dexter's father Darrell heard a bark outside the front door. He went and opened it. Jess sprang through, plowed into Darrell's stomach and nearly knocked him down jumping and yelping for joy. Somehow, the unhappy German Shepherd had followed some [impossible?] instinct on a year and a half 2200 mile [minimum] journey back "home."

............. what in God's Green World can explain this? You might put a map of the United States on a piece of paper on your lap, but that's the biggest misrepresentation of such a task than one can imagine. The real world of thousands of square miles is an awesome challenge --- where even to begin? What is the first step? And the next? Survival for Jess I have no trouble with; dogs are great survivors. Having any clue whatever about direction at each of the millions of decision points along that way? HUGE mystery. A nice friendly loving animal like Jess makes this a story which seems less "impossible" than, to me, it is. The statistical odds that such a thing could happen by chance must be beyond calculating.

SITU gets onto an old tale of disappearance: the story of an eskimo village from which the entire population of about 25 persons had suddenly vanished just prior to a trapper arriving on the scene was originally told in newspapers in the year 1930. A skeptical [actually a debunker-type] who has been given credit as discrediting this tale stated flatly that no such newspaper story existed --- only to find out shortly after the declaration that it did. To his credit he admitted that he had now seen the thing. To his and the wider press' discredit, he did not void out his blog entry and substantially rewrite it, nor have the repeaters of his error done so. But the story WAS reported in 1930 shortly after it supposedly occurred.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were allegedly notified of this odd disappearance of the population at Lake Anjikuni, and despite some moderns saying that this was made up too, now there is correspondence from the RCMP saying that they did indeed investigate back then. They say, however, that they could find no evidence for the trapper's claim. Some moderns have said that the whole concept is impossible, since an eskimo village of that size is too big for the area. 25? Too big? I don't buy that either. This story may well be bogus, but not for the reasons that people are giving. The debunker also accused Frank Edwards of making the thing up out of nothing, and that is of course also not true. I have no emotional [or even that much wonderment] stake in this story, but it seems to indicate the screwed up mindset of the bent-out-of-shape debunker quite well.

Well, what went on with SITU? The organization had a member named Ronald Dobbins who was writing a book attempting to find out if any evidence existed for a bunch of Canadian mystery tales. Lake Anjikuni was one of those. He wrote to the PURSUIT staff of his book-to-come and mentioned that he was not finding support for the trapper's tale. Dobbins DID locate the early newspaper story [giving the modern debunker no excuse whatever for writing things like Frank Edwards made it all up], and was allowed to seek contact with RCMPs of that era. These Mounties were all stationed at Baker Lake rather than near Lake Anjikuni, and they remembered nothing of such an incident. According to the RCMP historian, though, they should have if such had occurred. This also seems like "thin gruel" to me.

What do we really know about this? A trapper seems to reported an odd vacating of a small fishing village. He could have made it up. Reasons unknown. A newspaperman wrote the story up in 1930 just after the thing was supposed to have happened. He could have made it up. Reasons unknown. The RCMP did get a report on this, despite a few still-living [in 1976] Mounties from the general area not remembering it. Allegedly an investigation found nothing. Frank Edwards wrote the thing up in 1958 fairly accurately to the news claim. FATE Magazine published something twenty years or so later and revved up interest. A modern debunker did his thing with poor facts and several errors.

So...? We can't know can we? The wonderful world of liars, debunkers, poor record keepers, don't-really-give-a-damners etc have managed [as usual] to crud-up any chances of seeing if there's any mystery here at all. But let's say for a moment that a trapper DID come upon a rapidly abandoned eskimo village of twenty five people, and it seemed a real emergency that they left without preparation. Is this really mind-boggling? I don't think so. Interesting? Yes. Mind-boggling? No. The MOST telling thing about the story is the debunker's rush to want to debunk it --- something that I've seen so often, and pathetically, that I have nearly stopped reading the fetid leavings that they too often "grace" our lives with.

Well, let's disappear something else.

This is a story repeated almost accurately by Charles Fort in LO! {no, folks, Charles didn't mean LOL.}

A young woman was hurrying along a roadway in St. Boswells [Roxburghshire] nearing the dinner hour on May 7th, 1892. She was pressed for time and she had just decided to run. Just ahead appeared a tall man, dressed in black and looking as if he were a clergyman. The lady decided that it would appear undignified for her to run by him [hard to imagine any of the USAs champion soccer ladies thinking this way] so she just stopped and watched.

The "clergyman" turned a corner in the road and she could still see the upper part of him above the hedge. Then he just vanished. The lady hurried along to the turning point and there was nothing and nowhere he could have gone. Instead of the clergyman, she saw her sister waiting for her ahead on that same road. The sister was looking about her in bewilderment.

     "The strangest part of it all is that we found that when the man became invisible to her, he appeared to me between the part of the road where she and I were standing." 

My interpretation of that somewhat awkward sentence is that she and her sister were near one another, having not yet met up, and the disappearing man was between them on the path they would take to meet. Both sisters saw the man disappear, one possibly slightly before the other.

This apparition [or time-slip?] was seen several times in the decade of the 1890s.

Hmmmm.... sounds like a whole lot of other time-slips that seem to be coming out all over the anomalies reporting lately; just dressed in period clothes.

Well that was fun; let's try again.

Some of you will recognize the thing above, some might not. Just to be sure, it's a "mustache cup", a common device from the late 19th/early 20th centuries to keep your mustache from getting soggy while drinking.

There was a family who very much adulated their grandfather and he was a mustachioed gentleman with a favorite mustache cup. When he passed on, the cup became a "sacred nostalgia object" for the two granddaughters to protect. These sisters got along wonderfully, so there was no tension in this. The mustache cup was passed on to one of the sisters when their Mom passed in 1964, and with her it stayed. In 1978, the sister and her husband had guests for the Christmas holidays, both some family and some friends. One of the friends, a young married man, sported a massive beard and mustache and remarked that something like the cup was just what he needed.

After everyone had left for their parts of the country, and a couple of weeks into January, the caretaking sister noticed that the cup was nowhere to be found. The sister thought that her sister might have taken it, but that wasn't true. Then the idea that the friends had taken it proved also not to be true --- neither of those ideas had seemed remotely likely anyway. The entire year passed with no hint of resolution of the missing item.

Then in 1980 her sister called her with a weird suggestion: Light a Candle, she said, and ask for forgiveness from whomever stole the cup. Somewhat boggled by this, she then heard her sister say: we have the cup. What? The sister "explained" that she had just found the object resting on the top of other things in her closet, wrapped up in an old newspaper. Again, What? Quizzed about whether the sister had taken the cup [and this was some strange joke], the sister reminded her that she had offered the cup to her keeping shortly before its disappearance, and was told happily that "no, you can keep it." The sister said that the only way that she would have gotten the cup was if she had an out-of-body experience and fetched it in her sleep --- this was mostly joking but the sister had begun to believe in OOBEs. The cup's original caretaker then teased back with, well next time you're visiting by OOBE, at least tell me and we'll have a cup of coffee together.

The two sisters were such friends that the whole bantering between them [including the forgive and light a candle joke] was light-hearted while being amazed. How the cup ended up wrapped in newspaper on the top of other things in a closet [especially since that sister was a neat-freak] was never solved. It has the character of a Trickster event much like happens with clothing items with both my sisters, and with my old watch which disappeared for two weeks or so before mysteriously showing up "in its spot" in plain sight in my otherwise empty bachelor house.

Now you see it, now you don't.

March 1924, Rolland, nr. Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The Reverend Walter Davison hears a knock on his door. Opening it, there stood Mary Parker, one of two teenage daughters of a widow of his parish, and although he had not seen Mary in about a year, he knew her and the family quite well. Mary was disturbed and anxiously asked Reverend Davison to please come quickly to their home as her sister was ill and wanted to see him. He of course said yes and they immediately left on foot.

They walked the approximate mile between the two houses, passing several men doing some roadwork, and conversing about things all the way. Arriving at the Parker home, Mary said that she'd go around to the back, but the Reverend should go right in the front. She left and he knocked. Mrs. Parker answered the knock promptly and was happy to see him. He told her that Mary had fetched him to talk to her sister Eileen, and he was glad to come.

Mrs. Parker was shocked. She said that Eileen was indeed ill and asking for him, but that Mary had died eight months earlier. To say that this was a stunning revelation to the reverend would be putting it mildly. He was certain that it had been Mary Parker who had called upon him and accompanied him. As they walked she had conversed about private Parker family matters, and he had no doubts about who she was. But.....

When he had finished with his spiritual counsel with the other daughter, he left the Parker home profoundly puzzled. He came to the point where the roadworkers still labored. He stopped and asked them: did they see him pass by earlier that day? Yes, sir, they did. Was there anything unusual? They appeared a bit nervous but said: well, sir, you appeared to be continually talking to yourself, turning your head as if there was someone there with you.

Hmmm.... a Catherine Crowe type of apparitional communication experience. "Something" conjures up enough energy to manifest to the consciousness of another human being, communicates true information, but seems not to have been physically there.

A friend of mine, a very good friend and a bright guy, had finished a book-signing. A father who attended with his son had to leave early [because of said son] but wanted to tell my friend of an experience which he felt might have some point of contact with what was discussed then. The experience that he communicated the following day was this:

In 2008, he had invited friends over for a patio party and all had gone well. It was now late and everyone had left, and he was cleaning the place up. "Someone" came rushing up to him. It so startled him that he flinched and ducked. When he then settled down a bit, there in front of him, only three feet or so away, was a caricature of a man --- a flat-black hole in the environment looking like a badly drawn silhouette. It "stared" at him with no eyes nor features at all. Seconds later it turned and "ran" away.

Each aspect of this "running away" was strange. The turn was accompanied by a narrowing of the image as if one were watching a two-dimensional thing which almost [if not totally] disappeared at the moment of the turn when the edge would be presented. The "running away" was not a smooth but a jerking stop/go stop/go stop/go as if one were viewing individual frames in a movie, but not the intermediate "smooth flow." The going away was also weird in that there seemed a discontinuity in the escape at about twelve feet distance, whereupon it seemed instantly to be about 100 feet away. The person's feet, for one last memory, seemed too long and triangular in shape.

The experience was one that the witness didn't report right away, and he's still puzzled by that. The sequence though just kept repeating itself in his head now and then, but he was reluctant to tell anyone and he doesn't know why. Finally, weeks later, he decided to tell others about what he saw. He still has no idea what it was. An interesting speculation by him is that since whatever was behind this apparently saw him and came close to inspect him, might it not have been the appearance of some technology for data-gathering or just observing, and this is all we see of it on our end?

My sister saw a "shadowperson" once, suddenly occupying the seat in her car next to her, while she was driving home alone. She didn't like the experience. It was both creepy and distracting from driving the car, so she didn't stare at it. It then disappeared. She is the one of my two sisters who doesn't like this stuff, while the other thinks it's "neat." [unless it's temporarily losing a piece of clothing that she's needing.] The sister has effectively put her shadowperson into zero-stress condition by nicknaming "him",  Lemoyne.  Lemoyne, possibly offended by this frivolous attempt to demote him on the ladder of seriousness, has not returned.

I'm going to call it a day and return to civilization by Out Proctor airlines. I have a handful or so more of this stuff yet in the current pile, and will toss some more of it at you soon --- so be ready to duck.

As Mountain William says: Don't get anything on you which you can't wash off.

Peace, friends.