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Showing posts with label paranormal phenomena. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paranormal phenomena. Show all posts

Sunday, September 20, 2026

Naked-Eye Sightings of Mysterious Orbs (Part 11)

 Below are some posts I have published about people reporting they saw mysterious orbs with the naked eye:

Below is an account from page 10 of the November 1962 Psychic Observer which you can read here.

"Another frightening UFO encounter—a thirty mile chase—was reported by Mr. and Mrs. Richard DuBois, 13481 Shirley Street, Westminister, California. On the night of October 21, returning from a vacation, they were driving along Route 60 in New Mexico. Except for their car, the highway was deserted. It was about 2 a.m., when a 'brilliant ball of white light' flashed down across the car, slowed, then turned back and followed alongside. 'At first, I thought it was an airplane making an emergency landing,' said Mrs. DuBois. But the strange 'ball ’ streaked back into the sky. DuBois’ conjecture that it might be an odd moonlight reflection was quickly disproved. For the bright object again flashed down, raced ahead of the car, then flowed to let them catch up.  'We were really frightened by this time.' Mrs. DuBois reported. And their alarm increased when the strange device pacing them suddenly separated into four smaller, glowing objects. Flying alongside, the formation kept pace with the car until a service station appeared ahead. When DuBois slowed down, the four UFO's flashed upward and went out of sight. 'We were so terrified.' said Mrs. DuBois, 'That my husband drove at 100 miles an hour to the next town. We asked if there had been any reports of flying objects, but people only laughed. They thought was it was funny, but we were plenty scared.' "

The account includes this artist's drawing:


On page 121 of the document here, we read an account by J. Ricardo Lavicka, telling what he saw at about  age 14. He says that he saw forming above the head of a dying sister a translucent sphere about as big as a basketball. We read this: 

translucent orb at death

In a book on page 43 the author Jas Robertson reports his first attendance at what apparently was a seance of David Duguid (the wording is a little unclear about which medium was involved):

"At my first sitting I witnessed phenomena which I have never forgotten, and I can recollect saying to myself, when I saw a globe of light travelling from the end of the room, and assuming the form of a human hand when it reached the table, 'There never can come to me in all the future years anything which will weaken or make me deny what I am now witnessing.' "

Telekinesis refers to some paranormal ability to move matter only by mind or the power of spirit. You could use the term for any inexplicable movement seen at a seance, such as the table levitations that were so widely reported. On page 294 of the document here, we have a letter by Arthur Conan Doyle, dated July 19, 1922. He records observations at a seance of the Austrian medium Frau Silbert:

"Yesterday, July 18th, I was one of six who sat with Frau Silbert, the Austrian medium, at the British College of Psychic Science....I was seated on the left of the medium. Behind her was the 'cabinet,' a curtained enclosure, partially open in front. This I examined and found empty. The red light was kept fairly high—so high that we could easily see every movement of the medium or of each other. We laid our watches upon the ground under the table, as it was said that the medium’s control was able sometimes to scratch his name, Ivel, upon them. I may say at once that this phenomenon did not take place....

Presently the medium sank into trance, and made curious movements with her hands as if she were drawing some substance from her mouth and nose. If anyone were choking with cobwebs and was trying to clear oneself, it is the movement they would have made. She then stood up, gave a sharp cry, and picked apparently out of the air behind her one of the watches which had been on the ground. We were all agreed that neither she nor any member of the company had stooped down from the moment that the watches had been placed there. It was a clear case of movement without contact or telekinesis.  

The trance now deepened and the woman gave little whining cries, exactly like those which are the prelude to childbirth. Eva gives the same cries when she is about to emit ectoplasm. The actual emission is, I fancy, a relief. Presently I saw on the floor, about a foot behind the medium, and between her chair and mine, a luminous ball, like a phosphorescent sponge, rather larger than my fist. It was quite clear but it vanished in a few seconds. Further luminous patches then appeared protruding from under the curtains. The ball was exactly such as has been described by Miss Scatcherd in her observations upon Eva.....Several times the curtain of the cabinet was blown out as in a high wind, and twice I was touched by some solid body when I was quite clear of the medium. The sensation was that of a dog rubbing against my leg."

The mysterious fluttering of a curtain (as if blown by a wind) was an effect frequently reported in the seances of Eusapia Palladino.  From a quality-of-evidence standpoint, a dated account like this (stating what someone saw on the same day or the previous day) is relatively good evidence, much better than someone just recalling what he saw months ago or years ago. I advise people to always immediately write down a dated signed account of any thing very unusual that they witnessed, whether it be something paranormal-seeming or something that may be a matter of investigation by a scientist or a court. 

Below is an account from a paper dated September 10, 1959:

Brothers, Neighbor Report UFO Here Bright As Moon (From The Peoria Journal Star) 

"A Peoria drug salesman reported seeing an unidentified flying object 'just about as bright as the moon but not as high' at 10:30 p m. Saturday as be went out to move his car. J. H. Baker, 2725 Renwood Ave., Hamilton Park, said he at first thought the object was an airplane, but it then appeared as 'a round large ball of white light.' The phenomenon, said Baker, could be seen moving rapidly from southwest to northeast at a height of 10,000 to 12,000 feet. Baker said the object also was seen by his brother, R. J. Baker, visiting here from Chicago, and by a neighbor, Jack Rhodes, 2724 Renwood. The brother trained a powerful pair of binoculars on it. The strange object stayed in sight from 4 to 6 minutes. 'It was moving much faster than a jet plane,' Baker reported." 

The length of time the sight was observed seems to rule out a meteor (something that appears visible in the sky for less than 15 seconds).  A check of a moon phase calendar suggests that on the Saturday in question (September 6, 1959) the moon looked like a mere thin crescent. 

A very distinguished Earl (called under British customs the Master of Lindsay or Lord Lindsay) had many meetings with the famous medium Daniel Dunglas Home. Lord Lindsay kept careful records of paranormal events occurring at such meetings. Lord Lindsay was interviewed by the investigators of the famous Dialectical Society of London, when they did their long formal investigation finding resoundingly in favor of paranormal phenomena, which resulted in a long report that can be read in full using the link here or here. Lord Lindsay described viewing various dramatic types of paranormal phenomena, and his testimony is summarized in my post here. 

Lord Lindsay had printed up a small number of copies of a privately printed document discussing his observations of the paranormal around 1870. For many years the document was available only to a small, select group of people who had one of the rare copies. Finally in the 1920's the Society for Psychical Research published the document, which appeared in Volume 35 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (1925), which you can read here.  We have a book-length document describing some of the most amazing marvels humans have ever seen. 

On page 60 and the following pages we have a description of a Seance #6 at the house of Mr. Jencken, the husband of the medium Kate Fox, by then Kate Fox Jencken. (Kate was herself someone associated with many reports of the paranormal, as discussed here.) First we read that a servant at the house had been "seeing phosphorescent balls of light in her room at night."

We then read this:

"Home stood up and said, 'He is very strong and tall.'  and standing there beside me. Home grew, I should say, at least, six inches. Mr. Jencken, who is a taller man than Home, stood beside him, so there could be no mistake about it. Home's natural height is, I believe, 5 feet 10 inches. I should say he grew to 6 feet 4 inches or 6 feet 6 inches. I placed my hands on his feet, and felt that they were fairly level on the ground. .... He appeared to grow also in breadth and size all over, but there was no way of testing that. He diminished down to his natural size, and said, 'Daniel will grow tall again ' ; he did so, and said, 'Daniel's feet are on the ground,' he walked about, and stamped his feet. He returned to his natural size, and sitting down, he said, 'Daniel is coming back now, sit down, and do not tell Daniel at once what he has said.' In a few seconds he awoke."

This was only one of many times in which a paranormal elongation of the body of Daniel Dunglas Home was reported. We then read that the seance ended in this way

"We all went into the drawing room ; it was quite dark. Home sat at the piano, and played a few notes. Mrs. Hennings sat near him ; Mrs. Jencken a little way off ; Mr. Jencken and I stood near the piano. Soon we observed the light that we had been told we should see. A small luminous ball flitting about, sometimes very brilliant ; the chords of the piano were swept, but the keys were not touched. The piano was lifted off the ground about 2 inches. I had my hand underneath, and it was again lifted about 2 inches, and then without any effort, I should say 8 inches higher. It was not tilted, but lifted bodily. We now heard loud raps, the alphabet was called, and ' Good night ' spelled out. Nothing more occurred.."

Effects such as these in the presence of Daniel Dunglas Home were reported by many witnesses. As discussed in my post here, Home was investigated by the leading physicist Sir William Crookes, who reported dramatic paranormal effects occurring in Home's presence, including the levitation of Home himself (as you can read about in Crookes' publications here and here). 

On page 187 of the March 21, 1935 edition of the periodical Light, which can be read here, we get two astonishing accounts. First, we hear of the sighting of an apparition:

"In the Revue Spirite Beige for February (Liège), Dr. Lucien Graux tells the following story. One night, M. Albert Lambert, of the Comédie Française, was silently going over his part in ' Ruy Bias'  in his private room, when there entered a man in a long cloak, who was the very image of the Ruy Bias of the title part of the play. The apparition commenced to recite Victor Hugo’s verses. Albert Lambert listened with every sense alert; it was as though revelation and enlightenment were coming to him from the other world. When he was afterwards questioned about this vision, the famous actor replied: ' You wish to know whether it was an illusion, whether I really saw, or only thought I saw? My emphatic reply is this : I both saw and I heard.' ”

Then we have an account of a mysterious blue orb appearing at a seance:

"An eye-witness has sent to the Neues Wiener Journal (Vienna, January 7th), an interesting account of a sitting with the young French Medium, Mile. Remy. The sitters were the guests of Professor Lyonel, and included two well-known University Professors, two medical men, and an engineer, who was in charge of an intricate set of control apparatus, including a camera for infra-red film photography, as well as one that registered even the faintest manifestation of light. The delicate-looking young girl sat down in an armchair and was then put into slight hypnotic sleep. After an interval of only five minutes, Professor Lyonel was touched by a hand and the correspondent by another; then the table on which the sitters’ hands were resting was raised by powerful pressure from below and levitated into the air. The wish was expressed that the hitherto sceptical investigators might be enabled to see what was taking place, and a second later an iridescent ball of blue light appeared close under the ceiling; and the ticking of the light-registering apparatus gave independent evidence of this fact. By the light of this ball of blue, the sitters saw that the table was raised six to seven feet above the floor. The light then sank down over the Medium’s chair, revealing the sleeping figure of the young girl; and so profound was this sleep that it was not broken when, next moment, with a loud report, the ball of light burst and disappeared.

The account ends: 'There followed ten minutes of expectant waiting, when suddenly the room was filled with the most marvellous but infinitely sad music of a violin. We had seen before the room was darkened that, amongst the instruments on its walls, there was a violin, with its bow beside it. But whose was the masterhand that was now playing it? Certainly not the Medium’s, for, under the controlling eyes of the apparatus, she could not leave her seat even for one second without being detected; and the strip of film which I was allowed to examine later on proved that throughout the seance Mile. Remy had never left her chair. But the photograph also showed a film-like hand hovering in the air, with the delicate tapering fingers of a woman—ethereally delicate, as if from another world than ours.' ”

On page 375 of the June 22, 1934 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here, we read the following account of observing mysterious orbs in a seance:

"MME. NIJINSKY, who recently returned to London, tells us of a strange experience of Rudi Schneider and his wife. Rudi said he had never sat with a Medium. Mme. Nijinsky took him and his wife to Miss Frances Campbell. During the sitting—which Rudi, we are told, hugely enjoyed—balls of light sprang up and skipped from Rudi to Mme. Nijinsky’s lap. Miss Campbell gave accurate descriptions of the family affairs of her sitters ; then she turned to Mrs. Schneider and said : 'I feel I must prepare you for a blow. Your brother has been shot to-day in Linz.'  Mrs. Schneider protested that it could not be true. Next day, however, a telegram arrived stating that in the riot which cost so many lives in Austria, Mrs. Schneider’s brother had been killed."

On page 13 of the January 1897 edition of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, which you can read here, we read this:

"On the evening of May 21st, 1881, I was seated by a window at A. B. Rolfs in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Saw two large balls of light pass the window followed by a long crimson scarf that [it] seemed would never pass, its length was so great. I rose from my seat and went to the dining-room where some of the family were at tea ; told them what I saw, and stated my convictions that it was some national calamity. The balls meant death and the long scarf blood that would enwrap the whole nation. I then saw a stout, dark young man who handed me a paper. I then said, 'We will hear of this by such a young man as I describe.'  Time passed and the vision had gone from memory, when one day in July, same year, we all sat sewing and a man passed the window. I recognised the young man I had seen in my May vision ; sprang to meet him and he handed me a bulletin announcing Garfield's assassination, or rather the shooting that cost his life—the first intimation we had had of such a thing."

President Garfield was shot on July 2, 1881, and never fully recovered. He died on September 19,1881. The shooting was about six weeks after the strange sight of moving balls of light. 

Below is a passage from page 110 of the book The Other World  by Frederick George Lee, which you can read here: 

"The husband was often absent, but he and his wife occupied the room in which Mrs. Webb had died, while· their daughter, a girl about ten years of age, slept in a small bed in the comer. ...

Mrs. Accleton, during her husband's absence, having engaged her mother to sleep with her one night, was suddenly aroused at the same hour of two by a strange and unusual light in her room. Looking up she saw quite plainly the spirit of Mrs. Webb, which moved towards her with a gentle appealing manner, as though it would have said, ' Speak, speak ! ' 

" This spectre appeared likewise to a Mrs. Radboune, a Mrs. Griffiths, and a Mrs. Holding. They assert that luminous balls of light hovered about the room during the presence of the spirit, and that streams of light seemed to go up towards a trapdoor in the ceiling, which led to the roof of the cottage."

Page 231 of the May 19, 1883 edition of the periodical Light, which you can read here,  has an article by Stella Dunbar about experiences at a supposedly haunted house. We read this:

"Just at this time a young lady was crossing a passage, and looking from the window to the garden saw a woman in a light dress crossing the lawn. She called her companion, and they both watched the figure disappear. The same evening two others, knowing nothing of what these had seen, met the same figure coming from my room, and even noticed that it had very large bare feet."

We later read this:

"A visitor saw a woman’s figure, in everyday attire, sitting at the foot of her bed ; and my mother, entering the same room, saw what—until she spoke to it—she imagined to be the servant. In this room are frequently seen large balls of bright light."

The account has some other mentions of spooky figures making fleeting appearances at the house. We are told, "The figure of a child has been seen by the drawing-room fire-place, and at the top of the stairs."

Not long ago there was a news article on the CBS News web site entitled "Pentagon solves 1 UFO mystery but still probing cases of 'large orange orb,' 'large metallic cylinder.' "

In the article we read this strange description of an orb encounter:

"One case was reported by a law enforcement officer 'out West' who observed 'a large orange orb floating several hundred feet above the ground,' according to Kosloski. 

As the officer approached where he thought the orb would be, he saw 'a blacker than black object' that was about the size of a Prius. When he reached a distance of 40-60 meters away from the object, it tilted 45 degrees and shot up vertically, traveling faster than any drone he had seen before.

Just as it left his field of view, it emitted bright red and blue lights that lit up the inside of his vehicle 'as brightly as if someone had set off fireworks just outside of his vehicle,' Kosloski told Congress."

Tuesday, September 8, 2026

Precognitive Amnesia and the Notifying Apparition

In 1896 a newspaper published the very interesting news article below (which you can read here). You might call this a case of precognitive amnesia. I have never heard before of that combination. 

precognition simultaneous with amnesia


In the article above (in the area I highlighted in red) we read this astonishing claim about Franklin Hart developing an extraordinary power after he tried to kill himself by gassing himself:

" 'While Franklin's physical condition is
so good that he will be able to leave the
hospital in a day or two,' writes Hart,
'his mental state startles me. His mental
vision is supernaturally perspective [i.e. precognitive ], instead of being retrospective, and the physicians here tell me that there is no
parallel case on record in any part of the
civilized globe. They claim that the 
phenomenon demonstrated in my son's
mentality is one of the many hidden
forces in human nature. In ordinary conversation

Franklin is as lucid as ever, yet it is difficult for him to recall past events without hard study. For instance, when I referred to his Portland visit and his departure from there, it took him two days to recall the more important events, as they had altogether passed from his memory since the almost tragic affair at the Palmer House."

"The writer adds that the phenomenon in his son's mind consists of his mental anticipation of events as, for instance, the day prior to Mr. Hart's arrival in Chicago Franklin repeated almost verbatim to the doctor attending him the conversation he had with his father eight hours later. The singular and  unheard-of metamorphosis of young Hart's mental vision consists of its power to read all manner of events, even of the most trifling import, forty-eight hours in advance, with the same distinct clearness that the healthy, normal mind conjures up the past."

Not many years earlier, another source had used the same "mental vision" phrase we read in the quote above. On page 205 of the 1888 Revue Philsophique which you can read here, we have an article entitled "MENTAL VISION OR DOUBLE SIGHT IN INDUCED AND SPONTANEOUS SLEEPWALKING."  The article by a Dr. Dufay is about clairvoyance in someone while that person is in a hypnotic trance. Such a phenomenon was very widely reported during the 19th century. The account is in French, but I used Google Translate to produce the translations below. 

On page 209 we have an account of a woman named Marie who seems to have clairvoyant powers. We read of a strange power of this Marie, a type of medical clairvoyance she had under hypnosis. In the passage "put Marie to sleep" the author refers to hypnotizing someone:

"Dr. Girault had several times witnessed me perform very curious experiments on this girl, whom he magnetized [hypnotized] almost every day. When he was called to the countryside, he would put Marie to sleep before leaving and question her about the condition of the patient he was going to visit, so that, he said, he knew positively—let's just say approximately—what medications he should take with him."

On the same page and the next page we read that this Marie seemed to know through hypnotic clairvoyance of the death of a person whose death was unknown to her through normal means. The reference to "the sleepwalker" is a reference to Marie while she was in a hypnotic trance.  We read this:

"Then, with the speed of lightning, the comedy turned into drama: the poor sleepwalker was overcome with suffocation, her tears flowed, a cold sweat wet her forehead, and she called Mr. Girault for help.

 'What's the matter with you, Marie?... What's your pain, my daughter?'

'Ah! sir... Ah! sir... How awful! He's dead!'

'Who's dead? Is it one of my patients?'

'The son of Father Limoges, the ropemaker... you know... In Crimea... He's just died. Poor people! Poor people!'

'Come, come, my child, pull yourself together; it's no doubt a dream, a bad dream you've had.'

'A dream!... But I'm not asleep [that's the pretension of all sleepwalkers]. I see him... He's just breathed his last... Poor boy! Look at him.'

And her eyes wandered to a point in the apartment she pointed to with her hand. She wanted to flee, but, barely getting up from her chair, she fell back, her legs unable to support her.

It took a long time for calm to return, and when M. Girault woke Marie, she was still in the grip of a great malaise... which she attributed to indigestion, having no memory of what had happened.

What had she suddenly thought of the young soldier about? It was known in the village that the father was worried; he had no news of his son. Was she concerned about him out of sympathy for the family, or out of a more tender feeling that the idea of ​​Mademoiselle de S.'s marriage would have rekindled in her at that moment?

In any case, Father Limoges was informed some time later of his son's death, which had occurred in Dalmate (was that the name of a French ambulance?) near Constantinople, on June 15, 1855, that is, the very day Marie had had the vision.

This recalls the account of Gregory of Tours, according to which Saint Ambrose, having fallen asleep while saying Mass in the church of Milan, dreamed that Saint Martin had just died in Tours, which happened precisely on that day, and at the hour of Mass."

On page 211 we read that the same Marie was subjected to tests in which she was asked to tell the contents of sealed envelopes.  The author (Dr. Dufay) says he took an envelope containing a letter from a military man telling of his dysentery illness; and the author says he put the letter back in the envelope, and enclosed that envelope inside another envelope. We read this:

"The ten or twelve people gathered in Mrs. D.'s living room were stunned by what they had just seen. The sleepwalker [Marie] had unmistakably recognized the contents of several packages they had prepared themselves, as I had done. But I left mine in my pocket to avoid the monotony of the experiments, merely slipping my letter into the hand of one of the assistants, signaling to her to pass it to Mr. Girault. He received it without knowing it came from me, and placed it in Marie's hands.

I didn't note whether her eyes were open or closed, but that, as you can imagine, was of no importance in such a case.

'What do you have in your hand?' asked Dr. Girault.

'A letter.'

'To whom was it addressed?'

'To Mr. Dufay.'

'By whom?' 

'By a military gentleman I don't know.'

'What is he talking about in his letter, this military gentleman?'

'He's sick; he's talking about his illness.'

'Is it an illness you could name?'

'Oh! Yes, very well;... it's like the old woodcutter's in Mesland, which hasn't yet subsided...'

'Very well, very well, I understand,... dysentery. Listen, Marie, I think you would give Mr. Dufay great pleasure if you went to see his friend the officer, to bring him back some reliable news.'"

Marie seemed to have correctly identified that the double sealed letter was from a military man with dysentery. 


On later pages (pages 213 and 214) we read of a man who was accused of murder, and who committed suicide in prison, hanging himself with his own tie. The article author (Dufay) says he took the tie, and wrapped it in several sheets of paper, giving it to Marie. She correctly identified the package as containing something that was used to kill a man, and that the package contained a tie. She also said the person who was killed by the contents was someone who threw his murder weapon at a particular spot in a pond. A search revealed a matching weapon at that spot. 

On page 215 in the same article we read of an extraordinary sleepwalker named Janicaud Théophile. We read in the next pages that Janicaud seemed to make clairvoyant mind trips in which he found out little details about distant persons that were only later verified as true. For example, on page 217 we read this:

"The following night, he said that he saw on the road to Glény the body of a man who had drowned while bathing in the Creuse, and that he was being brought back to Guéret in a car. The next morning I went to check the news and learned that a resident of the town had indeed drowned the day before in Glény and that his body had been brought back to Guéret during the night. However, no one in the establishment, or even in the town, had been aware of this accident the day before."

The accounts of Marie's ability to detect the contents of sealed packages and sealed envelopes is similar to many accounts in the literature of parapsychology, documenting such a skill in others such as Alexis Didier.  You can read many similar accounts in my posts here and  here and here. To read many posts discussing accounts of apparitions that seemed to act like a death notification, see my series of posts here, continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right. 

If the topic of this post interested you, check out my free book "Psychics and Paranormal Phenomena," available on www.archive.org using the link here. Using the native www.archive.org file viewer in single-page mode (after clicking the [] icon at the bottom of the book viewer),  you can conveniently read the whole book by finger swiping. Scholars who are interested in following the links may prefer to download the book as a PDF file, which will allow opening links by right-clicking on a link. 

Sunday, August 30, 2026

Authorities Keep Gaslighting Those Having Out-of-Body Experiences

 In my July 2025 post "When Gaslighting Psychiatric Mudslinging Defames Healthy NDE and OBE Observers" (which you can read here) I documented some appalling gaslighting by authorities trying to shame, defame and pathologize healthy witnesses of the paranormal. The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word "gaslight" to mean this: "To psychologically manipulate (someone) so that they question their memories, perception, or sanity." 

Below is an infographic on gaslighting, one I modified from an output of Google Gemini:

gaslighting

Sociologist Paige Sweet defines gaslighting as "making someone seem or feel unstable, irrational and not credible, making them feel like what they’re seeing or experiencing isn’t real, that they’re making it up, that no one else will believe them.” The visual below shows two examples of gaslighting:

gaslighting

The visual below shows two other examples of gaslighting:

gaslighting

The latest example of gaslighting of witnesses of the paranormal is an article by neuroscientist Marina Weiler entitled " 'Am I Crazy?' Understanding Out-of-Body Feelings." Weiler attempts to reframe the well-documented fact of out-of-body experiences (a type of anomalous visual perception) as a mere "feeling." Instead of referring to out-of-body experiences, her title refers to "out-of-body feelings." Of course, there is a world of difference between an experience and a perception (on one hand), and a mere feeling (on the other hand). You may go to a reputed haunted house, and get a spooky feeling; but that counts for very little. If, on the other hand, you actually see a translucent apparition floating about, that is a perception, and it counts for very much as evidence. 

Are out-of-body experiences mere "feelings"? No, they are not. They are something much more than mere feelings: they are perceptions and observational experiences. In my post "Neuroscientists Cannot Credibly Explain Any of These 11 Features of Out-of-Body Experiences" which you can read here, I describe nine common features of out-of-body experiences, giving abundant examples of cases in which each of the features was reported. The features were these:
  1. Feature #1: observing one's own body from outside it, typically from a horizontal position, at a distance of about two meters above it, or from a location near the ceiling.
  2. Feature #2:  a strong feeling of euphoria or exaltation during an out-of-body experience
  3. Feature #3:  an experience of being able to pass-through matter while having an out-of-body experience.
  4. Feature #4:  an experience of having enhanced senses during an out-of-body experience, which may include the ability to see through walls or look inside the body as if you had x-ray eyes, or the ability to see a 360 degree view.
  5. Feature #5: an experience of being connected to the body while outside of it, sometimes with there being a cord-like or elastic structure between the observer outside of the body and his own body.
  6. Feature #6:  an experience of encountering one or more spiritual or non-physical entities (or deceased people) while having an out-of-body experience.
  7. Feature #7:  an experience of completely leaving the location of the body, while traveling to other earthly locations or unearthly locations.
  8. Feature #8:  an out-of-body experience experience that includes observations of things that should have been impossible for a person to observe, giving his physical position.
  9. Feature #9:  an experience of having an exalted intellect or speeded-up mind during an out-of-body experience.
Only one of these nine features can be called a "feeling." So it is grossly misleading to be calling out-of-body experiences "feelings," and to try to reframe out-of-body experiences as "out-of-body feelings." 

Engaging in some psychiatric mudslinging, Weiler claims, "People who'd had a disembodiment feeling showed more mental health diagnoses, more treatment history, and higher dissociation and childhood trauma." This statement includes a reference to a paper of hers hidden behind a paywall. The abstract of the paper makes no such claim, and we read no numerically specific claim of such an effect in the snippets of the paper you can read here. Should we bother to pay money paying for such paper? No, much better to just assume that no strong evidence was found of any such effect, because of the failure to report numerical specifics of any such effect in the paper's abstract or snippets. Almost always when scientists get noteworthy results giving decent evidence of an effect, they mention the specifics of such results in the abstracts of their paper. 

Gaslighting is a game of "shame, blame and defame the witness." Weiler seems to play some of that game when she tries to associate  having out-of-experiences with shame. She says, "In my inbox, I regularly hear from people carrying enormous shame around disembodiment feelings like hers, afraid to tell even those closest to them." You get her drift? It sounds kind of like: "Did you have an out-of-body experience? Be ashamed. Be very ashamed!" There is actually no reason why anyone should be ashamed of having a psychic experience, and surveys show that a large fraction of the population have such experiences.  You can read about such surveys here. 

It sounds like gaslighting when Weiler states this: "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) defines depersonalization/derealization disorder as persistent episodes of feeling detached from one's own body, thoughts, or surroundings—a description sitting uncomfortably close to out-of-body experiences." But typically an out-of-body experience is a one-shot affair, happening only one time in someone's life; and typically that one time is when someone had a close encounter with death such as a cardiac arrest. There is no legitimacy in Weiler's attempt to compare such once-in-a-lifetime events with " persistent episodes of feeling detached from one's own body, thoughts, or surroundings."

A site with the title of "The Brains Blog" can be found at the URL of https://philosophyofbrains.com/.  It has a byline of "Since 2005, a leading forum for work in the philosophy and science of mind." Searching for the term "out-of-body experience" using the search tool at the site, I get only one article using that term in its title. It's an article with the gaslighting title "What do out of body experiences tell us about self-consciousness; Or, Disorders of Self-Consciousness Part 5." The psychologist author makes a bad description of the conditions under which out-of-body experiences occur, failing to mention that they occur during close encounters with death such as cardiac arrest. I am left with the impression that the brain experts long writing at the Brains Blog have failed to do their homework in adequately studying this topic of out-of-body experiences so relevant to "the philosophy and science of mind."

Beware of gaslighting authorities who act like the guy below, who tries to gin up a personality defect from some one-shot observational report, while getting all confused between "something someone saw" and "something someone felt":

gaslighting psychologist

Postscript: I looked up some of the papers of Marina Weiler on Google Scholar. She has some papers on out-of-body experiences, which are mostly behind paywalls. Her paper "Distinguishing out-of-body experiences from lucid dreaming: a phenomenological analysis" is a paper that seems to gaslight those having out-of-body experiences, by trying to conflate out-of-body experiences with a type of vivid dreaming. Saying things like "maybe you were just dreaming" is a common type of gaslighting. The most prominent cases of out-of-body experiences occur during cardiac arrest, when the brain has shut down in a state of asystole, with brain waves appearing only as flat lines. Neither hallucinations nor dreams are possible during such a state, a fact which cripples Weiler's attempted explanations of out-of-body experiences. 

In that paper by Weiler we have this very bad misstatement: "Nonetheless, some have found that only a small percentage (4.5%) of reported OBEs occur during awake states (Green, 1968b), indicating that the majority of OBEs occur during sleep states." The reference is to the 1968 book "Out-of-the-body Experiences" by Celia Green, which you can read here. The book describes a major survey of out-of-body experiences conducted by Green, in original research.  Searching for that figure of 4.5% in the text of that book, I cannot find it. But I do find statements in that book stating the opposite. On page 85 the book states, "Of the subjects of single cases, 56.5 per cent actually claimed to have been more awake and keenly observant than usual." On page 20 the book states, "Twelve per cent of the 'single' cases studied were initiated while the subject was asleep." 

On page 61 of Green's book we read this: "Sixty-one percent of subjects report having had only one ecsomatic experience."  The book earlier defined "ecsomatic experience" as an out-of-body experience. This data is consistent with my claim earlier in this post that "typically an out-of-body experience is a one-shot affair, happening only one time in someone's life," a reality that discredits Weiler's attempt to link out-of-body experiences and types of psychiatric phenomena happening more than once in a lifetime. 

On page 42 of Green's book she states this: "Eighty-one percent of the subjects of 'single' ecsomatic [out-of-body experience] cases stated that, while they were apparently out of their bodies, they seemed to see their physical bodies from outside." So it makes no sense at all when Weiler states in her paper that "our proposed definition suggests that OBEs [out-of-body experiences] should not be defined by the subject’s ability to perceive their own body from a third-person perspective."

Weiler's paper "Neuroimaging studies of extra-sensory perception: A systematic and critical review" has the wrong title, as the studies reviewed are almost all EEG brain-wave studies that do not involve the creation of any images. But quite foolishly, some neuroscientists have started to say that EEG studies that involve no images are examples of "neuroimaging." It's just another of endless examples of defective assertions by today's neuroscientists.  

Such a paper causes me to wonder: why would someone focus on the tiny number of studies involving attempts to get neural correlates of extra-sensory perception, rather than seriously studying the vastly larger body of ESP tests that were done when a subject was not being brain-scanned and was not connected to an EEG device?  The very idea of looking for a neural correlate of extrasensory perception (ESP) makes little sense. ESP is a particularly clear example of a mental capability that cannot be explained by brain activity. That's why so many neuroscientists refuse to seriously study the 200 years of evidence for ESP and psi -- because such evidence conflicts with their "brains make minds" dogma.

A recent University of Virginia press release discusses an experiment Marina Weiler did involving people trying to have out-of-body experiences:

"The descriptions the participants gave of the objects on the laptop screen did not prove statistically more accurate than what could be expected from guessing. But during interviews afterward, one participant described how a researcher in another room, behind closed doors, had been seated on the left looking at a laptop screen while another researcher was farther back reading a book. Another participant described how a researcher had been seated on the right, taking notes, while a second was sitting on the left at the computer.

Trial records confirmed both descriptions were correct at the time of the participants’ sessions. Further, there was no way the participants could have seen the researchers, according to the trial organizers.

That has prompted Weiler and her collaborators to propose that the targets provided during OBE trials may play important roles in determining outcomes. It’s possible, they suggest, that memorable, distinctive or emotionally engaging targets may be easier for participants to visualize. "

That sounds like a failure to put two and two together. The reported result should make you suspect that out-of-body experiences can actually occur or that extrasensory perception can actually occur, rather than creating some mere opinion about what type of targets are easiest for a person to visualize. 

Monday, August 24, 2026

Unimpressive "Mars Jellyfish" Goes Viral, While Far Stronger Photos of the Spooky Are Ignored by Mainstream

I am seeing in my news feeds these days articles about a photographic anomaly on Mars. An example is an AOL article that appeared on the Yahoo site and also on Google's Science News page. It was entitled  "Jellyfish" Spotted In NASA Mars Photo Sparks Frenzy As People Dig For Explanation." 

We read that people on social media are getting all excited about a photo taken by the Curiosity rover "on August 20, 2023, during Sol 3924 of its mission while exploring Gale Crater on Mars." In any report like this, it is essential to look for the original NASA page containing the photo. That page is the one here.  That page has a 1024 by 512 image of the surface of Mars. The page has a Download button, but in this case the button is unnecessary, because when you click that button you get the same 1024 by 512 image displayed on the page. 

The 1024 by 512 image showing the photographic anomaly is the one below:

Mars jellyfish

If you look in the bottom left, you may notice a little anomaly. Below is a crop of that portion of the photo, a crop that is 77 pixels by 71 pixels:

77 pixels by 71 pixels

You should not be impressed by this, given that the anomaly in the middle consists of a handful of pixels. The anomaly is maybe 10 pixels in width and 10 pixels in height. A good rule of thumb when dealing with anomalies in photos is: ignore any anomaly that consists of only a very small number of pixels in a photo, particularly if it is an anomaly that only appeared once. There are 1001 mundane reasons why you can get such "handful of pixels" anomalies. 

The NASA page here allows you to see other photos taken on the same day. Other photos from the same angle on the same day fail to show the anomaly. For example, one is below.

Can we think of a natural explanation for the anomaly appearing in the first photo shown above? We certainly can. The anomaly looks rather like something known to frequently occur on Mars: what is called a dust devil. Observed on both Earth and Mars, dust devils are fleeting little mini-storms that cause dust to rise in the air. Dust devils are thought to be more common on Mars, which is covered in fine, lightweight dust. The Google Gemini infographic below explains what causes dust devils on Mars. 

dust devils on Mars

So in this case we have a known natural phenomenon on the surface of Mars (dust devils) that can easily be the cause of the so-called "Mars jellyfish." There is no need to assume that there's some weird undiscovered life form on Mars, merely because a photo shows on the horizon of Mars something that looks like a dust devil.  Another possibility is that a tiny bit of dust got on the camera lens, and was blown away by the time the next photo was taken. Because the surface of Mars is so abundantly filled with fine dust, such a thing would be not very improbable. 

We have three glaring failures of the "Mars jellyfish" photo to qualify as good evidence of the paranormal:

(1) The photo is a "one shot" affair, with there being only one photo showing the anomaly. 

(2) The photo is a "handful of pixels" affair, with the anomaly showing up as only a very small number of pixels (and almost all such "handful of pixels" things are dubious). 

(3) There is a known natural phenomenon on Mars (dust devils) that can produce something like what we seem to see in the "Mars jellyfish" photo. 

It is ironic that social media and mainstream sites get all excited about low-quality evidence such as a photo showing only a few spooky-looking pixels, while far more impressive photographic evidence of the spooky continues to be mostly ignored by social media and mainstream sites.  Back in my most productive days as a photographer of the anomalous, I got two types of very spooky anomalies that were very worthy of attention, but which were ignored by mainstream sites: (1) photos of dramatically repeating stripe patterns in mysterious orbs, taken under clean, dry conditions, and (2)  photos of dramatically repeating patterns in mysterious orbs, taken during photography of falling water drops. 

To read about the details of the first of these two things, you can read my post here or my post here. The visual below shows 36 types of repeating patterns I got in mysterious orbs I photographed in clean, dry air. The number under each photo is the number of times I photographed an orb with the stripe pattern shown. For example, under the first photo (showing an inverted Y pattern) we see "x11." That means that 11 times I photographed a mysterious orb with such a pattern. See my post here to see the photos that are the basis of this summary infographic. 

recurring orb patterns

Almost all of these pattern repetitions would occur on different days, with in-between photos showing no such pattern. So, for example, the photos below (showing the same pattern) were taken on the different days shown in the caption and documented in the posts here and here and here, and there were very many other photos taken on the same days and days in-between these days, showing no such pattern:

mysterious orb patterns

 And the two repetitions of the "ballet dancer" pattern below occurred on different days mentioned in the caption below, with many in-between photos showing no such pattern:

repeating pattern in mysterious orbs


 In the two photos above there was a most astonishing double pattern repetition, with both a "ballet dancer" pattern being repeated, and also below that a "vertical stripe" pattern being repeated. 

Altogether over the span of several years I got more than 800 photos of mysterious striped orbs, while photographing in clean dry air. You can conveniently see all of these photos using the link here, which takes you to a free online book which you can read by finger-swiping, after clicking on the [] icon at the bottom of the book viewer. The striped orbs appeared in a variety of colors. So, for example, I got 69 photos of striped blue orbs, 15 photos of striped pink orbs, 19 photos of striped purple orbs, 24 photos of striped red orbs, 15 photos of striped yellow orbs, 37 photos of striped green orbs, and 23 photos of striped orange orbs. 

A different type of very spooky photo anomaly I got in the most enormous abundance over the course of several years was the appearance and persistence of inexplicable and massively occurring orb patterns while I photographed ordinary drops of clean, pure water falling in front of a black, featureless background. Something like this would happen on very many different days. I would be photographing ordinary drops of pure, clean water falling in front of a black featureless background, using the protocol I describe in the second half of my post here. After quite a few photos showing nothing very notable, there would suddenly appear most mysteriously an unexpected pattern, repeating many times in circular shapes appearing in the photos.  An individual photo might show five or more very clear repetitions of the pattern. And exactly the same pattern would persist for many consecutive photos, often hundreds. 

The most convenient way to examine my photos of this phenomenon is to use the link here, which takes you to a free online book of 1495 pages, my book "Vast Precision of the Orb Patterns" which can be very conveniently read by finger-swiping, after the user has pressed the [] icon at the bottom of the book viewer. 

Some choice examples of the patterns I got with very great repetition can be seen in my summary posts here and here. On one day while doing photography of only ordinary drops of pure clean water falling, I photographed many hundreds of orbs with face-like details, such orbs appearing in most of hundreds of consecutive photos. Below is one example showing seven occurrences of the same face-like pattern.  At the link here you can see a video of my camera viewfinder while I took photos such as the one below and the next photo after it. See here and here for similar photos from the same day.

aquatic mega-patternization

On another day while doing photography of only ordinary drops of pure clean water falling, I photographed  a series of hundreds of consecutive photos that almost all showed multiple instances of a breast-like shape, with this breast-like shape appearing a total of more than 1000 times.  Below is one example (see here and here and here for others).  At the link here you can see a video showing my camera viewfinder while I took many of these photos. I got a similar pattern on this other day.

aquatic mega-patternization

On another day while doing photography of only ordinary drops of pure clean water falling, I took more than a thousand photos showing face-like details as we can see in the photo below.  Additional examples can be seen here.  A video showing my camera viewfinder while I took some of these photos can be seen here.


paranormal faces


Striped orbs would often dramatically appear in great abundance when I photographed falling drops of pure, clean water. On one day I got the pattern shown below. We see 25 striped orbs in a single drip of pure, clean water.

paranormal water drip

On another day I got the pattern shown below while photographing only pure, clean water falling against a featureless background. 

mysterious water


On one day I got the two-part pattern below, which persisted through almost all of hundreds of consecutive photos. I can't explain how these colors showed up when photographing only pure, clean falling water drops. 

orb two-part pattern

On one day while doing photography of only ordinary drops of pure clean water falling, I photographed a "snowman" motif consisting of a smaller circle on top of a larger circle, both on the right side of an orb.  Such a "snowman" motif appeared more than 5000 times in most of 1600+ consecutive photos I took, with the "snowman" motif appearing at least several times in most of these photos.  Below are two examples (see here for more). I photographed a similar pattern on this day.

aquatic mega-patternization

All kinds of patterns would appear during such photography of falling drops of pure, clean water. A particular pattern might have up to seven  different parts. Below (from my post here) is an example of a five-part pattern that mysteriously arose one day while doing photography of only ordinary drops of pure clean water falling, with many repetitions in consecutive photos:

five-part orb pattern

On another day I got the seven-part pattern shown below, which persisted through almost all of more than forty consecutive photos, appearing multiple times in most of such photos. 


seven-part orb pattern

On one day while doing photography of only ordinary drops of pure clean water falling, I got the photo below showing a motif repeating nine times.

aquatic mega-patternization

The photographs I describe here are not "handful of pixels" stuff like the crummy 10-pixel by 10-pixel affair that makes up the anomalous part of the so-called "Mars Jellyfish" photo. The photos I describe above are high-resolution photos in which each anomaly involves many pixels. And while the "Mars Jellyfish" photo can easily be naturally explained by assuming that a distant dust devil was photographed, or that a little of the super-abundant Mars dust got on the camera lens for a while,  we have no such convenient explanation for the photos of mine I have described above. They are shockingly anomalous, and seem to be suggestive of some mysterious power capable of making inexplicable manifestations with the most enormously precise power of repetition and persistence. A person adequately studying biology should not be too surprised by such a phenomenon, because within each of our bodies there occurs every day a million miracles of high-speed assembly (as described here), in which "molecular machine" protein complexes needed for our continued lives are mysteriously assembled with the most enormous precision, by some means that scientists do not understand. 

The photos of mine I refer to above were published online over a span of seven years between about 2015 to 2022, long before there were any good AI image generators invented. No trick photography or Photoshop-like product was used to make any of these photos, which looked the same to my eyes when I first saw them as they appear above and in the sources above.  You can see the photos in their original posts by browsing through my "Orb Pro" blog here. The Wayback Machine at www.archive.org has taken many snapshots of that blog over the years, documenting the photos were published during that period. My several long youtube.com videos showing my camera viewfinder during the photography of such wonders help to show the authenticity of these photos. Two examples of such videos are below. 






Among my photos have been 1500+ photos of mysterious blue orbs. An example of one is the photo below I published in 2015 in the post here. The size of the blue anomaly in the photo is roughly 200 pixels by 200 pixels. That's an anomaly photo area of roughly 40,000 square pixels, which is roughly 400 times larger than the anomaly photo area of merely 100 pixels in the "Mars jellyfish" photo. My photo here (taken with a different camera) shows an equally striking anomaly with a size of about 60,000 square pixels. 


Why has the unimpressive "Mars Jellyfish" photo gone viral, while so much better photos of the spooky have been ignored by the mainstream? You can explain it in terms of people getting excited about something that fits in with their worldview, while ignoring something conflicting with their worldview. Our media is largely controlled by an academia-centered "Ministry of Materialism" that wishes to propagate materialist ideas (to use a metaphorical phrase I coined in a post).  Those who serve that ideology want very much to believe that life arose on Mars, a place incredibly inhospitable to life. Life on Mars (particularly large macroscopic life) might show that blind evolution may have a great power to beat the most prohibitive odds, producing wonders of biology. 

But the same powers controlling such a "Ministry of Materialism" do not want to believe that there can be a mysterious unseen power acting here on planet Earth, capable of somehow producing the most astonishingly repetitive spooky manifestations with the most enormous precision. So even when the most abundant evidence of such a thing has been published, such an ocean of evidence may be ignored by those controlling the articles that appear in our news feeds. Playing "phenomena amnesia," the same information overlords ignore two hundred years of convincing written evidence for the paranormal, very much of it written by scientists and doctors, as well as an enormous body of evidence conflicting with their cherished "brains make minds" ideas.  

It's kind of a situation where the operating principle is rather like this: "a few drops count as an ocean, if it seems to support what I believe; but an ocean of evidence doesn't even count as a few drops, if it seems to conflict with what I believe."