Paranormal Magazine

BBC News are reporting that a street in Windermere is causing motorists grief because for some unexplained reason car remote controls and similar devices will not work when they park there. Click on the link below to watch the report.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8505314.stm

Spaceships powered by black holes or dark matter may be the future of stellar exploration.

The radical proposals, put forward by physicists in two American universities, are hoped to make visits to other stars in our galaxy plausible.

At the moment, the fastest-moving spacecraft mankind has made is Voyager 1, which is just leaving the solar system at an impressive 17km (10.6 miles) a second. However, even at that dizzying – to us – speed, it would take it another 74,000 years to reach even our nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light years away.

Chemical rockets are not suitable for travelling these sort of distances, as they only convert 0.000000001 per cent of their mass into energy. They would require billions of tons of fuel to get up to the required speed. Even nuclear fusion reactors would be less than 1 per cent efficient.

Other suggestions have included using vast sails to collect light energy, either from stars or from laser beams, or using antimatter reactions. But both of these have practicality problems: sails need a nearby power source, while antimatter is hugely difficult to make and equally difficult to store.

But a New York University physicist, Jia Liu, has suggested using a dark matter “jet engine” to power spacecraft, while two mathematicians at Kansas State University, Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland, have claimed that using an artificial black hole as a power source is feasible.

Surprisingly, there seems to be nothing in the present understanding of physics that would rule these proposals out, according to New Scientist.

The black hole proposal would involve building a spaceship with a large parabolic reflector behind it, and then putting a small (at a mere million tons) black hole in its focus. The “Hawking radiation” given off by the black hole as it slowly converts its mass into energy (or “evaporates”) would push the spacecraft to near light speed within a few decades, bringing Proxima Centauri into a more reasonable reach.

More than that, at the relativistic near-light-speed velocities, the travellers’ experience of time would slow down, making them age slower than those left on Earth. At very high speeds, says Mr Crane, “it might be possible to reach the Andromeda galaxy 2.5 million light years away within a human lifetime.”

Mr Liu’s idea is more speculative, relying on one possible theory of what dark matter really is. He suggests building a spacecraft with a large intake at the front which would scoop up dark matter particles. If, as is theorised, those particles are “neutralinos”, which annihilate each other on contact, they could be forced into a box at the back of the craft which would fire the energy rearwards like a jet engine.

The faster the spacecraft travelled, the more neutralinos it would pick up, and the faster it would accelerate. If his calculations are correct, Mr Liu suggests that the ship could reach near-light speed in just days.

However, even if dark matter does consist of neutralinos, there are other problems. First, to work well, it would need densely concentrated dark matter, and as far as we know the nearest dense area is 26,000 light years away in the centre of the Milky Way. Second, neutralinos barely interact with ordinary matter. To make a “box” to keep it in would require some new, unknown material. As Mr Crane says, “this is the idea’s Achilles heel.”

[via: telegraph.co.uk - Tom Chivers]

A ‘HAUNTED’ playground swing that rocks backwards and forwards on its own for days has scientists baffled.

Parents and children are convinced a ghost is to blame.

They were so spooked they reported the swing to cops after it began moving four months ago.

The phenomenon flummoxed police, who called physics professors into Firmat, Argentina.

But so far the boffins have failed to find a logical explanation.

Locals claim the seat moves nonstop for TEN DAYS before stopping dead, while other swings remain still.

Teacher Maria de Silva Agustina said yesterday: “One child called it the Blair Witch Playground. We believe it is haunted.”

Academics have now ruled out magnetic and electrical fields, and winds – and called in ghosthunters.

Go to our videos page to see the Argentinian ghost in full swing by CLICKING HERE.

[via: thesun.co.uk - Virginia Wheeler]

The ancient Egyptians were highly superstitious regarding death and burial. Carrying out the elaborate rituals incorrectly could result in a haunting or possession by very angry spirits. Egyptologist Bridget McDermott explores the afterlife beliefs of this fascinating civilization.

In ancient Egypt, the death of an individual was met with ritual and superstition. While public mourning was fashionable, the corpse was removed from view. It is rarely referred to in Egyptian iconography. Crafted by the gods from clay or tears, the Egyptians understood the perishable nature of the human body. They abhorred the thought of decomposition, and after death, the body was quickly distanced from living.

In view of the heat, a corpse required immediate treatment or burial, although there were a few exceptions. Embalmers were known to take liberties with their clients, so young women were left to decompose a little. Executed criminals were deprived of an afterlife: they were left above ground where their remains were devoured by animals and birds.

You can read the rest of this feature in Paranormal Magazine issue 38

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When American reader Todd took this photo of a pyramidal monument in the Cedarwood Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut, he spotted what he believes to be a spirit or a fairy sitting placidly beneath it. Todd would be delighted to hear other Paranormal readers’ comments on his photo. Please get in touch with your comments.

NICK REDFERN rummages through some real X-Files to uncover the truth about how the US government investigated the military potential of ESP.

In 1977 Dr. Kenneth A. Kress, an engineer with the CIA’s Office of Technical Services prepared a document for the Agency titled Parapsychology in Intelligence. It dealt with the CIA’s involvement in Remote Viewing – what could arguably be termed ‘psychic spying’ – and remained exempt from public disclosure for decades.

Among other highlights, the now declassified document demonstrates the American Government’s secret interest in ESP-type phenomena dated back to the Second World War. It also reveals that studies run by the CIA on the intelligence-gathering value of ESP were initiated as far back as 1961, and perhaps even earlier. Moreover, there is a clear indication that the Agency had some very real and startling successes in this controversial field.

The document begins by explaining the nature of the CIA’s investigations of parapsychology, the potentials and pitfalls faced by the Agency once it became immersed in the murky world of psychic phenomena, and much more. Most notably, the report states that: ‘Tantalising but incomplete data have been generated by CIA-sponsored research. These data show, among other things, that on occasions unexplained results of genuine intelligence significance occur…’

You can read the rest of this article in issue 29 of Paranormal Magazine

The Editor recalls his own experience of the paranormal: as the focus of a poltergeist when he was a boy. The house where these incidents occurred is still the home of his elderly mother, so locations have been suppressed.

I can remember screaming. Screaming with the full force of my lungs and swearing, too.

I was lying in the intensive care ward of the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool. The previous day I had undergone a five-hour operation. My ribs down my left-hand side had been cut through with an implement of cold metal, a saw or shears. Then my 11-year-old body had been prised open like an oyster and rubber-clad hands had forced their way inside me.

My stomach had become displaced during birth and was now situated too far up inside my thorax. There had been no noticeable effects of this deformity until my body began to grow at puberty. Then the increased pressure on my heart and lungs had made me very ill indeed. There was only one thing that could be done: my stomach had to be manoeuvred down to its correct position.

With broken ribs and manhandled guts, it’s no wonder I was in agony for a long time afterwards.  I cannot, of course, remember the pain itself – memory, though a miracle, spares us that ability – but I remember the result of it. I was on a morphine drip to kill the pain but the effect of the drug would dissipate an hour before the dose could be repeated. I had to endure several hours of agony every day.

On one occasion the nurses missed the dose. Perhaps I used to count every second as the pain kicked in, but somehow I knew the dose was late. I began to shout. As the pain got worse, I shouted louder. Eventually, I was like an infant bawling, without meaning or consciousness, just a storm of rage and pain. As nurses hurried past the end of my bed ignoring me, I yelled abuse. I think one nurse yelled abuse back.

My ordeal came to an end at last when a tired, drawn middle-aged woman ambled over, adjusted the drip and instantly transformed my life. I floated above the bed and lay back on a cloud of joy and tranquillity, as the child who had just died on the other side of the curtain beside my bed was discreetly wheeled away.

I was discharged from hospital three weeks later. There was the usual period of convalescence, but for a further month or so I was still too weak to spend more than a morning at school (and my friends made a great show of carrying my bags about while I was there).  I spent the afternoons sleeping or reading or watching ‘Mr Benn’ and ‘Crown Court’. Occasionally I’d put some languid effort into the homework my teachers set for me.

It was all very pleasant and indulgent. During the day. But my nights were filled with fear.

One odd side-effect of the trauma of the operation, and one which may have some relationship to the frightening phenomena which followed, is that during my first week or so back home I sleepwalked. I would wander about in an almost hallucinatory state, existing in a dream world yet also aware of my everyday surroundings. I can remember one of these incidents clearly. I strode into my parents’ room and woke them up with imperious demands for a sword I could see hanging from their wardrobe. After some sleepy curses and mutterings, my father, no longer fazed by this sort of behaviour, reached up to where I was pointing and handed across the bed an invisible something. I grasped the air and stomped back to bed, where, presumably, I continued my dream, which now had me wielding the imagined sword.

Although I can remember many such incidents and impressions from this time, I am hazy as to chronology: what happened when and for what duration. I can’t say for certain how soon after the sleepwalking it all began. Nor can I recall how I reacted the first time it manifested. I can guess my response, however: I would have kept it to myself. My home felt no longer my home because of this secret. Almost every night, a stranger found a way into the house and then invaded my bedroom. While my younger brother slept in the next bed, the intruder tormented me.

It never physically abused me. It used instead a variant on the Chinese water torture. It would tap… tap… tap… on the wall a few inches above my head. The rhythm was so loose as to be almost random but I feel sure it conformed to some strange, endlessly looping pattern. Each tap was precise yet muffled, as if the bricks of the wall were being rapped beneath the wallpaper and plaster.

No human hand caused the tapping. Nothing visible ever appeared. I soon recognised the intruder for what it was and named it accordingly: ‘the Poltergeist’.

You can read the rest of this feature in issue 27 of Paranormal magazine

Issue 27 of Paranormal magazine features an article on the notorious South Shields Poltergeist. Shocking video footage has now been released to The Sun newspaper showing the malevolent spirit in action.

You can see the video footage here.

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