Jock Brocas is a spiritual author and teacher with books published internationally. Jock is also the president of the charity organization assmpi and works tirelessly to he others develop spiritually and live a more rewarding life. Join Jock Brocas on a spiritual journey.
http://jockbrocas.us
The Hook Handed Killer, like most urban legends, has many different variations. Legends, by nature, morph as stories are shared and retold. Sometimes the stories change to embrace the current time period, while other changes are part of the teller’s creative license. Each retelling morphs the story to fit the values and issues of the time period they are in. The Hook Handed Killer has become more gruesome over the years, which coincides with American tolerance for gore and fascination with more horrific stories.
The Hookman Story
Donald and Sarah went to the movies. Then they went for a ride in Donald's car. They parked up on a hill at the edge of town. From there, they could see the lights up and down the valley. Donald turned on the radio and found some music. But an announcer broke in with a news bulletin. A murderer has escaped from the state prison. He is armed with a knife and is headed south on foot. His left hand is missing. In its place, he wore a hook.
"Let's roll up the windows and lock the doors," said Sarah. "That's a good idea," said Donald. "That prison isn't too far away," said Sarah, "Maybe we really should go home." "But it's only ten o'clock," said Donald. "I don't care what time it is," she said, "I want to go home."
“Look, Sarah," said Donald, "he's not going to climb all the way up here. Why would he do that? Even if he did, all the doors are locked. How could he get in?" "Donald, he could take that hook and break through a window and open a door," she said. "I'm scared and I want to go home."
Donald was annoyed. "Girls always are afraid of something," he said. As he started the car, Sarah thought she heard someone, or something, scratching at her door. "Do you hear that?" she asked as they roared away. "Sounded like somebody's trying to get in." "Oh, sure," said Donald. Soon they got to her house. "Would you like to come in and have some cocoa?" she asked. "No," he said. "I've got to go home."
He went around to the other side of the car to let her out. Hanging on the door handle was a hook.
History
From what I can tell, this story first started circulating in the early 1950s. The 1950s were a whole new era for Americans. The country was undergoing huge changes after WWII. Men had returned from serving in the military and resumed their careers. Woman returned to their roles in the home after being called to work during the war. People began moving outside of large cities and what we now know as the suburbs began to grow. With new neighborhoods being constructed and factories being able to produce goods faster, these changes lead to a boom in consumerism as well. Being able to buy premade items, such as clothes, allowed people more free time than ever before.
Teenagers were allowed to be kids for longer and many were able to continue their education through high school. Without the stress of leaving school to work there was more time for socializing with other teens. However, teenagers in any decade are, well, teenagers. We all know how it goes, boy meets girl, boy takes girl to movies, then boy drives girl to a quiet spot off the beaten path for a little kissing. However, the girl gets scared by the news of the escape prisoner, so the boy, irritated that his plans have been ruined, brings the girl home. They were relieved to discover that they barely made it out of Lover's Lane alive.
The second version, sometimes titled “Don’t look Back” is darker but similar in many ways. It’s not clear when this story morphed into a more sinister version, but it looks like somewhere around the early 1990s. In the newer version, the boy and girl are in a similar secluded spot when they hear noise outside the car. The boy gets out of the car to investigate the noise (Have scary movies taught us nothing?) The girl stays in the car and locks the doors. After what seems like a long time, the boy doesn’t come back, but she hears scraping on the roof of the car. Even more afraid, she hides in the car with all the doors locked and waits. Eventually the police show up. It turns out the scraping noise was the boy’s feet dragging on the roof of the car. He was hung from a tree, and in some versions gutted. The police tell her that there was an escaped prisoner in the area.
Why A Hook?
I know you’re asking yourself why a hook hand? Well hooks are scary. Hooks are usually sharp and can be used as a weapon. Hooks have been used in legends and scary movies for a long time. One of the most common characters with a hook hand are pirates. While pirates are currently portrayed as dramatic and fun (aka Jack Sparrow) real pirates are terrifying. The real pirates of the Caribbean were dangerous murderers who raided port cities and towns. They robbed, raped, and pillaged these villages, leaving a wake of destruction in their paths. They were not fun loving and charismatic villains trying to get their ship back and look for rum. (Why is all the rum gone?)
Morality Clause
Humans have been telling stories before there was a written language. The art of storytelling was developed to share information, entertain, but also to provide a lesson and education for the next generation. We can show that almost every society in history had a method of story sharing. While urban legends are not Aesop's fables most have a lesson or warning as part of the underlying theme.
Both versions of The Hook are told as a tale of caution for teens. A nice girl goes to a secluded place with a boy where there is potential for sex or sex acts to take place. Sexual exploration is common among teens, but society expects girls to be chaste and resist all advances.
The Hook and similar stories were meant to be shared as a warning about premarital sex and the potential dangers of being alone with a boy. While the standards changed slightly between 1950 and 1990 there was still a stigma around premarital sex, especially among teen girls.
I know you’re asking why not just teach kids about sex instead of creating a fantastic story? The short answer is even today sex is a taboo topic. Repeating stories is a way to help manage fears about difficult issues. While it may not seem like it on the surface this story communicates fears about relationships, sex, date rape, and many other scary topics associated with being a teenager.
Overall, this is a pretty scary story that has been adapted to fit with the times. Now the girl will have a cell phone, but the phone will be dead or without signal. What is scarier to a teen than being without their phone?
Hooks and escaped convicts will always be scary. Prisoners have already shown that they don’t have regard for the law and if they have escaped, they don’t want any witnesses pointing the authorities in their direction. So moral of the story, don’t go to some dark place to have premarital sex when there is an escaped, hook handed murder on the loose. It will end poorly. You have been warned.
I’ve never been happy with the word “pseudoscience.” Skeptics throw around this word much like monkeys in cages throw their poo; they just want it to stick and smell bad. But the closer you look at it, the more vague it becomes and nearly impossible to apply to most real world situations.
Merriam Webster dictionary defines pseudoscience simply and in a vague, unhelpful manner:
A system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific
Wikipedia has a somewhat more lengthy explanation:
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method.[Note 1] Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited.[4]
This seems reasonable, except I’ve never actually seen this. What’s described here is so far off the deep end that it would be almost universally uncontroversial. Kind of like the flat earth theory. It would be more of a joke than anything else. There’s no need to describe it as pseudoscience because aside from a small handful of weird people, no one takes it seriously enough for it to matter.
For most topics that get the pseudoscience tag slapped on them, this definition wouldn’t apply. Once you start looking more closely, what you see is usually just science embroiled in controversy.
For this word to be more relevant, the definition needs to be drastically narrowed.
My own definition looks something like this:
Pseudoscience is a deliberate attempt at misinformation through the use of falsified scientific studies to lead people to a particular, false conclusion.
I chose this definition because it is unambiguous and clearly states what pseudoscience is and what it isn’t. Any other definition creeps into gray areas where it can end up being applied arbitrarily. Here’s the problem:
While Flat Earthers arguably fit the pseudoscience definition, how about cold fusion? Is this also pseudoscience? Are you sure? Because the U.S. Department of Energy gave a $10 million dollar grant for that research in February of 2023.
How about Astrology? Surely that’s pseudoscience. Right? Didn’t a large study by Shawn Carlson published in the journal Nature in 1985 demonstrate that astrology is bunk? Actually, no. In a 2009 paper, Ken McRitchie outlined the problems with the study, and demonstrated that those errors, when corrected, supported Astrology. So a major study published in Nature shows that astrology is not pseudoscience.
The main problem with throwing around the term pseudoscience is that science is about measurement and if you can measure something, you can examine it scientifically. So if you apply the pseudoscience label to whole areas of scientific inquiry, you are missing the obvious problem that for any particular subject you can have both real science and pseudoscience.
When we’re talking about pseudoscience, we really should be talking about individual experiments, where errors in theory and erroneous conclusions can be definitively found. But even that has its own problems.
Even if an experiment has errors in theory and conclusions, what distinguishes pseudoscience from a bad experiment with a faulty conclusion? You can find terrible experiments with faulty conclusions in almost every science from physics to evolution to psychology. It happens all the time. Everything that can be measured can be measured incorrectly and every experiment has the potential to be badly flawed. But we don’t normally regard that as pseudoscience.
And then we move on to yet another problem with using the term pseudoscience. If a controversial area of science has a number of criticisms lodged against it, that is not enough to call it pseudoscience either. The existence of criticism just means that something is controversial. One first has to determine whether those criticisms are valid.
Controversies exist in science either because the available data is ambiguous, such as UAP’s or because there are deep, fundamental differences of underlying assumptions, such as is the case for parapsychology.
This opens the door to individual interpretations based on the weight people will give to various facts and opinions they encounter based on their prior beliefs. There is typically a lot of ground to cover: The original experiment, the criticism, the rebuttal, the rebuttal to the rebuttal, the commentary and analysis by third parties and the ensuing discussions.
It’s a rabbit hole that few people will go down and it takes more time and energy than most people are willing to devote. Yet this where truth lies. Anything else is just taking sides based on prior beliefs.
If you take a step back and look at who is using the pseudoscience argument the most and why, what stands out is the political nature of it. It’s more of a talking point than a scientific assessment. The accusation of pseudoscience is most often leveled by self described skeptics who are firm believers in materialism against the many sciences and practices that have evidence disputing this philosophical position. Materialism, -a belief that the universe is material-, is disproved if psychic ability is true. It’s disproved if psychic healing is true; if homeopathy works; if there’s something to astrology and if many holistic medicines work.
The term pseudoscience, when used in this context is nothing more than a dog whistle for skeptics. It doesn’t advance our understanding of anything. It’s analogous to saying “Make America Great Again.” When this phrase is used, it tells you more about the person saying it than the subject they’re addressing. In the same manner, using the word pseudoscience ends up telling you more about that person’s scientific beliefs than about the science they’re speaking of.
My suggestion is that the word be limited to clear cut demonstrations of intentional scientific deceit. Otherwise the word pseudoscience is almost useless.
‘Robert Temple is a brave man … it is going to be a difficult job for anyone to shoot him down in flames.’ - The Times
Unless you happen to be part of the eminent plasma physics research community, which includes Nobel laureates, senior academics and major research centres, it is highly likely that you would be as unaware as I once was of the truly revolutionary, enlightening and wondrous world of plasma – the fourth state of matter.
Plasma physics captured my full attention in early 2023 thanks to an interview with sage, scientific scholar and prolific author, Professor Robert Temple.His latest knockout book A New Science of Heaven, became an instant must read.
A New Science of Heaven reveals how over 99% of the universe is made of plasma and how there are two gigantic clouds of plasma, called the Kordylewski Clouds, hovering between the Earth and the Moon, only recently discovered by astronomers in Hungary...Other revelations not previously known include evidence that, in certain circumstances, plasma exhibits sentience, a sense that it may be alive... Temple believes that intelligent entities can be inorganic and non-biological, and thus do not have to live on planets.
A New Science of Heaven, Press Release, Hodder and Stoughton
Plasma Physics will cause us to reassess many ways of understanding the world
Professor Robert Temple was interviewed by Heather Ensworth PhD, an illuminated psychologist, shamanic astrologer, author and founder of the Rising Moon Healing Center. Their deeply resonant, hour long discussion catapulted me onto a new and exciting research trajectory.
The New Science of Heaven Interview
(Scroll down for Transcript Excerpts)
The New Science of Heaven Book Review
As soon as I began reading Temple’s book, I knew I was in the right place when he described himself as having a roving eye for anomalies,always on the lookout for things that don’t fit with present scientific understanding and his view that a shift in perspective caused by the new physics of plasma will cause us to reassess many ways of understanding the world previously dismissed as discredited or cranky.
Temple is also gifted with the literary ability to simplify expansive, complex concepts. An artful weaver of facts, personal experiences and compelling points of view. This is no mean feat when writing about significant scientific research that has the potential to bust some pretty big holes in standard narratives that obediently fail to challenge the proverbial status quo. Compliments also, to Temple’s editor.
I am also pleased to report that there is nothing stilted, long winded or over-analytical about Temple’s meticulous, in-depth research and understanding of plasma physics. His relaxed, engaging, straight-shooting, nonsense-free writing style is certain to satisfy the expectations of vintage academics, open minded scientists and fledgling physics students, to inquisitive, creative souls like me who have a deep interest in life, death, esotericism, consciousness and the mysteries of the universe. I would also highly recommend this book for parents who take the time to educate their children at home about exciting topics that will one day be taught in schools all over the world.
Writes Professor Robert Temple:
“I will be arguing that life in its basic state is organic and not made out of atomic matter – but pre-atomic matter, namely the atomic particles, electrons, and protons, and ions – the plasma. That we and all living things in the Universe, whether organic or inorganic, arise from the plasma and that the organic state is secondary to our fundamental nature as plasma beings. I believe that we can begin to articulate a new science of heaven.”
Temple is also of the view that many spiritual experiences reported throughout human history are really encounters with plasma phenomena or plasma entities and that his primary purpose is to reconcile the spiritual with the material and thereby to show that the dispute between them is false. “There is in fact, no contradiction between them when one digests the teachings of the New Science.”
How do you write a book review with so many points of interest vying for attention?
As I drafted my review of A New Science of Heaven in my our favourite angophora forest that overlooks eastern Australia’s ever alluring Pacific Ocean, I found myself continually distracted by the ridiculous amount of ‘point of interest’ page markers vying for their special mention.
I eventually decided to to change course and include some key transcript notes from Temple’s book interview instead. Even that proved difficult to contain but the resonant impact of his conversation with Heather about ‘cosmic physics’ was just too expansive, strengthening and thought provoking not to share. The interview also revealed additional research topics that didn’t make the journey into his published book.
Please gift yourself the time and space to either watch the interview or enjoy the following transcript notes as much as I enjoyed listening to and transcribing them, with slight edits here and there for a smoother reading experience.
Interview Transcript Excerpts - A New Science of Heaven
Heather: How extraordinary it is that we are realizing that 99% of the universe is composed of plasma.
Robert: That’s right, and I’m sure it will surprise anyone who doesn’t know, which is just about everybody, including most scientists, actually. Astronomers and astrophysicists do know by now, although they don’t necessarily say so, that the universe is not made of atoms. This is a big shock because we all grew up believing what we were told. I long ago gave up believing what I was told. But we are all trusting souls and when our teachers told us it was true that the universe was made of atoms, that made sense, didn’t it? But I’m afraid it’s not true. 99.9% at least, of the universe, is not made of atoms.
So, what does this mean? It’s made of plasma.
What is plasma and plasma science? I will be as simple as I can. Plasma is basically atomic particles and incomplete particles called ions, but not complete atoms. Different laws of physics apply to plasma than apply to atoms, so the physics that we have on our planet earth that we learn at school and at university, and all the people that get their PhD in it and so on, they are dealing with earth physics. They are not dealing with cosmic physics. The fact that everything is made of plasma and the small rocky planets like ours are made of atoms…means that everything of real importance, apart from the things in our daily lives, that are all made of atoms, is the plasma science phenomenon.
We are bio plasma beings and our bodies are ‘smart overcoats’
Robert:...We are plasma beings, now known as bio plasma and our physical bodies are temporary vehicles. I call them smart overcoats. The important thing to remember is that physical death is not extinction. The good news is that nobody dies. But the bad news is that nobody dies. Think about what that means. It means that you are stuck with yourself forever. If you are a bad person, you are going to be in bad company because you are going to be faced with yourself.
So, the only thing you can do to have a better experience in what we call the afterlife, which is when we go back to the plasma world, which is parallel with our own physical one, except you can’t see it with your optic nerves – sensitive people can sense it – is to become better people. If you become a better person, then you will be in the company of somebody pleasant when you die on earth because you can actually live with yourself and you will be with other people of your own standard of goodness. But if you are horrible, you won’t. It will be awful.
Heather: So, we return to that plasma field but retain that individual consciousness that we then can then work with, and work on our own evolution across many incarnations into the physical form.
Robert: And the incarnations into physical form are to help us learn and grow. And improve. To evolve into better people. Really, fame, riches and all that, is complete nonsense and means nothing. You can be intelligent as you like and still be a bad person, and that’s no good. The only thing that matters is are you good, are you kind, are you unselfish, do you help others and do you have compassion for all living things? Only if we develop those qualities can we really grow and go into the higher levels of being.
Heather: So, it’s really about coming from the heart.
Robert: Yes.
Confirmation that the Kordylewski ‘Superbrain’ Clouds do exist
Robert: Kordylewski clouds don’t emit any light and are pretty much transparent. They were discovered in 1961 by a Polish fellow Kordylewski…he wanted to study them more but his great grandson told me that the Polish (communist) government with whom he didn’t get along, stopped his research because they didn’t like it. People tried to confirm the existence of these clouds which were so difficult to detect but they lacked the sensitive instruments of today.
In 2019, I discovered that some Hungarian observational astronomers confirmed the existence of the Kordylewski clouds which had been hanging in the balance since 1961. Nobody was quite sure if it was Kordylewski’s fantasy, was he mad? …I contacted the woman who headed the astronomy team in Hungary through ResearchGate and asked if they were studying the plasma aspects of the cloud. She said they were only studying the celestial mechanics aspect and didn’t appear to know what I meant about the plasma aspects. I contacted my colleague Chandra Wickramasinghe, a retired professor of Astrophysics and told him about the cloud and that we had to go into print about their plasma aspects and intelligence. We published a paper (Kordylewski Dust Clouds: Could They Be Cosmic “Superbrains”?) in Advances in Astrophysics in 2019.
The earth moon system is a 2 cloud system
The clouds are between the earth and the moon but are not in a direct line of sight. They are 60 degrees to the right and 60 degrees to the left as you look at the moon. They are at two points known as the Lagrange points… between the earth and the moon where the gravitational pull of each is negligible. It comes to zero because they balance each other out. The moon can’t pull you towards it and the earth can’t pull you towards it. They are often just known as L points. L4 and L5, as a matter of fact. Each of these clouds are 9 times the size of the earth, so the 2 clouds together are 18 times the size of the earth, and they are between us and the moon.
So… the earth moon system is not an earth moon system. It is a 2 cloud system with an earth and a moon thrown in. We have to realize this. We are far too ethnocentric…earth centric. We still think…that the earth really is the center of the universe. We have crazy scientists saying that we are alone in the universe. There can’t be anyone else out there. Of course, those are all the people who belong in asylums. The idea that the universe doesn’t have any other intelligence in it, and anybody pretending to be in their right mind can even speculate that it is possible, just astounds me... Never mind, the world is full of lunatics.
Heather: But it’s also reflective of how we are all so focused on visible matter as primary in terms of scientific exploration whereas part of what you are reframing is how much this intelligence and life in the universe, is this inorganic plasma.
Robert: You are absolutely right. You have grasped the whole thing, fortunately. In fact, most people who read the book do say that they understand it all although they find the information a bit overwhelming and have to read it a second time.
Only plasma physicists know about dusty, complex plasma
Robert: The clouds are gigantic…and made of plasma, a special type of plasma called dusty complex plasma, which are a species of their own. But only the plasma physicists know about them. Ask any ordinary physicist, and he’ll say, ‘What’s a dusty complex plasma? I know what plasma is.’ And he will give you the old 1950s incorrect definition of plasma as a charged cloud of gas where the positive and negative charges are balanced.
Well, nothing could be more ridiculous because dusty complex plasmas are never balanced. It’s impossible for them to be balanced. And they contain modules within themselves called plasmoids which were discovered in the 1950s by a brilliant man Winston Bostick – what a hero. They are surrounded by sheaths and sheaths are double layered just like membranes that surround cells but made of different things that protect these little sub divisions inside a giant plasma.
So, you can have a very cold interior next to another plasmoid with a very hot interior. But surrounded by their sheaths, they can’t affect each other…you can have the most immensely complex interior structure to these dusty complex plasmas. All the dust particles are charged and the charges are vast – a single dust particle can have 10,000 electrons clinging on to it…
It’s now been established by the most advanced researchers that any… plasma body the size of our physical body, will have a more complex interior structure than our physical bodies do. That’s how complex our bio plasma bodies are, which are slightly larger than our physical bodies…some people call them auras and very sensitive people can detect that sort of thing. I have never seen an aura myself but the whole thing that’s going on is plasma phenomena.
Plasma Physics Suggests that Dusty complex plasma can spontaneously self organize
Robert: Russian researchers were a bit more freewheeling in their physics because they weren’t tied up in the religious sanctity of conventional opinions in the west. That’s just my speculation about why they were able to go so far in their plasma research. They have worked out and demonstrated in the lab that a dusty complex plasma can spontaneously self organise... through a process called…emergence. And this was even stated in the mid-50s by Bostick with his plasmoids. By emergence, they could develop intelligence.
We are talking about an AI type of intelligence. We don’t know whether such entities can have feelings and emotions…but they would have fantastic computing power. These clouds, 18 times the size of earth, would have computing power trillion and trillions and trillions of times more than we can imagine… the whole history of the planet and every person that ever lived, is in the Kordylewski clouds.
Was Metatron the Angel of the Lord or one of the giant entities between earth and the moon?
Robert: I also do a lot of research into ancient stuff…there was a sect of the gnostics known as the Marcosians…We know enough to know that the Marcosians believed that there were 2 gigantic superhuman entities above the atmosphere between the earth and the moon of immense size and that they were super entities…we know the name they used for one of them was Metatron.
We know the name Metatron from elsewhere because it was the name used by Samaritans who were a sect of Judaism up in the north, who didn’t get along with the Jews at all. They were hostile toward each other. They speak of Metatron and say that the Angel of the Lord described in the bible... the voice that came from the burning bush to Moses up on the mountain top, was Metatron’s voice. It was Metatron, the Angel of the Lord. It wasn’t the Lord.
The Samaritans named the Angel of the Lord, who in the bible isn’t given a name...The Samaritans said the name was Metatron. But the Marcosians say that Metatron is a giant entity between the earth and the moon…figure that one out.
In ancient times, people were really into psychic perceptions – they had shamans, seers, sibyls, priestesses and people going into trance and communing with the higher entities…they knew a lot of stuff that we are only just discovering with our modern science now in 2023.
(End of transcript text.)
The wondrous world of psychic perceptions and communing with higher (and lower) realms is alive and well
I don’t have a scientific background but thoroughly enjoy learning from independent, scientific researchers, writers and scholars. If plasma ‘cosmic’ physics was taught at Adelaide High School, South Australia, I’m sure I would have chosen it as a subject. Back in those ancient days, I used to admire my friends who studied ‘physics, mathematics and chemistry’ in Year 12, but couldn’t figure out what the attraction was. But they may not have understood why I loved English and History so much, either.
Plasma Physics And Spiritual Foundations
I do, however, have a strong spiritual background. One of those lucky people who was dealt ‘death, loss and grief’ cards in my teen years that propelled me on a journey that partly explored the many theories and belief systems attached to the afterlife. That said, I can confidently report that the wondrous world of psychic perceptions and communing with spirit is alive and well, and has been for a long time. However, sorting the wheat from the chaff can be a challenge these days because of the internet’s booming and highly competitive spiritual and metaphysical ‘industry’. But when you educate yourself about what to look for, the initial problem of identifying authentic practitioners is easily solved.
I have also been blessed to connect with some incredibly advanced practitioners, most of whom prefer to fly under the radar. But with a little coaxing, I’m confident that their enlightening and deeply nourishing stories will one day be told and contribute toward strengthening the exciting, existing bridge between science and spirit in the process.
As a librarian, I love connecting folks with resources. And as a person interested in the paranormal and Parapsychology, I especially love connecting folks with resources on spooky topics. Often, the two mix. I never get tired of hearing someone approach the reference desk and ask, “Do you have books about ghosts?” or “I need to write a research paper and I want to write about the paranormal - can you help?”
I especially love reminding people of all the ways they can freely access all sorts of books, articles, newspapers, and journals. This is partly because I suspect people often feel pressured to buy the things they want to read. To be fair, there’s nothing wrong with purchasing your reading material. It is, however, a privilege. And even if you do have the privilege of disposal income to spend on books or subscriptions, it’s not possible to buy everything that you want. And sometimes you may not even be able to find what you want in print.
But another reason why I love showing people the different things they can access freely is because people just don’t know the breadth of what’s out there or where to go to access it. You may not know, for example, that the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) allows you to freely access scholarly articles and journals on a wide variety of topics. Fun fact: you can find 190 articles in DOAJ just by typing the keyword “parapsychology.” Or maybe you didn’t know that there are entire scholarly journals dedicated to anomalous phenomena, like the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
I love connecting people with resources, because it’s not only fun to read about the paranormal - it’s also a great way to get inspiration for your own spooky shenanigans. Take, for example, the freely accessible textbook Handbook of Tests in Parapsychology by Dr. Betty M. Humphrey. Written in 1948, this textbook offers detailed methods for conducting various psychical experiments. Organized into three parts, Humphrey’s book outlines in detail experimental designs used to test for extrasensory perception (ESP), psychokinesis, and even a combination of both.
This book also helps the reader understand the difference between the phenomena of clairvoyance, telepathy, general extrasensory perception (GESP), and precognition. For example, in the introduction, Dr. Humphrey tells us that “In a simple clairvoyance test the subject is asked to name the top card of a shuffled deck when no one knows what that card is.” This is different from a test of telepathy, which she tells us is “when the experimenter merely thinks of a symbol and asks the subject to call it.”
But the thing I love most about this book is that it offers explicit designs for those who want to conduct experiments themselves. Part 1, for example, is dedicated to experiments involving ESP. One chapter in this section is titled “Card-Calling Tests of Clairvoyance.” The first paragraph of this chapter tells us that “in the clairvoyance tests the subject tries to name the symbols on cards when no one knows in what order the symbols are arranged.” The chapter then proceeds to give detailed descriptions of various experimental designs.
One design is called the BT (broken technique) method in which one person holds a card behind a screen while another person attempts to guess the symbol on that card. The BT method is just one option, though. Dr. Humphrey goes on to describe others like the DT (down through) method in which a person attempts to guess the order of a stack of cards - called ‘down through’ since the goal is to guess the symbols down through the stack. In this method, no cards are separated as they are in the ‘broken technique’ (hence the name) and are instead kept together as an entire stack.
There are detailed photos and even sample scoring sheets, all of which you can replicate or even modify for your own experiments!
A sample sheet for recording ESP experiment results.
You don’t have to be a literal scientist in order to replicate the designs in this book. And you don’t need to have an end goal of publishing your work in a journal. Maybe you want to test out your ESP abilities with a friend. Maybe you just want to get weird and have some fun. Maybe you want to adapt these experiments in different settings - like if you are investigating a haunted location and want to see how that environment might impact an ESP or clairvoyance test.
Whatever the reason, you should feel empowered to find inspiration in the pages of Dr. Humphrey’s textbook. Know that you deserve access to this information too. And it’s freely available! Why shouldn’t you boost your weirdness with the wide world of freely accessible weird resources?
Finedon is a picturesque, semi-rural village that sits quietly amidst the county of Northamptonshire, England. The village is famous for its quaint public houses, breathtaking hillside views, and cobbled streets that have awed people for centuries. Residents and visitors alike enjoy the wonders of grassy knolls, peaceful trickling rivers, and the gentle bleating of sheep, but the town has not always dwelled in such calmness. The rise of the Black Death plague in 1348 saw the once-thriving and bustling village slowly deplete of everything that gave it character. Children’s laughter that once graced the lush green pastures slowly began to fade, and the clunking sound of horse hooves on the cobbled streets became no more. Illness and death cast their sticky web of destruction over every home, forcing many to flee. An orchestra of silence was all that echoed in the tragic streets and hopeless homes for many years.
New Beginnings
Fortunately, the Black Death eventually succumbed to nature. Resettlement began sometime in the 17th century and life returned to Finedon. Inns were again filled with laughter, farming began to flourish and the once death-infested homes became occupied by young and happy families. The town continued to develop into the 20th century with no further signs of misfortune. Until a young school teacher was appointed the village school’s headmistress in 1901. Her name was Mary Ozier and curiously, our tale begins with nothing other than a kind gesture from this professional lady.
A Commemorative Oddity - A Haunted Doll
Proud of her appointment and seeking to christen her new status, Mary pondered greatly. She also needed something unique to commemorate the Finedon school’s upcoming anniversary, something that reflected the unique and quirky character of the village and school. She chose a beautifully crafted wooden doll and strategically positioned it in a small alcove above the school's main entrance, where it could be admired by all and keep watch over everything!
Very little is known about the origins of the doll. It is believed that it was made by a mysterious merchant who Mary allegedly met on a quiet country walk one afternoon. After conveying her ideas for the commemoration, the merchant gifted Mary the doll. Conveniently, it lay inside a sack upon his back. He took no payment, walked away, and was never seen again.
Dressed to Impress
The doll was deemed peculiar from day one by all who saw it. Mary’s sentiment was appreciated by the locals but there was something about the doll’s aura that emitted an uncomfortable, eerie feeling. Standing at approximately three feet in height, the figure was so intricately carved that the dark brown flowing dress looked almost real. Equally impressive was the carved white Dutch cap that adorned the head. The face appeared emotionless with dark staring eyes and tightly closed lips. These features were a strange contrast to the cherub cheeks upon which they sat. The doll’s attire closely resembled the fashion of the modern-day Puritan woman, complete with dark boots with a slight heel, also carved from wood.
The Dutch headpiece became the doll’s most famous and defining feature. It also resembled the hat worn by the children of the school at the time. As curiosity and uncertainty grew, the strange figure eventually became known as the ‘Dutch Doll of Finedon’. Finally, and probably the strangest feature of all was what sat tightly grasped in its hands. On the right was a bible, and on the left was a scroll that bared the writing ‘ Search the scripture-John-verse 39’...
Sinister Happenings
Days after the doll’s arrival, inexplicable events began to unfold. The once tranquil and carefree vibes of the school turned to anxiety and dread. One morning, a chastised student was sent to the school's front lawn to spend her break alone while others played in the yard at the rear. As she moped, a startling gust of wind appeared from nowhere, knocking her backward with great force. The girl grazed her head as she fell against an old tree. Within seconds, the wind was gone and the calmness of that June morning returned. As the girl composed herself, she saw something that chilled her to the marrow and contested until her dying day. Peering down from its concrete throne, the doll waved its left arm, scroll in hand, and juddered violently. The tight wooden lips were puckered, and its eyes glared with sadistic pleasure. Within seconds, the face returned to normal and the arm to its original position. Shocked and shaken by what had happened, the girl ran home, never to return to the school.
Since that horrifying incident, many students recounted witnessing the doll move on its own accord and the school record book reportedly possessed pages of daily occurrences depicting many traumatizing accounts. In the dead of night, the students who lived as boarders could often hear the sound of tiny pattering feet scurrying through the hallways. Dormitory doors would open on their own and scratching sounds could be heard on the floors. Some students claimed to see ‘tiny wooden hands’ and ‘beady wooden eyes’ peering around open doors before they were violently slammed shut. Piercing and blood-chilling cackling could also be heard around the school. Quite often, the shrill cries disrupted lessons and caused panic among teachers and students alike.
Was it a Haunted Doll or Not
Concerned for the student’s welfare, staff and parents decided to examine the doll during a school holiday. Convinced that the doll possessed a mechanical feature that could explain the phenomena, it was brought down from its cove above the door. After a thorough search, nothing was found. It was suggested that the doll may have been used in witchcraft rituals or even acted as a vessel for a malevolent spirit. Taking no chances, the now haunted doll was permanently removed from the cove. It was tightly locked in a chest and placed in the school’s dank, dark cellar.
For a short while, calmness settled upon the school. During this period, poor behavior would often be controlled with ‘tongue in cheek’ threats of detention in the cellar. Students trembled at the thought of being at the mercy of the wooden demon. It was the perfect deterrent. As time passed and incidents lessened, students began to believe the stories had been nothing more than a hoax. That was until a young student was sent to the cellar to retrieve more slates.
Haunting Crash
As the student gathered the resources, she heard an almighty crash behind her. The chest that housed the doll had fallen from a shelf and hit the floor with a deafening thud. Slowly, the chest started to rattle and vibrate furiously. A series of violent thumps followed and the chest edged toward the girl. Groans and gasps could be heard from inside the chest, each one more penetrating and violent than before. The student fled the cellar immediately. Terrified and shaken by the incident, she too left the school, never to return.
Eventually, the cellar was permanently closed, leaving the haunted doll entombed and alone for many years. Although the phenomenon decreased, a lingering and anxious atmosphere engulfed all who walked through the school. And despite the cellar being deep below the classrooms and far from the dormitories, strange laughter and voices could still be heard. The chilling echoes pounded through the school in the dead of night for many years.
A Mysterious Twist
Decades passed but the phenomenon and unrelenting feelings of dread persisted. A new headteacher, determined to alleviate the school of its supernatural reputation, had the doll removed. It was taken to the local St Mary’s church, and fixed tightly to the west wall. Locals hoped this would eliminate further troubles and suppress whatever strangeness lurked inside. As a result, the school returned to a state of calm that had not been felt for almost a century. Years passed and the memory of the Dutch doll began to diminish. All that remained were the frightening tales that once plagued the school, passed down through the generations. That was until an alarming and unexpected event took place...
Haunted Finedon Doll Vanishes
On the 24th of January, 1981, the parishioner unlocked the church to prepare for his daily duties. Upon walking to his alter, he noticed something unusual on the west wall. Further inspection revealed that the Dutch doll was no longer there. The hooks and bolts that kept it secure were strewn on the floor. Confused and unnerved by what had happened, the parishioner immediately visited the local police. Fears of supernatural forces being responsible resonated with him more than the idea of a potential thief. The parishioner knew that he had locked and bolted all the church doors the previous evening. All windows had also been locked, and only he possessed the key. It hadn’t been possible for anybody to gain entry without his permission. As a result, homes, fields, shops, and even the school were aptly searched. Locals were questioned but to no avail and restlessness returned to the town.
Tales of the haunted doll and superstition began to resurface, causing some parents to remove their children from the school amid the fear that the doll had returned. Fears of misfortune and miscellaneous activity repeating themselves grew at an alarming rate, forcing the town’s hierarchy to act. The townsfolk were reassured that the doll would be found and returned to the church. Despite everyone’s efforts, the haunted doll was never recovered. No further progress has since been made, and its disappearance remains Finedon’s biggest mystery. Is the Dutch doll residing in your home? It might be wise to check all those dark places before going to bed...
Photo Credits
St Mary’s church
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons, The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Finedon (Public domain)
A few months ago, I joined a team of paranormal investigators, visiting haunted locations for the first season of a brand-new indie ghost-hunting show called Inhuman Beings. This month, we launched a Kickstarter to finish Inhuman Beings and a paranormal documentary series called New Blood. The two shows aim to present a new outlook on the supernatural, showcasing the esteemed specialist in the occult, Michelle Belanger. Her expertise has been previously displayed on several publications such as Paranormal State, Portals to Hell, Conjuring Kesha, among others. Locations have been chosen for the first season of a brand-new indie ghost-hunting show called Inhuman Beings. This month, we launched aKickstarter to finish Inhuman Beings and a paranormal documentary series called New Blood.
Inhuman Beings
Each episode of Inhuman Beings features a different location with a reputation for high strangeness. Rather than trying to banish ghosts or uncover demons, we approach the unknown with a sense of curiosity, keeping an open mind and looking into ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, the fae, and more.
We use some traditional paranormal investigation techniques, experimenting with REM pods, spirit boxes, a Kinect SLS camera, and an Ovilus. But we also get weird, trying out remote viewing experiments, using dream sigils to communicate with entities, and following our curiosity as far down the rabbit hole as we can go.
That led us to some strange places. During production, we found ourselves crossing a remote river to visit land ruled by the fae, exploring a strange castle with a mysterious past, and investigating the most haunted building in a small town.
As the team’s paranormal researcher, I dug into the locations before filming and was floored by how many anomalies had been reported in each spot.
In one episode, we venture to the area of the original Loveland frogman sightings, along the banks of Ohio’s Little Miami River. While doing preliminary research, I couldn’t believe how much lore was concentrated in one small area and how interconnected the different paranormal phenomena were there.
I had heard the famous 1950s story about a man encountering strange, frog-like humanoids—one of whom carried a wand emitting sparks—but the more research I did, the more reports I found about local sightings of UFOs, cryptids, aliens, and ghosts.
That was my first hint that things were going to get a lot stranger than I had expected. However, I was not fully prepared for the firsthand experiences we had when we arrived at the site and engaged in conversations with the locals, conducted our own experiments, and gained a true understanding of what the place was truly like.
New Blood
Much of the cast and crew of Inhuman Beings are also in New Blood, a longform docu-series about modern-day vampires.
In New Blood, a series of synchronicities leads witch and host of paranormal podcast Follow the Woo Fen Alankus (she/they) to move from LA to the spooky Midwest. There, she conjures an investigative film crew to document a secret society of vampires.
They delve into the mysterious world of vampires while staying in a hauntedAirbnb. The experience, which involves visiting sacred vampire ritual spaces, braving the creepy woods of Ohio, and performing out-of-the-box psychical experiments and spells, changes all of them. Season one was a wild ride, and the next phases of initiation have already begun for the team.
The Kickstarter and team
Michelle Belanger (he/she/they) and Fen Alankus (she/they) have gathered a top-notch crew of film professionals and paranormal investigators. That includes historian and medium Stephanie Bingham (she/her), who has been featured on the CW’s Mysteries Decoded, Destination America’s Paranormal Lockdown and SyFy Channel’s School Spirits; tarot/oracle reader Tigresse Bleu (they/she); filmmaker, forager, and hedgewitch Aubrey P. Archer (they/them); and photographer and skeptic-turned-believer Taylor Brown (she/they), and me.
More than 100 hours of footage have already been shot for these shows, and both shows are slated for release in Fall/Winter 2023.
With theKickstarter funding, the team will finish up the first seasons of both shows, start pre-production on the next seasons, and more. Backers get rewards like magically imbued Ouija planchettes, Bigfoot and Pride Demon T-shirts, subtle-body portrait readings, bonus and behind-the-scenes content, executive producer credit, guest spots on their shows, and more. Spread the word and help bring this fresh paranormal project into the world!
Urban legends are a type of modern folklore that typically circulate through word of mouth or online media. These stories are often presented as true accounts and usually involve a shocking or mysterious event or circumstance. One of the most popular urban legends is the Disappearing Hitchhiker.
Imagine driving down a dark road and seeing a man (or woman) standing on the side of the road. There is light rain. You pull up and ask him where he is going. He asks for a ride to his girlfriend’s house, which isn’t far from where you are heading. You tell him to hop in the passenger side. Then you make some small talk about the weather and the town. Furthermore, you drive for a few minutes, but when you look over again, the mysterious hitchhiker is gone.
Variations of a Classic Urban Legend
The vanishing hitchhiker is a classic urban legend that has been circulating for decades. The story typically involves a driver who picks up a hitchhiker on a dark and lonely road. The hitchhiker is often described as being a young woman dressed in white or a soldier in uniform. The driver talked to the hitchhiker while driving, but when they arrived at the hitchhiker's place, the hitchhiker was no longer there.
Traced back to the early 20th century, this legend has retold and adapted in many different forms, with variations depending on the location and culture. Most accounts involve supernatural or paranormal elements, such as the hitchhiker being a ghost or spirit.
There are different narrative versions about the hitchhiker's identity, including a young woman who perished in a car accident on the very road she's hitchhiking on and a soldier seeking a ride back home after dying in combat. Sometimes the hitchhiker leaves behind a physical object, such as a scarf or a piece of jewelry that the driver later returns to the hitchhiker's family, or the driver goes to the address given by the hitchhiker only to discover that the person they picked up has been dead for years.
Image: Coco Parisienne, Pixabay
Hitchhiking Horror Stories
While the vanishing hitchhiker story is often presented as true, there is little evidence to support the idea that it is based on actual events. Instead, it may be more likely that the story evolved as a cautionary tale, warning people about the dangers of picking up strangers on the side of the road.
Hitchhiking was a common mode of travel in the 1960’s, especially during the hippy movement. People opted for hitchhiking to travel long distances without the high cost. Commercial air travel was still quite new and expensive in that era and generally reserved for businessmen and wealthy people while bus and train travel were more common but also quite pricey.
Unfortunately, hitchhikers made for perfect victims. Usually alone and far from home, they made excellent targets for violent crime. Multiple serial killers reportedly targeted young female hitchhikers; one of the most famous stories being that of 15-year-old Mary Vincent. She was attacked by Lawrence Singleton after accepting a ride in his van to her grandfather’s house. Singleton assaulted her multiple times then cut off her arms cut off with an axe, leaving her for dead. She managed to survive the ordeal after walking three miles with her bloody stumps raised above her heart to decrease blood loss.
Men are not any safer. The movie There is Something About Mary uses humor to show that even a man can be in danger when picking up strangers off the side of the road. By the late 1980s, hitchhiking had all but vanished. So why is this still one of the most popular urban legends?
New Stories Continue To Emerge
In recent years, the disappearing hitchhiker legend has continued to evolve and adapt to changing cultural norms and technologies. For example, there are now versions of the story that involve ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft, with passengers reporting picking up a hitchhiker who vanishes from the back seat.
While hitchhiking is no longer used as a common mode of transportation, we can now order our own stranger to bring our intoxicated selves home. As children, we were told to not get in a car with a stranger. Uber and Lyft now allow you to order your own stranger to pick you up and there have been many incidents of assaults stemming from ridesharing. In 2019, Samantha Josephson, a student from University of South Carolina, was raped and murdered after she got into a car that she believed was her Uber driver.
There are several theories about why the vanishing hitchhiker legend has persisted for so long and become so popular. Some suggest that the story taps into deep-seated fears and anxieties about death and the unknown, while others argue that it serves as a warning about the dangers of picking up strangers.
Despite there being little evidence to support the idea that the vanishing hitchhiker legend is based on actual events, it remains a popular and enduring urban legend, with new variations and adaptations continuing to emerge.
Urban legends commonly play on people's fears and anxieties, such as fears of strangers or the unknown, and can spread rapidly through social media and other online platforms. While many urban legends are generally harmless, some can be harmful or even dangerous if they inspire people to take unnecessary risks or engage in harmful behaviors.
