Archives at Zinester: Conspiracy Journal. Conspiracy Journal. Science & Technology

- 500 Conspiracy Buffs Meet to Seek the Truth of 9/11 -
- Nasty disease -- or is it delusion? -
- Kentucky Coal Train Collision With UFO -
- 37 Years After Snapping Photo, Bigfoot Talk Gets Man's Goat -
AND - Children's Imaginary Friends - Imagination Versus Spiritual -

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~ And Now, On With The Show! ~

- LOOKING FOR ANSWERS DEPARTMENT -

500 Conspiracy Buffs Meet to Seek the Truth of 9/11

CHICAGO, June 4 — In the ballroom foyer of the Embassy Suites Hotel, the two-day International Education and Strategy Conference for 9/11 Truth was off to a rollicking start.

In Salon Four, there was a presentation under way on the attack in Oklahoma City, while in the room next door, the splintered factions of the movement were asked — for sake of unity — to seek a common goal.

In the foyer, there were stick-pins for sale ("More gin, less Rummy"), and in the lecture halls discussions of the melting point of steel. "It's all documented," people said. Or: "The mass media is mass deception." Or, as strangers from the Internet shook hands: "Great to meet you. Love the work."

Such was the coming-out for the movement known as "9/11 Truth," a society of skeptics and scientists who believe the government was complicit in the terrorist attacks. In colleges and chat rooms on the Internet, this band of disbelievers has been trying for years to prove that 9/11 was an inside job.

Whatever one thinks of the claim that the state would plan, then execute, a scheme to murder thousands of its own, there was something to the fact that more than 500 people — from Italy to Northern California — gathered for the weekend at a major chain hotel near the runways of O'Hare International. It was, in tone, half trade show, half political convention. There were talks on the Reichstag fire and the sinking of the Battleship Maine as precedents for 9/11. There were speeches by the lawyer for James Earl Ray, who claimed that a military conspiracy killed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, and by a former operative for the British secret service, MI5.

"We feel at this point we've done a lot of solid research, but the American public still is not informed," said Michael Berger, press director for 911Truth.org, which sponsored the event. "We had to come up with a disciplined approach to get it out."

Mr. Berger, 40, is typical of 9/11 Truthers — a group that, in its rank and file, includes professors, chain-saw operators, mothers, engineers, activists, used-book sellers, pizza deliverymen, college students, a former fringe candidate for United States Senate and a long-haired fellow named hummux (pronounced who-mook) who, on and off, lived in a cave for 15 years.

The former owner of a recycling plant outside St. Louis, Mr. Berger joined the movement when he grew skeptical of why the 9/11 Commission had failed, to his sense of sufficiency, to answer how the building at 7 World Trade Center collapsed like a ton of bricks. It was his "9/11 trigger," the incident that drew him in, he said. For others, it might be the fact that the air-defense network did not prevent the attacks that day, or the appearance of thousands of "puts" — or short-sell bids — on the nation's airline stocks. (The 9/11 Commission found the sales innocuous.)

Such "red flags," as they are sometimes called, were the meat and potatoes of the keynote speech on Friday night by Alex Jones, who is the William Jennings Bryan of the 9/11 band. Mr. Jones, a syndicated radio host, is known for his larynx-tearing screeds against corruption — fiery, almost preacherly, addresses in which he sweats, balls his fists and often swerves from quoting Roman history to using foul language in a single breath.

At the lectern Friday night, beside a digital projection reading "History of Government Sponsored Terrorism," Mr. Jones set forth the central tenets of 9/11 Truth: that the military command that monitors aircraft "stood down" on the day of the attacks; that President Bush addressed children in a Florida classroom instead of being whisked off to the White House; that the hijackers, despite what the authorities say, were trained at American military bases; and that the towers did not collapse because of burning fuel and weakened steel but because of a "controlled demolition" caused by pre-set bombs.

According to the group's Web site, the motive for faking a terrorist attack was to allow the administration "to instantly implement policies its members have long supported, but which were otherwise infeasible."

The controlled-demolition theory is the sine qua non of the 9/11 movement — its basic claim and, in some sense, the one upon which all others rest. It is, of course, directly contradicted by the 10,000-page investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which held that jet-fuel fires distressed the towers' structure, which eventually collapsed.

The movement's answer to that report was written by Steven E. Jones, a professor of physics at Brigham Young University and the movement's expert in the matter of collapse. Dr. Jones, unlike Alex Jones, is a soft-spoken man who lets his writing do the talking. He composed an account of the destruction of the towers (physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html) that holds that "pre-positioned cutter-charges" brought the buildings down.

Like a prior generation of skeptics — those who doubted, say, the Warren Commission or the government's account of the Gulf of Tonkin attack — the 9/11 Truthers are dogged, at home and in the office, by friends and family who suspect that they may, in fact, be completely nuts.

"Elvis and Area 51 — we're sort of lumped together," said Harlan Dietrich, a recent college graduate from Austin, Tex. "It's attack the messenger, not the message every time."

To get the message out, the movement has gone beyond bumper stickers and "Kumbaya" into political action.

There is a plan, Mr. Berger said, to create a fund to support candidates on a 9/11 platform. There is a plan to create a network of college campus groups. There is a plan by the British delegation (such as it is, so far) to get members of Parliament to watch "Loose Change," the seminal movement DVD.

It would even seem the Truthers are not alone in believing the whole truth has not come out. A poll released last month by Zogby International found that 42 percent of all Americans believe the 9/11 Commission "concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence" in the attacks. This is in addition to the Zogby poll two years ago that found that 49 percent of New York City residents agreed with the idea that some leaders "knew in advance" that the attacks were planned and failed to act.

Beneath the weekend's screenings and symposiums on geopolitics and mass-hypnotic trance lies a tradition of questioning concentrated power, both in public and in private hands, said Mark Fenster, a law professor at the University of Florida and author of "Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture."

As for the 9/11 Truthers, they were confident enough that their theories made sense that on Friday, as a kickoff to the conference, they met in Daley Plaza for a rally (though some called it Dealey Plaza). They marched up Kinzle Street to the local affiliate of NBC where, at the plate glass windows, they chanted, "Talking heads tell lies," as the news was being read.

"I hope you don't end up dead somewhere," a companion said to a participant, hours earlier as he dropped him at the Loop. "Don't worry," the participant said. "There's too many of us for that."

Source: NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/05/us/05conspiracy.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=login

- I FEEL MY SKIN CRAWLING DEPARTMENT -

Nasty Disease -- or is it Delusion?

Thousands claim to have skin ailment; many doctors skeptical

The Bay Area might be home to a small cluster of a horrifying and as-yet-incurable disease that leaves patients with open sores all over their bodies and strange, unidentifiable objects poking out of their skin.

Or not. It's possible that this mystery disease is all in their heads.

The disease is called Morgellons, and no one knows what causes it or if it's even real.

After more than a year of pressure from patients convinced they have Morgellons, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will begin investigating the ailment for the first time and determine, once and for all, whether it exists. The CDC started organizing a committee this week for that purpose.

"Not a day passes when I don't talk to somebody who claims to have this," said CDC spokesman Dan Rutz. "In the absence of any objective review, people have jumped to conclusions and found each other on the Internet and formed their own belief structure. We really need to debunk this if there isn't anything to it or identify if there is indeed a new, unrecognized disease that needs attention."

No one knows how long Morgellons has been around, but about four years ago a South Carolina mom who says her three children have the disease was researching their symptoms and found reference to a 1674 medical study that described a similar condition, called Morgellons.

The disease sounds like a nightmare. In fact, one Web site claims Morgellons was "invented" recently to help promote a summer horror movie. A search on the Internet reveals dozens of people who have posted magnified photos of their symptoms -- usually twisted, thread-like protrusions from the skin and sometimes hazy images that look like small bugs.

It doesn't help convince disbelieving doctors that many sufferers complain of hard-to-believe symptoms. One San Francisco woman describes "tiny green shrimp" that come from her face, and she said she saw a fly pop out of her right eye. Even doctors and patients who believe Morgellons exists cringe at such reports.

"There really are physical symptoms that occur in people who are not crazy, although once they have it, it usually makes them pretty crazy," said San Francisco Lyme disease specialist Dr. Raphael Stricker, who has seen several patients with Morgellons symptoms. Stricker and a handful of other doctors believe Morgellons is somehow related to Lyme disease because so many patients have already been diagnosed with Lyme disease.

Stricker and a colleague, nurse practitioner Ginger Savely, have written the only paper on the disease, published this year in the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology. There have been no clinical studies.

The nonprofit Morgellons Research Foundation, founded by the South Carolina mom, is the only group keeping track of the disease worldwide. It uses a self-reporting system that encourages people who think they have Morgellons to register with the foundation Web site. So far, 4,131 households have registered, about 300 of them in the Bay Area. California has the most cases, making up 23 percent of the total.

One prominent name associated with the malady is former Oakland A's and Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Billy Koch, who left baseball because of pain and chronic fatigue he blames on Morgellons. Last week, a young man in Texas killed himself with a drug overdose in what authorities believe may have been an attempt to alleviate Morgellons-like symptoms that were making him miserable.

San Francisco resident Pat Miller, 49, said he went to 11 doctors with his symptoms after he developed an itchy spot on the back of his head that turned into a sore and finally a "mound of skin ... with deep black pits." He also describes a "crawling sensation" and a feeling like something is "trying to grow down into my skin, like a drill or a corkscrew."

Dermatologists said the black pits were just blackheads. Almost every doctor he saw diagnosed him with delusional parasitosis -- a psychiatric condition with symptoms eerily similar to Morgellons, in which sufferers believe they are infested with parasites.

"None of them once used a microscope. None of them once did any kind of invasive exam," Miller said. "To prove that I wasn't crazy, I had to go into a psychological program. A psychiatrist and several therapists all agreed that I wasn't crazy, that I did have a physical disease, and basically pushed me to pursue the fight, to prove that I wasn't delusional."

Eventually, someone referred Miller to Savely, who is considered one of the few Morgellons experts. She has about 125 patients at her San Francisco practice, not all of them from the Bay Area.

"These people, I feel terrible for them. They're suffering a ghastly disease, and no one will believe them, no one will help them, and in fact, everyone tells them they're crazy," Savely said. "If any one of these people came to me alone, I might have been skeptical of their stories. But when you have more than 100 people, and their stories are identical, that's impressive."

Few doctors have examined under a microscope samples of the multicolored filaments or black dots patients describe. Many who have seen the evidence brush it off as lint or dirt or something else from around the house.

Stricker said he has studied samples under a microscope, and they look like cellulose fibers, which typically would be found in plant material.

"When you see it, it's very hard to explain away. These patients have something that's really not delusional," Stricker said.

Still, plenty of doctors disagree.

Many Morgellons symptoms -- the feeling of something crawling beneath the skin, the open sores, even patients' conviction that they are absolutely infested with a parasite -- can be attributed to delusional parasitosis, doctors say. The sores are self-inflicted, caused when people scratch at a spot they think is infected, they say.

"There are a huge number of people out there with (delusional parasitosis), and most of them are not getting adequate treatment because they have this fixed belief," said Dr. Dan Eisen, a UC Davis dermatologist. "It's probably just a group of patients who haven't gotten the appropriate treatment, and they're calling it Morgellons."

The standard treatment for delusional parasitosis is anti-psychotic medication. Stricker and other physicians are treating Morgellons patients with a combination of antibiotics and anti-parasitic and anti-fungal drugs, but they don't alleviate all the symptoms.

Miller agreed to take anti-psychotic medication for a few months, but it didn't help, he said, and a therapist told him to stop taking it. Since he started seeing Savely, he's been taking the antibiotics and anti-parasitic and anti-fungal drugs, and he said his health has improved.

But he's still angry when he thinks of the doctors who brushed off his symptoms and insisted he was delusional without bothering to give him a thorough exam.

"I've been basically ostracized at work. I used to have big boils on top of my head, and I didn't look great," Miller said. "I don't really want an 'I'm sorry' from these doctors -- I just want them to come on board. I want them to stop treating me like I'm crazy."
Morgellons

Symptoms

-- Unexplained sores that won't heal

-- Materials protruding from the skin that look like thin, multicolored threads or black sand

-- Chronic fatigue

-- "Brain fog," including difficulty concentrating and short-term memory problems

-- Muscle and joint pain

-- Sensation of something crawling beneath the skin

How it often is diagnosed

-- Delusional parasitosis

-- Skin conditions such as scabies, eczema or acne

-- Symptom of Lyme disease

History of Morgellons

1674: A British researcher identifies a mysterious disease that causes a rash and strange hairs to break out on children. He names the disease Morgellons.

2002: A South Carolina mom researching her children's strange skin condition starts calling it Morgellons and creates the Morgellons Research Foundation.

2005: By December, nearly 2,000 households worldwide have registered on the Morgellons Research Foundation Web site as living with someone with symptoms.

2006: In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decides to investigate and determine whether Morgellons is a real disease.

Sources: Morgellons Research Foundation, Chronicle research

Source: SF Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/02/MNGOJJ6JO51.DTL

- LOOK, UP IN THE SKY DEPARTMENT -

Kentucky Coal Train Collision With UFO

PAINTSVILLE -- At exactly 2:47 a.m. on January 14, 2002, while working a coal train enroute from Russell, Kentucky to Shelbiana, Kentucky, our trailing unit and first two cars were severely damaged as we struck an unknown floating or hovering object. I know it was 2:47 because my watch froze, and to this day shows that time.

Along with my watch the entire electrical systems on both locomotives went haywire. Approaching a bend near milepost 42 in an area referred to as the Wild Kingdom, for the many different types of animals spotted there, my conductor and I saw lights coming from around the way. This ordinarily means another train is coming and will pass on the other track. The outlay of the area is this, the river, #1 track, #2 tracks and a straight up mountainside, carved out for the laying of these tracks. I killed our lights as not to blind the oncoming crew.

As we rounded the corner our onboard computer began to flash in and out, speed recorder went nuts, and both locomotives died. Alarm bells began to ring and that's when we saw the objects. Apparently scanning the river for something. At least three objects had several "search" lights trained there, the first object hovered about 10 to 12 feet above the track.

It was metallic silver in color with multiple colored lights near the bottom and in the middle. There were no windows or openings of any kind that we could see. It was 18 to 20 feet in length and probably ten feet high. With both engines dead as we rounded the corner we made little noise and the first object did not respond in time, I estimate that we hit the object at 30 mph with 16,000 trailing tons behind us. It clipped the top of our lead unit then skipped back slicing a chunk out of our trailing unit and first two coal cars. The other objects vanished.

Our emergency brakes had initiated due to the loss of power and we stopped approximately a mile and a half to two miles after impact. Our power restored after we were stopped and we notified our dispatcher, located in Jacksonville, Florida of what had happened. We were told to inspect the cars to see if they'd hold the rail and try to limp into milepost cmg 60 which used to be the Paintsville yard which is no longer in full operation. We checked everything out and the cab of the rear locomotive was demolished and smoking, the second two cars looked as if they had been hit with a giant hammer, but looked like they'd hold the rail.

We pulled into Paintsville yard at approximately 5:15 am. The huge overhead lights lining the yard were noticeably dark and the only lights came from what we assumed were railroad officials vehicles parked near the end of the track. We pulled to a stop and began unloading our grips off the wounded train. We could hear what sounded like an army of workers immediately tending to our train. Vehicle doors slamming, guys running by in weird outfits and lights glaring from all directions, the one thing missing was railroad officials.

A guy named Ferguson shook my hand and asked me to follow him into the old yard office. We did, once inside they, and by they I mean I have no idea who these people were, began to ask us hundreds of questions, they then told us for our own protection we'd be medically tested before we could leave.

I asked repeatedly to talk to my road foreman or trainmaster and not only were these requests denied but they confiscated my conductor's cellular phone. Hours later we were led outside the old yard office and the strange things continued to happen, the two locomotives and two cars were removed from the rest of the train we had brought in and my only guess was parked four tracks over under a huge tent like structure buzzing with activity. We were lead off the property and told, due to national security, our silence on this matter would be appreciated.

We were then put in a railroad vehicle and taken to Martin, Kentucky were we went through questioning again with railroad officials and were then drug tested. After all of this we were sent on to Shelbiana, where we took rest for eight hours and worked another train back to Russell. Working back we passed by Paintsville, no sign of the engines, cars, tent, people, nothing.

Source: Peter Davenport-Director National UFO Reporting Center
http://www.nuforc.org/

- THE LEGEND OF GOAT-MAN DEPARTMENT -

37 Years After Snapping Photo, Bigfoot Talk Gets Man's Goat

The Lake Worth Monster lives on in a grainy 1969 photo. To some hobbyists, it's proof that our "Goat-Man" of legend was Texas' own Bigfoot. But the man who shot the photo now says talk of a swamp beast is "silly."

The fleeing "monster" looked more like a prankster with a fur or rug, Allen Plaster, 59, of Fort Worth, says.
And the "Goat-Man" should be glad that Plaster shot only a Polaroid.

"That place was crawling with people with guns," he said. "That was really stupid."

Until this week, Plaster didn't know that his 1969 snapshot is on Web sites and in a new San Antonio museum exhibit, "Bigfoot in Texas?" For two months that summer, he and the rest of Fort Worth were swept up in monster fever.

When one motorist told the Star-Telegram that a 7-foot-tall half-man, half-goat leaped onto his car, and another man said he saw something hurl a tire 500 feet, hunters and curiosity seekers descended on Lake Worth along what is now Shoreline Drive facing Greer Island.

Police later blamed teenage pranksters. The owner of a nearby kennel said this week that he was tracking a 40-pound runaway macaque monkey near the lake that summer, which matches some descriptions. Plaster and a Weatherford couple, all in their early 20s, went to the lake two or three nights a week that summer searching for the "monster" or "Goat-Man" described breathlessly on TV and radio news.

Plaster was driving westbound along the shore late one night when one of his friends -- he would give her name only as Kay -- pointed and shouted, "Look! Look! Look! There it is!" Something furry stood up in 3-foot-tall weeds on his side of the road. Plaster stopped and reached for his Polaroid, catching the figure running away.

"Looking back, I realize that when we drove by, it stood up," he said this week. "Whatever it was, it wanted to be seen.

"That was a prank. That was somebody out there waiting for people to drive by. I don't think an animal would have acted that way."

At the time, Plaster had become the young owner of some women's-wear boutiques in Fort Worth, the House of Allen. Later, he managed hotels before working 15 years as a bail bond agent.

He hadn't seen the photo in years, he said. He remembers giving the Polaroid instant print -- the only copy -- to Sallie Ann Clarke of Benbrook, who not only saw the monster but wrote a homespun book, The Lake Worth Monster of Greer Island, Ft. Worth, Texas.

Now the photo is everywhere from eBay.com to San Antonio and the Institute of Texan Cultures, where an exhibit open through July 30 reviews the folklore of Texas Bigfoot sightings. Plaster looked down and shook his head sadly.

"It's strange, the things that happen," he said. "I don't know what gets in people's heads."

Clarke, now 77, said she thinks she has Plaster's original photo somewhere. She also stuck by her story and said that Plaster now laughs it off out of embarrassment.

"We all saw that thing at the lake that summer," she said. "A lot of people saw it."

Her book describes a "terrorizing monster" with white hair and scales, a 7-foot "goat-fish-man."

"It came out of a bunch of trees in front of 40 or 50 people," she said Wednesday by phone, describing the incident in the wee hours of July 11, 1969, that triggered the months-long search.

"When it screamed, everybody ran to their cars and took off. I didn't take it as a prank, and I don't think too many people did."

By the time Plaster shot the photo weeks later, everybody was either looking for Lake Worth's celebrity Goat-Man or maybe dressed up portraying him. And in 1969, the Monster wasn't the only thing into weeds.

"If I'd been smoking pot or drinking alcohol back then, I could blame that," Plaster said.

"But my friends were all terribly boring. That's why we were out driving around the lake every night. We were coffee and Dr Pepper people, staying out late."

If you think his photo shows Bigfoot, then you've been drinking something stronger than Lake Worth water.

Or Dr Pepper.

Source: Star-Telegram
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/14768863.htm

- A SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT -

Physicists Generate Ball-Lightning in the Lab

Scientists in the joint study group of Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik and Berlin’s Humboldt University have generated ball-lightning in the laboratory - or, to be more precise, ball-lightning-like plasma clouds. The physicists produce luminous plasma balls above a water surface which have lifetimes of almost half a second and diameters of 10 to 20 centimetres.

Ball-lightning is described as a luminous phenomenon occurring during thunderstorms. It is a mystery, however, that they should be visible not as a brief flash, i.e. just for microseconds, but exist for several seconds, i.e. a hundred thousand times as long as a flash of lightning. Besides such famous figures as the Roman philosopher Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Charlemagne and Henry II of England, in modern times the Nobel Prize winners in physics, Niels Bohr and Pjotr Kapitza, claim to have observed this phenomenon.

Less renowned observers also report unexpected encounters with ball-lightning; the internet features more than a million entries on the subject. On the other hand, the phenomenon is so rare that there are still no reliable data available. Accordingly, doubtful attempts at interpretation are rampant, ranging from black holes to mini nuclear explosions and esoteric explanations.

"In view of this incertitude it has been variously attempted to induce the phenomenon under controlled conditions in the laboratory", states Prof. Gerd Fussmann, head of the plasma physics study group of IPP and HUB in Berlin. One research group already succeeded in producing plasmoids fed with microwaves - luminous plasma balls consisting of an ionised gas - which it would be fair to class as ball-lightning. A similar effect is caused by electric sparks conducted over organic materials. About four years ago a study group in St. Petersburg successfully used electric discharges above water surfaces to produce spherical luminous formations that come appreciably closer to the natural phenomenon. For it is probable that flashes of lightning and water must be interacting when ball-lightning occurs.

Stimulated by the Russian experiments, the plasma physics study group in Berlin is conducting investigations in which plasmoids are produced above a water surface that have lifetimes of about 0.3 second and diameters of 10 to 20 centimetres. This involves igniting a short high-voltage discharge in a water tank; when it decays a plasma ball then emerges from the surface.

Apart from the powerful capacitor bank needed to supply energy, the experimental setup is rather simple: A glass beaker filled with salt water contains two protruding electrodes, one of which being insulated from the surrounding water by a clay tube. When a high voltage is applied, a current of up to 60 amperes flows through the water for 0.15 second. Flashover from the water enables the current to enter the clay tube, where it causes the water contained there to evaporate. After the current pulse a luminous plasmoid consisting of ionised water molecules appears.

The facility can generate impressive "ball-lightning" in every possible manifestation and colour about every five minutes. Professor Fussmann: "Why luminous phenomena occur at all is anything but clear: They continue to be visible about 300 milliseconds after the current has decayed and the energy input is thus cut off; however, they should really be quenched after a few milliseconds at most. Furthermore, the plasma glows very brightly, although the plasmoids appear to be rather cold. A sheet of paper placed above them does get lifted, but it does not catch fire."

These puzzling physical phenomena are now to be clarified in several diploma theses. This calls for systematic analysis of the processes involved - for example, by spectroscopic methods - and comparison with the existing theoretical formulations. "Although "ball-lightning" does not directly fit into the research field of IPP, viz. investigation of extremely hot plasmas such as are needed for a fusion power plant", states Prof. Fussmann, "it is also an attractive plasma physics topic with which students can acquire knowledge of sophisticated measuring technique and theory from an interesting natural phenomenon."

The Mystery of Ball Lightning
Bizarre, personal encounters with the most puzzling of all weather phenomena.

Much of what we call “paranormal” are facets or properties of the natural world that we do not yet understand. And although ball lighting is not usually considered a paranormal phenomenon – and is almost certainly a natural phenomenon – its mysterious nature has puzzled scientists and paranormal researchers alike for centuries.

There currently is no fully satisfactory or generally accepted scientific theory for ball lightning, mainly because it is so rare, and when it does occur it doesn’t stay around long enough to be studied; it generally has a lifetime of less than five seconds. According to one researcher, “ball lightning is the name given to the mobile luminous spheres which have been observed during thunderstorms. Visual sightings are often accompanied by sound, odor, and permanent material damage.” Many scientists still deny its existence, but there are so many eyewitness accounts of the phenomenon that it’s difficult to deny its reality.

It’s these personal encounters with ball lighting that have given it its mysterious reputation. Many eyewitnesses describe its movement or “behavior” as seemingly intelligent, as if it knows where it wants to go. When it enters houses, it often enters through doorways or windows and travels down hallways. But people tend to personify such peculiar events and it’s ludicrous to think that the balls of light have any intelligence, but the anecdotes are no less intriguing. Here are some fascinating first-hand accounts:

    * In January 1984, ball lightning measuring about 4 inches in diameter entered a Russian passenger aircraft and, according to the Russian news release, “flew above the heads of the stunned passengers. In the tail section of the airliner, it divided into two glowing crescents which then joined together again and left the plane almost noiselessly.” The ball lightning left two holes in the plane.
    * A “ball of sparks” about the size of a basketball entered a commercial aircraft, apparently through an engine airtake, moved into the fuselage, and proceeded to chase a flight attendant up and down the aisle. She was screaming as she tried to outrun the ball lightning. It dissipated quickly before striking her.
    * Glenn R. Frazier relates at incident at his grandfather’s cottage in upstate Pennsylvania. “I was sitting on a screened porch. I remember a brilliant flash of lightning and a large clap of thunder. Seconds later, my mother screamed. My grandfather and I turned to look in through the doorway and saw what looked like a ball of electricity coming down the hallway from the back door. It was about the size of a basketball and had an off-yellow kind of haze. It sounded like a large stream of water coming through a faucet. When it got to the kitchen area, it flickered and flashed a little brighter, and then was gone.”
    * “While on vacation on a small farm in Tennessee,” writes Bill Melfi, “I saw two balls of light, one about three feet and the other about four feet in diameter. They were glowing with a blue-green light that was about as bright as a 50-watt bulb and translucent as a balloon. They moved side by side, the larger one leading. The movement was quick and somewhat zigzag. I chased after it with a stick in hand, but they were faster than me. They didn’t break up, just disappeared in the woods.”
    * This incident occurred in Bavaria in 1921: A nine-year-old girl and her uncle were in the first floor of a building during a severe morning thunderstorm. Ball lightning appeared on the left side of the window sill. The ball fell to the floor where it jumped up and down once or twice, then started to roll slowly toward the observers across the wooden floor, leaving no marks. It was translucent, and the rapidly changing colors showed spots of light green, crimson, light blue, and pale yellow. It then rolled toward the tile stove, crept up the iron parts, leaving a deep groove about the width and depth of a thumb. Then it exploded in an air vent.
    * A Coast Guard officer reported this sighting in 1977: “The ball lightning phenomenon was very large and estimated to be about the size of a bus. It was a brilliant yellow-green transparent ball with a fuzzy outline. Intense light was emitted for about three seconds before flickering out. Severe static was heard on the radio. The object slowly rotated around a horizontal axis and seemed to bounce off projections on the ground.”
    * An observer in Canton Ohio writes, “I saw a ball of light moving along the ground across the street from my house. It seemed to be about 10 inches in diameter. I saw the light move through the window of a church building. The light moved in and out. It seemed curious and not something frightful. I continued to watch the light ‘explore’ the building, and move into a tree – without any sign of damage.”
    * “During a light thunderstorm in July of 1991,” writes Joanna Bosse of Nashville, Tenn., “a ball of plasma about 3 inches in diameter entered through my den window. The ball passed through the window leaving no marks on the plastic screen or the window glass. The ball was orange and blue and made a frying sound as it moved across the room, through the door into the living room where it exited through the front storm door back outside, leaving no marks on the glass.”
    * Kim LeVeque of Ann Arbor, Mich. tells this incredible story: “I first saw the ball lightning when it came out the front of the stereo. There was an explosion, smoke, and debris, and a large orange ball. It went into the front of the television set and exited through the wall behind the TV. With the explosion, cupboard doors flew open and were torn from the hinges, glass jars broke, the refrigerator door blew open and eggs cracked inside.”
    * In 1936, a reader related this story to the editor of the London Daily Mail: “During a thunderstorm I saw a large, red hot ball come down from the sky. It struck our house, cut the telephone wire, burnt the window frame, and then buried itself in a tub of water which was underneath. The water boiled for some minutes afterwards, but when it was cool enough for me to search, I could find nothing in it.”

Source: Psysorg.com/paranormal.about.com
http://www.physorg.com/news68812957.html

- THE BEST FRIEND YOU WILL EVER HAVE DEPARTMENT -

Children's Imaginary Friends - Imagination Versus Spiritual

Do children's imaginary friends only exist in a child's imagination?

Next time you are in the company of a child, just watch. Suppose the child is holding a small cardboard box in their hand: one moment the child is talking to you, the next they are rushing off to play because Aggis has arrived. The excitement draws you in but you see no one around; and the child is full of excitement as they explain that mischievous friend Aggis has come to play trains and planes using the cardboard box as the main prop. The child is suddenly transported from our physical "real" world and into their magical imaginary world - a world where friends like Aggis exist.

Imagination can be a child's best friend as well as worst enemy. From imaginary playmates to scary bedtime monsters, the world of pretend is a very important and real part of developing and growing up. The question we, as adults, need to ask ourselves is whether children are simply entering their world of imaginary friends or whether they are connecting to a spiritual world and talking to a dead relative or friend who has come to see them.
What is Imagination?

The word comes from the Latin "imago," meaning "picture". Imagination is, by a very general definition, "the power or process of producing mental images and ideas". Imagination is a hugely powerful learning tool for children starting at ages two and upward encouraging creativity, focus of mind and increase in concentration.

Imagination gives children the freedom to follow their ideas and interests in the way they wish and for their own personal reasons. Imagination can be fundamental in helping children explore, learn and question the world around them, helping them find a meaning for their own lives and existence on Earth.

How would life be without Imagination?

Life would lack poignant drama without the use of imagination and people would be less likely to follow their dreams and desires. People would be condemned to live predominantly instinctive lives lacking in social compassion and understanding. Without imagination, people would have no food for thought and never think to question or analyse the world around them as well as their human existence.

Without imagination the world would be devoid of beautiful man made constructions such as the pyramids, the Great Wall of China or Stonehenge. The world would exist without the technology of computers, the genius of transport, and the marvel of medical science.

Imagination IS a wonderful thing to have - it is an inner power which has been used throughout history by all the greatest thinkers, artists, musicians, scientists, philosophers, healers and inventors. Imagination has nurtured those people who have tried to solve problems and succeeded, who have overcome obstacles and who have pushed the creative boundaries to achieve the impossible.

"The man who has no imagination has no wings." - Muhammad Ali
Imagination or spirituality?

Childhood is the earliest phase in our life whereby we consciously choose to explore our imagination. It is a time of magic, of wonder and illusion; a time when the stairs carrying us to bed become our space rocket to Mars in search of alien life along the way "to boldly go where no child has gone before"; when the space under our bed is the hiding place for monsters and ghosts waiting to come out and scare us.

I was introduced to my eldest daughter's imaginary friend five years ago when I picked her up from nursery. Then two years old she announced that "Sammy" was her brother and that he was going to live with us and sleep under her bed. I remember being curious as to whether my daughter's friend was imaginary or whether it really was the spirit of the child I miscarried many years before she was born. Whatever the answer, I always encouraged my daughter's relationship with her "brother" Sammy.

There are many parents out there who adopt the opposite approach to mine, instead telling their children that imaginary friends are not real but only figments of their overactive imagination. Yet, how many parents embrace the possibility that their child's imaginary friend might be a ghost, a spirit guide, a deceased grandparent, a relative or even a family friend? How many parents analyse their child's bad dream(s), their strange images seen during the night, their imaginary friendships? How many parents wonder whether their child's imaginary friend might actually be a ghost who, for whatever reason, has chosen to communicate with the child?

When we tell our children "it was just a bad dream", are we accidentally teaching them to mistrust their personal thoughts and experiences and to constantly question themselves. Some parents unknowingly teach their children to dismiss "imaginary" experiences as being just that - imaginary. Other parents are terribly protective of their children, not wanting to see them upset or showing weird characteristics to separate them from the norm of most children. Many parents are ignorant to the strong likelihood that children might have spiritual experiences and connections with dead loved ones more than their adult counterparts. I know that all of us as parents are guilty of reassuring our children that their bad dream was just that - a bad dream. That we, as parents, are known to tuck our little ones back into bed with words we believed to be reassuring each and every time: "there are no such things as ghosts"..."you just had a bad dream"..."it wasn't real"..."it was just your imagination".

Yet the existence of ghosts or spiritual supernatural beings has been debated for centuries. Throughout history a primary question always comes back to haunt the professionals - why can some children see ghosts and yet others can't? There have been numerous theories to answer this question - some leaning towards the child's overactive imagination, others leaning towards the spiritual and supernatural realm. My own theory argues that children can and do see and sense imaginary or spiritual presences - with loved ones, spiritual guides or other paranormal connections. My theory believes that children have wonderful imaginations which should be nurtured, but also that children are natural intuitives or psychics.

Many experts have put forward varying reasons as to why children create imaginary friends and such reasons usually centre on the child's emotional and physical needs and wants at that particular time. Some declare that imaginary friends help to boost a child's creativity and where necessary prevent feelings of isolation or loneliness. Others suggest imaginary friends help to ease the anxieties of a child as the child confides their likes, dislikes and worries to their invisible friend. All experts agree that imaginary friends allow children to test the boundaries between right and wrong by breaking rules and placing the blame not on themselves but on their invisible friend.

An imaginary friend can help a child to feel more in control of their life, as they are seen to help out when the child feels particularly vulnerable (perhaps during the birth of a new sibling, during a house move or change of school). Whatever the extent of their purpose, most imaginary friends have names, personalities and vivid physical characteristics, are usually harmless and serve as an emotional outlet, conscience protector or alter ego for each child in question. Grace, aged six, talked about her imaginary friend in greater detail as she explained, "she does not like pizza because she does not like cheese".

Children can play highly imaginative games with their imaginary friend and the friend may even take up space in the child's bed - although you will be warned by your child not to sit on them if they do!

Most children tend to forget their imaginary friends once they have started school and even if they do not, the friend does not usually go to school with them. Some imaginary friends disappear before a child turns six, but most usually disappear between the third and fifth birthdays. The invisible friends - whether child, adult or animal - are around this time either forgotten, sent on a distant / permanent trip or 'die' in a horrible accident.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world" - Albert Einstein

A Few Stories to Share

When Robert Adams was a small boy he dreamt about a small girl who later became his imaginary friend. Robert went around telling his friends that he had a new invisible friend. He became very upset when his mother did not believe him, but was pleased that some of the children around him did believe him.

Rachel Ashcroft's imaginary friends were three little dragons - one red, one green and one purple. Rachel's purple dragon was the pest of the three as she (Rachel) always had to 'clean up after it'. Her mum tolerated Rachel's imaginary friends but drew the line at bringing them shopping saying that the "No Dogs" sign also meant "No Dragons" as well.

Peter Hill had two childhood imaginary friends who looked like Jerry, the mouse from Tom and Jerry cartoon. One mouse was Diggy, who was red in colour, the other was Gog, a blue mouse. Peter said Gog was responsible for all the naughty things and the Diggy was good, always telling Gog off. Diggy was also there at Peter's side whenever Peter has to tell his parents how Gog had done everything that was wrong. Peter believed his parents could see Gog and Diggy even if they blamed Peter anyway.

By paying attention to how and when imaginary friends appear in your child's life, you can learn a lot about your child as a little person. The occurrence of imaginary companions and fantasy play show you that the child is beginning to think abstractly. And this, I can tell you, is a remarkable event.

Infants and toddlers tend to be afraid of such things as a growling dog or a thunderstorm, normally things that are actually there and real at that moment in time - such fears are known as "concrete fears". That said, children could also show different fears as they talk about ghosts in the cupboard, monsters under the bed or burglars breaking into their room. These are called "abstract fears", fears that are not necessarily real or there at that moment in time.

Psychologists believe, that from a developmental perspective, a child's fear of monsters under the bed is actually a reason for celebration for it tells you that your child is struggling to master the intricacies of abstract thinking. It also explains why using a concrete approach to the fear, such as suggesting that the two of you check under the bed or in the closet for monsters or ghosts to eliminate them, doesn't always work. Your child will simply reply that the monsters are hiding and will come out later. Unlike a fear that's real and in front of them at the time (such as the dog growling), the monsters under the bed fear resides in the child's head and can scare them at any time.
Famous people with vivid imaginations

Princess Margaret is said to have used her imaginary friend to avoid blame. Whenever her nanny confronted her about something she had or hadn't done, Princess Margaret would place the blame on 'Cousin Halifax'.

Robert Louis Stevenson also had imaginary friends. Because he suffered chronic health problems throughout his childhood, he spent much of his youth bedridden. To amuse himself whilst bedridden, Stevenson created his own world of friends and playmates. As an adult, Stevenson's interest in children's imaginations together with his own childhood experiences, may have contributed to his many successes as author and poet. One particular poem, is particularly fitting within this article - The Unseen Playmate.
The Unseen Playmate

When children are playing alone on the green,
In comes the playmate that never was seen.
When children are happy and lonely and good,
The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood.
Nobody heard him, and nobody saw,
His is a picture you never could draw,
But he's sure to be present, abroad or at home,
When children are happy and playing alone.
He lies in the laurels, he runs on the grass,
He sings when you tinkle the musical glass;
Whene'er you are happy and cannot tell why,
The Friend of the Children is sure to be by!
He loves to be little, he hates to be big,
'T is he that inhabits the caves that you dig;
'T is he when you play with your soldiers of tin
That sides with the Frenchmen and never can win.
'T is he, when at night you go off to your bed,
Bids you go to sleep and not trouble your head;
For wherever they're lying, in cupboard or shelf,
'T is he will take care of your playthings himself!

Imagination is truly important for all of us, whether young or old. Without it we are truly non-existent and with it we are truly exceptional. With just a little imagination our dreams can develop into reality, our lives can become more fulfilling, and our loved ones of the spirit world can perhaps communicate with us.

During the research undertaken the last seven years for my forthcoming book, I have found that some children's imaginary friends do actually turn out to be their Grandmother or Grandfather who passed away before they were born. Jade, my eldest daughter always maintained that Sammy was her elder brother and I believed then as I believe now that maybe there is some truth in that. I also believe that children as early as two years old can meet real spiritual friends as well as one or two "made up" imaginary friends.

Source: Alternative Approach/by Kylie Holmes
http://alternativeapproaches.com/pnuke1/Article1692.html