Mind Boggling!
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I have been fascinated by stories of the "Paranormal" for most of my life. This is an awkward term in itself as it covers so much. Whilst much has been written about such things as UFO's and the Loch Ness Monster (try The Shadowlands Sea Serpent page, The Mysterious & Unexplained and Internet UFO Group and The British UFO Research Organisation for starters), let me relate 2 stories covered in "Strange But True?" in the past year. These stories are unusual as they don't seem to fall into a particular category, but as with all stories of this type, healthy skepticism with an open mind are a good approach to take.
This concerns a party of 2 couples who travelled to France on holiday, in the 1970's. They were driving down to the South and to break up their journey had decided to find somewhere to stay on the way down. They ended up in a small village and found a Inn with a bar. They went in and noticed that there was a policeman sitting talking. They noticed that the clothes that people were wearing seemed to be old fashioned, but as they were in the midst of a rural community, thought no more of it. They stayed the night at the Inn and took a couple of photos while they were there. They left the next morning and paid the bill - for the four of them, including the food and accommodation, they paid 18 francs (less than £3 or about 5 USD I guess). They travelled to their destination and had their holiday. On the way back, they decided they would stay at the Inn again, so they decided to re-trace their route. They could not find the Inn and eventually gave up looking and continued their journey home. At home, they got the photographs developed and the ones they took at the Inn did not come out as they expected (I can't remember exactly why, but I believe it was because no one else but them came out on the pictures, or that these pictures didn't come out at all and all the rest did). So troubled by this was one of the group that he decided to return to try and find the Inn. He found the village and where he thought (geographically) they had stayed - but all that was there were a couple of derelict buildings. Asking the locals, he eventually found out that around the turn of the century, there had been an Inn with a Police Station opposite it or next to it.
This is obviously another anecdotal mystery, but it is a strange story nevertheless. It would either seem that the couples travelled backwards in time and stayed there quite a while, or they collectively underwent some shared hallucination - I find both equally difficult to believe.
We were recently on holiday in Egypt. One day, we stopped with our tour group for lunch. We got chatting to one of the couples, Pete and Heidi, who were in their late 50's. I don't know how it came up in conversation, but they told us of how they had bought a plot of land adjoining their house. On it was a small disused Methodist Church - not used for Services for about 40 years. They knew there was an entrance backing on to their land, so Heidi thought she would go in and have a look. She came back to Pete and described how nice it was inside - describing the windows, the clock and the lectern particularly. Pete later went in to see for himself, but found a much more "run down" scene - no clock or lectern.
In relating this same story to a neighbour, he said that Heidi
had described the church just as it was - 40 years ago. The
couple themselves state this is exactly what happened and have no
explanation. It seems that here again there seems to be an
instance of "perceived time travel". This one was told
to me 1st hand
These could be instance of Ball Lightning.
Read on.
Do you know of any strange, and I mean really strange coincidences? Here is one of the classic ones in recorded history - the coincidences between the assasinations of Presidents Kennedy and Lincoln. It is, unusually, also linked to me personally, which I'll explain at the end:
It now seems clear, of course, that it wasn't Oswald who shot Kennedy - he was merely a scapegoat for some kind of plot, the details of which still aren't clear. However, this does not detract from the exceedingly strange nature of these facts.
The link to myself is of course that my name is Andrew Johnson
and my date of birth is 22nd of November, 1964 - a
year to the day after Kennedy's death - strange eh?
Here are some questions I have asked myself and others. I will try to discuss what I think are some of the answers when I get time.