Phantom Leopards and Collective Hallucinations

     If several people see the same thing, the assumption is that it has an objective reality. Since every mind is independent, a collective hallucination is virtually a contradiction in terms. The closest thing to it would be group hypnosis: as in one of those performances in which members of the audience are hypnotised together and told to visualise a given scenario. Just the same, I dare say that it would work only at the overall level - that if you interviewed the subjects after the event, you would find that they saw what the hypnotist told them to see in general, but that the details would vary according to each individual's imagination.
     Nevertheless, it appears there are times when an entire group can get themselves "psyched up" to have the same visual hallucination, provided it is simple, and this should be factored into any investigation of the alleged paranormal. We shall look at a few examples, starting with the most dramatic.

Haunted - But Not By Ghosts

     As I pointed out once before, people who experience various shades of weirdness tend to contact ufologists, even when there is no apparent connection with UFOs. Take, for instance, this bizarre haunting which was reported to the Mutual UFO Network in 2011. Of course, there is no way to confirm its authenticity, but at least it lacks some of the normal features of made-up stories, such as a beginning, middle, and end. For obvious reasons, the publisher suppressed the informant's name.

Sometimes You Need a Good Witchdoctor

     Readers of my vintage might remember a program called On Safari, by a husband-and-wife film team, Armand and Michaela Denis. In the mid-1950s they decided to settle in Kenya, residing in a Nairobi hotel while their house was being built at Langata, 11 miles out of town. That was how the trouble started. Michaela had been so engrossed in watching the Sikh carpenters and Kikuyu workmen, that she casually left a certain heavy biscuit tin in the dressing room. Only when they had returned to the hotel did she realise she had forgotten it. Feebly, she agreed to her husband's suggestion to wait until the morning to go back.
     Their friend, Tom Stobart in fact returned by half past nine the next day, and phoned to announce that the box had gone. "What was in it?" he asked.
     "Thousands of pounds worth of jewellery, that's all," she replied. She always carried it around with her.

What Happened to Their Planet?

     Don't believe anything until it is confirmed, but don't throw away any information. That is the philosophy of this blog, and the reason I use it to rescue items which might otherwise be overlooked. Whether it is the paranormal, or something mundane, like an accusation of spousal infidelity, in day to day life we tend to balance the credibility of the witness with the probability of the story. If a story is really fantastic, we tend to reject it, even if the reporter would otherwise be considered reliable.
     But there is a catch. Occasionally, the really fantastic happens to be part of a rare, but genuine phenomenon. If we throw away the stories every time we hear them, the data will never accumulate, and we will never discover that they form a pattern. So, even the fantastic deserves its day in court. Put it in your file. If the story is false, it will lie there, and eventually die of loneliness. But if it happens to be true, bit by bit, its relatives will drift in to keep it company.
     And nowhere is this more important than with alien abductions, where high strangeness is par for the course, but there are legitimate concerns that the data is contaminated with confabulations.

This is NOT an Aeroplane

     Have a look at this. It is a pretty good representation of an aeroplane, wouldn't you say? There are the wings and the tailfins, vertical and horizontal, and even what appears to be an open cockpit. It was made by the Tolima Indians, southwest of Bogotá, Colombia, and it more than 500 years old - a superb example of pre-Columbian Indian goldwork, one of the very few which survived the melting-down mania of the marauding Spanish conquistadores.
     This, or something very like it, was celebrated by Erich von Däniken in his 1968 best seller, Chariots of the Gods?, and taken up by lots of band-wagoners on the theme that ancient astronauts had introduced aeroplanes to South America - perhaps to land them on the Nazca Lines, hundreds of miles to the south, some of which have the appearance of airstrips.

     Whataloadofoldrubbish!

Stanley's Near-Death Experience

     "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?"
     These are the words which rise to mind when most people hear the name of Henry Morton Stanley. It's a pity, because he probably never uttered them, and they made him the butt of merriment. At least, that is the opinion of Tim Jeal, in his acclaimed 2007 biography, Stanley: the impossible life of Africa's greatest explorer. And one of the interesting bits of trivial which emerged was that he had a near-death experience.
    It occurred in May 1881, when he was busy setting up the Congo Free State, and he came down with fever. There was so much blood in his urine that it turned the colour of port wine. For several weeks, he was at death's door, shivering and sweating, and passing in and out of consciousness. At one point, he was convinced he was about to die, and called all his staff around him. After bidding them farewell in a barely audible voice, he sank back, cried out, "I am saved," and lost consciousness.
     Finally, when it was all over, he recorded the following in his diary:

I am at the entrance of a very lengthy tunnel, and a light as of a twinkling star is seen an immeasurable length away. There is s sensible increase in the glow - the twinkling ceases, it has become an incandescent globe. It grows larger & it advances ... the light grows blinding.

     But, nevertheless, he came back to continue his work.

I Still Don't Believe in Fairies, BUT . . .

     As I said in my last post, I don't believe in fairies as such. But suppose you did happen to see - ahem! - a tiny humanoid creature, who're you gonna call? Probably not your local newspaper - not unless you've forgotten what "laughing stock" means. You could google "tiny humanoid creature", but it won't get you to any central registry. In the bad old (pre-internet) days it was even worse. However, any sizeable telephone directory is likely to contain an entry commencing,"UFO" or "Flying saucer". And since ufologists have a penchant for weird stories anyway, they have a tendency to accumulate such accounts over the years.
     The following reports, except for the last one, were collected by ufologists. It is important to note, however, that no UFO was present in any of the cases.