THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

The author of this quote from Ecclesiastes is so right. Yet most of us tend  to forget this as we listen to our little egos telling us that we are the first to do this, invent this, dream this or say this etc.

I really thought how terribly clever and inventive I had been some months ago when hung a big black coat on my kitchen window to use as a solid background when I was taking my steam pictures.  I wanted to put up a big piece of black paper but was in too much of a hurry to make the trip into town to Smith`s. It`s been a great success and at the moment the coat is a semi-permanent fixture to be used at a whim.

Going through some old correspondence today I read something rather interesting in UNLIMITED HORIZONS,  a newsletter put out in 1988 by George Meek, an American EVP pioneer. It spoke about Mrs Rafaelia Gremese of Italy who was trying to get the video results obtained by other researchers of the time of dead people leaving messages  for their families. As a result of spirit guidance via her taped voices, she was instructed to put a large sheet of black paper inside the glass door of a china cupboard and mount her video-camera 6 feet in front of the black area.   Invisible to the naked eye, but detectable on the camera, the black paper becomes covered with a layer of what Dr Ernst Senkowski could only speculate was ectoplasm, probably taken in part from Mrs Gremese`s body and nearby green plants.  The white-grayish, cloud-like material captured by the camera shows to be rearranged or moulded to resemble human faces.

Shades of Pencoed, 2010!

WAITING................................

I`m a woman so I`m used to waiting.   This time it`s for paraplasms.com to be finished. My original  designer did a good job up to a point, and then he scarpered. I`ve looked into finishing it myself but think there may be too many hazards to try.

So, just letting any reader of this know that paraplasms.com will lie dormant, waiting, in fact, just like me for the finishing touches.

Au revoir,  Tina

THE CASE OF THE SOUND DISPLACEMENTS

There were a few times when we became aware of sound displacement on tapes that I recorded. Noises and voices that had been moved to spots on the tape where they should not have been.

And then there was the time was when Ben experimented with me (knowing how much I hated the killing of animals for sport) watching a 5-minute German film of ahunting and shooting party. Ben sat recording while he watched me as I watched the film.  I was ordered not to speak at all.  It was the most eeriest thing, on playback, to hear my voice, shaking and quivering, uttering vile words describing these hunters.  I asked Ben to turn it off in the end as I found listening to it quite difficult.

THE CASE OF THE HUMMING IN THE PARALAB

On one occasion when I was at work on my EVP tapes early one morning, I was humming while I was doing it (something quite well-known but the exact song forgotten now).  I heard Ben coming down the stairs and go into the kitchen so I decided to greet him and get a cuppa.  On my tape that was in record mode at that moment you can clearly hear me humming, pushing my chair backwards, my footsteps, the door being opened, my voice saying: Morning, Ben, how are you today?    And
you can still hear, very clearly, my humming which does not stop even when I`m talking!

THE CASE OF THE WORDS THAT WERE NOT THERE

One of the most memorable events that I remember in the Paralab was when Ben had written a 5-minute play for 2 people, him and me.  We sat at a small table and acted out the play with only our two voices cutting the silent night air and sticking to the exact words typed in front of us.  We recorded it on a cassette tape recorder and afterwards listened to playback.  It was astonishing (at least, to me, at that time) how many times we heard our voices uttering dialogue that had not been written or said!    Some of them were a bit naughty, too (for that time).

THE CASE OF THE BLUE ROOM IN THE PARALAB

The Paraphysical Laboratory (Paralab) was an L-shaped former farm-house  in Wiltshire, on a high vantage point far away from mad-made noises and street lights. It was a labour of love to encourage your car, which frequently red-lighted, up the rutted path to the building. The only way up and down.

I was to sleep in the Blue Room, which really meant that it was the only room that had the original bluish wall-paper. It also had even more dust than the rooms downstairs and there were books from floor to ceiling along each wall.  In the middle was a bed of sorts and I decided to sleep with all clothes on.

With head on pillow (my own) I lay there in the pitch-black darkness wondering what the morrow would bring, listening to the absolute stillness, with not even the sound of a night-owl to disturb me.  And then it started, quite soft at first, and I was straining to hear this new noise.  Within a few moments the noise had turned into a roaring chatter.  The only way I can describe it is as if I had suddenly been transported to Piccadilly Circus, a continuous hum of voices and traffic.  (Of course, the time was the early 80`s when it was still possible to cross the roads and sit on the steps under Eros- the favourite meeting-place for lovers! (Ah, those days!) )

I had a miserable night, turning continually, and even at one point stuffing my ears with tissue and pulling the bedclothes over my head.  I went down in the morning, forcing a bright smile on my face and greeted Ben and a friend who had also spent the night there.   Ben asked me how my night had been and not wanting to offend I said: OK, thanks.  The two men looked at each other and then back at me with  a `Are you sure?` look. So I unburdened myself and confessed to a night of horror.  Ben smiled knowingly and said: Ah well, that`s what happens to everyone who gets to spend the night in the Blue Room!  And that was the end of that.

More later.

BENSON HERBERT and the PARALAB

Benson Herbert, virtually forgotten today, was a paraphysicist  and I met and worked with him long after his star had reigned. I heard about him from my friend Scott Rogo when I was living in America. I looked him up as soon as I could and was immediately invited down to stay at his Paraphysical Laboratory that was hidden atop a large hill in the wilds of Lord Longford`s estate.

I don`t know what I expected but it certainly wasn`t the general state of deshabile that the farmhouse was in. I mostly remember the thick coating of dust everywhere and the aluminium foil that coated the walls. No heat, and no light, but electricity was created by an outside generator that was manipulated each day at dusk.  Bathwater was sparse and shared and I was privileged to be the first in!

More later....