Doug's Darkworld

Wait… what??!

I loved this picture when I saw it. Sometimes I think I should just make a blog about fun pictures that I find. Then I realize it’s been done, it’s called Facebook. Granted most of the pictures on Facebook aren’t all that funny, but this one was. Obviously it is photoshopped, but whoever made it did a good job. The background image is perfect, the choice of black and white adds a wonderful element of spookiness and verisimilitude to it. And the image is a bit blurred, as if it really was snapped quickly from a moving car. I’ll have to look for other images like this. And no, I don’t think there are extent dinosaurs anywhere. The world has been pretty well explored by now. At least big dinosaurs, like the Mokele-mbembe, a creature reported from the jungles of Africa which some claim is a surviving brontosaurus. Small dinosaurs, the size of chickens, who knows. I’m not holding my breath though.

Moving right along, it has been recently claimed that remote viewing experts helped solve a murder. Remote viewing is where people use psychic powers to view things at a distance, perhaps even things they knew nothing about. The US military experimented with it for decades, the Stargate Project, but ultimatley decided it wasn’t very useful. That’s the problem with remote viewing, under experimental conditions it has never been conclusively established as a reality. Often the “information” provided by remote viewers is so vague that people can (and do) interpret it any way they please. In this murder case however, the remote viewers not only determined the location of the body, in the water near Santa Catalina Island, they provided details about the murderer and where he had fled to. Well, that couldn’t be a coincidence, there must be something to remote viewing.

Or, well, not. If the information provided in accounts of the case is accurate, yes. Unfortunately the case happened some six years ago, and details are just now coming out. I have grown increasingly skeptical of cases like that, six years is a lot of time for memories to alter and facts to be lost or re-arranged. I hope the case gets seriously investigated at some point, I am curious to see what actually transpired. I suspect there is less here than meets the eye.

On the other hand, I had a remote viewing experience myself once. I was living in Idaho, it was 1984. I had a nightmare about a friend of mine, it was kind of vague, but I remember seeing the underside of a car. I was disturbed enough about it to write her a letter and ask to to be careful driving as I had had this dream about her and something bad happening in a car. She wrote back to tell me it was too late, she had recently rolled her car on a freeway interchange. She was pretty banged up but nothing serious. As far as we could tell, I had the dream at the same time she had the accident. Coincidence? Beats me. It’s likely the only time in my life I’ve written someone to warn them about a dream I had.

In other news of the weird, not much. Not much worth repeating. UFO reports and Bigfoot reports are common as dirt these days. None of them very convincing, and none of them having good videos or other empirical evidence. In the Baltic Sea a team of explorers has found a “saucer shaped” object at the bottom of the Baltic Sea.  At least it seems real, there is a sonar of a curiously shaped object on the ocean floor. And divers recently visited it, without really clearing up the mystery. It could just be a rock though. And things like this are always suspect these days, since good money can be made milking it for all its worth. I mean, the Baltic Saucer was discovered by professional treasure hunters. Again, not holding my breath.

Upon further reflection, I have more doubts about the remote viewing case I started this post with. The story is that this fellow hadn’t heard from an old friend for over a month, was concerned about their well being, and contacted a group of remote viewers for assistance. I find it very difficult to believe that anyone, no matter how concerned they were for a friend, would contact the psychics first. And if his friend was as well known as is claimed, a radio DJ, his disappearance would have been noted by all sorts of people. There’s clearly a lot of information missing from accounts of this event. Oh well, another one bites the dust.

(The above image is claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law. It’s not being used for profit and is central to illustrating the post, since the post is partly about the image itself. I have no clue who holds the copyright, the image is all over Facebook, but if I find out I will properly credit it. Next, maybe a post on some of the weird comments that have been showing up on old posts lately. Or not.)