@muir
Here is a page with a lot of pictures and info on these caves - http://www.oracleofthedead.com
Here is a page with a lot of pictures and info on these caves - http://www.oracleofthedead.com
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Merkabah
- Thread starter Skarekrow
- Start date
Bookmarked!
Awesome thanks! They're pretty special those ones
There are a couple of caves here in the UK i'm interested in visiting when i'm next down south
The hellfire club used to meet in caves on the estate of francis dashwood at high wycombe. He was postmaster general of the british army and his opposite in the newly independant US was Benjamin Franklin who spent a summer at the estate and would have been familiar with the nocturnal activities of the hellfire club!
The layout of the cave is similar to the caves you have mentioned with different stages and a river to cross
I believe that the physical caves represent symbolically inner psychic processes. So for example the crossing of the styx might represent what thelemites would call 'the abyss' which is the partition between our physical world (the world of form) and the world of creation (formative world)
Above the abyss are the top 3 sephiroth of the tree of life (the supernal triangle)....which are kinda the father, the son and the holy ghost of the christians
So as you progress on their initiatory process you would progress physically along their cave system
The ancient egyptians had some hardcore initiatory proceses where the initiate would fast for days and be put into dark tunnels and harrassed by priests in costumes trying to frighten them and so on....all to create effects on the psyche
Some processes were to create the effect of dying...so when we have a NDE (near death experience) we go down the tunnel of light. Initiates are born back into our world after their ordeal.
Death and resurrection in the freemasonic system is where we get the saying 'giving someone the 3rd degree' (as in giving someone a hard time)
I guess the reasoning is that the more intense an experience the more transformative it's potential
The other cave i'd liek to see is the Royston cave which belonged to the knights templar and is covered in carvings
Caves obviously appear in various mythological stories for example mithras emerged from a cave as did jesus
This one is particularly interesting to me for several reasons…firstly the age of it, then idea that both real and mythical characters visited it, and then why and how did it get disbanded and closed down…filled in…someone wanted it gone.
It really would have been something to see…it probably would have felt as if you truly were going to Hell…the smoke, and heat, the bubbling hot springs that make the river Styx…not to mention, if they did use psychedelics…I’m sure the cave was fantastically decorated at one point in time…probably occupied by certain individuals who operated various things such as the ferry across the Styx…it was probably a pretty mind-blowing experience for an initiate.
I’ve got quite a few caves on my list…but part of that is because I used to be a member of the National Speleological Society and an avid caver.
Of course you gotta have Merlin’s Cave under Tintagel Castle…lol…but I have several other more obscure one’s in my mental list.
Merlins cave is a good one...but make sure the tide is out or it can be hard to access
Another interesting thing to look out for in that area is the labyrinth carved on a rock. These appear across the world
You're brave to be a caver! That's a very testing experience on both the mind and the body....but exciting i'm sure! I bet you have you're own rebirth moment each time you emerge back into the sunlight!
The caves you've posted about would have just been a sensory overload! Can you imagine if you were picked up from some meeting place by the heirophants who then blindfolded you and took you to that cave before they took the hoodwink off.
It would have been super intense...the heat, the noises, the smell, the flickering light, the resonating sounds off the cave walls, the cramped feel.....real pressure on the mind...add a libation to that and you've got something out of this world!
The assassins used to do a process whereby a person would be drugged unconscious and then taken into a concealed and secret valley full of beautiful furniture and women and food and every sumptuous thing you could imagine from those times. The person would awake in heaven! They would be pampered and treated like a god and exposed to every pleasure under the sun
Then the person would be drugged again and taken out of the valley. The leader of the order, the 'old man of the mountain' would then tell the assassin to be that he had been given a taste of paradise and that if he carried out his suicidal assassination attack he would go back to that paradise forever!
You can still hear suicide bombers today speaking about being given a load of virgins in heaven to tend to their needs so that ancient form of mind control is still being applied today
But i don't think that's what your caves are for
I think greek myths have a number of aspects for example there is an astrological angle to them but there is also a symbolic and educative aspect as well. They would have contained lessons within them that would help people to deal with experiences in life. So perhaps they were told a story as a child but wouldn't really understand the significance until they went through some kind of similar experience that they would then relate back to the myth they were taught and this would deepen the understanding of the story...it would impact and initiate a new view of the world
Jason and the argonauts i think is a kind of alchemical tale of personal transformation although i did here an interpretation about how the area on the eastern side of the black sea was in 'ancient' times a place where they panned rivers for gold using fleeces to catch the gold dust out of the water; that materialist intepretation argues the story is about a fight over that gold rich resource between two peoples
Concerning who filled the tunnels in....the mystery schools were supplanted by the roman church and went underground (literally and metaphorically!)
When the ground gave way in a town in malta revealing an underground cave system (temple) built by the mysterious people called by the archeologists simply 'the temple builders' the first people into the system was the jesuits!
I have visited a number of sites and read up on plenty as well and again and again i hear stories of artifacts going missing or having been destroyed. Common stories involve stones supposedly bing buried or broken up to be used to make roads etc
All these places get plundered
Another group that is often first on the scene in the UK is the Royal Society of Antiquarians which are a masonic group. To gain membership you must be recommended and then supported by a second
This bunch of interfering fuckers have dug up many of the pre-historic sites in the UK and damaged or dissapeared the items found there. For example at callanish stone circle a soft black subtance was said to have been found which they destroyed. That could have been anything....it could have been made up of some plant or drug that might have given an insight into the practices of those times
For example the egyptian mummies have been found to have traces of both cocaine and marijuana in them but these substances only came from the americas which were not supposed to have been visited by that time!
I have no doubt in my mind that there is a cover up of our history for example of an atlantean civilisation
Artifacts that have been found like the antikythera mechanism are far in advance of the technology we though that people held at the time it dates from...so mainstream history is in need of a revision!
So if i had to guess i'd say the roman catholic church filled the tunnels in.
The hardest libation the RC is offering is cheap wine!
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Decided to post this here....enjoy!
Paul Buchheit | Profiting From America's Misery
The profit motive fogs the thinking of free-market advocates. The Economist gushes, "Take a bow, capitalism...the biggest poverty-reduction measure of all is liberalising markets to let poor people get richer." Forbes proclaims its belief in "the unmatched power of capitalism to improve human life."
Self-indulgent capitalists have turned much of America against its own best interests by promoting a winner-take-all philosophy that reaps great rewards for a few people at the expense of everyone else. To the neoliberal, vital human needs like health and education are products to be bought and sold.
Here are some other examples of greed and the pain it causes.
Water
The city of Detroit, which is positioned next to the greatest supply of fresh water between the polar ice caps, has lost its access to water because of bad financial deals that have left unsuspecting citizens with over a half-billion dollars in interest payments. Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr responded by putting the whole water system up for sale.
The United Nations has reminded us of the obvious, that water is a human right. But the prominent water company Nestle says water is not a human right. The company has taken this essential ingredient of human life and sold it back to us at a million percent profit.
Meanwhile, as average citizens of America and the world face increasing hardships from climate change, Wall Street firms are, according to Bloomberg, "investing in businesses that will profit as the planet gets hotter." Housing
Blackstone is a corporate model for making money at the expense of desperate former homeowners. Since the recession, it has become the nation's leading landlord, buying up tens of thousands of homes at rock-bottom prices, and then renting them back, often to the very people who lost them.
It's a perfect business, a well-designed process of predatory equity.
1. Buy Foreclosures.
2. Rent Them at Exorbitant Prices. Only one-third of Blackstone's Los Angeles renters are paying affordable rent, according to Department of Housing and Urban Development standards.
3. Skimp on Maintenance. According to a Homes for All study, 46 percent of residents reported plumbing problems, 39 percent reported roaches or insects, and 90 percent of Los Angeles renters have never met their landlords.
4. Package the Properties into "Rental-Backed Securities." These sound disturbingly like the mortgage-backed securities that crashed our economy a few years ago. Companies like Blackstone and Goldman Sachs are doing it to America all over again.
Savings
The financial industry indiscriminately targets all struggling Americans, from the impoverished class to the low-income class to the middle class. At the lowest level loom the payday lenders, with about as many locations in the U.S. as all the McDonalds and Starbucks combined, and with annualized interest rates that can reach 1,000 percent or more.
For families with incomes in the $25,000 range, about 10 percent of their income goes for fees and interest to financial institutions. The average underserved household spends $2,412 each year on alternative banking services.
For middle-class Americans trying to save for retirement in a 401(k), bank fees take about $2 of every $5 over a lifetime of investing.
Justice Itself
With the highest incarceration rate in the world, and with imprisonment skewed toward minorities, our business-oriented society has effectively turned our poorest citizens into products, with an emphasis on product volume.
Private prisons make deals with local governments to ensure full jail cells.
Company owners have taken advantage of the legalized slavery clause of the 13th Amendment, paying as little as 93 cents an hour for their labor.
Still other companies step in during probation periods, charging fees that keep poor people at the mercy of the 'justice' system.
And in the county that contains Ferguson, Missouri, as noted by author Radley Balko, some of the towns "can derive 40 percent or more of their annual revenue from the petty fines and fees collected by their municipal courts." Fines and fees for traffic offenses, fare-hopping, loud music, uncut grass, trespassing, wearing saggy pants, or failing to subscribe to the town's garbage service.
Poverty Capitalism: The Free Market At Work
A staunch capitalist might point out that America's growing poverty has created markets for anyone able to capitalize on destitution. Each of us, after all, is a source of profit, as long as we rent or own, save a little money, and drink water.
--
Paul Buchheit | Profiting From America's Misery
The profit motive fogs the thinking of free-market advocates. The Economist gushes, "Take a bow, capitalism...the biggest poverty-reduction measure of all is liberalising markets to let poor people get richer." Forbes proclaims its belief in "the unmatched power of capitalism to improve human life."
Self-indulgent capitalists have turned much of America against its own best interests by promoting a winner-take-all philosophy that reaps great rewards for a few people at the expense of everyone else. To the neoliberal, vital human needs like health and education are products to be bought and sold.
Here are some other examples of greed and the pain it causes.
Water
The city of Detroit, which is positioned next to the greatest supply of fresh water between the polar ice caps, has lost its access to water because of bad financial deals that have left unsuspecting citizens with over a half-billion dollars in interest payments. Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr responded by putting the whole water system up for sale.
The United Nations has reminded us of the obvious, that water is a human right. But the prominent water company Nestle says water is not a human right. The company has taken this essential ingredient of human life and sold it back to us at a million percent profit.
Meanwhile, as average citizens of America and the world face increasing hardships from climate change, Wall Street firms are, according to Bloomberg, "investing in businesses that will profit as the planet gets hotter." Housing
Blackstone is a corporate model for making money at the expense of desperate former homeowners. Since the recession, it has become the nation's leading landlord, buying up tens of thousands of homes at rock-bottom prices, and then renting them back, often to the very people who lost them.
It's a perfect business, a well-designed process of predatory equity.
1. Buy Foreclosures.
2. Rent Them at Exorbitant Prices. Only one-third of Blackstone's Los Angeles renters are paying affordable rent, according to Department of Housing and Urban Development standards.
3. Skimp on Maintenance. According to a Homes for All study, 46 percent of residents reported plumbing problems, 39 percent reported roaches or insects, and 90 percent of Los Angeles renters have never met their landlords.
4. Package the Properties into "Rental-Backed Securities." These sound disturbingly like the mortgage-backed securities that crashed our economy a few years ago. Companies like Blackstone and Goldman Sachs are doing it to America all over again.
Savings
The financial industry indiscriminately targets all struggling Americans, from the impoverished class to the low-income class to the middle class. At the lowest level loom the payday lenders, with about as many locations in the U.S. as all the McDonalds and Starbucks combined, and with annualized interest rates that can reach 1,000 percent or more.
For families with incomes in the $25,000 range, about 10 percent of their income goes for fees and interest to financial institutions. The average underserved household spends $2,412 each year on alternative banking services.
For middle-class Americans trying to save for retirement in a 401(k), bank fees take about $2 of every $5 over a lifetime of investing.
Justice Itself
With the highest incarceration rate in the world, and with imprisonment skewed toward minorities, our business-oriented society has effectively turned our poorest citizens into products, with an emphasis on product volume.
Private prisons make deals with local governments to ensure full jail cells.
Company owners have taken advantage of the legalized slavery clause of the 13th Amendment, paying as little as 93 cents an hour for their labor.
Still other companies step in during probation periods, charging fees that keep poor people at the mercy of the 'justice' system.
And in the county that contains Ferguson, Missouri, as noted by author Radley Balko, some of the towns "can derive 40 percent or more of their annual revenue from the petty fines and fees collected by their municipal courts." Fines and fees for traffic offenses, fare-hopping, loud music, uncut grass, trespassing, wearing saggy pants, or failing to subscribe to the town's garbage service.
Poverty Capitalism: The Free Market At Work
A staunch capitalist might point out that America's growing poverty has created markets for anyone able to capitalize on destitution. Each of us, after all, is a source of profit, as long as we rent or own, save a little money, and drink water.
--
Stephen Hawking: Research On the ‘God Particle’ Could Cause Space-Time to Collapse
Hawking's new book suggests that the Higgs particle could become unstable and cause a catastrophic vacuum.
September 8, 2014 |
In the preface to a new book, Starmus, acclaimed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking writes that the so-called “God particle” could become unstable and cause a “catastrophic vacuum decay” that would lead to the collapse of time and space, The Sunday Times reports.
“The Higgs potential has the worrisome feature that it might become metastable at energies above 100bn gigaelectronvolts,” Hawking writes. “This could mean that the universe could undergo catastrophic vacuum decay, with a bubble of the true vacuum expanding at the speed of light.”
“This could happen at any time and we wouldn’t see it coming.”
The successful discovery of the Higgs particle has led to calls from within the scientific community to create larger, more powerful supercolliders than the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, where scientists discovered the Higgs boson.
Many in the scientific community are upset with Hawking – not because he is incorrect, but because such statements from a scientist of his eminence could dissuade the public from funding experiments like those at Cern in the future.
In his preface, Hawking stresses that the possibility of the Higgs boson behaving in such a way is highly unlikely – and that creating the conditions in which the particle would is impossible given the current state of technological development.
“A particle accelerator that reaches 100bn GeV would be larger than Earth, and is unlikely to be funded in the present ecoomic climate,” Hawking
Don't worry...scientists are responsible people
It's those fucking conspiracy theory people you have to watch out for!
There are whispers that it was actually the conspiracy people who created the atomic bomb!
People who discuss conspiracy theories must be shut down as a matter of urgency!
Scientists trying to engulf our world in a black hole or create viruses that circumvent the human immune system on the other hand must be give as much funding and resources as we can steal from the taxpayers!
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star-shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
- Mary Elizabeth Frye
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
—Whitman
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star-shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
- Mary Elizabeth Frye
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
—Whitman
The Most Intriuging Case of Group Reincarnation Ever [FULL DOCUMENTARY]
Reincarnation is the religious or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body that may be human, animal or spiritual depending on the moral quality of the previous life's actions. This doctrine is a central tenet of the Indian religions. It is also a common belief of various ancient and modern religions such as Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar and is found in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Siberia, West Africa, North America, and Australia.
Although the majority of sects within the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Kabbalah, the Cathars, the Druze and the Rosicrucians. The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism and Gnosticism of the Roman era, as well as the Indian religions, has been the subject of recent scholarly research.
In recent decades, many Europeans and North Americans have developed an interest in reincarnation. Contemporary films, books, and popular songs frequently mention reincarnation. In the last decades, academic researchers have begun to explore reincarnation and published reports of children's memories of earlier lives in peer-reviewed journals and books.
[video=youtube_share;doH-WiGoEiA]http://youtu.be/doH-WiGoEiA[/video]
Reincarnation is the religious or philosophical concept that the soul or spirit, after biological death, begins a new life in a new body that may be human, animal or spiritual depending on the moral quality of the previous life's actions. This doctrine is a central tenet of the Indian religions. It is also a common belief of various ancient and modern religions such as Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar and is found in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Siberia, West Africa, North America, and Australia.
Although the majority of sects within the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Kabbalah, the Cathars, the Druze and the Rosicrucians. The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism and Gnosticism of the Roman era, as well as the Indian religions, has been the subject of recent scholarly research.
In recent decades, many Europeans and North Americans have developed an interest in reincarnation. Contemporary films, books, and popular songs frequently mention reincarnation. In the last decades, academic researchers have begun to explore reincarnation and published reports of children's memories of earlier lives in peer-reviewed journals and books.
[video=youtube_share;doH-WiGoEiA]http://youtu.be/doH-WiGoEiA[/video]
Tin Man
"a respectable amount of screaming"
I often have fragments of memories that show a place or time I couldn't have been too. It's nothing vivid, more like a feeling that comes about from sensory stimulation. I usually just ignore them as nothing more than my memory confusing fictional events I witnessed on TV for personal events I experienced first hand.
I still doubt there's anything to them, but it's interesting to think about.
I get the same kind of feelings…it’s hard to describe because it is not a memory and yet some part of you on a cellular level….or maybe more of a spiritual level…an unconscious spiritual level recognizes the place, or something about a person, or you know things about places or people that you really don’t remember having ever read about or learned….I get that.
Underground Map Reveals Hidden Secrets Of Stonehenge And Nearby Monstrous "Super Henge"
After spending four years scanning the ground surrounding the world’s most famous prehistoric monument, University of Birmingham archeologists have produced a map of unprecedented detail of the earth beneath Stonehenge.
The findings have yielded many unexpected surprises that are transforming our understanding of this ancient landscape, including details of a nearby 1.5 kilometer-round “super henge” and a plethora of previously unknown monuments.
For the survey, named the “Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project,” researchers ditched their digging tools and turned to magnetometers and ground penetrating radars that they dragged around with quad bikes.
These techniques, combined with aerial photography and airborne laser scanning, produced high-resolution 3D maps of the iconic landscape and the hidden secrets below.
Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project/University of Birmingham/ Ludwig Boltzmann Institute
The survey revealed hundreds of new features around the megalithic monument which lies on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.
Among the findings were 17 previously undiscovered ritual monuments that suggest Stonehenge did not stand alone, and also dozens of burial mounds, some of which were older than the 4,400-year-old monument.
A huge 6,000-year-old timber building beneath one of the earthy mounds was also revealed which they believe was probably used for bizarre burial rituals that involved removing the flesh from the dead.
Geert Verhoeven/University of Birmingham
They also identified novel features of a 3-kilometer-long, 100-meter-wide ditch nearby called the Cursus that was thought to serve as a barrier for Stonehenge. They found several gaps in the ditch and also giant prehistoric pits which appear to form astronomic alignments.
On midsummer’s day, the eastern pit’s alignment with dawn and the western pit’s alignment with dusk meet at the point where Stonehenge was built almost 500 years later.
The new map also yielded exciting information about the less well-known Durrington Walls, or “super henge.”
Located only a small distance from Stonehenge, this gargantuan monument is probably the largest of its kind with a circumference of more than 1.5 kilometers (0.93 miles).
The images hinted that at one stage, as many as 60 giant stones may have bordered the monument, some of which were 3 meters high.
The holes left by the stones seem to indicate that they were pushed over which would make sense given that several lines of evidence suggest ancient cultures often altered or dismantled their monuments.
The researchers also believe that some of these stones may still lay buried, but unfortunately the technology used to scan the ground could only penetrate a depth of 3 meters.
“This radically changes our view of Stonehenge,” said Vince Gaffney, head of the project at Birmingham University. “In the past we had this idea that Stonehenge was standing in splendid isolation, but it wasn’t… it’s absolutely huge.”
The team’s findings will feature in a major new BBC series entitled “Operation Stonehenge: What Lies Beneath.”
[Via University of Birmingham, Guardian, BBC News and Nature]
The Mysterious Hellhound of World War I
War brings with it horror.
The battlefields of World War I were no exception and the trenches here may as well have been meat grinders as they swallowed countless souls in an orgy of blood and death.
However, the ever present threat of death from the enemy was not always the only horror that lied in wait within the labyrinthine trenches of the war.
From the fog of blood, brutality and violence of the Word War I trenches comes the bizarre story of a mysterious and deadly creature that was said to prowl the danger-ridden no man’s land during fierce fighting during the Battle of Mons.
The Battle of Mons was so named for the small Belgian village of Mons, which was to become the scene of vicious fighting between British and German forces. In 1914, German troops had occupied Mons and the British, in what was their first foray into battle during World War I, valiantly marched in to try and liberate it.
The British were heavily outnumbered and quickly sustained large amounts of fatalities against the punishing German onslaught.
The battle devolved into perilous trench warfare as the tenacious British forces dug in and continued the fight, with both sides ravaging the other with artillery fire, machine gun batteries, and constant, tedious shooting as well as even barbarous hand to hand combat in the bloodsoaked mud of the trenches.
Trench warfare in World War I
Between the trenches of the two enemy sides was what is referred to as the no man’s land.
This term was used mostly in World War I and refers to the disputed area that lies between the trenches of two enemy sides that both lay claim to but are afraid to move into openly out of fear and uncertainty about what will happen if they do.
No man’s lands were typically heavily defended and fortified on both sides and any movement into them typically resulted in a pulverizing rain of weapon fire, thus ensuring that these zones become barren wastelands where no one dared to tread.
The only time anyone ventured into the no man’s land was during efforts to gain ground on the enemy, when retreating, or for the purpose of collecting wounded after an attack.
These were horrific pathways through Hell itself that were often crisscrossed with snarled webs of barbed wire and dotted with rudimentary land mines and the mangled bodies of those not lucky enough to make it across. Michael Morpurgo described a typical no man’s land scene in his book War Horse thus:
‘I stood in a wide corridor of mud, a wasted, shattered landscape, between two vast unending rolls of barbed wire that stretched away into the distance behind me and in front of me. I remembered I had been in such a place once before, that day when I had charged across it with Topthorn beside me. This was what the soldiers called “no-man’s land”.’
No Mans Land
It was the no man’s land at the Battle of Mons that spawned the story of a mysterious beast that stalked the edges of barbed wire and did not hesitate to slaughter both British and German soldiers alike; an enormous hound that came to be known as the The Hound of Mons.
The tale of The Hound of Mons was originally brought to public attention in 1919 by a Canadian war veteran by the name of F.J. Newhouse, who brought back the gruesome tale from the battlefield.
The story was originally published in a 1919 edition of the Ada Evening News from Oklahoma, but was soon picked up by other publications of the time.
According to the account, the incident started when a Capt. Yeskes and four men of the London Fusiliers braved the perils of no man’s land in order to carry out a patrol of the area.
The patrol never returned.
This was not strange in and of itself, remember this was a bloody battle during World War I.
But when the bodies of the men were found several days later, it was discovered that something had ripped their throats out and left gaping teeth marks upon the corpses.
One night a few days after this, it was reported that soldiers from both sides heard an ear piercing, monstrous howl emanating from the darkness of no man’s land.
The bloodcurdling shriek was allegedly so terrifying that some soldiers who had braved battle day after day considered retreating at once.
During the ensuing days more patrols would set out into no man’s land only to be found later in a similar mauled state, throats ravaged by some huge beast.
The occasional anguished cries of terror from German soldiers seemed to indicate that they were suffering similar attacks.
The eerie nighttime roars also increased in frequency and it was around this time that some of the soldiers on sentry duty along the edges of no man’s land reported seeing an enormous, gray hound skulking about out in the shadows of the war torn chasm between the two enemies.
For two years the hound prowled the battlefield of Mons, gaining an ever growing list of victims and instilling horror in the troops.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared the hound was gone and the attacks ceased.
The Hound of Mons. Artwork by Banthafodder.
As bizarre as the story is already, it gets even weirder.
Newhouse also claimed that not only was The Hound of Mons very real, but that it had been the result of twisted German military experiments trying to make biological weapons.
According to Newhouse, a German scientist by the name of Dr. Gottlieb Hochmuller had undertaken a ghastly experiment with the aim of inserting the mind of a deranged maniac into a hound.
Newhouse said in an article from the August, 1919 edition of the Oklahoman:
The death of Dr. Gottlieb Hochmuller in the recent Spartacan riots in Berlin has brought to light facts concerning the fiendish application of this German scientist’s skill that have astounded Europe. For the hound of Mons was not an accident, a phantom, or an hallucination—it was the deliberate result of one of the strangest and most repulsive scientific experiments the world has ever known.”
The report claims that upon finding the perfect candidate, the German doctor then had his brain removed and surgically implanted into the body of a large Siberian wolfhound.
The giant beast with the brain of a madman was trained and then taken to the battlefield and released into no man’s land to do its violent work.
Accounts have variously claimed that the hound had been altered to be larger than before, that its capacity for hatred had been chemically enhanced, or that its hide had been made to be impervious to bullets.
Newhouse claimed that papers had been found upon Dr. Hochmuller’s death that fully outlined the whole experiment as well as the doctor’s wishes to unleash the beast on allied troops, and fully proved that the experiments were real.
It is not explained whether the doctor had anticipated the maniacal hound turning against its own side or why the walking weapon might have suddenly stopped its rampage.
Nice doggy…
The whole story certainly has its rather fantastical elements to it, and a fair amount of doubt has been cast on the whole incident.
It is hard to believe that Germany or anyone else for that matter would have had the technology to successfully implant a human brain into a dog.
This is an impossible feat for us even with our medical technology now let alone in the early 1900s.
In addition, there seems to be no available records to demonstrate that Dr. Hochmuler ever even existed.
Indeed there is no record to show that there was ever a Captain by the name of Yeskes either, which certainly brings the veracity of the report into question.
These facts are reason enough to give one pause.
Even at the time there were many civilians who wrote off the story as the ravings and hallucinations of war addled minds.
It is even quite possible that Newhouse completely fabricated the whole spooky story from scratch from his, perhaps in some effort to spread propaganda against Germany.
So what was going on here?
Was there really some surgically or even genetically enhanced hellhound stalking the no man’s land?
Was it pure fancy?
If there is any grain of truth to it, then it seems perhaps more likely that wild or feral dogs had perhaps been drawn to the war and had congregated there feed on the dead fallen in battle, upon which their gruesome activities would be spotted by frightened, battle weary soldiers and interpreted as supernatural hounds from hell.
This theory would also account for the ghostly howling that was heard from the front lines.
I do wonder if dogs would be willing to stick around through all of the riotous cacophony of gunfire blazing around them, but it does offer a rational explanation if indeed the events were even real.
Nice doggy!
Or perhaps the story derives from some combination of the rational and the imagination.
War is an uproar of noise, confusion, and terror punctuated by death.
It is a waking nightmare.
It is perhaps no wonder that the stories that the bedraggled survivors of these horrors on occasion bring back stories of carnage wrought not only by their human enemies, but from the world of nightmares as well.
Perhaps the Hound of Mons was one such entity; a menacing apparition prowling through that twilight land between reality and the nightmare world that lies embedded deep within the human psyche.
It is quite possible we will never know for sure.
Ancient Charm Suggests Earliest Use of Magic in Christian Religion
While often depicted as light-colored and scattered like sand or frost upon the ground, arriving with the dew in the morning, the description given in the book of Numbers described a substance actually more like that of bdellium, a dark-colored, aromatic gum extracted from trees in the Middle East.
Despite these biblical descriptions of manna, little else is know of it. However, a recent discovery held within the archives of the Library at John Rylands Research Institute in the UK suggests that it was the same substance as that which became the first holy Eucharist produced and given to the disciples at the famous Last Supper with Jesus Christ.
The discovery of a small charm has indeed garnered much attention, since the item, believed to be around 1,500-years-old, depicts a papyrus charm that has been described as the first known to discuss the Last Supper, and also to equate magic or superstition with it.
“Researchers uncovered the ancient papyrus, written in Greek and dated between 574 and 660 [AD]” reported Capital OTC earlier this week. The papyrus within the charm is believed to have come from Roman Egypt, and has been in the possession of the Institute since the turn of the last century.
Researcher Roberta Mazza rediscovered the item in a library vault only recently. “This is an important and unexpected finding as it is one of the first recorded documents to use magic in the Christian context, while the first charm ever found to refer to the Eucharist — the Last Supper — as the manna of the Old Testament”. Mazza is a Research Fellow at the Institute.
The idea that magic and mysticism can be equated with Christianity is an idea that, for many, seems contradictory. But by definition alone, the implementation of things such as sacraments, which include blessings and rituals such as marriage, holy unction (the blessing with sacred oil), and other activities certainly invoke ritual processes familiar to those with interest in magic.
In her book Mysticism, author Edith Underhill wrote extensively on the mystical beliefs among Christians, which could very easily equate to a “magical” world of its own, in comparison with other ritual traditions around the world.
Whether or not it is overtly acknowledged as such, modern Christianity certainly maintains many of the primary components that could allow us to make such comparisons; namely that of prayer, and belief in its healing power as wrought by a merciful creator of all existence.
And although it is aged by some 1500 years, the papyrus charm newly rediscovered at John Rylands Research Institute in the UK signifies the earliest known instance of such superstitions being observed in conjunction with a physical token of some kind; comparable to modern charms bearing Saint Christopher carrying Christ across the river on his back (these are often worn as protection for travelers), or even the holy cross itself, the very likeness of Jesus’ crucifixion at Golgotha, as described in the New Testament.
Interestingly, the charm is complete with its own varieties of typos, which according to Mazza, may indicate that the quoted scriptures were taken from memory, rather than an actual transcription.
So what, if anything, might this mean for manna (which, in addition to being mentioned on the charm, bears something of a resemblance to its discoverer’s name, interestingly enough)?
Perhaps, if anything, the interpretation of bread broken at the Last Supper and manna being one and of the same is purely that; an interpretation, made from memory by a common individual who wore the charm for protection, and as a statement on their faith.
“The amulet maker clearly knew the Bible, but made lots of mistakes,” says Mazza, who believes it is evidence that early Christians weren’t only elites, but were ordinary people, too… perhaps the likes of which would inscribe scriptures on homemade charms, errors and all.
The Suicide Forest and Overtoun Bridge: What Makes Them So Deadly?
Suicide and depression have been at the forefront of our minds of late. What with the tragic loss of beloved comedian and actor Robin Williams in early August. Fans the world over mourn not only for the loss, but also for the pain and suffering he went through leading up to his eventual decision to end his life.
Whatever specific events pushed Robin Williams to suicide — and they were no doubt complex — the underlying reason was a lifetime battling chronic depression.
A terrible, ruthless, and largely invisible disease roughly 350 million people struggle through worldwide.
Recently the World Health Organization (WHO) released the results of a global study on suicide and suicide prevention.
According to their report, suicide rates across the world approach and exceed 800,000 deaths per year. That equates to someone, somewhere committing suicide once every 40 seconds.[1]
Those statistics are both alarming and heartbreaking, though preventing further deaths due to suicide is a difficult and complex endeavour.
Alongside advocating crisis services and suicide hotlines, as well as better mental health practises, the WHO report pleads for authorities in the worst hit countries — which tend to be poor-to-middle income countries — to begin reducing access to common means of suicide.
Though, governments can only restrict certain things, and only to a certain extent.
If a person is bent on ending their own life, there is nothing; no therapy, no regulations, and no law that will stop them.
This gruesome subject does have a somewhat strange side to it though; some places around the world seem to see more than their fair share of these tragic ends to painful lives.
Now, the statistics above don’t really bear out the fact that places like Japan’s Aokigahara forest, which is known as The Sea of Trees, or more poignantly, The Suicide Forest, are world famous for their connection to such tragic deaths, but the facts are clear.
Aokigahara Forest
Aokigahara is an arboreal forest of approximately 35-square kilometers (14 sq, miles) at the northwest base of Japan’s famous Mount Fuji.
The density of the forest acts as a near-total wind-block.
This coupled with the fact there is almost no wildlife in the area makes the forest eerily quiet, which of course, makes it popular with hikers and wilderness enthusiast.
Unfortunately, peace and quiet isn’t the only thing tourists are likely to find there.
There are all kinds of speculative reasons for why the disconsolate and depressed choose this particular location to leave their suffering behind.
Whispers of ancient demons and Yūrei (analogous to the western notion of ghosts) abound, and some blame a cultural meme, so to speak, generated by a 1960 novel Kuroi Jukai by Seichō Matsumoto, which centered on Aokigahara as the location for a series of mysterious murders. (Jukai means Sea of Trees, and is another name for the forest.)
The phenomenon of suicides in the forest long predates this book, however.
A sign post at Aokigahara Forest pleading with visitors “your life is precious”.
Local government has taken to posting both Japanese and English language warning signs and heartfelt requests for the depressed people who find themselves there, to seek assistance rather than end their lives. T
here is also an annual body search that takes places to comb the forest for that year’s victims.
There are other places around the world that are relatively famous for their apparent connection to suicides, though not all pertain to human suffering.
Overtoun House is a beautiful 19-century country estate in Dunbartonshire, Scotland.
It sits on a hillside overlooking the River Clyde, and offers picturesque gardens and walking paths.
It also offers one of the most mysterious bridges in all of Britain, perhaps even the world. Overtoun Bridge, as it’s known, is an arched stone bridge along an approach road to the Overtoun burn.
The surface of the bridge stands 15 meters (50 feet) above a shallow waterfall, and for some as yet unknown reason, an estimated 600 dogs have leapt to their death over the edge of that bridge.
The apparently suicidal dogs are said to have taken the plunge from Overtoun Bridge at the rate of one per month, since about 1970 (though possibly before this date too).
Overtoun Bridge
You may be asking yourself, why exactly a dog would wish to seemingly commit suicide.
After all, the saying “it’s a dog’s life” is meant to highlight the fact that domesticated dogs usually have a pretty easy life, so what could they be depressed about?
Let’s not forget that depression isn’t a choice, and doesn’t depend on miserable life circumstances to strike someone down, but the nature of the disease notwithstanding, canine existentialism hasn’t been explored academically to anyone’s satisfaction.
Other explanations have been suggested though.
Early investigators considered everything from strange isolated wind gusts, to electromagnetic energy creating confusion in the dog’s brain, to an ultrasonic sound originating from a nearby nuclear power facility, to a scent or sight perceived only by the dog, luring them to their deaths.
Dr. David Sands, an animal psychologist with the Scottish SPCA investigated the area and inconclusively concluded that it must have been something the dogs heard or smelled that compelled them to act, though he was unable to identify what that thing might be.
Later, animal habitat expert David Sexton, explored the grounds around the base of the bridge and finally discovered that the area was, and continues to be, a nesting place for a large number of mice and mink.
Sexton theorises that the smell of male mink urine wafting to the bridge platform is causing a sensory overload in certain dogs, which compels them to seek the source of the odour without, obviously, a thought to their own safety.
However you choose to look at these mysteries, the only aspect of the phenomenon that’s truly clear, is that both people and beloved canines are dying, and those deaths are somehow connected to these locations by more than just mere happenstance.
[1] Via Reuters & DailyMail Online. The suicide map of the world: Korea, Russia and India see the most citizens kill themselves — while America is ‘average’http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-suicide-rate-800-000-year.html#ixzz3CfA5hc2A
The vengeful spirit of a young woman, cut in half, preys on young people who stray into her domain after dark. She chases down those in her sights, running on hands that make a "teke-teke" sound, as they slap the ground.
Just looking at her invites a sentence of being sliced in half.
Don't Get Lost Near The Train Lines!
A scene straight out of a horror movie.
A young school boy leaves his school at the end of a long day. He had stayed back for some extra activities, and due to the settling in of winter it, was quite dark outside. He leaves the main doors of the building and begins to cross the yard and into the alley between the school and the neighbouring buildings.
As he winds his way through the cramped maze of city blocks, preferring to avoid the smog thick air of the main roads, he begins to feel as if he is watched. A mild paranoia sets in, as he has heard several strange stories about things taking place in such locations, so he increases his pace, his feet slapping in the puddles and on the damp ground.
The alley suddenly opens up into a small yard, several paths exit between other buildings. He is unfamiliar with this location, although he has walked this way - well, what he thought was this way - many times before.
The buildings climb to the sky overhead, lightless windows staring down at him - all except for one. The silhouette of a young woman is plain to see in the second floor window of one of the buildings. Although the back light casts her into shadow, he can still make out the delicate features of a girl of about his age, leaning on her elbows in the windowsill. He walks to her in the hopes of asking for directions, as he is undoubtedly lost.
The sudden sound of a train can be heard, the roar passing through the alleys. He must be near a train line... yes, definitely lost.
Smiling, he approaches the building the girl can be seen in. As he nears the base of the older brick and concrete structure, he clearly sees her face turn from a bemused smile to angry, sneering with a curled lip.
He is more than startled when she launches herself from the window. It’s not the speed and strength at which she leaves the building, but rather the fact that she is missing the bottom half of her body. As she arcs over him he can clearly see she has no legs, her entrails dangle from the ghastly slice that rent her in two.
She lands beyond him, facing the other way. She pulls herself to height, standing on her hands, her torso drooping below her. She stares at him, her long black hair passing over her face, yet he can still see she wears a face of pure contempt.
As he winds his way through the cramped maze of city blocks, preferring to avoid the smog thick air of the main roads, he begins to feel as if he is watched. A mild paranoia sets in, as he has heard several strange stories about things taking place in such locations, so he increases his pace, his feet slapping in the puddles and on the damp ground.
The alley suddenly opens up into a small yard, several paths exit between other buildings. He is unfamiliar with this location, although he has walked this way - well, what he thought was this way - many times before.
The buildings climb to the sky overhead, lightless windows staring down at him - all except for one. The silhouette of a young woman is plain to see in the second floor window of one of the buildings. Although the back light casts her into shadow, he can still make out the delicate features of a girl of about his age, leaning on her elbows in the windowsill. He walks to her in the hopes of asking for directions, as he is undoubtedly lost.
The sudden sound of a train can be heard, the roar passing through the alleys. He must be near a train line... yes, definitely lost.
Smiling, he approaches the building the girl can be seen in. As he nears the base of the older brick and concrete structure, he clearly sees her face turn from a bemused smile to angry, sneering with a curled lip.
He is more than startled when she launches herself from the window. It’s not the speed and strength at which she leaves the building, but rather the fact that she is missing the bottom half of her body. As she arcs over him he can clearly see she has no legs, her entrails dangle from the ghastly slice that rent her in two.
She lands beyond him, facing the other way. She pulls herself to height, standing on her hands, her torso drooping below her. She stares at him, her long black hair passing over her face, yet he can still see she wears a face of pure contempt.
Teke - Teke.
She takes several steps towards him, hand over hand, each step making a curious sound as it slaps the ground — teke-teke-teke.
The boy screams and runs as fast as he can away from the girl, however soon, all too soon, he can hear her chasing him — teke-teke-teke-teke...
He does not stop to turn around to see how much she is gaining on him, each of her steps sounds closer ad closer — teke-teke-teke-teke-teke.
The alley starts to open up, he can see a fence ahead as well as the train lines. He passes the wasteland between the buildings and the line as fast as he can, the terrible sound of the 'creatures' slapping hands continue to make their signature sound -teke-teke-teke-teke.
At the last moment the boy jumps at the chain link fence and starts to scramble over it, but soon finds himself back on the ground. He blinks, pain shoots through his side, and the face of the 'girl' is looking directly into his.
He blacks out and passes away, not entirely sure what has happened.
The following morning a young school boy is found next to a fence that runs along the train lines. He has been cut in half, handprints leading too and from his corpse.
The boy screams and runs as fast as he can away from the girl, however soon, all too soon, he can hear her chasing him — teke-teke-teke-teke...
He does not stop to turn around to see how much she is gaining on him, each of her steps sounds closer ad closer — teke-teke-teke-teke-teke.
The alley starts to open up, he can see a fence ahead as well as the train lines. He passes the wasteland between the buildings and the line as fast as he can, the terrible sound of the 'creatures' slapping hands continue to make their signature sound -teke-teke-teke-teke.
At the last moment the boy jumps at the chain link fence and starts to scramble over it, but soon finds himself back on the ground. He blinks, pain shoots through his side, and the face of the 'girl' is looking directly into his.
He blacks out and passes away, not entirely sure what has happened.
The following morning a young school boy is found next to a fence that runs along the train lines. He has been cut in half, handprints leading too and from his corpse.
Who or What is Teke - Teke?
Safe during the day... maybe steer clear at night!
Teke-Teke is a Japanese urban legend that tells of the ghost of a young woman, a school girl who in 1969 suicided on the train track, being cut in half by a train, as a result of school bullying. Her vengeful spirit, unable to rest, takes out its revenge on those who seem similar to the ones who bullied her.
There are other versions, as with all urban legends, of who 'Teke-Teke' is. Some put her as a nurse, others as a girl who was murdered and finally as a girl whose death is accidental. Regardless of her origins, the fate of her victims is always the same — they are chased down and cut in half.
The name 'Teke Teke' comes from the distinctive sound she makes as she runs on her hands, or at other times her elbows, a 'tek, tek' sound with each hand fall.
In the early years of the legend, one would be safe by not venturing near train tracks alone at night, Teke-Teke would seek her prey near the location of her death. Unfortunately, as her death took place in a different location with each telling, one had best stay away from all train lines to be sure.
There are other versions, as with all urban legends, of who 'Teke-Teke' is. Some put her as a nurse, others as a girl who was murdered and finally as a girl whose death is accidental. Regardless of her origins, the fate of her victims is always the same — they are chased down and cut in half.
The name 'Teke Teke' comes from the distinctive sound she makes as she runs on her hands, or at other times her elbows, a 'tek, tek' sound with each hand fall.
In the early years of the legend, one would be safe by not venturing near train tracks alone at night, Teke-Teke would seek her prey near the location of her death. Unfortunately, as her death took place in a different location with each telling, one had best stay away from all train lines to be sure.
Dead (still from the movie).
The story soon evolved, the horror soon started to stalk the school during the night, and finally at the crux of school student panic over the legend, Teke Teke was said to haunt the toilet stalls of the schools bathrooms. No doubt a story that saw smoking in the school toilets decrease dramatically.
It is said there is no escaping Teke-Teke, for even if you manage to outrun her — a near impossible feat — she will find you and you will surely be dead within three days. Just glimpsing her is said to be a death sentence.
As with all good urban legends, and with Japanese cinema’s affinity with a really creepy story, the legend of Teke Teke was turned into two movies in 2009. You can find the trailers for these movies on youtube.
As with all urban legends what you believe is up to you.
It is said there is no escaping Teke-Teke, for even if you manage to outrun her — a near impossible feat — she will find you and you will surely be dead within three days. Just glimpsing her is said to be a death sentence.
As with all good urban legends, and with Japanese cinema’s affinity with a really creepy story, the legend of Teke Teke was turned into two movies in 2009. You can find the trailers for these movies on youtube.
As with all urban legends what you believe is up to you.
The Suicide Forest and Overtoun Bridge: What Makes Them So Deadly?
Suicide and depression have been at the forefront of our minds of late. What with the tragic loss of beloved comedian and actor Robin Williams in early August. Fans the world over mourn not only for the loss, but also for the pain and suffering he went through leading up to his eventual decision to end his life.
Whatever specific events pushed Robin Williams to suicide – and they were no doubt complex – the underlying reason was a lifetime battling chronic depression.
A terrible, ruthless, and largely invisible disease roughly 350 million people struggle through worldwide.
Recently the World Health Organization (WHO) released the results of a global study on suicide and suicide prevention.
According to their report, suicide rates across the world approach and exceed 800,000 deaths per year. That equates to someone, somewhere committing suicide once every 40 seconds.[1]
Those statistics are both alarming and heartbreaking, though preventing further deaths due to suicide is a difficult and complex endeavour.
Alongside advocating crisis services and suicide hotlines, as well as better mental health practises, the WHO report pleads for authorities in the worst hit countries – which tend to be poor-to-middle income countries – to begin reducing access to common means of suicide.
Though, governments can only restrict certain things, and only to a certain extent.
If a person is bent on ending their own life, there is nothing; no therapy, no regulations, and no law that will stop them.
This gruesome subject does have a somewhat strange side to it though; some places around the world seem to see more than their fair share of these tragic ends to painful lives.
Now, the statistics above don’t really bear out the fact that places like Japan’s Aokigahara forest, which is known as The Sea of Trees, or more poignantly, The Suicide Forest, are world famous for their connection to such tragic deaths, but the facts are clear.
Aokigahara Forest
In the case of The Suicide Forest, the facts are that roughly 100 suicides occur in that forest every year.
Aokigahara is an arboreal forest of approximately 35-square kilometers (14 sq, miles) at the northwest base of Japan’s famous Mount Fuji.
The density of the forest acts as a near-total wind-block.
This coupled with the fact there is almost no wildlife in the area makes the forest eerily quiet, which of course, makes it popular with hikers and wilderness enthusiast.
Unfortunately, peace and quiet isn’t the only thing tourists are likely to find there.
There are all kinds of speculative reasons for why the disconsolate and depressed choose this particular location to leave their suffering behind.
Whispers of ancient demons and Yūrei (analogous to the western notion of ghosts) abound, and some blame a cultural meme, so to speak, generated by a 1960 novel Kuroi Jukai by Seichō Matsumoto, which centered on Aokigahara as the location for a series of mysterious murders. (Jukai means Sea of Trees, and is another name for the forest.)
The phenomenon of suicides in the forest long predates this book, however.
A sign post at Aokigahara Forest pleading with visitors “your life is precious”.
Local government has taken to posting both Japanese and English language warning signs and heartfelt requests for the depressed people who find themselves there, to seek assistance rather than end their lives. T
here is also an annual body search that takes places to comb the forest for that year’s victims.
There are other places around the world that are relatively famous for their apparent connection to suicides, though not all pertain to human suffering.
Overtoun House is a beautiful 19-century country estate in Dunbartonshire, Scotland.
It sits on a hillside overlooking the River Clyde, and offers picturesque gardens and walking paths.
It also offers one of the most mysterious bridges in all of Britain, perhaps even the world. Overtoun Bridge, as it’s known, is an arched stone bridge along an approach road to the Overtoun burn.
The surface of the bridge stands 15 meters (50 feet) above a shallow waterfall, and for some as yet unknown reason, an estimated 600 dogs have leapt to their death over the edge of that bridge.
The apparently suicidal dogs are said to have taken the plunge from Overtoun Bridge at the rate of one per month, since about 1970 (though possibly before this date too).
Nearly all of the dogs who’ve jumped have died upon impact with the ground below, though some have survived the fall, only to again attempt the jump upon reaching the bridge platform when rescued, or upon return visits on later dates.
Overtoun Bridge
You may be asking yourself, why exactly a dog would wish to seemingly commit suicide.
After all, the saying “it’s a dog’s life” is meant to highlight the fact that domesticated dogs usually have a pretty easy life, so what could they be depressed about?
Let’s not forget that depression isn’t a choice, and doesn’t depend on miserable life circumstances to strike someone down, but the nature of the disease notwithstanding, canine existentialism hasn’t been explored academically to anyone’s satisfaction.
Other explanations have been suggested though.
Early investigators considered everything from strange isolated wind gusts, to electromagnetic energy creating confusion in the dog’s brain, to an ultrasonic sound originating from a nearby nuclear power facility, to a scent or sight perceived only by the dog, luring them to their deaths.
Dr. David Sands, an animal psychologist with the Scottish SPCA investigated the area and inconclusively concluded that it must have been something the dogs heard or smelled that compelled them to act, though he was unable to identify what that thing might be.
Later, animal habitat expert David Sexton, explored the grounds around the base of the bridge and finally discovered that the area was, and continues to be, a nesting place for a large number of mice and mink.
Sexton theorises that the smell of male mink urine wafting to the bridge platform is causing a sensory overload in certain dogs, which compels them to seek the source of the odour without, obviously, a thought to their own safety.
As yet, no one has provided a conclusive explanation, and though the idea that these dogs are experiencing some instinctual predatory reaction triggered by the scent of another animal is compelling, for many people it seems difficult to believe that an otherwise intelligent animal would fail to see the risk in jumping off the side of a bridge 15 meters above a small river.
However you choose to look at these mysteries, the only aspect of the phenomenon that’s truly clear, is that both people and beloved canines are dying, and those deaths are somehow connected to these locations by more than just mere happenstance.
[1] Via Reuters & DailyMail Online. The suicide map of the world: Korea, Russia and India see the most citizens kill themselves – while America is ‘average’http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-suicide-rate-800-000-year.html#ixzz3CfA5hc2A
My guess would be that the dogs do not know how far the drop is on the other side.
The Quantum Effect of Anaesthesia: A New Theory of Consciousness
One of the things we take for granted in this age of technology and science, is the medical knowledge that has been hard-won to the toll of billions of deaths over the centuries.
The world’s respective medical establishments are advancing the front lines of research and patient care (usually), but for the general public there are some basic concepts in the endeavour that, while we know they exist, we don’t generally have any idea how they work.
Of course, we trust that those who practice medicine do know precisely what they are doing and how their techniques, medications, and surgical procedures work. Sometimes though, that trust is a little misplaced.
I don’t mean to overstate the matter. Doctors the world over can be trusted, generally speaking, though there are always going to be individual exceptions.
And I don’t mean to make you fear for the state of the medical establishment, but there are some things in general medicine that even our best doctors and scientists don’t really understand.
In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a whopping total of 51.4 million inpatient surgical procedures in the US. Statistics Canada reports 2.9 million inpatient procedures (including births) over 2013.
The vast majority of those millions of medical procedures required the use of some form of anaesthetic, whether general or local. What if I told you that no one really knows how anaesthetics work?
That’s kind of a loaded statement, and it requires some explanation.
Anaesthesiology is a highly specialised field, anaesthesiologists are dedicated to only that field. There are three basic kinds of anaesthetics, categorised by the goals doctors want to achieve with their use.
Those goals are:
- Hypnosis — which entails unconsciousness and memory loss (not to be confused with the common use of the term hypnosis)
- Analgesia — which entails a loss or reduction of sensation and autonomic reflex (think Advil)
- Muscle relaxation — often used in therapeutic settings
- Analgesia — which entails a loss or reduction of sensation and autonomic reflex (think Advil)
- Muscle relaxation — often used in therapeutic settings
Each of those categories lists several drugs that are used to bring about the desired effect.
Sometimes all of those goals or end-points are needed for a procedure, other times only a single type is needed.
It depends on both the nature of the procedure (open cavity surgery, endoscopic surgery, etc.) and on risk factors in the patient — of which there are many.
General anaesthetics, most of which achieve both hypnosis and analgesia, are the ones that offer us the biggest mystery.
Surgery in the best of conditions is a risky venture, and while the medical community has a solid understanding of how to apply anaesthetics to achieve those goals safely, that understanding has been gained, more or less, through a process of trial and error, rather than an understanding the chemical mechanics of the drugs.
Traditionally it’s been thought that the drugs have what’s called a pharmacological effect on neural receptors and/or ion channels in the brain.
That means, effectively, that it was thought that chemical reactions in the brain were the active mechanism, though it’s never been adequately described through observation, for obvious reasons.
Recent research, however, has shown that this may not be the case.
Dr. Luca Turin, and a team from the Alexander Flemming Research Center in Athens, Greece, has completed a study of the effect common general anaesthetics have on drosophila, also known as fruit flies.
Turin and his team conducted a complicated experiment using two groups of flies, in which they essentially froze the flies (to immobilise them) and then exposed them to anaesthetics.
They then measured electron spin resonance (ESR) in their brains. One group showed a pronounced increase in ESR, while the other group — which were a mutated species bred to be immune or highly resistant to anaesthetic effects — showed no increase at all.[1]
That may not mean much to you at all, and certainly it is a difficult thing to understand, but in simple terms, this means that the many various drugs that cause anaesthetic unconsciousness are actually employing a quantum effect on our brains. And that’s fairly big news.
You may recall, a few years ago, Anaesthesiologist Dr. Stuart Hameroff and Theoretical Physicist Dr. Roger Penrose presented a theory of quantum consciousness, called Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR).
Their theory has met with a good deal of criticism and skepticism, though it certainly hasn’t been defeated.
Orch-OR says, in the most basic terms, that consciousness is the result of the state of sub-atomic particles in the brain.
It is a very complex idea, but at first glance it seems to be supported by Turin’s research and conclusions.
To be clear, as pointed out by Dr. Turin (below), the two theories are quite different, however; if chemicals can have an electronic effect on our brains, the result of which is unconsciousness, as Turin claims they do, then it follows that consciousness is fundamentally electronic in nature (in this context, electronic refers electron spin resonance, or the quantum state of electrons).
At it’s very core, the Orch-OR theory makes the same claim, but in a different way.
Hameroff has weighed in on Turin’s experiment, and rightfully questions the methodology used.
Since the flies had to be cooled to just above freezing to keep them immobilised (which was necessary for measuring ESR), the lowered temperature and the altered physiology of the flies could have had an unknown effect on their response to the anaesthetic.
Turin admits that there are flaws in this experiment and is continuing with his research, but the simple fact that the two groups of flies had different ESR rates under the same conditions suggests quite strongly that he’s on the right track.
The broader meaning of these conclusions, whether flawed or not, is uncertain.
If either Turin, or Hameroff and Penrose (or both) turn out to be correct, it could revolutionise neuroscience, and it could both provide a lot of answers for some of the world’s biggest and longest pondered questions, and it could present a lot more questions.
1. Luca Turin, et al. Electron spin changes during general anesthesia in Drosophila. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1404387111