ephemera

A GLIMPSE INTO THE PARANORMAL
By Pamela Apkarian-Russell

   Would you like to see into the future and know what is going to happen to you in the next ten years? Have you ever wondered why you would walk into a building or a town you had never been in before and it all looked so familiar? Have you ever thought of someone you hadn’t heard from in a long time, had the phone ring, and there they were on the phone, saying they were just thinking of you? Have you ever had a feeling not to go some place or do something, such as taking a trip on the Titanic?
   These are just a few of the many things that happen to people which gives them a feeling that there is more to this level of existence than we can see or feel. Have you ever had cold chills up and down your spine and feel like you were in a spot of very cold? Would you know a ghost if you bumped into one?
   Many people don’t believe in the paranormal. Some deny it outright. Some have had enough proof to be convinced. Regardless if you believe in the paranormal, or in metaphysics, or you feel it is all illusion and trickery, there are sufficient amounts of ephemera and thousands of books, which have been written on the subject, to keep one busy for a lifetime or two.
   Stonehenge and the great stones excite the interest of pagans the world over, as well as those who are just tourists. The amount of books written on this subject is overwhelming. Visions of Merlin with his wand outstretched levitating the great stones from the Giants Causeway in Ireland to Salisbury Plain, not far from Wales, are visions of great power which we have no scientific background for even today. Wouldn’t every antique dealer love to teleport their stock to shows, or at the very least, take it via their flying carpets?
   Tessler and Einstein thought there were time portals and a 4th dimension. One hundred years ago if you had told people that air travel would be a common every day occurrence they would have told you that you were mad or worse, an evil being or a Satanist. That is how some people felt about Goddard, which isn’t that long ago, and yet today we think of him as the founder of the space program, a man that turned Flash Gordon into reality.
   There are still some people who feel that the walk on the moon and the whole space program is diabolic trickery. As technology progresses what was once laughable becomes reality. Perhaps some day we will be able to go back and see the great pyramid with its golden eye. Until then, let’s look at the items that have made an impression on their own time.
   Mother Shipton was a seer from Knaresboro, England that predicted tunnels under the sea, people smoking a weed from another continent, etc. etc. There are pamphlets on her, postcards, and even boxes of soap powder!
   Nostradamus was one of the great seers of all time and about 2/3rds of his Predictions have come true. He has been on the best seller list for centuries!
   Edgar Casey was another great psychic who was able to help people and cured many. There are many books about him and publications from the Edgar Casey Foundation.
   Robert Calef was not, in any way, involved in the occult or the paranormal. What he did was to write a book called “More Wonders of the Invisible World” which was during the Salem Witch Trials and mocked Cotton Mather and other participants of the trials. Calef was a very daring man. He took his life in his hands and risked being called out as a witch. This book caused such a stir and made such fools out of Mather and the trial judges that it was a major cause of their cessation It may be remembered that spectral evidence was allowed at the trials, which meant that I could accuse you of murder because a ghost came to me in a dream and told me that you had! How can one argue with a ghost in someone else’s dream? It was a nightmare. Because of this book Mather never became president of Harvard, which was his life long ambition.
   Fra Savonarola had dreams that he would purge the evil from the lands of the Medici’s. He proceeded to gather together as many books as he could and burned them. Paintings and sculptures were included and the fires he saw in the city were ones he created! Michelangelo was fortunate to save many of his works from those fires.
   Madam Blavatsky was one of the great shakers and movers in the early days of Spiritualism. Even her detractors and those that say she was a great hoax cannot explain many things that she said.
   Sybil Leek along with Gerald Gardner, were two of the most influential practitioners, gurus, and writers on the subject of Wicca. Gardner put together the most important collection of paranormal artifacts and opened a museum on the Isle of Mann. When he died, the items were sold off to “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” and they spirited the items out of Britain to America. Sybil wrote books on fortune telling, but her real forte was astral projection.
   These are just a few people who over the centuries have influenced how we perceive the paranormal.
   Those who are into Masonry and have taken the time to analyze the degrees will see the definite influence of the early pagan rites.
   There are so many pamphlets and books related to this subject, it is overwhelming. The three dimensional items like crystal balls and wands, if old, and if they have a good provenance, can be very valuable. Items without a good Karma are difficult to sell.
   The paranormal, however, is much more inclusive than just works on witchcraft and Stonehenge. The Spiritualist movement in this country is still going strong and cards showing their camps in places like Lilydale in NY and Chesterfield, Indiana, show many of the major spiritualist teachers and even the spirits themselves, and are in great demand. Certainly letters and correspondence from any of the major movers on the subject of spiritualism is very much in vogue. The Druids, the Masonic order, the Rosicrucian, The Order of the Golden Dawn, are just some of the many groups that have a metaphysical component. There are photographs, and booklets, pamphlets, and music which have been produced over the lifetimes of the organizations and are eagerly looked for by researchers and members.
   Then there are ghost stories and tales of those who still roam after their bodily death. Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman believed in them and even spoke with them. Lincoln allegedly still walks troubled around the White House, as do some of the other presidents who either left things undone or are very unhappy with the state of affairs. I, for one, would love to spend a night in the Lincoln room, not for prestige but I have questions I would like to ask a certain tall man with a black beard who haunts that room as well as the oval office. Just think of the historical information we could learn and information that could be corrected or confirmed if we could do an interview with some of the great molders of civilization. What if, like Tessler and Einstein thought, there might be a way to converse with those who went before, and we used that information not only to tell our loved ones how much we cared for them but to ask questions like: Miss Lizzie Borden did you, or did you not, give your father forty wacks and if so, why? Or, Queen Elizabeth the First, had you no idea at all that Essex was being set up so he would fall from your favor? Or, Seti, I & II, Pharaohs of Egypt, just how were those Pyramids built? Or Merlin, did you levitate the stones from the Giants Causeway in Ireland to Stonehenge, and if so, how?
   Think of how much knowledge and information has been lost since mankind began to which we could we finally learn the answers.
   There are so many facets to the paranormal and so many things to collect, both serious and fantasy, that the sorting of the fact from fiction could give scholars a lifetime of labor or employment. The reading of tea leaves, coffee grinds, and the tarot would have to be left to futurists and not to the archeologists of mankind’s divinatory past. Spectral evidence might even bring a tad of respectability back to Cotton Mather, but what would one do with the perverts of the Inquisition who felt they had to justify the Maleus Malficarum?
   It’s almost Halloween, so let’s pull out the Ouija board and see if we can find out some of the answers!