Quilt dreams

Nothing paranormal has happened to me at all in recent weeks except this: Can you see a man's pouty face in the quilt in the picture on the left? I can. There's his red bottom lip and the oval of his chin. There's the curved line of his forehead to the right, and his blue and white nose.

I'm not sure what it means but there it was, clear as anything, when I woke up two mornings ago.

Why did this face emerge in the quilt as I lay under it dreaming? Is it the face of the man I will eventually marry? If so, I will need to start hanging out at Cirque de Soleil. I can't think of anywhere else I might meet a man with a patchwork face.

Alternatively, I could hire a police sketch artist to show how this man might look in real life so I'll be able to recognise him.

Filed under: not paranormal

Messages from America

just quickly, messages from the universe came thick and fast in america. i got 's' 't' 'r' 'o' 'f' 'i' 'i' through either missing or doubled letter misspellings. maybe america is closer to some sort of 'portal' for messages from the universe. maybe because i was more relaxed i was more able to see the messages. or maybe i am just becoming more alert to them in general. below are some examples of the missing or extra letters.

so far i've got the message 'it is for...' from the letters, i will keep working on it xxx ps, couldn't work out how to put this on the 'msgs from the universe' pg L xxx

One of our agents is missing

It has been very quiet here at SBI as one of our agents is missing. She has been spotted in America.

Small Stranded Angel

I looked out of my window late at night a few weeks ago, before the blossom started to flower on the trees, and I saw this. I thought it might be a dead swan or a seagull, or even a small stranded angel that had got trapped in the branches and died. Worse, it might have been killed and hung there deliberately as a warning.

I once went to a Shamanic Dreaming workshop in north London where I was asked to visualise the animal guide that represented my creativity, and then visualise where it lived. It was a magnificently beautiful, oversized tiger that prowled in a cave under this tree at the bottom of the garden and growled when I didn't do enough work. Above ground, it was a blue tit that fed from the nuts and seeds I left out for it on my apple tree and watched over me to make sure I was happy.

Seeing this dead bird hanging from my 'creativity tree' I was frightened, wondering what message the universe was trying to send me.

When I woke up the next morning and got a closer look, I saw that it was only a broken paper lantern, and I remembered this video of UFOs in Peckham in 2008. Oh my days!

Filed under: not paranormal

Paranormal Pen Lid?

I recently attended a lecture on psychic fakery by renowned sceptic Richard Wiseman, a magician who is now a professor of psychology. The lecture was very interesting and he even did a few magic tricks with a coin. You can follow his blog here. You can vote on whether or not you think a particular YouTube clip is fake, and so on. Obviously we won't be having anything like that here.

Midway through the lecture, noticing a sticky brown smear in the palm of my left hand, and surreptiously bringing my palm close to my face to see what it was (not stigmata, obviously) I realised that it was chocolate. I was able to trace the chocolate to my pen lid, which I had been holding in my left hand while I wrote with my right. It seems that, almost as a provocation to the subject matter in hand, my pen lid had begun to spontaneously produce chocolate.

Was it a paranormal event? Please examine the photo on the right and draw your own conclusions. Obviously it's a bit blurry but then, as we know, paranormal activity is resistent to capture. If you want to believe, you just have to believe.

Units of Forgetfulness

You and I have been out and about a lot in recent days - you've been working, I've been going to parties - and nothing paranormal has happened. That, in itself, seems quite paranormal, unless you take the view that paranormal things only happen to people who stay in most of the time by themselves.

One thing that caught my eye last week was the report in the Guardian newspaper that West Midlands and Surrey police are offering a £1.5bn contract for private firms to investigate crime and detain suspects. Do you think we should tender for it? I would enjoy the investigation but I wouldn't enjoy detaining suspects. I imagine it would be a bit like having builders in the house - lots of cups of tea and coffee, and trips to Tesco up the road to buy them chocolate biscuits and muffins. Of course, builders are usually here by consent. What is the etiquette when detaining suspects? Presumably the promise of a blueberry muffin would not be enough to keep the suspects here if they didn't wish to be detained. I could lock them in the cellar. But actually I'd hate to keep someone here against their will. You know how I feel about animal rights. It would not be possible to speak out so vehemently against the imprisonment of animals in circuses and zoos while keeping suspects detained in the cellar on behalf of the West Midlands or Surrey police.

No sooner had I started writing this post, complaining that nothing paranormal had happened, than something occurred that was very mysterious (frightening, even). I went to make a bread-based snack to keep my spirits up, to help me finish writing the allocated 1000 words of my novel today. I found the bread easily enough, but I couldn't find any almond butter to put on it, even though I'd bought a jar of it the other day. It ought to have been in the 'dry goods' cupboard by the washing machine but it wasn't there. I looked in the fridge and found it in there, of all places, with the cellophane wrapper still intact. And yet I knew I had opened it and eaten some of the contents (very almondy, if you 're wondering how it tastes.) Weird! Self-healing cellophane! We could make a fortune... However, further investigation revealed a second jar of almond butter in the fridge. This one had been opened.

Remember when I thought I had bought a jar of almond butter, couldn't find it and went out and replaced it? Now I have two jars of almond butter. But why? What does it all mean? One possible explanation is that the original jar disappeared in some kind of 'Brigadoon' circumstances for 17 days, only to reappear this afternoon. Another is that the universe is calling out to me, telling me that there is plenty of paranormal activity, if only I look closely enough. Another explanation is that it's a sign of forgetfulness. I don't know how many jars of almond butter I would have to buy before calling in medical professionals, or even if such people measure forgetfulness in units of jars of almond butter.

I would like to do further research on units of forgetfulness. I think of the heyday of science as being the time when scientists were inventing new units of measurement, don't you? The kelvin, the watt, the pascal, the ampere, the ohm, the volt and the joule. I would like to give my name to a unit of forgetfulness, or to anything scientific and esoteric.

Case no 0004 - Dog Mind Meld

Our attention was drawn to a cold case from 1990 by our friend Mr. Terence Dackombe in the comments of a previous post:

Here are the facts of the case as explained by TD:

"Naturally I have been very impressed by your extensive record of solving mysteries. Thus I am awarding you a multi-million pound* contract to help me resolve a mystery that has troubled me for many years.

In 1990, I travelled, by car, with my then girlfriend and her dog to Worthing. We went for a stroll in the sea; I was wearing tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt. I had my keys, including my car keys in the pocket of the tracksuit bottoms. The pocket was rather shallow and when I emerged from the water and we had sat down, I noticed my keys were no longer in my pocket.

I imagined all sorts of possibilities for the next step - train journey home, pick up spare keys, return to Worthing and so on.

However, I said I would re-trace my steps. My girlfriend said it was a forlorn hope as we had no idea where we had entered the sea or retracted from it. I walked in a straight line from where we were seated, walked out into the sea to about the height I imagined we had reached, looked down and picked up my keys which were lying on the sea bed, about four feet below.

We returned, triunphantly, to Berkshire, with no need for spare keys. Was this a simple piece of good fortune, or was there 'special forces' at work?

It was a warm June day; we had never been to Worthing before; no other party was involved; the dog was useless and just sat down looking bored.

*May be re-negotiated.

Terence Dackombe, February 2012"

Our initial response:

Mmmm, this is a very interesting case. I know we said we were 'not for hire' but personally I'd consider doing anything for a million pounds, even a headstand.

Key words here seem to be: straight line, keys, girlfriend, Berkshire, Worthing.

Other significant elements might be: warm day in June, tracksuit bottoms, dog.

I do think it important that you recall the dog 'was useless and just sat down looking bored.' In fact, dogs usually like retrieving things, and they are seldom bored, which is why they make such cheerful companions.

It seems strange that the dog didn't join in the 'game' of looking for the keys. Did it affect looking bored while actually using special powers to take control of your mind and direct you to the exact spot where the keys had been lost?

I need to confer with my colleague but I believe that special forces were at work - a kind of dog/man mind meld.

I would categorise this under 'paranormal'.

We are trying to establish SBI's reputation as we are newly-established, and so we will waive our fee for this one.

We got in touch with TD ('Sir Terence') via Twitter to make further enquiries about the dog. We felt that if it was his girlfriend's dog, it might have been jealous of him. The response was significant:



It transpires that the dog was a Jack Russell called Rambo. Jack Russells, as we know, are highly intelligent:



So, it was TD's birthday! Very interesting. Presumably Mary-Ann had been making a fuss of him that day.

Conclusion: The dog, Rambo, was jealous of TD and wanted to discredit him. Rambo used some kind of mind meld technique that day in Worthing. First, Rambo caused TD to lose the keys in the sea. Next, the dog propelled TD towards the sea in a straight line, like a remote controlled human toy, to retrieve them. The 'bored' appearance of the dog was due to intense concentration.

The straight line is important: humans rarely walk in a straight line; it would be more usual to use a frantic wiggle to cover as much ground as possible in the hunt for the keys. It emphasises TD's robotic, controlled state. Also, the dog couldn't resist making it clear that he knew exactly where the keys were, by sending TD directly to their location without deviation.

By using TD like a toy, Rambo was attempting to demonstrate his superiority to him to Mary-Ann. The dog's intention was to ruin the relationship.

Categorised as: Paranormal.

[n.b. pictures posted by a model.]