At his burial some curious and suggestive words were used by the presiding rabbi: "HOUDINI POSSESSED A WONDROUS POWER THAT HE NEVER UNDERSTOOD AND WHICH HE NEVER REVEALED TO ANYONE IN LIFE!

The creator of Sherlock Holes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Harry Houdini were strange bedfellows. Doyle was a contemporary of the world's greatest magician and escape artist, who continually battled his friend over the legitimacy of life after death, and the reality of spiritualism. Doyle was a "true believer," while Houdini made it his "mission" to denounce just about all things preternatural.

Doyle was convinced - from what he personally witnessed and what others confided to him - that Houdini could read minds, dematerialize, possessed supernatural strength, and was guided by angelic forces which shielded him from harm even during the most dangerous of escape performances which likely would have caused death to others.

Doyle stated that Houdini had once remarked, "There are some of my feats which my own wife does not know the secret of." And a famous Chinese conjurer who had seen Houdini perform added, "This is not a trick, it is a gift." Sadly, many of Houdini's feats died with him, even though they would have been an invaluable asset. "What can cover all these facts," states Doyle, "save that there was some element in his power which was peculiar to himself, that could only point to a psychic element -- in a word, that he was a medium."

Here is both sides of the story -- in the actual words of the famed Sherlock Holmes originator and Houdini himself, who went out of his way to create the impression that fakes and phonies were afoot everywhere in the "shady world" of table tapping, levitating trumpets, spirit photography, slate writing, as well as the materialization of ectoplasmic forms in the darkening shadows of the seance room.

This incredible book and FREE AUDIO CD is now available exclusively for Conspiracy Journal subscribers at the special price of only $22.00, plus $5.00 shipping. 

- STRANGE SKY QUAKES DEPARTMENT -

Fayetteville, NY Rattled by Mysterious, Loud Boom

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The world's always thronged with monsters and marvels, but have we been looking for them in the wrong places?

Once upon a time, though poss­ibly not so long ago as you might like to kid yourself, the world was full of wonders: monsters, freaks, fairies, unknown animals and weird ‘technologies’ such as the carbuncle, a precious stone that glowed with its own light and so could be used to illuminate the marvellous palaces of strange races that no one had yet met. However, if they existed at all, these things were actually quite a long way away. They were literally ‘beyond the pale’, when ‘pale’ meant a perimeter fence and so, by extension, known territory.

Frankly, I don’t have the slightest interest in what the carbuncle might have been, whether the griffin was a misidentified triceratops fossil or even whether fairies were remnants of an extinct race. What is at issue here has less to do with facts than beliefs, so for the sake of simplicity let’s lump all this stuff together and just call it the ‘Other’. So, where was the Other to be found? Essentially, the answer to that is not here… not within the bounds of the villages, towns or cities where, throughout history, ordinary people have lived their normal lives. And why was that? Probably because, especially in past eras, ‘normal life’ was so grindingly mundane that people needed to be able to believe in at least the possibility of various wonders that transcended everyday reality, if only as an escapist fantasy. And fantasies best retain their glamour, of course, if they’re placed a safe distance away, where they can’t be checked and proven not to exist: somewhere outside the known world.

Originally, of course, when people hardly travelled at all, the known world was correspondingly small, and the fairies might well have lived under the neighbouring hill, or all kinds of weird stuff might go on beyond the next forest. Back then, that sort of thing would only have been recorded in oral tradition, but when civilisation arrives, with written records, we get something rather more concrete to work with… if such nebulos­ities can ever be described as ‘concrete’. But still we find the Other lurking at the fringes: beyond the borders of empire or, ultimately, at the ends of the Earth itself.

For the Greeks and Romans, the Other was mostly to be found in India or Africa (often referred to at that point as ‘Libya’). So, for example, back in the 5th century BC Herodotus wrote (Histories, 4.191) that: “The land westward of Libya is extremely hilly, and wooded, and filled with wild beasts; in this region there are giant snakes, and bears, and vipers, and asses with horns, and dog-headed men, and headless men with eyes in their breasts…” Now, you might think that, actually, what lies west of Africa is the Atlantic Ocean, but that’s hardly the point: “beyond Libya” is outside the confines of the known world, and so a likely place for all sorts of wonders to occur. India, largely terra incognita too, was just as weird, with the Sciapodes, who had such large feet they fell on the ground at noon and used their own feet for shade, people with long ears, cyclopean eyes, and so on. And as for the land of the Seres, as the Chinese were then known, who lived even further on…

Actually, the ancient Chinese had distinctly par­allel views, recording similar marvels in the Shanhaijing, ‘The Classic of Mountains and Seas’; and again it’s notable that these mountains and seas are actually placed at the edges of the world, beyond the reach of empire. The same sort of thing continues centuries later with mediæval Western travel writers like Sir John Mandeville and Marco Polo, who placed entire mythical kingdoms, such as that of Prester John, in the unexplored wastes of Asia. As always, the Other is placed just too far away for its authenticity to be verified.

Gradually, of course, the world became fully explored and such marvels disapp­eared for lack of somewhere to place them. The Other still exists, however, though more often disguised these days as certain types of fortean phenomena… yet once again, it frequently comes from, or is only to be found, somewhere quite difficult to access. For example, Mokele-mbembe (see FT86:32–35; 145:30–32), the putat­ive dinosaur-survivor, is said to survive only in the dense and unexplored jungles of the Congo (though as my garden shed appears on Google Earth, it’s hard to imagine something the size of a brontosaurus escaping notice in this day and age). Again, the phantom airships at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (see FT196:46–49; 198:48–50 and passim) were frequently said to be piloted by foreigners, or if the pilots were American, to have come from the other side of the country… always somewhere far enough away to be uncheckable. By 1947, of course, it was fairly obvious that unidentified aerial machines were unlikely to originate anywhere on Earth (unless they happened to be Nazi flying saucers from similarly inaccessible subterranean bases beneath the poles), and so the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis was born; all the more wonderfully convenient because it was impossible to verify, just like all those old Greek and Roman tales.

At this point, it might be useful to look, in very general terms, at the development of science fiction, and particularly the interplanetary romance. From the earliest surviving examples, by Antonius Diogenes and Lucian of Samosata, back in the 2nd century AD, through until the late 19th-century works of Verne and Wells, fictional space-travellers rarely went beyond the Moon, which was still conceived as being able to support life in some form. With the early 20th cent­ury, we find the horizons expanding to include ancient, canal-riven Mars and the cloudy, jungle planet Venus… locations remaining popular until the 1950s, when it was finally realised that they were actually uninhabitable. But by then SF had already moved on beyond the solar system, first with the aid of multi-generational long-flight ships and later with the faster-than-light drive, to create the interstellar romance. Here we see the same sort of process: the more we explore and understand our local territory, the more both the Other, and the settings of our fantasies, recede into the distance, until they’re eventually to be found mainly beyond the celestial seas of near-Space.

By the mid-1960s, though, the physical difficulties of interstellar travel were becoming more apparent, and the SF-universe began to implode, thanks largely to writers of the ‘New Wave’ based around the Michael Moorcock-edited magazine New Worlds. From here on, the emphasis switched away from space-opera adventures on other planets to dys­topian tales of social breakdown, drugs, near-futures and parallel universes, etc., as it finally dawned on people that our interior worlds and parochial societies were actually rather more interesting than completely fictitious alien worlds. Human, rather than non-human territory had become the place to explore.

The parallels with ufology are easy to see here. The contactees of the early 1950s, such as George Adamski, allegedly met human-like people from Mars and, more particularly, the myst­erious, cloud-enshrouded Venus, both of which were, in the popular imagin­ation at least, still considered habitable. Only later were UFOs thought to come from such locations as the Pleiades, and it’s interesting to note that, as their homeworlds recede into the distance, so the visitors become progressively more alien: hardly anyone ever tried to place little grey aliens on Venus, after all.

It’s also notable, though, that by the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis as an explan­ation for UFOs was starting to collapse, particularly in Europe, and we began to see the rise of other approaches to such encounters, most notably the psychosocial one, which finds just as much of interest in the witnesses and their social milieu as in the perceived phenomena themselves. As was the case with SF, the emphasis switched away from interstellar orig­ins and toward the human dimension of UFO encounters.

This is not to deny the existence of the Other, of course… or perhaps more to the point, the place of the Other in the way we construct our worldview, as it seems to have been present throughout history and across the globe. It does rather imply, however, that we’ve been looking for it in the wrong place. It’s less likely to be found outside us, literally existing somewhere over the horizon; instead it’s far more likely to be found inside our heads. And, ultimately, that’s probably a far more interesting space to explore than anything that might be lurking out there in the Pleiades.

Source: Fortean Times
http://www.forteantimes.com/features/commentary/3298/receding_horizons.html

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The world’s largest electronics firm has highlighted potential dangers the technology poses to pregnant women, the elderly, children and people with serious medical conditions.

The Korean manufacturer, whose 3D sets will hit British stores in the coming days, warned of an array of side effects viewers could suffer.

The devices could trigger epileptic fits or cause ailments ranging from altered vision and dizziness to nausea, cramps, convulsions and involuntary movements such as eye or muscle twitching, it said.

Those who have been deprived of sleep or who have been drinking alcohol are also advised to avoid watching 3D television.

The scale of the warning threatens to overshadow the launch of 3D, which has been billed as the future for television by manufacturers and broadcasters.

The technology has been given a boost by 3D blockbuster films such as Avatar and Alice in Wonderland and is being pushed by Sky for enhancing its football coverage.

To view television in 3D, users wear special glasses which bombard the eyes and brain with a succession of flashing images that appear for a fraction of a second.

However, the technology puts unusual strain on the body, hence Samsung has advised viewers to take regular breaks to prevent suffering side effects.

Samsung’s statement, posted on its website, says: “Children and teenagers may be more susceptible to health issues associated with viewing in 3D and should be closely supervised when viewing these images.

“Some viewers may experience an epileptic seizure or stroke when exposed to certain flashing images or lights contained in certain television pictures or video games. If you suffer from, or have a family history of epilepsy or strokes, please consult with a medical specialist before using the 3D function.

“Even those without a personal or family history of epilepsy or stroke may have an undiagnosed condition that can cause photosensitive epileptic seizures.

“Pregnant women, the elderly, sufferers of serious medical conditions, those who are sleep deprived or under the influence of alcohol should avoid utilising the unit’s 3D functionality.

“Viewing 3D television may also cause motion sickness, perceptual after effects, disorientation, eye strain and decreased postural stability. It is recommended that users take frequent breaks to lessen the potential of these effects.

“If your eyes show signs of fatigue or dryness or if you have any of the above symptoms, immediately discontinue use of this device and do not resume using it for at least thirty minutes after the symptoms have subsided.”

“Watching TV while wearing 3D glasses for an extended period of time may cause a headache or fatigue. If you experience a headache, fatigue or dizziness, stop viewing TV and rest.”

Source: Telegraph (UK)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7596241/Samsung-warns-of-
dangers-of-3D-television.html

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A one-woman mission to prove breasts don't cause earthquakes has swollen into a shirt-straining global movement preparing for the inaugural "Boobquake".

Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi angered womens' groups around the world recently when he claimed that promiscuous women were responsible for literally making the earth move.

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Sedighi said.

"What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" he asked during a prayer sermon.

"There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam's moral codes."

Iran is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries, and the cleric's unusual explanation for why the earth shakes follows a prediction by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that a quake is certain to hit Tehran and that many of its 12 million inhabitants should relocate.

Women in the Islamic Republic are required by law to cover from head to toe, but Sedighi says an increase in young women flaunting the law - and not the fact that Tehran straddles scores of fault lines - is risking the lives of the city's 12 million inhabitants.

Jennifer McCreight is determined to prove him wrong.

Since launching the "Boobquake" Facebook page, she has enlisted more than 20,000 women promising to show as much cleavage as possible on Monday, April 26. If the world doesn't then disappear into an apocalyptic fiery chasm, then Sedighi will have no option but to admit he was wrong.

"On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own," Ms McCreight wrote.

"I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty.

"With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake.

"If not, I'm sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn't rumble."

And you can now make that number 21,000 - and rising fast.

Source: News.com.au
http://www.news.com.au/technology/boobquake-determined-to-prove-
cleric-wrong/story-e6frfro0-1225856787031