I was having a a fascinating discussion today with friends regarding ghostly and paranormal phenomenon and the fabric of time. As an experienced paranormal investigator I wouldn’t normally theorise without definite scientific evidence and I shouldn’t really even use the word “ghost”, “spirit” or even ‘haunted’ since they’re not officially scientifically proven. I would never do this while conducting a professional paranormal investigation as it could potentially produce a lot of criticism from parapsychologists, but in this article I’ve decided to make an exception to this rule.

I know that there are allegedly 2 main types of paranormal phenomenon (unexplained phenomenon) that’s linked to so called ‘haunted’ locations:

1….Spiritual phenomenon – this is when there’s evidence of an intelligent and fully concious being that allegedly exists in another dimension that’s parallel to ours which is sometimes called the Etheric plane or even the spirit world, but there’s also allegedly other realms of spiritual existence including the Astral Plane. This spiritual ‘being’ is normally thought to be the spirit of a person who has lived on Earth and passed away, but some people also believe that other intelligent entities also exist and some people may even call some evil non-human entities “demons”, but I’m rather sceptical about their existence without seeing any hard evidence so far. In my opinion there’s certainly plenty of evidence of Spirits interacting with living people on request and many people believe they can use their psychic abilities to communicate directly with Spirits through clairvoyance (means ‘clear seeing’), clairaudience (means ‘clear hearing’) and/or clairsentience (means ‘clear sensing’). I’ve personally seen an overwhelming amount of evidence over the years to strongly suggest that concious Spirits certainly do exist, but unfortunately unless someone has seen this evidence first hand, they will usually remain sceptical.

2….Ghostly phenomenon – this is generally considered to be a replay of past events that for some unknown reason can repeat itself at any time in the same physical space, but no-one can yet predict when this will occur and there’s no accepted reason as to why. Often the replayed events are allegedly from a moment in time where there was a an extreme amount of emotion like absolute terror and/or death, but this isn’t always the case. This phenomenon can allegedly include seeing the “ghost” of a person from the past, but it can allegedly also include past objects too, E.g. a person might report hearing musket fire and drumming on an old battlefield. Also this phenomenon can allegedly include the movement of an object or objects that’s been repeated many many times in the past where it later repeats again, E.g. I listened to a tape recording of what sounded like a draw bridge mechanism, it was recorded at Chingle Hall in Lancashire and the tape recorder was left recording in an empty hole in the wall that once housed the original draw bridge mechanism that had long since been removed. I’ve even heard reports of objects from the past interacting with the current time frame, E.g. a visitor at Chingle Hall reported helping herself up the stairs using a hand rail, but when she went to move her hand along, it suddenly disappeared and the only hand rail was on the opposite side of the stairs. In the past a the handrail used to be located on the opposite side and was swapped over in more recent years. We know that objects aren’t concious, but ghostly apparitions of people are also generally thought not to be concious beings as they cannot respond to communication and they always go about a fixed path.

There is another type of phenomenon that allegedly exists and that’s residual energy. Many people believe they can feel residual energy from objects or places. For instance, one might allegedly feel the sheer grief relatives felt in a children’s burial ground and this energy can slowly dissipate as one slowly walks away from the area. One can sometimes allegedly feel bad or even ill in an area where there once was a gruesome murder, I once walked a dog around such an area and the dog would always bark in a distressed manner in the exact spot even though it was many years since the murder occurred, was the dog picking up on residual energy, was it perhaps picking up on spiritual energy, was the dog barking for another reason or was it just a big coincidence? Well I strongly doubt it was a coincidence and the dog consistently barked every time at this spot no matter what on at least 50 occasions which virtually rules out a coincidence. I also have to admit that I’ve also felt such energy and I therefore personally believe that residual energy exists, but it’s also possible that this energy could be the same energy that can ultimately produce ghostly phenomenon.

The Big Question:

I have personally witnessed what people who say are replays of events from the past which is often known as ghostly phenomenon, but the big question I am asking is when witnessing such phenomena, am I really witnessing just a replay of events that’s similar to watching a video cassette recording, or am I witnessing the real and unique event that is actually crossing through the boundaries of time?

My Theory:

We are spiritual beings and we live in a specific time frame that is controlled by our perception. Our conciousness is generally located within our physical body during our waking life and our physical body exists in our perceived time frame that we call “now”, but even during our waking life our perception of time can change. I can say this is true since our perception of the passing of time is totally different when we are asleep or unconscious, plus time appears to generally travel much faster as we get older. When we were young children, the school Summer holidays seemed like forever and ever, but now at 41 years old at the time of writing, 6 weeks appears to travel much faster than when I was for instance 6 years old. Also our perception of the passing of time is also faster when we are enjoying ourselves and slower when we’re bored. Now when someone is hypnotised or is in deep meditation, things can become very interesting indeed. People can allegedly have their perception of time taken into the past where they see everything as it was then and sometimes this time can allegedly even include a time during a past life (past life regression).

I question what is now? Here’s the complicated bit, I believe that all time exists in parallel at all times, now is only our personal perception of an instant in time. For example, I suggest that some people are currently perceiving time as 1066AD while the Battle of Hastings is currently being fought and to them that is the present (now), while other people are experiencing time in other eras where they all have different perceptions of the present (now). We are usually perceiving time during our own physical existence as the present moment, but I believe it’s also possible to perceive different time frames using deep meditation techniques where one can allegedly take their perception out of their own physical body (sometimes known as Astral Projection which I know from experience is definitely possible). As a non physical and spiritual being, we can instantly travel to anywhere in the universe and beyond into other realms like the Astral Plane, but I also believe that we can travel to different time frames by altering our perception and many people report this as possible. Only experienced Astral Projectors succeed and remember their personal experience of other time frames since as soon as one thinks of, or feels the physical body, our perception is immediately transferred back. When one dies, our perception of time is likely to be totally different.

I believe that sometimes past events can ‘fall through’ time to partially also exist in the future. I can’t fully explain why this happens, but when this phenomenon occurs people and/or objects can be seen, heard, smelt, touched and/or even tasted on a future date. They always occupy exactly the same space, E.g. A ghostly apparition can be seen walking through a wall if the wall didn’t exist in their time frame or the ‘ghost’ could be seen walking half way into the floor if the floor was at a different height in their time frame. Strong emotion, fear or death can often provide the energy required to create this ‘cross time’ phenomenon, but there’s other occasions this can also occur that remains unexplained. Most people believe that the ghosts of people aren’t concious, well if this theory is correct, this isn’t technically true since they are fully concious in a past time frame to our perception of time. If you see such an apparition, you are therefore witnessing the actual person moving in their time frame. Similarly, if you hear musket fire on an old battle field, I believe you are listening the the actual musket fire in a past time frame and it’s not a recording that repeats itself at all.

Now here’s one more brain twister, if the above is true, then the people from our past are consciously living out their lives while we are consciously living out our own lives in our time frame. The point is, our history is already written as if history changed, it would completely change our current existence. Now our perception of now would also be in the history of people living in our future which would mean that everything we do and every event is also already written and in theory cannot be changed. If this was true, then how can someone be blamed for their mistakes or how could even a murderer be blamed as they would have no control over pre-written events? Well it’s also possible that there’s an infinite number of realities, but in truth, I believe that our mind and/or brain just isn’t capable of understanding everything about our universe and existence. In a similar way, a dog will never ever understand that the Earth is a spherical shape and a dog will never understand or ever contemplate that air contains various elements that we cannot see, mainly Oxygen and Nitrogen. It wouldn’t matter how long one tried to teach a dog these simple concepts of our universe because a dog’s mind and/or brain just isn’t capable of computing this information. In the same way I believe there are more complex concepts of our universe that we can never possibly understand and the concept of infinity is certainly bordering on our understanding as we cannot compute infinite distance, time or even an infinite number of universes, but there will be other much more complex concepts that we won’t even be capable of contemplating. It’s possible that more advanced ‘beings’ could understand these much more complex concepts and many people would probably call such ‘beings’ “Gods” or simply “God”, but similarly how we can’t explain to a dog what we understand, they wouldn’t be-able to explain these concepts to us even if they wanted to.

I’d be very interested to hear other people’s views on this subject, you’re very welcome to leave comments…

Original Article:

It’s important that any respectable paranormal group has an infra-red night vision camcorder and for many years paranormal groups have been able to rely on Sony to provide Night Shot Plus or Super Night Shot Plus on all of it’s range of camcorders from budget models right through to very expensive professional models. The big problem is that for some reason Sony have recently at the time of writing decided to release a new range of camcorders and unfortunately NONE have infra-red night vision (Super Night Shot Plus or Night Shot Plus). After enquiring and investigating further, I have found out that Sony have phased out Super Night Shot Plus completely and this is terrible news for paranormal groups like Birmingham Investigators of the Unknown to which I’m a founder member. Although we currently have a night vision camcorder, replacing it in future will become increasingly difficult. I cannot find any other make or model of camcorder that has infra-red facilities within a reasonable household budget, but if anyone knows different, please let me know. Apparently the night vision technology is patented by Sony although I cannot confirm this 100%, if this is the case it’s makes it much harder for other manufacturers to fill the gap in the market and it’s questionable that this gap is big enough to even get the attention of other manufacturers.

So why have Sony withdrawn Super Night Shot Plus?

Well I can’t find any official information about this what-so-ever on the Sony website and for some reason they appear to have been very quiet about this. It wasn’t until my friend went to purchase a new Sony camcorder recently that we realised there was a problem getting IR night vision.

I can only guess the reason for it’s withdrawal, but I suspect it’s something to do with new Carl Zeiss 60x optical lenses which are on all the latest Sony camcorders at the time of writing that don’t have IR night vision. We also have an old Sony DCR 91E camcorder with only a 20x optical zoom, yet the IR night vision is amazing and stays in focus most of the time. We also have a more modern Sony DCR 110E camcorder with a 40x optical zoom, but there are problems with the IR night vision as it regularly goes out of focus. I suspect that Sony had loads of complaints from customers using the 40x Optical lenses with IR night vision and it’s likely that the new 60x lenses would have caused even more problems with night vision and because of this Sony decided to withdraw the feature. Sony have probably thought that more customers would want a greater zoom lens than IR night vision on their latest camcorders and that having a 60x optical zoom would be a greater selling point. It’s a terrible shame that Sony haven’t released at least one model of camcorder with Super Night Shot Plus that’s within a reasonable budget for paranormal investigating and other people who also need to film in pitch darkness (0 lux). A very powerful zoom lens isn’t so important to a paranormal group, but Infra-red night vision is absolutely critical.

What will paranormal groups do in future?

I’m hoping Sony will back down or another manufacturer will start producing IR Night Vision camcorders eventually, but unfortunately I doubt this will happen in the near future.

At first paranormal groups will be able to buy 2nd hand or refurbished Sony IR night vision camcorders quite easily. In the future however I suspect that the 2nd hand value of these camcorders will increase in value as they become fewer and far between. Eventually these camcorders will become very out of date with technology, but paranormal groups will be forced to hang onto them and get them repaired for as long as possible.

It is possible to convert existing camcorders to record infra-red using an IR filter and there’s already at least one company in the USA offering to convert non night vision camcorders for people at a cost which is at the time of writing rather expensive, but in the future hopefully the price will come down with more competition.

Paranormal groups can still use CCTV equipment as IR night vision will always be an integral feature of CCTV security surveillance.

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