The Unexplained issue 6 - Hypnosis, ESP, Black Madonnas, Black Holes, Roy Hudd!

Issue 6 cover

A new series of articles on out of the body experiences (OOBE) is the cover star for the sixth issue of The Unexplained. The illustration, by the painter and romantic poet William Blake, portrays the reunion of the soul and the physical body. Blake created the drawing for a 1813 publication of Robert Blair's poem The Grave (1743).

The Disembodied Self by Jenny Dawson introduces a widely reported phenomena in which a person leaves their physical body and views the world around them from a position divorced from their material body. Stress seems to play a role in triggering an OOBE with many people reporting an experience when on the operating table, being involved in an accident or when seriously. An incident can also strike when people are just going about their daily lives such as shopping or gardening. The phantom or astral body remaining attached to the physical body by a thin cord is also often reported.  

The introductory image for the article The Disembodied Self which depicts ba, the Egyptian depiction of the astral body.

Belief in OOBEs is widespread. A 1978 American study collected data from nearly 70 non-Western cultures and found that around 95 per cent of them expressed a belief in the phenomena. More recently the National Folklore Survey, a collaborative project between Sheffield Hallam and Hertfordshire Universities and Chapman University in America, 7% of respondents stated they had experienced an Out-of-Body Experience. Several famous writers have detailed their own OOBEs with one of the more striking being Ernest Hemmingway being hit by shrapnel during the First World War. 

"My soul or something coming right out of my body, like you'd pull a silk handkerchief out of a pocket by one corner. It flew around and then came back and went in again, and I wasn't dead anymore." (Ernest Hemmingway quoted in The Disembodied Self by Jennifer Dawson, The Unexplained 6, 1980, p.103.)

Depiction of the astral body with 'the cord' that connects to the physical body.

The run of articles about hypnosis continues to look at past life regression by examining the strange aspect that subjects remember small and humdrum facts, but often have no idea about political, sociological and culture issues of the time. The article doesn't offer a satisfactory explanation for this and instead recites several cases and how historical details were checked and verified. 

UFO Photo File offers more indistinct images of unidentified flying objects including one from a 1975 sighting in Switzerland (below). 

UFO observed in Switzerland on 26th July, 1975.

The second image from the article (below) dates from October 1965 and was taken by Deputy Sheriff Strauch on a hunting trip in Minnesota. The photo shows a bright, blurred, disc-shaped light. 

The next in the series of articles on extra-sensory perception focusses on the aspect of premonition and discusses classic cases of the phenomena. The text leads with the case of nine year old Welsh school girl Eryl Mai Jones (see below). She told her mother on 20th October, 1966 that she had dreamed that when she had gone to school it wasn't there and that 'something black had come down all over it'. The next day she went to Pantglas Junior School in Aberfan and was killed alongside 116 children and  28 adults when a half a million tons of coal waste slithered onto the school. 

She was one of many people who claimed after the disaster that they had experienced premonitions about it. A London psychiatrist, Dr John Barker analysed these claims and narrowed them down to 60 he felt were genuine. He found that there was gradual build up during the week before the spoil tip destroyed the school and that it reached a peak on the night before the tragedy. 

The sinking of the Titanic also seems to have been foretold in two works of fiction. In 1898 a novel by Morgan Robertson, The Wreck of the Titan, predicted the disaster with uncanny accuracy. His tale featured a 70, 000 tonne vessel, the safest in the world, that strikes an iceberg in the Atlantic on her maiden voyage. The ship sinks with the loss of nearly of the 2, 500 passenger because the liner had only 24 lifeboats - less than half the number required to save all passengers and crew.

Now let's compare the story with the event. On 14th April, 1912 the 66, 000 ton Titanic hits an iceberg on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic. She had just 20 lifeboats which resulted in a great loss of life. The coincidences between Robertson's story and the real-life liner become even more uncanny when you learn that the author named his vessel the SS Titan. 

Journalist W. T. Stead (left) and The Titanic (right).

The second incident literary has an ironic twist in the tale. W. T. Stead (1849-1912) was the editor of The Pall Mall Gazette and an early pioneer of investigative journalism with reportage on child welfare and England's legal structure. His short story How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid Atlantic by a Survivor was published on 22nd March 1886 in the Pall Mall Gazette and told the tale of a steamer colliding with another ship which results in huge loss of life due to the fact that are not enough lifeboats for the passengers and crew. Stead prophetically added a note at the end of his story: 'This is exactly what might take place, and what will take place, if liners are sent to sea short of boats'. Stead departed for America in April 1912 to attend a peace congress under the invite of President William Howard Taft. You can guess the name of the boat he was on...

The Virgin of Jasna Gora.

Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent continue their theological study of Black Madonnas by tracing how Christianity worked to subtly other the gods and shrines that had existed since before the birth of Christ. This helps to highlight how Black Madonnas can be seen as a blending of purity and paganism with associations that reach back to ancient religions and sometimes even demonic beliefs. 

Hurrah! The series of texts about black holes ends with this issue and I've found them equally as frustrating as the first time I read them back in 1980. This time the theorising centres around creating white holes that could possibly help to return astronauts to their point of departure after travelling through a black hole. To illustrate this the box out (below) explains an Einstein-Rosen Bridge and the two ways it could work depending on if spacetime is curved or flat!

Illustration of a Einstein-Rosen bridge.

Comedian Roy Hudd is the guest writer for the first of an irregular series of one-off articles. If you collected your issues in a binder you where encouraged to remove the cover and so lost the photo feature and assorted articles. When I came to recollect the magazine I decided to source single issues and not binders for this very reason. 

Comedian Roy Hudd.

The House that Haunted Me by Roy Hudd is strange personal tale involving his love of the music hall star Dan Leno. Roy had a vivid recurring dream since childhood of entering a house and walking around the rooms. The dream always ended with him in the cellar where the walls are lined with mirrors. One day he was invited by some friends to visit them in their new home. As he neared the house he was overcome with an overpowering sense of déjà vu. As he entered he could describe the layout of the building before seeing it and explained his dream to his friends. During the conversation they mentioned that a famous Victorian music hall comedian, Dan Leno, had lived in the house. Hudd knew very little about Leno but he soon became fascinated with him. He discovered that Leno had rehearsed in front of mirrors which helped to explain the cellar walls in his dream. After visiting the house Hudd never had the dream again.

The sixth in the photo series The World's Mysterious Places is Glastonbury Tor.