The 'Y' Files: A Study of Unexplained Paranormal & Occult Phenomena

By Anthony North

Reincarnation. Ghosts. Spiritualism. Precognition. Telepathy. Psychokinesis. The Poltergeist. Surveying the world of the Paranormal, Anthony North asks: are we dealing with separate phenomena, or various facets of a single process?
Rationalizing the paranormal to prove it. From uneXplained to whY.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthony North
• Release date: Jan 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463342930

Anthony North

Thinker & Storyteller****7,453 Words to Save the UK and I,Writer are now FREE. Scroll down to find them.*****1955 (Yorkshire, England) – I am born (Damn! Already been done). ‘Twas the best of times ... (Oh well).I was actually born in the year of Einstein's death, close to Scrooge's Counting House. It doesn't mean anything but it sounds good. As for my education, I left school at 15 and have had no formal education since. Hence, I'm self-taught.****From a family of newsagents, at 18 I did a Dick Whittington and went off to London, only to return to pretend to be Charlie and work in a chocolate factory.When I was ten I was asked what I wanted to be. I said soldier, writer and Dad. I never thought of it for years – having too much fun, such as a time as lead guitarist in a local rock band – but I served nine years in the RAF, got married and had seven kids. I realized my words had been precognitive when, at age 27, I came down with M.E. – a condition I’ve suffered ever since – and turned my attention to writing.Indeed, as I realized that no expert could tell me what was wrong with me, I began my quest to find out why. Little did I realize it would last decades and take me through the entire history of knowledge, leaving me with the certainty that our knowledge systems are inadequate.****My non-fiction is based on P-ology, a thought process I devised to work with patterns of knowledge, and designed to be a bedfellow to specialization. A form of Rational Holism, it seeks out areas the specialist may have missed. I work from encyclopaedias and introductory volumes in order to gain a grasp of many subjects and am not an expert in anything, but those patterns keep forming. Hence, I do not deal in truth, but ideas, and cover everything from politics to the paranormal.When reading my work I ask only: do I make sense? Of course, an expert would say: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I agree. And an expert has so little knowledge of everything.I also write novels and Flash Fiction in all genres.

Book preview

The 'Y' Files:

A Study of Unexplained Paranormal & Occult Phenomena

By Anthony North

Copyright: Anthony North 2020

Cover image copyright: Yvonne North, Richard North, 2020

Smashwords Edition

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission

Other books by Anthony North

In 2019 I began a 3 year publishing program that will result in 14 volumes of my fiction, inc 7 novels in most genres, & 21 works of non-fiction covering cults, politics, conspiracies, religion, disasters, science, philosophy, warfare, crime, psychology, new age, green issues & all areas of the unexplained, inc ufology, lost worlds and the paranormal. Hopefully appearing at the rate of one a month, check out the latest launch at my bookstore at http://anthonynorth.com or buy direct from Smashwords for all devices at: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/anthonynorth

In addition to the above, you may like my ‘I’ Series – 8 volumes of flash fiction (horror, sci fi, romance, adventure, crime), 4 volumes of poetry & 5 volumes of short essays from politics to the unexplained. Available from same links as above. Also check out my bookstore for news of my books out in paperback.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One - Psi-Stars & Sceptics

Chapter Two - Minds Possessed

Chapter Three - Is There Anybody There?

Chapter Four - Phantoms of the Night

Chapter Five - Time's Arrow

Chapter Six - Sympathy of Souls

Chapter Seven - Dark Talents

Chapter Eight - Scratching at the Door

Chapter Nine - A Strange World

Chapter Ten - Walking With Gods

Chapter Eleven - Towards the Unknown

Contents by Subject

Bibliography

About the Author

Connect With Anthony

Introduction

This book is a concise survey of the paranormal & occult from ghosts to telepathy, poltergeist to premonition, alchemy to witchcraft. I'm neither a sceptic nor believer, accepting that phenomena happens, but I do not like traditional tags such as the supernatural. How do I know phenomena happens? Because it's often happened to me.

Here are a couple of examples:

I was asleep one night when someone (?) rattled my letterbox. I was in the RAF at the time and was used to being called out in the middle of the night. I got up, opened the window to say I’d be down in a minute, but there was no one there.

I went back to bed, and as I’d woken my wife, I told her what happened. Closing my eyes, the letterbox rattled once more, followed by the sound of footsteps moving away. My wife heard it, too, and I jumped out of bed, opened the window. There was no one there.

My wife’s granddad, who had died several years previously, used to rattle letterboxes rather than knock on a door. She now advised: ‘That was granddad letting me know that my nan has just died.’

We lived some 200 miles away from my wife’s nan. Although not in good health, we had no reason to think she was about to die. The following morning we received a telemessage advising that she had just died.

The night before my first son’s Christening I heard something spooky coming upstairs. When my bedroom door handle was turned, I jumped out of bed, through the door and downstairs. I was worried someone was stealing the booze. There was no one there. My wife was suffering post-natal depression at the time and had experienced various hallucinations. Speaking to our neighbour about this event, she advised that she, too, had felt a regular presence in her house. She had recently had the latest of a string of miscarriages.

We were all young families in RAF married quarters. In our street we knew there had been several others with baby tragedies. Discussing this amongst ourselves, we found a whole spate of strange phenomena, including mild poltergeist activity. The events culminated in an invisible stalker trying back doors every time the men were away on military exercises. Many thought it was a dead monk to blame.

I don’t offer the above anecdotes as evidence – they are unprovable; yet I know they happened – but simply to show where I’m coming from, and to point out that at this very moment there are thousands of similar experiences happening to ordinary people the world over; and have been happening for as long as history has been with us.

This is the problem with supposed ‘experts’ who comment about the paranormal. I use many anecdotes in this book, and every one of them could be fake – I simply don’t know. No one does – except the people experiencing them. I use them simply to show what so many ‘ordinary’ people experience - and are confused, even frightened, by them. But what help do those ‘experts’ offer? If sceptics, they tell them they’re mad or fraudsters. If believers, they go into this or that spiritual system with no evidence to back up their claims. This leaves the subject in a limbo-land of accusation, denial, fear and confusion.

Those experiencers deserve an answer – which brings me to the title of this work.

Why do I call this book The 'Y' Files?

Because I look for rational explanation, but not to debunk like most sceptics do. No, I'm looking for real answers, nudging our understanding on to the next level. You see, the problem with most theorists of the paranormal is that they fail to understand that, to be accepted, knowledge must take existing intellectual baggage with it – taking a small step into the unknown, rather than a giant leap into the dark. I do the former - but in surprising ways. Indeed, I even argue that what we think of as separate phenomena are no more than aspects of the same process – and a process that could well be the key to understanding just who we are.

So join me in my quest to move on from uneXplained to whY.

Chapter One – PSI-STARS & SCEPTICS

The writer G K Chesterton once remarked that when man ceases to believe in God he will not believe in nothing. He will believe in anything. This book is about the paranormal, and such a statement as the above has been used ruthlessly by many sceptics to pour scorn on the subject. However, in many cases we can see this as justified. Take, for instance, the infamous case of Lord Dufferin.

This renowned 19th century British diplomat often told of a strange dream. Related by researcher Camille Flammarion, Dufferin was awoken one night and went to the window. Outside, he saw a man with a hideous face carrying a coffin. Many years later, he was about to enter a lift in a Paris hotel when he saw the hideous face, belonging to the lift attendant. He didn't take the lift, and moments later it plummeted, killing all inside.

The entire story is, of course, bunkum. There WAS a lift accident in the mentioned hotel, but Dufferin was not in France at the time. Flammarion should have checked this out; as well as the playful wink Dufferin gave every time he related the story.

Similar problems arise when we look to the one time most haunted house in Britain, Borley Rectory. Built in the 1860s, it became home to one Rev Henry Bull and his family. In 1863 he claimed to see spectral nuns, whilst others saw coaches and headless horsemen. When the Rev Guy Eric Smith moved into the Suffolk rectory in 1928, he and his wife began to hear strange noises and other phenomena. Intrigued, famed psychical researcher and maverick, Harry Price, went to investigate, and continued to visit the rectory for years. In his presence, stones and other objects flew through the air and spirit messages appeared.

By the time the Rev Lionel Foyster and his wife Marianne moved into the house in 1930, Borley Rectory was manifesting classic poltergeist phenomena, including materializations, strange noises, floating furniture and inexplicable fires. However, it was always suspected that Price, or a hysterical Marianne, were behind the events. Eventually the rectory burnt down, and in 1956 the Society for Psychical Research published a devastating report, blaming acoustics, wind vortices and fraud for much of the phenomena.

The famed Angels of Mons are equally problematic. Appearing when the British Expeditionary Force fought the German onslaught in the early stages of World War One, a typical case was that of a Lt Col who reported a retreat during the night, escorted by a column of ghostly cavalry.

Most researchers answer the mystery by way of a short story, The Bowmen, by Arthur Machen. Appearing in the Evening News on 29 September 1914, it tells a tale of the British being helped by the appearance of Agincourt archers.

The angels thus become simple battlefield hallucinations common during such campaigns, made stark by a story upon which to focus. However, as the campaign progressed, stories began to emerge of an even more fundamental nature, removing them from simple hallucinations.

However, as to their validity, we must introduce characters such as Phyllis Campbell, a patriotic nurse at a Mons dressing station. Hearing stories of angels from injured soldiers, she was one of many who went on to embellish the stories in an attempt to prove God was on the side of the British.

The actual truth of Borley Rectory and the Angels of Mons is now polluted by accusation and time. To the sceptic, this is good. Indeed, a specific organization exists to debunk the entire field of the paranormal. This is the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, or CSICOP, set up in 1976 by humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz.

Some sceptics have gone to extraordinary lengths to debunk the paranormal. Take magician James Randi who offered a million dollars to anyone who can prove the existence of the paranormal. Withdrawn in 2015, the money could never have been claimed for there is an important point concerning science - the fact that science never deals in absolute proof. Rather, science is a consensus of opinion that seems to fit the universe at a particular time. It is a means of human understanding that seems to work, but can never be absolutely proved. And if hard physics, chemistry and biology can never be absolutely proved, the paranormal has no chance.

Other organizations do, however, attempt to prove the existence of the paranormal. Most famous of these is the Society for Psychical Research, or SPR. Created in 1882 in London and including scientists such as Sir William Barrett, Sir William Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge, it initially investigated mediums in the field, inviting much ridicule.

Typically, when leading member, Frederic Myers, died in 1901, a number of members formed the Sidgwick Group to contact him - Myers had declared his intention to contact THEM from beyond the grave. Known as the Cross-Correspondence case, many claimed to receive messages from him, but in the main the communications are trite and unbelievable.

The SPR eventually became more scientific, doing work in the laboratory on ESP and PK, or psychokinesis, with an American branch soon set up including famed psychologist William James. Indeed, it was James who defined what proof should be in the subject. As he said in 1890: ‘If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, it is enough if you prove that one crow is white.’

To William James a white crow – a person with such obvious paranormal powers – would prove the existence