The Paranormal

[Dotini]

AS GTP's semi-official King of Woo, I'm in a good position to create and help along our thread dealing with the paranormal.

Here is the place to post your every question and personal experience in this exotic subject.

 

[PeterJB]

I'll humour this.

A sighting that's always caught my attention is the case of the Roman soldiers in the cellar of the Treasurer's House in York. For those that don't know, in 1953 a plumber was installing new piping in the cellar of the very old house on the grounds of York Minster when he could hear the sound of a trumpet and marching in the distance. It gradually got louder until eventually a legion of Roman soldiers and horses appeared out of the wall his ladder was leaning against and walked across the room, taking no notice of the plumber before disappearing through the opposite wall. He said they looked tired and war-torn, with one the hung over the saddle of a horse. They were walking knee-deep in the ground but a depression in the cellar floor revealed their full stature. The plumber was naturally terrified and ran upstairs when he was informed that he wasn't the first person to see them.

The highly-detailed descriptions he gave of their uniforms felt inaccurate to historians at the time, however further research revealed them to match 5th-century outfits, which probably wasn't something you'd expect a teenage plumber to know. Even more research revealed there was a Roman road running two feet underneath the cellar floor.

http://www.theparanormalguide.com/blog/the-roman-ghosts-of-york#:~:text=In 1953, a young plumbers,disappeared into the opposite wall.

This was fairly unique as accounts of ghost sightings go. The fact that several people witnessed doing the same thing in the same place and that the apparitions took no notice of anyone that witnessed them isn't particularly strange. What is unique is that they were completely opaque figures, there were horses present and their footsteps, voices and the trumpet could be heard clear as day. So rather than these being ghosts or spirits, one possibly explanation from a physics perspective is that there was some kind of break or fissure in space-time that caused an event that happened in the past to be "replayed" in the present in the exact location where it originally happened, or even a hole between dimensions?

 

[Dotini]

I'll humour this.

A sighting that's always caught my attention is the case of the Roman soldiers in the cellar of the Treasurer's House in York. For those that don't know, in 1953 a plumber was installing new piping in the cellar of the very old house on the grounds of York Minster when he could hear the sound of a trumpet and marching in the distance. It gradually got louder until eventually a legion of Roman soldiers and horses appeared out of the wall his ladder was leaning against and walked across the room, taking no notice of the plumber before disappearing through the opposite wall. He said they looked tired and war-torn, with one the hung over the saddle of a horse. They were walking knee-deep in the ground but a depression in the cellar floor revealed their full stature. The plumber was naturally terrified and ran upstairs when he was informed that he wasn't the first person to see them.

The highly-detailed descriptions he gave of their uniforms felt inaccurate to historians at the time, however further research revealed them to match 5th-century outfits, which probably wasn't something you'd expect a teenage plumber to know. Even more research revealed there was a Roman road running two feet underneath the cellar floor.

http://www.theparanormalguide.com/blog/the-roman-ghosts-of-york#:~:text=In 1953, a young plumbers,disappeared into the opposite wall.

This was fairly unique as accounts of ghost sightings go. The fact that several people witnessed doing the same thing in the same place and that the apparitions took no notice of anyone that witnessed them isn't particularly strange. What is unique is that they were completely opaque figures, there were horses present and their footsteps, voices and the trumpet could be heard clear as day. So rather than these being ghosts or spirits, one possibly explanation from a physics perspective is that there was some kind of break or fissure in space-time that caused an event that happened in the past to be "replayed" in the present in the exact location where it originally happened, or even a hole between dimensions?

Very bonnie historical report. Thank you! Personal reports are very appreciated as well.

Note to my presently undersubscribed fan club: I'm going off the grid for the next day or so. I'll be kayaking the Salish Sea. Should I commune with any whales or kraken, I'll be sure to report it!

 

[Danoff]

one possibly explanation from a physics perspective is that there was some kind of break or fissure in space-time that caused an event that happened in the past to be "replayed" in the present in the exact location where it originally happened, or even a hole between dimensions?

The exact location? The problem with this one is that the Earth, Sun, Solar System, and Galaxy have moved in the meantime, quite a lot. If somehow light and sound were radiating across time, we have to explain why it was channeled through the Earth to the exact spot on Earth where it occurred. Even reconstructing the light rays would be an absolute nightmare as the light from the objects is not reflecting off of those objects now, it's being presumably bent and curled and traveling back toward the observer... or series of observers, in an apparently coherent fashion despite the fact that the light is across a range of frequencies. Sound is even more problematic.

This video starts at an explanation of how radio waves from lightning travel through the magnetosphere and come back to Earth. But note that they don't come back to Earth at the same place, and they don't come back with all radio frequencies arranged the way they were when they left because they travel differently according to frequency. The signal is smeared across frequency.

 

[TenEightyOne]

which probably wasn't something you'd expect a teenage plumber to know. Even more research revealed there was a Roman road running two feet underneath the cellar floor.

York Minster has had interpretative displays since the 19th century, and the York Trust has had them all over the city since the early 20th century. Why couldn't he have seen something similar? Does this hinge on our expectation of what a teenage plumber knows? All the little classic details of the made-up ghost story are here, imo, including all the ones that "they couldn't possibly have known".

Even more research revealed there was a Roman road running two feet underneath the cellar floor.

"Even more research" wasn't particularly required when everything a few feet below the surface is Roman era. York's been an important point on the Ouse for thousands of years. Add to that the extra-ordinary amount of digging in the city by antiquarians in the late 1800s and there was no surprise to anyone that with Roman remains found on either side of the Treasure House there were also Roman remains beneath it.

Was that general knowledge? Certainly, it's been part of York's tourist scene since at least the interwar period. Could a poor teenage plumber have been aware of this? If he was local then it seems impossible that he wouldn't be aware of it.

some kind of break or fissure in space-time that caused an event that happened in the past to be "replayed" in the present in the exact location where it originally happened, or even a hole between dimensions?

But it's not in the same place. It's billions (million, trillions, whatever) of miles away. Relative to the overall globe that piece of plate isn't even in the same place. Are ghosts/time-travellers specifically local to some other subdivision of geography?

 

[Danoff]

But it's not in the same place. It's billions (million, trillions, whatever) of miles away. Relative to the overall globe that piece of plate isn't even in the same place. Are ghosts/time-travellers specifically local to some other subdivision of geography?

Kinda fun to think about the light signals actually. I mean some light from that event (presuming the event actually occurred, which is a big assumption) presumably exists somewhere in the universe, having traveled there at the speed of light from sunlight reflected from the soldiers directly into space and traveling at the speed of light ever since. If you could get there, you could see it.

...but you wouldn't see what this person was claiming to have seen. You'd see the tops of heads and helmets. The light rays from the perspective of the observer would have struck the earth. So we have to account for the disappearance of that light, which didn't hit the earth somehow (and wasn't noticed not hitting the earth), and went... somewhere, and was returned on the same trajectory (relative to the earth's crust specifically, adjusting for movement of the earth and as you say, the crust itself)... with sound vibrations!

 

[PeterJB]

York Minster has had interpretative displays since the 19th century, and the York Trust has had them all over the city since the early 20th century. Why couldn't he have seen something similar? Does this hinge on our expectation of what a teenage plumber knows? All the little classic details of the made-up ghost story are here, imo, including all the ones that "they couldn't possibly have known".

Because the specific types of uniforms he was describing were not known to historians, and he gave a very detailed description of what they were wearing. That's one of the reasons he was taken as a fraud for many years, until it was later excavations in the North East found out his descriptions were accurate to what was worn at the time, which was when his account started to be taken more seriously.

"Even more research" wasn't particularly required when everything a few feet below the surface is Roman era. York's been an important point on the Ouse for thousands of years. Add to that the extra-ordinary amount of digging in the city by antiquarians in the late 1800s and there was no surprise to anyone that with Roman remains found on either side of the Treasure House there were also Roman remains beneath it.

Was that general knowledge? Certainly, it's been part of York's tourist scene since at least the interwar period. Could a poor teenage plumber have been aware of this? If he was local then it seems impossible that he wouldn't be aware of it.

This particular Roman road was not known to have ran directly underneath the cellar at the time, despite numerous excavations in the vicinity. I don't think it's as simple as him just making the whole thing up, he wasn't the only person to witness the apparitions, he seemed to be just as flummoxed by it as everyone else, (he never outright said he believed they were ghosts) and unless he was just desperate to not work in that otherwise assuming cellar it's a bit of an odd excuse to try and get time off work.

But it's not in the same place. It's billions (million, trillions, whatever) of miles away. Relative to the overall globe that piece of plate isn't even in the same place. Are ghosts/time-travellers specifically local to some other subdivision of geography?

Indeed. If we go down the line of this being inter-dimensional travel or a snapshot of something in the past, maybe the figures get locked to the Earth because of some kind of interaction with the magnetic field?

 

[TenEightyOne]

This particular Roman road was not known to have ran directly underneath the cellar at the time, despite numerous excavations in the vicinity.

Green knew it was there when he excavated in the 1930s. Temple Moore knew it was there when he brought parts of it up. The Georgians knew it was there when they dug the base out. Even Archbishop Melton knew it was there in the 1300s. I accept that the whole story doesn't hinge on whether or not Harry knew there was a Roman Road there, but it was known. York's Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Anglo-Norse history was a hugely fashionable area of study and activity in the 19th century in particular. The location of Petuaria was (still is) a subject of much debate amongst scholars and intensive mappings of known Roman roads were made. (It's in Patrington, that's my two penn'orth )

Because the specific types of uniforms he was describing were not known to historians, and he gave a very detailed description of what they were wearing. That's one of the reasons he was taken as a fraud for many years, until it was later excavations in the North East found out his descriptions were accurate to what was worn at the time, which was when his account started to be taken more seriously.

Unfortunately it was the 1970s before any details of the siting were publicly known. That doesn't disprove the "unknowness" of this teenage plumber's very specific uniform claims but it does somewhat knacker the provenance.

Indeed. If we go down the line of this being inter-dimensional travel or a snapshot of something in the past, maybe the figures get locked to the Earth because of some kind of interaction with the magnetic field?

The field isn't in the same place either. Hmm, what could they be locking to?

Anyway. It's interesting that the world's security cameras are consistently failing to pick up any supporting evidence for apparitions, whether or not there are other humans present. Interestingly there don't seem to be any cases of humans seeing apparitions with security cameras (or any other cameras) present. Do not give Most Haunted as a source.

This suggests that the apparitions are not on a visible spectrum and therefore cannot be seen with the human eye. If people are genuinely believing that they've seen the things that eventually coalesce into verbal descriptions then they're describing something that happened in their mind. Therefore the only things moulding their verbal explanations of their experience are the existing contents of their own brains and the interpretations/help of the people taking the account.

Lots of room for bollockry there, no doubt about it.

 

[PeterJB]

Unfortunately it was the 1970s before any details of the siting were publicly known. That doesn't disprove the "unknowness" of this teenage plumber's very specific uniform claims but it does somewhat knacker the provenance.

His claims about their uniforms were not corroborated until the 1990s.

The field isn't in the same place either. Hmm, what could they be locking to?

Anyway. It's interesting that the world's security cameras are consistently failing to pick up any supporting evidence for apparitions, whether or not there are other humans present. Interestingly there don't seem to be any cases of humans seeing apparitions with security cameras (or any other cameras) present. Do not give Most Haunted as a source.

This suggests that the apparitions are not on a visible spectrum and therefore cannot be seen with the human eye. If people are genuinely believing that they've seen the things that eventually coalesce into verbal descriptions then they're describing something that happened in their mind. Therefore the only things moulding their verbal explanations of their experience are the existing contents of their own brains and the interpretations/help of the people taking the account.

Lots of room for bollockry there, no doubt about it.

My hypothesis is that it's the magnetic field itself that they're locking to.

There have been large numbers of alleged ghost sightings caught on CCTV, but they tend not to be particularly convincing. I enjoy the thrill of watching "Top 10 Ghost/UFO Sightings" videos, however the vast majority are very poor camera quality, (with footage filmed recently I really struggle to work out where they get such bad cameras from) and whatever we're supposed to be looking at is either very far away or very small, or the camera's shaking around so much you can barely tell what's going on. If the person filming it really thought it was something we should be paying attention to they wouldn't be masking it so much!

Everyone once in a while you do get footage in HD quality that's well-focused, that doesn't at first glance appear to be edited in any way, but they're few and far between.

 

[Dotini]

His claims about their uniforms were not corroborated until the 1990s.

My hypothesis is that it's the magnetic field itself that they're locking to.

Thanks again for your contribution.

For whatever reasons, I guess Harry Martindale seemingly went on to become a valued and respected member of the community.

In terms of hypotheses, we may want to browse the scholastic literature of the paranormal for similar cases.

Felton...proposes several categories of supernatural appearances which might be useful for the study of ancient Greek and Roman belief: Revenants, Crisis Apparitions, Poltergeists, and Continual Apparitions.

https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1999/1999.11.07/

Since these Roman soldiers of York were seen by others at different times, we might want to take a quick look at "Continuing Apparitions".

Foremost among these are the Fatima apparitions which raise the theological issues and the many thousands of witnesses. Meager formal research indicates not all apparitions are the result of purely subjective factors.
http://cdn.theologicalstudies.net/40/40.3/40.3.3.pdf

Another possibly related general category of the paranormal may be precognition/retrocognition.

 

[Dotini]

Brief intro to pioneering chronicler of reported paranormal events.

 

[Dotini]

Skinwalker Ranch is the zenith of contact with the paranormal in the US, at least from what I've read. I rode through the area once on my motorcycle during one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life, a two week back roads journey from Seattle to Yellowstone and back, camping under the stars all the way. The following Bedtime story is well-told, and just in time for Halloween. Today the Ranch remains closed, guarded, and restricted to scientific study.