My experiences,thoughts,and views about ghosts/spirits and hauntings, along with other Paranormal subjects. Also the spot for an occasional Guest Blogger & for Reader's Requests...Reading may just lead to believing.
Like I've made well known in a previous post, I believe that there are other lifeforms out in the vast universe besides us. There is NO way that we can be the "only" 'intelligent' life forms around.
With that said, I think I feel like touching on the subject of Crop Circles, which coincide with the topic of aliens.
Crop circles are detailed "pictures" that are made in fields on farms. Let's take more of a gander in to this Paranormal phenomenon, shall we?
"A crop circle is a sizable pattern created by the flattening of a crop such as wheat, barley, rye, maize, or rapeseed. Crop circles are also referred to as crop formations, because they are not always circular in shape.
While the exact date crop circles began to appear is unknown, the documented cases have substantially increased from the 1970s to current times. Twenty-six countries ended up reporting approximately ten-thousand crop circles, in the last third of the 20th century, and 90% of those were located in southern England. Many of the formations appearing in that area are positioned near ancient monuments, such as Stonehenge.
Formations usually are made overnight, but have also been made during the day. The most widely known method for a person or group to construct a crop formation is to tie one end of a rope to an anchor point, and the other end to a board which is used to crush the plants. More recent methods include the use of a lawn roller.
Some crop formations are paid for by companies who use them as advertising. Other formations are sometimes claimed by individuals or groups without any evidence to support their assertion, usually after undesirable legal repercussions become unlikely." (Read more at the link provided)
One of the most famous "crop circle" movies has to be SIGNS (2002, Touchstone Pictures).
*NOTE: Not to be confused with spontaneous combustion.*
**WARNING!! Pictures at the bottom of this post may be too graphic for some readers. Viewer discretion is advised.**
Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is a name used to describe alleged cases of the burning of a living human body without an apparent external source of ignition. While there have been about 200 cited cases worldwide over a period of around 300 years, most of the alleged cases are characterized by the lack of a thorough investigation, or rely heavily on hearsay and oral testimony. In many of the more recent cases, where photographic evidence is available, it is alleged that there was an external source of heat present (often cigarettes), and nothing occurred "spontaneously."
There are many hypothesized explanations which account for the various cases of human spontaneous combustion. These generally fall into one of three groups: paranormal explanations (e.g. a ghost or alien caused it), natural explanations that credit some unknown and otherwise unobserved phenomenon (e.g. the production of abnormally concentrated gas or raised levels of blood alcohol cause spontaneous ignition), and natural explanations that involve an external source of ignition (e.g. the victim dropped a cigarette).
Objections to natural explanations usually revolve around the degree of burning of the body with respect to its surroundings. Indeed, one of the common markers of a case of SHC is that the body — or part of it — has suffered an extraordinarily large degree of burning, with surroundings or lower limbs comparatively undamaged.
*Unverified natural phenomena*
* Since every human body contains varying strengths of electrical field and the human body also contains flammable gases (mainly methane in the intestines), an electrical discharge could ignite these gases.
* SHC victims are sometimes described as lonely people who fall into a trance immediately before their incineration. Heymer[3] suggests that a psychosomatic process in such emotionally-distressed people can trigger off a chain reaction by reacting nitrogen within the body and setting off a chain reaction of mitochondrial explosions. This hypothesis has been criticized on the basis that Heymer "seems to be under the illusion that nitrogen exist as gases in the blood and are thus vulnerable to ignition, which is, in fact, not the case."[4] (Mitochondria are organelles found within cells.) The hypothesis also fails to take into account the fact that nitrogen is an inert, non-flammable gas.
* Another hypothesis suggests high-energy particles or gamma rays[1] coupled with susceptibilities in the potential victim (e.g. increased alcohol in the blood) triggers the initial reaction. This process may use no external oxygen to spread throughout the body, since it may not be an oxidation-reduction reaction. However, no reaction mechanism has been proposed, nor has a source for the high-energy particles.
* The victim is an alcoholic and has been smoking while drinking or shortly after drinking a strong spirit. There are claims that this raises the blood alcohol level to a point where it ignites; however, this theory is implausible, since ethanol typically burns only if the concentration is greater than about 23%, whereas a fatally toxic level is about 1%.[5] However, this does introduce the probability that the victim will fall asleep while holding a lit cigarette.
*LIST CONTINUES*
**Natural explanations**
* Cigarettes are often seen as the source of fire in valleys. Usually, it is thought that natural causes such as heart attacks may lead to the victim dying, subsequently dropping the cigarette. Embers from cigarettes and pipes may also ignite clothes.[3] Additionally, cigarette steam at a temperature too low to trigger a flare up of most otherwise combustible materials. Typically if a person drops a lit cigarette on an article of clothing, it will create a burn-hole, but not ignite into an open flame and spread.
* The "wick effect" hypothesis suggests that a small external flame source, such as a burning cigarette, chars the clothing of the victim at a location, splitting the skin and releasing subcutaneous fat, which is in turn absorbed into the burned clothing, acting as a wick. This combustion can continue for as long as the fuel is available. This hypothesis has been successfully tested with animal tissue (pig) and is consistent with evidence recovered from cases of human combustion.[6][7]
* Scalding can cause burn-like injuries, including death, without setting fire to clothing. Although not applicable in cases where the body is charred and burnt, this has been suggested as a cause in at least one claimed SHC-like event.
Deaths...
* Robert Francis Bailey : United Kingdom, 1967
* Polonus Vorstius : Italy, 1470
* Cornelia di Bandi : Italy, 1731
* John Irving Bentley : United States, 1966
* George I. Mott : United States, 1986
* Mary Reeser : United States, 1951
* Helen Conway : United States, 1964
* Nicole Millet : France, 1725
* Phyllis Newcombe : United Kingdom, 1938
* Anna Martin : United States, 1957
* Jeannie Saffin : England, 1982
* Henry Thomas : Wales, 1980
* Janice McCall : United States, 2009 < not a SHC - surgical flash fire.
* Ginette Kazmierczak : France, 1977
Read more on the subject at the link provided for this subject that is posted at the *top* of this blog piece.
With the holidays now past us, I can once more concentrate on BOTH blogs. It was looking like a ghost town around here...Get it? "Ghost" town?? Yeah...That went well.
Apparently, we are still having odd things happening. Mainly where the attic is concerned. My oldest was kept up a good portion of the night by what she said was "something" being dragged, steps and the "rolling" noises I have mentioned before in a previous post.
But enough with that {for now}...
Below I will be placing a LINKY TOOL for others that write about the Paranormal *ONLY*, as to gain exposure, readers/followers and to add to our reading lists.
As long as it is Paranormal in nature, you can add your link to the link up tool (below).
If I see a NON-Paranormal blog linked up, it will be DELETED from the blog roll. Only PARANORMAL blogs are permitted for this blog linking.
Pretty interesting read, if you ask me. Oh.. You didn't. But I'm saying it anyways.
So the run down is that Astronomers have found evidence of more stars in the universe than they had previously thought. Three times as many as a matter of fact. And that is A LOT... Many more galaxies and suns as well, if you sit and think about it, seeing as suns are just huge stars themselves.
Also, the scientists have found that a microbe can actually LIVE and thrive in ARSENIC. Which has had lead them to think that they can live in some pretty harsh conditions that us humans very well cannot.
From the article... "The evidence is just getting stronger and stronger," said Carl Pilcher, director of NASA's Astrobiology Institute, which studies the origins, evolution and possibilities of life in the universe. "I think anybody looking at this evidence is going to say, 'There's got to be life out there.'"
In *my* humble opinion, I agree. We as THE leading and MOST intelligent species of our planet would be completely naive and all-out stupid to believe that within this vast and (seemingly) unending universe that we are the ONLY life forms out there.
We will NEVER (in my mind) know truly how many life forms that there are out there beyond the reaches and outer fringes of our galaxy.
Now, in the Christian texts of the Bible, within Genesis, it states... (via BIBLE GATEWAY)
"1:31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
2:2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done."
What many Creationists (those that solely believe in what the Bible states word for word, and that God made the earth and it is NOT *millions/billions* of years old, but only *thousands* of years in age) believe is that Evolution and Astronomy Sciences were just made up nonsense to have some other "explanation" than a god/deity forming everything out of nothing. They do not believe in the "Big Bang" theory or take stock in anything regarding the "Evolutionary Scale". And being that the Bible does NOT state that there are other forms of life BEYOND us, then it can't be true.
Most (but not all) Astronomy Scientists are Atheists. They do not feel that there was a deity design to the universe, let alone believe that ANY gods exist.
Now some are said to be Agnostic, where they cannot prove, nor can they prove the existence of a deity. Nor can they prove or disprove that an intelligent being such as the Christian God made the planets and the universe.
Then, you do have a small handful of people that work within the various fields of Science that do believe in the Christian God.
One thing that they all do have in common is that they ALL rely on the evidence presented to them, theoretical measures, probability measures and anthropology to have gotten as far as they have in the fields of Astronomy, Biology and Evolution.
It just amazes me that people can sit there and FLAT OUT deny the REAL possibility of life on other planets within our very own solar system, let alone outside of the galaxy that we call "home".
To the Creationists, how can you be SO sure that those "six days" were not actually 6 million/billion YEARS? So someone said days in the Bible. Man had written and *REWRITTEN* that Book so many times, who HONESTLY knows for sure what God ACTUALLY said at this point? Do you not think that one second to God is a THOUSAND YEARS to us? Remember that saying? I was told that many times over.
So, take that second in "our" time and expand it out to those six days, put those six days in to God's version of "days"/time and see what you come up with... I suck at math, but I can safely say that it's WAAAAY more than "thousands" of years, my friends. You are looking at more along the lines of the millions or even the *billions* mark.
I myself am a Christian. I believe in God and Jesus Christ. I believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave, only to ascend to Heaven and that one day, He will return as it is written within the Book of Revelations.
BUT!!...Yeah, I have one.
I cannot sit here in good conscience and claim that science is wrong and that indeed there is NO OTHER life out in our vast galaxy and in the outer reaches of space. For me to do so would be just plain ignorant. Nor can I state that the earth is only *thousands* of years old. If that was the case, then we should be walking with dinosaurs, having volcanoes going off and earthquakes shaking all around us.
It took MILLIONS, if not BILLIONS of years for our planet to cool down, fill with water, and for the continents shape and shift. Plus species had to start somewhere, right? And no I do *not* believe that it started with Adam and Eve of the Bible. We started out as microbes, bacteria and from there evolved over those millions/billions of years in to what we are today. Homo Sapiens.
So as far as Extra Terrestrials, Astronomy, Cosmology and other sciences go for this Christian woman, I love it, love learning about it all, and truly believe that YES there *IS* other life out in the universe and that we are *NOT* alone by any means.
It's not shameful, ridiculous, or even hearsay to go beyond your belief system (be it Christianity or otherwise) to look at things on a larger, broader scale. Science (in any form) is NOT perfect or exact. But neither is religion.
Please watch the rest of this 5-part series via YouTube.
