Many believe in the "mysterious, unknown". Some talk about their own encounters with ghosts, UFOs and other unexplained phenomena. Others believe that there are people endowed with paranormal abilities: they can allegedly move objects with an effort of will or predict catastrophes.
German physicist and psychologist Walter von Likad, supervisor. unique in Germany, the Service of Parapsychological Consultation, talked with many staunch supporters of parapsychology, as well as with psychics.
What is paranormal activity? Are these some isolated, unique cases?
Likadu: Here you are completely mistaken! According to polls, two-thirds of people in Germany have ever encountered a phenomenon that they cannot explain, that is, the very paranormal. They contact us by phone, fax, e-mail! those or personally. We are working to the limit. As soon as we put down the telephone receiver, it rings again.
What do they usually ask about?
Likadu: Some people think that they are "pursued by the devil", others - that they are "hypnotized by others." Many people talk about prophetic dreams, ghosts, or a mysterious glow emanating from the earth. Parents alarmedly ask us about occult practices or the activities of various sects that their children have become interested in. Often they also share with us predictions received from some self-styled psychics, magicians, clairvoyants.
Who is addressing you? Probably people with an unbalanced psyche, insecure?
Likadu: On the contrary! People, so to speak, are firmly on their feet. Pragmatists to the core, very self-confident, are not dreamers. Before that, they, as a rule, did not deal with esotericism. No wonder many people say: "If I had not seen this myself, I would never have believed in this!" Judging by age, gender, or education, we get a fairly representative sample of representatives of German society.
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And how do you determine what you have to deal with - with the paranormal or with something more prosaic?
Likadu: We are often told the most bizarre stories. We listen carefully and try to find some trivial explanation for what happened. In most cases, it turns out that a person is unwittingly deceived himself or is deliberately misled. After all, I am not only a psychologist, but also a physicist, and this helps me to understand the essence of most of the described phenomena.
- Give examples of any ghost stories that have a simple physical background
Likadu: A man told me that from the teapot he was hearing some voices. I visited him and found that there was a powerful medium-wave radio transmitter in the immediate vicinity of the stove. If you put the kettle on the stove, then it can become a kind of sound amplifier - indeed, voices can be heard from the kettle, namely … radio programs are broadcast! Or here's a story with paintings that for no apparent reason, by themselves, began to swing on the wall. I visited this apartment and guessed what was the matter. The frames of the paintings were made of metal, and there was an elevator shaft just outside the wall of the apartment. When the elevator was traveling up or down, a powerful magnetic field was generated, affecting these metal frames. It was as if someone was starting to swing them - it was just right to believe in a ghost that settled in the house. Strange tapping from the wall is also often reported, especially in the morning. Here the solution is even simpler: people wake up, turn on the heating, hot water flows through the pipes, and the heated pipes expand - so they begin to knock.
Sometimes the dishes in the cupboard suddenly clink. And what's that? Maybe it's still a paranormal phenomenon?
Likadu: Oh no, this is infrasound. Air vibrations with a frequency of less than 16 hertz, that is, low-frequency sounds that we cannot hear. It is they who make the glasses on the shelves vibrate, and sometimes even collide with each other. A source of infrasound can be, for example, window glass, which, under the pressure of the wind, begins to vibrate imperceptibly, with a low frequency. The air carries these vibrations around the apartment. Sometimes people, for no apparent reason, suddenly begin to experience pain: this happens when the frequency of infrasonic vibrations is close to the natural frequency of vibrations of a particular organ of the body.
Did it happen to you to prove that there was no ghost, and this, for example, a neighbor played a joke on the poor fellow?
Likadu: Of course! Many ghost stories have the most trivial background: quarreling with neighbors. You won't believe at all what nasty things people indulge in just to annoy another person, ruin his mood.
“In the meantime, some are making money by allegedly possessing supernatural powers and being able to communicate with ghosts. Have you ever exposed such scammers?
Likadu: More than once. Recently, by the way, I was invited to participate in a TV show where one such psychic was supposed to perform. He told the audience that he was once struck by lightning and since then he can, for example, light electric lamps with a simple touch of his hand. He did a brilliant job, but as soon as the commercial break began, I said that I knew the trick. Either he confesses right now that he deceived the audience, or I will explain what the matter is. This psychic did not even think to blame for anything, continuing to talk about his "amazing abilities". Then right in front of the camera, I asked him to take a step back. How he didn't want to do this! When he obeyed, I immediately pulled out from under the rug the so-called Tesla transformer, which has a flat shape. The high-frequency pulses of this transformer charge the entire human body with electricity. Then the incandescent lamp really starts to glow if you take it with your hand. You can imagine how the audience in the hall where this talk show took place burst out laughing.
And real ghosts - do they still meet?
Likadu: I have sometimes had to deal with unexplained phenomena in apartments or houses where they dealt with ghosts. Once, for example, a stone flew at me and fell next to me. Until now, this case remains a complete mystery to me - there was no one nearby who could throw this stone at me. But I was unable to photograph this one, as well as other similar cases. And in general, as far as I know, no one in the world has yet managed to truly capture a ghost, that is, photograph it. People faced with such a phenomenon are often so shocked that they simply do not have time to take up the camera. No, whatever you say, sometimes mysterious, inexplicable stories happen.
We all tensed in anticipation of the story
Likadu: It happened recently in southern Germany. A couple renovated a small cafe they owned, and suddenly a ghost appeared there. At times there was a crash in the empty living room; barrels of beer rolled by themselves in the basement, although there was no one below. Right in front of the frightened guests, who later told me about this, a tray of beer mugs soared into the air and then flew into the hall where the visitors were located. They called the police, technicians, set the alarm - nothing helped. An inexplicable case, you know. Then, when I joined in the investigation, I noticed that the ghost appeared every time the wife was at home, and the husband was not - during the day he worked part-time in a neighboring village. I thought that maybe she was terribly tired of her husband constantly leaving somewhere and she was left alone in the cafe. Mistress, and rightly soadmitted it to me. As soon as the husband quit his job, the ghost immediately stopped showing up. The woman is still convinced that it was the "brownie who spoiled" - instructing them on the right path. That, in her opinion, is the whole answer.
Maybe she just set it all up?
Likadu: Not at all. Yes, she physically could not do it. In addition, she was definitely not near the place where all sorts of strange things were happening. And I completely trust the witnesses - they were impartial observers. Well, in general, why was there such a complex idea, which would require so much money? What's the point in this show? Maybe scare the public and ruin your cafe. However, it was already ruined.
So, a ghost started up in the house, and the woman did not find justice for him?
Likadu: Yes, she was somehow the culprit in this story, but the matter cannot be reduced to a simple fraud or a joke. It is more complicated here, here there was, perhaps, what psychologists call "externalization", the outburst of psychic energy into the surrounding space. If a person has serious problems at work or disagreements in the family, if he feels that no one understands him and does not seek to understand that he is underestimated, put into nothing, then he experiences severe psychological stress. Often he has unreasonable headaches, stomach pains, etc. However, such a psychosomatic reaction can affect not only the person himself, but also the space around him. And then around this poor fellow, exhausted by endless stress, some kind of devilry really begins to happen. Obviously, the same thing happened with the owner of the cafe.
Do you think there are such people that, having worn out with their problems, they begin in the literal sense of the word "to roll beer barrels at others"?
Likadu: No, here you are exaggerating. I am only saying that between the mental state of a person and the physical reality surrounding him there may be some kind of relationship that we do not yet understand. An example of such a relationship could be psychokinesis, that is, the ability of people to move surrounding objects with an effort of will. Sometimes in experiments, anomalous effects were observed: it happened that people, with an effort of will, forced the control lamp to flash.
That's beauty! Means, it is necessary only to mentally strain - and miracles will be?
Likadu: No, it’s not just a simple causal relationship: I press the switch in my brain and the light comes on. Here, rather, we are dealing with a certain relationship between the psyche of a person of a certain type - mostly of a creative nature, an extrovert and, let's say, an accident. Due to the characteristic mental attitude inherent in this person, these accidents become more frequent. “We are dealing with clusters of accidents,” the experts would say.
Wait, how would you like to understand this? Couldn't it be simpler, more specific?
Likad: To explain the paranormal, you have to resort to the most complex physical theories. For this, the "weak quantum theory" and the "pragmatic information model" were developed - recognized scientific theories, to the formation of which I had a hand too. There is absolutely nothing mysterious about this.
Demonstrate how you explain parapsychological phenomena
Likadu: The main idea sounds like this: a special relationship is established between people or objects if they are dear to each other in some way. Take, for example, two people who love or hate each other, who have been through so much together: they often intuitively feel how things are with their loved one. They feel this, not seeing each other, not calling on the phone, not communicating on the Internet. As a scientist, I would formulate it this way: these people have developed a mental community, they have common thoughts, feelings, experiences.
Can you give examples of such a magical connection?
Likadu: I have a nurse acquaintance with this kind of ability. It often happens that on a day off she calls at work and tells her shift worker: go to such and such a ward, look, the patient there, in my opinion, is bad. The shift lady walks, looks, the way it is. Or take the memories of World War II survivors, soldiers' widows. It happened that a woman suddenly felt sick or tormented by some kind of stabbing, and then she was informed that her beloved husband had died. Died that very day, at the very moment when she felt something unpleasant, heavy. Or another example of such a premonition: you thought about a person, and a minute later he met you by chance or called.
Such a connection is established only between people or does it happen that people and objects are also connected by something invisible?
Likadu: The same applies to such relationships. If we go back to that woman from the cafe, then there are two effects at once. First, she has the ability to pour out her psychic energy outward. Secondly, she was so used to her cafe, to the basement where barrels of beer were kept, that she literally merged with them. Therefore, a special connection has developed between her and her environment; her mental state began to reflect on nearby objects. At least in this case, I would refuse other, more traditional explanations.
- Honestly, we simpletons cannot understand such high scientific matters
Likadu: I will try to tell you one more case from my practice. A married couple is driving in the car. Suddenly, the woman - she is sitting next to the driver, in the front seat - is seized by a wild fear. Just like that, for no apparent reason. She begs her husband to slow down. Suddenly, from somewhere to the right, from the alley, without braking, a car takes off. They never saw this car, which they almost crashed into. If the woman had not been seized by unreasonable fear, if she had not reacted to an event that was just about to happen, they would surely have been killed.
So, are there people who can look into the future?
Likadu: No, such a primitive explanation will not work. People use such abilities unconsciously, as well as any talent in general. So it is impossible to learn this, to train in the courses. Talent is either there or not, and it manifests itself in certain circumstances, when people are very attached to someone or something. And, as a rule, they only in hindsight understand what, in fact, meant what they thought, felt or what they dreamed then. For example, some people confessed to me - and I had no reason not to believe them - that shortly before September 11, 2001, they dreamed that planes crash into a skyscraper. Experts call such dreams prophetic.
And what about people who are endowed with such abilities? To envy them? Or maybe take pity on them, sick?
Likadu: Difficult question. Often people who have witnessed strange phenomena are even afraid to talk about it with their loved ones and therefore turn to us for advice. Indeed, in our society it is not customary to talk openly about the paranormal, just as it was not customary to talk about sex before. If a person begins to tell all sorts of oddities about himself, then God knows what about him. And many are silent, they are afraid that they will be mistaken for crazy.
Have you personally encountered unexplained phenomena? Not when did they go to some of the victims, but in everyday situations?
Likadu: Oh yes! Ten years ago, in my office - there, however, everything is packed - a letter of scientific content was lost. Recently I badly needed that information; I ransacked the whole room, spent hours looking for a letter - and all to no avail. The address of the woman who sent me this letter was only on the envelope, and therefore, I had no chance of ever finding her. I gave up. And as soon as I said to myself: “That's it, I’m not looking for this letter anymore,” the same evening I opened my mailbox - and I couldn’t believe my eyes: it contained a new letter from the same lady! The letter, in particular, contained the following lines: “I don’t know what makes me write to you now. But I have a feeling that it might be important. Perhaps this lady has a downright intuitive gift to do something necessary, not even understanding why she is doing it. I just have to throw up my handsI cannot explain this incident in any other way, even though I have been engaged in the paranormal for forty years.
Source: “Interesting newspaper. Magic and mysticism №5 2012