For several centuries they have been mentioned not only in fairy tales and legends, but also … in incident reports and police reports
We are mostly familiar with invisible people from fairy tales. You can put on a magic hat, an enchanted cloak or take some kind of medicine in them - and no one will notice you. The question of how a person becomes invisible is skillfully masked by a series of adventures of an invisible hero.
Meanwhile, invisible people for several centuries have been mentioned not only in fairy tales and legends, but also … in incident reports and police reports. And this is already a reason for a serious conversation with an attempt to answer: how does this happen contrary to the laws of physics ?!
In 1876, a terrible panic arose in the Chinese city of Nanking: invisible demons appeared in the city, cutting off people's traditional braids. In vain the townspeople covered their heads with their hands, trying to save their hair …
The attacks were carried out in the street in front of dozens of witnesses. More precisely, before the eyes of witnesses, the pigtail disappeared from the person, as if it was dissolving in the air. But the one who cut it off was never seen by anyone.
After a while, the panic spread to Shanghai, then to other cities. The panic lasted for about three years. Meanwhile, the events of 1876-1879. were not the only ones, the emergence of an incomprehensible "evil spirit" was recorded by the Chinese chronicles before: invisible people cutting their hair were known in China back in the era of the Wei dynasty (477-517 BC)
The incomprehensible and shocking events in China somehow overshadowed an isolated incident that had occurred three years earlier - in 1873, and not in China, but in Menomonee (Wisconsin, USA).
Standing on the street next to her mother, the girl suddenly felt someone cutting her hair, and at the same time they disappear without a trace. Neither she nor the witnesses of the incident were able to prevent the hooliganism (as they thought then).
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And in 1890 an invisible "evil spirit" moved to Japan, and a massive panic swept this country. The situation was aggravated by the fact that if in China the invisible man only cut his hair, then in Japan he inflicted wounds in the neck. The cut was about an inch (about 2.5 cm) long. You can't die from this, but it's still somehow unpleasant!
European newspapers wrote about this with condescending irony: Asia, what can you take from it! The London Daily Mail, for example, humorously described how Indian coolies in Lahore are convinced of the existence of the "mumiyai" - an invisible creature that prowls everywhere and grabs people right on the streets.
The humor faded away in 1922 when a massive panic caused by the invisible people arose in London. There, an invisible hand was cutting the hair of young girls. And no one could explain how, in broad daylight, in a large European city, people's hair suddenly disappeared from their heads.
Information about mysterious wounds began to arrive. For example, on April 23, 1922, the People newspaper published a report from Cherring Cross Hospital in London about a patient who was admitted there on April 16 with a knife wound in his neck.
He could only tell how he turned off Coventry Street, received a wound and fell to the sidewalk. A few hours later, a second patient was admitted to the hospital with the same wound. Finally, on the same day, another person was inexplicably wounded at the same intersection.
This would not be surprising if at least one person was next to the victims at the time of the injury. But around, according to eyewitnesses in the distance, there was no one!
Historical evidence suggests that meetings with mysterious invisible people took place in the history of mankind at all times and in many countries. Russian chronicles tell about the appearance in 1092 in Polotsk of invisible people who killed people in the streets, and about a mass panic.
At the end of the XX century. in the western press there were reports of an entire village of invisible people living in Indonesia. They are called "orang bunyan" (translated from Malay "hidden people").
Invisibles live deep in the forest and have supernatural powers. Sometimes they kidnap children. Apparently, their time passes in a different way: there were cases when children who had been stolen earlier and already grown up returned to their homes, but none of their relatives were already alive, or they were already old.
The border with the place where orang bunyan live, the Malays marked with large boulders. Those who ask for help come here. They bring food and other gifts and turn to the invisibles to solve their problems. Sometimes problems are actually solved, which makes the belief in invisible people stronger.
Europeans who have visited Indonesia cite numerous evidences of the existence of the orang bunyan: the sounds of drums heard in empty meadows, the appearance and disappearance of food or dishes, the movement of transparent silhouettes in the rain, etc.
Sometimes the invisible ones behave really brutal. So, in 1761, five women from the Italian village of Ventimiglia were returning home. Suddenly one of them screamed and fell down dead. Her companions were in indescribable horror from what they saw: it seemed that some terrible force in one second tore apart the unfortunate.
Her clothes and shoes were torn into small pieces and scattered around her body. There were deep wounds on the head, and in some places the bones of the skull were even exposed. The right side was ripped open and the insides fell out.
The sacrum is shattered, and the head of the tibia seems to have been pulled out of the joint. Most of the internal organs turned out to be flattened … Everything looked as if the woman was the victim of a sudden silent explosion.
A similar story was published on December 8, 1831 by the New York Times. It was the story of the captain of the German ship "Brechsee" about a strange incident during a storm, when a sailor was inexplicably wounded before his eyes. He suddenly developed a 4-inch long wound on his head and fell unconscious on the deck.
Published in 1860, "A Narrative of Extraordinary Events Behind the Children of Mr. Richard Jail," cases of various invisible attacks on children in the same family are described. Once invisible men left bite marks on the face of one of the children. On another occasion, witnesses saw a terrible sight: an invisible hand strangled a girl.
Later, other children of this family also became victims of invisible attacks. Once, during one evening alone, five witnesses saw “someone invisible bite their hands 20 times … They themselves could not do this in any way, because all this time we were closely following them.
Examining these bites, we found traces of 18 or 20 teeth in them. Saliva was smeared on the surface of the wounds, the contours of which clearly indicated the touch of someone's mouth to the child's hand. The surface was wet, very wet, and smelled disgusting."
Something similar happened to 20-year-old South African farmer Jimia de Bruin in 1960. Invisible men "gutted" him for several days in a row. The police witnessed how Jimmy suddenly screamed in pain and wounds appeared on his legs.
The next day, two police officers saw a deep cut in his chest, although his shirt remained intact. Wounds in various places on his body appeared for several days in a row. They were neat, as if made with a razor or scalpel.
In all cases of invisible attacks on people, there is one common detail: wounds appear on the body under clothing, on which there are no traces of cuts or punctures. So far, no satisfactory explanation has been found for the "invisible" phenomenon.
However, as early as 1092, the Russian chronicler had no doubt that the wounds inflicted by an invisible hand were the essence of the "stinging" of demons.
However, there are other versions as well. The most popular is that invisible people live next to us in a parallel world. One of those who shares and actively promotes this version is the paranormal researcher Magnus Skarfedinsson from Reykjavik. In his collection there are more than 700 testimonies of those who in one way or another came into contact with the invisible.
It is curious that the invisible person in Iceland is also called “hidden people”. According to most testimonies, they come to the rescue when someone is in trouble (they are ready to pull the fallen person out of the gorge or take the lost person out of the forest). When communicating with ordinary people, they can become visible - and then they look like people, however, their clothes are more reminiscent of medieval ones.
Skarfedinsson argues that invisible people come from a parallel world only when their help is needed. It somehow does not agree with the cases of hair cutting in China or England …
Another point of view: the existence of invisibles is due to the fact that life in the Universe can have a variety of forms - including consisting of matter so rarefied that the human eye is unable to see it.
In the 60s. Academician V. Kaznacheev, who deals with biophysics, suggested that in addition to the protein-nucleic form, which is usual for us, life on the planet can be represented by some kind of energy structures that are invisible to the human eye.
And again it is not clear: why should representatives of another form of life remind of themselves with openly hooligan tricks?
Can't the phenomenon of invisible people be united by phenomena of a different order? Those. the invisibles who stabbed them - are they completely different invisibles than the orang bunyan and those who come to the rescue from a parallel world or consist of other forms of matter?
In 1998, an interesting story was published in American newspapers. Several Minneapolis teens were involved in supermarket theft. They were detained and handed over to the police. At the station they were interrogated - all but one girl - Jennis.
No one paid any attention to her, as if she had never existed. Jennis was surprised at first, and then calmly left the station. Later she talked about this with her accomplices - and they also confirmed that she had become invisible for some time.
This case became the starting point for the research of psychotherapist Donna Higby. She gave advertisements asking to report incidents when an ordinary person becomes invisible for a while. The responses were not long in coming.
A woman from Ventura (California) spoke of a situation when she was at the post office and tried to attract attention - but no one saw or heard her. Another woman from Roanoke, Texas, reported having had attacks of invisibility at a restaurant and airport. Another Texan from wrote about how he suddenly disappeared for others in the cinema.
Letters with similar stories came not only from the United States, but also from other countries. In 2001, during the inauguration ceremony of George W. Bush, a man suddenly appeared next to him. He was not invited, but the security officials did not see him until he shook hands with the president.
The Russian press wrote about a student at St. Petersburg University. When all the money was stolen from him, he was forced to travel by train without a ticket for a month. But the controllers and fellow travelers did not seem to notice him! A month later, when the money issue was settled, the "invisibility" disappeared.
These examples speak of a phenomenon of a completely different order - that a person can somehow block the visual perception of himself by other people. This is something akin to hypnosis, but it can happen unexpectedly for the very invisible person. This point of view is confirmed by the research of the psychotherapist V. Isakov.
This version fully explains the aggressive behavior of some invisibles, who, using their acquired supernatural abilities, could enjoy their power, frightening others.