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Odd, Unexplainable Appearances

Mungoman

Mostly harmless...
Joined
Feb 25, 2010
Messages
3,223
Location
In the Bush (Peak Hill, NSW)
This happened to me and my Mum.

I was living on a property (farm) with my parents about 20 K's north of Goulburn. We grew potatoes and raised poll herefords

It was about 16:00, on a winters afternoon, and I'd just finished ploughing one of our river paddocks.

We had the Wollondilly river running through our place, running south to north with the farm house on a slight rise of 20 metres or so above the level of the river, and the farmhouse being about 100 metres away from the river. On the other side of the river, apart from small trees twinning the river, the land lay cleared away for miles - dead flat.

I'd shedded the tractor and was sitting on the verandah with my Mum, having a coffee and just talking about this and that, looking across the river, onto Old Man Toparas's potato fields - about 300 acres in size.

As we chatted we noticed an area just on the other side of the river (about 150 metres away), what looked like a small single storied house appear - it took about 30 seconds to appear from vague opaqueishness, where we could see through it, to something solid and impenetrable.


I looked at Mum and Mum confirmed that She also was seeing the same is me.

Over five minutes, we silently watched these single storied buildings appear over an area of twenty acres or so, all built exactly the same - flat roofed, with large windows, awnings and sills at the top and bottom of the windows that were intended to lift up and lower down to meet in the middle and cover the windows.

We watched this for approximately ten minutes or so, and then watched them all fade away to nothingness.

Mum was a bit of a 'spook' and strange things happened around Her, so us kids just took it as normal (sort-of), but this was the most implausible thing I'd ever seen, and I'm still blown away by it. After the houses had dissolved, we talked about it and I tried to come to some form of a rational explanation - big mistake - so every couple of years I go back to have a look, but nothings changed. So far.

Well that's my bit of wierdness - have you ever seen things appear?
 
That's one of the weirdest stories I've ever heard. I feel that you're expecting the houses to eventually 'appear' there, or rather be built, as if you somehow saw them as they'd be in the future, would that be right?

You seem to know a lot about the design of the houses. It's not a style we see here in the UK, is it what you'd expect over there? (I'm assuming you're in Australia so correct me if I'm wrong.)
 
Was there a heat haze? Could that have been a really good mirage?
My secondary theory might be a vision of the future seen through a time tunnel.
 
Could you find a picture of a house on t'net that resembles the ones you saw Mungoman?
 
maybe a Fata Morgana? displaced objects in a landscape?

lovely story! :)

EDit to add the Wikipedia explanation of Fata Morgana. But it says it's across the horizon...
 
It was the most weird experience ever, I'm just glad that I was not the only one seeing it Escargot1, and yes, It wouldn't surprise me to see this happening in reality, but the area, it's all zoned rural and the distances from power lines phone or gas connections would be prohibitive.

I don't know about house design, but it was 'obvious/intuitive' to me that these houses were designed for cyclonic weather (yep I'm an aussie), and having been up the top end, and seen houses designed with window shutters for that climate extreme, it seemed to fit nicely in my own head.

Life is bloody strange at the best of times Ecargot, and growing up in a house with a Mum who frequented circles, and who around, weird things happened sort of got me to realise that what we see and perceive is only skin deep - our perception and world is as wide as our EMS will allow us to see - I've often wondered if our spectrum was much wider, and the rules of physics could be altered, what we would perceive.
 
Have you been back recently, Mungoman? Are there houses similar to what you saw there now?
 
@MungomanII , fascinating. Can you remember if the houses seemed too tall, or was it impossible to tell their scale?

Was the ground where you could see this phenomenon physically unusual in comparison with the wider surroundings? Were the potato fields very flat, or uneven? Was the crop actually in leaf, or just cultivated in preperation for planting? Could ploughed lines, viewed through a haze, possibly form an aliased image that coalesced into a shared trompe l'oeil?

Can you remember if apparent group of houses began to appear from the centre outwards, or from one side to another, or just as a randomly presenting effect?

An absolutely gripping experience....
 
Skinny, I think the brand of coffee was 'Misty Mountain Magic' *wink*.


Frideswide, Aye, they that hath an eye shall see. I've often wondered about our limited perception, and wonder if it is due to a universal law that is dictated to us by an atomic resonance of this level of being, and that those ghouls, ghosties and things that go bump in the night that we occasionally see, are actual denizens of a ghostly world that parallels ours, and that every now and again, due to some kind of harmonics, or those that have a particular resonance in sympathy with that nether world, becomes visible to us.


GNC, I've been back in the last twelve month and there are no new buildings, just a flat expanse. I'll try to embed a google world image that shows the old farm (Gibraltar).

Gibraltar.jpg


Good, it worked. The white roof nearest the river is the old homestead, and the area directly across is Toparis's potato paddocks. This is where we saw the buildings appear - as you can see, there are no buildings whatsoever, and I can't imagine any type of building being erected in the next 100 years, as this is strictly rural alluvial flats - sheep, cattle, potatoes, or lucerne - it's too valuable for it's primary production for it to be rezoned (Australia has in it's land mass, only 5% arable land - the rest is non-arable land - deserts, mountains, swamp).

Ermintrude, It was a winters afternoon, 4'ish - about 7 degrees - the sun was an hour from setting, and it sets in the top left corner of the photo at this time of the year. The field would have been fallow after the harvest, so it would have been flat and bare of vegetation, the hue of the soil is dark, due to organic matter, and the field floods with every rise in the river as it's, at the most, maybe two metres higher that the static level of the river.


The lighting in Australia is usually astonishingly clear, and in this instance there were no factors that would obscure this clarity. The buildings started to appear at a common focal point (about where the single tree is), then radiated out exponentially, until the whole are that you can see was covered with buildings in no order, with small lanes in between.


The buildings were squat, rather plain, with large windows the width of the wall, solid awnings that were fixed from the top of the window at an angle of about 25 degrees from the horizontal, with a corresponding sill of equal dimensions - the funny thing is that as I recall, I couldn't see doors on these buildings. It was such a strange sight Ermintrude, that I did the blinking, and the stand up and turn around shtick that we are supposed to do when we do not trust our eyesight but it was there. After about two minutes, Mum and I just sat, watched, and observed the growth of the vision.


Naughty_Felid and Amoradala2, I have no idea about the appearance of the buildings, I just accept that it was Phenomina, with a capital 'P'. What was behind that phenomenon, what caused it, I would dearly love to know.


Mythopoeika, the clarity of it all was astounding, with no haze. With mirages, there's usually a disconnection at the base of the mirage and a wavering quality to it - but there was none of it with this vision.


Building..jpg


davidplankton, the building on the right here, is the closest in similarity, just imagine an awning that sits on the top of the window at 25 degrees from the horizontal, and another as the external window sill at the same inclination at the bottom, with the capacity to be lowered and raised to meet in the middle so that it covers the whole of the window.
 
Fata morgana, another dimension appearing, ghost houses?
Have you checked with local history societies to see if there was housing there in the past?
 
Vague memory alert: wasn't there a trick of the atmospherics that enabled the New York skyline to be seen way out at sea in the Atlantic? Anyone care to jog my memory? Could be something to build on here (so to speak).
 
Yes, thanks. Looks like it might have been the Toronto image I was thinking of, unless someone knows better?
 
Mythopoeika, the clarity of it all was astounding, with no haze. With mirages, there's usually a disconnection at the base of the mirage and a wavering quality to it - but there was none of it with this vision.


View attachment 946

davidplankton, the building on the right here, is the closest in similarity, just imagine an awning that sits on the top of the window at 25 degrees from the horizontal, and another as the external window sill at the same inclination at the bottom, with the capacity to be lowered and raised to meet in the middle so that it covers the whole of the window.

Hmmm. Time/dimensional tunnel, then.

That looks like a holiday home - a kind of chalet.
 
Vague memory alert: wasn't there a trick of the atmospherics that enabled the New York skyline to be seen way out at sea in the Atlantic? Anyone care to jog my memory? Could be something to build on here (so to speak).
Yes, it was very clear. I saw this pic the other day.
 
Fata morgana, another dimension appearing, ghost houses?
Have you checked with local history societies to see if there was housing there in the past?


S.O.V., the only people who lived there before us were the Gundungarra People - theirs was a nomadic lifestyle.
 
I love stories of intermittent cottages and places that can never later be found.

I think this is the only story I have heard where one materializes - normally they are assumed real until they disappear.

Can you put a date on this, Mungoman? Not that a date will convince anyone sceptical about whether such things can be at all.

I'm up late - so I'm thinking you are up early since we both have green lights on. :)
 
Thanks for the interest one and all, for the last 40 odd years I've never thought too much about the mechanics behind what we saw but now seems to be a good time, so, here goes.


Fata Morgana is a mirage, albeit a superior mirage. The thing about any mirages that I've seen, and I can estimate that I've seen thousands is that there is a wavering quality to them, there is also a detachment at the base where it connects with the ground, they are seen on the horizon, and the closer you get to them the more they fade away - a reversed inverse square ratio.


What we saw was approximately 200 metres away, rather than the horizon and it extended outwards to possibly 600 metres away. The resolution was utterly clear, from the ground up, with the experience 'growing' from one building to hundreds over an extended period of time, then a period of time when no more buildings appeared - at the end of that period in time all of the buildings faded from view equally, and at the same time.


What I saw seemed, in my mind, to be contemporary - similar to site huts - or Dongas, as we call them here, but rather extravagant in comparison to their dimensions and more permanent than Dongas, perfectly suited for Australia's climate, and with an economy more suited to a workers wage.


What sits better in my mind, in relation to an explanation of it all, is more that, for some reason energy or perception altered what wasn't there, and every person that could've been there would have seen it due to a changed perception i.e. My previous reply to Frideswide that we only see what is visible within the Electro Magnetic Spectrum, due to our restricted perception, and that if we enlargened the width of that part of the spectrum - our perception - what would be seen.


I think that there are times and people who are 'gifted' temporarily, with the ability to see more of the spectrum, and that would explain a mass vision, or more conversely, one person seeing something that no one else can see.


This then opens up my mind to possible 'passive' time travel, or even interdimensional travelling - who knows - I don't, but what a lovely day dream.
 
I love stories of intermittent cottages and places that can never later be found.

I think this is the only story I have heard where one materializes - normally they are assumed real until they disappear.

Can you put a date on this, Mungoman? Not that a date will convince anyone sceptical about whether such things can be at all.

I'm up late - so I'm thinking you are up early since we both have green lights on. :)


G'day James, It's a rather cold (6 degrees Celsius) day here in the Southern tablelands of NSW Australia, 14:00 in the afternoon. It would have been August of 1971, and the property was known for 'strange things'. We had sightings of large Cats throughout the area, also behind the farmhouse there was a natural amphitheatre, which reared straight up to a height of 200 metres which had a delightful resonance to it, and we had often heard strange sounds of a night. we were also part of an extended triangle that ran north from Goulburn that was synonymous with tremors and UFO's - it was also known as being in a 'rain shadow' - average rainfall 600 mm, but travel 20 K's east or west and you were guaranteed an average rainfall of 800mm, so, I think it was possibly the place itself that was the anomaly.


In this neck of the woods, we have tales of the Nargun - large mountainous rocks that are alive and move - they also bring ice with them - and the thought comes to me, what if the amphitheatre was one of the Old Narguns and that Dreaming power wafted out, every now and again, to play with the heads of us whipella...
 
how long ago was the area covered in glaciers? :eek:


About 20,000 years ago Frideswide, but it was confined to the Snowy Mountains and the Tasmanian highlands. Glaciers were most extensive in Tasmania where ice caps formed on the Central Plateau and West Coast Ranges, and systems of valley and cirque glaciers formed on surrounding mountains.

At this time, a vast area of Australia, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to northern Tasmania, was covered by dunefields.

During the glacial maximum the climatic system produced intensified pressure systems, leading to high speed winds that reactivated the dunefields covering much of the arid zone, that had formed during previous stages. The dunes had been stabilised by vegetation during the previous wetter phase. As the drying of the arid zone reached extreme levels, the vegetation was unable to cope with the increasing drought, and increased fire frequency and severity in many areas that would have occurred in the increasingly dry and windy conditions.


"Lakes dried up, forests disappeared, deserts expanded, animals went extinct and vast swathes of the Australian land mass would have been simply uninhabitable."
Annual temperatures plummeted by as much as 10 degrees below present-day levels, with massive reductions in rainfall. Glaciers appeared in the Snowy Mountains and Tasmania.

"This was a time of massive change," Professor Ulm said. "Sea levels fell more than 120 metres during the LGM, exposing much of the continental shelf and connecting mainland Australia to Papua New Guinea and Tasmania."

Australian researchers from James Cook University, the Australian National University and the University of New South Wales teamed up with colleagues from Oxford University in the United Kingdom and Simon Fraser University in Canada to use advanced geospatial techniques to analyse archaeological radiocarbon dates from across Australia.

"We are trying to understand how people responded to these extreme conditions," Professor Ulm said.

The researchers found that during times of high climatic stress, human populations contracted into localised environmental 'refuges', in well-watered ranges and along major riverine systems, where water and food supplies were reliable.

Co-leader of the study, Alan Williams from the Fenner School of Environment and Society at The Australian National University, said surviving the last ice age required Aboriginal communities to adapt to massive change.

"As much as 80 per cent of Australia was temporarily abandoned by Aboriginal people at the height of the LGM (Last Glacial Maximum), when conditions were at their worst," he said.

"Along Australia's east coast, people contracted to refuge areas with good water supplies - most likely the result of increased summer snow melt coming off mountain ranges like the Victorian Alps, or glacier-fed river systems such as those of the central highlands of Tasmania."

Professor Ulm said that while those better-watered areas would have provided more reliable resources, Aboriginal people needed to make significant changes to their way of life in order to survive.

"The archaeological evidence reflects major changes in settlement and subsistence patterns at this time," he said.

"Many previously occupied areas were abandoned.

"There were changes to hunting practices, the types of food people were eating, and the technologies they were using, to deal with new circumstances.

"We expect there would have been huge impacts on social relationships and religious beliefs as well, but these types of changes are much harder to detect in the archaeological record.

"One thing we can say for sure is that extreme climate change results in the fundamental social and economic reorganisation of society.

"This was certainly true in the past and will be true in the future."
 
Thanjk you :D


I've just had a thought Frideswide; The Old Ones would climb up every year or so to the Alpine regions of the Snowy Mountains, to collect and eat the aestivating Bogong Moth (Agrotis infusa) - definitely famine food - I wonder if they noticed, over the years, that Erratics, trapped in Glaciers, were moving with the flow of the glacier, ergo the myth of the Nargun, ice, and movement?
 
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