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The Strange Room

drbates said:
I have a theory that we constantly drift from world to world (cant remember if I've ever read this is stolen it from somewhere else). As these worlds are to all itents and purposes identical most of the time it makes no odds and we dont notice - but sometimes we'll clock a difference.

I'm glad it's not just me who wonders about this. Sometimes get the feeling I've woken up in a marginally different universe to the one I went to sleep in (it'd explain those people on TV etc you thought were dead, but aren't, or vice versa,, they were dead or alive, as applicable, in the last version of the world you were in).
 
Timble2 said:
I'm glad it's not just me who wonders about this. Sometimes get the feeling I've woken up in a marginally different universe to the one I went to sleep in (it'd explain those people on TV etc you thought were dead, but aren't, or vice versa,, they were dead or alive, as applicable, in the last version of the world you were in).

Well keep a lookout for the 'Thunderbird' photo on your travels and if you find it get it tatooed on your person so we can have a look when next you return!

Er, best do it on your arm or shoulder!
 
ElishevaBarsabe said:
I had a 45 containing a song about being crazy about some boy, whose name changed at the end of every run through (four names total). Great fun. Wish I still had it. Although I don't know what I'd use to play it on.

The 1st Heaven 17 LP "Penthouse And Pavement" had a closed loop at the end of side 2 which repeated the words "For A Very Long Time" forever (didn't work on some record players with an auto return arm). The CD version just played it for a few minutes then faded.

An old DJ trick is to place a bit of tape over a section of the vinyl so that the tonearm jumps/loops and plays the same peice over and over for a 'sampled' rhythm.

Is this off topic?
 
It is possible to 'force' an error during the encoding of a CD to make it 'stutter' on playback, as if it was scratched, by purposefully (sp?) encrypting it wrong. But why you'd want to do this is beyond me. Maybe the end of the last track finishes in machine gun fire, static, or a really fast beat?

But then it might not work on all CD players.

EDIT - And people would return the CD saying it's faulty.

EDIT - Which it is.
 
drbates said:
Frobush said:
Timble2 said:
Well keep a lookout for the 'Thunderbird' photo on your travels and if you find it get it tatooed on your person so we can have a look when next you return!

Er, best do it on your arm or shoulder!

I've SEEN that bloody photo! If I ever track it down I'll make sure I not where...

Personally I think its a Jungian Archetype..or something the Greys will use to sort us..

"Have you seen the Thunderbird photo?"

"Yes"

What's the Thunderbird photo???
 
OH NO!

>OPEN CAN
>YOU OPEN THE CAN
>LOOK CAN
>YOU SEE WORMS

iStock_can_of_worms.jpg


(thanks wombat103)
 
Thunderbird Photo

In short (and I've seen a thread here somewhere on the subject but I can't find it) it's a photo of some coyboys standing in front of a dead pterodactyl or big bird. Loads of people remember seeing the photo in a newspaper or magazine but are unable to find the reference. Explanations for this occurence have to do with alternate realities or time travel and other stuff.

Don't go there!
 
drbates said:
I think we have an intruder in our midst.

Next you'll be asking where to start measuring the circle ;)

Well, he did disappear for awhile and magically appear again amidst the 'mysterious gas station' thread.

Makes you wonder! :D
 
Er, I think I'm losing the thread here...

So, is this Strange Room filled with 'mysterious gas'? :?
 
Look. I said ages ago that this thread was going off topic!

I'd say it wasn't all my fault - but I think it was. Oh, sod it!

It's not my fault!


Prey/pray continue.
 
drbates said:
I think Frobrush is talking about the Transdimensional Gas Station thread - not [r]ead that one so I cant comment.
Shame on you, Sir!

Rectify this gap in your understanding of Forteana immediately!
 
You know, this morning I witnessed a group tossing herbs into a fire, reciting a prayer punctuated by screams, and then I had a nice chat with the former Prime Minister of Canada.

To find the "Thunderbird" pictures, go here: http://www.lorencoleman.com/museum.html (scroll down)

It was a hoax.

At the transdimensional gas station we're just waiting for someone to unpack so he can find a receipt. It's gonna happen. Any day now. Real soon. Real real soon.
 
drbates said:
markbellis said:
You know, this morning I witnessed a group tossing herbs into a fire, reciting a prayer punctuated by screams, and then I had a nice chat with the former Prime Minister of Canada.

To find the "Thunderbird" pictures, go here: http://www.lorencoleman.com/museum.html (scroll down)

It was a hoax.

You misunderstand. That was a re-creation of a Thunderbird Photo. If the mystery was just that the 'proper' thunderbird picture was a hoax then we'd all have copies to study at our leisure, now would'nt we?

But I remember clearly seeing the photo at Loren Coleman's cryptozoology site!
 
It's gonna be pretty hard to find - the first photo was printed in a newspaper in New York in 1880 using the new halftone process - before then they just used engravings, so it's quite unlikely that a town like Tombstone, which never had a population greater than 15,000 even in its mining heyday, would have had a halftoner by the mid 80s, and if it had been published, how did it manage to escape the attention of all the scientific bodies in the US?
The Tombstone Epitath is still published and they haven't been able to find it!
 
drbates said:
Im struggling to see where you're coming from...do you believe there IS a genuine Thunderbird photo, or that the photo everyone remembers is a fake, or that the original photo is some sort of urban legend that people are mis-remembering which lead to a fake being produced?
Erm, all of the above? ;)
 
I don't think there was a "real" photo of a "real" big bird.

I don't know if "urban legend" could apply here - Ivan T. Sanderson, who originated the tale, was writing for men's mags like Argosy in the 50s and 60s and if you've ever had a look at back issues, you'd see they never let the facts get in the way of a good story. Probably "tall story" would be the best phrase.
Pterodactyl hoaxes go back to the 1850s, when the London Illustrated News carried the story of one that fell out of a rock formation in France, still alive!!
 
Alright, what I'm seeing is this....every "fake" Thunderbird photo that's been posted or linked (included one I linked to) so far doesn't match the one I remember seeing. I'm not saying that they're not all hoaxes, just that so far, I've not seen the one from my youth.

In fact, it's rather remarkable that I've never seen all these other photos until now, and they STILL don't match the one I saw many years ago. They all have quasi-familiar elements, but are definitely NOT the one I'm thinking of.

Relating to the "Drifting from world to world" Hypothesis:
I've a theory that the universe splits infinities every moment to account for every miniscule change that occurs, but because most of the changes can be considered irrelevant the universe recombines those infinities that are of no consequence, thus reality splits and recombines and in the end, only those changes in reality that lead to a different outcome are maintained as separate branches.

For instance, The position of every grain of sand on a beach may vary, but the only grain whose position may matter at a given time is the one that gets stuck in your eye at that exact time on that given beach, so the position of most of the other grains is moot, hence the realities where their positions differ but do not effect the outcome of the grain of sand in your eye simply recombine as if their positions had never changed.

"Did everything jump around or did my brain just stroke off for a minute?"
--Professor H. J. Farnsworth
 
Well, in a sense. I guess instead of the cat being both living and dead at the same given moment, this would backup the idea that the cat is living in one branch of reality and dead in another.

To simplify, no matter how the poison escapes, it kills the cat.

No matter how the poison DOESN'T escape, it leaves the cat alone.

So, if in several realities, the poison escapes through the vial being broken by a hammer, a leak being present in the cork in the vial, etc, the end result is the same. So while reality splits infinities as to how the poison escapes the vial, those realities recombine at the end and the result is that the cat is dead.

This vastly simplifies things; in general, one could say that reality splits to allow for every variation of the molecules of the box containing the cat and poison. If the position of the molecules doesn't change the end result of the experiment, reality simply recombines to ignore all those extra positions of the molecules since, in the end, they really don't matter. I base this idea on the fact that Nature, by nature, isn't wasteful; why keep splitting reality to account for things that will not influence other things? This almost goes to "Effect before Cause" as if Nature (or Reality) knows what will and will not influence something in the future (another headache for another time).

The observer wouldn't notice all the other realities of the different positions of the molecules of the box; instead the observer would only "focus in" on either the reality where the cat is alive, or the reality where the cat is dead. This gets vastly more interesting when, in the experiment, you have two people who can control which reality they "focus" on and they both pick two different outcomes. Now, the cat is both alive AND dead in one reality, ala "Superposition".

Yes, you can argue that the two observers each take a different path as reality splits to allow the cat to be either alive or dead and depending on which reality they focus on they would take that particular split, but that's another, different headache--and also incredibly off-topic.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I derail the train? :twisted:
 
escargot1 said:
You total geek! :lol:

Ah, well, yes.

escargot1 said:
Escargot Jnr, the FTMB SLAC physicist, is heading your way next month. 8)

That's great. If he'd like to go to the Big Foot Museum, please tell him to contact me. I'll send my phone number by PM.
 
MercuryCrest said:
Yes, you can argue that the two observers each take a different path as reality splits to allow the cat to be either alive or dead and depending on which reality they focus on they would take that particular split, but that's another, different headache--and also incredibly off-topic.

Oh, I'm sorry, did I derail the train? :twisted:

1) For this thread, you aren't off-topic.
2) The train is still heading for the transdimensional (gas) station--by two routes simultaneously.

As if to confirm that something has slipped, I've been allowing the tv to horrify (news) and entertain (history channel) me while I'm knitting. There are altogether too many cultural references to things I've never heard about. I'll start taking notes if this keeps up so I'll have definite examples for you.
(Although, you all will have heard about all of them if you're from this particular universe.)
 
The link in post #1 is long dead. Here's the complete text, salvaged from the Wayback Machine ...

-------------------------------------------

THE STRANGE ROOM

Mel Phillips


In about June 1995 I was going to work. I lived right next to where I worked at that time. A security badge was required to enter through the back door to the building where I worked. I went up the stairs to the second floor and turned right to enter a large work area I always entered, but to my shock, there was only a small room that had windows where a wall should have been. There were also several long couches and a fixed bench against the wall where the windows were. There should have been cubicles divided by the portable walls you see in hi-tech offices. A small room of about 25 feet square had replaced the 250 by 50 foot room I was expecting to see as I had seen for over a year! I descended and re-ascended the stairs four more times to try to see if the new room to the right of the top landing would revert back to what it was supposed to be, but it remained "different" than what I new it ought to look like.

I was beginning to panic when someone I knew showed up to go to work. He always took the same right turn I was trying to make, to get to his cubicle, so I followed him up the stairs just behind him. This time when we made the turn together, the room appeared as it should have been. My co-worker never knew of my weird attempts to get to my office. I kept quiet for obvious reasons. Has anyone else ever had a weird event like this happen to them? I hope I never encounter another one, it really shakes you up.

--------------------------------------------

SALVAGED FROM: https://web.archive.org/web/20040520193806/http://217.206.205.129:80/happened/strangeroom.shtml
 
Reminds me of two instances of getting turned around that I can recall, one explainable, the other not so much but both involving taking the dog out.
The first having walked the usual way over fields and through a small patch of woodland which led to a brackeny escarpment of sorts with two parallel paths that joined further on. We usually went up one path and then doubled back down the other to come out in the same field just further down. Not a huge distance but a nice spot provided you stayed away from the edge which had quite a long drop to trees and bracken below.
On the first path on the way I found a clump of fly agraric, and as I was attempting to do a painting of said mushrooms, picked one for studying (and showing the kids what not to touch.) Not wanting to squash or break it I carried it rather than put it in a pocket and carried on. We had doubled back and were on the return path when it suddenly occurred to me that we'd been walking for what seemed like a long time and I looked round to take stock. The quite familiar path was the same, but also different. The trees weren't the same or seemed out of order, the rocks were differently shaped and placed and I couldn't work out exactly what part of the path we were on. After striking out on a couple of tangents to try and find the path we'd walked in on and not really getting anywhere, I sat down on a rock, putting the toadstool down next to me. While sitting, dog mucking about round the trees, I realised that maybe holding the shroom carefully by cradling the cap in my sweaty palm wasn't the best way to go if I wanted to get back anytime soon, so put it in a pocket damage or not. Normal directions were resumed soon after and we got back without further incident.
 
The second, similarly taking the dog out for his business, but involved a smallish patch of overgrown scrub behind a travel lodge type place. Had travelled and stayed overnight for a wedding and on the day of, leaving the kids having breakfast, took him out to the patch. It was just behind our room and bordered by a low wooden fence so we stepped over that and went into the trees. There was no path, there wasn't really anywhere to go it wasn't big enough and the trees were all small so we just walked in a straightish line for a few minutes. As it was bordered by the motel on one side and big roads on two, traffic noise was pretty constant and I decided to just walk to the far side,turn round and go back.
At the far side it devolved from small trees to brambles and prickles so we turned round and started walking back. And walked. At some point I realised that the traffic noise was quieter or muted which was odd as it was a weekend, a fair morning and a busy road, but didn't really dwell on it. After walking some distance I realised we should have been back on the grass by the room, the overgrown patch wasn't that big, even if somehow we'd walked off at an angle we should have hit either edge or the fence, but all I could see in any direction was more small trees and overgrowth. So, presuming that we'd veered off to one side or the other I set off walking at an angle I thought would bring us out at the fence. There was no sound of traffic that I can remember, can't even recall if there was any birdsong, but I was getting concerned as we had to get ready and go out, and the kids would have finished breakfast by now.
After yet more wandering through, looking for any tree that looked halfway familiar (and failing) I decided that whatever was going on wasn't funny anymore, I didn't have time, so gave up any idea of knowing where we where and just decided to follow the dog. He took the lead and after a few minutes, walked us both straight out onto the grass at the back of the room, surprising me by how relieved I was after such a ridiculous situation.
On getting in I found out we'd been gone over an hour. Unbelievable considering the patch hardly looked much bigger than some back gardens.
 
The second, similarly taking the dog out for his business, but involved a smallish patch of overgrown scrub behind a travel lodge type place. Had travelled and stayed overnight for a wedding and on the day of, leaving the kids having breakfast, took him out to the patch. It was just behind our room and bordered by a low wooden fence so we stepped over that and went into the trees. There was no path, there wasn't really anywhere to go it wasn't big enough and the trees were all small so we just walked in a straightish line for a few minutes. As it was bordered by the motel on one side and big roads on two, traffic noise was pretty constant and I decided to just walk to the far side,turn round and go back.
At the far side it devolved from small trees to brambles and prickles so we turned round and started walking back. And walked. At some point I realised that the traffic noise was quieter or muted which was odd as it was a weekend, a fair morning and a busy road, but didn't really dwell on it. After walking some distance I realised we should have been back on the grass by the room, the overgrown patch wasn't that big, even if somehow we'd walked off at an angle we should have hit either edge or the fence, but all I could see in any direction was more small trees and overgrowth. So, presuming that we'd veered off to one side or the other I set off walking at an angle I thought would bring us out at the fence. There was no sound of traffic that I can remember, can't even recall if there was any birdsong, but I was getting concerned as we had to get ready and go out, and the kids would have finished breakfast by now.
After yet more wandering through, looking for any tree that looked halfway familiar (and failing) I decided that whatever was going on wasn't funny anymore, I didn't have time, so gave up any idea of knowing where we where and just decided to follow the dog. He took the lead and after a few minutes, walked us both straight out onto the grass at the back of the room, surprising me by how relieved I was after such a ridiculous situation.
On getting in I found out we'd been gone over an hour. Unbelievable considering the patch hardly looked much bigger than some back gardens.

Your post really reminded me of my experience in the notorious Clapham Woods, which I posted almost 3 years ago and bump below.

A few months after Clapham Woods featured on Most Haunted, I had a day off work during the week and decided to drive the 40 miles or so south to explore them for myself.

It was broad daylight, around 14:00 if I recall. There was no-one else around. Initially, the main track through the woods didn't feel at all spooky. I was maybe two or three hundred yards inside the woods, far enough for any traffic noise to have disappeared and the large trees formed a cathedral-like canopy far above my head, when I spotted a natural break in the trees alongside the track to my left and I decided to head that way. I found myself in a roughly circular glade maybe 20 yards in diameter, with one large tree in the centre. I walked around it clockwise but, when I got back to where I thought was the point at which I had entered the glade, I was unable to find the gap in the trees leading back to the main track. I retraced my steps anti-clockwise and found a small gap on the other side of the glade, which I pushed through and eventually found a narrow path which I followed to the right and it eventually led back to the main track.

I do have some photos on my hard drive somewhere which showed some slightly odd-looking vine-like appendages dangling from the upper branches of that central tree. I will revisit my photos when I can and post any which look interesting.

When I had reached the far side of the woods, which peter out into some rather mundane farmland where sheep were grazing, I headed back along the main track, without taking any further detours. I was, though, completely unable to spot the entrance to the glade I had entered earlier and which should have now been on my right.

Not enormously Fortean, I'll grant you, but a genuine example of how easy it is to become disorientated in dense, ancient woodland. Anyone with an interest in Forteana would do well to visit Clapham Woods.
 
Anyone with an interest in Forteana would do well to visit Clapham Woods.

Or any woods, really. When you can't see the horizon and also often need to divert from a path to go round mud or trees or undergrowth, it's very easy to get lost. I've told the story of how I regularly walk in the same local woods and the path is different every time.
 
When you can't see the horizon and also often need to divert from a path to go round mud or trees or undergrowth, it's very easy to get lost. I've told the story of how I regularly walk in the same local woods and the path is different every time.

When we used to walk our dogs in local woods we'd sometimes meet people who'd got lost. The woods were a long thin shape and there was only one path which went round the edge. How anyone could lose their way I don't know! but they did.
 
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