MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

The New York’s high society of the second half of 19th century, the so-called “The Four Hundred”, was very strict in everything related to etiquette. Everything had a correct way to be done. And the guru of The Four Hundred’s etiquette was a social snob called Ward McAllister. No one has managed to explain how such a dull guy (it's said that, when he told a joke, caused sobbing and even occasional suicide attempts) could had emerged as the benchmark for fashionable New York Society. Not only was he the benchmark in matters of etiquette but, since he had drafted that list, he had even the right to select who deserved to be part of “The Four Hundred”. But like any idle community, this social elite had a dangerous tendency to get bored and, therefore, to adhere to the mundane pastimes of its time, and among these pastimes featured communication with spirits. When McAllister learned that in the Astor, Vanderbilt and Goelet mansions séances were being held, he drew up a list of The Fou

Chicago, May 11, 1925. When Joe Maurizio, an accountant, came home from work, he paled. Before the door was a huge piece of Parmesan cheese. He quickly opened the door, whimpering and calling his wife like a frightened child. "What's wrong?!" she asked. Trembling, Maurizio pointed to the cheese. "Oh, what a detail. You have brought cheese”, she said kissing him on the forehead. "But what's wrong with you? You're shaking". Speechlessly, Maurizio dropped himself on an armchair while his wife went grab the cheese. "Don’t touch it!", he shouted. She picked up the cheese and smelled it. "Mmnn, how good it smells." She picked up a knife from the kitchen and began cutting slices. "And it tastes better". He looked at her in awe. "What are you doing?" "Honey, you're very weird. What the hell happens to you?". "How can you eat it like that?" he said, stunned. “Do you mean with the fingers?” “Like

The baptism by fire for the American Society for Pchychical Research was a most talked-about event. At that time (the year was 1884), the ASPR had only five members, and all were eager to start investigating. So when the first case turned up, it was the five of them en bloc who got ready to look into it. At that time, the Society already had a small network of spies or informants. You know?, the investigation of paranormal phenomena presents similarities with criminal investigations. One needs informants in the streets, people with eyes and ears wide open to find out anything unusual that is happening. In those early times, however, the network of informants of the ASPR was very small. In fact it consisted of only one man, Jerry Bonanno, although this man was located in the right place. Bonanno was a waiter in McDermont’s Old Ale House, a Lower East Side saloon which was a kind of magnet for paranormal guys. Mediums, clairvoyants, telepaths ... all came together in that place at the e

Sir William Barret stayed a few more months in New York overseeing the details of the founding of the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research. Among other things, he had the mission to recruit talented scientists willing to devote their research to paranormal phenomena. People with a rationalist mentality capable of "separating the wheat from the chaff" as he used to say. Naturally, when it came to renowned scientists, he visited them personally to invite them to join the project. But also many unknown scientists who aspired to be part of the ASPR passed through his office. He had placed an ad in the New York Times requesting "brilliant minds accustomed to separating the wheat from the chaff", which motivated many peasants to pass through his office. It was necessary to withdraw the announcement and write another one without metaphors that could give rise to misunderstandings. However, at the beginning many screwballs also passed through his office. &q

The first meeting of Sir William Barret with Madame Blavatsky, founder and undisputed head of the Theosophical Society, was most curious. Almost a paranormal phenomenon in its own right. It turns out that at that time William James had joined the Theosophical Society and was impatient for his friend to meet this extraordinary woman. The headquarters of the aforesaid Society were located in New York, where Barret was staying, so he had no problem being introduced to such a famous woman. On the contrary, he had heard wonders about her paranormal abilities, so he felt a natural curiosity. James had not warned of their visit, so when both Williams showed up at Madame Blavatsky's residence, no one was waiting for them. They found the door open and James invited his friend to go inside with the familiarity of someone who knows that he is welcome in other people's home. They walked down a long corridor without seeing a living creature. Puzzled, James began to shout (Barret had the im

Oh, the psychophonies! At the end of the 19th century, people was enthusiastic about psychophonies. If they had been given a choice, many would have preferred a psychophony to a symphony. People lined up outside the door of the houses where it was rumored that psychophonies were being produced. Most of the time they were false alarms: the meow of a cat that had been accidentally locked in the pantry, a creak of old wood, the spasmodic snores of a husband whose wife had forgotten he existed ... However, there remained a small percentage of cases for which the SPR had not found any explanation. One of these unresolved cases is the one I am going to refer to now. It was William James, who was then residing in New York, who spoke for the first time of this case to his friend William F. Barret, who in 1884 had traveled to New York from London to found the American Society for Psychical Research. When a downtown Broadway office building was deserted at night, you could hear Trickitrickitric

When Frederic W. H. Myers, prominent member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), read Mrs. Cassel's monograph "Paranormal Waters", where she gives an account of the paranormal activity that happens in the spas, he was fascinated by the variety and scope of the phenomena presented in the book. Eager to do the test himself, he arrange a fifteen-day stay at a famous English spa, but nothing remarkable happens to him (except the loss of all his pants, which he attribute to no paranormal power but to the incompetence of his valet). Frustrated, he arrange an interview with Mrs. Cassel herself at her home in Clermont. There he unleash his disappointment claiming that his stay at the spa has been the most boring fortnight of his life (with the possible exception of the fifteen days that he spent hidden in a barrel). Besides, as a consequence of spending so much time submerged in water, he has become all wrinkled like a raisin, not to mention the loss of all his pants that

Dr. Hugues made it crystal clear that sneaking into someone else's dreams was invading her privacy. However, his patient did not seem to mind the least that since four nights ago that man with the shell glasses and the wild hair interfered in her dreams. On the contrary, it would seem that Margaret Rowland was delighted with that intruder of whom she spoke with such familiarity and tenderness. That's why Dr. Hugues objected: a young woman should not rely so quickly on a stranger, let alone fall in love with him in such a frank and naive way. “Sometimes, strangers turn out to be simple opportunists who only seek to take advantage of young naïve women like you”, he instructed her, “How the hell have you known him?”. Then she told her dream: She was in Newport with her family. She went down to the beach and, as always when she went down to the beach in her dreams, the sea level grew and grew until the water reached her neck and she had to swim to save her life. Usually, after a lo

Year 1871. During Mrs. Cassel's stay in the spa resort of Vichy, she witnessed the discussion between the director of the thermal establishment and a client, who complained that, in the room she shared with her husband, strange noises were heard at night. The director insisted that it was her husband's snoring, to which she replied that she was familiar with her husband's snoring and  this was another kind of noise, more like the one that emits a Patagonian Mara. The director said he wasn't familiar with the noise that a Patagonian Mara emits, but even so he would switch rooms. Intrigued by what the client had told him, the director set out to spend the night in the room in question. Mrs. Cassel got up early the next morning to see with her own eyes the result of the venture. When she was walking down the corridor, she saw from a distance a dozen strange rodents similar to jackrabbits leaving the room in single line. The last one to leave was the director of the thermal

Someone asks me why the eight is such a paranormal number. The answer is simple but transcendent. The 8 is the symbol of infinity only that standing up in order to pass unnoticed. We all know that standing up is the best tactic when you want to infiltrate somewhere. Eight is a supernatural number camouflaged in the universe of natural numbers (colloquially called “cardinal numbers” or “ordinal numbers”). This paranormal essence of number 8 is the reason why so many mathematical operations where the 8 intervene give such crazy results. That is why mathematicians tend to avoid this number as far as possible, either by taking a detour or by vaulting over it by means of a pole. The latter, of course, implies obvious risks. The famous mathematician Martin Trollope broke his neck trying to vault 8 in this way. However, it is not always possible to avoid 8, for example when you try to add four and four. Unless you do not mind making a sucker out of you by claiming that four plus four equals n

Judging by the experiences that Jackie Cassel relates in her monograph "Paranormal Waters" (published in 1867 when the passion for the spa resorts was at its peak), the thermal establishments are not only sources of health but also of paranormal phenomena. Mrs. Cassel, a middle-aged and unmarried Frenchwoman resident in Clermont, suffered from cerebral lumbalgia and the doctor prescribed her some purple pills, but as she did not like that color, she preferred to prescribe herself a stay in the spa of Carlsbad in Czechoslovakia. Even with reluctance, her doctor agreed to pay for her stay at the Grand Hotel in that spa city, and that is how Mrs. Cassel began his career as an expert in spas. In that first stay in a thermal establishment, she realized that unusual things happened there. For example, the towels disappeared. You left the towel on a lounger and, when you returned, it was conspicuous by its absence. The jars of aromatic salts also disappeared and, on one occasion, t

It is known that the famous gangster Al Capone flirted with the paranormal and that, in his luxurious apartment in Chicago, he used to perform mysterious rituals with Parmesan cheese during which he recited spells in an obscure Italian dialect. That's why one of the worst threats you could receive from him was to find on your doorstep a big piece of cheese. It is also suspected that he possessed clairvoyance skills, which would explain why Elliot Ness founded so difficult to hunt him down. To fight him with his same methods, Ness had in his office a rag doll named “Capona” to which he used to nail pins while performing a voodoo dance. That explains why, at the time of his arrest, Capone appeared before the press with endless pins stuck all over his body. (By the way, Ness was such an honest man that, when Capone tried to bribe him, not only did he not accept the money but gave his failed briber a monthly wage from his own salary, which was also paid out of his own pocket.)  Anothe

When profane people hear about paranormal phenomena, they tend to imagine great wonders, such as teleporting a cow to the moon, or going to bed one night without even knowing how to spell the word "zoo" and get up in the morning speaking seven languages ​​with their dialects. However, such phenomena are as paranormal as the simple half-inch displacement of a pen left on the table ... unless, of course, you live next to an elevated railroad. Since I’ve just mentioned the “els”, I remember a famous paranormal case that happened in New York at the beginning of the 20th century. The “Third Avenue El” that was designed to run, without leaving Manhattan, from South Ferry to 129th   Street, ended sometimes in Flashing Meadows, on the other side of the East River, without anyone having clarified the phenomenon to this day. The rails were checked inch by inch and they were found to have the proper orientation. The reason why the train ended sometimes in Flushing Meadows remains a my

Another of the psychic abilities used by the secret services that operated during the Cold War, was the folding of spoons from a distance. It is known that the KGB had a whole department composed of more than five hundred psychics spoon benders. There were many Americans who, when preparing to take a spoonful of soup to the mouth, suffered the sudden folding of the spoon, with the consequent spilling of its contents. Determined to counterattack, President Kennedy hired a famous Dutch psychic, who after many unsuccessful attempts, managed to generate chaos during a gala dinner in the Kremlin by causing that the guests failed to introduce the food in the mouth nailing the fork all over the face. That night the guests did not taste a bite and left indignant the dining room without waiting for the desserts and with their faces full of punctures and pieces of food attached. This incident triggered the so-called “Cuban Missile Crisis”. The experiments with teleportation also had a stellar m

On the occasion of a question that I am asked, I am going to tell a little-known anecdote whose historical scenario was the Cold War that the two superpowers of the time fought during the second half of the 20th century. The question that I am asked is: "Are there people who have the psychic ability to understand the language of animals?". Well, the answer is yes, although this skill is very scarce. In fact, those few people were very sought-after by both the Western intelligence services and their Soviet Union counterparts. Nixon and Brezhnev, the leaders of both superpowers, were very interested in knowing what was being said in their rival's office. However (as Nixon would discover very soon), it was not easy to place microphones, which were bulkier than today, or spies, which were also bulkier than today (Vladimir Kozlov, the famous Russian spy, weighed 374 pounds, and Paul Blake, in whom the character of agent 007 was inspired, weighed more than 400 and needed two o

Seemingly, Donald Dandish (aka Dandish The Scoundrel, aka Mole Don, aka Abe Sogrevevitch, aka Aka) was a determined activist in favor of ecumenism, since, even being of Jewish religion, for a month he had not stopped going regularly to the Church of Saint Mark, of Catholic confession. Only the Shabbat stopped attending the church to make an appearance in the synagogue. Every other day he attended the church with an unusual regularity: fifteen or sixteen times a day. He always occupied the same place, at the end of a side bench near the wall. He spent an hour there kneeling and with his head bowed, as if doing penance, then he got up, went out into the street, took a breath of fresh air and rushed back inside the Church. His neighbors considered him either a very pious man or someone who fled from justice and did not want to be seen in the streets. But even if that was the case, it was evident that he was deeply repentant. Because not only did he not dare raise his head towards the Hig

When the company I worked for named me manager in our branch office in Memphis, Tennessee, where Elvis Presley lived most of his life, I wasn't very happy about that. Personally I do not like rock and roll, and for me Elvis was the embodiment of that kind of music. After a morning touring the city looking for a house to rent, I was captivated by a small house in the suburbs. When I rushed to rent it, however, I made the mistake of proclaiming to the agent of the real estate agency that I preferred the suburbs because I did not like the omnipresence of Elvis' living memory that I found in the center. I tried to escape from that cult to a dead singer whose music I did not even like. As a good salesman he was, he hid me then that Elvis had resided briefly in that same house when he was still a young unknown musician. At first, everything went well. But one night I was awakened by what I thought was a recording of an Elvis song. I got up angry against the neighbor who at that time

I believe in everything that is paranormal. But instead, everything normal makes me feel uneasy. I don't know, I do not trust normal. I consider myself a paranormal entity. You will say: "What you are is a monstrosity." Okay, that's fine with me... as long as it's a paranormal monstrosity. Normality is such a boring thing ... Look at my work, for example. A normal work, like everyone else's. Everything is always the same again and again, everything so predictable. Well, except for the time that crazy man broke into the office. Ha, ha, ha! That was a paranormal event! I will never forget. We were all typing letters, as in all offices of Manhattan. The letters need to be typed, you know, and that's what the office workers are for: to please the damned letters! Sorry, that's my bad temper. Everyone says it: Henry has a bad temper. Damn, how can I not have bad temper if normality overwhelms me! It surpasses me! If at least once in a while some paranormal p

There is a great variety of sects, all equally pernicious (it is not healthy to be brainwashed, no matter what kind of shampoo they use). But the sect I fell victim to has the added disadvantage that they do not allow you to sleep unless you have good reasons for it. And it is not enough to say "I'm sleepy", you have to have a stronger reason. I will tell you how I fell into the networks of this destructive sect. I was a naive young man in search of the "meaning of life". I had the intuition that in life there must be something deeper than turn somersaults (I must clarify that I worked as acrobat in a circus). Some guys saw me one day snooping around an old bookstore in search of books in which the word "meaning" would appear in the title. And they grabbed me. When I say "grabbed" I do not mean that they surrounded me and grabbed me by the arms, or that they applied a cloth soaked in chloroform to my nose. No. Captors of sects are more subtl

Much has been said about the Yeti since the photo of a strange creature came to light in 1927. This photo shows a living being very similar in everything to a man except in its fondness to wander through the snowy mountains of the Himalayas without any clothes on. The locals claim to have seen him swinging on a rocking chair while humming a fashionable song. Such a statement has been questioned by National Geographic based on the evidence provided by one of its affiliates, although such evidence thawed instantly. Professor Min Gao, from the Central University of Beijing, argues that the probability of the existence of such a creature is one in two. However, the sightings do not stop happening. A Tibetan woman claims to have seen the Yeti at the market in the city of Nagqu buying some donuts typical of the region. Another witness who lives near a railroad speaks of "strange beeps at night". In the West it is speculated on with the possibility that the Yeti is not more than a m

There is a legend that affirms the existence, in the heart of the Himalayas, of a non-existent kingdom called Shambala where there is no disease nor death and where people are perpetually young. There is another legend that not only questions this statement but all those from the same source. This non-existent kingdom has been the goal of numerous expeditions organized by Westerners, as well as the goal of numerous jokes made up by Easterners. In 1867 a British expedition set off from Brighton in search of Shambala but somehow ended up in a used car lot of Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Two years later a German expedition suffered the same fate. As a result of these failures, the US government forced the owner of the aforementioned business to change its name of “Shambala” for another that did not cause so much confusion. Years later, in 1912, an adventurer named Charles Sherwood organized a third expedition in search of the non-existent kingdom in the Himalayas, and this time he foun

The most sinister figure in the annals of paranormal history is undoubtedly Heimrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi SS. In the world of the paranormal there have been many evil people. There have also been many assholes. But there has never been such a successful combination of both as in the case of Himmler. Already as a young man, when he was goose-stepping along with the Hitler Youth, the soldier who marched in front of him invariably ended up with pain in his butt due to the kicks that the asshole inflict him. In those march-pasts, Himmler raised so much the leg and with such thrust that, on one occasion, he did a back flip, which made such a good impression on Hitler (who was present witnessing the parade) that, noticing him for the first time, he started recommending Himmler for the highest positions in the Nazi hierarchy. Well, while the soldiers were dying on the battlefront, Himmler spent the war looking for "objects of power", like the sword of Damocles, the horn of

George P. Dandish. Maybe you remember the name. It appeared on the front pages of all the newspapers nine years ago. Then it was discovered that he was the first man who had gone to the moon. Before Armstrong, Aldrich and Collins. But his feat had even more merit because he went to the moon without a rocket or anything. Freehand, so to speak. I know it's hard to believe. In fact the next day the news was denied, that is why it has fallen into oblivion. But I think that, in this forum dedicated to the paranormal, it deserves at least a review. Have you heard of astral travel? The soul temporarily abandons the body and goes around to skive off. It is thanks to one of these trips that George P. Dandish arrived to the moon before anyone else. What evidence do we have of it? When the secret archives of NASA were declassified nine years ago, some surprises came to light. Maybe on July 20, 1969, some of you had the chance to watch on TV the astronaut Armstrong's historic spacewalk on

We the fans of the UFO phenomenon handle a classification when we treat of the “close encounters”. Depending on how close we've been to the aliens, we talk about "close encounters of the first kind", "close encounters of the second kind", "close encounters of the third kind", and finally there's the kind in which you cut and run. There are fans to whom going from one phase to another takes a lifetime. I, however, went through all these phases in just a few minutes. Now I tell you. In order to establish contact with extraterrestrials or with any girl who agreed to date me, I spent the nights traveling with my old Chevrolet around my hometown. Well, on March 15, 1986, I lost the bet I had made with my neighbor Nicky, who had bet against me that I would find the aliens rather than a girl willing to date me. Indeed, that night I was calmly driving through an uninhabited area when suddenly I saw a turquoise blue light in the sky. I stopped the car an