Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible, and the Ignored

Dedicated with gratitude to my Teacher,

Lee Lozowick

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

JANUARY 1: THE CRYSTAL SKULL

FEBRUARY 1: COMPUTERS THAT KILL

MARCH 1: BLASTS OF GOD

APRIL 1: THE KADA CODEX

MAY 1: MADAME BLEROTTI

JUNE 1: THE SECRET TREASURE AT RENNES-LE-CHATEAU

JULY 1: SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION

AUGUST 1: BALL LIGHTNING UNPLUGGED

SEPTEMBER 1: BEACH BURSTS INTO FLAMES

OCTOBER 1: UFO DOGFIGHT

NOVEMBER 1: GLOBSTER OF MARGATE

DECEMBER 1: DOLLARS TO DUST

REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION

Eyes are windows. Looking into eyes, you see the soul of the person inside. Looking out from eyes, you see the soul of the world—a soul of constantly shifting phenomena and relationships. It is a mysterious place, this world we live in, if only we would allow ourselves to see it. Though harder to glimpse in modern times, Mystery is there nonetheless. It sparkles behind our concrete assumptions, dances like diamonds amongst the crowds and the rush to get ahead, shines in the face of all our brilliant distractions.

The soul of the world delights and attracts children but becomes unbearably bright as we grow older, busier, more involved, bumping along from rut to routine. We lose touch with essence. We do this to ourselves on purpose. We grow afraid of Mystery's unmanageable power and brilliance, and build our world to keep all awareness of Mystery at bay. Adventure and the unknown might be alluring, might make for good movies and books, but it's never to be seriously sought. We keep the unknown at arm's length, lest it disturb our quiet, well-managed, mundane lives. We don't notice this withdrawing from the Mystery, but we miss it when it's gone.

Sometimes the world's magic leaks out. Mystery does that; it can never be truly contained. Jagged cracks occasionally split the carefully laid constructs of our safe and predictable lives, and the unexplained tumbles forth into our awareness, revealing the world for what it really is—an interconnected series of dimensions and possibilities. These events may be hushed up, buried in the back pages, and seldom talked about, but they are never forgotten by those who experience them. Cracks in the façade that spill magic and wonder into daily life always leave behind a sense of lasting astonishment, a memory that never fades, and a deep awareness that the world is more than we think it is.

Reawakening to the unexplainable, incredible soul of the world begins with curiosity and questioning. Discovering the cracks in our limited and low-power worldview leads quickly to a growing sense of wonder and a new—yet very old— awareness of the strong magic inherent in this garden kaleidoscope we call Earth. It is a garden overflowing with perfumed blossoms and forbidden fruit, heady and ready for picking; hidden dangers, and unexpected delights, something new at every turn of the path. The real, magical world is a much larger place than where we ordinarily live. Part of the magic is that it's right here with us, now, waiting only for us to see it.

The incidents in this Almanac were gathered together to give you a glimpse back into Mystery. They are the stories and astonishment left behind by the cracks in the world. They are for you to use. Sometimes, what you find here will be all that's left of that occurrence. More often, the story here only touches the surface. Study and research any incident that captures your imagination. That is how you gaze more deeply into the cracks.

Let yourself become excited by the infamous, the incredible, and the ignored. Reawaken to the strange and unexplainable events that are constantly happening all around you, and that the modern world of glittering and draining distraction would have you never even notice. That's what this Almanac is for—to help you become an adventurer in your own life.

JANUARY 1

THE CRYSTAL SKULL

On January 1, 1927, in British Honduras, seventeen-year-old Anna Mitchell-Hedges discovered an exquisite crystal skull in the dust beneath the altar of a Mayan temple, during an expedition led by her father, F. A. Mitchell-Hedges. The find was not mentioned in expedition reports; Anna later explained that if it had been included, the skull would have gone to a museum. Instead, the skull was returned to the Mayans. On the Mitchell-Hedges' departure, the Mayans made a gift of it to them. In the 1940s, the skull was auctioned at Sotheby's by Sydney Burney, who had received it as collateral against a loan. Mitchell-Hedges bought it back to pay off the loan and to establish legal ownership.

The Mitchell-Hedges crystal skull has attracted worldwide attention. In 1970 Hewlett-Packard Laboratories examined it and discovered that the skull has light pipes, which are similar to modern fiber optics. The eye sockets are concave lenses; the interior contains a ribbon prism and a tiny light tunnel. The crystal, actually a quartz material, holds electrical energy and oscillates at a constant and precise frequency. Incredibly, it had been carved against the natural axis of the quartz without the quartz shattering, and a lack of microscopic scratches indicates metal instruments were not used to carve it. It rests in perfect balance. The slightest breeze causes the skull to nod back and forth, and the jaw opens and closes as a counter weight, making the skull look as if it is talking. The technique that created it is impossible to duplicate today.

The skull is also reported to change color, emit odors, create sound, change temperature, and possess psychic and healing powers. It is thought to be 2,000 to 4,000 years old, and theories about who made it abound. Was it carved by the Aztecs? The Knights Templar? Extraterrestrials? An Inner-Earth society? Mitchell-Hedges himself?

Legend says thirteen such skulls exist and that when they are brought together, they will reveal ancient wisdom.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

—ARTHUR C. CLARKE

SECRET POWER: Today's power is a flair for precision and using crystals for mental and physical healing.

TO OPTIMIZE: Pick a crystal, study about it, and practice with it.

JANUARY 2

PSYCHIC DETECTIVE SAVES CITY

On January 2, 1940, Arthur Price Roberts, a seventy-three-year-old in excellent health, fulfilled a prediction he had made two months earlier: he died, after a lifetime of foretelling disasters and catching crooks.

Since childhood, Roberts had had the skill to see and find things others could not. He stayed illiterate all his life, afraid that education would destroy his ability. Among his many achievements: Roberts saved a wrongly convicted murderer from execution. He intuited where the body of a missing man had been snagged by sunken logs in a river. He located the killer in a two-year-old murder case by picking the killer's picture out of a series of police mug shots and announcing where the killer was working in another country. And he tracked down a stolen taxi, while the thieves were still driving it, twenty-four hours after the theft.

In Milwaukee in 1935, Roberts told police, Going to be lots of bombings—dynamitings! I see two banks blown up and perhaps the city hall. Going to blow up police stations. Then there's going to be a big blowup south of the Menomonee River and it'll be all over. Eight days later the village hall was blasted to bits; two people died, and others were injured. The next day the same dynamiters blew up two Milwaukee banks and two police stations. In spite of extra police patrols, a sixth explosion took place. It was heard up to eight miles away, and the garage where it had been centered was obliterated. Two young men, Hugh Rotkowski and Paul Chovaonee, who were responsible for the other five bombings, were inside the garage with fifty pounds of dynamite for their sixth bomb when the explosives accidentally detonated. Roberts had correctly predicted the entire series of explosions, including the final accidental blast.

Because past, present and future exist simultaneously, there is no reason why you cannot react to an event whether or not it happens to fall within the small field of reality in which you usually observe and participate.

—SETH (A NONPHYSICAL CONSCIOUSNESS CHANNELLED BY MEDIUM JANE ROBERTS)

SECRET POWER: Today's power is to see and find things usually hidden from sight.

TO OPTIMIZE: Have someone hide something for you. Then practice guessing where it is.

JANUARY 3

TELEPORTED TREES

On January 3, 1582, a clump of land, complete with trees and bushes, was lifted into the air and transported forty yards before being set down again. A Tudor annalist named Stowe, reports the event, which he said happened in the Hermitage, in Dorset:

On Sunday, 3 January 1582, in the valley of the Cerf Blanc, Dorset, a piece of earth suddenly quitted its place of former time, and was transferred and transported forty yards to another paddock, in which there were alders and willows. It stopped the high road leading to the little town of Cerne. Yet the same hedges that surrounded it still enclose it today, and the trees that were there are still standing. The place this bit of land occupied is now a great Hole.

All manner of objects and creatures, including humans, have been also reported mysteriously transplanted. From the ninth century we have two reports of a case of land teleportation in Prussia. They may or may not be referring to the same incident. The first says:

AD 822: This year a prodigious portent occurred in Thuringia: a foot and a half of turf was seen suddenly to be lifted into the air from over a total area of twenty-five feet. It also happened on the border of Saxony and Misnia that the earth swelled up and erected itself in a heap near Lake Aonseum, creating a mound nearly 3,000 paces long.

The second report, the Chronicon Ecclesiae Sancti Bertini, compiled at St. Bertin's Abbey of St. Sihieu, says that in 840, in Thuringia, a clod of earth over fifty feet long, fourteen feet broad, and six feet thick, no hand touching it, was cut off and raised into the air. In Saxony the earth was puffed up like a mound of one league.

Something unknown is doing we don't know what.

—SIR ARTHUR EDDINGTON

SECRET POWER: Today's power is earth magic.

TO OPTIMIZE: Write and bury a spell, bury an object related to a wish, or draw in the dirt an image of something you're wishing for. Then walk many miles while visualizing the outcome of your magical act.

JANUARY 4

ORFFYREUS'S PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE

On January 4, 1718, the seals on a locked room were broken open, and a team of investigators heard the unmistakeable sounds of a machine at work. Before them, a wooden wheel, measuring twelve feet in diameter and fourteen inches thick, turned on an iron shaft. The inner system of gears and pulleys was hidden behind a tightly stretched oiled canvas. This wheel had been spinning continuously, at twenty-six revolutions per minute, for nearly two months, and had strength enough to lift a box of stones. Johann Bessler had invented a perpetual motion machine.

This story goes against the law of the Conservation of Energy. Bessler had invented a way to get more energy out of a machine than he put into it. Orffyreus, as Bessler renamed himself, was a wild and wildly paranoid man. After years of ridicule, he was now under the protection of Count Karl of Hesse-Cassel, a region that later became a part of Germany. This third model of his invention was built in a garden shed and then transferred to a room in the castle. A thorough examination of the space eliminated suggestions that the wheel was aided by a hidden human being or turned via a cord from another room. The investigators were impressed. Professor Willem Jacob Gravesande, a Dutch mathematician who later became a professor of physics and astronomy and was responsible for laying the foundation for teaching physics, wrote to his friend Sir Isaac Newton, lauding the invention.

Twenty thousand pounds was the price that Orffyreus wanted to reveal the secret to his machine. When no one offered the money, Orffyreus's benefactor was finally allowed a glimpse of it. The count saw an ingenious system of weights on the ascending side of the wheel, which were prevented from following their path next to the rim by small pegs that swung out of the way as the weight passed the zenith. Shortly afterwards, the inventor locked himself up with the wheel and an axe and smashed his life's work to bits. Orffyreus became an embittered wanderer who died in November of 1745.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

—NIELS BOHR

SECRET POWER: Today's power is to act beyond the limitations of reality.

TO OPTIMIZE: Study quantum physics. Invent things.

JANUARY 5

BURSTING INTO FLAMES

On January 5, 1835, James Hamilton, a professor of mathematics in Nashville, Tennessee, felt a sharp burning sensation in his left leg. Looking down, he saw a bright flame shooting from his thigh. He slapped it with his hand, but could not put it out. Then he closed his hands over the flame to cut off the oxygen supply and managed to extinguish it. The incident occurred outside in below-freezing weather. Later the professor examined the burn. It was three-fourths of an inch in width and three inches long. His underpants were burned through at the point of the injury, but there was no scorching around the hole. His trousers were not burned at all.

On January 5, 1820, in Marylebone, London, a series of unexplainable spontaneous fires began to break out in the Wright household, where Elizabeth Barnes, a ten-year-old girl, was employed as a servant. Mrs. Wright's clothes caught fire twice while she was in the kitchen with the girl and once when she was alone. Elizabeth was accused of causing the fires, but Mrs. Wright defended the girl, believing that the fires were caused by some unknown means. Eventually, Mrs. Wright was so dreadfully burned she was put to bed. As Mr. Wright left the room he heard his wife scream. The bed was in flames. The Wrights had Elizabeth arrested.

On January 5, 1895, fires in the Brooklyn home of Adam Colwell culminated in the frame building's destruction. All morning, fires had been bursting out spontaneously in the furniture and on the wallpaper, frequently in front of investigating policemen, and Colwell, his wife, son, and stepdaughter. The fire marshal said, It might be thought that the child Rhoda started two of the fires, but she cannot be considered guilty of the others as she was being questioned when some of them began.

You can only have two things in life, Reasons and Results. Reasons don't count.

—JOHN PAUL RICHTER

SECRET POWER: Today's power is spontaneous fire.

TO OPTIMIZE: Feel hot blood moving through your body.

JANUARY 6

FLYING MEN

On January 6, 1948, in Chehalis, Washington, Bernice Zaikowski and several children coming home from school saw a man flying through the sky. They went into the garden for a better look. The flyer was hovering at twenty feet over the barn and had long, silver mechanical wings strapped to his shoulders. The fellow controlled them via an instrument panel attached to his chest, while he flew in an upright position. A whizzing noise accompaniesd his progress.

In Longview, Washington, three months later, James Pittman and Viola Johnson observed three men flying above the city. They could hear motors, but did not see any devices connected to the flyers, whose feet were dangling while they flew. Johnson said they appeared to be wearing helmets and that they were looking around as they went.

In 1953, Hilda Walker and two friends in Houston, Texas, were sitting on the front porch of their apartment building, enjoying an early morning breeze, when Hilda saw a huge shadow across the lawn. She said, I thought at first it was the magnified reflection of a big moth caught in a nearby street light. Then the shadow seemed to bounce upward into a pecan tree. The shadow was a man, six and a half feet tall, dressed in tight-fitting black clothing, with a cape and quarterlength boots. A halo of light surrounded him, and big folded wings could be seen at his shoulders. After fifteen minutes, an unnamed witness said, he just melted away. A swish was heard, and then a rocket-shaped object blasted off.

In 1897, in Mount Vernon, Illinois, the town mayor and 100 citizens saw something that resembled the body of a huge man swimming through the air with an electric light on his back. The first known report of this kind—of a man flying with mechanical aid of some kind attached to his body—was recorded in Kentucky, in 1880.

One can never consent to creep when one feels the impulse to soar.

—HELEN KELLER

SECRET POWER: Today's power is flying high.

TO OPTIMIZE: Wear a cape in the wind.

JANUARY 7

FAIRIES FROM LIGHT

On January 7, 1970, a glowing red mist cloaking a metallic UFO descended near two skiers in Finland. The swirling cloud softly buzzed as a brilliant ray of light flowed from its base onto the snow. The astonished men saw a small elfish creature enveloped in the light beam. He was short, had a pale face, was luminous like phosphorus, and was wearing green overalls, boots, and a conical hat. He carried a box that shot a flash of light and colored sparks at the men, momentarily blinding them while the elf returned to his cloud-shrouded vehicle and departed. Laughing with delight and excitement, the men returned home.

In another account from 1860s Scotland, T. C. Kermode reveals his experience of seeing fairies while walking to a harvest festival with his friend. His friend looked across the river and said, Oh look, there are the fairies. Did you ever see them?

I looked across the river and saw a circle of supernatural light . . . The spot where the light appeared . . . I saw . . . a great crowd of little beings . . . They moved back and forth amid the circle of light . . . I advised getting nearer to them, but my friend said, No, I'm going to the party. . . . [M]y friend struck the roadside wall with a stick and shouted, and we lost the vision and the light vanished.

The Reverend Robert Kirk, a minister from the Scottish highlands, believed in fairies and published encounters from his region in his famous work of 1691, The Secret Commonwealth. He said fairies had bodies somewhat of the nature of a condensed cloud, and best seen in twilight. . . . [T]hey can appear or disappear at pleasure. It is widely believed that Kirk did not die but was taken into the fairy realm at Aberfoyle Hill, where he can still be found.

When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.

—J. M. BARRIE

SECRET POWER: Today's power is casting lighthearted enchantments.

TO OPTIMIZE: Make someone smile.

JANUARY 8

LIGHTNING PLAYS FAVORITES

In 1953, in Ermelo, South Africa, lightning struck a native boy as he was leading a team of eight oxen pulling a heavy plough. The boy was knocked unconscious and was just about to be trampled and crushed when lightning struck again. The second bolt killed all eight animals, saving the boy's life.

In the 1800s, ball lightning skipped down from a treetop, one branch at a time and, avoiding mud puddles in the yard, meandered over to the barn where two children were keeping dry from the rain. One of the children kicked the sphere, causing it to explode. The eleven cows in the stable were killed. The children were fine.

Also in the 1800s, in Salagnac, France, three women and a child were in their house when ball lightning entered through the chimney. It rolled about the room and then passed through the kitchen and into another room before going into a small stable. The fiery ball passed over dry straw without igniting it. It touched a pig and then vanished. The pig died. In another incident, ball lightning circled a little girl with a kitten in her lap. When it disappeared, the kitten died, but the girl was unharmed.

A baby sleeping in its buggy escaped unscathed when lightning struck, ripping three sides off the carriage. In 1890, in Ireland, lightning hit a basket of eggs, shattering the shells, but leaving the inner membranes unbroken. In 1902, in Iowa, lightning broke every other dish in a stack of twelve plates. Other strikes have unplugged drains, popped bags of popcorn, and cut perfect circles from the glass in windows; in 1972 lightning cut circles in window glass at the Meteorology Department in the University of Edinburgh.

Fortunately somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.

—LUIS BUÑUEL

SECRET POWER: Today's power bestows divine unconditional protection.

TO OPTIMIZE: Be receptive.

JANUARY 9

PAROPTIC VISION AND SENSORY DISLOCATION

In January 1960, in Virginia, fifteen-year-old Margaret Foos sat blindfolded and played a game of checkers with a group of medical experts. Seeing through her skin, she also read from the Bible, pointed out objects, and identified colors. Her father had noticed how good she was at playing blindfold games and began to coach her in seeing without her eyes. With her father encouraging her and emphasizing that she must believe she could do it for it to happen, Margaret quickly progressed. Only reading proved difficult. It was hard for Margaret to get the letters into focus until Mr. Foos, struck by inspiration, told her to blow the smoke away. She did. The letters came into focus, and she was able to read while blindfolded.

In 1963, in Russia, twenty-two-year-old Roza Kuleshove was tested for a talent she had discovered as a teenager. Skeptics covered her eyes with tin foil and adhesive tape, and then stuck a large diving helmet over her head. She could still read page upon page of whatever they gave her. She also described pictures in the publications, including their colors.

In the 1600s, an Irish scientist reported a case of a blind man who could recognize colors. In the 1700s, Europeans met blind Samoan islanders who could describe the Europeans' appearance. In the 1800s, in Italy, a fourteen-year-old blind girl saw with her left earlobe and the end of her nose, wincing when sharp objects or bright lights were brought near either. She also smelled with her chin. In 1821, an Italian man suffered a head injury, and his sense of hearing moved to his solar plexus. In 1920, in France, 12 out of 400 tested blind subjects used their fingertips, cheeks, and stomachs to see. In 1930, in the United States, a blindfolded man could identify objects by holding his hands over them.

All of us, you see, have two senses of sight . . . [I]f only we could develop these inner sense of ours, then we could smell without our noses, taste without our tongues, hear without our ears and see without our eyes.

—ROALD DAHL

SECRET POWER: Today's power is seeing without eyes.

TO OPTIMIZE: Play Blindman's Bluff.

JANUARY 10

CARPENTER GETS SHAFTED

On January 10, 1951, near Dusseldorf, Germany, a carpenter working on the roof of his house was killed when a shaft of ice came hurtling down from the sky—and straight through him. The icicle was six feet long and six inches in diameter.

In 1953, in Long Beach, California, three cars at an auto dealership suffered significant damage as chunks of clear ice came blazing down from a cloudless sky. A worker at the dealership had just finished polishing the car when he heard a whistling sound. Looking up, he saw huge pieces of shiny stuff plummeting. A ice block the size of a man crashed onto the vehicle and broke into ice chunks that scattered all over the lot. The fender and hood were ripped from the car, exposing the motor.

Across the street from the scene, Charles Roscoe heard what he assumed to be a gunshot and ran outside. At that moment a block of ice landed on the roof of his establishment. Looking up, he saw the sun reflecting off of the huge ice cubes. He later said, They rolled and turned in the air like a kind of waterfall. He thought the ice must have fallen from a passing plane, but he didn't see one.

Whatever befalls you was prepared for you beforehand from eternity, and the thread of causes was spinning from everlasting, both your existence and this which befalls you.

—MARCUS AURELIUS

SECRET POWER: Today's power is receiving messages from eternity.

TO OPTIMIZE: Watch for the signs.

JANUARY 11

SURGEON OF THE RUSTY KNIFE

On January 11, 1971, Ze Arigo, a talented and controversial Brazilian healer, died. Two weeks earlier he had announced that his earthly work was complete and soon he would be gone.

As a child, Arigo saw visions and heard voices. When he was older, he developed headaches and had nightly dreams of a hospital operating room. The doctor in the operating room told Arigo that he had died in World War I, leaving his work unfinished, and that Arigo was to continue that work for him.

Soon after those dreams, Arigo was staying in a hotel with a friend, Lucio Bittencourt, who had an extreme case of lung cancer. In the night, Bittencourt awoke to see Arigo, razor in hand, saying that immediate surgery was needed. Bittencourt lost consciousness. In the morning his pajamas were bloodstained, and he had a small incision at the back of his ribcage. Bittencourt's Brazilian doctor thought the impressive operation had been performed in the United States using a technique unknown to him.

Over the next six years, Arigo saw between 200 and 300 people a day. A medical doctor investigating Arigo reported watching as Arigo, using a four-inch paring knife, scraped out the socket between an elderly man's left eyeball and eyelid. The patient didn't feel anything. When finished, Arigo wiped the pus-covered blade on his shirt and continued onto the next person. Unsanitary conditions, no antiseptic, no stitches were used. Arigo could also stop blood flow with a verbal command; all the wounds he treated healed cleanly and quickly. Arigo refused payment for all his healing services.

The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

—JACOB BRONOWSKI

SECRET POWER: Today's power is channelling body consciousness combined with mental intelligence through the hands.

TO OPTIMIZE: Balance and heal yourself.

JANUARY 12

MERMAID SIGHTINGS

On January 12, 1809, northeast Scotland, a voluptuous mermaid frolicked in the waves while two women watched from shore. They noted her habit of reaching a delicate arm above the water to toss back her long green tresses.

Their report of the mermaid prompted another man to relay his experience along the same beach at Sandside. Twelve years earlier, schoolmaster William Munro was startled at the sight of an apparently nude woman, sitting on a rock while combing out her luscious brown hair. She had a plump face, rosy cheeks, blue eyes, and a torso like that of a full-grown woman. Four minutes passed before the mermaid dove into the sea. Munro had heard others speak of the phenomenon, but was skeptical until he saw it for himself.

In 1814 a boy observed a half woman, half fish off Scotland's west coast, but was mocked after telling others what he'd seen. The next month his friends also saw her, at first thinking she was a drowning woman, but then noticing her large fish tail. They fetched some farmers, and one arrived with a rifle, which he didn't use. Instead he whistled at the mermaid, who turned to face him. She then stayed by the shore for a couple of hours, watching and hissing at the group.

In the Hebrides, in the 1830s, a small mermaid was playing in the water when a boy hit her with a rock. Her body washed ashore a few miles away, where it was noted that her lower half was like a salmon tail, but without the scales. Local folk buried her.

One can't be of an enquiring and experimental nature, and also be very sensible.

—CHARLES FORT

SECRET POWER: Today's power is meeting mermaids.

TO OPTIMIZE: Swim like a fish.

JANUARY 13

BALL LIGHTNING ENTERS AIRCRAFT

On January 13, 1984, ball lightning entered a Russian passenger aircraft. A news release from Russia carried the following report:

Suddenly . . . a fireball about four inches in diameter appeared on the fuselage in front of the crew's cockpit. It disappeared with a deafening noise, but re-emerged several seconds later in the passengers' lounge, after piercing in an uncanny way though the airtight metal wall. The fireball slowly flew above the heads of the stunned passengers. In the tail section of the airliner it divided into two glowing crescents which then joined together again and left the plane almost noiselessly.

Mechanics carrying out equipment repairs found two holes in the aircraft: one in the fuselage where the fireball entered and one in the tail section where it left.

In the spring of 1958, ball lightning was dancing about on the outside of an Aer Lingus Constellation, which was flying between Shannon, Ireland, and Gander, Newfoundland, during extensive thunderstorm activity. Attaching itself to the plane, the crackling orange ball entered the cockpit, apparently through the engine intake, with a loud crashing sound. The first officer heard it hissing, and everyone on board felt a powerful static charge on their heads. Over a foot wide, the phenomenon had licks of flame shooting from its surface, but emitted no heat. The cockpit filled with a distinctive ozone odor.

A startled flight attendant ran screaming down the aisle, trying to outrun the fireball as it followed close behind. She jumped up on one of the seats in the rear of the plane and watched as the ball continued to glide down the aisle at floor level to the rear of the cabin. It passed through the bulkhead with a snapping sound, going back out into the storm.

It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

—URSULA LE GUIN

SECRET POWER: Today's power is to journey with the ability to energize impenetrable places.

TO OPTIMIZE: Visualize ball lightning gently removing obstacles.

JANUARY 14

CADET RICHARD COX DISAPPEARS

On January 14, 1950, cadet Richard Cox, brilliant scholar and athlete, with no known vices, was last seen in his room at West Point Military Academy, getting ready to met an enigmatic stranger for dinner. Cox, happy in his career and engaged to be married, had received a mysterious visitor named George the week before. Cadet Peter Hains took the call from the stranger asking for Dick Cox. Cox did not recognize the caller's name, but he knew the fellow when he saw him. The man, six feet tall, of medium weight and coloring, wore a trench coat. He teased Richard about his uniform while the cadet was getting his coat and then they headed off base for dinner.

A few hours later Cox returned, inebriated, and fell asleep over his books. When taps sounded (to signal lights out,) he jumped up, startled, and shouted out an unidentifiable word, and then he dropped onto his bed, fully clothed, to sleep again. The next morning he told his friends that the fellow, whom he never referred to by name, was a morbid, sadistic person who had been part of Cox's outfit when he was stationed in Germany in 1947. The man had been drinking and wouldn't let Cox out of his car until Cox indulged as well. Cox hoped it was the last he had seen of him.

At dinnertime on January 14, George apparently appeared at the barracks again, and Cox went to the nearby Hotel Thayer for a meal with the man. Looking pensive in his long gray overcoat, Cox checked his watch and left the room, never to be seen again. No one noticed him leaving the barracks, and the sentries had no sign of George.

When Cox was absent from his room in the morning, New York State Police issued a thirteen-state alarm. Every corner of every building on and around the academy was searched. Helicopters were part of the dragnet, and the academy's pond was drained, but to no avail.

All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing exists entirely alone; everything is in relationship to everything else.

—THE BUDDHA

SECRET POWER: Today's power is a tangent point between appearance and disappearance.

TO OPTIMIZE: Get the perspective of a vanishing point.

JANUARY 15

ELECTRIC ANGELIQUE COTTIN

On January 15, 1846, in La Perriere, France, fourteen-year-old Angelique Cottin became an electric phenomenon. The heavy oak weaving frame Angelique worked at with other girls, making silk gloves, began to shake abruptly whenever Angelique came near it. Thinking her to be possessed by the devil, they took her to be exorcised. The minister, however, believed that the ailment was physical and recommended a medical doctor.

For ten weeks objects shot away from her, and furniture would spin or bounce if touched by her hand or even her apron or petticoats. Picking up paper or pen was impossible as they flew off at her approach. Chairs darted out from under her, a sixtypound table levitated when she touched it, and her bed rocked persistently. Two strong men held a chair for her, and it shattered in their hands. A chest with three men sitting on it retreated across the floor from her. A stone, covered with cork, was the only place she could rest. Standing on a carpet or waxed cloth lessened the force. Standing on bare earth increased it exponentially. Known as the Electric Girl, she would electrically shock people without touching them. Approaching the north pole of a magnet would send a powerful shock through Angelique, but approaching the south pole produced no effect.

The bizarre occurrences frightened Angelique. Her pulse would race, and she often experienced convulsions. Testing showed that the electromagnetic force radiated from her left side— particularly her wrist, elbow, and pelvis— which was noticeably warmer than her right side. The force was activated intermittently throughout the day, but occasionally would stop for about forty-eight hours and then resume. The effects were strongest in the early evening. Her presence was often accompanied by a cold blowing wind.

There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify—so that among human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism.

—JOHN KEATS

SECRET POWER: Today's power is generating a bodily electromagnetic force that charges the environment.

TO OPTIMIZE: Eat foods rich in trace minerals.

JANUARY 16

RAINMAKER CHARLES HATFIELD

On January 16, 1916, after a two-year drought, rain fell in San Diego thanks to Charles Hatfield, moisture accelerator. Before San Diego, Hatfield had been successful in bringing rain to revive parched farms in California's San Joaquin Valley, filling prospectors' sluiceboxes in the Alaskan Klondike, dousing a forest fire in Honduras, ending a drought in Italy, and proving he could make it rain anywhere in the Mohave Desert. He earned between $50 and $10,000 a downpour.

Hatfield began his career in pluviculture when he realized that large storms often followed great battles involving cannon fire, and the cannons' smoke somehow caused moisture in the air to form drops rather than disperse. Experimenting on his father's Kansas farm, Hatfield mixed formulas in large wooden vats, allowing them to stew under cover for twenty minutes before removing the lid with a long pole and watching the noxious vapors rise until he got rain. Quitting his job as a sewing machine salesman, Hatfield then grabbed his hat and umbrella and went to work.

To bring rain to San Diego, Hatfield erected tall wooden towers by Lake Morena, a reservoir sixty miles from town. Chemicals, water, and acid, 300 times the average strength, were added to the towers. Twenty-four hours later, wicked-smelling vapors rose to the sky, and soon the rain began to fall. It stormed for twelve days over the next three weeks, causing the San Diego Exposition and the Tijuana race track to flood. The rain swept away 110 of 112 bridges, telegraph and telephone poles, and houses, boats, and dams. People and animals died, and hundreds of snakes arrived in the city streets. The city was isolated for a week and refused to pay Hatfield. Hatfield later died and never revealed his secret formula for making rain.

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