Danny Penman: It was a beautiful sunny day in the Cotswolds. Six paragliders were circling like eagles on powerful currents of rising air. Children gazed with open mouths as the aircraft dived and swooshed silently above their heads. Old men watched with glee as they remembered their days flying with the RAF. One of the pilots broke away from the group and a powerful gust of wind hit his paraglider, turning the canopy inside out. He began spinning like a sycamore seed towards the earth. After wh...

Anthony North: One major problem with the paranormal is that it can never be quite explained. Why is this? Is it because, as skeptics maintain, it isn"t there? Or could it be that its very nature disallows a total appreciation of what is going on? To the skeptic, this may seem like a cop-out, but in reality, some branches of science hold these same properties. Typical is particle theory, which includes its own uncertainty principle, giving a limit to what can be known. I"ve previously argued for...

Anthony North: So the guy lays his hands on you and you"re healed. Great! Life continues in full health, which is, in effect, a miracle. Which is why so many people are suspicious of healing. But CAN it work? Can we rationalize a means of explanation? Well, the first hint is given by many healers when they say they don"t heal. What they do is give the patient the authority to heal themselves. This offers an interesting angle. : We already know that a person can seem to feel better by a pure act ...

Anthony North: Could it be that credible paranormal theories often fail because we don"t understand what an ‘individual" is? You are an individual. But how do you know this? What is there about "you" that makes you unique -a one off? This is a subject that has often fascinated me. And when ever I look into it, "you" disappear. You know you are "you" because society tells you so. We live in a world of individuality, where there is nothing above "you". No God, no wider influence, no meaning above ...

Anthony North: Many people believe in the existence of higher consciousness in the universe, yet we"re often told that such concepts are unexplainable. I"m not sure this is true. Could we rationalize such a thing? In my essay, The Mystical Seven, I showed how the "law of large numbers" could be applied, at least philosophically, to such a concept. Stated simply, the law indicates that greater order manifests the greater the number of things involved. I applied this to the universe.: I argued tha...

A wiry man in his late 30s hangs near the top of a 40-foot wall, the toes of his climbing shoes barely gripping the sheer face. He clings with his left hand and pauses, swinging his right arm to the side, loosening the muscles. Then he raises his head and lunges, thrusting his right hand above him and catching a rock hold with his fingertips. With a few more moves he arrives at the top. Under normal circumstances this extreme rock climber would be worth watching. But what makes his effort even m...

People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don"t. Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input. In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger pe...

Employers, the military and intelligence services may soon be using computerised mind-reading techniques and there is a need for a public debate about "mental privacy," a leading neuroscientist said yesterday. Scientists have taken MRI scanning equipment normally used in hospital diagnosis to detect lying, racism, and even identify which image a person is looking at, suggesting one could visualise scenes from a person"s dreams or memory. At the Cheltenham Science Festival, backed by The Daily Te...

Submitted by Da Verminator: Liew Thow Lin is known as the "Magnetic Man" of Malaysia, because of his incredible ability to stick metal objects to his body. After a deep medical study, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) lecturer Nasrul Humaimi Mahmood said this ability was probably associated with "suction properties in his skin." Professor Dr. Mohamed Amin Alias, from UTM"s electrical engineering faculty in Johor, agreed. After seeing Liew perform, the professor did research on the matter, and ...

For the first time ever in Criss Angel Mindfreak history, A&E will broadcast a special live one-hour episode on Wednesday, July 30 at 10 PM ET / 7 PM PT a week after the series’ fourth season premiere on Wednesday, July 23 at 10 PM ET/PT. In the special one-hour live episode, “Building Implosion Escape,” world-renowned mystifier Criss Angel will be shackled in a 6-story building in Florida that is loaded with explosives and set to detonate. Angel must attempt to escape the restraints and ove...

Cats who know exactly when they are going to be taken to the vets. Dogs who sense their owners" whereabouts - even if they are miles away. And birds who seem to mourn the deaths of those around them... our pets and other animals have always been intuitive - but do they really have a mysterious sixth sense? A new book by Britain"s leading clinical authority on near-death experiences, Dr Peter Fenwick, and his wife Elizabeth, a counsellor, examines the remarkable cases of psychic animals. The...

Mr. Gerald O'Donnell holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics, a M.Sc. in computer Science, and an MBA. He is a certified Hypnotherapist. He was, amongst other activities in various fields, once considered one of the world's 7 best top technical commodities experts (independent advisor: C.T.A.) by Paine Webber and Bache Co.. He was approached in the 1980's by a Western European intelligence agency in order to join an ongoing program of mental Remote Viewing (sensing) of targeted locations. This ...

Anthony North: We're told we live in a hard reality. Material sciences have mapped it out adequately to know this is the case. Well, not quite. At best they can say they understand the world enough to discount esoteric forces at work. Oh, sorry, no they can't. Their own theories concerning the subatomic world show a myriad of esoteric forces working below the material world. Indeed, it is looking very much like the 'material', as we know it, doesn't actually exist. This is th...

Shawn Lindseth: In 1982 Benedetto Supino, an Italian adolescent boy, discovered something quite strange about himself. He was sitting in a dentist"s waiting-room reading a comic book when all of the sudden the thing burst into flames right there in his hands. At the time, no doubt, he claimed total innocence to deaf ears. Once a fiery pattern was established after a few more incidents, his surrounding adults may have been more likely to believe him - especially when they actually saw him acciden...

Anthony North: We"ve all heard of destiny, but what is it? Is it some guiding force within the universe looking after us, or is it a total fantasy? As often happens, ideas on the subject fall into one camp or the other. But maybe most sense lies in the middle ground. If we were to adopt this position, then we"d have to accept that a "force" DOES have an effect upon our lives, but rather than being some omnipotent supernatural influence, it could be grounded in things we have a fair idea about. W...

Anthony North: One often used excuse for not taking the paranormal seriously is that it is worthless to the human condition. I disagree with this argument. In many ways, understanding of the paranormal is the root to understanding ourselves and our actions. This is therefore the first in an occasional series of essays in which I try to show how the paranormal may impact on our lives in ways we do not even think of as paranormal. Indeed, it could be at the centre of knowledge. My research into th...