We have
five senses. More than enough for the likes of us. Each of those five senses
report to centres in the brain where the input is processed and, some of it,
stored.
The
storage procedure is not very efficient for most of us and so memory becomes
fallible. We mostly remember things in the way that we expect them to be rather
than how they actually were.
We have
ultra-short term memory that retains information for up to two seconds—except
for the visual cortex that stores iconic memory for about half a second.
Then we
have short-term memory that we hold on to for about ten to twenty seconds. Some
of those memories might get transferred into long-term memory but that is more
likely to happen with rehearsal.
Usually
we can remember between five and nine ‘chunks’ of memory for a short time so
splitting things up into small pieces is better but the most effective method is
making a short note.
A short
note is far better than a long memory.
There are
people who tell us that there is a sixth sense commonly regarded as a
‘non-sense’.
Yet there
are uncanny things that occasionally crop up that make you think about this.
All
examples of this sixth sense can be pooh-poohed quite easily, for instance,
people will say, “How often have you had the feeling that you were being
watched, you turn and there is someone watching you?” This is easily countered
with, “How many times have you thought you were being watched, you turn and
there’s nobody there?”
Yet there
is one startling effect that was documented by researchers; several days before
the WTC towers were hit, we are not going into all the conspiracy theories
about this, there was an upsurge in the feelings of fear by people. The
recording of this was made before the event so it was not something that was
noted after the event.
Shall we
look at some ‘odd’ things that have been written about ‘after’ events—these
things are, obviously, less reliable but sometimes there is no smoke without
fire, as they say.
On Friday, October 21, 1966, a mountain of coal waste, perched above the
Welsh mining village of Aberfan, broke loose and came flooding down onto the
village.
It
rolled over a tiny cottage about halfway down the slope, crushed Pantglas
Junior School, wiped out 20 houses - then finally came to rest.
A total
of 144 people, 116 of them were children, were crushed or suffocated to death
in one of Britain's most horrific, peacetime, tragedies.
But for
one family the grief was even more acute. One of those killed, ten-year-old
Eryl Mai Jones, had predicted the catastrophe.
In the
days prior to the atrocity Eryl had told her mother that she was 'not afraid to
die'.
Eryl
said, “I shall be with Peter and June.”
Eryl's
mother offered her daughter a lollipop and thought nothing of it. Then, on
October 20, the day before the disaster, Eryl said to her mother, “Let me tell
you about my dream last night. I dreamt I went to school and there was no
school there. Something black had come down all over it!”
The
next day Eryl's horrific premonition came to pass and she was killed with her school
friends Peter and June. They were buried, side-by-side, in a mass grave—just as
Eryl had predicted.
Of
course, the premonitions of disaster prior to the WTC collapsing were many and
varied.
One of
the most clear examples was that the aircraft used had very many fewer seats
occupied than would be typical on any other day.
The
Boeing 757 that crashed into the Pentagon had only 64 of 289 seats taken. The
aircraft that crashed into the twin towers were 74% and 81% empty.
Studies
have shown that in a major disaster there are usually (but not always, of
course) less people involved than might have been expected.
Not
just humans are affected. Before the tsunami on Boxing Day, 2004, the
flamingoes in Sri Lanka’s southern coast fled and monkeys stopped taking
bananas from tourists and began to scream.
A woman
reported an incident where her cat jumped off the back seat of her car and bit
her—causing her to stop; seconds later a tree crashed onto the road in front of
her.
I just
have an odd feeling that lunch is on the way.
If you
are interested in such things, try:
http://sixthsensereader.org/about-the-book/abcderium-index/premonition/
No comments:
Post a Comment