A Strange Event Occurring Twice.

Death is a door we all must walk through. Rich or poor, it doesn’t matter, when death’s hand alights on our shoulder, we have no choice to but to follow the beckoning. To what circumstance and condition does death lead us? Do we remain a ‘something’ that retains a conscious awareness in an arguably new environment that we call the afterlife?

I hope that throughout my life I have been open-minded enough to have been fair in my sceptical assessment of our ultimate end. It has been a rare occurrence for me to experience anything paranormal in my life that I could not explain with a nod to science, and the use of a modicum of my intellect through reason and logic. Yet recently, over the last 3 months, two events have occurred to the same object, which I cannot easily pass off, and as such, have made me question my sceptical position, and return to a subject I had thought I had left behind for good.

I have a large framed picture of Pendle Hill which I bought 4 years ago. I did not put the picture up on a wall, but placed it on the floor, leaning slightly against a wall with other framed paintings of the English countryside. My intention was to fully redecorate my apartment, get new furniture and soft furnishings, and put the paintings up. I never got round to doing so, and four years passed.

Just before last Christmas, I took the picture of Pendle hill and placed it on top of a living room display cabinet that once belonged to my mother, who died in January 2012. Once again, I propped the picture leaning against the wall, and in front of it, there were a number of other ornamental items that would help keep the framed painting in position.

Well about 2 months ago, the framed painting fell off the display cabinet. The unusual aspect of this was that it had fallen forward and onto the floor, without disturbing the ornaments in front of it on top of the display cabinet. Although this was puzzling, the painting and frame were not damaged, so I simply placed it back into position, ensuring that it could not fall forward again without a hefty force being applied.

Yesterday, Saturday morning while I was doing some work on the computer, a loud crash caused me to jump out of my seat. The painting had once again fell to the floor, again without disturbing any of the ornaments in place in front of it, on top of the display cabinet. Only this time, the frame was damaged and the glass was completely shattered. It will now need new glass and the frame to be repaired. I was not a happy bunny at all! See the added pictures for illustration.

Prima facie, it is as though the painting either ‘jumped’ over the ornaments, or simply passed right through them? It literally could not do anything other than that to get to the position on the floor where it ended up. When I say ‘jumped’, I am talking of a height of at least 12 inches, as the two tall candle holders are about 9 inches. The painting itself is wider than the display cabinet, but not by much, and was centred by sight into position. I just don’t understand or fathom how it could have gotten to where it landed without disturbing the ornaments, which themselves are heavy-ish?

A once-off occurrence can be passed off. A second occurrence is definitely both concerning and curious. If any of you can come up with an explanation (and please, no silly ones), well, I am all ears.



I intend to continue this thread with some thoughts on my perspective that has/is undergone and going through a change.

Did the picture change after it fell? Looks like a different picture
Why would you sit a picture on a table instead of hanging? Nail shortage? 😀

damwel:

Did the picture change after it fell? Looks like a different picture? Why would you sit a picture on a table instead of hanging? Nail shortage?

Seriously?

Of course they are different pictures. The one stood up is for illustration of the original setup. As for the reason why I didn't hang it on a wall, is explained in the 3rd paragraph. Did you omit that one?

How heavy are the treemen? And what is behind that wall? A bump or 5 on the other side of the wall behind at frame height could cause it to tumble forward, if the trees are heavy enough they would cause a leaning picture to pivot (as there is a bit of space between them and the wall) and the weight of the picture being top heavy at this point would tumble down in front without disturbing the trees all that much.

bad sideview ascii example. trees are Y

|
|---/ --->
|--/
|-/Y

I'm trying to think but it just looks not possible. Well that's a bad thing to say it is obviously possible it did happen but the how escapes me.

And if you had half the strangeness I've gone through you would be a raving lunatic by now. No doubt "paranormal" hate that word, is reality.

What angle was the painting at?
Is their an air vent behind it?

I like the image popped in my head of the "tree men" coming to life looking at each other leaning back grabbing the painting and throwing it. Keeping down their chuckles as you enter the room. Lol.

No serious though i have no clue.

a reply to: elysiumfire

constant_thought:

How heavy are the treemen? And what is behind that wall?

The Treemen (Ents) are about one and a half pound each. The wall is an outside wall 2ft thick, but a 3 inch gap between the walls, 40 feet up. The building is an old church converted into apartments.

a reply to: elysiumfire

How heavy are the candleholders? Because the only idea I can come up with, and it is a reach, would be that if the picture tipped forward, it could have a high enough center of gravity that it would flip over the candleholder without disturbing them to land on the floor. Again, provided the the candleholders are heavy enough not to be disturbed while acting as a fulcrum.
But we are still left to wonder what would make it tip forward.

In my opinion the painting may have pivoted/slide on the heavy candle holders top and flipped over onto the floor. I would try to push the new painting over them just to see if this is how it will fall.
Of course, there is still the question how it got away from the wall, but without a feel of the weight of the painting and the distance between it and the wall I cannot tell much. Like I said I would try to play with it a bit to see how much movement it needs to start leaning forward.
A third try with a camera with a motion sensor pointing directly at it can solve the mystery.

Edit to add: I see someone already thought of this.

Reverbs:

What angle was the painting at? Is their an air vent behind it?

The angle at about 7 or 8 degrees from 90, as is the illustrated second picture I use in the photograph. As you can see from the 2nd picture, there is no air vent. There is a window to the left, but was not open at the time...I checked.

...serious(ly) though, I have no clue.

You and me both, I am wracking my brains as to how it could have happened, but I just cannot figure it out. By the way, I live alone.

Thanks for the replies, guys.

I have lived here for 16 years, and nothing strange has ever happened here...well, not to me personally, or to my knowledge with the other apartments. The broken painting is 31 inch by 35 inch and weighs about 5 pound with the frame, and 10 pound when the glass was not shattered.

a reply to: elysiumfire
I have an explanation. Someone prefers the picture on the floor. Or, they wanted to get your attention by moving it twice...
Do you have a deceased relative that had pictures on the floor - before their demise?

originally posted by: donktheclown
a reply to: elysiumfire
I have an explanation. Someone prefers the picture on the floor. Or, they wanted to get your attention by moving it twice...
Do you have a deceased relative that had pictures on the floor - before their demise?

It was the OP's deceased Mom'z cabinet that it was on, maybe she don't like Pendle Estate?

a reply to: elysiumfire

My thoughts are someone lingering from the old church days is not fond of that particular piece as an altar center.

The initial painting of the woman in a black dress looks similar to a 'siren', 'banshee'.

On Dec 22 2014 some spiritual glass barriers to the spirit prisons were shattered, hence the broken frame glass.

Wikipedia has an interesting titbit about witch trials. So if the witches were imprisoned in hell, and now the prison gates have been all opened, then this weird event does make sense.

the Pendle witch trials (1612), Richard Towneley's barometer experiment (1661), and the vision of George Fox (1652), which led to the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) movement.

So from the quote above, maybe the spiritual world is heating up (barometer) and the 'witch trials' executed by a 'Religious Society' angered many innocent women who were wrongly convicted.

Try an experiment. Print off a picture of a banshee, stick it in the frame and see if something big happens.

So, to continue where I left off. I’ll let the mystery continue, but I want to state that with all the many years of lay study I have done with regard to the afterlife and of near-death experiences (NDE), I must admit to a thought popping into my head that perhaps my deceased mother was giving me a message of some kind?

Now I am quite sceptical of most things paranormal or supernatural, and I consider the afterlife nothing more than wishful thinking, purely because of something I call the ‘power source’ problem.

This problem asks the question…if some aspect of us remains consciously aware after physical death, how does it remain cohesive and energised? This is a question I have been searching for a plausible hypothesis for many years.
Yesterday and today I have been going over some old research papers and think I might have something of a plausible hypothesis at last. I’m still formulating it, but in brief, it goes like this.

What I am about to relate is to be considered entirely natural. There is nothing supernatural or paranormal about it. The concepts and mechanisms are not new, and are not all of my own thinking.

There is a retired English lecturer of mechanical engineering, now in his eighties, called Ron Pearson, whose studies and applied mathematics to Quantum theory and Relativity theories, brought out an unusual by product from his work. I’ll give a link to his website later.

Stating it in very basic terms, beneath the sub-quantum world there is another layer of reality (the actual only reality that never changes). Ron Pearson calls it the ‘i-etheric’ (the ‘I’ stands for intelligence). It was created out of collisions of pure energies, which at the time (well before the alleged Big Bang) consisted of positive and negative forms.
When they collided as density clumps they would annihilate each other, but this left behind tiny filaments that fell across each other and formed something like a neural network along which energy waves would propagate. At this point there is no space or time or matter. Just densities of positive and negative energies colliding, and a growth of a filamentous structure which was acting like a neural switching network. As this filamentous structure emerged and grew and evolved, it became rudimentary self-aware by coming into a pseudo-conscious state. It created matter and the Big Bang bloomed. This i-etheric layer exists way below the sub-quantum level right through the whole universe and every single thing that exists. It interpenetrates everything, including the atoms and sub-quanta of your body.

It is the nearest thing to spirit you are ever going to conceive of, and (according to Pearson) it is this that survives the death of the physical body, once memory has been downloaded to it. Your life’s total memory has an energy value, and this sets the level of reality to which you can attune to when you die. Throughout life, we each do good and bad things, and this adds to or subtracts from the total memory value. Nothing, not a single micro-second of our life’s experience is lost. All is recorded and preserved. You are, right now in this physical life experience, determining the level of reality you will attune to when you die. Whether it is a proverbial heaven or hell, is up to you.

In the NDE, there is the ‘life review’. This is a purge and an understanding of all your actions and thoughts that had an impact on others. You get to immerse your consciousness with all those you came into contact with, and you perceive yourself from their point of view, but you also perceive and feel the pain you caused them, or how they felt in your company. Apparently, it is not an easy process to go through. You are not judged by other ‘entities’, you are simply understanding your life’s experience in respect to that of others.

However, the power source problem has a plausible hypothetical resolution. If what survives physical death is made of the same stuff as that of Pearson’s i-ethric substance, then it will survive because it is self-feeding and self-energising.

More to follow…

a reply to: elysiumfire

That is really odd. The painting should have skited the figures straight off the cabinet as it fell. If it's an old house, then wonky florboards can 'ping' furniture upwards when you stand on the other end of them, but then everything tends to fall, not just the item at the back of the cabinet.

The only thing I know about Pendle Hill is courtesy of Derek Acorah, but I remember there were strong connections with witchcraft and hangings (?), I think. And then you say you live in an old church?
I'm sorry, but I think you've got ghosties...

beansidhe:

If it's an old house, then wonky florboards can 'ping' furniture upwards when you stand on the other end of them...

It's an old church converted to apartments. The floors are wooden floorboards, and are loose in areas, but I tried jumping around the cabinet to see if I could shake the cabinet or move it...I didn't.

I think you've got ghosties...

Or, the odd occasional visit of a particular one. I grew up around Pendle Hill, it used to be my playground.

a reply to: elysiumfire

The ornament things certainly look heavy enough for the picture to sort of fall over them without actually disturbing them. Heck they may have even wobbled a bit and returned to the same position. While the picture seems much lighter than the ornament things. I could see it toppling over without disturbing them.

MaMaa:

The ornament things certainly look heavy enough for the picture to sort of fall over them without actually disturbing them.

I wish that was the case, then I could put the mystery to bed and return to my scepticism, but unfortunately, it isn't. In the first picture where I use a substitute painting, I tried toppling it forward, and it disturbs the ornaments every time and pushes them forward towards the edge. I allow the painting to topple with its own momentum and weight.

Fact is, the ornaments should have been moved when the painting fell, but they were not, as there was a light dust on top of the cabinet at the time, which is how I know they did not move (it's okay, I've polished since, after I tidied the shattered glass up).

Well that certainly makes my line of thinking a little less believable.
I still think it's likely it fell forward then pivoted over, but how... hmmm.....

Someone call Jonathan Creek. Nevermind, I just did.
"Perhaps a series of intricate pulleys were used along with a smoke and mirrors technique called 'Protecting The Ent Nest'. It would have been noticed had it not been for Mrs. Curtis' timely distraction about the seating issues in the town hall. All this to steal the famous Dartmoor scene "rising crest" by R.L.Schubert... Fascinating..."