Human Spontaneous Involuntary Invisibility *

* (restored)

‘We live in a world where reality shifting and temporal anomalies are becoming the norm, a simple case of a person disappearing should not be difficult to explain – yet it is. What remains obvious is that the person who can no longer be physically seen has shifted into a higher frequency than 3D – therefore cannot be seen with our physical eyes.

‘In the summer of 1994, I became aware of a very strange phenomenon, human spontaneous involuntary invisibility, which was apparently happening to people in the U.S. When I checked with other researchers and discovered that a number of them had also heard of such cases, I decided to place an inquiry letter in several well-known journals, asking other researchers and the general public if they had any experiences of this nature that they would like to share with me. Besides the publication of my inquiry letter, my inquiry was placed on several Internet bulletin boards. The letters began pouring in, giving me a broader picture of this phenomenon. I want to share a few stories with you and pass on some of the information I have come across during this past year.

Donna Higbee, CHT

‘My inquiry letter told the story of Vera in Ventura, California, who tried to get assistance in a post office, only to be completely ignored by other customers and the postal clerk. I have kept in touch with Vera and she has had other apparent invisibility experiences in stores and other public places. Sheila in Roanoke, Texas, continues to have invisibility experiences, some of which have occurred in restaurants and at the airport. Glenda in Fort Worth, Texas, has had these experiences occur in a cafeteria and a movie theater. Most of the cases that I have researched have been in the U.S., although I do know of cases in England, Europe, Australia, Puerto Rico and Brazil.

‘In every case I have heard about or personally researched, the person is physically still present, although unable to be seen or heard. From the point of view of the invisible person, the world looks normal and they have no idea that they cannot be seen or heard by people around them. I will address how this might occur a little further along in this article, but first I want to give a few examples below. The quotes are directly from experiencers’ letters to me.

Jean

‘Jean in Tucson, Arizona, wrote me of her experiences. She has had them occur in the library when she attempted to check out books and in clothing stores. The following is a quote from her letter, showing the humor with which she deals with these occurrences. “I’ve had this happen in stores, in restaurants, and many places. I remember joking to a friend of mine one time that I felt like I could walk into a bank, help myself to a pile of bills and no one would ever see me because I was invisible. There is no physical reason why I should be. I’m taller than average for my sex and age group (I’m fifty-five years old and 5’9″), referred to as good-looking, and I’ve always worn my hair red. You wouldn’t think a tall woman with red hair, high heels in a purple dress and dangle earrings would be invisible, would you?”

Peter

‘Or the story from a forty-seven year old man, Peter in Gloucestershire, England, who was at a private party in 1987. He walked upstairs to use the bathroom and was followed by a woman who also wanted to use the bathroom. The woman motioned for him to go first and she stood outside the door to wait her turn. Peter used the bathroom, opened the door and walked out into the hallway, closing the door behind him. He went on down the stairs and walked over to some friends and started talking to them. They all ignored him completely. He though they were playing a joke on him, so he walked away and found his girlfriend and asked her for a cigarette. She, too, acted like she didn’t see or hear him. Peter was getting angry by this time and thought the joke had gone too far. He decided to walk back upstairs and catch the woman coming out of the bathroom and ask her for a cigarette. “…I walked back up the stairs and, on reaching the bathroom landing, I came across the girl again who was standing outside the bathroom door, clearly still waiting for me to come out. When she saw me, her face dropped in surprise for clearly she thought that I was still in the bathroom.” Peter returned to the party downstairs and everything was normal again and he was able to be seen and heard. When he questioned his friends and girlfriend as to why they had ignored him, they all swore that they had never seen or heard him. Obviously the woman upstairs had not seen him come out of the bathroom and go downstairs.

Melanie

‘Then there is the case of Melanie in Ventura, California, who became invisible while sitting on her own living room sofa and staring at the wall, lost in her own thoughts. Her husband was walking around the house looking for her but could not see her sitting there, only several feet away from where he was walking. This lasted for approximately ten minutes, then she was suddenly visible again. Her husband was quite upset with her and thought she had been hiding from him. She assured him that she had been sitting there all along, but to this day, he does not believe her.

Jannise

‘Or, how about Jannise in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who has had a number of invisibility experiences throughout her life. The one reported here lasted longer than usual. As a teenager, she fell in with a group of friends who decided to see if they could actually steal something from a department store and not get caught. As luck would have it, the entire group was caught and taken into custody, including Jannise. They were taken to the police station and one by one were questioned; all, that is, except Jannise. Although she was standing right there, no one paid the slightest attention to her; not the police, the guards, or the office personnel. She finally just got up and walked out of the police station without ever being questioned or anyone attempting to stop her. When she later talked with her friends about what happened in the police station, “…they didn’t even recall me being taken into custody at the department store. Yet I rode in the police car with everyone else, and they thought I was still at the store.” No one had seen her from the moment the police had arrived on the scene in the store until some time after she had walked out of the police station unhindered.

‘What actually is happening? Why is this occurring? We don’t have answers for these questions yet. But in trying to learn more about invisibility, I came across some information which I want to share with you.

John Macky

‘Interestingly, a man named John Macky, who was an early Masonic leader (the early Masons were believed to be an offshoot of the Rosicrucians) taught a method whereby any man could render himself invisible. Another offshoot of the Rosicrucian fraternity, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, left manuscripts describing the Ritual of Invisibility. These manuscripts talk about surrounding yourself with a shroud, which is described as looking like “a cloud.” It is said that Madame Blavatsky, of the Theosophical Society, witnessed this invisibility for herself and was actually given the secret, thereafter accomplishing this for herself on several occasions in front of witnesses. The literature on the Spiritualists in the U.S. shows that there is no doubt they, too, knew about the cloud and its creation.

‘So, just what is this cloud? We are looking for something that is between empty space and actual physical matter, something unseen by the naked eye but very much in existence. When spiritual essence gathers into very minute focal points of electrical charge (due to certain conditions), we have the creation of electrons. Science reports that such a cloud of free electrons will absorb all light entering it; it will not reflect nor refract light waves, nor are light waves able to pass through a human being. Consequently the observer’s eye sees nothing there and the person surrounded by such a cloud is invisible. Since light is necessary for human sight, when there are no reflected or refracted light waves bouncing off a person and hitting the observer’s retina, the person is not able to be seen and is not visible under normal circumstances.

‘How is this cloud created intentionally? That is difficult to say. There are references to and descriptions of invisibility and its creation in the writings of secret societies, but most people don’t have access to these writings. One could go to India and become an apprentice or student of an Indian guru or teacher to learn these techniques, but that probably is not practical in modern life. To the everyday person, the knowledge of how invisibility works is a mystery.

‘With this being the case, just how are people having experiences of spontaneous involuntary invisibility? I wish I had the answers, but we are still in the midst of our research. If indeed they are forming the light-absorbing, free-electron cloud around themselves, they are doing it unknowingly and without knowledge of the method. Since some kind of focused mental thought process must be employed to make the cloud form around oneself, then it might be that these people are doing this unconsciously.

‘My research has shown the people to be well adjusted, well educated and taken totally by surprise at the occurrence of invisibility. Often it takes several such occurrences before they realize that they are truly invisible during certain times to other people. They attempt to interact with those around them and simply can’t be seen or heard. This produces frustration and, in many cases, a sense of fear at something which they don’t understand. There is a big difference between a person purposely not interacting with you because of some cultural or personal reason versus a person not interacting with you because he can neither see nor hear you. A case in point:

Joe

‘I recently had a phone call from Joe L. in Fullerton, California who was very bewildered and needed to talk about what was happening to him. He had just returned from a nightclub where he was seated at the bar by himself drinking his beer. Joe was sitting forward in his chair and intent upon something happening on the dance floor and did not notice a man pass behind his table and take his jacket from the back of his chair. When he finished his beer, he stood up to get his jacket and found it missing. He reported this to the bartender and was told that the man who turned it in had said no one was sitting at the bar and he assumed that the party had left, so he turned in the jacket. Joe had had several such invisibility occurrences within the past three months and was quite disturbed over them. As I continue to get letters and phone calls, I realize that there is much more to be learned about this fascinating phenomenon.’ — Donna Higbee, CHT

Discussion

Nigel: Sounds like in this case, being ignored = being invisible.
State of Grace: Isn’t being ignored = being invisible, a perceived state of invisibility not actual invisibility?
Nigel: People are often oblivious to their surroundings.
State of Grace: I am not obilvious to my surroundings.
Nigel: It’s impossible to be aware of everything around you all the time.
State of Grace: Perhaps I am more aware, awake, than compared to some others? Why is it impossible to be aware of everything around you all the time?
Nigel: Because humans become focused on certain things, and tend to not pay attention to other things.
DrMatt: Grace, if you’re not a professional magician, you should attend some serious magic shows–if for no other reason than to be reminded that even the very smart and very aware cannot be aware of all their surroundings all the time. It simply isn’t possible. Our brains have filtering mechanisms to call our attention to important things and allow us to ignore unimportant things so that we can react to our surroundings in a timely manner. If you shut that section of the brain off, instead of greater awareness you get hallucinations or aphasic short-term memory failure.
State of Grace: If these filtering mechanism works as you say by focusing our attention on what is of importance, like a magic show. Are we really unaware of the less important things happening around us at the same time, say what the people surrounding us are doing. If the brain is processing everything coming into it simultaneously does it not hold the body in a waiting fight or flight status?
specious_reasons: What Dr Matt is saying is that much magic works on misdirection. Unless you walk away from a professional magician’s show unimpressed because you caught every sleight of hand and figured out some of his tricks, you are not aware of everything.
DrMatt: Some of my favorite moments in magic are when the magician is presenting a really *basic* trick which they’d never actually do that way in front of a paying audience, and they explain that all the clues needed to decode the trick are clearly visible. And then they explain the clues, and indeed they’re things that were clearly visible but didn’t register to most of us as having any special significance. About the only part of that which I’ve even *started* to notice is that some magicians often stand around with their hands rounded in the shape they’d be if they were holding something–even when not working!–as if that were just the natural thing for them. In the context of a trick, that makes the rounding of their hands around a palmed object *not* stand out to our eyes.
bbws1o: I would love to ask her to comment on the fact that none of the people who reported themselves “vanishing” mentioned what happened to their clothing. And if their clothing also became invisible, why not the chair they were sitting in or the floor they were standing on? Of course, this would be a very unnerving phenomenon if it happened to someone standing outside on the ground because it would seem to follow that the whole planet and all the other people and things touching it would also disappear.
Senor Molinero: Well, that was one of the fall-down points (only one of???) in “Hollow Man”. He claimed he couldn’t sleep because his eyelids were transparent. How could he see with transparent retinas?
Colt: In Hollow Man, there is a worse flaw than the retinas.. Hair. Hair is basically dead cells.. Well, the chemicals that he injected himself with would have affected the living parts of his body only, what about his hair and the dead skin cells on his skin? Also, anything he ate or drank, since it would not be a part of him, and his urine, etc. You get the idea.
Mr. X:: Jeez. The human race has lots of problems.
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*

p.s. Hey. ** Charalampos, Hi. I suppose it’s possible to find ‘Skinamarink’ scary, but it’s not really about scaring you. I’m not sure what you mean by automatic writing. I write what comes out. I guess that’s automatic? Yes, I always let myself write whatever I write and go back and spend as much time as I need to refine and edit and rewrite it into something I like, with poems too. Is it freeing? For sure. I’m very into sentences and sentence construction, but I also think that thinking of sentences as construction material for paragraphs, etc. is very important too. You should write in whatever way excites you while trying to improve your skills at the same time. Congrats on the poem’s success! ** Jack Skelley, Jack!!! It has begun! Sounds exciting, and I’m biting my lip that I can’t be an in-person witness. I’ll check out the podcast post-haste. Everyone, Here’s the maestro Jack Skelley talking about ‘Fear of Kathy Acker’ on the Empyrean Path podcast. Gobble it. ** Brian, Hi! Thanks a lot about ‘PGL’. Very interesting about your research fellowship being about Terence Davies and your chosen thematic, which, yes, I agree, needs exposing and intricate thought. Great! Very exciting! I’ll start newer Evenson with the latest book, thanks for that tip. I haven’t tried the Twigs yet, but I did like the bits they were streaming in their social media ad. So are you headlong into the fellowship now or in the prep phase? Seen anything else of note lately? Take care bud. ** Misanthrope, I certainly would not be sorry whatsoever if the superhero movie phase is dwindling into the past tense. Fun with Kayla, I can safely assume? I hope your venture into hernia repair today is a successful launch. ** A, Hi. I certainly foresee there being a break in the editing, but I have no idea when that will happen at the moment. No, the heat isn’t so bad here yet. Hovering around late 20s-30 centigrade. It’s going to get much worse. I can see your ARC in my peripheral vision as I type, so it’s doing just fine. ** Mark, Cool. There’s actually a little guided Alfred Jarry walking tour you can take here. I think it happens once a month. I’ve been meaning to do it. ** _Black_Acrylic, I think if you want to watch an Ahwesh film, your best bet is using the links in the post that click over to most of her films in free, streamable form. Glad your body has reset and is over its bratty phase. Highly hoping it stays the course. ** Dominik, HI!!! My pleasure, of course. ‘Bleak place’ … yum. There must be so many reasons why you being out of Hungary is great and important that I couldn’t count them even if I knew them. Do you miss anything from back there yet? Future thanks to love! Love making me stop listening to Sparks’ ‘The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte’ on repeat, ha ha, G. ** Cody Goodnight, Hi Cody. I’m good enough, you? Ahwesh’s films have a big range in style, which one of their exciting properties. ‘She Puppet’ is a good enough place to start, I guess, yes. Very grateful for our rain. It’s basically warding off the hideous summer temporarily, which I will happily take. ‘Female Trouble’ can’t be beat. Nice that you’re watching Nelson’s videos. I’m in one of them for a fraction of a second amongst a crowd at the Pyramid Club. I can’t remember which video. Fine next 24 hours to you, my friend. ** Steve Erickson, Enjoy the new laptop and apps exploring. Everyone, Two reviews from Mr. E today: first of Wes Anderson’s ASTEROID CITY, and, second, of Militarie Gun’s album LIFE UNDER THE GUN. ‘Asteroid City’ opens here tomorrow, and I can not wait. I’ve dipped in and out of Killah Priest’s stuff in recent years, but the new album actually grabbed me some reason. ** Jasmine Johnson, Hi, Jasmine. I’m going to be in Paris all summer, and, honestly, I want nothing to do with Laura Albert and the JT Leroy thing, but I appreciate you asking me. ** Right. I’m not really sure why I decided to restore this ridiculous old post. A passing whim that has now escaped me. But maybe you’ll find a reason. See you tomorrow.