Michael Prescott's Blog
Archived blog focusing on the paranormal
Category: Cool things
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The myth of the vampire has been around since ancient times in one form or another, but it didn't become a popular entertainment trope until the 19th century. Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker gives us the vampire we all remember, but he was preceded by others. First came Sir Francis Varney, the blood-sucking villain in a…
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Despite the paucity of my posts lately, I haven't been entirely idle. I finally got around to writing my book on the afterlife, which I call The Far Horizon: Perspectives on Life Beyond Death. I was planning to self-publish this short (45,000-word) book and maybe sell a handful of copies. But when I announced it…
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Since I never go to movie theaters anymore, I didn't watch the highly acclaimed science-fiction drama Arrival until last night, after I rented it from one of those supermarket vending machines. It's a good movie, with strong performances and a compelling storyline – though I thought the method selected for establishing communication with the aliens was a bit…
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Saw this in my Facebook feed (posted on Art's page) and wanted to pass it along. It's an article about Fermilab's ongoing attempt to establish whether or not the spacetime universe is a hologram. A lot of stuff in here seems (to my layman's eye, anyway) to be possibly consistent with the idea that physical…
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In a recent post I discussed the much-hyped news that the identity of Jack the Ripper had finally been revealed via DNA analysis of an old shawl purportedly found at one of the murder scenes. I also discussed objections raised by so-called "ripperologists" – dedicated aficionados of the unsolved Ripper murders, who have learned to…
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There's a headline-making item in the news: DNA evidence has revealed the identity of Jack the Ripper. Having written a thriller about old Red Jack, I found this story intriguing, but I'm not sure if I believe it. First things first. The article appears in the Daily Mail, a British tabloid known for sensationalistic exaggeration. The…
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I was thinking of doing a post on opinions and keeping an open mind and not demonizing one's opponents and so forth. Then I came across a column in the Village Voice (of all places) that said it better than I ever could. The political blog Ace of Spades introduced me to this item. Ace…
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Facebook friend Ian Kerry points me to this tabloid news item about photos of (gasp!) actual fairies. To me, they look like bugs. Somewhere, Arthur Conan Doyle is smiling. Maybe. Also, Matt Rouge points me to this Cracked essay by someone who had (or may have had) an NDE and didn’t think very much of…
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Facebook friend Ronnie Lee points me to this story about research indicating that decapitated worms seem to retain their memories after regrowing their brains. So is this evidence of a) some kind of muscle memory, b) epigenetic modifications, c) morphic fields, d) extracerebral memory storage, or e) something else entirely?
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This cutting-edge research has yet to be confirmed, but it could be the start of something big. If I understand the article correctly, a fragment of DNA was “teleported” from one test tube to another by quantum processes. Making the phenomenon more mysterious is that the DNA in the first test tube had to be…