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Charles Lindbergh's
Friendly Ghosts
When Charles Lindbergh was
in a pickle flying across the Atlantic with his plane "Spirit of St. Louis"
in 1927, unknown but very friendly phantoms accompanied him during his
famous solo flight.
Lindbergh told afterwards
that on his historic flight across the ocean, the plane's freezing cold
fuselage decked with ice was filled with "ghostly presences!"
He said, "Those phantoms
speak with human voices. They are friendly, vapor-like shapes without
substance, able to appear or disappear at will, to pass in and out through
the walls of the fuselage..."
He wrote the ghosts gave
him advice on his flight: "They were discussing problems of my navigation,
reassuring me, giving me messages of importance unattainable in ordinary
life."
"These spirits have no
rigid bodies, yet they remain human in outline and form They're neither
intruders nor strangers, it's more like a gathering of friends and family
after years of separation, as though I'd known all of them before in some
past life." He said.
Lindbergh made it safely
across, thanks to his good ghosts, no doubt!
The Ghost on
the South Pole
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton
wrote in his memoirs that he and his two companions had been joined by
a divine spirit, when he was exploring the South Pole in the beginning
of this century.
He wrote, "I know that
during that long and racking march, it seemed to me often that we were
four, not three,"
Another of the expedition
members, F.A. Worsley, had had the same feeling.
Seven years after the
expedition Worsley wrote: "Each step of that journey comes back clearly,
and even now I again find myself counting our party. Shackleton, Crean
and I and -- who was the other?
"It's strange that we
should always think of a fourth, but then we correct ourselves."
The
Ghost on the Mount Everest
Frank Smythe had a
similar experience while climbing Mount Everest in 1933. He wrote: "When
I reached the ledge, I felt I ought to eat something in order to keep
up my strength.
"I took out some cake and carefully dividing it into two halves, turned
round one-half in my hand to offer my 'companion.'"
His companion was a phantom.
The
Ghost of The Pinta
The adventurer
Joshua Slocum wrote in his journals that he had received help from a ghost
while he was attempting a single-handed, around-the-world ocean voyage
in 1895.
At one point in the voyage, Slocum became ill with food poisoning and
lay writhing in pain on the cabin floor in heavy seas.
He wrote: "To my amazement, I saw a tall man at the helm ... 'Senor,'
he said, doffing his cap, 'I have come to do you no harm.
"'I am one of Columbus' crew. I am the pilot of the Pinta come to help
you.
" 'Lie quiet, senor captain, and I will guide your ship tonight...You
will be all right tomorrow.'"
The next morning, Slocum said, he found his boat an a true course -- and
it had covered considerable distance in the stormy seas with the phantom
of the Pinta at the helm.
Medium's
Dead Composers Ghosts' Works Are Performed
 MUSIC
which pianist and medium Rosemary Brown claims was dictated to her by
long-dead composers has been performed at a concert in London. The concert,
introduced by Mrs. Brown, included a sonata which she says Beethoven completed
just two months ago, and short piano pieces she ascribes to Liszt, Brahms
and Rachmaninov, were all written down in the last year.
She is a widow
with little musical training. She has written down more than 600 pieces
in the past 15 years. Mrs. Brown says that leading 18th and
19th century composers have established contact with her to
dictate posthumous works. Franz Liszt first appeared to her when she was
seven, she says. According to Mrs Brown, he told her that when she was
older, he would teach her to make music. She claims that he returned one
day in 1964 while she was playing the piano and took control of her hands
at the keyboard.
Since then she
says she made the aquaintance of a host of others, including Chopin, Bach,
Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Grieg, Schumann, Debussy and Rachmaninov.
George Gershwin and Fats Waller have also appeared. Sceptics abound, but
Larry Sitsky of the Canberry School of Music thinks the sheer volume of
her output is evidence in her favour.
"It is faster than
any composer could hope to compose. So it is not being composed on the
spot, it is being dictated. We have to think about where it is being dictated
from."
The Evil Ghost
Of The Statue
 Mr.
and Mrs. Lambert took a round-the-world trip from England. At Japan's
Kobe, they saw a Buddha statue in the window of a shop. It was of white
ivory, about 1 1/2-in. tall, with a happy round face and stomach, sitting
on a pillow of embroidered Japanese flowers. The Lamberts liked it and
the price was a giveaway. The seller told them that Ho-Tei would bring
good luck.
The statue was placed in Mrs.
Lambert's case on their trip to Manila. That night, she had a terrible
toothache. The doctor had medicine, but it was no help. At Manila, a dentist
drilled one tooth to the nerve and the pain was almost unbearable.
Then to Sydney, Australia. While
on board the ship, they had changed stuffs and the Buddha was somehow
changed to Mr. Lambert's baggage. That night, he had an awful toothache.
No doctor was on board and he took one aspirin after another. Nearly mad
with pain, he got off at Sydney and was aching as before. Two days later
at another port, Mr. Lambert saw another doctor but he told him nothing
was wrong. When he returned to the ship, his teeth were aching. At another
port, he told the dentist to start pulling all teeth until he said to
stop. The doctor pulled one. There was no more aching, and so he concluded
that was it.
At Chile, South America, they
visited his mother. When shown Ho-Tei, she loved it and they gave it to
her. She had good teeth, but within a few hours, all her teeth were aching.
Few days later, Mother returned Ho-Tei, saying it did not suit her.
The ship went to England. The
Lamberts had no toothaches because Ho-Tei was in the storage room with
other baggages, they having bought other stuffs. The next morning in England,
friends visited them. They gave Ho-Tei to a woman to show her husband.
All that day, they did not see the woman, which was thought to be strange.
But the next morning, she came with pale face and swollen mouth.
Then, came the realization!
They recalled dates, diaries and their hairs rose in horror. They finally
decided to give the statue to a Japanese curio shop in London.
The
Monk's Ghost On The Temple Tile
 The
Siegers, a German couple, were on holiday in Thailand in 1985. They toured
the capital Bangkok, and one of the stock places to visit of
course, is
the famous Emerald Buddha in one of the golden temples that grace the
ancient city, especially along the mystical Chao Praya river.
When strolling through the temple compound, Mr. Sieger spotted a a glazed
green tile lying around in one of the temple flower beds, which had been
part of the temple but had fallen off. He could not withstand the temptation
to take a souvenir home to Germany with him from Thailand, and so picked
up the object and slid the thing in his pocket. Soon after they left the
country and returned home to Germany, where they put the tile on display
in their livingroom.
It wasn't much later when Herr Sieger began to have very lucid dreams
at night, in which a saffron robed Thai Buddhist monk lectured him on
his crime and warned him to return the tile to the temple no matter what.
The recurring dream didn't go away, and Mr. and Mrs. Sieger started to
get quite worried when little things in the household started to go wrong
for unexplained reasons.
Finally they made the
decision that the tile had to be returned, before the ghost of the Monk
was going to get serious about his threats. He called the Thai Embassy
confessing his mistake and explained how the dreams made him quite concerned.
The Thais listened politely
to his story and
offered to receive the tile in order to return it and inquired from which
temple it was taken. The tile was taken to the embassy and put on a Thai
International flight back to the City of Angels, where it was collected
by the Chief "Phra" (abt) of the temple in question, in which
it was restored to its rightful place.
No doubt the ghost of the monk who travelled on the piece of pottery with
the Siegers to Germany was happy to be home as well, back among his fellow
departed monks, as he must have been awfully lonely In the German town
without anyone to talk to that would understand him. He is probably a
famous ghost now in the Thai capital, as he got to go on a trip half way
around the world.
This true story was published with Thai pride in their cultural heritage
in the Thai newspaper "the Nation" in the year 1985. I know!
As I lived in Thailand for 14 years and was there at the time following
the story several days in the local English newspaper.
The Musicman.
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