While talking to a friend recently, we both noticed a tendency to sometimes lose things. They just aren't where we remembered putting them. After much searching, we go back to an area we just looked and voila, the item is suddenly there.

Rather than attributing these mysterious disappearances to elves or poltergiests, we decided it must be some kind of stress induced 'negative hallucination,' a condition where you are prevented from seeing something that you really need at the moment.

This triggered a memory of an InterNet page that talks about 'Spontaneous Invisibility.' I asked another friend who is a psychologist if she had ever heard of any studies being done on this subject, she said not to her knowledge but she did provide the title of the book 'Secrets of Invisibility' by Dallas resident Steve Richards (his pseudonym).

I've had this book for several years and been trying to meet Mr. Richards through a mutual friend but to date we've not been able to arrange a meeting. My friend tells me he is very secretive, partly because he published much of what he learned after swearing secrecy to various occult orders. One of his other interesting books is 'Practical Levitation.' Both of these books used to be available from Lewellyn Press.

In the book on invisibility, Richards comments on a technique of inducing a 'mental confusion' in your target subject. This takes two forms, one of which is a cloud or mental fog which is impressionable by another's thoughts, the other takes advantage of the brain not wanting to deal with anything that doesn't immediately fit into the person's view of reality, such as a chaotic or complex image.

When looking towards such an area, the eye will jump past the overly complex image, seeking to find familiar visual territory that doesn't require a high degree of analysis. This phenomenon has been noted with the Indians who could not see the first Spanish ships that were clearly visible in the harbor. Only when someone else described what they were seeing, could the rest of the group begin to see the reality. Almost like a visual hundredth monkey effect.

There is also a hard to find book about Russian mentalist and paranormal researcher Vasiliev. In this book, Vasiliev talks about passing a blank piece of paper to a bank teller who gives him 1000 rubles in return. He projected an image into the tellers' mind that the paper was a cashiers check in the amount of 1000 rubles. The money was returned after witnesses testified to the success of the experiment.

Another experiment was based on a bet with Stalin. Many of the Russian scientists had no patience with paranomal investigations, but Vasiliev and some of his colleagues wanted to establish a research institute to investigate and perfect useful techniques.

Vasiliev made a bet with Stalin that if he could appear in Stalin's private study at 8PM on a specified weeknight, Stalin would agree to establish a research institute for paranormal investigations.

Stalin was always heavily guarded, even at home, so he thought this would be a sure bet. On the appointed night, Stalin was sitting in front of his fireplace reading, when the clock struck 8PM, he heard a clearing of the throat, looked up and saw Vasiliev sitting in an armchair opposite him.

Stalin immediately called in the guards and demanded to know how Vasiliev had gotten past all of them. Each denied they had seen Vasiliev that night. Finally, before Stalin could have them all put to death, Vasiliev explained that he had projected the image of one of Stalin's most trusted advisors into the minds of the soldiers as he walked through.

This advisor was of such high rank that he was allowed to come and go without challenge by the soldiers. It was at this point that Stalin was convinced of the usefulness of psychic research and funded the highly effective Russian paranormal research efforts.

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When I was about 15 years of age, I experienced a peculiar event that left a lasting impression. We had a local newstand that received new magazines and paperback books once a week. Being a heavy reader, I had a friend who I often met there as we went through looking for books and magazines on UFOs, paranormal, science fiction and other weirdness.

One night, we were to meet at 7PM. I arrived first and climbed onto a ladder with my feet about 2 feet off the floor so that I was easy to spot from anywhere in this small shop. This shop also had only one door with an aisle having books and magazines on each side of the aisle. I heard someone enter, turned around and it was my friend. He looked around the shop, right through me without seeing me at all, over a distance of about 15 feet max and sat down to await my arrival.

I was puzzled about this, thinking he had not said hello because he must be kidding around. Prior to his entry, I was very absorbed in a new paperbook that I was contemplating buying. A few minutes later, I stepped off the ladder and out from behind a wire bookrack.

My friend was startled and asked how I'd gotten into the shop without passing by him. I explained that I'd been there all along, he thought I was lying so asked the cashier who confirmed I'd been there for at least 30 minutes. It was very strange. I don't know if he was distracted or if my deep concentration on the book produced some kind of 'cloud of confusion' to his perception of the surroundings.

To that end, and based on these periodic missing items that suddenly return when you are not so pressed to have them in hand, I decided to put up a file on invisibility, including a few URLs of interest.

I found the page that I remembered reading about where people became invisible to others along with some others that you might find interesting;

• 'Spontaneous Invisibility' which you should check out,
• the the Mechanics of Invisibility and
• a humorous look at How to make Invisibility Paint.

There are several other technical versions such as the claims of the Phildelphia Experiment and a few files on KeelyNet. Those might be included at a later date.

>>> Jerry

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