Discussions

This is a post about miracles and ghosts, UFO's and cases of possession, all sorts of stranger things.  
 
So I recently read a book that I would recommend to anyone interested in this sort of thing, called "Lying Wonders, Stranger Things" by Michael H. Brown, a former journalist and modern day author.  
 
My question for ebrandon, which I will post at the end as well is, what sort of stranger things have Brandonites experienced? Anyone had a near death experience? Any personal miracles? What do people think about all of the phenomenon out there which has a spiritual dimension to it?  
 
The author who is admittedly a strong Catholic, looks at all sorts of strange phenomenon out there and demonstrates the religious significance behind them. Including the connection that one finds between areas of witchcraft or Satanism and UFO sightings, cases of clairvoyance and psychics or even sightings of things like the loch ness monster or bigfoot type apparitions.  
 
I think even the strongest skeptic has to acknowledge that there is a lot of weird phenomenon out there which goes beyond comprehension.  
 
The Bible has a strong warning against the incredible evil associated with any sort of practice in the occult or attempts to communicate with the dead, and yet all over one sees individuals who claim to be able to practice things like clairvoyance and act as psychics.  
 
When it comes to miracles, people often argue against Christianity because you find miracles in every religion, and yet from the earliest days of Christianity and Judaism, there was always an acknowledgment that the gods of the pagans were fallen angels (demons) and were therefore capable of creating spiritual phenomenon and great acts of deception.  
 
And so I would challenge everyone who has considered Christianity to be a false belief system because they see so many other strange phenomena out there to seriously ask themselves whether Christianity might be able to explain it all.  
 
Here are some of the things that the book talks about:  
 
Ghosts aloft - The case of Eastern Airlines Flight 401, where after a crash that left 101 passengers dead, the pieces of the airplane were used in other airplanes throughout the USA. The passengers and crew having no idea that the pieces of the old plane were placed in the planes they were traveling on, started seeing dead crew and passengers as ghosts on their plane trips. Flights were canceled and people who knew the crew confirmed seeing them on the flights. A vice president of the company confirmed speaking to someone who he thought was flying his plane until he realized it was the deceased pilot. The sightings which were multiple were all reported to the Flight Safety Foundation, and the airline quietly removed all of the old parts from their other crafts.  
 
Seeing from afar - How the KGB and CIA experimented with clairvoyance, something that has been acknowledged by them. Cases of people who were spirit mediums who were able to move &#111:bjects in controlled settings, or others able to see where lost individuals are, such as in the case of lost children. Our own Brandon police force has I have been told attempted this in the past. These are all cases where the individuals were said to practice occult and therefore demonic rituals.  
 
The dancing plague - Cases of multiple demonic possessions affecting towns, schools or teams. In 1518 in Strasbourg, France one such plague caused numerous people to dance without rest for a period of one month, many of them succumbing to death by heart attack, stroke or exhaustion. A government study by the US institute of health noted in 2009, a wave of mass hysteria overcoming a high school in South Africa, in some of the cases students were said to regurgitate strange &#111:bjects like pins and shards of glass, convulsions were common – all phenomenon's that are said to frequent cases of possession.  
 
The case of Clarita Villaneuva - a 17 year old Filipino girl who was said to be possessed and was incarcerated, she had welts, bruises and bite marks all over her body that would materialize in front of multiple different witnesses even reporters, she could also tell people that they would die and then subsequently it would happen in short order until the demon inside her was finally exercised.  
 
The cases of organ transplants and how in certain cases the personality and certain characteristics of the donor end up being transferred to the recipient of the transplant.  
 
Cases of premonitions and sightings of the dead, or telepathic communications. One example given is the case of a grandmother who before her death woke up from hercoma in America and shouted duck to her grandson before passing away, and her grandson in Vietnam hearing the voice saying 'Duck James' clearly right before a bullet nearly hit his head.  
 
Cases of UFO sightings and phenomenon which very often involve individuals who not long before were dabbling in the occult, or in areas where witchcraft or Satan worship was prevalent.  
 
Former Isreali paratrooper Uri Geller who physicists from the pentagon confirmed that he was able to contort metal &#111:bjects simply by looking at them. Uri was photographed with US president Jimmy Carter, Isreali Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and later with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Declassified CIA documents revealed in 2017 that Uri "has demonstrated his paranormal perceptual ability in a convincing and unambiguous manner".  
 
Faces on a Floor – In August 1971 a household in Spain saw a terrifying image of a person in her floor, it shifted, grew and evolved, no amount of cleaning could get rid of it. When the area was broken by axe and re-cemented, it re-emerged, and in short order a cluster of new ones emerged with expressions that would change. The town council decided to dig out the floor and dig underneath at which point they found all sorts of human remains, this was then placed in a cemetery, and when another floor was poured the images still appeared. The photographic images and controlled scientific testing showed that the images would move. The images is said to still appear to this day.  
 
The Loch Ness Monster – Loch Ness, an area often associated with satanism has seen all sorts of strange and weird sightings. Allister Crowley, one of the most prominent satanists in relatively recent history purchased a cabin on the edge of Loch Ness Lake and was said to be able to conjure up the monster at will.  
 
The case of a 13 year old boy, Cornelio Closa, who after having seen a women while walking with a friend who couldn't see the women, disappeared in front of his friend and then reappeared with his family some time later. The boy was completely changed and had many characteristics of being possessed. He demonstrated in front of multiple different witnesses at different times his ability his disappear at will. This happened until he received an exorcism.  
 
Now for Holy Miracles:  
 
Padre Pio – Padre Pio was a Franciscan Monk in Italy who died in 1968. He is credited with numerous miracles which likely reach into the hundreds or perhaps even thousands, but three of the more prominent are the following: Anna Maria DiGiorgio was a girl born with no pupils in her eyes and was therefore completely blind from birth. At the age of 7 she went to see Father Pio and he restored her eyesight, despite still never having pupils in her eyes. Then there's the case of Giovanni Savino who was involved in a dynamite accident that left most of his face scorched, and his right eye completely gone. Father Pio restored the eye to the astonishment of all the witnesses and medical professionals. Finally there is the case of the flying monk, whereby in WW2, numerous allied pilots who were ordered to drop bombs over the area containing the monastery that Padre Pio was stationed at saw a flying monk in the sky that gestured for them to turn around and simultaneously their airplanes would on their own, divert direction. Finally an American general, Bernardo Rosini decided to take matters into his own hands and fly a squadron of planes to the site, when he returned, he and all his pilots recounted how they saw the flying monk in the sky and at that moment their planes all mysteriously dropped their bombs and diverted on their own. The American general who was a protestant, converted to Catholicism after meeting the monk in person following the war.  
 
Modern Day Lazaruses – A 16 year old Catholic schoolgirl named Alphonsine Mumereke in Kibeho, Rwanda, who in 1982 announced that the Virgin Mary was going to be taking her to see Hell and Heaven, and that her body would look dead but she would not be dead, so please don't bury her. When the event happened her pulse went down to almost nothing and it lasted for 18 hours, during that time she was preternaturally heavy, and despite being a small girl was completely unable to be moved even by multiple men. The book notes two other similar cases, Anathelie Mukamazimpaka, and Vestine Salima. Vestine succumbed at 3 p.m. on good Friday and would only take a breath of air once every hour or two, she awoke at daybreak on Easter Sunday.  
 
Maria Esperanza, a Venezuelan mystic who died in 2004, was demonstrated to have grown Roses out of her chest, which one would think would be an absolutely incredulous miracle, except that these events were witnessed by doctors, a television-news crew, a radio host from Philadelphia and former CBS radioman John Marion. Maria is also known to have experienced numerous other miracles during her life which were witnessed by many, including cases of levitation.  
 
The cases of Bibles and hollow statues which on their own produce oil, perfume or blood despite their being no scientific or technological ability for them to do so. Even in our own backyard of Winnipeg, this has happened to &#111:bjects in the room that surrounds Blessed Vasyl Velychkovsky's tomb in St. Joseph's Ukrainian Catholic Church.  
 
The cases of Eucharistic miracles which are many and demonstrate that they always have the same DNA and blood type, some even being 1,300 years apart – for the skeptics out there, if that were a hoax, it would require the Catholic Church to keep a large sample of blood over 1,300 years and be able to keep it from decaying, and somehow know that at some point they would be able to tell blood apart by DNA. There are also the cases of the in-corrupt saints, which are also many and some lasting for over 500 years. There is the case of the Shroud of Turin which displays a number of miracles that have caused the vast majority of skeptical scientists who have studied it to become believers. There is the Tilma of Guadeloupe, which came into being 500 years ago and also has numerous unexplainable miraculous phenomena associated with it. Then finally there is the case of Fatima, Portugal where in 1917, the miracle of the sun, an event which lasted for over 10 minutes and was foretold by the seers of Fatima was said to be witnessed by tens of thousands of people, including scientists, atheists, journalists, skeptics and the like.  
 
So again, my question for ebrandon, what sort of stranger things have Brandonites experienced? Anyone had a near death experience? Any personal miracles? What do people think about all of the phenomenon out there which has a spiritual dimension to it?