Observations placeholder

THE METAL-BENDERS” by JOHN B. HASTED

While we were all standing around looking at the statuette, a second object appeared in the air and dropped. This time we all observed it, and it was clear to us all that it had not been thrown. It was the key of a Buhl clock which stands next to the statuette on the bookshelf in the lounge. Normally the key is hung on the clock, although, since the clock had had no pendulum for thirty years, it was never used. However, I recognized it easily, since it is unique and well proportioned. If the statuette and the key had passed in normal parabolic arcs from the lounge bookcase straight to their destination in the kitchen, the arcs would pass through the wall (see Figure 18.1). Perhaps there could have been more complicated curved paths, passing out of the lounge door into the hall, and thence through the kitchen door and across the kitchen. But the observers would have been very likely to see the object moving in such a path; in particular, I myself was standing in the kitchen doorway when the statuette reappeared, and if it had simply moved all the way in a normal trajectory it must have passed close to me. If the movement of the objects had been in a single normal trajectory, then the objects would have had to pass through a wall to get to the place at which they reappeared.

Lynn and I were to find in the subsequent weeks that objects apparently reappearing on the other side of solid walls was a common feature of these phenomena; sometimes the objects would have had to pass through the wall of a container or wrapping to appear where they did. Our observations continually reinforced the presumption that the events were not to be described as objects flying about, but as objects disappearing and reappearing. We might suppose that the ‘ability’ had been induced in Lynn.