On 15 July 2011, two television towers in the Netherlands caught fire. One collapsed spectacularly. There had never been a fire in a television tower in the Netherlands. These television towers had been there for over fifty years. And there were only twenty-four of them. A few people speculated about these incidents having a common cause.1 The towers are in different areas, making a common cause unlikely unless there is intent. After all, what is the chance of two aeroplanes crashing into both towers of the World Trade Center in New York on the same day? Only there was no evidence suggesting intent or a common cause. That makes it very mysterious.
Consider this coincidence from Bermuda, which is near the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. In 1975, a 17-year-old boy had a deadly accident while riding his moped. He died exactly a year after his 17-year-old brother died in an accident while riding the same moped in the same intersection and collided with the same taxi with the same driver, carrying the same passenger. Repeating patterns may have contributed to the incident. Perhaps it was a dangerous point where accidents frequently occurred. The passenger may have visited Bermuda once a year and taken a taxi from the airport to the same destination each time.
In 1992, I was bicycling in Groningen, where I lived at the time. On the way, a car door suddenly opened just before me. I could barely avoid a collision. About ten minutes later, on the same trip, it happened again with another car on another road. Never before or after this trip had a car door opened in front of me, even though I had made bicycle trips nearly every day for several decades. It is odd. But what are the odds?
Those incidents might be random events. Many things happen all the time, so bizarre accidents occur by chance. It doesn’t require a Supreme Puppet Master to make them happen. It may be hard to calculate the probability of an event like two television towers catching fire in one country in one day, but it is very low. Only, the number of possible strange incidents is very high.
But how low and how high? That matters tremendously. If there are a million possible events, and the chance of one happening on any given day is one in a million, we should not be surprised when one does. On average, an event like that should happen every day. If it is one in a trillion, and such an event occurs quite frequently, we are on to something, because, on average, it should happen once every million days.
The number of possible strange coincidences is infinite, so it shouldn’t surprise us that simple coincidences, such as a car door opening in front of me twice on a single bicycle trip, happen from time to time. It is, however, odd that it happened twice on one trip and never on any other. Coincidences come in different types. The more intricate a coincidence is, the less likely it is to occur. Indeed, some complicated coincidences are far less likely to occur than two car doors opening on one bicycle trip.
The following falls in the latter category. Once, I entered a do-it-yourself store. There was a couch near the entrance. The price tag of € 389 caught my attention. As a student, I lived in dormitory 389 on the campus. Price tags often end with a nine, so there was nothing suspicious about it, I concluded. Strange things had happened, so I tried to convince myself that it was not unusual. I realised it would be far more curious to find a price tag of € 401, as I had also lived in building 401, and price tags rarely end in a 1.
A few seconds later, I ran into a pile of bags of potting soil. These bags had a conspicuous lettering ’40l’, indicating they contained 40 litres of potting soil. That was close enough to 401 to be intriguing. There were no other types of bags on the spot. Potting soil is available in 10, 20, 25, 40, and 50-litre sizes. Sacks of 40 litres also come with markings such as ’40L’ and ’40 litres’. Hence, the ’40l’ was indeed remarkable.
Two years later, I returned to the same store. These bags of potting soil, marked ’40l’, stood conspicuously stacked near the entrance, reminding me of the previous incident. There was no couch, and I did not see a € 389 price tag there. I contemplated this while fetching the item I planned to buy. Its price tag was €3.89, and I had gone to the store to purchase that one item.
That is far less likely to happen than two car doors opening before me on the same bicycle trip. The events interacted with my thoughts, and the sequel made it even more improbable. The car doors opening could be a coincidence, but the do-it-yourself store incident should boggle the mind, provided one is allowed to think. In one of those dormitories, I met a most peculiar Lady. Since then, a series of noteworthy coincidences have transpired, reminding me of that. This coincidence thus also fits into this scheme, further heightening its peculiarity.
To make the coincidence happen, the bags of potting soil had to be in place, so I would run into them just after thinking of 401. And later, I had to go there to buy an item for € 3.89. And it goes much further than that. The scheme encompasses the item having a price tag of € 3.89, and my having lived in dormitories 389 and 401. That is most peculiar indeed. So much can go wrong. Imagine the bags’ content being 50 litres, the lettering being different, or me visiting another do-it-yourself store or buying another item the second time, and the scheme would fall apart. Perhaps it is a mere coincidence, but it is less likely than two car doors opening in front of me during the same bicycle trip.
On the evening of 11 October 2025, my wife and I watched episode ‘Demon 79’ of the Netflix series Black Mirror. The story played in Great Britain in 1979. It turned out that the murder of two people by a psychotic shoe saleswoman, following orders of a demon disguised as Boney M band member Bobby Farrell, proved insufficient to ward off the apocalypse. The apocalypse proved to be a nuclear war. After watching it, I went to bed. The next morning, I first read the news headlines on the teletext page 101 of the Dutch public television, and found out that two people had died at age 79, actress Diane Keaton and singer Joost Nuissl. So, two people died, thus not enough to ward off nuclear war. Two days later, on 14 October 2025, a NATO exercise named Steadfast Noon began. It included dropping fake atomic bombs above the area where I live. ‘You can sleep peacefully,’ a NATO spokesman added.
Latest revision: 14 October 2025
Featured image: Number 381 dormitory. University Of Twente (2013). [copyright info]
1. Onderzoek: Hoe konden twee zendmasten vandaag in brand vliegen? Algemeen Dagblad (15-07-2011). [link]
At the end of our lives, we will boldly go where billions have gone before, which is the afterlife, of which we know very little. Quite a few have ventured into the no-man’s land between life and death and returned to report on what they found there. One group has had a near-death experience (NDE). Often, they saw a bright light at the end of a tunnel and experienced a sense of absolute peace. Another group travelled outside their own body while hearing doctors discussing what to do. These are out-of-body experiences (OBE). Some argue that this is evidence of an afterlife. Scientists are unconvinced. NDEs and OBEs could be hallucinations of a dying brain lacking oxygen. Some psychologists claim people believe in an afterlife to cope with their fear of dying.
People who have had an OBE claimed they were fully aware of it. Their memories were vivid. Is this a hallucination of a dying brain? Those who have gone through the experience differ. Scientists claim our consciousness is just the result of chemical processes in our brains. Pills can cure depression or psychosis. A slight change in brain chemistry can turn a rational and intelligent person into a raving lunatic or a serial killer. A brain injury from a car or bike accident can change a person’s personality. Research suggests that brain chemistry may induce OBEs. Still, that doesn’t explain the evidence suggestive of reincarnation.
A psychiatrist named Ian Stevenson has researched thousands of cases. He began in 1960, when he learned of a child in Sri Lanka who claimed to remember a previous life. He questioned the child, his parents and the people the child named as his parents in his former life. Stevenson worked through thousands of similar cases, conducting interviews with the people involved. In many cases, no one close to these children knew about the deceased person, the child claimed to have been in a previous life. It is possible to plant fake memories in someone’s brain. However, there was no evidence to suggest that it had happened, as these memories were spontaneous.
The YouTube film below shows five reincarnation stories:
Stevenson’s work generated criticism, but his integrity remains beyond doubt. He carefully collected the data and investigated the possibility of fraud. Stevenson even hired a sceptic to verify his methods and conclusions. This person claimed that in only 11 of the 1,111 cases he checked, there had been no contact between the families of the deceased and the child before the interview.1 When the investigators arrived, the evidence was contaminated. The exchange between the families could have altered the account. But there is irony in those numbers, 11 of the 1,111, which was lost on the sceptic. This kind of contact is difficult to avoid in real-life situations. Parents want to check their child’s story and will thus contact the relatives of the deceased before going public.
Why are there only a few thousand credible reincarnation cases on record? Why aren’t billions of people remembering previous lives? If we do reincarnate, one might expect this to be the case. And why do most cases occur in areas where people believe in reincarnation? And why is there so much evidence that our consciousness is a result of chemical processes inside the body? Reincarnation evidence could be a practical joke of our creators. We like to believe there is life after death. Why not play into that? In a simulation, you don’t have a soul, but your consciousness exists in computer memory. Someone else can inherit your memories and even your personality after you pass away. Minds are chemical processes inside the body in the real world. In this world, it only appears like so.
Latest revision: 19 July 2025
Featured image: Relief from the Dazu Rock Carvings in China outlining the Buddhist cycle of reincarnation. User Calton (2004). Wikimedia Commons.
1. Edwards 1992, pp. 13–14; Edwards 1996, p. 275; McClelland 2010, p. 144.
There is an ongoing debate among self-proclaimed pundits who sell books about whether this universe is a simulation. They argue we can know by examining the universe’s properties. They are wrong. We can never say whether these properties, reflected in the established laws of reality, are real or fake. Even when a property of our universe appears strange or consistent with a simulation, it doesn’t prove that this universe is a simulation. It can be a property of an authentic universe. It is like saying, ‘This object is grey, and elephants are grey, so it probably is an elephant.’ Now, imagine that grey object saying moo. However, people continue to buy their books, so the so-called pundits keep writing them, because of what economists call the law of supply and demand.
That is also why science can’t establish whether we live inside a simulation. Science aims to determine the properties of the universe, as reflected in the laws of reality, also known as natural laws. However, science can’t say whether or not these natural laws are, what you might say, real. Hence, any argument that this universe is a simulation based on its properties is a dead end. In its simplest form, the reasoning goes that this universe must be a simulation because the underlying properties are digital. At the most basic level, everything can be just numbers in computer memory.
How does that work? A digital television screen consists of more than a million tiny coloured dots. Every single spot on the screen has a unique number. Also, every colour has a unique number. And so, spot 268,122 on the screen has colour 187,091. From a distance, you see a person or a mountain. At the underlying level, the screen is just a display of digits. It is possible to store numbers in computer memory so that you can represent an entire universe in this way.
Real universes might also be digital. We don’t know. Being digital is a property, not a cause of existence. Another argument based on quantum physics states that our reality is a sequence of states. Nothing exists or happens between them. Like the dots on a television screen, we can represent these states as numbers. Again, this could mean that our universe exists inside a computer. And also in this case, there is no way of knowing whether this applies to a universe that is not computer-generated.
Quantum entanglement is bizarre. Particles can interact directly with each other regardless of the distance between them. If you come to think about it, then one particle at one end of the universe might interact directly with one at the opposite side, as if there is no distance between them. This phenomenon mocks our idea of distance. Billions of light-years are nothing. Forget about warp-speed space travel. You can be on the other side of the universe in the blink of an eye. It can raise questions about the age of the universe, as estimates of its age are related to its size. However, we don’t know whether this behaviour is also present in a real universe that is billions of years old.
Many believe that intelligent extraterrestrials must exist. So far, there is no material evidence of their presence. UFO encounters occur, and people have seen aliens, but no extraterrestrials have revealed themselves to the general public. The physicist Enrico Fermi once asked, ‘Where is everybody?’ Perhaps humankind is the only advanced civilisation in the entire universe. If we live inside a simulation, there may be no point in simulating other beings on remote planets. That is not the only possibility. Perhaps civilisations tend to die out before becoming advanced. Or maybe we overestimate the probability of advanced civilisations contacting us. And possibly aliens do visit us. After all, people have seen them.
Several types of small particles don’t exist most of the time. They come into being when someone observes them. It is the observer effect. If this universe is a simulation, it would be a waste of memory and processing power to represent them all the time. If this universe is real, these particles might, or even should, always exist even when no one is watching. The argument stems from a misconception. These particles don’t disappear when not being observed. They become waves instead. There is no way of knowing whether this kind of observer effect exists in real universes. And why can we notice this? It shouldn’t be hard to conceal the non-existence of unobserved particles in a simulation.
Latest revision: 24 July 2024
Featured image: Tunnel of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. Julian Herzog (2008). Wikimedia Commons.
US Presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were both involved in drafting the Declaration of Independence, signed on 4 July 1776. Hence, 4 July became Independence Day. Jefferson was Adam’s Vice President until he became President in 1800. They were the last surviving members of the revolutionaries. Both died on 4 July 1826, precisely fifty years after the Declaration of Independence.1 Independence Day is 4 July (4/7) as 4 + 7 = 11. This date occurring twice is similar to seeing an 11:11 time prompt.
Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler
Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler both conquered nearly all of Europe. There are several parallels between them. Both came to power through a coup that ended a period of instability. Napoleon and Hitler both turned Europe into a battlefield. They both ventured into Africa and faced defeat in Egypt. They both waged war on two fronts. Both attacked Russia while not having defeated Great Britain.
Napoleon was born on the island of Corsica, which was then an independent island but later became part of France. Napoleon became the leader of France. Hitler was born in Austria, an independent country that was later annexed by Germany. Hitler became the leader of Germany. On 9 November 1799, Napoleon came to power following a coup. Hitler was involved in a failed coup on 9 November 1923.
The Titanic
The supposedly unsinkable Titanic had sealable compartments. In 1912, it sank on its maiden voyage after having a close encounter with an iceberg. In 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote the novel Futility, describing the maiden voyage of a transatlantic luxury liner named the Titan. Although touted as unsinkable, it collided with an iceberg and sank, resulting in a significant loss of life. In the book, the month of the wreck was April, the same month the Titanic sank. The similarities are striking:
The ships had similar names.
Both were the largest crafts afloat and considered among humankind’s greatest achievements.
The sizes were roughly the same: the Titan counted 45,000 tons, and the Titanic was 46,000 tons.
Both ships were deemed unsinkable.
Both had a triple screw (propeller).
Both vessels had a shortage of lifeboats.
Both struck an iceberg: the Titan, moving at 25 knots, struck an iceberg on the starboard side on a night in April in the North Atlantic, 400 nautical miles from Newfoundland, while the Titanic, moving at 22½ knots, struck an iceberg on the starboard side on the night of 14 April 1912 in the North Atlantic, 400 nautical miles from Newfoundland.
Both ships sank with much loss of life.
Robertson’s apparent clairvoyance drew attention. He claimed the similarities were the result of his shipbuilding knowledge. That can explain the technical details but not the sinking or the similar names. And the story was to get a sequel.
In April 1935, the cargo vessel Titanian sailed in the North Atlantic. A sailor claimed he felt uncomfortable because the ship’s name was similar to that of the Titanic. For that reason, he sounded a warning. He claimed to have done this before an iceberg was in sight. He added that the vessel stopped just in front of an iceberg. According to reports, the Titanian had run into some damage during the voyage.2
One hundred years later, the luxurious Italian cruise liner Costa Concordia sank after hitting a rock. The accident occurred on Friday, 13 January 2012. The ship had thirteen decks. Some passengers claimed that the Titanic theme ‘My Heart Will Go On’ played in a restaurant when the accident happened.3 Shortly afterwards, on 27 February 2012, another cruise liner of the same parent company, the Costa Allegra, ran into trouble near Seychelles.4 This repetition within a short timeframe adds to the peculiarity of the scheme.
The assassination of Franz Ferdinand
On 28 June 1914, the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in his car in Sarajevo. His act triggered World War I. World War I ended with the Armistice of 11 November 1918. 11 November is a peculiar date as it is 11-11. Several strange coincidences accompany the assassination. Franz Ferdinand had premonitions of an early death, and the assassination succeeded after a series of mishaps. But the most peculiar coincidence was the licence plate number A III 118 of the car that drove Franz Ferdinand to his appointment with destiny. It contains a possible reference to the Armistice of 11 November 1918 (11-11-18).5
Gräf and Stift Double Phaeton ridden by Archduke Franz Ferdinand at the time of his assassination
D-Day
D-Day was on 6 June 1944 (6/6/44). That date has double digits, like 11 November (11-11). The Allies had selected 5 June 1944 for their invasion because of a full moon that night. They postponed it by one day due to the weather. There was no consensus among historians on the start date of World War II, whereas the Battle of Stalingrad lasted more than two months. Therefore, D-Day is considered the most important single day in World War II. D-Day means Decision Day. D is the fourth letter of the alphabet, so Decision Day (DD) can refer to (19)44, the year D-Day happened.
Normandy invaded England in 1066 AD, while D-Day occurred on 6 June, or 6/6. In the ensuing Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, King Harold II of England died while trying to repel the invasion. That happened a few days after his forces had killed King Harold III of Norway, who also had invaded England. On 14 October 1944, the German General Rommel committed suicide after having overseen the construction of the German coastal defences intended to repel the Allied invasion.
Roman de Rou is a chronicle written around 1170. It covers the history of the Dukes of Normandy. It mentions that Roger the Great de Montgomery commanded parts of the invading forces in 1066. Other sources don’t confirm this account.6 During the 1944 invasion, Bernard Montgomery commanded portions of the invading army. That is most peculiar indeed, and there is more.
On 11 March 2010, the founder of the Dutch political party D66, Hans van Mierlo, boldly went where billions have gone before, and passed away. The name D66 stands for Democrats 66 and refers to the year 1966 as the party was founded on 14 October 1966 by 44 people.7 The name can refer to D-Day, making the founding date and the number of people involved in establishing the party rather intriguing. D-Day was on 6-6-44, so D66 could mean D-Day 6-6. Van Mierlo died in 2010, 44 years after starting D66 and 66 years after D-Day. Van Mierlo had just married a few months before on 11 November 2009 (11-11-11 after compressing numbers), which might also raise some eyebrows.
The numbers 66 and 44, along with the date 14 October, repeatedly appear in this scheme. And 11-11 is part of it too. It was the day Hans van Mierlo got married. 11 November is the date of the Armistice that terminated World War I. And the Vikings founded Normandy in the year 911. This number is closely related to the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11. On 9 November 1989 (9/11 European notation), the Berlin Wall fell. On 11 September 2001 (9/11 American notation), the terrorist attacks took place.
The assassination of Martin Luther King was on 4 April 1968, one year after he spoke out against the Vietnam War on 4 April 1967. Both dates are 4 April (4/4). On 5 June 1968, in another high-profile political assassination in the United States, Senator Robert Kennedy crossed the path of a bullet. He died the next day, on 6 June (6/6). Both incidents happened in the United States in 1968 and point to the digits of D-Day (6/6/44). 6 June was also the release date of The Omen, the most ‘cursed’ film in history.
John F. Kennedy’s assassination
‘We’re heading into nut country today,’ said President John F. Kennedy to his wife on the morning of 22 November 1963. She had just seen an advertisement from the John Birch Society in the Dallas Morning News suggesting that he was a communist. The border of the advert was in the black of a funeral announcement. ‘But, Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?’8
A few hours later, somebody shot him from a window with a rifle. The assassination date, 22 November (22/11), consists of two multiples of eleven, which is somewhat unusual as is the date of D-Day and the date of the Armistice ending World War I. There are also parallels between John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln:
Both concerned themselves with Civil Rights.
Both did get a bullet in the back of their heads in the presence of their wives.
Lincoln was shot in the Ford Theatre, and Kennedy in a Ford Lincoln.
They were both murdered on a Friday.
In both cases, an assassin assassinated the assassin before he could face trial.
Lincoln’s election into Congress happened in 1846, and Kennedy’s in 1946.
Lincoln’s election to President occurred in 1860, and Kennedy’s in 1960.
Lincoln’s successor was Andrew Johnson, born in 1808, while Kennedy’s successor was Lyndon Johnson, born in 1908.9
Longer lists are circulating with some false claims. Sceptics have argued that these similarities are mere coincidences and that similar parallels exist between other US presidents. Wikipedia even labelled it an urban legend, although it is not, as it implies that the story is false. That both murders took place on a Friday is indeed unremarkable. But the murder of Lincoln taking place in the Ford Theatre and the assassination of Kennedy happening in a Ford Lincoln is noteworthy, as is the time difference of precisely one century that recurs three times. And there are links with other peculiar coincidences.
Kennedy’s brother, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was shot a few years later. He died in 1968 on 6 June (6/6), just after the murder of Martin Luther King on 4 April (4/4). That is odd, given the coincidences surrounding D-Day (6/6/44). His untimely passing is part of a series of premature deaths, accidents, and other calamities involving members of the Kennedy family called the Kennedy Curse.
The son of President Lincoln, Robert Todd Lincoln, also had his share of remarkable coincidences. A few months before John Wilkes Booth murdered his father, Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes, saved him when he was travelling by train. During a stop, he stepped back on the crowded platform to let others pass, pressing his back against a stopped train. When the train began to move, Lincoln fell onto the tracks. Booth hauled him back onto the platform. The Booth family and the Lincoln family were not neighbours, which makes the incident even more remarkable. Robert Lincoln was in the vicinity when the murder of his father occurred. He was also present at the assassination of President Garfield in 1881 and the assassination of President McKinley in 1901.10
The Kennedy assassination takes part in a series of premature deaths in office of American presidents elected in years starting with a zero, called the Curse of Tippecanoe or Zero-Year Curse. From William Henry Harrison to John Kennedy, every President elected in a year ending in zero died in office. It ended with Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, who survived an assassination attempt. First Lady Nancy Reagan reportedly had hired psychics and astrologers to protect her husband from the curse.11 George W. Bush, elected in 2000, also survived an assassination attempt. The curse seems to have lost its lustre. Even Joe Biden, who could have passed away at any time without raising any suspicion of something of a curse having an involvement, survived.
Houston, we have a problem
We associate the number 13 with bad luck. Bad luck haunted the voyage of Apollo 13. The launch was on 11 April 1970 at 13:13 CST from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The departure time combined with the mission number was a daring attempt to defy fate. Possibly, the people at NASA thought, ‘We are scientists and don’t believe in this superstitious nonsense.’ And bingo! Fate took vengeance. On 13 April, note the date, an oxygen tank exploded. The event has enriched the annals of history with the famous quote, ‘Houston, we have a problem.’ Mission control aborted the lunar landing. The crew made it back alive.12
The fall of the Berlin Wall
The fall of the Berlin Wall was the pivotal event marking the end of the Soviet Empire and the Cold War. The dismantling of this wall began on 9 November 1989 (9/11 European notation). On 11 September 2001 (9/11 American notation), a terrorist attack was another pivotal event in the war on terror. It marked the end of the period of relative peace following the fall of the Soviet Empire. On 11 September 1989, thousands of East Germans began crossing the Austrian-Hungarian border to emigrate to West Germany. That eventually led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. This date, also being 11 September, is noteworthy.
The historian James P. O’Donnell unwittingly predicted the year the Berlin Wall would fall. In the German edition of Reader’s Digest, he wrote ten years before it happened, ‘Not long ago I dreamed of Berlin. The year was 1989. The wall was coming down. Along its hideous 165 kilometres, East and West Berliners were pouring out to dismantle it. […] Canny merchants were weaving through the happy crowd selling souvenir bricks.’13
That is not as remarkable as it seems at first glance. O’Donnell made his prediction in 1979. If you were thinking in 1979 about the Berlin Wall falling and were guessing when it might happen, 1989 is a year you could easily pick. The final year of a decade can be a moment to think of the next decade’s final year. A 1979 ABBA does the same in a song named Happy New Year. But then again, O’Donnell thought of it in 1979, which increased the likelihood of choosing 1989. He could have thought of it in many other years, but he just happened to think of it in 1979, which makes it somewhat fishy nonetheless.
There is another peculiar twist. O’Donnell became Newsweek Magazine’s German bureau chief in 1945. He came to Berlin on 4 July 1945 to investigate Hitler’s death and gather information about his wife, Eva Braun.5 Braun died at the age of 33, and Hitler died at the age of 56, while 33 + 56 = 89. Hitler was born in 1889. And the erection of the Berlin Wall was a consequence of Hitler’s defeat. And it fell in 1989. There is more to say about Eva Braun and 1989, which makes the coincidence part of a larger scheme. That is, however, a separate story.
Latest revision: 23 July 2025
Featured image: NASA mission control celebrating the successful return of Apollo 13. NASA. Public Domain.
1. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die. History.com (2009). 2. Titanian – Echo of Titanic. Encyclopedia Titanica (2004). 3. Costa Concordia disaster. Wikipedia. 4. MS Costa Allegra. Wikipedia. 5. Curses! Archduke Franz Ferdinand and His Astounding Death Car. Mike Dash (2013). Smithsonian. [link] 6. Roger de Montgomerie, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury. Wikipedia. [link] 7. Hans van Mierlo. Wikipedia. [link] 8. Three surprising details from the JFK assassination – and why they matter. James L. Swanson (2013). The Globe And Mail. 9. Lincoln–Kennedy coincidences urban legend. Wikipedia. 10. Robert Todd Lincoln. Wikipedia. 11. Curse of Tippecanoe. Wikipedia. 12. Apollo 13. Wikipedia. 13. Reader’s Digest, Geman Edition, January 1979 14. James P. O’Donnell. Wikipedia. [link]
It was December 2010, and the wind was blowing. My wife and I sat at the kitchen table. My wife was discussing her late mother and father. Her mother had outlived her father for more than three decades. When her father was still alive, her mother had once asked him to contact her as a spirit if he were to die first. My wife recalled her mother later saying he had never made himself noticed, ‘not even by stopping a clock.’
Just after my wife had finished speaking, a gust of wind blew a flower pot over the balcony, making a loud noise. It was windy that day, but the blow came out of nowhere. It was eerie. The next day, my wife noticed that both a clock and an alarm clock were back one hour. One was connected to the power grid, while the other ran on a battery. So, did her late father make himself noticed?
Perhaps you also experienced something you couldn’t explain, such as an incredible coincidence or a near-death experience. You are not the only one. Or maybe you know someone who did. You can’t reason it away. And so you believe there must be something more than this life in this world. That can be comforting. Perhaps there is a God, and maybe your life has a purpose.
And I’m gone with the wind like they were before But I’m believing myself, I think there’s something more There must be something more, I think there’s something more Something more
Amy MacDonald, Footballer’s Wife
Why do people believe in an afterlife or God? Do they fear death? Do they hope their life has meaning? Would it be so bad if our existence had no reason? Is that worse than playing a part in the grand scheme of a Supreme Puppet Master? And eternal life? You could bore yourself to death. For a long time, I believed that I would die one day and that it would all be over by then. And that was comforting.
Let’s end this on a lighter note. In 2014, my wife, son, and I visited the Apenheul monkey zoo in Apeldoorn. We had been walking around watching monkeys for hours when a long-tailed monkey came down from a tree to sit near me. I could have touched its tail if I wanted to. And so I said to my wife jokingly, ‘Well, if I pull the tail, a bell will go off, saying ding-dong.’ Within a second, a loud ding-dong came from the speakers all over the zoo. An announcement followed. There had not been an announcement all day, nor did one follow later on. The monkey zoo is in Apeldoorn. That is noteworthy, as this name refers to the word ‘ape’. Indeed, there may be more about this universe than science can explain.
Latest revision: 16 July 2025
Featured image: South Western langur (Semnopithecus hypoleucos) female, Kanha National Park, MP, India. Charles J. Sharp. CC BY 4.0. Wikimedia Commons.
The Plan For The Future 