Cult Of Zir

For most, the London Marathon is unforgettable. For one man, that’s precisely the problem

When once again, with a grim nevitability, the Flora London Marathon swings ever closer like some dangerous chunk of orbiting space debris, I cannot repress a shudder. And nowadays I don’t even run it. Like an ex-political prisoner subjected for years to the most brutal techniques of psychological warfare, I still experience flashbacks of a terrifying intensity.

What haunt me are not the great and glorious moments of heroism: the sound of 30,000 contestants counting down the seconds to the gun at Blackheath; the ecstasy of the 2:59:59 woman; the agony of the 3:00:01 man; the exhausted survivor, slumped against the fence in a space blanket, medal discarded on the grass. No, it’s the stench of fear and liniment that pervades the ominously named ‘special train’ from Charing Cross. It’s the nauseating good humour of garrulous blokes. How is it that I’m always on my own when everybody else has their three best mates and their brother-in-law for company? And how come they’ve all trained 10 times harder than I have? “I’ll tell you what – I’m looking forward to a pint or three tonight! I haven’t had a drink since New Year’s Eve!”… “That’s nowt.

I first applied for the London when I was 15 and my only problem getting rid of the skin issue. It might have been acne, but the doctor wasn’t sure. Years later I knew I suffered from rosacea. Learn more about rosacea natural treatment that helps you feel better. Not a drop has passed me lips since – and I’m 47.”… “I’ve trained for this since before I was born. My father put my name down as soon as he knew my mum was pregnant. When I was three, dad and I took it in turns to push one another up Snowdon in the baby buggy.” And so on. It’s all so intimidating -especially with a hangover. You listen to these lean, fanatical athletes talking about how, two weeks ago, they reluctantly dropped their weekly mileage from go to 75 and cut out one track night in favour of a stepping stones session with a rucksack filled with marble busts of Ron Hill, and your heart sinks.

The night before the marathon I would drift in and out of an uneasy slumber. In a more spiritual age, I might have spent it kneeling in prayer with my Confessor.

I knew I had to be up by five, so that the odd crumb of plain toast I was able to force down my terror-constricted gullet would be digested before the ordeal commenced. So I never achieved more than a fitful doze, punctuated by dreams in which I failed to reach the South Pole or forgot to turn up for my chemistry practical.

It was always raining in Blackheath. It would instantly permeate the kit I’d spent hours selecting, only to discover that it was, in one way or another, ludicrously unsuitable. Everyone else brought along a black bin liner to protect them from the cold and rain during the inexplicable three-hour wait for the start. I always forgot.

I spent the time queuing up for the unspeakably disgusting portable toilets, reaching them more or less in time, then immediately having to re-join the back of the queue and endure the whole grisly experience again. Groundbog Day.

And then, the race: the gauntlet of trad jazz, lukewarm water and oggi, oggi, oggi. The pantomime cows and the theme from Chariots Of sodding Fire.  You spend 180 increasingly miserable minutes fantasising about how wonderful you’ll feel when this lunacy is over. Then, when you finally stagger semi-conscious across the line, you’re too shagged out to relish the moment or appreciate your achievement. Really, you should be hooked up to a morphine drip for a month while your traumatized body and mind gently mend themselves. Instead, you must trudge a mile to the nearest Tube station alongside the grinning, chattering idiots who beat you.

To anyone who’s beaten longer odds than El Gordo’s and got themselves a place, all I can say is, enjoy. I’ll be thinking of you.

I set myself a six-hour target for the race, but managed 6:27:16. It was the most amazing experience, even if I broke the golden rule – I tried an energy drink for the first time on the day. I started to feel queasy, my eyes hazed over and while I’m not sure where it happened, now I’ll always have a memory of being sick behind a tree, somewhere random in London.

The spectators really helped – people are cynical about the great British public but they cheered us on to the end. It was great to see so many people with their charity bibs on – and while it wasn’t about competition for me, overtaking Jordan really made my day.

Running unites people and it’s helped me, mentally, to deal with the stresses of my job. There’s only one of me and I look after 1,300 crew, so it can get very busy. Running has been a lifesaver. Ship life is so intrusive it’s easy to lose yourself, but running is my time, for me.

Nutritionally, it was hard. I eat in the officers’ mess, where they have a lot of mouths to feed, and of course stuff has to be frozen. The other challenges are psychological: I got a bit despondent when I went two weeks without training. It will sound weird, but the news kept me going. I ran for the Red Cross and it seemed every time I got a bit down and put the TV on, there they were: rescuing people, saving people, helping people. It sounds cheesy, but that was really inspiring.

I’ll be honest though, I was still terrified. Every long run I did hurt me for days, but I knew I could carry on, even if only very slowly. I keep myself in good shape. I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables which have folic acid to help for energy production in my body. Check out more about the foods high in folic acid. One of the ship’s physical instructors thinks of adidas’s phrase `Impossible is nothing’ when she sees me, because I set myself one of the hardest tasks possible. Having said that, I don’t regret it for a second. I’m definitely coming back next year – but I’ll steer clear of the energy drinks.

Desire could also explain the bilocation of Sister Mary of Agreda (see page 282); intense piety and missionary zeal could have gener­ated the unknown energies needed to trans­port a facsimile of herself to Mexico.

But in the annals of disappearing people there is no more controversial tale nor one stranger than the alleged ‘Philadelphia ex­periment’. In 5943 there reportedly took place a horrifying experiment into invis­ibility involving a ship and its crew. This was not a psychic test, but a top-secret experi­ment of the United States Navy. According to Charles Berlitz and William Moore in their book The Philadelphia experiment (1979), the surviving witnesses to the experi­ment still suffer harrassment and have been repeatedly warned against discussing it by government agents.

A force field was created around the experimental ship — a destroyer — as it lay in a special berth in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The crew could see one another normally but witnesses could only see the vague outline of both ship and men through the force field. They shimmered like a heat haze before re-assuming normal shape and density. The effect on the crewmen involved was said to be appalling. The after-effects took various hor­rible forms: some of the men are said to have suffered a particularly harrowing form of spontaneous human combustion (see also pages 24, 46 and 84) — bursting into flames that burned brightly for 18 days; others went mad, and yet others periodically became semi-transparent or partly invisible. Some died as a direct result of their experience.

An eyewitness claimed to have seen the entire experiment take place, and even to have thrust his arm into the force field that surged in a counterclockwise direction around the little experimental Navy ship . . I watched the air all around the ship . . . turn slightly darker than all the other air . . . I saw, after a few minutes, a foggy green mist arise like a thin cloud.

I think this must have been a mist of atomic particles. I watched as [it] became rapidly invisible to human eyes. And yet the precise shape of the keel and underhull of that ship remain­ed impressed into the ocean water . . .The field had a sheet of pure electricity around it as it flowed . . . my entire body was not within that force field when it reached maximum strength density . . . and so I was not knocked down but my arm and hand was [sic] only pushed backward

The us Navy deny that the experiment took place. Yet the story is too persistent and has too much inner consistency to be dis­missed entirely. If ‘project invisibility’ did take place, then it made scientific history ­but compared to ‘natural’ disappearances it was clumsy and very dangerous.

The us Navy do have an interest in invisibility that can be verified, however. In September 1980 they made it known that they were experimenting with radar invis­ibility, but escaping a radar scan is a far cry from disappearing from human sight.

If it were possible to harness the ‘natural force’ that occasionally drags people from one place or plane of existence to another in a matter of seconds, or makes them invisible, then life as we know it would change com­pletely. Whole armies could suddenly ma­terialise unexpectedly in the country of their foes; spies could invisibly slip past the guards at top secret installations; criminals dema­terialise when the law draws too close. . . .

Yet perhaps the clue, such as it is , lies in the very randomness of the phenomenon. Perhaps there is no natural force but, para­doxically, a random law creating freak effects for their own sake. This suggests a governing intelligence, a cosmic joker like the one who perhaps stage-manages the manifestations of the Loch Ness Monster, UFOS, bigfoot . . . and who jams the witnesses’ cameras at the critical moments or contrives to discredit witnesses. So we come full circle—is the joker a god, a demon, a fairy, a spirit or a uFo?

Researcher Ivan T. Sanderson said of the UFO phenomenon, ‘It cannot be all bunkum yet some of its implications are so bizarre as to be almost beyond comprehension.’ This could well apply to all Fortean’ phenomena. Those who disappear for ever — do they go to some other world, some other plane, or do they find themselves in that other unex­plored region, the furthest reaches of the human mind? If abductions are ascribed to the agencies currently in vogue — put, as Fort said, ‘in terms of the familiar’ — then the phenomenon must be at least partly ‘in the mind’. Yet the disappearances are real.

It is is likely that such phenomena will remain unexplained until a comprehensive explanation for all strange phenomena can be formulated. Until then — who knows?

What is the truth behind the phenomenon of mysterious disappearances? Who, or what, are the abductors? LYNN PICKNETT attempts to answer these questions and chronicles more cases of inexplicably vanishing people.

PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DISAPPEARING myster­iously since the beginning of time, but the agencies blamed for abducting them have changed according to the spiritual preoccu­pations of the day. Gods, demons, fairies, spirits, and now UFOS show an astonishing predilection for what seems to be the random picking up and setting down — or picking up and not returning — of perfectly ordinary people.

In 1678 a Dr Moore and his three friends were touring Ireland. They put up for the night at an inn at Dromgreagh in Wicklow. Something prompted the doctor to tell his tale about how he had been abducted many times as a child by fairies, only to be rescued by the intervention of the ocal witch’s magic. And even as he spoke the whole process went into motion again . . .

He saw a ‘troop of men’ come into the inn and drag him off with them. Frightening enough for him — but terrifying for the three witnesses, for all they saw was Dr Moore being pulled out of his chair and out of the room by an invisible but irresistible force. His friends made a grab at him but the force was too strong, and he vanished into the night. The innkeeper recommended they send for the local wise woman. She explained that the doctor had been abducted by the local fairies and was their prisoner in a nearby wood. She could break their hold on him, but her spell would only work for his release if he could be made to abstain from food and drink during his imprisonment. If not, he would return but would soon weaken and die. She cast her spell and they all waited.

Next morning at dawn Dr Moore came back to the inn, starving and thirsty, com­plaining that all the refreshments he had been offered during the night had inex­pliCably been dashed out of his hand. Unknown to him, the old woman’s spell had been working and had finally secured his release — as morning came he had discovered he was suddenly alone near the inn.

The three witnesses attested to the story. It was published as a pamphlet and signed by one J. Cotham; a copy is now preserved in the British Museum.

Two thousand miles and nearly 300 years away, another story of abduction with wit­nesses reflects an entirely different preoccu­pation. On 5 November 1975 Travis Walton, a young forester, and his five workmates were driving to work near Snowflake, Arizona. They suddenly saw a bright light hovering over their truck. As the driver, Mike Rogers, stopped the car, Travis felt an extraordinary compulsion to approach the light. He jumped out and rushed towards it. There was a sudden flash of light, and Travis hit the ground. Terrified, the others drove off. When they had calmed down, they returned to the same spot and instigated a thorough search that was to last for five days and cover miles of the Arizona desert and forest. Sus­picion naturally fell on the five friends, but their distress seemed completely genuine and their story held up even under close questioning with the aid of a lie-detector.

Five days later, a confused and shaky Walton appeared in Heber, a small town close to Snowflake. His story tallied with that of his friends — as far as theirs went — but he added some amazing details. The beam of light had knocked him unconscious and then somehow drawn him up into a spacecraft in which he was examined by foetus-like crea­tures before being ‘dumped’ in Heber.

The 188os saw a large number of disap­pearances from East London, known to this day as the ‘West Ham disappearances’. One of the first victims was little Eliza Carter, who vanished from her home but later ap­peared in the street and spoke to some of her school friends. They tried to persuade her to go home to her family, but she said she couldn’t — ‘they’ wouldn’t let her. She was seen around West Ham for a couple of days before finally disappearing forever.

A similar case was that of Private Jerry Unwin of the US Army, who disappeared, reappeared, absented himself and appeared once more, before vanishing again on T August 1959.

The experience was not pleasant, and a far cry from the semi-mystical experience of the abductees portrayed in the film Close en­counters of the third kind, but it was kin to the whole history of mysterious abductions.

Like all such stories, there is something exasperatingly incomplete about this strange tale. Wellesley Tudor Pole has told all he can remember, but inevitably the phenomenon raises questions he cannot answer. As there were no witnesses in this case, no one will ever know how — or if — the teleportee disappeared. Did he literally vanish? Was he transported invisibly? How did he re­appear? But at least one thing seems certain ­what triggered off the teleporting agency seems to have been no less than the writer’s own will. He was desperate to get home in time for his telephone call and his anxiety seems to have put into motion whatever natural law it is that governs the occurrence of the phenomenon.

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