A Bird’s-Eye View of the Cosmic Rube Goldberg Machine

Seasoned students of the highly weird are subject to all manner of ideas and theories regarding what might loosely be called the paranormal. In presenting this rather convoluted solution here in this writing, language and definitions of the words used becomes a stumbling block almost immediately. Depending on your point of view, the label “paranormal” might specifically refer to ghostly activity– and even within that realm, there are various types of ghosts, and a multitude of viewpoints about what each type is and what they represent. As subjects such as ghosts, UFOs, cryptozoology, and various occult traditions become more mainstream the curious seeker is beset with all manner of opinions, many of them claiming expert knowledge. With all of the forms of media available to us now, from books and blogs to reality TV and online influencers, it can be difficult to know where to look for good information regarding the anomalous. 

It’s only natural to develop systems for understanding our world, and conjecture regarding these things that don’t neatly fit into our consensus model of reality is no different. To stick with ghosts as an example, one wishes to find some authority figure who knows what they are- or, short of that, some framework for understanding the phenomena around them. In so doing, the curious seeker will find over a century’s worth of studies in parapsychology; they will find ghost hunters with their own methods and ideas, ranging from the mystical to the pseudoscientific. They are likely to find mediums and demonologists, and in each and every case they will have been presented with answers to something that by definition is unanswerable. It ultimately boils down to the big questions, such as what happens when we die. The only people who know are the ones who have, and perhaps they tell us and perhaps they don’t. There are perhaps questions even bigger than life after death, for which language becomes even more impenetrable. The effort becomes one of making the ineffable effable, and eff it- it’s worth a try!

The multitude of viewpoints each have their own merits as well as their dubious qualities, and where they overlap our popular conception of things such as ghosts coalesces around certain forms, definitions, and inborn assumptions. It is our nature to find patterns, and one could spend a lifetime refining subcategories and deviations with an ever-magnified specificity and still not adequately explain each spook, specter, and apparition. We may get bogged down in minutiae, and though we’ve used ghosts as an example here this same framework applies to UFOs as well, or cryptids, or even specific types of UFO or cryptid encounters to the exclusion of all others. Every viewpoint has its place, from that of the scoffing skeptic to the kookiest of cranks, culminating in flawed popular models for the honest investigator to begin puzzling over. The homogeneity that results in these models allows for virtually anyone to play the game, to pick up puzzle pieces and build off of them. There is a low bar for entry in the world of paranormal speculation, and our technology allows now for anyone with the right device to be part of the conversation. This is equal parts wonderful and problematic, and one wonders whether any progress can be made retreading the same ground. Our bird’s-eye view of looking at how folks look at the phenomena no-one can explain may not help in our attempt to eff the ineffable, but it just might help us come up with bigger and better questions.

There are other ideas which have become more popular over the years which eschew the strict categories and divisions outlined above. The idea of co-creation, for instance- that anomalous phenomena is a collaborative psychic process which can produce any number of otherwise unexplainable effects. There is little doubt that the observer plays a large role in how various anomalies are perceived and reported, and the more one looks at accounts and cases the more one realizes how deeply personal many of these effects are. The lines between the ufological and the ghostly, for instance, fade and break down; we may start to develop a paranormal Theory of Everything. This, however, can also be problematic as it provides an easy answer for every particular story. Ideas that are similar to co-creation, borrowed from occult and spiritual systems and divorced from their original context, become deployed as solutions for virtually every highly weird entity. When terms like “tulpa” and “egregore” are thrown around with reckless abandon, our puzzle comes no closer to showing us a picture of the blinding reality beyond our limited perception. Instead of effing the ineffable, it merely effs it up and confuses matters further. It simply adds to the columns of categories and rigidly excludes other ideas, in a continuation of the very systems it seeks to escape.

Even worse is the idea that nothing is real. As models like the Simulation Hypothesis have become more popular in recent years, anomalies are increasingly referred to as “glitches in the matrix”. The technological frameworks of these ideas carry with them the implication that they are new models of reality, when in fact they are ancient. The idea that we all live inside of a computer simulation is really just a cyberpunk reframing of concepts that trace their roots to spiritual models such as Gnosticism and even further back in time to Buddhists constructs of reality. While these are big picture ideas, they are also non-starters for our purposes in investigating odd phenomena. We may very well be living inside a digital code or an archonic construction of false materiality, but the danger inherent with such beliefs is that one might come to conclude that nothing here on earth matters. The technological spin on these old ideas is particularly dangerous, as it divorces the model from any spiritual and moral framework. For our purposes in exploring the highly weird, we are explicitly interested in phenomena as we perceive it here in the material realm; what we see and hear here, and what stories we tell and systems we conjure to explain them are for all intents and purposes our reality. Even if all of it is some form of invention, it is worth looking at the constituent parts to learn more about how it all works.

Reality is so big and weird that we can’t even conceive of the vantage point from which we could appreciate how big and weird it all is. Perhaps there are intelligences and entities for whom this vantage point is the norm, and there have certainly been those who have presented theories along these lines. Such an entity would be beyond our dimension of space and time, existing alongside us in mind-bending ways that can only be occasionally perceived if at all. These types are variously called inter-dimensional beings, or ultraterrestrials, existing on a superspectrum mostly outside the bounds of our material realm. Of course, some might say the same of demons, while others might have other religiously oriented or folkloric concepts to rely on. There really is no end to the possibilities, and we could conjecture about any or all of them until the end of time. In trying to illustrate the problems of creating a system of myriad concepts and categories, we have done just that– and perhaps it's a fool’s errand to take such a lofty view of it all in the first place. Foolishness has never stopped this writer before, though, so as we fly closer to the Sun upon waxen wings we might ask ourselves this question: What if everybody is at least a little bit right?

That is to say, with any particular paranormal event there may be several, or many, factors at play. One explanation need not exclude others. Is a Bigfoot sighting just simply a sighting of an unknown animal? Or is it a timeslip to another era? Perhaps the hairy beast shuffled in from another plane of reality and ambled right off into yet another- but some combination of these things could simultaneously be true. It might be productive to inquire why these encounters happen, more than how- if for instance our hypothetical Bigfoot encounter is followed by poltergeist activity or premonitory dreams, or happens at the same time as UFO sightings in the area, perhaps there’s a reason for it all beyond our ability to see. There might be machinery behind the veil, and causation need not follow linear time or reality as we know it. Perhaps we can look to the work of Prof. Lucifer G. Butts for a little insight into how this might work:

The fictional professor is the creation of cartoonist Rube Goldberg, and the inventor of the marvelous machines that have become synonymous with Goldberg’s name. The satire of the cartoons involved engineering absurd and complicated devices, often using live animals, to accomplish some miniscule action. If we employ the cartoon logic inherent in these machines to a multidimensional structure of reality, we may gain some insights into the how’s and why’s of highly strange events. First and foremost, the design is comically absurd from where we sit in material, non-cartoon reality. Of course, this is what old Rube intended. From a 4th or 5th dimensional standpoint, however, our comings and goings and our machinations may appear just as crazy to an outside intelligence; perhaps something like the Butts patented egg opener makes more sense there.

These machines rely on living things to remain static in time and space, and then behave in a predictable way once stimulated in order to complete the chain reaction of events. Imagine our metaphorical bird’s eye view once again, and the allusion to waxen wings and the Sun- this would be similar to the viewpoint of our extra dimensional intelligence, only we’ll add that the wax is not melting and the Sun has not begun to set. That is to say, our hypothetical observer from 5-d reality is outside of our concepts of linear time. Such an entity would be able to act upon static living things, including you or I or any experiencer of high strangeness. From where they sit (if indeed they have butts on which to sit) they could view any and all moments of our lives as frozen, static realities- and move backward and forward as they wish. One wonders if some cosmic cartoonist engineers events with us as playthings, pieces of a weird machine which we have no ability to conceive of (if indeed they have a Prof. Butts for whom this would be a habit.) We would be blissfully unaware, like the little monkey in the cartoon– that is until the pistol fires, and we perform the prescribed duty of jumping in alarm to continue the chain reaction. 

Causality becomes a mind-bending proposition when one removes Time from the equation. In this cartoon and others, the Goldberg design relies on a flower to grow after being splashed with water, in order that it might push upon a stopper above. In cartoons, there is no problem with such rapid growth from a plant, but as we reconcile cause and effect with the realm of timelessness this becomes a fantastic thought experiment. What would it mean if both the parrot and the monkey had perspectives to match that of a small potted plant? What if the firing of a pistol took the same amount of time? Suppose plants are sentient and their perspective is better equipped to deal with the brain-breaking model of non-linear (or even non-existent) Time! Maybe the trees know more than we do.

No event, whether paranormal or mundane, happens in a vacuum. Any event that we can conceive of is contingent upon other events, environments, and material items. We exist in a complex universe wherein every action has an attendant reaction, on and on through the Goldberg machines of our lives. Like dominos falling in every direction with every move or decision, our actions have spiderwebbing effects connecting otherwise disparate seeming events and phenomena. Sometimes something gets stuck on a strand of said web, alerting our spider sense and becoming apparent as a synchronicity or apport. But perhaps our foolhardy flight has gotten us tangled up in this web, as we might begin to wonder what Rube Goldberg really has to do with paranormal events. 

You’ll be relieved to know, dear reader, that there is some support for some of these wackier ideas; artist, writer, and paranormal researcher Eugenia Macer-Story explored a great deal of multidimensional concepts in her papers written for The U. S. Psychotronics Association. In exhaustive detail and complicated, technical terminology Macer-Story presents her ideas about the “Fluidice Matrix”- a system through which living information can be transduced from one dimension to another. The manifestations of this as we perceive it can appear to us in any number of ways, and she doesn’t shy away from referencing everything from psi effects to astrology to UFO sightings in her work. In her paper Reflexive Time: The Magic Non-local Touch, she describes the conditions through which 5-d actions might be triggered and perceived as objects of wonder from a 4-d perspective. In essence, these would be anomalous events with no apparent cause. 

In the paper, she utilizes Einstein’s analogy of a stationary person and a moving train to illustrate these anomalous transductions from another realm by adding a 5-d helicopter above. The train represents linear time as we perceive it, where the helicopter exists outside of time, and the paper outlines the various ways 4-d “anchor points” allow for non-local intelligences to interact with our world. She posits that certain times and places are more likely for such an intelligence to “plug-in”, and the paper concerns itself with how one might predict such things. For our purposes in our own peculiar flight of fancy, the mathematical and physics based approach of Macer-Story in her papers may be a bit too obtuse and heady to discuss adequately; this humble writer is not entirely sure he understands her theories overall. It’s enough, then, to say that someone much smarter than I has probably come to similar insights within these streams of weirdness, and it’s perhaps little wonder that Macer-Story found various outlets for expressing her world view in her other writings, her songs, and her artwork. While people now glibly mention “glitches in the matrix” when referring to odd occurrences, Macer-Story conceived of a fluidice matrix using advanced physics terminology to support it. 

If living informational energy can exist non-locally to our material, mundane reality and occasionally touch down like the tip of a cartoonist’s pen to paper, any and all miracles, wonders, and paranormal happenings could be possible. While Rube Goldberg may never have intended his wacky machines to provide a springboard to understanding a greater reality beyond what we see and hear, untethered to the passage of Time and free floating in another dimension, the absurdity of his cartoons may just be an approximation of Truth in comical garb. Perhaps Prof. Butts deserves a prize for excellence in paranormal research, while we’re at it. One suspects that the old debates will continue, favoring one theory or another about every minute aspect of the paranormal- with skeptics decrying the woo all the way, and grifters looking to cash in, and honest but naive seekers caught up in the mix. It’s all as it should be, as they are all playing their parts in a machine. So are we, if we’re being truly honest- but it’s nice every once in a while to zoom out and take it in from a bird’s-eye view aboard a 5-d helicopter… pondering the ineffable.

Forteana for a Froggy Evening

    Frogs hold a special place in the annals of Forteana - Charles Fort documented cases of frogs falling from the sky in his book that started it all, The Book of the Damned. Among the many instances of "damned facts and evidence" he collected, the frogs were only one example of things falling from the sky that seemed impossible. These odd events provided him a great platform from which to lampoon the attempts of scientists to explain them away. The rational explanation usually involved a waterspout pulling aquatic or amphibious creatures from the water and depositing them with rainfall elsewhere; the animosity between the rational approach of scholars at the time and Fort's sarcastic material agnosticism is a hallmark of all manner of Fortean subjects to this day.

    Other notable frogs within the weird fringe literature that can loosely be called Forteana are of course the Loveland Frogmen, who may not have even looked all that froggy at all. Various descriptions had been given for these odd creatures, which were reported in Ohio in the 50s, the 70s, and more recently - none of which matched the official explanation that someone's pet iguana had gotten loose, lost its tail, and was mistaken for a flying saucer occupant. Further, though not immediately evident of frogginess, there's the Hook Island Sea Monster photo. Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that this photo of an injured sea serpent is a hoax, but to this writer's eyes it looks like an enormous tadpole. Of course, such a tadpole would imply the existence of a Gargantuan Sea Frog. Imagine how large such a frog would be, how it would live, and what it would eat! We've now cast off from familiar shores out into the waters of pure imagination and conjecture, a place that might be requisite for appreciation of this blog.

          Yet another example of frogs posing unique questions to the Fortean mind is the phenomena of entombed animals. Claims dating back to the mid-19th century have documented instances of live frogs (and sometimes lizards) being freed from inside a lump of coal or a rock. This sounds absurd in the extreme; while frogs are known to hibernate encased in mud for several months, the amount of time it would take for mud to turn into rock would be far too long for any animal to survive, especially without food or water. In most reports, the frog dies shortly after being liberated from the stone. This phenomena is mostly discredited these days, but since we're still adrift in the numinous tides of speculation we won't let that concern us too much. Whether this is a 'True' phenomena or not, it provides a perfect segue for the main subject of our Froggy Night Feature: High Strangeness!

        The 1955 Warner Brothers cartoon "One Froggy Evening" may seem at first glance to have nothing to do with Forteana or High Strangeness. It's a weird premise for a cartoon, but it's a classic and a very funny one. The plot shows a construction worker at a demolition site who discovers a time capsule in the cornerstone, in which there is a living (and very lively) frog. The frog then proceeds to dawn a top hat and perform a song and dance with a cane. Michigan J. Frog can be interpreted as an "entombed animal". There is evidence to suggest this cartoon was inspired in part by the tale of Old Rip the Horny Toad, a horned lizard that allegedly survived being kept in a time capsule for 31 years in Eastland, Texas. Chuck Jones, the legendary cartoon director who managed this particular piece, gives the credit for the character and plot to his friend, writer, and gag man Michael Maltese in his autobiography Chuck Amuck. "The quirky brilliance of his ready wit was never neutral.", he said of Maltese; "He disdained facts as useless-- only the odd, the unusual, the hilariously peculiar interested him." Regardless of Michigan J. Frog's provenance within the varying fields of the weird, we can use him as a totem for how the phenomena of high strangeness acts - and how we interact with it. 

    After all, many of the strange events that those of us who have an interest in such things research really are "hilariously peculiar", which has in recent years led to fertile grounds for jokes on paranormal podcasts. A great many UFOlogists over the decades have dismissed the cases that seem too "out there", or omitted the laughably strange details from reports in an effort to present the case seriously. This applies also in ghost hunting and cryptozoology; often the desire for the case to be presented as worthy of honest investigation means it must be trimmed of anything that makes it sound too bonkers. Worse still, witnesses will fail to report the exorbitantly strange details of an event, even if they will generally share that it happened. 

    So what are we to do when we encounter the Singing Frog of High Strangeness? The events of the cartoon show us a few possibilities, each of which is echoed by examples through the history of investigations into the very weird. The Worker, who is never named, initially thinks only of the money to be made off of such a discovery - only to find that the frog will not dance on command for others. Hucksterism, grifting, and opportunist entrepreneuraliasm are rife within the history of all manner of weird subjects, as is the unrepeatability of odd effects. Places famous for their monsters see a lot of tourism purely for that reason, which is all the more reason to promote the mystery. It's not surprising that some who possess a Singing Frog would seek to profit from it, and although they sometimes do, they never really can prove that it's genuine. A good deal of experiencers and researchers have had their hopes of cashing in or even just getting recognition dashed to pieces by an uncooperative phenomenon.

    Witnesses to genuine events are met with doubt because of the fleeting nature of weird phenomena. Like a frog that only dances when no one else is around, witnesses can only describe the experience, not reproduce it. They generally have to be taken at their word without evidence to bolster it. The average person is not generous enough to do that, and although a lot of these ideas are becoming more mainstream they are likely to be shown the door- just like the Worker when he brought the frog to the Talent Agency.

    The mind-bending weirdness of some of these accounts is exemplified well by the "diabolical frustration", as Jones put it, that Michigan drives the Worker to. He rents a busted old theater, fixes it up and invites the public to come see. No one is interested until he puts a sign out that says "FREE BEER", and - alas! - he is unable to open the curtain in time for the crowd to see the frog sing. Where one man sees an extraordinary, phenomenal miracle others simply see a mundane, croaking frog... and they proceed to pelt him with fruits and vegetables. It all feels reminiscent of the revelatory claims in the ever-impending but never arriving government Disclosure of UFOs, or any bold pronouncement of conspiracy theorists. The average person has to be bribed into caring at all, and the reasonable among them will scoff when results fail to appear. Likewise, some phenomena seems awfully performative while at the same time very particular about its audience. The Worker in the cartoon is a lot like "repeaters" in UFOlogy, or those who have many varied stories of otherworldly encounters. For whatever reason, there are those seemingly genuine people who attract strangeness, or are perhaps more cognizant of it- but not in a way that can be confirmed by others. Diabolical frustration, indeed.

    Incidentally, there is a precedent for diabolical dancing frogs- as illustrated here from the 6th edition of J. Colin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal. Frogs were often associated with witches, and thought to be demons posing as frogs. Also, frogs were thought to be potent ingredients in magical workings.

    "One Froggy Evening" in this sense becomes a cautionary tale about how best to interact with a bizarre, highly strange situation. Perhaps the funniest moment comes when the Worker, now destitute and miserable, sits on a snowy park bench while Michigan belts out "Largo al factotum" from the opera The Barber of Seville. This attracts the attention of a police officer walking the nighttime beat. The cop, investigating the loud singing, is flummoxed by the Worker blaming it on the croaking frog. He is then left with no choice but to drag the man off to the Psychopathic Hospital, where Michigan continues to serenade him.

    The funniness of this scene has a much darker correlate in the avenues of investigating, researching, or simply living with highly strange events or circumstances. It really can drive one crazy, or at least lead outsiders to assess a witness as such. People of all walks of life can become obsessed, entirely invested in proving their claims or in more tragic cases, seeking help. Many anomalies seem to exist to fulfill the function of being anomalous; many mysteries will never be solved. Trying even at the expense of one's well-being to be the one who solves these mysteries is a path that often leads to madness. A good deal of witnesses and experiencers become ostracized from their communities, lose their jobs, and have their lives turned upside-down by the act of telling the truth as they know it. Some of them are likely lying, or mistaken, or cognitively disadvantaged. The fact remains, however, that strange encounters really do change people - for better or worse.

    The cartoon ends with the Worker seeing the opportunity to ditch the box with Michigan J. Frog in it at a construction site, and it goes right back into a cornerstone. 101 years later, the Future Worker once again liberates the Singing Frog and the cycle starts again.

    The diabolical frustration and madness of what can broadly be called The Phenomena is contagious, and the old stories appear over and over again with every new generation of Forteans, UFOlogists, ghost hunters, legend trippers, and weirdos. Our reactions to it may change, and that is for the best. How different would it have been for the Worker to just take the frog home and enjoy the song for himself? It would have been a boring cartoon, but the Worker would have been better for it. There's no right or wrong way, necessarily, to engage with weird stuff when it happens to you. There is perhaps a way to interpret your experience in a way that is deeply personal- and that means it doesn't need to be widely shared, or proven. Some phenomena is meant for you and you alone; you may watch the frog sing, but don't let it break your mind!