THE WORMWOOD FILES: "Just a Coincidence?"

By Dr. Abner Mality

"The utmost extent of human knowledge is but comparative ignorance."--Sir Andrew Crosse

In 1912, the most famous nautical disaster of all time, the sinking of the Titanic, took place in the North Atlantic.One of the Titanic passengers who died was journalist W. T. Stead. Stead's most recent lecture used the image of a shipwreck as a metaphor for death and drowning as a metaphor for the spirit's wanderings after death.

Fourteen years previously, the author Morgan Robertson had written a book called "Futility". The subject of the book was an enormous passenger ship called Titan which is sunk after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage.

In 1935, a coal trawler named Titanian just narrowly missed being sunk by an iceberg. It was in the same waters where the Titanic went down 23 years earlier.

Forty years later, in 1975, the Melkis family of Dunstable, England were gathered around the TV watching "A Night To Remember", a movie about the sinking of the Titanic. Suddenly, with a huge crash, a large block of ice fell through the roof of the house and landed in their living room. The source of the ice was unknown, but was believed to be frozen liquid waste ejected from a plane flying overhead.

What is going on here? Is God having a laugh at the expense of any ship with "Titan" in the name? Is some sort of cosmic joker fixing events? Or are all these "coincidences" just an example of an amazing fluke of probability? Or is there something much deeper going on?

The great researcher of the strange and fantastic, Charles Fort, was definitely of the opinion that "we are being played with". And looking at some of the incredible "flukes" that litter history...far more than we would like to admit...it almost seems like some guiding hand is behind it all.

Speculation about such coincidences involves space, time, reality and human consciousness and is almost beyond even the Good Doctor's ability to describe. I'll take a stab at it later, but for now, here are some more "coincidences" that seem to be much more...

Anthony Hopkins is world famous for his portrayal of genteel cannibal Hannibal Lecter as well as other films like "Bram Stoker's Dracula" and "Howard's End". However, in the early 1970's, he was just breaking into the movie business. He was signed to star in a film version of author George Feifer's "The Girl from Petrovka". Hopkins wanted to get a copy of the novel to read to help research the part, but after a search of London bookstores, he had no luck. Heading into the subway station at Leicester Square, he sat down at a bench to await the train. He looked down and saw a book which someone had forgotten there. Sure enough, it was "The Girl from Petrovka"!

A couple of years later, Hopkins was in Vienna, Austria filming the movie when George Feifer the author stopped by the set. During a conversation with Hopkins, Feifer admitted he had lost his own copy of the book a couple of years ago after loaning it to a friend. Hopkins had his copy handy and gave it to Feifer. Feifer recognized some of the notes scribbled in the book margins as being in his own handwriting. Both men were utterly flabbergasted by the occurence!
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In 1858, an Englishman by the name of Robert Fallon was playing a high stakes poker game in a San Francisco bar. One of the other players discovered Fallon cheating at cards and shot him dead in a rage. Fallon had won the sum of $600.00 by cheating and the other card sharks wanted nothing to do with that money. They called in a man passing by in the street to take Fallon's place in the game, thinking they would easily win the money back. Fallon's body was concealed in a backroom.

The newcomer was no rube. He had soon turned the $600 into $2200...a princely sum in those days. The police, informed by an anonymous tipster of Fallon's death, arrived suddenly at the bar and took stock of the situation. They asked for the winnings so they could give them to Fallon's next of kin. Confused, the young man replied "You mean to say my father is the dead man? I'm Thomas Fallon!" ******************************************************************************************
The 19th century French poet Emile Deschamps related a "culinary" coincidence that spanned decades. As a young man going to school in 1800 Paris, Deschamps expressed a desire to try the celebrated English dessert known as plum pudding. He was given a slice by a distinguished middle aged gentleman named Monsieur Fortgibu who had just visited England. Deschamps was delighted by the tidbit and thanked his benefactor.

Ten years later, Deschamps was walking down a Parisian street when he caught sight of a large plum pudding in the window of a restaurant. He entered and inquired if he could purchase it. Alas, the proprietor told him, the pudding had already been bought by a gentleman sitting in the corner. Deschamps was stunned to find it was M. Fortgibu, who invited him to sit and have a slice. The two men discussed the fantastic coincidence.

Fifteen years later, Deschamps was invited to a dinner party and was told that plum pudding would be the dessert. Deschamps smiled and told the party's hostess that he expected to see M. Fortgibu there. The party came and a huge plum pudding was brought out to finish off the evening. As the guests prepared to eat, there came a knock on the door. It was an elderly man who was somewhat feeble and confused. Deschamps recognized M. Fortgibu once again. The old man was looking for another address and had knocked on the door mistaking the party house for the one he was looking for. It had been an "accident"!
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Sometimes strange coincidences seem to be acting as agents of justice. You could have asked Texan Henry Ziegland about that. In 1883, he tossed his girlfriend over the side and the young lady was so upset that she killed herself. Her enraged brother decided to get revenge on Ziegland...he took a shot at him. The shot was not fatal and Ziegland was only grazed. The bullet wound up embedded in a large oak tree. The shooter thought he had killed Ziegland and took his own life after firing the shot.

In 1913, Ziegland, who was never punished for his involvement in the twin suicides, decided to get rid of that old oak tree. The tree proved to be almost impossible to remove by conventional means so Ziegland put a dynamite charge in the tree. When the dynamite exploded, the bullet fired at Ziegland 30 years earlier struck him in the head, killing him instantly.

Justice had been served!
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In perhaps the eeriest coincidences, real life seems to follow the exact same pattern as a book or movie. This was made clear in 1973, when Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie starred in the movie "Don't Look Now", based on a book written by Daphne du Maurier. The film was a low key and chilling ghost story about a couple haunted by the spirit of their young daughter who drowned in a pond.

In 1979, Jonathan and Lesley Heale and their two year old son were staying at the cozy country farmhouse owned by Julie Christie. In what can only be described as a morbid coincidence of colossal proportions, the Heale's young child drowned in the small pond next to the house...exactly as the child in "Don't Look Now" had done. Lesley Heale had even dived into the pond to try and rescue the child just as Donald Sutherland's character had done in the movie.
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Are all these events the result of mere chance? After all, improbable things do happen and it has been said that at some point, almost everything, no matter how unthinkable, will occur. But in these and other cases, something more than mere outrageous probability seems to be at play. Certainly Morgan Robertson's book about the Titan seems to have foretold the later disaster of the Titanic. But Robertson was not trying to be a prophet...he was merely trying to write an entertaining story. Yet, amazingly, fact followed fiction, instead of the other way around. The same thing can be said to have happened in the instance of "Don't Look Now" and the tragedy suffered by the Heale family.

Perhaps the nature of time itself leads to these coincidences. Human beings tend to think of time in a very linear fashion, proceeding from Point A to Point B in a straight line. In fact, this is strictly a mental phenomenon that allows people to easily understand what they experience everyday. It's how we PERCEIVE time to be...not necessarily what time IS.

Perhaps Daphne du Maurier and Morgan Robertson jumped outside of the linear idea of time to somehow see the tragic future events their books were based on. This would have not occurred to their waking mind but was somehow perceived by their subconscious.

What does this mean in the case of M. Fortgibu and the plum puddings? How important in the universal scheme of things was it for M. Fortgibu and Emile Deschamps to intersect every time one of them was near a plum pudding? Was this the result of a cosmic "joker" who likes to play tricks? Or was it some sort of universal force that decreed that plum puddings must always be involved with the two men?

Human beings also believe that cause leads to effect. But is this necessarily so? Or, like the perception of time, is it just something the human mind creates to keep from going insane?

The philosopher David Hume believed in the latter possibility. He believed the existence of cause and effect could not be totally proven...it could be said to occur in most cases, but no one could say it was an unbreakable law. If this supposition is true, then the reality of anything cannot be proven 100%. And thus, in some cases, effect might indeed come before cause.

This head-scratching view has come to be supported in the 20th Century by the arrival of quantum physics. This radically different view of the universe, touted by no less than Albert Einstein and other scientists like Niels Bohr, speculates that there is no physical matter...all is energy and various patterns of it. Moreover, the way this energy acts is unpredictable at the most basic level. So there is a basis in physics for Hume's idea. And therefore, there is no such thing as a "coincidence"...just a difference in how things relate to each other.

If this isn't mind-blowing enough, consider the view of the great psychologist Carl G. Jung, who believed that there was a hidden universal "sea" of human thought, ideas and symbolism that spanned all of time and space. Human beings are always subconsciously tapping into this great mass of thought to create art, religion and science. It could also be possible that things we think of as "coincidence" are actually instances of people drawing images of the future and past to create some sort of pattern which the waking mind cannot perceive.

The Zen monks of Asia have had this perception for centuries. It's nothing new to them. Zen's main teaching is that the physical is unimportant and all human concepts of time, causation and justice are irrelevant. The state of realizing this is called "nirvana" and it allows those achieving it to leave reality behind. In many ways, modern quantum physics says many of the same things that Zen has been saying for thousands of years.

To the quantum physicist and the Zen philosopher, there are no real coincidences. Everything is essentially unpredictable and in flux...including probability.

Well, this has sure been the most long-haired and brain-bending Wormwood Files yet. Before I take my leave of you humanoids, here is one last "coincidence" for you to ponder:

The celebrated writer of macabre tales, Edgar Allen Poe, wrote a story called "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" in 1838. The story told the gruesome tale of three sailors who survived a shipwreck and who floated helplessly on a cruel sea. As the men were driven mad with thirst and hunger, a horrible decision was made. One of the men must be killed so the others could use him as food. Lots were drawn and the luckless Richard Parker was chosen to be butchered.

In 1884, long after Poe's death, three survivors of another shipwreck were found on the ocean. They were placed on trial for killing and eating the fourth member of their party. His name? Richard Parker.

This is Dr. Abner Mality, turning out the lights...