Latest news with #CloseEncountersoftheThirdKind
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Your bones rattle': The thrill of chasing rocket launches in this California coastal town
The first time Gene Kozicki drove to Lompoc to see a rocket blast off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, it was night, and the whole scene reminded him of the movie 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.' The road was blocked off. There were police. Flashing lights. A guy standing near Kozicki had a radio scanner, and they listened as a spartan voice counted down: Ten, nine, eight, seven … Over the hill, where the rocket was on the pad, all was dark. And then it wasn't. 'The sky lights up, and it's like daytime,' Kozicki said. 'This rocket comes up and then a few seconds later, the sound hits you. It's just this roar and rumble, and then it's a crackle. And then you look at it and you realize, this thing is not a movie. This thing is actually going into space.' Kozicki told me about that experience as we both stood atop a sand dune at Surf Beach, just outside Lompoc, waiting for a different rocket to launch. Through my binoculars I could see a SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 on the pad at Vandenberg, with a Starlink satellite on top. SpaceX and other companies have been sending up more and more rockets in recent years, and Lompoc has become a day trip destination for aerospace aficionados. With Blue Origin sending up an all-female crew, including Katy Perry, Gayle King and Lauren Sanchez, from West Texas in April and my social feeds full of pics of launches from California's Central Coast — not to mention SpaceX founder Elon Musk's preternatural ability to stay in the news — it seemed like everyone was talking about rockets, so I wanted to get as close to a liftoff as possible. I had driven to Surf Beach on the advice of Bradley Wilkinson, who runs the Facebook group Vandenberg Rocket Launches. When asked for the best spot to experience a launch, Wilkinson had responded, in the manner typical of connoisseurs, with questions of his own. 'Do you want to see it?' Wilkinson asked me. 'Do you want to feel it? Do you want to hear it?' If I had just wanted to see it, he said, I could do that easily from Los Angeles. If I picked a launch around twilight, I could even see the jellyfish effect that happens when sunlight reflects off the rocket plume. (People all across Southern California had that experience earlier this week.) But I wanted more. I wanted to hear and feel the launch, so I took off toward Vandenburg on a clear Friday afternoon, staying just ahead of traffic. Not everyone is a fan of the increased frequency of SpaceX launches. Beyond the many controversies surrounding the company's founder, there are concerns about the effects of sonic booms on the environment, and the California Coastal Commission has been battling SpaceX in court over the need for permits. Some Lompoc residents have complained about the effects of all that rumbling on their houses, but others, like Wilkinson, enjoy living so close to the action; he said he doesn't even bother straightening the pictures on the walls of his house anymore. As I drove up the coast, I kept checking the Facebook group for updates. Launches can be scrubbed for any number of reasons, and Wilkinson and other members of the group, including Kozicki, have become adept at reading signs: They track the weather; they watch the rocket's movement toward the pad; they monitor SpaceX's website and social media. I pulled into the Surf Beach parking lot about an hour before launch, and that's where I met Kozicki, chatting with a SpaceX engineer and her mother. The engineer was off the clock, but that didn't stop her mom from telling everyone, proudly, that her daughter worked at SpaceX. It became a refrain for the next hour: 'You should ask my daughter. She works at SpaceX.' 'Stop telling everyone I work at SpaceX!' From the top of the dunes, the four of us watched the launchpad for telltale signs of exhaust. I thought of how, thousands of miles away, crowds in St. Peter's Square had watched for white smoke with a similar feeling of anticipation. Other spectators soon crunched across the ice plants and joined us on our perch. Some of them had parked in a bigger lot to the north and followed the train tracks that ran parallel to the beach. The SpaceX engineer answered questions about rocket stages and landing burns. She was not authorized to speak to the media, but she shared her knowledge with everyone her mom sent her way. We all watched and waited. More people walked up the dunes, including Dan Tauber, who said he'd been motorcycling around the area with friends before deciding to break off from the group to experience the launch. 'You want to feel your bones rattle,' he said. 'So why not get as close as you can?' Kozicki announced to the group that we'd know the launch was about to happen — really about to happen — when we saw a deluge of water on the pad. Then it would be a matter of seconds before liftoff. Tauber and I sat together in the sand. We watched and waited. He had been a firefighter in San Francisco. He now lived in San Diego. We watched. We waited. A southbound Pacific Surfliner train pulled up alongside the parking lot. The railroad bell kept ringing, adding to the tension. 'Deluge!' shouted Kozicki. 'Deluge!' shouted the SpaceX engineer's mother. Three seconds later, ignition. Fire. Smoke. Liftoff. Cameras clicked. Someone shouted, 'Whoa!' I might've done the same. The sound of the rocket came next, just as Kozicki had described. Roar. Rumble. Crackle. Tauber leaned back and said, 'I'm just going to enjoy it. Take pictures for me.' The rocket rose in the blue sky. I managed to get a few pics, but the flames were so bright that my camera's settings went haywire. I put the camera down and watched the rocket go up, up, up. Then it was gone. Awestruck, I stood around, wanting more. I wasn't sure where to go afterwards. I knew I would be back. Start with a site like There are many reasons why a launch could get scrubbed, however, so Wilkinson suggests checking the Vandenberg Rocket Launches group about 12 hours before a liftoff is scheduled to see whether it's actually going to happen. The final authority for SpaceX launches would be If you just want to see the rocket, go outside when there's a liftoff scheduled for twilight or later. Depending on the weather, you should be able to see the rocket streaking across the Los Angeles sky. Surf Beach is a good spot, although the parking lot can fill up quickly. There is another parking lot to the north, at Ocean Park, about a 30-minute walk from Surf Beach. Wilkinson also recommended just parking along Ocean Avenue to feel the launch in your feet. 'There's more of a rumble out there,' he said. 'You can feel the vibration in the ground.' Other viewing spots, recommended by Explore Lompoc, include Santa Lucia Canyon Road & Victory Road; Harris Grade Road; and Marshallia Ranch Road. No matter where you park, be considerate of locals. That means no littering, and no middle-of-the-night tailgating. The roads can be crowded with cars and people, so take care whether driving or walking. If you're looking for food after the launch, I had a satisfying surf and turf burrito from Mariscos El Palmar (722 E. Ocean Ave) in Lompoc, right next to a bar called Pour Decisions. There's a renowned burger at Jalama Beach Store, where you can also view a launch. Jalama Beach County Park has many charms, but the cellular signal is spotty out there, so you'll likely have no way of knowing whether a launch has been scrubbed at the last minute. But you'll have a pretty drive either way. Looking to spend the night? The Village Inn (3955 Apollo Way) just opened and markets itself as being inspired by 'the golden age of space exploration.' If you're having a space day, might as well go all the way.
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Dazed and amused, ‘Elio' is Pixar on a spaced-out psychedelic trip
'Elio' is a breezy Pixar adventure, the studio's pivot back to making original, rip-roaring children's yarns. Launched by 'Coco' co-director Adrian Molina and steered to completion by Madeline Sharafian and Domee Shi, it's got a setup simpler than whatever credit negotiation happened behind the scenes. An 11-year-old boy, Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab), looks at the sky and wonders who's up there. This classic plot hook harkens back to 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and 'A Trip to the Moon,' and if I had to place a bet, it's the oldest story mankind's got. Depending on the era and zeitgeist, the heavenly strangers gazing down upon us in judgment could be anyone from Zeus to 'Dr. Who's' Zygons, and their interest in us capricious or cruel or kind. We've got lightyears' worth of these speculative tales. They're really asking: Does our species have value? In Elio's case, he's a recent orphan living with his aunt Olga (a warm and frazzled Zoe Saldaña), a major in the Space Force who monitors satellite debris (which the film convinces us is more exciting than it sounds). Everyone in the movie is surrounded by technology — radios, computers, monitors — and yet most of them seem disconnected. Olga thinks that alien chatter is for crackpots like her colleague Melmac (Brendan Hunt), so named for Alf's home planet. She's paused her own astronaut dreams to take care of her brooding nephew. In return, the boy wants little to do with her or any other earthling. Preteen Elio is on a misanthropic trajectory that, if not recalibrated, could result in him growing up to marry a pillow. When Olga takes Elio to a space museum, he falls in love with the solitary crusade of the Voyager probe whose golden record of wonders, curated by the astronomer Carl Sagan, is hurtling through the galaxy in search of someone who will listen. (Sagan's own voice is heard throughout the movie, though he goes uncredited.) Enthralled, Elio plops a colander on his head and pleads for aliens to touch down and 'take me with you — but not in a desperate way.' Elio doesn't do too much sulking before he's beamed up to the Communiverse, an interplanetary take on the United Nations. He's not alone in the universe, but now he has to earn his place. From there, his quest vrooms at the pace of a Flash Gordon serial — or, for that matter, the first 'Toy Story.' Kids Elio's age have mostly seen Pixar rehash itself with sequels or hunt for Oscars in a therapist's couch (where lately it's been coming up with lint balls). Here, trauma is merely the framework, not the focus. The highfalutin prestige animation studio is signaling to the 'Minecraft' generation that they can do fun new movies too. The film's earthbound sequences boast staggeringly beautiful shots of the ocean under a night sky. But the galaxy above is a fractalized freak-out: a psychedelic rainbow of delights that makes you think that more than one animator has spent time grooving to Phish in a Berkeley dorm. (No doubt some of the grade-schoolers seeing the movie on opening weekend will, a decade from now, watch it again in their dorms under heightened circumstances.) Multiple extraterrestrials appear inspired by a lava lamp. Others resemble wireless earbuds and stress balls and decks of cards, the type of creature design that might happen when you're in your own alternate dimension grokking at the stuff on your dresser. I'm not casting aspersions on anyone's sobriety, I'm just noting that Pixar was founded on musing, 'What if my lamp could jump?' Elio will befriend Glordon (Remy Edgerly), a larval goofball from the Crab Nebula who has a dozen wiggling limbs with various protuberances. Off-planet, the boy readily drops his defensive shields and opens himself to the excitement that's been promised since the epic opening notes of Rob Simonsen's eclectic score. In a sequence set to a Krautrock-esque banger, Elio and Glordon enjoy a montage that's essentially a teaser for an amusement park experience that's probably already in its drafting stage, with the buddies frolicking in waterslides and chugging a beverage called Glorp, styled so that it can be readily re-created with boba. As ever, everything is tethered to what our earthbound brains can imagine. Even the names Glordon and Glorp might be a nod to the Voyager's known flight plan, which in 40,000 years is expected to have its first-ever close encounter with a star named Gliese 445. Bonding with the miscellaneous beings of the Communiverse does spur Elio to be nicer to Olga, but admirably, the script (credited to Julia Cho, Mark Hammer and Mike Jones) doesn't take the easy escape hatch of sending the earth boy into the beyond only to realize that everywhere else is even worse. Space isn't the enemy. If anything, space is too nice. Most of the aliens Elio meets insist that they believe in tolerance and open-mindedness. You're waiting for that to be a big lie, but it's not. Voiced by Jameela Jamil, Shirley Henderson, Atsuko Okatsuka and Matthias Schweighöfer, they can get a tad snippy, but otherwise these galactic Neville Chamberlains cower when a bruiser named Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), who stomps around on thick metal legs, lands on their base spoiling for a fight. The cartoon well calibrates its PG thrills to give kids a mild case of the shivers. More spunky than saccharine, Elio spends most of the film wearing a bandage over a black eye. Back home, he's pursued through the woods by masked bullies (and when he gets an opportunity, he kicks one of them in the head). In space, Elio stumbles across adorable skeletons and shimmies through gacky pipes. Meanwhile, Lord Grigon's dastardly hobby is skeet-shooting fragile, flowerlike critters. When hit, these living daisies don't die — they're just pitifully embarrassed to lose their petals. It's refreshing to see a romp this spry. 'Elio' isn't trying to reinvent the spaceship — it's after the puppyish charm of sticking your head out the window as marvels whiz past. Some of my favorite gags just sparked to life for an instant, like an all-knowing supercomputer who is a bit put out that Elio accesses its wisdom simply to learn how to fight. It's offering to teach our species the meaning of life; we want the art of war. 'Why should an advanced society wish to expend the effort to communicate such information to a backward, emerging, novice civilization like our own?' Carl Sagan wrote in his 1973 book, 'The Cosmic Connection.' Yet more than half of Americans believe that aliens exist. A third think they've already come to visit. Like Elio, we yearn for cosmic validation. The great scientist wouldn't have put 'Elio' on his golden record. It's a trifle, not a cultural touchstone. But while Pixar has anthropomorphized ants and rats and cars and dolls and emotions, this lonely boy feels stirringly human. Yes, the movie says, go ahead and look for connection up in the sky or under your feet. But also seek it out in each other.
Time of India
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Prasad Film Labs and Belgium's Barco launch world's largest ‘HDR by Barco' colour grading facility at Chennai studio
If you were to watch the remastered editions of Steven Spielberg's 'ET' or 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' in an HDR-ready theatre today, chances are you might end up squinting while viewing sequences depicting the arrival of the extra-terrestrial motherships on planet Earth, shielding your eyes from the blinding spotlights emanating from the fuselages. For Gen Z arrivals, the nearest equivalent might be the 'daybreak on Earth as seen from outer space' sequence from Alfonso Cuaron's 'Gravity'. Among those pushing the envelope of cinematic immersiveness via post-production, is city-based Prasad Film Labs, which recently joined hands with Barco, a technology company headquartered in Kortrijk, Belgium. The two companies have together launched India's, and Asia's first, and the world's largest 'HDR by Barco' colour grading facility at Prasad's Chennai studio. What does the Barco collaboration mean for the filmgoing experience? Abhishek Prasad Akkeneni, CTO – Prasad Corporation (P) Ltd, began by speaking about the company's journey in the colour grading space. "We were among the first adopters of the Digital Intermediate (DI or colour grading) technology in India. One of the first films we worked on while employing DI was the Bollywood blockbuster 'Khakee'. The process of colour grading is the last part of post production, and it employs some of the most highly-trained professionals in the industry. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 2025 Top Trending Local Enterprise Accounting Software [Click Here] Accounting ERP Click Here Undo These are technicians with a deep understanding of colour science and film grammar," he tells us. Prasad's grading suite is equipped with Barco's HDR Lightsteering technology toolkit, including its proprietary HDR Lightbox and LS4K-P HDR Lightsteering projector. The suite features a large 51-foot screen and the country's longest throw-distance in a DI suite. It enables colourists to work in a theatrical, larger-than-life setting, as opposed to performing colour correction and mastering for cinema and OTT deliverables on conventional large-format HD screens. In India, close to 1,500 films are churned out every year. So, post production is big business. And the work that goes into the 'post' of tentpole films starring A-listers is staggering. "Some of the biggest features, and tentpole films of the year take nothing less than 300 hours for colour grading. Between Prasad's three post production suites in Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad, we work on anywhere between 30 and 40 features a month," says Akkeneni. The grading for HDR for two major releases has already begun at the Prasad facility here. Colour grading might be only the tip of the iceberg, as Barco had made another major announcement earlier in May. The company inked a multi-year agreement with Chennai-based Qube Cinema, to deploy HDR by Barco in premium multiplexes across India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Moviegoers in these markets can expect at least 10 new HDR-ready theatres per year in the coming years, with all locations in the deal deployed by 2030.
Time of India
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time of India
City studio pushes cinematic immersiveness to the next grade
If you were to watch the remastered editions of Steven Spielberg's 'ET' or 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' in an HDR-ready theatre today, chances are you might end up squinting while viewing sequences depicting the arrival of the extra-terrestrial motherships on planet Earth, shielding your eyes from the blinding spotlights emanating from the fuselages. For Gen Z arrivals, the nearest equivalent might be the 'daybreak on Earth as seen from outer space' sequence from Alfonso Cuaron's 'Gravity'. Among those pushing the envelope of cinematic immersiveness via post-production, is city-based Prasad Film Labs, which recently joined hands with Barco, a technology company headquartered in Kortrijk, Belgium. The two companies have together launched India's, and Asia's first, and the world's largest 'HDR by Barco' colour grading facility at Prasad's Chennai studio. What does the Barco collaboration mean for the filmgoing experience? Abhishek Prasad Akkeneni, CTO – Prasad Corporation (P) Ltd, began by speaking about the company's journey in the colour grading space. "We were among the first adopters of the Digital Intermediate (DI or colour grading) technology in India. One of the first films we worked on while employing DI was the Bollywood blockbuster 'Khakee'. The process of colour grading is the last part of post production, and it employs some of the most highly-trained professionals in the industry. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Giao dịch vàng CFDs với sàn môi giới tin cậy IC Markets Tìm hiểu thêm Undo These are technicians with a deep understanding of colour science and film grammar," he tells us. Prasad's grading suite is equipped with Barco's HDR Lightsteering technology toolkit, including its proprietary HDR Lightbox and LS4K-P HDR Lightsteering projector. The suite features a large 51-foot screen and the country's longest throw-distance in a DI suite. It enables colourists to work in a theatrical, larger-than-life setting, as opposed to performing colour correction and mastering for cinema and OTT deliverables on conventional large-format HD screens. In India, close to 1,500 films are churned out every year. So, post production is big business. And the work that goes into the 'post' of tentpole films starring A-listers is staggering. "Some of the biggest features of the year, such as Mani Ratnam's 'Thug Life', take nothing less than 300 hours for colour grading. Between Prasad's three post production suites in Chennai, Mumbai and Hyderabad, we work on anywhere between 30 and 40 features a month," says Akkeneni. The grading for HDR for two major releases has already begun at the Prasad facility here. Colour grading might be only the tip of the iceberg, as Barco had made another major announcement earlier in May. The company inked a multi-year agreement with Chennai-based Qube Cinema, to deploy HDR by Barco in premium multiplexes across India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Moviegoers in these markets can expect at least 10 new HDR-ready theatres per year in the coming years, with all locations in the deal deployed by 2030.
Wales Online
13-06-2025
- General
- Wales Online
I used a Ouija Board for fun when I was a teenager and this is why I've never touched one since
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info As a child in the 70s and 80s I was fascinated by the supernatural, aliens, space - anything and everything outside the sphere of everyday normality. I would collect those series of magazines they did, like The Unexplained, which delved into mysteries no-one really understood. The 80s were the era of the original Poltergeist films, ET, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Popular culture was awash with the other-worldly and we all wanted to be Elliott and find a friendly alien in our garden shed, then be chased by police on our Grifter and Chopper bikes. But these things were always just fiction or someone else's story. I wanted things like aliens, ghosts and extrasensory perception to be real, but I'd had no first hand experience that they were. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here That all changed one night when I was a young teenager and I spent the evening with my parents at a relative's house. My parents had always been pretty straight-laced - as far as I was aware. My dad was a businessman, my mum a stay-at home parent at that time. They would mostly scoff or tease me when I'd regale them with stories I'd read about 'real-life' supernatural events, or UFO encounters. I had no reason to believe that they thought it was anything other than made-up nonsense. Then, that night, they decided to use a Ouija Board to contact the dead. It sounds dramatic, but it wasn't. It was a lark in their minds, a bit of fun after a few drinks. It was a popular thing to do in the 60s and 70s, despite the odd scary story - we weren't a family of occultists if that's what you were thinking - the reality is that we were oh so very normal. They had no 'board' as such - they just had squares of paper, each one with a letter of the alphabet or a number on, arranged in a circle with a tall glass in the centre and a piece of paper with 'yes' or 'no' on it either side. Everyone then put their finger on the top of the glass while one person asked, over and over, "is there anybody there". My older sister and I weren't allowed to partake and were shut out of the room. But we snuck into the garden to watch through the window. I don't recall fully how much we saw, but I don't think we saw what happened next. However, I do remember everyone returning to the room later, all still in high spirits (if you excuse the pun). All bar one, that is. There was one person there who was known for always making jokes and winding people up. But he was quiet for the rest of the evening, sat, seemingly staring into space, deep in thought. I was told that, for days afterwards, he would not return to the room where the event took place. I remember being surprised at that. We spoke to my parents after and I think they explained a little of what had happened. The general gist was that you asked questions and the glass would move, with everyone's fingers still on it, either to reply 'yes' or 'no', to spell out some response using the letters, or count out one with the numbers. I recall they seemed fairly chilled about it, even my dad which surprised me, although I felt he was still pretty cynical. My mum had always claimed to have 'feelings' about certain places, especially if something bad had happened there, so was a little more spiritual, you might say, although neither were or still are religious in any way. My mum's advice was that, if you ever used a Ouija Board, or the DIY equivalent, you should never ask about the future, because you might learn something, true or not, that you'd rather not hear. Someone, maybe her, told me a story at the time about how some schoolchildren or students had once been using a Ouija Board in a classroom and how the glass had smashed the moment a particular girl had entered the room. I had no idea of the significance of that story, if it was just coincidence, or even if it was true, but it fuelled the feeling within me that people were messing with something they did not really understand, the stuff of myth and hushed conversations, something potentially powerful. Of course, being an acutely curious kid, the temptation was just too great. I think it was with my older sister that we first tried a DIY Ouija Board with the bits of paper and the glass. My memory has faded, but I recall something short-lived happening, but only after quite some time. But it was when I encouraged a friend to try it with me, that things really started to happen. The first evening we tried, nothing happened for what seemed like ages. We were on the verge of giving up, when suddenly there was movement. After that, it didn't stop. In fact, we just had to stop ourselves in the end as I had to leave, even though the 'conversation' on the board seemed set to continue all night. I can't recall everything we asked - we avoided questions about the future, as per my mum's advice - so i think it was mainly people's names, where they were from, where they were. Few of the answers have remained in my head. You would have thought that with something so momentous, I'd remember everything but, weirdly, I recall very little - although it is 40-odd years ago to be fair. The one thing I do recall with great clarity is the answer it (I'm using the word 'it' for ease right now - but I'll come back to that) gave to one particular question - as it stood out so much. That question was: "How long have you been there." I can't recall the exact context to that question, but I remember that we had established it was somewhere, shall we say, not of this world, and we wanted to find out for how long. If I was somehow controlling the glass myself, and I wanted to answer that question, I might have gone to some set number of years, like 50, 100, 364 - whatever. I have always thought that would be what most people would do. But it didn't do that. First it went to the 'zero', then to the number '1', then '2', then '3' and so on. When it got to '5' or '6', I asked: "Are you trying to say you have been there too long to remember". It shot, without hesitation, to 'Yes'. We dabbled with the Ouija Board a number of times after that, but with diminishing returns. It either took too long, or the response was so weak, that eventually we gave up. I've never done it since, although I thought about it a few times. I've never stopped thinking about what it all meant and whether there really was an 'it', a spirit of some kind, involved at all. The obvious possibility was that one of the two of us was pushing the glass. We suspected that at the time, even though I trusted my good friend and, I believe, she I, but to rule it out, we tried in turn to push the glass without the other knowing we were. It was impossible. Your finger would not slavishly follow wherever the glass was pushed. It either left the glass if it was pulled away from you. Or you stopped it if it was pushed towards you. Try it yourself - there is no way to push a glass around the table when two or more people have their finger on it, without both or all those present co-operating. The second thing was - we were using a small, traditional sherry glass with a long stem and a small area which held the sherry. Try and push it with your finger and the friction of the table would make it tip over. We just couldn't do it - it fell over every time, especially when you tried to move it towards you. So - one of us couldn't have faked it - it could only have been both of us co-operating, and I know for a fact I wasn't. There would have to have been a conversation between us to fake it and prior knowledge about how we would answer each question. There was neither of those things, and at the end of the day, what would have been the point? We were alone in the room, there was no-one to dupe except ourselves. Agreeing to push a glass around a table and try and pretend to ourselves it was neither of us would have been utterly pointless. Another possibility was that, somehow, our minds and actions became linked, that we pushed the glass around the table in subconscious coordination through some shared hypnosis which manifested physically through our co-operation in deciding where the glass would go and stopping it from falling over. That's a pretty weird explanation in itself - although shared hypnosis is a real-world thing. It happens, but you'd really need a trained hypnotist in the room to carry it out. Neither of us were hypnotists at the time or since, as far as I am aware, and there was no-one else in the room. But, still a possibility I guess, if unlikely. As I've got older, my interest in science has deepened. I'm fascinated by theoretical physics, the quantum world, all the weird quantum effects that have been discovered in experiments. I know about theories of parallel universes, hidden dimensions - the stuff of science fiction you might think, but all actually established theories of reality explored by some of our greatest minds. One such scientifically observed phenomenon is called quantum entanglement which basically means the properties of two particles can be intrinsically linked even if they are separated by a vast distance. Albert Einstein called it 'spooky action at a distance'. The term 'spooky' is not one you will come across much in science but its use by one of the most famous and cleverest scientists ever is an indication that there's plenty we didn't understand when Einstein was around and still don't. I'm not religious. Lately, I've thought of myself as more of an atheist. But I'm also open-minded to the idea that there are things out there we don't understand. People once looked at the sky and saw lightning and thought the gods were angry. Perhaps one day people will look back on our scientific theories and observations of the 21st century with the same bemusement. There is no proven scientific evidence for the existence of ghosts or spirits, I know that. But until we can explain everything, it's difficult to 100% rule out anything. Maybe it was all some shared hypnosis, or an elaborate hoax that I or both of use fell hook, line and sinker for. Maybe someone is still having a quiet chuckle at our expense. Perhaps we live, as some scientists postulate, in some kind of simulation and someone 'up there' pushing all the buttons like we're in one big game of The Sims thought it would be fun to play a little prank on these two gullible kids with their Ouija Board. Whatever the reason, I can't explain it. I've gone through it over and over in my mind, like I did at the time, and I've never cracked the mystery. It makes me question everything I know. And that's why I've never done it since. Because, if those really were spirits of the dead, or some kind of floating souls, voices from a parallel universe and so on... then they were there, in that house with us, or occupying our minds. If that was the case, my thinking ever since has been, "why would I want to invite them into my home". I don't really like ghost horror films, that sort of thing - they freak me out and I end up spooked in my own home, afraid of dark unseen corners. But, if by using a Ouija Board you welcome in things that wouldn't have been there otherwise - how do you know they have gone when you finish. And how do you know their intentions are good? It's a freaky thought, and that's why you'll never (probably) find me asking that question ever again: "Is there anybody there". I'd genuinely really like to know the answer to that question. Is there anybody there? But until someone can definitively prove whether there is or there isn't - I'd very much rather not take the risk of potentially welcoming them into my life.
