We're not talking about your slight-of-hand magician's trick here, but an honest-to-goodness invisibility act performed by fellow human beings without any effort on their part. And there are hundreds of stories about it; hundreds of people who have reported they just disappeared in front of friends and neighbors; no one could see them and no one could hear them though they attempted to talk to others and participate at busy functions.
And about the only common thread between all those that say they have become momentarily invisible is that it doesn't last very long and they have no idea how it happened. Many of the storytellers remain in somewhat of a state of disbelief themselves.
There's the West Coast woman that reports she was sitting on her sofa watching television, on the verge of nodding off to sleep. Her husband sat on the same sofa not three feet away. Suddenly looking in her direction and not seeing her, he called out her name, assuming she had gone into another room without his being aware. She answered him, but he didn't hear her. Rising from the sofa, he strolled through the house, opening the back door and calling her name. She went into the kitchen, again he ignored her attempts at conversation, passed near her as he returned to the sofa. She followed, sat down, then he looked in her direction again and said "Where did you go? Didn't you hear me calling?"
Then there was the man in Suffox, Englnd who had gone into a bathroom at a friend's party. He and another guest had arrived at the bathroom door at the same instant, but the other had yielded to him and waited outside the door until he finnished. After coming out of the bathroom and closing the door behind, he spoke to the other guest who had his back turned, but didn't receive a response.
After going downstairs to his wife and friends, he became irritated because he was being intentionally ignored. In anger, he climbed back up the steps and saw the man still waiting outside the bathroom door. The other guest was startled when he saw him climbing the stairs, not understanding how he had gotten out of the bathroom. Going downstairs again, his wife and friends denied having ignored or even seen him in the moments before.
These are just a couple of the hundreds of stories about humans becoming invisible without design.
Is it possible? Does it really happen?
Human invisibility is not an uncommon concept. Indo-European and pre-Aryan shamanistic beliefs about invisibility accompanied people who migrated into the Indus Valley. The Vedas, which form the basis of Hinduism, emanated from the teachings of the rishis, who were said to possess the power to tune their minds into making their forms invisible.
Beginning in about the thirteenth century, numerous texts in Europe refer to similar abilities, performed by sorcerers and magicians who had the power to make themselves invisible, like the shamans (both ancient and modern), and the yoga masters in India.
Japanese Ninjas and American Indian Shamans have also claimed to possess the power to become invisible by concentrating with their minds, and controlling the environment around them. Researchers that take the reports of invivibility seriously believe that it is indeed a power of the inner mind that apparently surfaces without our awareness, either because we have entered a REM state unknowingly and have reached deeper into the conscience than we are aware, or because our immediate environment at the moment of occurence is just right for such a rare phenomena.
As for me, I'm still looking in the mirror, and am still with form and substance. So it either doesn't work for me or I am leaving something important out. Or was that a flicker in my image just now?
