Otherkin News

Content warnings: None.

August 22, Kansas: Nobody knows who has been building and placing tiny gnome-size houses all over the city of Overland Park.

(The otherkin community has practiced similar arts meant to provoke belief in fair folk and magic, which they call a glamourbomb.)

Source

"Gnome homes popping up all over Overland Park." 2013-08-22. KSHB Action News. http://www.kshb.com/dpp/news/region_kansas/johnson_county/gnome-homes-popping-up-all-over-overland-park

Epilepsy warning! The linked video contains bright blue flashing lights against a dark background. The first few minutes have this the worst, but then the lights are shown in several other parts of the video.

February: Deepspeed Media made a short documentary about the Internet Archive. It's about thirteen minutes long.

When I was writing my book, the Otherkin Timeline, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine is one of the tools that I used to research the history of the emergence of the otherkin and therianthrope communities on the Internet. The Archive made it possible for me to see websites that had been gone since the 1990s. The Archive's ethic of preservation and sharing of information is important to me. (Ironically, my Otherkin Timeline is, itself, down for maintenance right now.)

Source

Deepspeed Media, “Internet Archive.” 2013-02-08. http://vimeo.com/59207751#

Trigger warning: death of an animal (wolf).

July: Wolves had not been seen in the wild in the Netherlands since 1869 (140 years ago). That is, up until last July, when the body of a wild wolf was found. She was a one and a half year old female, who had been in good health before being hit by a car. Researchers confirmed that this wasn't a hoax. They also found signs that might mean other wolves live nearby.

Source

"Wolf found in Netherlands is no joke, scientists say." 2013-08-07. Phys.org. http://phys.org/news/2013-08-wolf-netherlands-scientists.html

July: A cryptozoologist named Nick Redfern opined in a blog about why werewolves aren't usually studied in cryptozoology. (Cryptozoology is the study of reports of animals whose existence hasn't been confirmed. That means animals that are so rarely seen that people have some question about whether they have all died out, such as the ivory-billed woodpecker, and the Tasmanian tiger. Usually, though, it means bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster.)

Redfern says that there are reported sightings of creatures who could be considered werewolves. He says cryptozoologists don't want to study those, because of the association with Hollywood movies. They see that as "embarrassing." Redfern says the reported werewolf-like creatures fall into one or both of these categories:

"(a) a type of wolf-like animal that is unknown to science and which has the ability to walk on two legs as well as four; or (b) a creature of definitively paranormal proportions. But, mainstream Cryptozoology cannot bring itself to fully embrace the study of either 'possibility (a)' or 'possibility (b)' and the solely paranormal crowd aren’t excited by the prospect of investigating something that may be purely zoological. So, what happens? Well, this is what happens: a topic that is undeniably important, and which is supported by large amounts of witness testimony, ends up languishing in a realm filed with confusion and lack of direction."

The werewolf sighting reports aren't cryptozoologists' favorite topic of study because it's thought of as undignified, and because the researchers disagree about what the sightings could signify.


Source

Nick Redfern, "The problem with werewolves." 2013-07-29. Mysterious Universe. http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2013/07/the-problem-with-werewolves/

Trigger warnings: Spooky mirror imagery, kind of trippy, weird faces. Linked article talks about neurology.

About a year ago: This is an interactive art installation by fine art animator Karolina Sobecka, titled All the universe is full of the lives of perfect creatures. It's a mirror that juxtaposes a computer animated animal face upon the viewer's reflection. In the video above, the ghostly face is offset due to the camera angle. From the perspective of the person looking in the mirror, the animal face covers their own, like a mask. The artist's statement explains,

"A different animal appears every time a person walks in front of the mirror. The animal not only mimics the viewer's facial features, but also occasionally makes its own, uniquely animal expressions. The viewer feels compelled to in turn enact such lip licking and snarling, fully inhabiting the role; following while being followed. This project explores a mirror as an amalgamation of the self and the other, inviting inquiry into how we determine the boundary between the two."

The art piece uses the mirror as a symbol of self-reflection and imitation, to draw attention to the mental processes involved in these, particularly 'mirror neurons.' For more information, see the web-page for this piece.


As far as I know, this artwork has no explicit connection to therianthropy. Nonetheless, I include it here because of the themes of transformation through augmented reality. That topic has been dealt with before a few times in this blog.


Source

Karolina Sobecka, "All the Universe is Full of the Lives of Perfect Creatures." n.d. (The video was posted about a year ago, with no specific date shown.) Karolina Sobecka. http://www.gravitytrap.com/artwork/perfect-creatures

Trigger warnings: Conflict between religion and science.

May: The Creation Museum, a well-funded museum promoting Christian young-earth creationist views on history and biology, located in Petersburg, Kentucky, announced that it will install a new exhibit about dragons. The museum is advertising it with billboards in several cities. The exhibit will be about dragons in global mythology and legend. Young-earth creationists believe that dinosaurs lived alongside humans. The exhibit suggests that old myths about dragons might really be about dinosaurs.

Doubtful News, a skeptical current events blog, expresses dismay about this exhibit for several reasons.

The teaser for the exhibit says that it will contain a great deal of original artwork, including "two large colorful dragons from China." The museum is famous for, among other things, the high quality and professionalism of its artwork. The museum's web-site says the exhibit will open "soon," but another page said it was going to open back on the weekend of May 24-25, so maybe it was postponed?

I'm not aware of any young-earth creationists in the otherkin, therianthrope, or dragon communities. I am aware of a lot of dragon mythology enthusiasts and Christians here, though, so maybe this will be of interest.


Sources

idoubtit, "Creation Museum invokes DRAGONS! Ooooh, scary!!!" 2013-06-23. Doubtful News. http://doubtfulnews.com/2013/06/creation-museum-invokes-dragons-ooooh-scary

"Bring forth the dragons!" 2013-05-07. Creation Museum. http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/creation-museum/2013/05/07/bring-forth-the-dragons

"Dragon invasion." Creation Museum. http://creationmuseum.org/whats-here/exhibits/dragon-invasion/

Ken Ham, "'Dragon Invasion' Coming to Creation Museum." 2013-05-15. Creation Museum. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2013/05/15/dragon-invasion-coming-creation-museum

Trigger warning: weird, trippy glitches in how brains and bodies work.

In a recent study in Sweden, published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, an experiment induced supernumerary phantom limb sensations. They investigated it in more detail by conducting 11 experiments on 234 participants. The tactile illusion works like this:

"the participants sat at a table with their right arm behind a screen so that it was not visible to them. The right hand of the volunteers was then touched by the researchers with a small paintbrush, while they imitated the same movement with a different paintbrush up in the air so that it was visible to the subjects. [...] 'most participants, within less than a minute, transfer the sensation of touch to the region of empty space where they see the paintbrush move, and experience an invisible hand in that position. Previous research has shown that non-bodily objects, such as a block of wood, cannot be experienced as one's own hand, so we were extremely surprised to find that the brain can accept an invisible hand as part of the body.'"¹

Brain scans demonstrated that the participants could really feel the invisible hand. "'Taken together, our results show that the sight of a physical hand is remarkably unimportant to the brain for creating the experience of one's physical self,'" Arvid Guterstam [lead author of the research] explained."²

I include this news here because supernumerary phantom limbs are a common experience among therianthropes and otherkin.

- O. Scribner


Source

1. Sarah Glynn, "Non-Amputees Experience Phantom Limb Sensation." 2013-04-11. Medical News Today. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/259003.php

2. Ibid.

The study in question:

Arvid Guterstam, Giovanni Gentile, and H. Henrik Ehrsson, "The Invisible Hand Illusion: Multisensory Integration Leads to the Embodiment of a Discrete Volume of Empty Space." Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2013-04-11 doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00393

Trigger warnings: Medical practices, physical health problems, mental health problems, paralysis, stroke, amputation, brains, and weird health treatments. In the comments on this post, there's some discussion about gender dysphoria (transgender issues) and private body parts.

Summary: If a person's idea of their body doesn't match how their body is shaped, putting water in their ear can temporarily change that.

A person’s inner ear (and other parts of the vestibular system) gives them their sense of balance and sense of their body’s position and movement. It also has something to do with a person’s sense of the shape of their body (body schema). If you put water in a person’s ear, it can temporarily change their senses of balance, position, and body schema. (Different things happen if the water is warm or cold, or which ear it's put into.) This practice is called vestibular caloric stimulation. It’s useful because it sometimes helps treat people who have problems with those senses. It can also show things about the relationship between the inner ear and the body schema in the brain.

For some people, their body schema doesn’t match their physical body. Either the person has a body part and feels like it isn’t theirs (somatoparaphrenia), or they’re missing a body part and feel like it’s still there (a phantom limb). People have to learn more about the body schema in order to treat these. Likewise, studying these will help people learn about the body schema. Treatment of these can involve trying to repair the person’s body schema. One of the ways to do that is by showing the person a type of optical illusion, called “mirror box therapy,” but that’s another story. You can also temporarily treat both of these conditions by means of vestibular caloric stimulation. That is to say, these are problems that can be helped by putting water in a person’s ear.

Sometimes people who have had a stroke or become paralyzed on one side end up feeling like one of their body parts isn’t theirs. The sufferer develops far-fetched beliefs about how the body part got there. (It’s called a somatoparaphrenic delusion.) Since there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with the body part itself, doctors try to repair the person’s body schema. A 1991 study showed that putting water in the sufferer’s ear can temporarily change their body schema, so that they feel like the body part is theirs again.

People who have lost a body part (amputees) sometimes feel like the missing body part is still there. Even if the person knows nothing is there, the “phantom limb” can feel very real. Phantom limbs happen because the person’s brain still has that body part in its body schema. The brain gets confused about why it isn’t getting sensory messages from the limb anymore, so it makes things up to fill in the blank. Sometimes a phantom limb even feels like it hurts. You can’t just use pain killer on a body part that isn’t there.

A study published in 2001 found that vestibular caloric stimulation can do things to phantom limbs. When the researchers put water in the ears of amputees who never felt phantom limbs, it made the amputees temporarily feel phantom limbs. When the researchers put water in the ears of amputees who had suffered phantom limb pain, the phantom limbs stayed there, but they stopped hurting.

I heard about these discoveries in recent post in a non-academic blog (io9), but when I read the sources, it turns out that these aren’t very recent discoveries. Please note, I’m not a neurologist or any kind of doctor. I’m an interested layperson. I can’t guarantee that I got the facts right. If you're curious about this stuff, you should talk to a professional who has studied it in particular. I’m including this article in Otherkin News because therianthropes and otherkin often report that they have, so to speak, a body schema that doesn’t match their physical body. Any information and discoveries about the formation of the body schema in the brain could lead toward helping them understand why theirs might be that way.

- O. Scribner

Sources

Esther Inglis-Arkell, “The weird way to eliminate—or evoke—phantom limbs.” 2013-01-20. io9. http://io9.com/5976618/the-weird-way-to-eliminateor-evokephantom-limbs

Edoardo Bisiach, Maria Luisa Rusconi, and Giuseppe Vallar, “Remission of somatoparaphrenic delusion through vestibular stimulation.” Neuropsychologia 29: 10 (1991), pp. 1029–1031. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/002839329190066H

J. M. André, et al., “Temporary Phantom Limbs Evoked by Vestibular Caloric Stimulation in Amputees.” Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, & Behavioral Neurology 14:3 (2001), pp. 190-196. http://journals.lww.com/cogbehavneurol/Abstract/2001/07000/Temporary_Phantom_Limbs_Evoked_by_Vestibular.8.aspx

Trigger warning: Beliefs about the end of the world.

Many people believe that the world will end, suffer a catastrophe, or spiritually change during this month on the 21st, a date selected partially on the basis of a misinterpretation of the ancient Mayan calendar.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) offers their official explanation of why the world won't end this week. NASA refutes several mistaken astronomical claims made by some believers, claims which the believers sometimes falsely attribute to NASA. NASA says that despite what you may have heard, there will actually be no planetary alignment.

I'm not aware of any groups of otherkin and therianthropes who have publicly announced any expectations or actions for the date of 2012-12-21. If you know of any, please e-mail me as soon as possible so that I can interview the otherkin and therianthropes in question in order to report on it within the week.


- O. Scribner

Trigger warnings: Paranormal phenomena.

This month, paranormal investigator and cryptozoology blogger Lon Strickler¹ posted a witness report (purportedly collected in 2009) from a correspondent named only as Dee, regarding her sighting in 1990 of short, elf-like humanoids who emerged from a portal in New York. The portal was an area of open air that shimmered like water, accompanied by a humming sound.²

Paranormal investigator Robert Goerman, of the Nonhuman Research Agency, noticed that Dee’s report closely resembled another report. As Goerman pointed out in Fate Magazine,³ the similar report was published in Philip Imbrogno’s and Marianne Horrigan’s Celtic Mysteries in New England (2000), in which an anonymous team of paranormal investigators saw bearded, dwarf-like humanoids emerge from a buzzing, shimmering portal in New York in 1992. As with the other story, the portal appeared near a group of boulders.⁴

As always with witness reports of paranormal phenomena, both reports could be fabrications. The many similarities between the two reports suggest that one may have been based on the other. If they are merely tall tales, it's still interesting to track elf and dwarf folklore in modern New York.

- O. Scribner

( Sources )