時空躍遷，消失的物體現象：一項調查，托尼·金克斯 （Tony Jinks） 著

消失的物體現象：一項調查，托尼·金克斯 （Tony Jinks） 著
 
物體消失現象的封麵

出版詳情麥克法蘭，ISBN：978-0786498604。 發布日期Thursday， 1 九月， 2016 - 12：00
 
由羅伯特·查曼 （Robert A. Charman） 

作者是澳大利亞西悉尼大學心理學高級講師，也是澳大利亞超心理學雜誌的顧問。他調查了大約 385 個關於意外消失、重新出現、首次出現或被另一個類似物體取代的小物體的個人描述。雖然“消失的物體現象”是他書的標題，但金克斯使用了瑪麗·羅斯·巴林頓（Mary Rose Barrington，1991,2018）創造的術語來描述這種現象，即“jott”，如“Just One Of That Things”中關於這種莫名其妙的經曆的評論，以及“jottle”和“jottling”指的是他們的異常行為。

這是他的開篇例子（略微縮寫）：2008 年 8 月的一個晚上，凱特下班後開車回家，回到她位於郊區一條安靜住宅街道上的小房子。她把車鑰匙和其他鑰匙都掛在同一個鈴上，選好了前門鑰匙，在電話響起的同一時刻打開了門。知道是誰後，她把門開著，放下包，跑到走廊裏去接電話。打完電話後，她回去從門鎖中取出鑰匙環，拿起她的包。袋子在那裏，裏麵的東西完好無損，但鑰匙環不在那裏。她找了又找，徒勞無功，最終得出結論，一定是有人進入了門廊並搶走了鑰匙，盡管街道上空無一人，周圍似乎也沒有人。由於找不到它們，她麵臨著不方便且昂貴的業務，需要獲得新車鑰匙，更換前門、後門、車庫和郵箱的鎖，並為她的辦公室剪下一把新鑰匙。一年之內，她搬到另一個城市找了一份新工作，並在市中心附近購買並徹底翻新了一套公寓。一天晚上，她回到家，像往常一樣把新鑰匙放在走廊的抽屜裏，然後走進臥室，卻發現她的舊鑰匙套在枕頭上的同一枚戒指上。當她對金克斯說時，她感到“惡心和頭暈”，因為在她不在的時候，沒有其他人可以進入她的公寓。

他的第二個例子是 Mark，他坐在沙發上，旁邊的靠墊上放著他的黑色大電視遙控器，當他的搭檔 Courtney 在廣告休息時間在廚房準備小吃時，他輕率地決定切換電視頻道。當她回來時，她不太高興，他急忙伸手去拿遙控器，想換回來，卻發現遙控器不在那裏。他們以為它一定是掉在沙發墊之間或地板上，徒勞無功，把沙發倒過來，甚至用手和膝蓋在地板上爬來爬去。找不到它，馬克又買了一台，但幾周後，當 Courtney 外出時，他去了洗手間，回來時發現這個遙控器也消失了，盡管瘋狂地尋找，但仍然消失了。那周晚些時候，他又買了一台遙控器，但幾個月後，遙控器一夜之間消失了，這讓他完全困惑，因為他清楚地記得自己在睡覺前把它放在了支架裏。然後，他決定受夠了，並進行了從沙發上站起來，通過電視控製改變頻道和音量的健康運動。

經過多年對這些說法的個人調查，Jinks 決定這些意想不到的、不方便的和不受歡迎的物體消失，重新出現等不能歸因於健忘、無意識的錯位、錯誤的記憶、無意識的失明或知覺失明，同時對著眼前的物體思考其他事物、幻覺錯誤、自己或他人的故意欺騙、神遊狀態、意識狀態改變等等。被反複和獨立描述的東西似乎是一個真實的現象，盡管就科學和日常常識而言，它被認為是完全不可能的。

以巴靈頓對同一現象的大約 185 個案例的先前研究和分類為指導（有關她的分析和理論討論的詳細信息，請參閱我的書評）。Jinks 決定將他更大的數據庫提交給一個徹底的統計、表格、分析，以分析最常涉及的對象，例如戒指、胸針和項鏈等珠寶、單個食品和飲料、鑰匙、衣物、U 盤和“老鼠”等小型計算機物品;電視遙控器、梳子、刷子、發夾和鑷子等美容用品、刀叉等廚房用具、手表、錢包、信用卡/借記卡、個人硬幣、文具、小工具等。他發現，按照記事活動的順序，最常見的行為是該物體的消失和隨後的重新出現，通常是在同一個地方，但有時在房子的其他地方，一個無法解釋的新物體的陌生外觀，以及未被識別的類似類型的物體替換，有時是永久消失。

作為一般規則，最近處理對象並記錄為丟失的對象越早，它返回的速度就越快，Kate 和 Mark 的經曆是例外。金克斯還根據物品的貨幣或個人價值對斑駁的物品進行分類，並體驗這種體驗是一次性的，還是在數月或數年內重複出現。男性和女性總體上受到的影響似乎大致相同，但這個比例因物體類型而異，因此女性受到的影響比男性更大，例如，在珠寶方麵。絕大多數 jott 體驗者都是 20 多歲以上的成年人，就 Jinks 的判斷而言，他們是普通的公眾成員，對超心理學知之甚少或根本沒有興趣，對魔法現象沒有信仰或實踐，不知道這種經曆發生在其他人身上，並且對自己的經曆感到困惑，並且經常對自己的心理狀態感到困惑和情緒不安。在教育水平或職業或職業類型與報告的發生頻率之間沒有發現顯著差異。

至於 jott 現象的總體流行率，這 385 名體驗者顯然不是隨機的，而是自我選擇的，因為他們無法為自己的經曆找到正常的解釋，以至於他們回應了此類帳戶的請求，並最終聯係了 Jinks 或他聯係了他們。這同樣適用於向巴靈頓報告的 185 例病例。當 80 人在不知道研究目的的情況下自願參加一項匿名調查，並被問及他們是否經曆過諸如“行為異常的物體”之類的事件，如果有，他們的經曆的性質是什麽，結果完全出乎意料。據推測，此類案例很少（如果有的話）會被報告，但 42 部分ICIPANTS （52%） 報告有過記點心的經曆（未發表的心理學研究生文憑）。這意味著，也許至少有一半的成年人經曆過無法解釋的物體消失、重現、出現或更換，當時他們莫名其妙地憤怒地認為“隻是其中一件”，因為手頭似乎沒有其他解釋，同時感覺到發生了真正神秘的事情。

對 jott 行為的分析表明，有幾個特征適用於所有對象。他們要麽在那裏，要麽完全不在那裏，如果他們再次出現，他們和上次看到時一模一樣。他們並沒有淡入或消失。如果一把鑰匙在消失之前有一塊鏽跡或略微彎曲，那麽這就是它重新出現時的樣子。他們從未消失或重新出現，或首次出現，或作為丟失物品的明顯替代品出現。突然間，他們就出現在了眾目睽睽之下。Jott 現象似乎從未伴隨著任何其他超自然現象，例如鬧鬼活動。他們的出現或消失總是隻由一個人注意到，然後根據社會環境，由其他人確認。喬特的消失從來都不是有意識的，盡管在情感上尋求重新出現並取得了不同的成功。一個全新的物體或類似的替代物體的出現總是一個完全的驚喜。Jinks 小心翼翼地指出，這些共同特征並不能證明 jotts 的發生是毫無疑問的，因為要證明，你需要對所有聲稱的變量進行可複製的科學觀察和測試。他們所證明的是，在每一個可以想象的 “正常 ”解釋都被排除在外，因為不足以解釋這些經曆（而金克斯作為一個盡職盡責的心理學家，係統地研究了你能想到的每一個可能的解釋，還有一些），那麽一些事情正在發生，這些事情不應該發生，而且顯然不可能發生，但盡管如此，這確實發生了。

既然如此，我們需要尋找一種在我們對物理世界的主流科學理解中找不到的解釋，因為聲稱的 jott 的發生原則上被否認，更不用說在實踐中了。因此，如果接受 jott 發生的存在，就必須尋求對我們所知道的我們自己與物理世界明顯獨立的性質（包括 jott 現象的可能性）之間的關係的解釋。那麽，金克斯是如何試圖解釋聲稱發生的事情實際上是如何發生的呢？

出於所有實際目的，包括科學調查，我們假設我們觀察外部世界和我們在其中能看到的一切，都存在於它自己的三維領域中，完全獨立於我們自己。事實就是如此，我們發現我們與其他人達成了共識。經典物理學完全同意這一觀點，但量子物理學對現實的看法卻截然不同。對於量子物理學來說，宇宙的本質被認為是存在於一種不可觀察的概率態疊加中，這種概率態被稱為波函數，當它與測量設備相互作用時，它會以波或粒子的形式“坍縮”成一種物理現象，例如在單體中。E 或雙縫實驗。Jinks 將普遍現實的這種量子水平稱為“前物理基底”。在他的最後一章中，他提出我們的意識充當心理測量裝置，將“前物理基質”坍縮到我們看到的周圍世界及其所有三維特性中。觀察者不是從無到有創造物質，而是從重要成分的量子湯中想象物質的構象——“前物理基底”。據推測，每個物種都根據他們的意識類型來執行這種構象。

金克斯推測，一些“深層次的基本過程”決定了“從這些成分來看世界應該是什麽樣子”，而有意識的觀察者“隻是在進行實現的最後行動”。他認為，雙方同意的公共空間及其所有對象都由對過去或現在的集體有意識的觀察保持著穩定的永久觀察，因此，諸如晚餐菜單、汽車、道路或建築物之類的物體，如果不被某人觀察，就極不可能消失回其前物理基質，因為它是在其共識的“多感官景觀”中維持的。 但是，當一個物體在有意識的現實中的持續存在僅依賴於一兩個意識來維持它時，它這樣做的可能性就會增加。互動意識/前物理基礎坍縮成觀察到的物理連續性，比由集體意識維持時要弱得多。有時，由於未知的原因，可能是通過無意識的動機水平，在觀察現實中維持特定對象的有意識支持莫名其妙地減弱，一個對象從我們的個人現實中消失，回到其前物理基質中，創造了隨後的 jott 體驗。然後，這個斑駁的物體就從所有人的視線中消失了——它沒有被傳送到任何地方，現在已經不是了。後來的心理變化可能會逆轉這一點，物體會再次以原樣出現在主人麵前。有時物體會像 Mark 的電視遙控器一樣永久消失，但也許它們會重新出現在其他地方。

必須警告讀者，這隻是我對金克斯理論的理解，他們確實需要閱讀他的最後兩章才能得到完整的闡述。維基百科上關於“馮·諾依曼鏈”的條目將帶您直接進入量子/意識的爭論。在他的最後一章中，金克斯還意外地透露，他每隔幾個月就會經曆一次 jott 經曆，因此在他意識到這些事件沒有正常的解釋後，他對這個主題產生了興趣。他舉了三個例子，這裏有很多刪節：

由於肋骨受傷，他決定在接下來的周末打板球，並在一周內用球棒練習，但他沒有球棒，因為他總是從球隊的球衣中借來一根。那個星期六下午 3 點，在觀看了他的球隊比賽後回到家，他想起他在車庫的某個地方有一隻“初級球棒”，裏麵有一大堆未分類的垃圾，但決定下次再找一次。下午 5 點，他鎖上了房子，和家人一起去和朋友一起吃飯，晚上 9 點開車回家。他打開了門，第一個進來了。當他打開休息室的燈時，他看到“少年蝙蝠”靠在書架上。它肯定不存在當他出去時，他的家人肯定沒有找過。他認為，這是他打算練習擊球而引起的一次出場。

一個星期三的晚上，他注意到他的錢包不見了，他通常把錢包和眼鏡和鑰匙放在抽屜裏。有時他把它放在廚房的台麵上，或者梳妝台上，或者放在他工作包的前拉鏈上，或者放在床邊，但它都沒有出現在這些地方，他在那時和星期四在家工作時，都徒勞地搜查了房子。他取消了信用卡/借記卡，並於周五開車進城領取新的駕照。周五晚上是他兒子們的運動之夜，所以這可能會變得相當緊張，他有嚼口香糖來緩解父母壓力的習慣。他把手伸進一個高架櫥櫃裏，拿出一些口香糖包，轉身去收拾廚房的櫃台，這時他聽到他的妻子發出了驚訝的喘息聲。幾秒鍾後，她打開了櫥櫃的門，也拿了一些口香糖包，在口香糖容器上方的架子上，放著他的錢包。他進頭看的時候不可能錯過它，因為那是一個又大又胖的黑色皮錢包，櫥櫃是白色的。它一定是在櫥櫃的兩個開口之間的幾秒鍾內重新出現在人類的觀察中（我必須在這裏補充一點，他的妻子肯定也搜索過，正如我根據多年經驗了解到的那樣——母親、妻子和女兒——如果一個女人找不到什麽東西，那肯定不存在）。

一個星期六的清晨，他正在修理他的前圍欄，打算用新的鐵絲網替換一段，因為他首先在柱子之間連接了新的拉緊線，為此他買了兩卷新的鐵絲網，現在在地上準備使用。他知道他在車庫的某個地方有一把用過的半卷，但懶得去找。在任務期間，他停下來與鄰居聊天，當時他離他隻有十幾步遠，而且可以看到圍欄區。回來後，他發現了閃亮的新卷和有點生鏽的半卷，他最終發現他需要完成任務。它不存在 - 然後它就在那裏。

對於懷疑論者來說（我仍在掙紮），Barrington 的 185 個案例和 Jinks 的 385 個案例加起來有 570 個異常經曆需要解釋。為什麽？因為沒有一個通常的解釋能夠充分解釋這些經驗者所說的發生在他們身上的事情，而他們顯然與讀者處於相同的普通日常心理狀態。他們都沒有預料到，就失蹤而言，他們都不想要。Jinks 的敘述按章節完整引用，並為討論的每個案例提供了參考書目和非常有用的頁麵索引。這種現象，包括 52% 的患病率指標，需要更多的研究，我確實推薦 Barrington 的書和這本書，因為它們共同提供了一個似乎被幾乎所有超心理學家忽視的 jott 經驗寶庫。

PS
現在我不知道截至昨天，11 月 30 日星期五該怎麽想（細節很重要）。我從來沒有過 ESP 的經曆，並認為我就像一塊磚頭一樣通靈，但現在呢？除了早上來到廚房喝杯咖啡外，我還花了一上午的時間在樓上的書房裏寫這本書呃。下午 1 點，我決定做一個烤奶酪三明治，像往常一樣，打開廚房抽屜，拿出我那把老式的、必不可少的 11 英寸長黃油刀，刀刃寬大，外加一把較短的鋸齒刀來切奶酪。我吃了三明治（很好吃，謝謝你），站在廚房的窗戶前看著花園，聽著收音機，喝了一杯茶。我在熱水龍頭下衝洗了一個盤子和兩把刀，然後將刀放回廚房抽屜。我下午出去了，大約在下午 6 點 30 分決定在晚餐時做一些烤土豆。我打開了黃油刀的刀抽屜，把從罐子裏滴出來的牛肉拿出來，但是雖然鋸齒刀在那兒，黃油刀卻不在。我搜索了廚房的其他抽屜但沒有成功，真的很生氣，最終不得不使用勺子。當土豆烤著時，我又徹底搜查了廚房，然後走進了客廳。像往常一樣，我的中等大小的橢圓形餐桌幾乎光禿禿的，一頁葉子上放著報紙，另一頁葉子上放著我的 iPad，中間的餐墊上放著一盒紙巾，還有幾支筆。我隻添加了一把刀叉、鹽和胡椒粉和餐盤。當我坐在桌子中間吃晚飯時，我的 iPad 在我左側大約 18 英寸處，中間什麽都沒有，直到我用左手伸過桌子，把紙巾盒拉過來。飯後，我清理了桌子，將紙巾盒和墊子又移回了一起。

在晚上 9 點的商業電視休息時間，我泡了一杯或茶，在經過桌子回到椅子上的路上，我拿起了紙巾盒，同時看到我的黃油刀粗略地停在我吃飯時紙巾盒所占據的空間裏。在做這兩篇評論之前，我隻是想知道它到底是怎麽走到這一步的，以及我怎麽可能在它如此明顯的時候錯過了看到它。現在，我在想是否......

參考資料

Barrington， M. R. （1991）。JOTT – 隻是其中之一。靈能研究員 3， 5-6.
巴靈頓，MR（2018 年）。記。當事物消失時...和 Come Back or Relocation – 以及
它為什麽真的發生。德克薩斯州聖安東尼奧：Anomalist Books。

您可以通過以下電子郵件聯係 Robert A. Charman：[e-mail]

原文：

Disappearing Object Phenomenon: An Investigation, by Tony Jinks
 
Cover of Disappearing Object Phenomenon Publication DetailsMcFarland, ISBN: 978-0786498604. Publish dateThursday, 1 September, 2016 - 12:00
 
Reviewed by Robert A. Charman

The author is a senior lecturer in psychology, Western Sydney University, Australia, and a consultant to the Australian Journal of Parapsychology. He has investigated some 385 personal accounts of small objects that have unexpectedly disappeared, reappeared, appeared for the first time or been replaced by another similar object. While ‘Disappearing Object Phenomenon’ is the title of his book, Jinks uses the terms coined by Mary Rose Barrington (1991, 2018) for this phenomenon, namely ‘jott’ as in the ‘Just One Of Those Things’ comment concerning such inexplicable experiences and ‘jottle’ and ‘jottling’ referring to their anomalous behaviour.

Here is his opening example (slightly abbreviated): One evening in August, 2008, Kate drove home after work to her small suburban house situated in a quiet residential street. With her car key on the same ring as all her other keys she selected her front door key and opened the door at the same moment that her telephone rang. Knowing who it would be she left the door open and dropped her bag to run down the hall to answer the phone. After the call she went back to take the ring of keys out of the door lock and pick up her bag. The bag was there with contents intact but the ring of keys was not there. She searched and searched in vain, eventually concluding that someone must have entered the porch and snatched the keys although the street was empty and there seemed to be no one about. Unable to find them she was faced with the inconvenient and expensive business of getting a new car key and changing the locks of her front door, back door, garage and mailbox and cutting a new key for her office. Within the year she moved to a new job in another city and bought and thoroughly renovated an apartment close to the city centre. One evening she returned home, placed her new set of keys in the hallway drawer as usual and then went into her bedroom only to see her old set of keys on the same ring on her pillow. As she said to Jinks she felt ‘nauseous and giddy’ with shock as no one else could have entered her apartment during her absence.

His second example is Mark who, sitting on the sofa with his large, black, tv remote control on a cushion beside him, rashly decided to switch television channels while Courtney, his partner, was in the kitchen preparing a snack during an advertisement break. On her return she was less than pleased and he hurriedly reached for his remote to switch back only to find it was not there. Assuming that it must have fallen between the sofa cushions or onto the floor they searched in vain, turning the sofa upside down and even crawling round the floor on their hands and knees. Unable to find it Mark bought another one, but a few weeks later while Courtney was out, he visited the bathroom and returned only to find this remote had also disappeared and remained disappeared despite frantic searching. Later that week he bought another remote, but a few months later that disappeared overnight leaving him completely baffled as he distinctly remembering that he had put it in its cradle before going to bed. He then decided that enough was enough and engaged in the heathy if inconvenient exercise of getting up from the sofa to change channels and volume via the television controls.

After years of personal investigation into these claims Jinks decided that these unexpected, inconvenient and unwanted object disappearances, reappearances and so on could not be attributed to forgetfulness, unaware misplacement, faulty memory, inattentional blindness or perceptual blindness while thinking of something else to an object in plain sight, hallucinatory error, deliberate deception by themselves or someone else, fugue states, altered states of consciousness and so on. What was being repeatedly and independently described seemed to be a genuine phenomenon despite being considered as completely impossible as far as science and everyday common sense is concerned.

With the prior research and classification of some 185 cases of the same phenomenon by Barrington as his guide (see my book review for details of her analysis and theoretical discussion). Jinks decided to submit his much larger database to a thorough statistical, tabled, analysis as to the objects most frequently involved such as jewellery items as in rings, brooches and necklaces, single food and beverage items, keys, items of clothing, small computer items such as USB sticks and ‘mice’; television remote controls, grooming items such as combs, brushes, hair clips and tweezers, kitchen utensils such as knives and forks, wristwatches, wallets, credit/debit cards, individual coins, stationery, small tools and so on. He found that in order of jott activity the most common behaviours were disappearance and later reappearance of that object, often in the same place but sometimes elsewhere in the house, the unfamiliar appearance of a new object that could not be accounted for, and unrecognised similar type of object replacement and sometimes disappearance for good.

As a general rule, the sooner an object has been recently handled and then noted as missing the quicker it returns, Kate’s and Mark’s experiences are exceptions. Jinks also classified jottled objects according to their monetary or personal value, and experients as to whether the experience was a one off, or repeated over months or years. Males and females seem roughly equally affected overall but this ratio varied according to type of object so women were affected more than men with regard to jewellery for example. The great majority of jott experients were adults from their twenties onwards, and as far as Jinks could judge they were ordinary members of the public who had little or no prior knowledge or interest in parapsychology, no beliefs or practice in magical phenomena, had no idea that this experience had happened to anyone else, and were baffled and often emotionally disturbed as to their own state of mind by their experience. No significant difference was found between levels of education or types of career or occupation and frequency of reported occurrence.

As for population prevalence of jott phenomena these 385 experients were obviously not random but self-selecting in that they were so unable to find a normal explanation for their experiences that they responded to requests for such accounts and eventually contacted Jinks or he contacted them. The same applies to the 185 cases reported to Barrington. When 80 people volunteered to take part in an anonymous survey without knowing the purpose of the study and were asked if they had ever experienced an incident such as a ‘strangely behaving object’ and, if so, what was the nature of their experience, the result was completely unexpected. It had been assumed that very few, if any, such cases would be reported but 42 participants (52%) reported having had a jottling experience (unpublished post graduate diploma in psychology dissertation). This implies that maybe at least half of the adult population have experienced an unexplainable object disappearance, reappearance, appearance or replacement, dismissed in baffled exasperation at the time as ‘just one of those things’ because there seemed no other explanation to hand, while sensing that something genuinely mysterious had occurred.

Analysis of jott behaviour has demonstrated that several characteristics apply to all objects. They were either there or they were not there in their entirety, and if they reappeared, they were exactly the same as when last seen. They did not fade in or out of existence. If a key had a patch of rust or was slightly bent before disappearance then that is how it was on its reappearance. They were never seen to disappear or reappear, or appear for the first time, or appear as an apparent substitute for the object that was lost. Suddenly they were just there in plain sight. Jott phenomena never seemed to be accompanied by any other paranormal phenomena such as poltergeist activity. Their appearance or disappearance was always noted by one person only and then, according to social circumstances, confirmed by others. Jott disappearance was never consciously willed although reappearance was emotionally sought with variable success. The appearance of a completely new object or similar replacement object was always a complete surprise. Jinks is careful to point out that these shared characteristics do not prove that jotts occur beyond all possible doubt because for proof you need replicable scientific observation and tests of all the claimed variables. What they demonstrate is after every conceivable ‘normal’ explanation has been eliminated as inadequate to explain these experiences (and Jinks as a conscientious psychologist systematically examines every possible explanation you can think of, and some) then something is occurring that should not occur, and apparently cannot occur, but despite this does occur.

This being so, we need to look for an explanation which cannot be found within our mainstream scientific understanding of the physical world because the claimed occurrence of jott is denied in principle, let alone in practice. So, if the existence of jott occurrence is accepted, an interpretation of what we know about our relationship between ourselves and the apparently separate nature of the physical world that includes the possibility of jott phenomena must be sought. So how does Jinks attempt to explain how what is claimed to occur can actually occur?

For all practical purposes including scientific investigation we assume that we observe the external world and everything that we can see in it as existing in its own three-dimensional domain completely independent of ourselves. It just is, and we find that we are in consensual agreement with other people. Classical physics is in complete agreement with this view, but quantum physics sees reality very differently. For quantum physics the essential nature of the universe is considered to exist in an unobservable superposition of probability states known as the wave function that is ‘collapsed’ into a physical phenomenon either as a wave or particle when it interacts with a measuring device such as in the single or double slit experiment. Jinks calls this quantum level of universal reality the ‘pre-physical substrate’. In his final chapter he proposes that our consciousness acts as the mental measuring device that collapses the ‘pre-physical substrate’ into the world we see around us with all its three-dimensional properties. Observers do not create matter from nothing but rather imagine the conformation of matter from a quantum soup of vital ingredients – a ‘pre-physical substrate’. Presumably, every species performs this conformation according to their type of consciousness.

Jinks speculates that some ‘deeply fundamental process’ determines ‘what the world should look like from these ingredients’ and conscious observers are ‘merely carrying out the final act of realization’. He suggests that the consensual public space and all its objects are held in a steady perpetuity of observation by the massed conscious observations of those past or present, so an object such as a dinner menu, or car, road or building is incredibly unlikely to disappear back to its pre-physical substrate when not observed by someone as it is sustained in its consensual ‘multisensory landscape’, but the possibility of it doing so increases when an object’s continued existence in conscious reality is dependent upon only one or two consciousnesses to sustain it. The interactional consciousness/pre-physical substrate collapse into observed physical continuity is then much weaker than when sustained by massed consciousness. Sometimes, for unknown reasons, possible through unconscious motivational levels, the conscious support that maintains a particular object in observational reality inexplicably weakens and an object disappears from our personal reality back into its pre-physical substrate, creating the subsequent jott experience. The jottled object has then disappeared from everyone’s observation - it hasn’t been teleported anywhere, it no longer is. Later psychological changes may reverse this and the object reappears to the owner again as it was. Sometimes objects disappear permanently as Mark’s tv remotes seem to have done, but maybe they re-appeared elsewhere.

Readers must be warned that this is only my understanding of Jinks’s theory, and they really do need to read his two final chapters for a full exposition. The Wikipedia entry for ‘the von Neumann chain’ will take you straight into the quantum/consciousness debate. In his final chapter Jinks also makes the unexpected revelation that he is subject to a jott experience every few months hence his interest in the subject after he realised that there was no normal explanation for their occurrences. He gives three examples, much abridged here:

Suffering from a rib injury he was determined to play cricket the following weekend and practice with a bat during the week, but he did not possess a bat as he always borrowed one from the team kit. Returning home at 3pm that Saturday afternoon after watching his team play, he remembered that he had a ‘junior bat’ somewhere in the garage under loads of unsorted junk but decided to look for it another time. At 5pm he locked the house and with his family went to join a friend for a meal, returning home by car at 9pm. He unlocked the door and was first in. When he switched on the lounge light, he saw the ‘junior bat’ leaning against the bookcase. It was certainly not there when he went out and his family had definitely not looked for it. This, he suggests, was an appearance jott occasioned by his intention to practice batting.

One Wednesday evening he noticed that his wallet was missing from where he usually put it in a drawer with his glasses and keys. Sometimes he put it on the kitchen counter, or the dresser, or in the front zip of his work bag, or besides the bed, but it was in none of these places and he searched the house in vain both then and during Thursday when he was working from home. He cancelled his credit/debit cards and on Friday drove into town to get a new driver’s licence. Friday night is sports night for his boys so as this can get rather tense, he was in the habit of chewing gum to relieve parental stress. Reaching up into an overhead cupboard he took out some gum packets and had turned to clear up the kitchen counter when he heard his wife utter a gasp of surprise. She had opened the cupboard door a few seconds later to take some gum packets as well and there, on the shelf above the gum container, was his wallet. He could not have missed seeing it when he looked in because it was a large, fat, black leather wallet and the cupboard was white. It must have reappeared back into human observation in the few second interval between the two openings of the cupboard (I must add here that his wife must have searched as well, and as I have learned by experience over very many years - mother, wife and daughter- if a woman cannot find something it is definitely not there).

Early one Saturday morning he was repairing his front fence, intending to replace a section with new wire netting after first attaching new straining wire between the posts for which he had bought two new rolls now on the ground ready for use. He knew he had a used half roll somewhere in the garage but had not bothered to look for it. During the task he stopped to chat to a neighbour, being only some ten steps away and in full view of the fencing area. On his return he found both the shiny new rolls and the somewhat rusty half roll alongside which he eventually found that he needed to complete the task. It was not there - then it was there.

For sceptics (and I am still struggling) Barrington’s 185 cases and Jinks’ 385 cases add up to 570 anomalous experiences that require an explanation. Why? Because none of the usual explanations can adequately account for what these experients say happened to them when they were apparently in the same ordinary, everyday state of mind as that of the reader. None of them expected it, and as far as a disappearance is concerned, none of them wanted it. Jinks’ account is fully referenced by chapter, plus a bibliography and a very useful page index for every case discussed. This phenomenon, including the 52% prevalence indication, requires much more research, and I do recommend both Barrington’s book and this book, because together they provide a treasure trove of jott experiences that seem to have been overlooked by almost all parapsychologists.

PS
Now I don’t know what to think as of yesterday, Friday, 30th November (the detail is important). I have never had an ESP experience and have assumed that I am as psychic as a brick, but now? Apart from coming down to the kitchen for a mid morning mug of coffee I had spent the morning in my upstairs study working on this book review. At 1pm I decided to make a toasted cheese sandwich and, as usual, opened a kitchen drawer to take out my old fashioned and indispensable 11 inch long butter knife with its broad blade plus a shorter serrated knife to cut the cheese. I ate the sandwich (delicious, thank you) and drank my mug of tea while standing at the kitchen window looking at the garden and listening to the radio. I rinsed a plate and the two knives under the hot tap and put the knives back into the kitchen drawer. I went out during the afternoon and at about 6.30pm decided to do some roast potatoes with my dinner. I opened the knife drawer for the butter knife to take the beef dripping out of the jar, but although the serrated blade knife was there the butter knife was not. I searched the other kitchen drawers without success and, really exasperated, eventually had to use a spoon. While the potatoes were roasting, I did another thorough search of the kitchen and then went into the living room. My medium sized, oval dining table was, as usual, almost bare, having a newspaper on one leaf, my iPad on the other leaf, a box of tissues on a place mat in the middle and a couple of pens. All I added was a knife and fork, salt and pepper and dinner plate While eating my dinner seated at the middle of the table my iPad was about 18 inches to my left with nothing in between until I reached across the table with my left hand to pull the tissue box across. After my meal I cleared the table and moved the tissue box and place mat back together again.

During a 9pm commercial tv break I made a mug or tea and on my way back to my chair past the table I picked up the tissue box and at the same moment saw my butter knife roughly in the space that had been occupied by the tissue box during my meal. Before doing these two reviews I would just have wondered how the hell it had got there and how I could possibly have missed seeing it when it was so obvious. Now, I’m wondering if ...

References

Barrington, M. R. (1991). JOTT – Just One of Those Things. Psi Researcher 3, 5-6.
Barrington, M. R. (2018). JOTT. When Things Disappear... and Come Back or Relocate – and Why
    it Really Happens. San Antonio, TX: Anomalist Books.

Robert A. Charman can be reached at email: [e-mail]