时空跃迁，消失的物体现象：一项调查，托尼·金克斯 （Tony Jinks） 著

消失的物体现象：一项调查，托尼·金克斯 （Tony Jinks） 著
 
物体消失现象的封面

出版详情麦克法兰，ISBN：978-0786498604。 发布日期Thursday， 1 九月， 2016 - 12：00
 
由罗伯特·查曼 （Robert A. Charman） 

作者是澳大利亚西悉尼大学心理学高级讲师，也是澳大利亚超心理学杂志的顾问。他调查了大约 385 个关于意外消失、重新出现、首次出现或被另一个类似物体取代的小物体的个人描述。虽然“消失的物体现象”是他书的标题，但金克斯使用了玛丽·罗斯·巴林顿（Mary Rose Barrington，1991,2018）创造的术语来描述这种现象，即“jott”，如“Just One Of That Things”中关于这种莫名其妙的经历的评论，以及“jottle”和“jottling”指的是他们的异常行为。

这是他的开篇例子（略微缩写）：2008 年 8 月的一个晚上，凯特下班后开车回家，回到她位于郊区一条安静住宅街道上的小房子。她把车钥匙和其他钥匙都挂在同一个铃上，选好了前门钥匙，在电话响起的同一时刻打开了门。知道是谁后，她把门开着，放下包，跑到走廊里去接电话。打完电话后，她回去从门锁中取出钥匙环，拿起她的包。袋子在那里，里面的东西完好无损，但钥匙环不在那里。她找了又找，徒劳无功，最终得出结论，一定是有人进入了门廊并抢走了钥匙，尽管街道上空无一人，周围似乎也没有人。由于找不到它们，她面临着不方便且昂贵的业务，需要获得新车钥匙，更换前门、后门、车库和邮箱的锁，并为她的办公室剪下一把新钥匙。一年之内，她搬到另一个城市找了一份新工作，并在市中心附近购买并彻底翻新了一套公寓。一天晚上，她回到家，像往常一样把新钥匙放在走廊的抽屉里，然后走进卧室，却发现她的旧钥匙套在枕头上的同一枚戒指上。当她对金克斯说时，她感到“恶心和头晕”，因为在她不在的时候，没有其他人可以进入她的公寓。

他的第二个例子是 Mark，他坐在沙发上，旁边的靠垫上放着他的黑色大电视遥控器，当他的搭档 Courtney 在广告休息时间在厨房准备小吃时，他轻率地决定切换电视频道。当她回来时，她不太高兴，他急忙伸手去拿遥控器，想换回来，却发现遥控器不在那里。他们以为它一定是掉在沙发垫之间或地板上，徒劳无功，把沙发倒过来，甚至用手和膝盖在地板上爬来爬去。找不到它，马克又买了一台，但几周后，当 Courtney 外出时，他去了洗手间，回来时发现这个遥控器也消失了，尽管疯狂地寻找，但仍然消失了。那周晚些时候，他又买了一台遥控器，但几个月后，遥控器一夜之间消失了，这让他完全困惑，因为他清楚地记得自己在睡觉前把它放在了支架里。然后，他决定受够了，并进行了从沙发上站起来，通过电视控制改变频道和音量的健康运动。

经过多年对这些说法的个人调查，Jinks 决定这些意想不到的、不方便的和不受欢迎的物体消失，重新出现等不能归因于健忘、无意识的错位、错误的记忆、无意识的失明或知觉失明，同时对着眼前的物体思考其他事物、幻觉错误、自己或他人的故意欺骗、神游状态、意识状态改变等等。被反复和独立描述的东西似乎是一个真实的现象，尽管就科学和日常常识而言，它被认为是完全不可能的。

以巴灵顿对同一现象的大约 185 个案例的先前研究和分类为指导（有关她的分析和理论讨论的详细信息，请参阅我的书评）。Jinks 决定将他更大的数据库提交给一个彻底的统计、表格、分析，以分析最常涉及的对象，例如戒指、胸针和项链等珠宝、单个食品和饮料、钥匙、衣物、U 盘和“老鼠”等小型计算机物品;电视遥控器、梳子、刷子、发夹和镊子等美容用品、刀叉等厨房用具、手表、钱包、信用卡/借记卡、个人硬币、文具、小工具等。他发现，按照记事活动的顺序，最常见的行为是该物体的消失和随后的重新出现，通常是在同一个地方，但有时在房子的其他地方，一个无法解释的新物体的陌生外观，以及未被识别的类似类型的物体替换，有时是永久消失。

作为一般规则，最近处理对象并记录为丢失的对象越早，它返回的速度就越快，Kate 和 Mark 的经历是例外。金克斯还根据物品的货币或个人价值对斑驳的物品进行分类，并体验这种体验是一次性的，还是在数月或数年内重复出现。男性和女性总体上受到的影响似乎大致相同，但这个比例因物体类型而异，因此女性受到的影响比男性更大，例如，在珠宝方面。绝大多数 jott 体验者都是 20 多岁以上的成年人，就 Jinks 的判断而言，他们是普通的公众成员，对超心理学知之甚少或根本没有兴趣，对魔法现象没有信仰或实践，不知道这种经历发生在其他人身上，并且对自己的经历感到困惑，并且经常对自己的心理状态感到困惑和情绪不安。在教育水平或职业或职业类型与报告的发生频率之间没有发现显著差异。

至于 jott 现象的总体流行率，这 385 名体验者显然不是随机的，而是自我选择的，因为他们无法为自己的经历找到正常的解释，以至于他们回应了此类帐户的请求，并最终联系了 Jinks 或他联系了他们。这同样适用于向巴灵顿报告的 185 例病例。当 80 人在不知道研究目的的情况下自愿参加一项匿名调查，并被问及他们是否经历过诸如“行为异常的物体”之类的事件，如果有，他们的经历的性质是什么，结果完全出乎意料。据推测，此类案例很少（如果有的话）会被报告，但 42 部分ICIPANTS （52%） 报告有过记点心的经历（未发表的心理学研究生文凭）。这意味着，也许至少有一半的成年人经历过无法解释的物体消失、重现、出现或更换，当时他们莫名其妙地愤怒地认为“只是其中一件”，因为手头似乎没有其他解释，同时感觉到发生了真正神秘的事情。

对 jott 行为的分析表明，有几个特征适用于所有对象。他们要么在那里，要么完全不在那里，如果他们再次出现，他们和上次看到时一模一样。他们并没有淡入或消失。如果一把钥匙在消失之前有一块锈迹或略微弯曲，那么这就是它重新出现时的样子。他们从未消失或重新出现，或首次出现，或作为丢失物品的明显替代品出现。突然间，他们就出现在了众目睽睽之下。Jott 现象似乎从未伴随着任何其他超自然现象，例如闹鬼活动。他们的出现或消失总是只由一个人注意到，然后根据社会环境，由其他人确认。乔特的消失从来都不是有意识的，尽管在情感上寻求重新出现并取得了不同的成功。一个全新的物体或类似的替代物体的出现总是一个完全的惊喜。Jinks 小心翼翼地指出，这些共同特征并不能证明 jotts 的发生是毫无疑问的，因为要证明，你需要对所有声称的变量进行可复制的科学观察和测试。他们所证明的是，在每一个可以想象的 “正常 ”解释都被排除在外，因为不足以解释这些经历（而金克斯作为一个尽职尽责的心理学家，系统地研究了你能想到的每一个可能的解释，还有一些），那么一些事情正在发生，这些事情不应该发生，而且显然不可能发生，但尽管如此，这确实发生了。

既然如此，我们需要寻找一种在我们对物理世界的主流科学理解中找不到的解释，因为声称的 jott 的发生原则上被否认，更不用说在实践中了。因此，如果接受 jott 发生的存在，就必须寻求对我们所知道的我们自己与物理世界明显独立的性质（包括 jott 现象的可能性）之间的关系的解释。那么，金克斯是如何试图解释声称发生的事情实际上是如何发生的呢？

出于所有实际目的，包括科学调查，我们假设我们观察外部世界和我们在其中能看到的一切，都存在于它自己的三维领域中，完全独立于我们自己。事实就是如此，我们发现我们与其他人达成了共识。经典物理学完全同意这一观点，但量子物理学对现实的看法却截然不同。对于量子物理学来说，宇宙的本质被认为是存在于一种不可观察的概率态叠加中，这种概率态被称为波函数，当它与测量设备相互作用时，它会以波或粒子的形式“坍缩”成一种物理现象，例如在单体中。E 或双缝实验。Jinks 将普遍现实的这种量子水平称为“前物理基底”。在他的最后一章中，他提出我们的意识充当心理测量装置，将“前物理基质”坍缩到我们看到的周围世界及其所有三维特性中。观察者不是从无到有创造物质，而是从重要成分的量子汤中想象物质的构象——“前物理基底”。据推测，每个物种都根据他们的意识类型来执行这种构象。

金克斯推测，一些“深层次的基本过程”决定了“从这些成分来看世界应该是什么样子”，而有意识的观察者“只是在进行实现的最后行动”。他认为，双方同意的公共空间及其所有对象都由对过去或现在的集体有意识的观察保持着稳定的永久观察，因此，诸如晚餐菜单、汽车、道路或建筑物之类的物体，如果不被某人观察，就极不可能消失回其前物理基质，因为它是在其共识的“多感官景观”中维持的。 但是，当一个物体在有意识的现实中的持续存在仅依赖于一两个意识来维持它时，它这样做的可能性就会增加。互动意识/前物理基础坍缩成观察到的物理连续性，比由集体意识维持时要弱得多。有时，由于未知的原因，可能是通过无意识的动机水平，在观察现实中维持特定对象的有意识支持莫名其妙地减弱，一个对象从我们的个人现实中消失，回到其前物理基质中，创造了随后的 jott 体验。然后，这个斑驳的物体就从所有人的视线中消失了——它没有被传送到任何地方，现在已经不是了。后来的心理变化可能会逆转这一点，物体会再次以原样出现在主人面前。有时物体会像 Mark 的电视遥控器一样永久消失，但也许它们会重新出现在其他地方。

必须警告读者，这只是我对金克斯理论的理解，他们确实需要阅读他的最后两章才能得到完整的阐述。维基百科上关于“冯·诺依曼链”的条目将带您直接进入量子/意识的争论。在他的最后一章中，金克斯还意外地透露，他每隔几个月就会经历一次 jott 经历，因此在他意识到这些事件没有正常的解释后，他对这个主题产生了兴趣。他举了三个例子，这里有很多删节：

由于肋骨受伤，他决定在接下来的周末打板球，并在一周内用球棒练习，但他没有球棒，因为他总是从球队的球衣中借来一根。那个星期六下午 3 点，在观看了他的球队比赛后回到家，他想起他在车库的某个地方有一只“初级球棒”，里面有一大堆未分类的垃圾，但决定下次再找一次。下午 5 点，他锁上了房子，和家人一起去和朋友一起吃饭，晚上 9 点开车回家。他打开了门，第一个进来了。当他打开休息室的灯时，他看到“少年蝙蝠”靠在书架上。它肯定不存在当他出去时，他的家人肯定没有找过。他认为，这是他打算练习击球而引起的一次出场。

一个星期三的晚上，他注意到他的钱包不见了，他通常把钱包和眼镜和钥匙放在抽屉里。有时他把它放在厨房的台面上，或者梳妆台上，或者放在他工作包的前拉链上，或者放在床边，但它都没有出现在这些地方，他在那时和星期四在家工作时，都徒劳地搜查了房子。他取消了信用卡/借记卡，并于周五开车进城领取新的驾照。周五晚上是他儿子们的运动之夜，所以这可能会变得相当紧张，他有嚼口香糖来缓解父母压力的习惯。他把手伸进一个高架橱柜里，拿出一些口香糖包，转身去收拾厨房的柜台，这时他听到他的妻子发出了惊讶的喘息声。几秒钟后，她打开了橱柜的门，也拿了一些口香糖包，在口香糖容器上方的架子上，放着他的钱包。他进头看的时候不可能错过它，因为那是一个又大又胖的黑色皮钱包，橱柜是白色的。它一定是在橱柜的两个开口之间的几秒钟内重新出现在人类的观察中（我必须在这里补充一点，他的妻子肯定也搜索过，正如我根据多年经验了解到的那样——母亲、妻子和女儿——如果一个女人找不到什么东西，那肯定不存在）。

一个星期六的清晨，他正在修理他的前围栏，打算用新的铁丝网替换一段，因为他首先在柱子之间连接了新的拉紧线，为此他买了两卷新的铁丝网，现在在地上准备使用。他知道他在车库的某个地方有一把用过的半卷，但懒得去找。在任务期间，他停下来与邻居聊天，当时他离他只有十几步远，而且可以看到围栏区。回来后，他发现了闪亮的新卷和有点生锈的半卷，他最终发现他需要完成任务。它不存在 - 然后它就在那里。

对于怀疑论者来说（我仍在挣扎），Barrington 的 185 个案例和 Jinks 的 385 个案例加起来有 570 个异常经历需要解释。为什么？因为没有一个通常的解释能够充分解释这些经验者所说的发生在他们身上的事情，而他们显然与读者处于相同的普通日常心理状态。他们都没有预料到，就失踪而言，他们都不想要。Jinks 的叙述按章节完整引用，并为讨论的每个案例提供了参考书目和非常有用的页面索引。这种现象，包括 52% 的患病率指标，需要更多的研究，我确实推荐 Barrington 的书和这本书，因为它们共同提供了一个似乎被几乎所有超心理学家忽视的 jott 经验宝库。

PS
现在我不知道截至昨天，11 月 30 日星期五该怎么想（细节很重要）。我从来没有过 ESP 的经历，并认为我就像一块砖头一样通灵，但现在呢？除了早上来到厨房喝杯咖啡外，我还花了一上午的时间在楼上的书房里写这本书呃。下午 1 点，我决定做一个烤奶酪三明治，像往常一样，打开厨房抽屉，拿出我那把老式的、必不可少的 11 英寸长黄油刀，刀刃宽大，外加一把较短的锯齿刀来切奶酪。我吃了三明治（很好吃，谢谢你），站在厨房的窗户前看着花园，听着收音机，喝了一杯茶。我在热水龙头下冲洗了一个盘子和两把刀，然后将刀放回厨房抽屉。我下午出去了，大约在下午 6 点 30 分决定在晚餐时做一些烤土豆。我打开了黄油刀的刀抽屉，把从罐子里滴出来的牛肉拿出来，但是虽然锯齿刀在那儿，黄油刀却不在。我搜索了厨房的其他抽屉但没有成功，真的很生气，最终不得不使用勺子。当土豆烤着时，我又彻底搜查了厨房，然后走进了客厅。像往常一样，我的中等大小的椭圆形餐桌几乎光秃秃的，一页叶子上放着报纸，另一页叶子上放着我的 iPad，中间的餐垫上放着一盒纸巾，还有几支笔。我只添加了一把刀叉、盐和胡椒粉和餐盘。当我坐在桌子中间吃晚饭时，我的 iPad 在我左侧大约 18 英寸处，中间什么都没有，直到我用左手伸过桌子，把纸巾盒拉过来。饭后，我清理了桌子，将纸巾盒和垫子又移回了一起。

在晚上 9 点的商业电视休息时间，我泡了一杯或茶，在经过桌子回到椅子上的路上，我拿起了纸巾盒，同时看到我的黄油刀粗略地停在我吃饭时纸巾盒所占据的空间里。在做这两篇评论之前，我只是想知道它到底是怎么走到这一步的，以及我怎么可能在它如此明显的时候错过了看到它。现在，我在想是否......

参考资料

Barrington， M. R. （1991）。JOTT – 只是其中之一。灵能研究员 3， 5-6.
巴灵顿，MR（2018 年）。记。当事物消失时...和 Come Back or Relocation – 以及
它为什么真的发生。德克萨斯州圣安东尼奥：Anomalist Books。

您可以通过以下电子邮件联系 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]