"STRANGE TALES: WHICH ONE IS FALSE" > Page 1, 2, 3
Story 3: The Uninvited Guest
Many people experience what they consider ghostly activity - unexplained noises, lights switched off and on and missing objects. More rare are actual apparitions. But rarest of all are ghosts that appear so real that they cannot be distinguished from living persons.
This remarkable case took place in 1977 in a Finnish home. The woman who reported this story tells how she was hostessing a reception in her Helsinki apartment for a friend who had just been honored with a doctorate. About 60 people were invited as guests to the celebration. One guest at the party, however, was not on the guest list. The hostess noticed a woman among the guests whom she did not recognize. She was dressed in clothing and shoes that were conspicuously out of date, and did not appear to have brought a coat, which seemed odd because of the very cold weather. This out-of-place-looking woman seemed to be accompanying one of the professors, so the hostess assumed she was his wife or friend.
During the course of the party, the hostess was somewhat surprised when this woman came into the kitchen and offered to help. The hostess declined her kind offer, and the woman seemed to return to the party. But she was never seen again. The hostess inquired about the strange woman among several of her guests, but no one else claimed to have seen her.
The mystery woman remained a puzzlement to the hostess for three years - until she by chance came across a magazine article. The article profiled a painter by the name of Meri Genetz, who had died 34 years previously in 1943. The magazine article included one of Genetz's self portraits as well as a photograph of the artist, whom the hostess immediately recognized as the uninvited guest to her reception. As it turned out, Genetz had once lived in that very apartment. Moreover, she had a deep interest in spiritualism and had even conducted séances there. It seems she had returned to her old apartment to prove survival after death.
Story 4: A Rip in Time
Travels across time and space have been the subjects of many science fiction stories, but momentary glimpses into other times have also been reported as quite real by those who have experienced this unsettling phenomenon.
One intriguing case involved a country physician named Dr. Edward Gibson Moon. Sometime in the 1930s, the prominent British doctor was one day attending to one of his most important patients, Lord Edward Carson, at the lord's home on the Isle of Thanet. Lord Carson was quite ill and Dr. Moon visited him nearly every day. On this occasion, the doctor was standing at the top of the steps on the front of the lord's house. There was a curved driveway, the ends of which opened to a country road, and a high hedge ran along that road in front of the house.
Dr. Moon was deeply considering his patient's case when he happened to glance up to a strange scene. Somehow the hedge was gone, and there was no road where there should have been one. Bewildered, the doctor could distinguish nothing familiar about the scene before him. He then noticed a man walking up a muddy path toward the house. The stranger was dressed in clothing from the late 17th or early 18th century - breeches, riding boots, a caped overcoat and a hat all from that period - and carrying a flintlock rifle. The doctor watched this man from another time in astonishment. And then the man looked over and seemed to see the doctor. He stopped and stared back at the doctor, as if trying to figure out what he was seeing.
Dr. Moon, trying to orient himself to the situation, turned briefly to see if Lord Carson's house was still behind him. It was, but when he turned back to the time-lost man, he was gone - and the familiar scene of the lord's grounds had returned.
Dr. Moon has told of this
story of briefly seeing into the past, and we have to wonder if the traveler on
the muddy path told anyone of his strange vision. 
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