Category: Blog

As I write this, it’s challenging to realize it’s late October. In contrast with the photo above, coastal Maine (USA) has had temperatures near 80F.

The big holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s) will soon be here, and I’m not even close to being prepared for them.

Of course, 2024 has been a year of changes.

GOOGLE CHANGES THE GAME?

Google is leaning into their own AI answers to questions and topics entered into the search engine.

That means less traffic to websites, including mine.

After all, why would anyone keep looking for answers, if it seems like Google’s AI told them what they wanted to know? (Rhetorical question, but also highlights how search engines can effectively mute websites, and most people won’t care.)

Will people switch to DuckDuckGo, or ChatGPT’s search option? Or, will they go to Perplexity, which—while skeptical in tone—usually links to its sources?

I’m not sure.  I’m hoping for a resurgence of personal websites. But, for most people with time constraints, AI may be the short-term answer.

I’m considering all of this as we approach 2025.

BOOKS AND WEBSITES

I was trying to complete one more book for Halloween since my books are most popular at this time of year.

However, with just a few chapters written and a two-inch, overflowing stack of printouts filled with reference materials, that’s not going to happen.

Also, I was trying to restore the Mandela Effect website and update it and moderate comments again. (Update: As of December 2024, I’ve decided that – for me – it’s not a worthwhile use of my resources.)

SOCIAL MEDIA?

Seeing more weird Facebook decisions, I no longer feel that being banned from the site is personal or even makes sense. Either their management is making odd choices, or their AI isn’t as astute as it should be… or both.

What happened to me at Facebook is similar to what – as I’m updating this in early November – seems to be happening to friends at other AI-managed sites, including Etsy.

This is troubling, and I’m not sure where it leads. I find the Neo-Luddite topic interesting. It’s not always practical or apparently (?) sensible, but interesting. The anti-social network in NYC may be extreme, but I applaud their efforts to minimize the damage caused by excessive reliance on social media, etc.

I started a Substack to see how I liked it, and if friends would find and follow me there.

My conclusion: For my purposes, Substack is a bit clunky and inconvenient. I’ve phased it out.

NEXT…

I’m taking a break. In the U.S., in addition to having a typically busy year, I’m feeling the same election fatigue many others are.

For me, the answer is to step back and pursue my favorite hobbies and interests, which happen to include researching history related to “haunted” places.

I’m also fascinated by Graham Hancock’s history series on Netflix.

With other interests singing a siren song, I’d already announced that I’m semi-retired… from topics I’m best known for, anyway.

• The Mandela Effect is a fun, intriguing topic, and I’m pleased that I was able to popularize it. However, as of December 2024, I’ve lost interest in maintaining the site and staying current with comments.
• As time (and mood) permits, I’d like to turn more of my ghost-related research papers and website articles into topic-specific books.

Frankly, I’m ready to pursue other interests, or at least shift my focus related to favorite topics.

It might be artistic photography at haunted sites. Or, it might be trekking to quirky historical and archaeological sites, with or without ghosts.

Or… I’m not sure yet.

Meanwhile, I wish you a wonderful holiday season and thank you for your continued interest and support. The friendships made during the past couple of decades have meant the world to me.

I hope our paths cross again in the future.

This week, someone – yet again – asked me why people like me won’t declare that the Mandela Effect always reflects false memories.

Here’s my lightly edited (and perhaps redundant) reply to that comment.

(I’m placing it here so – hopefully – it’s more visible to casual researchers. Or, at the very least, I can link to it and quit using valuable time, repeating myself.  It seems so surreal that 15 years after I began talking about the Mandela Effect, there’s still so much confusion about its origins.)

Regarding the Mandela Effect:

According to some—and at apparently opposing poles—there are those who want to believe that everything that doesn’t match their memories is best explained as a changed/parallel reality.

At the other extreme, others want to insist that all conflicting memories are best explained as “false” memories.

(Yes, Wikipedia—which once had a dedicated Mandela Effect page— now labels all related phenomena as “false memories.”)

Personally, I’m somewhere between those two.

That is, I’ve seen logical explanations—usually commonplace confusions— for some alternate memories.

For example, if someone’s mom or grandfather kept calling the peanut butter brand’s name “Jiffy” (instead of “Jif”) when the child was a toddler, that name may be what they recall.

That’s especially true if the family switched to Skippy (brand name) peanut butter by the time the child could read, and—since then—the child (now an adult) never paid close attention to other brands of peanut butter… until someone in a forum mentioned the Jif/Jiffy conundrum.

I always advocate fact-checking an alternate memory, when possible.

However, in my own case, I have yet to find any multi-day, televised funeral (and its immediate aftermath) that fits the time frame and context of my Mandela-related memory.

Since my family moved every three years or so, I have a clear time frame for the memory. That makes fact-checking far simpler.

I also recall several specific images, from the slow movement of the hearse with crowds lining the streets, to the widow walking towards a podium beneath a huge tree, leaning heavily on her bodyguard’s arm.

In addition, it was a time when my family was experimenting with a “no TV” rule.

So, unless I was watching a specific, scheduled TV show, there was no channel surfing.

If the show I planned to watch wasn’t actually on—as in this case, since it was preempted—I quickly turned off the TV.

That’s why this memory is fairly clear: I was irked that my intended early morning entertainment wasn’t on at its usual scheduled time.

I still don’t have an explanation for the memory. People have suggested that the funeral was Stephen Biko’s, but he died in 1977. It doesn’t fit my history at all, and I doubt that his funeral received three days of daytime coverage in the U.S.

Even now, I can’t find a South African funeral for someone else, so significant his funeral would preempt American TV programs for three days, within my memory’s time frame.

What I also can’t explain are the reports by others—many hidden (by request) from view—that matched precise details of the funeral that I’ve never made public.

And, since I could see their IP numbers, they appeared to be in very different parts of the country.

Note: Yes, I’m aware of IP spoofing, etc. Starting around 2012, trolls were a steady problem at my original Mandela Effect (dot com) site. Every comment was moderated before the public saw it, and I did my best to be sure most comments were authentic.

So, it’s possible that those comments may have been made by people who – like my family – had moved since the years of the funeral that I recall. And we all saw the same erroneously displayed TV coverage.

However, the volume of those reports makes it unlikely that, for multiple days, a local channel (to me, at the time) was (mistakenly?) running a replay of the Biko funeral… and that we all saw it.

That’s why I don’t see the Mandela Effect as either straightforward or a dichotomy. However, I have nothing to prove and – in fact – freely admit that I have no proof to support my assertions. I’ve said that repeatedly.

If you’re more comfortable with a simple A/B answer for the Mandela Effect, and it works for you, that’s fine.

However, it doesn’t work for me.

We can agree to disagree.

If you’ve recently discovered the Mandela Effect, here’s a one-minute summary of what it is… and isn’t.

Note: As an author and Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

___

This should be clear: The term “Mandela Effect” describes the phenomenon, not an explanation of it.

When a reporter or blogger claims the Mandela Effect is a “theory,” they haven’t done their homework.

Likewise, when the Mandela Effect is brushed off as “false memories,” the person is — perhaps conveniently — missing the point.

And they’re insulting our intelligence at the same time.

Yes, some odd memories can be explained as false memories. With a little research, you may be able to find where the mistake happened.

(If it’s a false memory, it’s not the Mandela Effect; it’s a false memory.)

But many people’s first-person stories about the Mandela Effect aren’t so easy to dismiss.

What’s not the Mandela Effect

Everyone has had a moment (or two or three) where they said, “Wait… I really believed [something] was real.”

That “something” could be a small incident, or it might be something big and troubling.

For example, an early, possibly traumatic moment may have been discovering that Santa Claus doesn’t deliver gifts on Christmas Eve after all.

At the other end of the spectrum, there’s the frustration of thinking you left your car keys or the TV/streaming remote in a certain location… but it’s not there when you look.

Those aren’t the kinds of beliefs and memories we’d describe as the Mandela Effect.

Likewise, there are assorted other reasonable explanations for conflicts between what a person remembers and what actually happened.

Ruling out obvious answers

Here are some commonplace explanations for “different” memories of the past:

• • Faulty news reporting
  • Jokes that were taken seriously
  • Hyperbole by those who like to stir up drama
  • What some scientists term the “broken telephone effect” refers to a party game (sometimes just called “telephone”).

Those are part of everyday life. When we find a reasonable explanation among them, we’re unlikely to think about our mistaken memories again.

In other words, if there’s a clear, sensible answer to our past confusion or misunderstanding, it’s not the Mandela Effect.

Most of us recognize that.

We do our homework. We fact-check our recall and our memories.

That’s common sense.

If all the answers were simple, I wouldn’t have started the Mandela Effect website.

Once the novelty of a personal, baffling memory wears off, many of us keep looking for answers. That was—and still is—the reason for the Mandela Effect website.

At first, I hoped others might offer a simple explanation for my memories of Nelson Mandela’s funeral. (So far, no easy answer has been a match to what I recall.)

Then, when more memories—different from recorded history—emerged, the Mandela Effect became really interesting.

And fun.

Meanwhile…

I’m unsure whether I should feel sorry for those who choose the simple “false memories” explanation.

They’re missing the intrigue of exploring a wealth of evidence, such as credible 19th-century doppelgänger reports, that may point to parallel realities and Many Interacting Worlds.

For me, that’s the fun part of Mandela Effect speculation and research.

Yes, for those who rush to simplistic answers, perhaps life may be complex and challenging enough.

That’s okay. They have my sympathy, and—really—I have nothing to prove.

However, I’m irked when small, vocal groups of critics (and reporters rushing to meet a deadline) suggest that we’re not bright enough to fact-check our own memories. Or throw other badly flawed accusations at us.

My message to them is this: Attempting to brush aside the Mandela Effect as “false memories” will not make science vanish.

(After all, 19th and 20th-century efforts to ignore quantum physics merely delayed its inevitable emergence as a serious study affecting everyday life and perceptions.)

I applaud those who continue to seek answers to the curious aspects of the Mandela Effect.

And I’d really like the insulting rhetoric to cease.

---

[This rant was expanded from part of a longer article that appeared on my Mandela Effect website.]