One night in June 1950 an oddly dressed man Square in New York City -- which eventually led to the most baffling mystery in the history of the New York Police Department.
Captain Hubert V. Rihm was in the Missing Persons Bureau at the time, and took an active part in the investigation. He is now retired and since he does not have the records in his possession, could not quote exact dates and addresses in all instances. He did, however, remember the main details. It was somewhere near the middle of the month, about 11:15 P.M., right at the height of the after theatre traffic rush.
The man appeared be about 30 years of age. His most noticeable features, aside from his clothing, was a luxuriant set of mutton-chop whiskers, which went out of style many years ago. He wore a high silk hat, a coat with cloth covered buttons at the back, and a high cut vest with lapels. The trousers were black and white checked material, rather tight, without cuffs and pressed without a crease. He wore high button shoes.
No one saw his walk out into the street. Witnesses first noticed him standing in the middle of the intersection "gawking at the signs as if he'd never seen an electric sign before". Then he seemed to become aware of the traffic and began to make frantic movements to dodge out of it. The police officer at the corner saw him and started out to lead him to safety. Before he could reach him the man made a sudden dash for the curb. A taxicab hit him, and he was dead when they picked him up.
The attendants the morgue took the whiskers and the clothing in their stride. One meets some odd characters during 20 or 30 on the force, some of them much odder than he. When they began to search his pockets, their brows began to wrinkle, "One brass slug good for one 5 cent beer". The name of the saloon was unfamiliar even to the old timers, "One bill from a livery stable on Lexington Ave.: 'To the feeding and stabling of one, horse, and the washing of one carriage; $3.00′" The name of the stable did not appear in the directory. "About $70 in currency, all old style notes, and including two gold certificates." "Cards bearing the name 'Rudolph Fentz' and an address on Fifth Ave., with a letter to the same name and address, postmarked in Philadelphia June 1876." None of the items showed any signs of age.
The Fifth Ave, address was a store. So far as the present [16] occupants knew, it had always been a store. None of them had ever heard of "Rudolph Fentz". The name did not appear in the directory. A finger print check, both in New York and Washington, brought no results. No one ever called, or made enquiries at the morgue. Capt. Rihm continued to investigate the case. He checked back thru old phone books, looking for the name "Fentz". Finally, in the 1939 directory, he found a "Rudolph Fentz, Jr." with an uptown apartment address. They remembered Fentz at the apartment: a man in his 60s, who worked at a nearby bank. He had retired in 1940 and moved away. They had not heard from him since.
At the bank, Rihm learned that Fentz had died about 5 years before, but that his widow was still alive in Florida. In reply to Rihm's letter, she said that her husband's father had mysteriously disappeared sometime during the spring of 1876. It seems that Mrs. Fentz, Sr. didn't like to have him smoke in the house. She thought it smelled up the curtains. So it had been his custom to go out for a walk every evening about 10 and enjoy a final cigar before retiring. One night he went out as usual and never returned. The family spent quite a bit of money trying to find him but he was never seen or heard of again.
Capt. Rim found Rudolph Fentz listed in the "Missing Persons" file for 1876. The address given was the same as that appearing on the cards and letter, so the place was evidently a private residence at that time. He was 29 years of age, and wore mutton chop whiskers. The description of the clothing which he was wearing when last seen agreed exactly with that worn by the mysterious traffic victim. The case was still listed as "unsolved".
Captain Rim never wrote the results of his private investigations into the official records. He didn't dare! They'd have had him in the "nut factory" for a mental checkup in nothing flat! After all, a man can't just walk out into thin air in 1876 and then suddenly turn up, unchanged in any way, 74 years later! No one would believe a tale like that. He didn't believe it himself, "but -- give me some other explanation which will make sense."
NOT THIN AIR BUT A FOURTH DIMENSIONAL PORTAL!
From Holland's "A Voice In The Gallery", No. 4, 1953 until March 1969, we had to wait for the occult explanation of the Fentz disappearance and reappearance. Marian Hartill was the channel, Myron the communicating Teacher.
"I see you wish information as to what exactly happens when humans suddenly disappear from the Earth without a trace being found of remains. This is a very common occurrence, more common than is ever accepted; for in this day and age family ties are not as they once were and people travel far and wide.
"Picture if you will two large spheres or balls one within the other, the inner smaller being the 3rd Dimension, and the larger outer sphere being the 4th Dimension. Now imagine that both of [17] these globes have been punched with holes, some very large and others very small. These two balls are constantly turning so as to make these holes both big and small come in direct line with each other at one time or another as the Earth surface or inner globe turns.
THROUGH THE VEIL
"These holes are thinly covered with a vapor -- like a sheer curtain hung over the opening -- that has a very solid appearance but which is nothing more than a flap of vapor-like energy reflecting the true solid material on either side of it. This is why people are completely unaware of anything being amiss until they have passed through this vapor illusion and find themselves unable to find the hole back through; for remember that these holes are slowly turning and it is only seconds before the entrance is again overlapped.
"The human finding himself in a vapor-like vacuum of 4-D atmosphere is in a state of shock and confusion. He can't find his way back through these moving holes and he cannot see where he is to get any bearings as to how to attract help. He will on most occasions die quickly of fright, but many have been seen to live in a stupor-like state, calling and calling for their relatives and friends for help."
One of the best examples of this out of borderland literature is David Lang, a Tennessee farmer. On Sent. 23, 1880 he was walking across one of his fields, in full view of his wife and two children at the house, and of two friends in a buggy on the approach road, when he disappeared before their eyes. There was no cover or concealment possible in the flat, open, grassy field, overlaying a solid understructure of limestone. No physical trace of him was ever found, though his children claimed they could hear their father calling them from that general area, in an ever fainter and fainter voice for two or three weeks afterward.
"It is rare," wrote Myron of the Ashtar Command through Marian Hartill, "when these holes between the 3rd and 4th Dimension realign themselves so a human or a ship or plane can escape out by the same manner it entered," and one such example was the Spanish soldier walking guard duty in Manila, Philippine Islands the night of Oct. 24, 1593. He must have walked into one of these 3-D-4-D portals, and out another one; for the next thing he knew he was walking down a street in Mexico City, and it was the morning of Oct. 25th! With him he brought the news that the Governor of the Philippines was dead. The Mexican authorities could only throw him in jail as a deserter, and hold him, until the news of the Governor's death did reach Mexico City weeks later. The case would have been lost to history if the Holy Office of the Inquisition hadn't taken an interest in it and made it a matter of record. The man's claim to have been on guard duty in Manila was supported by sworn testimony from that city, also his sudden and inexplicable disappearance. He was wearing the uniform of his PI regiment; so [18] there was nothing to do but accept the fact of the situation and ship him back to his outfit, a 9,000 mile journey which he had previously made in the time "it takes a cock to crow".
ETHERIC "NO-MAN'S-LAND"
"There is a very real no-man's-land between the two Dimensions," continued Myron, "and if one were truly clairvoyant they would see right through these revolving holes as they turn. This is one of the reasons people claim to see events of the past played before their eyes only to quickly fade in a few minutes; for the two spheres have turned so as to close the openings where the scene was being re-played on the spirit side by Earthbound entities.
"What happens to the bodies? Of these unlucky beings who vanish? They die, or wander in shock, growing weaker and weaker. This enveloping fog-like vapor takes care of the tissue and bone unless negative scavengers have found it first and use its life forces for their own purposes.
"We have seen strongly religious people stumble into these openings, and we find that their auric-field takes on a radiant protective shell that while it does not solve their dilemma it does attract spiritual workers who are able to ease their panic, and they are protected from the dark forces that would vampirize them.
"There are spots all over the Earth where these holes align themselves with regularity (in the Bermuda Triangle for instance?). Many are in thinly populated areas or over your vast ocean stretches. This accounts for ships often sailing right through one hole and out another, while the crews are never found; for often they are seized with complete panic and jump off the ship into the vacuum; while if they had stayed with the ship they would perhaps have sailed out another hole back onto the 3-D surface. The time elapse could be minutes or weeks, depending on how long it. took for another hole to align itself with their position.
"Atmospheric changes are causing the space between these two spheres to be push-pulled. This causes uncanny events to happen all over the surface of the Earth. There is a kind of a suction or pull when two holes become lined up. Now, as never Before, hold tight to that Lantern within which contains the protective, CHRIST LIGHT."
Well, students of the Mysteries, here's another working hypothesis to explain teleportation: The 3-D-4-D Portals and their random effects. If we are going to use it to explain Rudolph Fentz's disappearance in New York City in 1876, and reappearance there in 1950, we are going to stretch it beyond Myron's outline; for Fentz showed no loss of vitality or youth in 74 years of earth time while parked in the 4th Dimension!
Another Voice From The Gallery is Vincent Gaddis, BSRAssociate and author of "Invisible Horizons". Vince and his wife Margaret have collaborated on another excellent borderland book, "The Strange World of Animals and Pets". We have this choice item from them to [19] round out our story and confound the academic flatheads.
"THEY NEVER FOUND HIM"
"In the summer of 1927 I lived in a Los Angeles court. The landlord was a plaster contractor. He had in his employ a young man about 23 years old. On a Saturday the young man said he guessed he would go to Catalina. He would not take his pay until Monday, he might spend too much or lose some of it.
"Come Sunday morning, bright and sunny, the Catalina steamer 'Avalon' left Long Beach at its regular time about 10:30. Santa Catalina island is some 30 miles off the So Cal coast and Angelinos are proud of saying that on a clear day you can see it from the mainland. Well, that day you could. As a matter of fact the Coast Guard was looking at it, the steamer, I mean. She was about half-way across the channel, loaded with some 40 or 50 pleasure-seekers, and, as the guardsman later testified, he was watching her through binoculars.
"'She was all right, nothing wrong. One second I saw her that way, the next I couldn't see her at all!'
"Nor could the guards at Avalon on the other side. Upon losing sight of the steamer, coast guard boats lost no time in converging upon the scene where they last saw the ship. The water was calm and untroubled, no floating debris, no people, no oil, no signs of explosion. Just plain nothing. In the days and weeks that followed they searched the coast up and down and all around the island, too. Then they dredged the channel. But as far as I know there was never a shred of anything found from the boat. The young man never came back to work; nor did he come to collect his pay. His relatives eventually came searching, but they never found him.
"Then, about 20 years later, I read about a report made by the commander of a submarine that was making its way along the coast toward San Diego. He reported seeing an old-fashioned steamer cruising along, smoke issuing from her funnels; but not only was the ship odd looking but it was traveling in the wrong place, out of the regular passenger lanes. The name on her side was 'Avalon'. But search ships failed to find this one."
Mebbe the sub commander caught a replay of the tragedy in the mind of one of the earthbound victims, twenty years later, through the temporary alignment of a 3-D-4-D Portal in the area.
***
An Eskimo Medicine Man told it to Hans Ruesch: "The God of the white man is jealous, selfish, and greedy because the White man are jealous, selfish, and greedy. The White man's religion is designed to restrain the wickedness of a very wicked people -- and a people exceedingly afraid of dying. Their love of their God has been built upon their fear of death. Each tribe has the God it deserves. Gods are made in the image of those who believe in them . . ."
The story of time displaced Rudolph Fentz presented above was, in fact, a retelling by Ralph "Rolf Telano" Holland (1899-1962) of Jack Finney's "I'm Scared" from Collier's (September 15, 1951) -- a fictional story presenting the anecdotes of a nameless narrator who fears man of the "present" will cause the time barrier to break, bringing about chaos as all events flow into one. Holland's Fentz story, widely thought to have been a true case among some fringe sources, was very thoroughly investigated (and debunked) by Fortean researcher Chris Aubeck of the Magoniax Project. As ever, we caution that you remain vigilant, always keep your eyes open, and tread lightly when walking through the borderland -- you never know what you might step in. ~ Ed. in year 2014 (or so he hopes).
References
- Finney, Jack. "I'm Scared." Collier's 15 September 1951:24-25, 78-81. Print. [Digital: <http://web.archive.org/[...]/col510915024.htm>; digital (PDF): <http://www.unz.org/Pub/Colliers-1951sep15>]
- Gaddis, Vincent H. Invisible Horizons. New York: Ace Books, 1965. Print. <http://amzn.to/UC8lLN>
- Gaddis, Vincent H, and Margaret Gaddis. The Strange World of Animals and Pets. New York: Cowles Book, 1970. Print. <http://amzn.to/1o5NRWZ>