February 8
Human Spontaneous Involuntary Invisibility:
At Last! An Explanation for Why I Can't Get My Dog to Do Anything

While researching my favorite cause of death, spontaneous human combustion (SHC), I ran across the website of Donna Higbee, CHT. My reaction was one of envy. Here was a woman, ostensibly a woman anyway, whose subtle sense of humor and attention to detail rivaled, nay, exceeded, my own. She had taken SHC to the next logical step: Human Spontaneous Involuntary Invisibility. Which, I imagined, was not like Human Spontaneous Voluntary Invisibility. And the picture of Donna! No doubt this photo of a paragon of normalcy was the author's sister in a 1976 photo taken for her sorority. Oh, God, why hadn't I thought of that? And she had a title--Donna had letters after her name: Donna Higbee, CHT.

We're not worthy! Donna wrote:

In the summer of 1994, I became aware of a very strange phenomenon, human spontaneous involuntary invisibility, which was apparently happening to people in the U.S. When I checked with other researchers and discovered that a number of them had also heard of such cases, I decided to place an inquiry letter in several well-known journals, asking other researchers and the general public if they had any experiences of this nature that they would like to share with me. Besides the publication of my inquiry letter, my inquiry was placed on several Internet bulletin boards. The letters began pouring in, giving me a broader picture of this phenomenon. I want to share a few stories with you and pass on some of the information I have come across during this past year.

Why had I not heard of Donna? If her gift for tongue-in-cheek had gone unnoticed what hope was there for me?

My inquiry letter told the story of Vera in Ventura, California, who tried to get assistance in a post office, only to be completely ignored by other customers and the postal clerk. I have kept in touch with Vera and she has had other apparent invisibility experiences in stores and other public places. Sheila in Roanoke, Texas, continues to have invisibility experiences, some of which have occurred in restaurants and at the airport. Glenda in Fort Worth, Texas, has had these experiences occur in a cafeteria and a movie theater. Most of the cases that I have researched have been in the U.S., although I do know of cases in England, Europe, Australia, Puerto Rico and Brazil.

Vera in Ventura! Southern California, where most of Art Bell's favorite people live! A post office! The brilliance! Who hasn't been completely ignored by hostile and unresponsive postal workers? Roanoke, Texas! Roanoke--that colony where EVERYONE disappeared! Why the heck hadn't I thought of this. Tears were starting to form.

In every case I have heard about or personally researched, the person is physically still present, although unable to be seen or heard. From the point of view of the invisible person, the world looks normal and they have no idea that they cannot be seen or heard by people around them. I will address how this might occur a little further along in this article, but first I want to give a few examples below. The quotes are directly from experiencers’ letters to me.

Jean in Tucson, Arizona, wrote me of her experiences. She has had them occur in the library when she attempted to check out books and in clothing stores. The following is a quote from her letter, showing the humor with which she deals with these occurrences. "I've had this happen in stores, in restaurants, and many places. I remember joking to a friend of mine one time that I felt like I could walk into a bank, help myself to a pile of bills and no one would ever see me because I was invisible. There is no physical reason why I should be. I'm taller than average for my sex and age group (I'm fifty-five years old and 5'9"), referred to as good-looking, and I've always worn my hair red. You wouldn't think a tall woman with red hair, high heels in a purple dress and dangle earrings would be invisible, would you?"

Noooo, you wouldn't. But of course I could imagine why someone would pretend that she were; the old "Maybe if I don't say anything she won't talk to me."At this point I was beginning to hate Donna's guts. This was too good. A little wordy and I would have used shorter paragraphs, but all in all it was really great. Growling and gnashing my teeth, I continued to read:

Or the story from a thirty-seven year old man, Peter in Gloucestershire, England, who was at a private party in 1987. He walked upstairs to use the bathroom and was followed by a woman who also wanted to use the bathroom. The woman motioned for him to go first and she stood outside the door to wait her turn. Peter used the bathroom, opened the door and walked out into the hallway, closing the door behind him. He went on down the stairs and walked over to some friends and started talking to them. They all ignored him completely. He though they were playing a joke on him, so he walked away and found his girlfriend and asked her for a cigarette. She, too, acted like she didn't see or hear him. Peter was getting angry by this time and thought the joke had gone too far. He decided to walk back upstairs and catch the woman coming out of the bathroom and ask her for a cigarette. "...I walked back up the stairs and, on reaching the bathroom landing, I came across the girl again who was standing outside the bathroom door, clearly still waiting for me to come out. When she saw me, her face dropped in surprise for clearly she thought that I was still in the bathroom." Peter returned to the party downstairs and everything was normal again and he was able to be seen and heard. When he questioned his friends and girlfriend as to why they had ignored him, they all swore that they had never seen or heard him. Obviously the woman upstairs had not seen him come out of the bathroom and go downstairs.

Waaaaaaa!

Then there is the case of Melanie in Ventura, California, who became invisible while sitting on her own living room sofa and staring at the wall, lost in her own thoughts. Her husband was walking around the house looking for her but could not see her sitting there, only several feet away from where he was walking. This lasted for approximately ten minutes, then she was suddenly visible again. Her husband was quite upset with her and thought she had been hiding from him. She assured him that she had been sitting there all along, but to this day, he does not believe her. Or, how about Jannise in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who has had a number of invisibility experiences throughout her life. The one reported here lasted longer than usual. As a teenager, she fell in with a group of friends who decided to see if they could actually steal something from a department store and not get caught. As luck would have it, the entire group was caught and taken into custody, including Jannise. They were taken to the police station and one by one were questioned; all, that is, except Jannise. Although she was standing right there, no one paid the slightest attention to her; not the police, the guards, or the office personnel. She finally just got up and walked out of the police station without ever being questioned or anyone attempting to stop her. When she later talked with her friends about what happened in the police station, "...they didn’t even recall me being taken into custody at the department store.....

"You're slipping, Donna," I thought as I read "Melanie in Ventura." "You already used Ventura." And the rest of the paragraph lacked pizazz. The article wasn't real funny anymore. Could it be... I quickly read through to the end.

It wasn't a humor article.

And neither were her other pieces, which focused on hypnosis treatment for alien abductees.

I could have just kicked myself! Why hadn't I looked at some of the other articles before I became so distraught! She wasn't a humorist at all and the fact was right there in front of me all the time.

I just couldn't see it.

***

Saints celebrating feast days today include Saint Jerome Emiliani (patron saint of orphans and abandoned children), Saint John of Matha, Saint Nicetius or Nizier of Besancon, Saint Elfleda, Saint Meingold, Saint Cuthman, and Saint Stephen of Muret.

Birthdays: John Grisham (1955, Jonesboro, AR), Ted Koppel (1940, Lancashire, England), Nick Nolte (1941, Omaha, NE), Mary Steenburgen (1953, Newport, AR).

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© Marilyn Jones 2000-2008