SEE UPDATE, BELOW
If you’ve been with us a long while, you may look back fondly, as we do, on our series about “OT Phenomena” from old issues of Advance! magazine.
Once a week on Fridays, as part of our regular feature “This Week Aboard the Apollo,” we’d pull out the most fun tall tales that Scientologists told each other as they tried to convince the newbies that if they could only get up into the expensive “Operating Thetan” levels, they would experience superhuman and otherwordly powers they called “OT Phenomena.”
Jeff Hawkins, who at one time edited Advance!, tells us these were always the most popular feature in the publication. Scientologists just couldn’t get enough of these eerie tales of metaphysical derring-do.
There was the account, for example, of the woman who “exteriorized” from her body, flew across some vast span, then entered a hospital and performed surgery on another person while in an incorporeal state. We loved that one.
But for some reason, we noticed that many of the tales involved driving cars and parking them. An OT 5 might mention that a parking space had opened up, magically, just when he or she needed it, implying that the mind-powers that came with OT levels had somehow opened up a parking space or changed a traffic light. At several hundred thousand dollars for the full OT course catalog, we wondered if these phenomenon weren’t on the modest side. But what do we know.
Anyway, we knew that current issues of Advance! continue to feature OT Phenomena, but they were less interesting to us in part because long ago Scientologists stopped putting their names on them. Then, this week one of our tipsters sent us a real doozy.
It’s from a recent issue, and for a little background, you might remember that last year, in February, Super Bowl XLVII featured the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers in the Superdome. And at one point during the game, the power went out.
Now, finally, the reason for the outage can be revealed…
Isn’t that a great yarn? It just makes you want to zoom up the Bridge so you too can gain the power to influence major international sporting events with your mind.
Of course, there’s just one little problem. “D.W.” here apparently forgot, and the editor of Advance! apparently didn’t check, but the power outage at the Super Bowl actually occurred at the beginning of the second half, not at the beginning of the game itself.
Oh well. And it was so believable too.
UPDATE: And here’s the hilarious upshot to this story. Some Anons are claiming that they dreamed up this impossible story and submitted it to Advance! to see if the editors there would bite on it — and they did!
We’re told the editors liked the story so much, they asked for more. We love that.
——————–
Karen de la Carriere on Scientology and “justification”
Another great video from Karen, this one on how Scientology justifies what it does, even though its promises never pan out…
——————–
Posted by Tony Ortega on October 28, 2014 at 07:00
E-mail your tips and story ideas to tonyo94@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter. We post behind-the-scenes updates at our Facebook author page. Here at the Bunker we try to have a post up every morning at 7 AM Eastern (Noon GMT), and on some days we post an afternoon story at around 2 PM. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.
Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…
BLOGGING DIANETICS (We read Scientology’s founding text) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25
UP THE BRIDGE (Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48
GETTING OUR ETHICS IN (Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING (Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49
PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | Scientology’s Private Dancer
The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ
