Weird story

[Rolfe]

If someone else told me this, I wouldn't believe it. It's only because it happened to me that I'm still puzzling at it.

Many years ago, when I was at school, we had a Biology teacher called Mr. Brodie. One day we had Biology last period in the afternoon, and we were learning about the cabbage white butterfly. Near the end of the lesson Mr. Brodie told us about something called the ichneumon fly, which lays its eggs in the butterfly's chrysalis so it hatches ichneumon flies and not butterflies. Then the bell rang, and as schoolkids do, we stampeded for the door.

Next morning (not first thing, but before lunch) we had Biology again. Mr. Brodie started the lesson by asking, "Can anyone tell me about natural predators of the cabbage white?" I assumed he was checking to see if we'd been awake the previous afternoon, and as I remembered it perfectly well, I stuck my hand up. I was kind of surprised that mine was the only hand that went up, but I was that sort of kid.

I simply regurgitated everything I remembered him saying about the ichneumon fly, wondering vaguely why he looked so surprised. When I finished, he said "Where did you learn all that?"

"You told us yourself yesterday afternoon," I replied. At this point I simply assumed that he'd got further than he realised in his lesson plan, and had forgotten that he'd told us about that parasitic fly thing.

I looked round the class, expecting a reasonable number of other pupils to back me up on this. (This was a very high-level selective school, and the top stream of Biology pupils - SOMEBODY else had to have been awake. There were some very bright kids in that class.) Whole room full of blank stares. Not one person backed me up, in fact they were all quite adamant (some of the little swots even referring to notes) that he hadn't mentioned the damn fly.

Mr. Brodie just looked completely baffled, as if he thought I was playing some weird trick he couldn't quite figure, muttered something about "Well, the ichneumon fly - what she said," and went on with the rest of the lesson. None of the other pupils wanted to talk about it. I think they thought I'd read it up in a book and was trying to be clever.

Except - I really did have a very clear memory of Mr. Brodie sitting on the edge of his desk telling us all about the ichneumon fly, the previous afternoon.

Now it wasn't clairvoyance, because Mr. Brodie never did do that in the end. He just validated that what I'd said was correct, and went on. The rest of the class learned about the ichneumon fly from ME.

Did I slide from one universe to another that evening, one in which the only difference was that in the new universe he hadn't got quite as far on with his lesson plan? Look, this is nuts.

The only rational explanation I've ever been given is that I dreamed the entire incident. All I can say is that I don't think I did. I don't often remember dreams at all, and I can only remember a very few (particularly frightening) dreams from longer ago than a few weeks. And I know very well they were dreams. That classroom incident was like no dream I ever had.

Much, much later, after discussing this with the friend who suggested the dream explanation, it occurred to me that the only source of information I had ever had for the truth about the ichneumon fly as a biological organism was my (apparently false) memory of Mr. Brodie telling us about it, and my subsequent retelling of that. So I looked it up in a book (a book I did not possess at the time of this incident - it was one I acquired at university). There it was. I'd even got the spelling right. In the book, the parasitised organism was said to be a beetle larva in a tree, not a cabbage white butterfly, but the details of the parasitism were pretty much correct.

OK. I dreamed it all. But I didn't.

Rolfe.

 

[tamiO]

Good story I don't know what to make of it, either.

 

[Ed]

That fly is well known and figures often in nature films. It also provided the underlieing concept for the film "Alien" as you may remember. The point is that you could have come across a discussion of it in a variety of places, not just text books. Attributing the information to an authority figure would not overly surprise me.

Strange, though

 

[Rolfe]

That fly is well known and figures often in nature films. It also provided the underlieing concept for the film "Alien" as you may remember. The point is that you could have come across a discussion of it in a variety of places, not just text books. Attributing the information to an authority figure would not overly surprise me.

Strange, though

This happened in 1970. When did they film "Alien"? Oh, and we didn't have a television in the house until 1972. And I didn't go much to the cinema.

The weirdness is remembering him telling us. The very next day. It seemed so ordinary, just a usual checkup that we'd remembered something, until the universal declarations that he hadn't.

Rolfe.

 

[Ed]

This happened in 1970. When did they film "Alien"? Oh, and we didn't have a television in the house until 1972. And I didn't go much to the cinema.

The weirdness is remembering him telling us. The very next day. It seemed so ordinary, just a usual checkup that we'd remembered something, until the universal declarations that he hadn't.

Rolfe.

At the risk of losing all credibility, let me say that odd stuff does happen, it certainly has to me. Nothing, perhaps as jarring as your example. I remember once I was in a house and my mind kept repeating "get out". Never happened before or since. Not very well formed but subjectively real nontheless. Was there no, is there not now a field of study called "phenominology", sorta investigation into one off events?

 

[Thanz]

Now it wasn't clairvoyance, because Mr. Brodie never did do that in the end. He just validated that what I'd said was correct, and went on. The rest of the class learned about the ichneumon fly from ME.

I agree that the dream explanation may be hard to swallow (not that I have a better one). When I have a dream, and I am reading something in the dream or hearing some song or whatever that I don't actually know, and I try to focus on it in the dream, I find out that I can't and then I know that I am dreaming.

If we are allowing "woo-woo" speculation here, I would not rule out clairvoyance just yet. It would depend on your view of the universe and determinism. It could be that you saw the future as it would have rolled out prior to you seeing it - that is, what would have happened is that your teacher would have asked about predators, no one puts up their hand, and he then explains about the fly. You "saw" this explanation. When you regurgitated it the next day, you altered the time line slightly so that the explanation you "saw" never occurs, as it is not needed. Or something like that.

 

[Starrman]

One day we had Biology last period in the afternoon, and we were learning about the cabbage white butterfly. Near the end of the lesson Mr. Brodie told us about something called the ichneumon fly, which lays its eggs in the butterfly's chrysalis so it hatches ichneumon flies and not butterflies.

This quote is to illustrate just how important the fact that it was a butterfly that was affected. Then;

Next morning (not first thing, but before lunch) we had Biology again. Mr. Brodie started the lesson by asking, "Can anyone tell me about natural predators of the cabbage white?"

He then confirms you are right about the predator of a cabbage white butterfly. Then, at the end of your post;

I'd even got the spelling right. In the book, the parasitised organism was said to be a beetle larva in a tree, not a cabbage white butterfly, but the details of the parasitism were pretty much correct.

This strikes me, and I think it is the key point to the story. If I read this right, your description from your memory was pretty much correct, except the fact that it was a beetle rather than a very specific (cabbage white) butterfly. This is huge. If your rememberence of the story is true, wouldn't the biology teacher have corrected this mistake, rather than confirm it?

 

[Rolfe]

This strikes me, and I think it is the key point to the story. If I read this right, your description from your memory was pretty much correct, except the fact that it was a beetle rather than a very specific (cabbage white) butterfly. This is huge. If your rememberence of the story is true, wouldn't the biology teacher have corrected this mistake, rather than confirm it?

No, hang on a minute. We were STUDYING the cabbage white butterfly, which according to him is a bit of a pest if you grow vegetables in your garden. The ichneumon fly came into it because, as my recollection of the biology class goes, it was a natural curb on the numbers of the cabbage white. His actual question was, "Can anyone tell me about natural means of control of the cabbage white butterfly?" I then volunteered the ichneumon fly story, believing I was repeating his earlier lesson, and he acceded to that. As I remember.

It was only much much later that someone suggested I might have dreamed the lot. In which case, was there actually any such thing as the ichneumon fly? It occurred to me I'd never looked up anything to check if there even was such a thing - as I said, according to everyone present except me, the only time that material had been presented was when I told the story (thinking I was repeating what the teacher had said). And I remember no other occasion when the creature impinged on my consciousness apart from that allegedly "false" recollection.

At that point I looked up a book (which I have in front of me now, marked as bought in September 1971 when I went up to university - this all occurred in 1970 while I still at school) to see if it mentioned anything about the creature. The book spoke about it parasitising beetles, but by exactly the same technique as I "remembered" being told it parasitised the butterflies. This I took as evidence that the entire creature, name and modus operandi, wasn't some figment of my imagination!

I'm assuming the damn thing does the mojo on the butterflies as well as the beetles. The book doesn't go into much detail. If it hadn't been related to the butterfly, there was no relevance to the lesson, which was about the butterfly, not the ichneumon.

I just mentioned the beetle bit, as well as the date of purchase of the book, to demonstrate that I didn't get the whole story from the book. Actually, although it was a set book, I don't remember reading that part at all until the day I used it to check up on the facts of the "weird story".

Rolfe.

 

[dingler44]

(This was a very high-level selective school, and the top stream of Biology pupils - SOMEBODY else had to have been awake.

This is the segment of your story I find most interesting. To me as an outside reader, I don't find it strange that a top biology student at a very high-level selective school knew details of a particular fly.

The question is where did that information come from? Had you read, heard of or studied the fly before and simply forgotten the original source? Did you unintentionally replace your forgotten source with the teacher's previous lesson? We all know that the mind is both creative and fallable.

 

[voidx]

The validating part of this story appears to be the ichneumon fly. You would have to be absolutely certain you'd never heard it mentioned before the lesson about the Cabbage white. Where did the teacher "actually" leave of the lesson the previous day? You were already discussing the Cabbage White, so if he left the previous days class with the thought of predators and other such things, then if you'd had some inkling of the ichneumon fly previously you could have just related it to the Cabbage White, and as it turned out were correct. This is an important question to me, since you seemingly remembered this whole class portion and discussion the previous day, and it turned out to not have happened, do you know what he was actually talking about that day? Did someone fill you in? Do you have any recollection? I think its important to know what he actually talked about the day before, because it may have lead you in this direction.

 

[voidx]

I agree with Dingler44 as well. I'm very hesitant to invoke the clairvoyance explanation. I do not discount it, but I find using it at this point is lazy, it poses no detail on what actually happened, and its not verfiable. Where as problems with memory lapse or dreaming, day-dreaming could still adequately explain this.

 

[Starrman]

Looking up this very fly on the net, it seems the fly will inject its eggs into any insect or caterpillar. I can't seem to find any mention of it injecting its eggs into a chysalis.

The qoute from the original story again is:

Near the end of the lesson Mr. Brodie told us about something called the ichneumon fly, which lays its eggs in the butterfly's chrysalis so it hatches ichneumon flies and not butterflies

So what Mr. Brodie told you in this memory (or dream, or whatever) was not correct. It seems odd to me that you remember things as specific 'ichneumon fly' and 'white cabbage butterfly' (even will enough to spell 'ichneumon' correctly), yet get the part about where it lays it's eggs wrong.

 

[voidx]

This will probably make my point clearer. Here is your recollection of events:

1) Day 1 - Brodie talks about Cabbage Whites and the ichneumon fly, you listen.

2) Day 2 - Brodie asks about natural controls for the Cabbage Whites, you thinking he's seeing what you remember from Day 1 answer about the ichneumon fly, no one knows what you're talking about.

Everyone else's recollection:

1) Day 1 - Brodie talks about something, probably relating to the Cabbage White as that was your subject of discussion at the time, but you have no recollection as you imagined the above Day 1.

2) Day 2 - Brodie throws out a question, I'm assuming relating to the previous days "actual" discussion, you answer it and no one knows how you knew the answer yet, not even Brodie.

So my question again is, what happened on Day 1 in everyone elses recollection?

 

[Darat]

33 years ago and you trust your memory on the details of something that happened when you were a teenager?

No disrespect but how can you be certain your memory is actually 100% accurate of what and when the events happened and how do you know you just haven’t forgotten something that could explain it quite mundanely?

With all these types of anecdotes I tend to (because of my own experience with memory of long ago events) consider the possibility that the recollection of the event may not be 100% accurate or may leave out what would be information that could explain it because its been forgotten over the years.

Again, if my experience can be generalised, we tend to remember the “special” events. Just as a “for instance” there could have been a TV programme on the night before that you half listened to that had the information in it but you just don’t remember that.

It is rather similar in some ways to a post made by a few weeks ago by Explorer, Telepathy? .

 

[Rolfe]

Looking up this very fly on the net, it seems the fly will inject its eggs into any insect or caterpillar. I can't seem to find any mention of it injecting its eggs into a chysalis.

So what Mr. Brodie told you in this memory (or dream, or whatever) was not correct. It seems odd to me that you remember things as specific 'ichneumon fly' and 'white cabbage butterfly' (even will enough to spell 'ichneumon' correctly), yet get the part about where it lays it's eggs wrong.

He might have said caterpillar. It was a long time ago. Cabbage white butterfly, juvenile version, ichneumon fly lays eggs in this, which does no good to the butterfly and so saves at least some of your cabbages. That's all I really remember of the detail.

To go on to Voidx's point, I everyone else knew that the topic we were on was the cabbage white butterfly. No dispute. This was confirmed by Mr. Brodie's actual question, which pre-supposed that we were still on that topic. The only apparent disagreement was whether or not he'd mentioned the ichneumon fly the previous day.

I tried to ask other people about it afterwards, because I thought maybe they just didn't remember, and somebody would perhaps rremember with a bit of prodding, or maybe there was some silly conspiracy to wind me up, but nobody wanted to talk about it. I got the impression that they thought I was playing some sort of silly atttention-seeking game.

Can't have been a TV programme, we didn't have a TV at the time (sad, but true). And again, if I'd got it from the radio or a book, my usual attitude would have been to answer, and then take some pride in knowing. But I was repeating the previous day's memory of the teacher telling it to the class until the "thump" moment when I realised it hadn't just been a "check to see who was awake last lesson" question. It's the bewilderment of that realisation that has kept the memory so fresh.

For many years the only explanation put to me was that I somehow knew about the ichneumon fly from another source, and had imagined Mr. Brodie telling us about it. I just couldn't see how that could have been so - if I'd known some other way, I'd just have stuck my hand up and shown what a smart-aleck I was. What actually happened was that I believed I was remembering Mr. Brodie telling us about it only the previous day - it was a recent, and at that time reasonably detailed memory (even if now I can't tell you whether he said chrysalis or caterpillar).

It was only relatively recently that someone suggested that perhaps I'd dreamed DAY 2. Mr. Brodie really did tell us all about the creature, and somehow I had a dream that he'd asked the class, and nobody but me remembered. I can't refute that, only that until the suggestion was made it hadn't even occurred to me, and the memory doesn't feel like a dream, and although it has faded with the passing of time, it hasn't gone completely the way dreams do. It was too rational. I was dressed, for a start! And my dreams usually feature prominently me being unprepared, or late, or without some vital piece of kit - not knowing something I'm not supposed to know.

It was only then I thought to check whether there was any such beastie, and found sufficient confirmation to indicate that the thing wasn't entirely hallucinated. But that doesn't completely refute the dream theory at all.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

33 years ago and you trust your memory on the details of something that happened when you were a teenager?

No disrespect but how can you be certain your memory is actually 100% accurate of what and when the events happened and how do you know you just haven’t forgotten something that could explain it quite mundanely?

You're quite right of course. It's just that it was SO odd, and was never explained, and as such it's something I've come back to now and again all my life.

I've never forgotten it, and I've never changed my story.

The thing is, I can say, "I know what happened, it happened to me," but as soon as anyone I tell passes on the story it becomes "A friend of mine says..." and thus completely non-substantiated.

I just thought I'd see if anyone had any other ideas. The dream one is the best, it's just so odd that until a friend (a real live friend but on an email list at the time) suggested that explanation, it hadn't even occurred to me. Because the whole experience had no "dream" quality to it.

Rolfe.

 

[voidx]

Having a vivid realistic dream isn't impossible, so that to me is the most mundane aspect, that part could have happened, whether a night dream or a day dream. To me it would appear that the answer lies within the "lost" day. Whether it was Day 1, or as suggested to you Day 2. You have a day where you remember you "memory" but do not remember what actually happened, I would guarantee you that your answer lies in the "lost" activities of that previous day. Something prompted you to start thinking about predators or natural controls for the Cabbage White, you got the memory, through dream or imagination, or something, and you attached the ichneumon fly, which perhaps you had heard about, but did not remember. This seems likely to me, albeit quite an odd experience admittedly.

 

[Rolfe]

Having a vivid realistic dream isn't impossible, so that to me is the most mundane aspect, that part could have happened, whether a night dream or a day dream. To me it would appear that the answer lies within the "lost" day. Whether it was Day 1, or as suggested to you Day 2. You have a day where you remember you "memory" but do not remember what actually happened, I would guarantee you that your answer lies in the "lost" activities of that previous day. Something prompted you to start thinking about predators or natural controls for the Cabbage White, you got the memory, through dream or imagination, or something, and you attached the ichneumon fly, which perhaps you had heard about, but did not remember. This seems likely to me, albeit quite an odd experience admittedly.

Dunno. I have to believe it was something like that, or else complete woo-woo.

I feel a bit like Madeleine Ennis, but with a difference. She's the professor who claims to have replicated the Benveniste experiment in her lab, but just sits there saying she has no explanation for the facts she states. It was actually her experiment the famous Horizon programme tried to replicate for the Randi challenge, not Benveniste's. Of course, the attempt failed comprehensively. She just sits there saying "I have no explanation."

Well, hell woman, you're a scientist. Don't you want to know? Why don't you invite Randi's team into your lab to see if he can spot the problem like he did in Benveniste's? Or at least try to troubleshoot it yourself? Or if you're so all-fired sure, apply yourself for the million bucks?

I'm a scientist, and that's why the ichneumon fly story bugs me (pun not really intended!). But it was a singular event, nothing like it has ever happened to me before or since, and there's no way I can test it.

The more time passes from the event, the more inclined I become to say it must have been some effect just as Voidx suggests.

Rolfe.

 

[patnray]

I'd guess you had heard of the fly form some other source. It is not uncommon, and back in the late 60's there was a great boom of interest in using "natural" pest controls. Stores were selling lady bugs and bacillus thurigensis (sp?) for controlling aphids and caterpillars. I had heard of the ichneumon fly from several sources (but back then I had an avid interest in insects and used to collect caterpillars and feed them to see what they turned into. One of them hatched a batch of these flies...)

Even though the exposure you had to the concept was not conciously remembered, the class discussion of the white butterfly triggered that memory during a daydream or a sleeping dream which seemed real enough (as dreams sometimes do) so that your memory of the class got mixed up with the memory of the dream...

Memory is a funny thing. In the early 60's I had a horrendous argument with my brother, an argument we both remember to this day. Except we both have completely different ideas about what the argument was about...

 

[SRW]

It's an interesting story and there are some interesting possibilities mentioned above. I cannot help but wonder if you have had more experiences like this?