There has been more and more weight given to the idea that there are other realities and dimensions besides our own, which bump against us and even overlap us. With this idea comes hand in hand the notion that traveling between them could also be possible, and there are accounts that point to the possibility that not only is this possible, but that such portals between these realms have already been opened. Intriguing, often a bit scary, and always weird, these cases of alleged gateways capture the imagination, and make us wonder whether alternate realities not only exist, but have already been visited by us.

Perhaps the most well-known tale of a supposed inter-dimensional portal concerns the town of Ong’s Hat, merely a speck on the map and one of the numerous abandoned old villages scattered throughout the remote Pine Barrens of the U.S. state of New Jersey. Purportedly getting its name from a man named Ong, who once threw up his fancy silk hat in frustration when the jealous lover of a woman he was having an affair with stomped on it, after which it became stuck on a pine branch, the town supposedly started as a single hut. By the 1860s, the village had apparently grown into quite a lively town known for bootlegging and supplying booze to the outlying areas. However, the town declined dramatically in the following years, and by the 1930s was all but abandoned, although it still showed up on maps, and in modern days it is merely feral, weed-choked ruins, crumbling buildings, and empty lots.

The small, rural town would perhaps have forever remained an obscure backwater ghost town if not for a curious book called Ong’s Hat: The Beginning, which was written by Joseph Matheny and published in 2002. The book claims that in 1978 a man by the name of Wali Fard settled in the New Jersey Pine Barrens after purchasing 200 acres there. Fard, who was a member of the secretive cult the Moorish Orthodox Church of America, had allegedly just returned from traveling the world studying various philosophies, magical practices and spiritualist techniques in such exotic locales as India, Perisa, and Afghanistan, and he would then join another cult called the Moorish Science Ashram. He was apparently an eccentric man to say the least, moving onto the property with a ragtag group composed of some runaway boys and two lesbian anarchists…

Some researchers into the matter have said that all sorts of strange beings could tumble through such a doorway. One author, researcher, and very vocal conspiracy theorist on the idea of the LHC creating doorways to strange realms is Stephen Quayle, who has claimed that everything from actual demons, to angels, to reptilian beasts and other things we cannot possibly fathom could be let in if such a gate were opened. Quayle does not mince words when giving his opinion on the consequences of experiments at CERN, saying:

The men who would play God, in searching for the God particle, are truly going to find more than they bargained for as they open the gates of hell. They will find inter-dimensional beings who have a taste for human flesh and humanity’s destruction. Most scientists, in lacking an understanding of the ‘supernatural entities’ that are going to confront them, are way beyond their ability to comprehend, let alone control, the forces of Pandora’s box that will be released.

While this may be at the extreme end of the spectrum of talk of the LHC opening up doorways to alternate dimensions, the idea that this is happening to some extent already is persistent. Evidence for this sort of interdimensional activity is often offered in the form of the various strange things that have allegedly been photographed or filmed in the skies over CERN over the years, including UFOS, strange vortices, and other unexplained aerial phenomena. For instance, in December of 2015 footage was taken by some tourists of what seems to be an orb of some sort entering what appears to be some kind of portal or vortex, which vanishes as soon as the unidentified object enters it. Another similar video from May of 2016 supposedly shows some sort of portal in the clouds that appeared right after the power went out at CERN, an incident they claimed was caused by a weasel getting into some of the sensitive machinery…

Is it possible that doorways to other realities and dimensions exist, be they manmade or otherwise? Is this even possible? With more and more scientific attention being paid to the possibilities of other parallel dimensions brushing up against our own, it is seeming to be more and more plausible that these realities are out there, although whether we will ever be able to travel between them remains unclear. Yet as long as stories like these keep popping up it is curious to think that not only may such portals be possible, but that they may already exist.