About G. Gene Ladner

Born and raised in Houston, Texas, I’ve had a wide variety of interests in hobbies throughout my life of 59 years, such as woodcarving, windsurfing, and even rattlesnake hunting, but my recent years of “coincidence collecting” have been nothing short of life-altering. While it is true that I experienced several esoteric events, starting at age 8, such as seeing two ghostly apparitions at the same time, and successfully finding two lost objects and a lost person through remote-viewing exercises over the course of a two-year period as a teenager, and I’ve always been interested in, and open-minded about all manner of paranormal subject matter due to such experiences, I was nonetheless astounded at the level of bizarre coincidence that can be found when I engaged in the practice of intentional coincidence collecting, sparked by a mystical experience I had while on a morning walk in March of 2004 (also a prior one in July of 2003, in which I “received” a mathematical formula that appears to work into infinity. It’s so simple I wonder why I’ve yet to meet anyone who knows of it).

My foray into intentional collection of coincidences began rather innocently when I used the digits of Pi to generate a page number in my only dictionary at the time, just to see what might develop. The results seemed quite fantastic to me, so I did it again, and found similar results. Consequently, I became fascinated with the technique, and went on to develop other techniques that deliver results that satisfy my taste, including hundreds of anomalies in the digits of Pi that, to my knowledge, I have been the first to discover. About five years after my initial foray into coincidence collecting, I began having occasional psychic dreams, including the occasional daytime psychic “hit”, or event. My theory is that by discovering coincidences through an intentional process, I may have opened up a section of my brain I had used only sparingly before, if at all. I hope one day to be able to use more of my brain’s capacity through such exercises, and perhaps become even healthier as well. In 2012 I began using visualization techniques to cure and prevent my headaches and colds, and I’ve experienced spectacular successes. I’ve taken no drugs or vitamins since 2012, including aspirin, as I’ve had no need to do so. In any event, I certainly hope my readers will enjoy the entertainment value of the coincidences I’ve uncovered, even if they get nothing else out of them. Naturally, I personally find them quite intriguing.

What follows is a short compendium of a few of the hundreds of anomalies I have personally discovered in the digits of Pi. I hope that the reader will find them entertaining at the very least, and possibly thought-provoking as well.

The 11th appearance of 54 in the digits of Pi is in position 1154 (1,154 digits after the decimal). Coincidence only? Perhaps, but I found it intriguing enough to include this piece of “coincidence trivia” in my work of fiction (based on factual coincidences) The Coincidence Collector, due to its apparent relationship to other similar anomalies. Though I considered it to be only an amusing coincidence for several years after making the discovery, my opinion about its possible “significance level” went up dramatically when I watched the Graham Hancock Youtube video “Quest for the Lost Civilization, Part 3: Ancient Mariners”. At 25:21 into the video, Hancock mentions that “In Cambodia, precession is represented by the number 54, three-quarters of a degree of precession. All over the site, that number comes up again and again. Pompeii in the Pacific is exactly 54 degrees east of Angkor”. Naturally, since Hancock is referring to degrees of a circle, and the digits of Pi are in direct reference to such, I thought this might be worth some additional pondering, if only for the entertainment value. Here’s another possibly entertaining piece of trivia about the 11th 54, in position 1154: The asteroid #1154, discovered on February 8th, 1927 by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth (in Heidelberg, Germany) is named ASTRONOMIA, after the field of ASTRONOMY itself. Yet another “just a coincidence” happenstance? Doesn’t seem so to me, especially since Hancock is referring specifically to the subject of ASTRONOMY when he mentions the number 54, and he uses the word several times in his video.

The three-digit number 331 appears in the digits of Pi in position 1127 the very first time it appears. If the position number is whimsically allowed to represent the date November 27th in a common (non-leap) year, that date happens to be the 331st day of the year. Rather luckily, I happened across this particular synchronicity on the date 11/27 in 2005, the 331st day of the year, which happens to be my son’s birthday. Half an hour of additional research after stumbling across this interesting anomaly yielded the fact that only one other position number does this particular “thing”, when that position number is allowed to represent a date of the calendar year, but it is perhaps not quite as significant as the one previously mentioned, since it is not the first appearance of the number of days into the year in that particular position. However, it is perhaps still somewhat interesting: The second appearance of the two-digit number 56 is found in position 225, and in a common year the 56th day of the year is February 25th (2/25). As previously stated, these two dates (11/27 and 2/25) are the only ones that pull this particular stunt in the digits of Pi. Significant? Perhaps only as entertainment, but I think it best to keep my mind open to other possibilities (you know, just in case).

The 19th appearance of 19 in the Digits of Pi is in position 1227. If the position number is whimsically allowed to represent a date, December 27th, that date in a common year is the 361st day of the year, and 19 X 19 happens to be 361. On a rather curious side note, the official time of drawing the afternoon lottery games (such as Pick 3 and Daily 4) in Texas is 12:27. Not 12:15 or 12:30, as seems more logical to me, but the rather odd time of 12:27. On top of that, the dictionary I use most often has the word NUMBER as the last keyword on page 1227, and it is the first keyword on the following page, 1228. These are the two position numbers required to designate both digits in the 19th appearance of 19, and 12:27 is the official time of drawing of the NUMBERS in Texas.

Since I’ve now brought up the subject of dictionaries, please allow me to relate a rather curious synchronicity concerning what is found on specific pages of the two dictionaries I use most often (the only ones I owned at the time of this particular discovery), and one of the most bizarre connections to the digits of Pi I’ve ever uncovered. The two pages containing all the listings pertaining to GOD in my Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (circa 1981) are 782 and 783, and the first listing (and therefore the keyword) on the second of those two pages is GODDESS. Several years ago (just for the heck of it), I looked to see what is in position 783 in the digits of Pi, and what I found is the very first appearance of 973. I then turned to page 973 of the same dictionary, and what I found there seemed too perfect to be just an ordinary coincidence. There are only two illustrations on page 973, the very first of which is at the very top of the page in the first column: ISIS, the Egyptian GODDESS. Therefore, the three digits which make their first appearance in position 783 (which is the page where GODDESS is the first listing), are 973, and that just happens to be the page where ISIS is listed at the top of the page, which also has the added visual impact of being the first of only two illustrations on that page. After recovering from my goosebumps, I then bothered to look at page 973 of my other dictionary, a Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (circa 2002), and it turned out to be the first of the two pages which contain the exact same listings pertaining to GOD as in the first dictionary I checked (pages 782 and 783 in that one). If that wasn’t enough, I then bothered to count the listings on page 973 down to the first listing for GOD, and it turned out to be the 42nd listing on the page, which, oddly enough, is what I suspected, since I was already fully aware that the name of asteroid #42 is ISIS, after the Egyptian GODDESS, of course. Significant? Maybe not, but I certainly find it thought-provoking.

Asteroid #895 is known as Helio, and the first five digits found in position 895 in Pi are the very digits required to spell hELIO upside-down on a digital matrix, such as a calculator. Admittedly, they are not in the correct order to do so, but there are exactly 120 different permutations of that five-digit string, which happens to be composed of five different digits, with no repetitions (since Helio is composed of five different letters, obviously), and position 895 is indeed the earliest appearance in the digits of Pi of any of them, and by far. After taking the time to confirm my suspicion that position 895 is indeed the first appearance of any of those 120 permutations, I pondered the possible significance (if any) of the first appearance of the five digits required to spell hELIO upside-down on a calculator, but in the correct order (which would be 01734, instead of the sequence 14730 in position 895, which would spell OELhI), so I keyed the correct sequence into the Pi Search site, and got one heck of a good surprise. Turns out it is 30302 digits after the decimal (too bad it isn’t position 30303, which refers to the second digit in the sequence, as that is what I call a “reverse principle multiplier”. More on that later), and it is immediately followed by yet another “hELIO Sequence”, one of the other 120 different permutations. The second permutation in this sequence is followed by two of the same digits (34), which allow for the entire twelve-digit sequence to appear to say this, when keyed onto a calculator: hE ELOhI hELIO. Now, I’m no Bible scholar, but I’m not exactly oblivious, either. I immediately recognized the possibility that ELOhI could mean GOD, in the singular sense, since ELOHIM is plural for many Gods, according to everything I’ve ever read about Hebrew tradition. Then I happened by sheer luck to come across the listing ELOHI in a dictionary of Angels which a friend had given me a few years ago. According to this dictionary (by Gustav Davidson, circa 1967), Elohi is “an angel invoked in the exorcism of fire. Elohi is 5th of the angelic hierarchies answering to the 10 divine names”. According to Davidson, he got his information about Elohi from a book by Mathers (The Greater Key of Solomon, edited by S. L. MacGregor), and according to Mathers, when the name of Elohi is pronounced “God will dry up the sea and the rivers”. Mind you, I certainly don’t have any idea as to where Mathers (whoever that is) got his information about Elohi, but I certainly wonder the veracity of his claim, especially since I have inadvertently pronounced the name “Elohi” many times since I discovered this particularly enigmatic sequence in the digits of Pi, and nothing untoward seems to have happened because of it. Then again, maybe I’m just mispronouncing it? Not too concerned about it at the moment, nor is it likely I will be any time soon. Probably just an entertaining coincidence.

Now for a few quick anomalies to finish up this article: As in the case of the 11th 54 in position 1154 (item A in this article), the 4th 67 is in position 467, and the 4th 7 is in position 47. The 4th 7 in position 47 is the very first Pi anomaly I discovered, due to my affinity for the 15th prime number (47, of course). Not only is the 4th 7 in position 47, the 4th prime number is 7, as well. This is the only two-digit number that does this particular brand of “self-indication” in the digits of Pi, whereas there are a few other three-digit and four-digit numbers that do so, in addition to the ones I mentioned already in the first line of this paragraph.

The 118th prime number is 647, and 647 makes its first appearance in the digits of Pi 118 digits after the decimal. This prime number is likely the only prime number that demonstrates this particular synchronicity with its position in the digits of Pi, since I have checked the first one-thousand primes, and nothing else even comes close. I found this particular synchronicity without any use of trial-and- error due to my affinity for the number 47, as the first appearance of 47 in the digits of Pi also just happens to be part of the first appearance of 647.

To finish up here, I sincerely hope I have entertained the reader with one of my favorite kinds of “coincidence collection”, and I hope to get to do so again in the near future, as I have managed to stumble across literally hundreds more confirmable Pi anomalies in the past ten years. The reader is certainly welcome to take with a grain of salt any significance I have ascribed (either intentionally or otherwise) to the synchronicities I have related in this article, but the synchronicities themselves are confirmable, and possibly significant in the larger scheme of things, though impossible to tell at this time. I hope you’ve at least gotten a chuckle out of them, if nothing else.