Mystery Soda Machine

Seattle is a large harbour city that sits on the coast of the Pacific northwest of the United States of America. Outwardly it's a normal American metropolis; but for some reason Seattle, and the area around it, has a very esoteric reputation that I've had to deal with more then once before, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/mysterious-object-in-seattle-tunnel-dig.html and: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/dr-jonathan-reed-at-rendlesham-forest.html. The enigma I'm going to discuss today is ostensibly very ordinary; in fact it's the sort of thing you would probably walk past and not give a second look if you didn't know better. Believe it or not, it centres around a soft drinks dispenser; what Americans call a "soda machine". Like many occultist phenomena it can be found at a crossroads, in this case the junction of East John Street and 10th Avenue East in the Capitol Hill district of downtown Seattle. It is an aged and rather weather-beaten machine with the paint scraped off both sides; some rust and graffiti has been substituted. The design of the machine is similar to ones soft drinks corporations manufactured in the 1970's; however it is not an exact model and appears to have been custom-made by persons or organizations unknown. Unlike modern drinks vending machines, the selection buttons are at eye-level instead of at the side. It still works perfectly despite the fact that nobody ever seems to repair it. This is remarkable because automated drinks dispensers are quite complex from an engineering perspective and they require a lot of maintenance. The stock is stored in a refrigerated compartment and the electronics and mechanics have to process the money and then smoothly and quickly transport the correct product from that compartment to the delivery chute without getting it jammed or handing out the wrong item. The oblong plastic selection buttons are labelled for Coca Cola, Pepsi Cola, Barq's Root Beer (a product of the Coca Cola company) and Mountain Dew. The motifs of the drinks are all of 1970's vintage. All products cost ¢US 75, the equivalent of 48 pence; this is extremely cheap. Whoever... or whatever... manages the machine, they have only ever once adjusted their prices to take account of changing currency values, up from a giveaway ¢US 55 per can, about 34p. Assuming that they purchase their stock through the normal channels, they must run their outlet at a considerable loss. Interestingly there are two extra buttons on the machine both labelled "?MYSTERY" (sic) in a circus signboard-like font on a yellow background. If you insert your money and press that, all kinds of strange things are alleged to happen. The machine is said to read minds, so if you think about the beverage you want while pressing the "?MYSTERY"  button, it will give you your choice. Another report said that after spending five dollars in the machine, it dispensed a product that is not one from its normal menu. The machine can apparently provide up to six different extra brands of soft drink, some that are not even manufactured nowadays. If so I hope whoever got them kept the empty cans afterwards, because they'll be a vital piece of evidence. Nobody knows who owns the mystery soda machine, or who put it there. Also no one seems to remember when the machine first appeared in the neighbourhood although specific records of its presence date back to 1999. It stands outside the offices of Broadway Locksmiths Ltd and many researchers have made enquiries there. The staff say that nobody has ever been seen refilling the machine or taking away the money. Despite this it never runs out of any drink and its moneybox is never full. It has no known established electricity supply, which is very odd considering machines like those include a powerful refrigeration system. The manager of Broadway Locksmiths assumes the machine is on the office's mains, but they are never changed for it on their electric bill. It has a reputation in the local area as a source of fear as well as curiosity. Some people find it creepy and cross the road to avoid it, see: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mystery-soda-machine.

The Mystery Soda Machine has become a fairly popular novelty and alternative tourist attraction, and many people who take a trip to Seattle pay a visit to the machine to try the Mystery button and see what pops out. They have their photos taken beside it and even film themselves using it, see: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=dce_1396106908. There are several travel articles and rough guides which mention the machine and speculate as to its nature. The notion of it being paranormal in some way does come up. Others just assume that the shadowy soft drinks dispenser is tended late at night by people in dark overalls and balaclavas driving a black van full of cans in the back. This may well be true, but I take the supernatural theory seriously. It is possible that the Mystery Soda Machine is some kind of hyperdimensional intrusion. In this way it is similar to Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland. My friend and fellow researcher Brian Allan has investigated Rosslyn thoroughly and concluded that it exists only partly in our world; one part of it sticks outside our universe on a fourth dimensional level, see: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/programme-10-podcast-brian-allan.html. If what I've said doesn't make any sense to you then I recommend the book Flatland by Edwin Abbott. I guarantee it will completely clarify the matter; I review it here: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/flatland.html. (Here is a link to the public domain online edition; the author died in 1926 so his copyright expired in 1996, see: http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/.) If the reports about it are true then the machine may well be similar to Rosslyn Chapel; in this way the rules of causality and reality inside the machine may be very different to what we'd normally expect. This could be why it never runs out of stock no matter how many drinks customers order. This is why it doesn't need refilling. This is why it can sell products at such cheap prices that they would bankrupt any other retailer. These kinds of seemingly impossible effects are more common than you might think; in fact if you could walk by Seattle's magic drinks machine maybe you walk past similar phenomena all the time and never know it. Indeed you may suddenly find strange objects falling from the sky like rain and wonder how on Earth could that happen. Events like this do occur regularly and I suspect are related to things like the machine, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/out-of-blue.html. There's also the strange case of the "interdimensional vortex" opening up in Brighton, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/stargate-brighton.html. There may even be a link to the esoteric computer game Polybius, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/polybius.html. The background links below contain more information on this area of research. If one accepts the reality of parallel universes and the possibility that different universal "membranes" can come into contact and bleed over into each other; then one must also ask, as I have done many times, if some individuals might be trying to access other universes deliberately via occult rituals, heavy industrial scientific methods, or even a mixture of the two. I suspect that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN could be one of these attempts, see: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/cern-progress-or-apocalypse.html. The quandary of the mystery soda machine has inspired a local Seattle film maker, Marcy Stone-Francois to make this short movie as part of her college course, see: https://vimeo.com/51843238.

The skeptics will of course respond that everything I've written above is nonsense and that there's a "rational explanation" for all the anomalies of the machine. But an explanation can never be rational, only a method can. I think I've explored possibilities based on what I know, not made any firm conclusions, using a perfectly rational methodology. So when this photograph came to my attention I studied it carefully, see: http://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2014/05/spoiler-alert-mystery-of-the-capitol-hill-mystery-coke-machines-mysteries-revealed/bmloxcncyaasyvh-1/. This drive-by snap shows a man and a woman standing by what appears to be the Mystery Soda Machine with its door open. Inside you can clearly see what looks to be the completely normal interior of a drinks dispenser, the kind you see if you looked into any of them while the maintenance man is paying a visit. However, one mistake the skeptics often make is that they fail to understand that a "rational explanation" is a claim too. There are many examples of false-debunking operations that the skeppers have accepted without question simply because they are debunking operations, for example see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lDF-NAOraQ. That means we must not be too swift to accept that photo as evidence without subjecting it to the same scrutiny that we would, say, a ghost image or piece of UFO footage. We must admit that it could just as easily have been Photoshopped. Seattle is named after a famous Red Indian chief who in 1855 wrote a letter that reveals explicitly the difference in psychology and culture between Illuminati-occupied lands and those beyond it, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2007/11/chief-seattles-letter.html. If the Seattle region really is a portal area where our world blends with others, then it's no surprise that some of the modern residents and visitors are oblivious to it and in denial. If we can break out of our modern blinkered stupor then a haunted vending machine for carbonated fruit juice-based drinks will appear run-of-the-mill compared to what else we'll become aware of.

See here for background: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/mystery-object-found-inside-lhc.html.

And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/somerton-man.html.

And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/stargate-china.html.