On December 5th 2013 a man died. Not just any man but a hero to an entire nation, an entire race of people. A man who had been imprisoned for nearly 30 years spending 18 of those in a tiny cell on Robben Island, south of Cape Town, before finally being released and leading his nation out of the oppression of apartheid and racism, united under a multicultural democracy. That man was Morgan Freeman… no, wait, I mean Nelson Mandela. Or was it? In 2010 a paranormal consultant blogging by the name of Fiona Broome was convinced that Nelson Mandela had died in prison — to quote her post
“I thought Nelson Mandela died in prison. I thought I remembered it clearly, complete with news clips of his funeral, the mourning in South Africa, some rioting in cities, and the heartfelt speech by his widow.”
The problem I have with this statement is that there’s no mention of when or where he died, just a vague “in prison” comment. And that ladies and gentleman is how this whole movement began. Since then it’s become this big pile of steaming horse shite gathering speed as it skyrockets downhill faster than the career of whoever the latest celebrity is this week who’s being accused of something untoward.
But can she have such a memory? Well it is true that Nelson Mandela was hospitalized with tuberculosis during the 1980’s and was on the very precipice of death — in fact many newspapers of the time were speculating that he was about to snuff it, and his wife at the time Winnie did appear on the telly a lot, but he survived to become the iconic man we (most of us) remember.
There is a book produced every year called English Alive: Writings From High Schools in Southern Africa, a collection of essays and poems written by high school students. The 1990 edition contained the following passage in an essay, written by a kid called Andrew McCarthy:
“The chaos that erupted in the ranks of the ANC when Nelson Mandela died on 23rd July 1991…”
If you’re interested the ISBN number is 0620151862 9780620151863 if you fancy checking it out? So, that’s that sorted then? Apparently not…
Everything from time slides, parallel universes, dimensional merging to the mighty Hadron Collider at Cern distorting the space-time continuum have been proposed as the reason why so many people are afflicted with historical ignorance. Some even go so far as to suggest that when it was fired up in 2012 the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) destroyed the version of Earth on which we all resided, but luckily had enough time to reset itself and dump us all on an alternative timeline none the wiser, a timeline where Mandela survived. Guess I missed that party eh?
It’s not so much the concept of parallel universes of inter-dimensional shifts I’m opposed to, far from it. I can hack those any day of the week, except Saturday mornings, nothing happens then except the consumption of a bacon sarnie and a litre of Irn Bru. I’m off track again — this is the effect this whole thing has had on my state of mind (is that why it was over three weeks late?! — Ed). I spent a whole day watching YouTube videos dedicated to the subject, from fancy cgi presentations taking me on a gnat’s eye view through CERN, to some incredibly horrible millennial chat show guff to video after video about the Berenstein/Bernstein/Berenstain confusion. By the end of it I was ready to chuck it all in. Thank God for Rammstain [sic].
I came across all manner of examples or people remembering alternative versions of products, movie quotes, and film titles but nothing of any actual historical importance. But in the end I had to begrudgingly admit that this was a topic that was just too big for one issue and would probably better served as a two-parter. So in this first part I’m going to list a couple of the more popular examples of the Mandela Effect that have got the world’s collective knickers in a twist, starting with a big one, even bigger than the death of Nelson Mandela.
THE BERENSTEIN/BERENSTAIN BEARS
I’d never heard of these children’s books — however you spell it. When I was a wee lad, we had Peter Rabbit, The Beano, The Broons or Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree stories (referenced in V For Vendetta don’t you know!) so this probably means a lot more to readers over the pond. At first I thought it was just a mis-pronunciation but then I looked up the authors. Jan and Stan Berenstain, who’d met at the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art in 1941. Nearly two decades after and with a number of minor successful books under their belts they hit upon an idea of writing children’s books using bears as the central characters.
Who would have thought a childrens book could cause so much trouble?
The first story involving these Berenstain Bears was titled Freddy Bear’s Spanking (try getting that published today!) which ended up in the hands of none other than Theodor Geisel — or as the world knows him best, Dr Seuss. Enamoured, or not, by the potential he requested it was rewritten and expanded and so, in 1962, the first book The Big Honey Hunt was published and was an immediate hit giving rise to a whole series of books selling over 240 million copies by 2003 according to Wikipedia. So, that’s 240 million books at least featuring the immortal words ‘The Berenstain Bears’? Let that sink in. OK, to continue… These bears lived in a big treehouse, and eventually had five animated specials before being commissioned for a series in 1985 imaginatively titled The Berenstain Bears Show. Not only that but from 1990 there were a whole glut of educational computer games aimed squarely at the pre-school market, you know the ones; learn to count, fun with colours, learn about letters, how a bear shites in the woods etc… OK we made the last one up, but these were little money-making plastic discs of pure unbridled joy across living rooms in the States. But why do people insist that they remember it as Berenstein or even Bernstein then?
Well there’s a couple of options here, from my point of view anyway. First off in a mis-pronunciation confusion of an artworker or marketing guru assumed that ‘ain’ was a typo so changed it ‘ein’. There’s a famous example by a Reddit user who was moving house and found a VHS cassette tape that actually said The Berenstein Bears on the long label on the front of the tape. This was considered the Holy Grail for Mandela Effect devotees, at last their whole parallel existence was justified. There was just one slight problem though, a closer look at the image itself, especially the label on the top of the cassette, clearly shows The Berenstain Bears and by Stan and Jan Berenstain. Clearly pointing to the fact that the front label contained the most common of Berenstain typos.
Michael Berenstain, son of Stan and Jan, even admits himself there was a lot of confusion over the pronunciation of the family name and there’s very good interview with him in the National Post which you can read here.
Then there was a whole plethora of official cashcow products designed to make adults part with their hard-earned dollar to keep Brett and Jolene happy — clothing, breakfast cereal, chocolate, puzzles, junk food ‘Happy Meals’, even embroidery kits! Christ on a bike! Which leads me neatly on to possibility number two. Counterfeiting. Aye, knock-offs, goods that DelBoy would flaunt out of a suitcase down Peckham Market. You see The Berenstain Bears were big business, a huge honey pot of fictional dungaree wearing bears. Remember the number of books sold by 2003? That’s right 240 million. So, it stands to reason that there’d be more than a few chancers looking for a piece and not ashamed to exploit the armies of pocket-money wielding kids. It makes a whole lot of sense to me for a whole hooky merchandise empire to be created around the ‘Berenstein Bears’. Ignorance is bliss so they say.
I’ve seen a lot of bad Photoshopped ‘evidence’ to last me a lifetime so if anyone has actual physical, unaltered proof of ‘Berenstein’ then please by all means send it to the usual address.
One last thing before this family of bears is consigned to fireside rugs and wall trophies, check this out. You can even listen to The Berenstain Bears on Spotify! If that’s too much (my record was 4 seconds) then try The Berenstain Bears Is A Conspiracy by some dude calling himself Ponder.
OK so that’s all for now, look out for Part 2 coming soon! Or if you can’t wait visit www.shadowsmagazine.co.uk and check out the back issues!